What Makes Japanese People Different from Others?

Every time I read about the street fights and hooligan hostilities in my country, I am more convinced that we are still at the primitive stage of human civilizations, though it is widely thought otherwise. The motivation to start writing this post is Mr. Omar Abdullah’s tweet on the hospital fire in Kolkata, one of the famous cities in West Bengal. While our history books are proud to acclaim thousands of years of inherited civilizations, the anarchic state and the vicious uproars point to the story of an immature and halfway dropped civilization process in India.

We may have hundreds of reasons to justify the hooliganisms and vandalisms, sweetly coated with the reasons of freedom of speech and expression, democratic rights, and so on. Freedom of speech and expression should not harm others as well. Those actions that harm others cannot be counted as the result of a democratic way of agitation. Such criminal actions are the result of the desire to kill, the desire to destroy, and the animal instincts that exist in the primitive minds of human beings inherited from their uncivilized ancestors.

People in southern states of India, one state which is home to the most educated people and the other which is home to the cultural capital of India, have been misled by their political protagonists. It is hard to find ‘differences between people in Tamil Nadu and Kerala’ unless you are strongly motivated to write a thesis on that subject. The problem could have been solved through discussions rather than pulled out to the streets. The street dogs know only to fight and bark for a single piece of bone, and this is what we see and hear now. An illiterate crowd could be malleable, but one thing has become certain: now that education, or the rate of high literacy, won’t automatically bring any common sense or guarantee that the educated mass cannot be mass-hypnotized.

Is this what we had inherited from our ancestors through the so-called 5000 years of ancient Indian civilizations? The land where the looking into the self was taught as more important than looking to others had gone years back to the early stages of human development or might have stopped somewhere in the middle of the civilization process.

The chaotic state still exists in India, where multiple ethnic groups have to share common land and bread. The migration of ethnic groups and their spread were not directed with a clear objective; rather, the movements might have been caused by war, famine, and natural calamities. The intrusion of new elements into an existing system causes disorder. Disorder causes for collision. This is true in the science, and now I am convinced that it is true in social science too.

In fact, collision is what we see in our society. As the particles collide and generate heat in a system, different groups ram, and we call it unrest or agitation. This process may continue till a unification happens, and it may take years, but any society where multiple interest groups co-exists has to go through these processes.

Japan is almost homogenous and has one of the highest rates of literacy. Four years before, I read in a blog that the Japanese race is unique. I started searching for the truth of this statement and went through different academic papers and websites. There is no race called the ‘Japanese race.’. Japanese people belong to the Mongoloid race, in which the Koreans, Chinese, and other East Asian people belong. The other way around is propaganda that is similar to the one that Indian right-wing groups use to find a common ancestry for all Indians by denying outside migration to India. Scientific facts are bad for many deceptive groups.

What makes Japanese people different from other East Asian countries is their more civilized manners. That is the outcome of years of civilization processes that happened in a unique way that is exclusive to Japan. Here I don’t claim any superiority to the Japanese society, and they don’t have it either. They are just like any other country’s people with all kinds of emotions and instincts. History may have something different to tell, but observing the current practices, I feel this way. It is my personal observation that the public behavior of Japanese people, at least among themselves, if not to all the foreigners, is more refined.

There were internal fights in Japan, and there were different interest groups as there are there in other parts of the world. Japan is like a bottle into which differently colored solutions are poured, closed with the cap, shaken thoroughly, and then allowed to rest for 250 years. Now the mixture has become perfect and looks as if it is one of the unique base colors. That mixing produced a different color that is unique to Japan! Want to call it a different race? OK...

Signing off...

Indian and Japanese influence in Indonesian culture and language

Indonesia shares many common things with India, from culture, language, diversity and people’s attitude etc. For me, Indonesia was all about Mustain-san. Our friendship in Tokyo lasted more than one year in Tokyo.

While Mustain-san was in Tokyo, we used to go to Indian restaurants and Indonesian restaurants. Both of us had trouble to cope with local food on all days. Once in a while Japanese food is OK, but for all the days, both of us found it a bit self torturing. We visited Indonesian Surabaya hotel and ‘One coin curry’ and ‘Namaste India’

Indonesian culture is a mix of many cultures. Indonesia was ruled by British, French, Dutch, Portugal and finally Japan. I heard Japan conquered Indonesia to get petroleum products when European and American countries denied petroleum to Japan during Second World War. I may have to do a google search on the events that happened during world war II to know more historical facts.

The news paper I got on the board carried strange news that Western Indonesian state will implement a ban on the tight jeans for ladies. I thought I was entering to a religiously fundamentalist country, but the experiences in Jakarta showed a different picture of Indonesia.

Indonesian language is originated from Sanskrit and is then influenced by Chinese, Malaysian, Portugese, Arabic etc. I could hear many Sanskrit words while talking to Indonesian people. Bahasa is colloquial slang of Bhasha in Sanskrit or any other Indian language meaning ‘Language’. Bhoomi stands for ‘Earth’, Putra for ‘Son’ and Putri for ‘Daughter’, Guna for ‘Quality’. Pura stands for ‘Temple’. These are some of the words I just recollect immediately.

Starting of my own name ‘Jaya’ means success or victory in Sanskrit. Jaya is one of the popular word in Indonesian language used for names as well as for company names.

Indonesian cuisines are influenced by Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Dutch and Arabic cuisines. Indonesian food is tasty with many sea foods. I could taste crab and smoked duck for the first time in Indonesia. Indonesians use coconut milk in almost all curry they prepare. Nasi goreng is fried rice and is a popular Indonesian dish. Prawns and a wide variety of fish dishes are also part of Indonesian food.

Tender coconut water is popular in Indonesia along with other soft drinks. Coconut is called Kelapa in Indonesian language. Indonesian cuisines are rich in their varieties like Indian dishes. Indonesian dishes are spicy and they commonly use red hot chilli. Rice is the main food in Indonesia.

Japan’s influence in Indonesia is still visible after many decades of Japanese invasion of the Indonesian archipelago. All kind of invasions have some sort of aggression and that will reflect in the administration of the invaded geography. For many of the Asian leaders, Japanese occupation was more tolerant than the occupation of the European colonial forces. The influence of Dutch was discarded by Japanese rule in Indonesia, but some forms of influences in the food preparation are still visible.

Bali in Indonesia is a place where Hindus live apart from India and Nepal. Bali is a favorite tourist in Indonesia where the prakriti (nature) and bhoomi (earth) are still in harmony with the Atma (soul). Visit to Bali will be a life experience, which we should not miss while planning a trip to Indonesia.

Indonesian people admire the economical growth of Japan and its technological advancement. They perceive the whole Japan as a high-tech city. Normally Indonesian people are interested to know how Japan could achieve such a high level of growth.

Apa kabar? (How are you?) was the only Indonesian word I was familiar with by buying the Apa kabar international telephone calling card available in Japan. Terima khisi means ‘thank you’ and I said this to the driver who dropped me at Soekarno-Hatta international airport.

Australia – World War II, Japan, India and Indian National Army

Magarri was shot by Japanese military. Magarri was on his mission to save the trapped children in an island in Australia when Japanese war planes bombed and destroyed most part of the island including an orphanage run by missionaries. Japanese military men shot Magarri from back when he tried to run to the boat where Drover and Nullah along with saved children were waiting.

Magarri fell on the sand. Japanese army men approached to the half dead Magarri. They tried to get information about others from him. He did not say anything. Japanese army men shot him to confirm his death.

It is a scene from ‘Australia’ which I saw yesterday along with friends in 109 Cinemas in Ito Yokado, Kiba. The movie ‘Australia’ directed, co-produced and written by Baz Luhrmann is interwoven well with fiction, romance, fairly tales, history and aboriginal believes.

What is special with the movie Australia for me is it is the first movie I watched in Japan. Generally I do not prefer to watch movies at theatres mainly due to some of my physical limitations. When Tom-san and Wong-san proposed to watch this movie at Kiba, I also joined with them. It was slightly difficult to follow the Australian version of English but the flow of story in Australia was never boring. We could enjoy the beautiful landscapes of Australia.

The character of Magarri is played by David Ngoombujarra who is an indigenous Australian actor. He played the role of assistant to the main character Drover played by Hugh Jackman who was looking after the livestock in ‘far away down’ in North western Australia own by Lady Ashley. The leading role of Lady Ashley was played by Nicole Kidman.

Incredible is the role of Nullah, the son of an aboriginal woman and a white father. The boy plays an equally leading role like Lady Ashley in the movie. Nullah's role was played by Brandon Walters, an 11 years old indigenous boy from Broome. The scenes of the boy Nullah riding a horse were excellent with an astonishing Australian landscape as background.

Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman were in Tokyo, Japan on 26th February for a promotion of ‘Australia’. The movie Australia was released in Japan on 28 February 2009. I am not going to the detailed story of Australia as it will kill the thrill of watching the movie for many of you.

The Australian aborigine grandfather of Nullah played by David Gulpilil is exciting. He played the role of King George, a magic tribal leader, whose grandson is Nullah, the boy living with Lady Ashley. Nullah is son to an aboriginal woman and a white Neil Fletcher, a station manager who plans to take Faraway Downs from Lady Sarah Ashley. Mother of Nullah is daughter to King George. All scenes of black magic and aboriginal dance shown in the movie were new to us. The movie Australia conveyed new knowledge on Australia.

There is love, passion, desire, fear, anger, hatred, racism, jealousy, simplicity, superstition and history in Australia, all interwoven so nicely that we enjoyed watching the two hours and forty five minutes lengthy movie in one stretch without any intermission.

Japanese Army was shown as negative characters in the film. The Japanese war planes bomb at innocent human beings and kill them. The orphanage was also destroyed by Japanese army. They killed Magarri. History says Japanese people were wrong at the time of World War II, but how come my mind justifies the Japanese stand!

Did the history teachers conveyed me wrong lessons that Japanese military was in the right direction? Was British imperialism opposed severely by Indian people and at the same time justified Japanese imperialism? I am not a scholar to comment into the exact details of support of Indian people to Japan even after many years of the war. Was it due to the anger towards the British who were ruling India at the time of war?

Japanese military helped one of the great Indian freedom fighter Subhash Chandra Bose (S.C Bose) to form Indian National Army (INA) and fight against the British at the time of Second World War Almost all Indians consciously or unconsciously supports S.C Bose and consider him equal to Gandhi. Some Indians consider him as the real Indian freedom fighter. He has shown courage to form a military with the help of Japanese military and fight against British. They captured some eastern parts of India and established the Independent India Government (Azad Hind). Unfortunately Japan lost the war and rest is part of the history well known.

Contrary to the official opinion, Indians supported the stand of Japan at the time of World War II. It is worth to recall the name of the Indian judge Radhabinod Pal, who was on the 11 judge panel of the Allied tribunal and was the only one to voice dissent. Radhabinod Pal opposed punishing Japanese war criminals convicted by an Allied tribunal.

Other East Asian countries may not support Japan and the new generations at these countries might have studied a different history about Japan as opposed to the history books in India. Therefore it was little difficult for me to accept first the scene of Magarri shot dead by Japanese army. I don't want to personally justify any crime committed by the Japanese army during World War II, but just wanted to convey the influence of teachings and different perspectives on mindsets. Probably the truth is what the majority believes not always may not be the absolute truth. So is the fate of history too. What the majority and the winner believes and implements is the true history and the defeated one is always a sinner!

Yahoo answers have an interesting discussion on this movie. To read please go to this link; The movie Australia

Anyway, my first movie in Japan ‘Australia’ invoked memories of the history classes at high school. Thanks to Baz Luhrmann and team.

Japanese language friends reunion at Funabashi

There were lots of fun and play when our Japanese classmates met once again for get-together party at Remus’ house. We decided to meet at Funabashi railway station exit before moving together to his apartment. Remus, an Engineer by profession and a prospective young and gentle bachelor from Singapore is one of the few friends I got during my stay at Sakura for training. His Japanese language proficiency is good and he takes care to help friends – one of the rarest human values we slowly miss in the process of modernization and industrialization.

We saw some free medical checkup campaign tent built right at the entrance of the station. One of the volunteers approached us as part of inviting us to have a free medical checkup. The volunteer showed his interest in talking to us. He told, he had a neighbor from India when he lived at Osaka. He was all admiration to the beauty of Indian women! It was interesting to hear his experiences.

We, the Asian friends are from different countries, mostly from ASEAN. Ms Pappathorn Kongkrew from Thailand, Mr. Mohammad Mustain from Indonesia, Mr. Remus Sim Teck Huat from Singapore, Ms. Misaki from Japan, Mr. Wong from Malaysia and Watashi ('watashi' in Japanese means 'I') from India – it was an Asian friends get-together.

Remus had prepared East Asian foods to serve us. Such casual reunion of friends working together brings more excitement and color to the otherwise usual life. Sharing of experiences, communication with different nationalities, ideas on new cultural trends, travel experiences and related friendly activities are signs of healthy interpersonal relationships. I was always fond of such gatherings and longed for more in life, though came rarely.

Language sharing was useful as I learned some new Japanese words and forms of use. While we attended the Japanese class itself, our classroom was one of the lively one with more fun. Cultural information sharing among friends of different nationalities is an appealing way of learning new things in life. The essential criteria is to have friends of almost similar mentality.

One of the lengthy discussion was about the white elephants in Thailand. Ms. Pappathorn told they have white elephants in Thailand. Though I have learned in childhood that the Hindu mythical king Indra possessed white elephant named ‘Airavat’, it all seemed excerpts from Indian fairy tales. She told is a truth and to be frank, it is really a new knowledge for me. She told the elephant is not exactly white, but having grey shades or more like a cream color. Since I have not seen such elephants I can not comment.

My interest in elephants is natural and inborn as I hail from Thrissur in Kerala. Thrissur is place of temple celebrations with decorated elephants. Since my childhood, I can recall, our lives are very much associated with temple celebrations and decorated elephants. My native place, Kerala in India is known for its famous elephant pageant. Many of the stories elders used to tell us were surrounded to temples and elephants.

Possessing a white elephant may seem a metaphor for an encumbrance, a worthless possession. For people at Thailand a white elephant is a highly unusual creature to be venerated. Thai art and handicrafts are flooded with the pictures of elephants.




Ms. Misaki brought strawberries, which we tasted after lunch. Strawberry is called ‘Ichigo’ in Japanese language. Ichigo is one of the first few Japanese words I learned in India before coming to Japan. I loved to snapshots the lovely strawberries to my mobile camera.




It was almost 6’O clock in the evening when we decided to part away. I could not resist asking my friends to gather for a photo so that I can go back to memories of sweet shared moments and ruminate them once in a while. We said good bye to each others and diverted to six different directions along with the sun at the western horizon saying good bye to the earth in the cloudy sky.

BUSHIDO – an expedition to the enigmatic twirls of Japanese psyche

I have been reading through the book Bushido written by Inazo Nitobe. First published in 1900 written originally in English, the author of Bushido was Under Secretary General of the League of Nations.

One of my Japanese friends Mr. Hiranuma Yoshiaki suggested this book for reading, when I expressed my desire to learn more about the history of Japanese culture, mind and behavior. Mr. Yoshi is a nice gentleman working in firm engaged in education planning and research.

I have been almost with full admiration and surprise ever since I heard of Japan and the nature of Japanese people from a friend in my native village who was working with a Japanese bank at New Delhi. It is a coincidence that I got a chance to live in Japan.

My first encounter with a Japanese dates back to 12 April 1996, when I visited UN headquarters at Geneva. I was in Switzerland to visit a fiber optic cable production machine manufacturer at Lousanne, 100 km away from Geneva. The Japanese national was very happy to meet an Asian at Geneva. We became friends easily and talked about the culture and society of India and Japan. She was alone on her travel to Europe. That also excited me as generally even the highly educated Indian women are very conservative in nature and would not dare to explore the world alone.

It all surprised me to think what is special with Japanese people? Who taught them to become self disciplined? Japanese people are so disciplined by themselves that they do not need many of the external policing or separate rules to keep the society and environment clean. Majority of Japanese people are self ruled with high morals. There may be few exceptions as is with every culture and society. But the percentage of good people – that makes the difference to a society.

Majority of the Japanese people are not seriously religious. Religion has taken a third or fourth place to many of the Japanese. God is not a great thing in Japan. Still Japan has the lowest crime rate. Low records of violence. High morals at public places and high levels of self discipline are observed in Japan. Japan prompts to think: Is religion a necessity to make a good society? No! my experience in Japan tempts me to say this.

Coming back to Bushido, the book has good forward by Yoshio Hatano who was former Ambassador to the UN. The book is titled as BUSHIDO – The soul of Japan – An exposition of Japanese thought. My friend recommended a bilingual version of the book. The Japanese translation is done by Tokuhei Suchi.

It is interesting to mention how excited the author himself was when he travelled through the history of Japan and explored fine reasons to justify many of the present day Japanese behavior. Though it may seems his over anxiousness to prove his nation and people extra ordinarily, whoever lived in Japan and have chances to interact with Japanese people can not possess much different concepts as expressed in Bushido.

Woven with the history, psychology, culture and social systems Bushido is more or equally beautiful like a Japanese kimono. If borrowed from Bushido, Japanese psyche is represented by Sakura flowers!

I could complete reading the 299 page book. Now reading it once more gives more insight to minute details of reason. Bushido is interesting and a must read book. I may explore more on the Japanese psyche by reading Bushido once more.

A trip to Asakusa - City of temples in Tokyo

It was from Morishita sensei that I heard about Asakusa first time while I was attending Japanese language class at OVTA. She mentioned about Asakusa while referring the Japanese word ‘Omiyage’. Omiyage in Japanese means gift or presentation. She told, there are plenty of traditional Japanese Omiyage shops in Asakusa.

Asakusa is a tourist spot both for people visiting in Tokyo from other parts of Japan and for foreigners. Today I got that opportunity to go to Asakusa. In fact, I was thinking to visit Asakusa for quite sometime after hearing about this place from Morishita sensei. I made the trip with a friend who was also wishing to visit Asakusa.

Asakusa is famous for its Sensoji temple. It is a Buddhist temple. Asakusa is a district in Taito Tokyo. There are several more temples in Asakusa, as well as various festivals. Asakusa is a traditional Japanese city famous for its temples and festivals.

Coming out of the A4 exit of Asakusa line (Tokyo metro), we asked the way to a Japanese girl standing in front of the exit. She could partly understand our broken Japanese, but she could manage to direct us to the desired location. We walked to the location to where she pointed her finger.

There were many foreign people on the road. I was surprised by seeing the man pulling rickshaws on the road. There are still these kind of old traditional vehicles seen in Tokyo! I could not resist taking photos of those rickshaws on the Asakusa road. I had a wrong notion that rickshaws are popular in India only. Now I realized that was my biggest mistake. I have seen a plenty of human powered rickshaws in India’s Northern states. Still those are bicycle connected. Human pulling rickshaws are considered a human rights violation.

In Asakusa, these rickshaws are maintained as part of tourism. Nobody really want to travel long distances in rickshaws. Sitting and travelling in human pulling rickshaws bring back memories of past mode of transportation. Later I learned that in Japan also rickshaws were popular. Probably I made a big mistake before realizing now that the word rickshaw have its origin in Japanese word Jinrikisha.

In Jinrikisha, we can see a combination of three words like Jin, riki, and sha. The word ‘Jin’ means human or person, ‘riki’ means power or force, and the word ‘sha’ is for vehicle. So, the word ‘Jinrikisha’ is human-powered vehicle! It was a new knowledge for me when my friend explained the concept of Rickshaw. Moreover, my wrong concepts of origin of human powered vehicles were being rewritten when I visited Asakusa. English people called human-powered vehicles ‘Pedicabs’.

Asakusa is famous for its ‘Omiyage’ shops. The street that leads to the Sensoji temple and the nearest area are full of Omiyage shops. We could see many women dressed in Traditional Japanese kimono. Asakusa is famous for geisha population also, I heard.

Asakusa was the center of entertainment in Tokyo for a most part of 20th century Japanese life. Now the attraction for entertainment has shifted to Shinjuku from Asakusa. Still Asakusa is famous for its classical Japanese films as many of the tourists are elderly Japanese who visit Buddhist and Shinto temples of Asakusa.