Life in Japan

Richard was our Gion tour guide.

Our tour leader’s comments on life in Japan as I recall them.

With the same party in power for some thirty years, it may come as no surprise that most Japanese are content just carrying on with their lives with little concern for external politics. That said, there is little love lost for China and Korea, even if younger folks like K-pop.

The minimum wage has rested at $10 an hour, primarily because there has not been inflation in Japan. Richard observed that Korean culture is about 30 years behind Japanese culture in terms of work-life balance.

Richard made many observations about WWII, but the most interesting one was that the US set up the entire education system and curriculum for Japan. As the result, Japanese are raised with the notion that they were evil for attacking Pearl Harbor.

Richard also has the opinion that Japanese education is very rigid and produces a monoculture. He also remarked that innovation, which used to lead to the creation of major corporations with innovative products, has been weaned out of the education system that does not encourage creative thinking, or analytical thought, but focuses on memorization.

The general view of the United States is very positive with most Japanese feeling the US represents “cool.” However, Japanese also feel inferior when it comes to standards of beauty and customs to the predominantly western culture and notions of beauty that pervade Japanese media.

Japanese are predominantly secular and non-religious. However, they routinely go to shrines with the notion that shrines represent places of positive energy and a place where people can make affirmations for change. Richard stressed that before the introduction of Buddhism, there was no central religion in Japan and that Shintoism is not a god-based religion.

As to World War II, Richard agreed that the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not trigger the surrender of Japan. He saw the major destruction of Japanese cities (by Curtis LaMay) and the entry of the Soviet Union into the war as the major contributing factors. Amongst the leadership there was just a sense of weariness and exhaustion.

He also agreed that when Japan launched the war, they were just trying to buy time to secure oil fields. The leadership expected and hoped to achieve peace United States at that point. He also mentioned that the attack on Pearl Harbor was after the formal declaration of war was delivered to United States, but the United States did not publish that fact.

Finally, he said that because of the warning states period, Japanese culture does not hold grudges in the event they lose a war, and that they bear no ill will towards the United States because of this cultural tradition.Read more