What is Japan?

Kenichi Tanaka-san’s blog video ‘Japan – The strange country’ prompted me to write this post. Tanaka-san did translate successfully and humorously his observations about his own country to 11:21 minutes movie. While Japanese people are known for their generalizations, Tanaka-san stands different and looks in to the facts with a distinctive perception.

That might be the fifth grade when the science teacher told about cold countries. Probably there was a country name Japan. Almost 29 years, during the 1980s, I was fond of Soviet Union. Our text books were protected by the thick pages of Soviet Nadu (Soviet land), the magazine which we received free of cost to home during our childhood. My father was an Indian National Congress leader during those years who was involved in the active politics with ex-chief minister of Kerala, K. Karunakaran. Even then he did not show any hesitation to receive the magazine from Soviet Union, which boasted the achievements of communism in Soviet Union.

Soviet Union was powerful in those days and influenced Indian political brains, while hard core communist leaders and followers dreamt on the thunder sounds of spring in India that will come from China or Soviet Union. Japan was not known to me at that time. Japan came through electronic products such as Sony, Panasonic, Mitsubishi, and Hitachi and through the Suzuki motors. Japanese automobile companies influenced India much more than the electronic products in terms of cost.

In upper primary schools, we learned about volcanoes and Japanese earthquakes. We heard that Japanese people make light weight roof to their houses, in order to reduce casualties in case of earth quakes. We heard about the intelligence of Japanese people. We learned Japan's victory over China and Russia.

Japan returned to our study corners during high school days, when we learned about Second World War. That was first time I really admired Japan. More than any Japanese electronic products or Suzuki’s joint venture to produce Maruti to the Indian streets, Japan’s help to Indian freedom fighters during the war impressed me. That was a topic of discussion in our friends circle. That was one of the rare subjects where all friends reached to a common agreement! Japan – an Asian country dared to stand alone and fight the European colonial forces in Asia. Japan might have tried to colonize some Asian countries, but the Japanese military helped S.C Bose, popularly known in India as Netaji to form Indian National Army (INA). Indian National Army along with Japanese military fought against British East India Company and advanced through Eastern India. They could form the first Independent India Government in Andaman Nicobar Islands under the leadership of Netaji. Unlike many of the South East Asian countries, I believe, Indian people supported Japan and wished for its success. We were so depressed to learn Japan’s surrender in the war.

Somewhere in the mind, there was a desire to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki at least once in life. During our high school days, Japan was almost a model country. A country with dedicated work force, a country with educated, healthy, disciplined and polite people live, stood as a role model to our generation. Teachers taught us to learn from Japan’s experience, Japan’s return to the world’s economy like a phoenix bird. History teacher Mrs. Rathi compared the phoenix bird and Japan’s waking up from the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The desire to visit the land of Phoenix birds were heaping up. Internet and access to the information was not so popular on those days. I searched the encyclopedia pages to read about Japan. I could see pictures of beautiful women with colorful umbrellas and hand-fan. Japan remained a mystery in the mind. People are different, their faces are different, eyes are small and after all Japanese people believed the manufacturing technology ‘Small is beautiful’. Japan makes everything small.

Japanese workaholic nature is famous all over the world. One of my colleagues recollected his professor’s visiting experience to one of the Japanese company, where he could see an operator with a black badge on his uniform. While inquired about this, he was informed that the operator and his union were in strike against the management. I am not sure of the truth behind this story, but such kind of stories surfaced in our discussions during tea breaks when I was working in India. This was an extraordinary incident as the strikes in India have never been gentle.

Japanese management style has become popular in India. The collective responsibility and treatment of all people in all grades with equal respect has been some what different from the one, Indian companies and institutions inherited from the colonial British system. When working in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, one of the Pakistani friends, who worked in Japan, used to tell his observations on Japan. The discrimination in the society is not so open and severe in Japan based on the nature of job of a person compared to India or Pakistan.

Japanese product quality and quality implementation systems are famous around the world. There is a significant section of the Indian society believing in ‘brand Japan’ image. Japan is a brand for quality products.

My first encounter with a Japanese national dated back to 1996 April 11 when I was on a short business tour to Geneva and visited United Nations office. During business meetings there were chances to meet people from Japan. While talking with them, I have not tried to hide the veneration towards Japan.

There is no intention to assess the present living experiences with that of the old imaginations right now. I may do it on another occasion. It is always better to keep imaginations to our heart. Practical experiences may differ from person to person and can not be weighed and criticized with imaginations. I have tried to recall maximum possible images of Japan before I came to Japan. Now it will be interesting to watch what is Japan in Tanaka-san’s video.

Japan - The Strange Country (Japanese ver.) from Kenichi on Vimeo.

Indian Embassy, Radhabinod Pal and a cultural shock

Mr. Grant was on a short trip to Japan, when I met him near Kudanshita station. I was on my way to Indian Embassy to get the application form for renewal of passport. A tourist from Britain, Grant was curious to hear my opinion about Japan and more on Japanese attitude towards foreigners. Interestingly, this is one of the snooping topics many of the foreign travelers in Japan trying to get answered from foreigners living in Japan. Grant did not hesitate to tell his intention to know Japanese attitude towards foreigners.

The subject of talk was particularly important considering the place of our meeting. There were much in the western and East Asian press connected with Yasukuni shrine in the past, but it is quite natural for Indian people to support Japan’s stand during World War II. As the post-war trial judge Mr. Radhabinod Pal mentioned, victors decide what is wrong and what is right. It is a controversial issue. Opinion polls conducted by various newspapers and other media across India reveals that Japan is the most admired nation in India even today. It is common that school history teachers in India used to tell inspiring facts and incidents of Japan's growth as a powerful nation in Asia. Japan has been a source of inspiration for many young Indian politicians and industrialists. After all, Japan helped Indian freedom fighter S.C Bose to make INA and fight against the British East India company rule in India. Radhabinod Pal has done the justice to millions Indians too through the dissent notes and observations.

While walking towards Indian Embassy, I remembered Justice Radhabinod Pal and his reasons. Each cause could be justified with the theory of relativity. The justice is relative, the crime is relative, the punishment is relative and the whole social structure and laws are relative. Moral values are relative. When the Observer and the observed are two different identities, there exists a line of difference. That difference will bring conflict and conflict will generate injustice. The justice or injustice depends on the perception of the observer. Moreover, the judgment is influenced by the observer’s attitude.

There are three entities in the process of observation - The observer, the medium for observation and the observed. The inference is affected by the relative positioning of the three entities. The difference creates such a division between the observer and the observed. The difference between the observer and the observed is the source of conflicts and injustice. If there is no difference, the observer and the observed becomes one. This is the reason Mr. Pal is revered in Japan and there is a monument dedicated to him that stands on the grounds of the Yasukuni Shrine.

Grant was also curious to know the cultural shock I might have faced in Japan. Cultural shock is a much debated subject in Japan among foreigners. Periods of cultural shock are a necessary phase of any expatriate’s life. The perception and excitement the expatriate bear with while entering to a foreign country have great influence on magnitude of cultural shock. As every expatriate may pass through some form of cultural shock during the expatriate life I also have undergone a mild cultural shock. It was not severe to totally obliterate the good feelings.

If the host culture is extremely different from ours, we may psychologically disorient for a period of time. For some people it takes more time. Very few people, unable to cop with the differences, decide to put an end to the expatriate life. The saddest part of the cultural shock is that during many of the life situations, the expatriate may feel as if they are children, a kind of helplessness, as if we are thrown out from our mother's lap. Some feels loss of face. Frankly, I did share the feelings to Grant the difficulties of carrying a different head in public places! It is a strange feeling while riding a subway train or walking on the roads. A different object among things of uniformity! It is easy to get noticed in the crowd. Foreigners from countries other than some of the East Asian countries have different looks. Grant has been carrying his head through many cities and villages, but he agreed the psychology of a visitor is different from the psychology of an expatriate.

If the host country is hostile, expatriates will feel more uneasiness. In this case foreigners living in Japan are lucky that Japanese people are not hostile. Japanese people are warm and there is a considerable percentage of philanthropists in Japanese society.

After around thirty minutes of sharing on history, justice and culture shock, we bid adieu. Walking back to the Exit-2 of the Kudanshita station after completing the work at Indian Embassy, images of S.C Bose and his marching soldiers flashed in the memory.

Tail-Post: Taking the exit-2 at Kudanshita Toei Shinjuku line/Tozai line is one of the shortest routes to reach Indian Embassy at Tokyo. Embassy is called Taishikan in Japanese language and the kanji is 大使館.

International Military Tribunal for the Far East: Dissentient judgment

Lectures on universal declaration of human rights,

What happens if somebody visits Hiroshima?

Recently, the newspapers, websites and news blogs were full of analyses of Obama’s proposed visit to Hiroshima. When some of my friends told about the plan of the president to visit there, I was skeptic and told them that it will not happen. The proposed visit had some thing to do with our high school physics book.

Neither politics is a subject to ignite ideas for blog posts here nor do I intend to criticize the diplomacy of politicians. Criticism, especially negative will not yield any positive result.

The equation we learned in our physics class was e = mc2. Our physics teacher, Girijan Master explained the meaning of each component in the equation. Girijan Master was not simply a teacher for me. We at high schools used to listen to him as if we hear an interesting story when he teaches complex theories of physics. It was thus we heard more about the city of Hiroshima, far away from our home town and country, in Japan.

By the time we reached High school, we had enough general knowledge about Japan and its importance in the technology products supplying to other nations. Moreover, we heard from our history teacher regarding the heroic acts of Japanese military that triumphed over European and American power axis during World War II. The history teachers were not so serious to tell us what went wrong with the war at last.

What happened before sixty or seventy years before may not be interesting to the younger generations, but when it still can influence the lives, we have to listen to the history. Looking back more seriously to what Girijan master told us when he explained the miseries of human beings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I can now realize that the energy equals mass multiplied by square of speed of light has many things to do with politics, human sufferings, power shift, alignment of nations, trade and business.

History is not written with golden letters always. Many times it is written with a knife that has the stain of blood of many innocents. Revisiting the history needs much more political will and compassion to those innocents. It may not always come with the determination of a political group that depends on the support of  majority. It is here Bertrand Russel proves himself true in saying that truth is not always absolutely true, but is what the authority or majority says. Then the chances for truth are fifty percent in the present day society. It may not be always the truth we hear as the truth is decided by the majority.

War is a crime, whoever is responsible for it. It is also true that no present-day generation can be blamed for what had happened in the past. What we can do is to learn from the past and take caution not to repeat the same mistakes that happened once in our history.

Girijan master taught us the famous energy equation on an August. That may be purely coincidence. The test ground of energy equation waited for the president which never happened. What happened in the past must not be willingly important to the present generations especially when it involves many complicated self-disgusting historical facts. We may not be able to wipe out the energy equation getting realized in many countries, but at least a caution is required to save our future generations.

This post does not attempt to find fault with anybody, but just wanted to reiterate what Girijan master taught us in our High school class. The ‘e’ that stands for energy can stand for emotion also. Then the mc (mass x velocity of light) can stand for man’s common-sense (mc). Emotions of hundreds of thousands of innocents are in the hands of common-sense of our political leaders.

Japanese discipline – obedience to the law and order in Japan

Discipline is part of Japanese culture. It is neatly interwoven to the psyche of each Japanese citizen. It won’t be much exaggerating if I say Japanese people are obsessed with discipline.

There was an interview for foreign staff at the work place last year and I was being asked by the interviewer ‘what is your impression about Japan and its people?’

Well, that was an interesting question to answer. Almost naturally, without thinking I answered ‘Discipline of Japanese people’. The interview board was interested to know more about my impression on the discipline of Japanese society. One of the members asked me the spelling of the word discipline. He wanted to check the exact meaning of discipline in his language translator device. He asked me and I spelled D-I-S-C-I-P-L-I-N-E.

Probably ‘discipline’ is a bit difficult word for many Japanese people to pronounce. Most of them make mistake in writing discipline and they may write it as ‘disipirin’. The L and R confusion of Japanese people is very well known to them as well as to the foreigners in Japan. Japanese language has only one sound for R and L, the sound of which is in between RA and LA. Then, to many Japanese people, the ‘Light’ will be the ‘Right’ and ‘Law obedient’ will be the ‘Raw obedient’. I remember reading a site ‘Old brains learn New tricks’ in which the difficulty of Japanese military to distinguish L and R is expressed though an example when the GIs in the Pacific theater chose passwords overrun with R's , words like "rabble-rouser" or "rubbernecker." The reason was the Japanese people have a 'ell of a time with R, which they often pronounce as "ell."

He got the meaning of discipline in Japanese and we discussed the discipline and culture of Japanese society. The culture of a well disciplined Japanese society is known throughout the world. In school, the teachers used to tell us about the Japanese discipline and the benefits the Japanese society derived out of their discipline. Getting inside the train, getting out of the train, walking to the escalator (Eskureta in Japanese is modified form of escalator) are some of the occasions we encounter the discipline of Japanese people. I expressed my good feelings on the discipline of Japanese society to the interviewers.

By definition, the discipline is the training and control of oneself and one's conduct, usually for personal improvement. Since long, Japanese society had implemented discipline to its social structure as one of its essential constituent element. The Japanese Kanji character for discipline is 訓練. The Japanese samurai culture was based on discipline as the word indicates. Discipline refers to systematic instruction given to a disciple. In one sense the Bushido culture was programmed or instructed social system. Of course those instructions have been proved good to the present day Japanese society.

The obedience of Japanese people has its origin in the disciplined behavior which was instructed from childhood. Small kids will be trained by parents for good public behavior. The obedience to the law, the obedience to the system, the good manners in public behavior etc will be continued and reinforced through teaching in schools.

The culture of Bushido stressed on the importance of discipline. Discipline in English means ‘to instruct a person to follow particular rule, or ‘to adhere to a certain "order." This adherence to the order and the obedience to the order from higher ranking officers made the Japanese military one of the significant forces during World War II. I don’t want to enter into a controversy whether Japanese military was right or wrong during Second World War.

Coming to daily life experience in Japan, I have been observing the public discipline of Japanese people especially in railway stations. The pin-drop silence in railway stations in Tokyo is a live example of the discipline and good manners of Japanese people. The discipline may not be always corresponds to the education only. It depends on many factors one of which may be the level of education. Education does not mean simply holding a university degree, but with a more meaningful explanation, manifestation of the self as 'Swami Vivekananda' emphasized. When the education arms an individual with a powerful social tool ‘Empathy’, the entire society and nation become its beneficiary. Empathy is what many of us lack.

The discipline of Japanese children is incredible! Children too are learned to obey public behavior and rules. Learned from elders, they are not behind any of the adults and on many occasions better than the adults in observing obedience and discipline.

‘Discipline’ is one of the best characteristics of Japanese society, which I admire and would like to proclaim to the rest of the world.

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.