🚀 go-pugleaf

kenji@tom.astem.or.jp (Kenji Rikitake) writes:

>Yes, we ARE living in the closed society - most of Japanese don't
>understand what CNN, BBC, ZDF, Antenne 2, CCTV or KBS say. 
>Accessibility should be defined by how people can understand the
>contents - not by what people can see and hear. 

Not to deny what you say, but just to add that I think it's deeper
than that. IMHO only a few people seem to have any *interest* in the
information provided by CNN, et al. One needed understand the language
to be able to look at the pictures, and I would say at least 50% of
the information comes as visuals.

>Well UK (or the federation of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern
>Ireland) and Ireland are also $@Eg9q(J or island nations - and UK is
>acting very much diplomatic and still is one of the leader of the
>world - so being a $@Eg9q(J or an island nation does not necessarily mean
>being a closed nation.

Exactly. And Japan is a lot bigger than U.K. besides! 

IMHO one of the most outstanding things about Japan is the number of
lame excuses. Another example is how Miysawa is reported to have
said that wouldn't meet Yeltsin in Okinawa because you couldn't
expect him to go all that distance ... that's OK, I guess, but
why on earth would he ever expect Yeltsin to come all the way to
Tokyo then? ? ?

> |YES! Welcome to Zhipangu: The shikata-ga-nai-no-kuni!
> |Everything you want to do and cannot, you will hear a shikata-ga-nai...

>The shikata-ga-nai syndrome itself proves why Japan is more communist
>than any other countries. The government does not have to educate the
>ideology of authoritarianism (sp?)... well, I might be a bit too
>sarcastic. :)

The idea of government "repression" and "control" is, IMHO, another
lame excuse. As I believe we are seeing with respet to the Saturday's
off from school, people in Japan want to live as they do and thus
convert anything else to their chosen lifestyle of work, work, work.

> |I think the media, the education, the government make the people believe
> |in their "uniqueness" and many people don't think they need to adapt
> |to what the world is requiring about Japan: A leadership to make new
> |financial, economical, political and moral values.(My opinion)

>It's NOT the media, or the educaion, or the government - it's the
>society itself to force people to think your closest neighbors more
>important than others (e.g. other countries).

While I agree completely that it's NOT the media, et al., I think we
need to look at what "society" means. My idea is that this is the
set of unexamined cultural assumptions that is implicity passed down
from generation to generation. By "implicity" I mean they aren't
ever spoken of as such, but children learn them by example and other
indirect ways. The phenomena isn't limited to Japan, of course. 

One of truly educational experiences in life can be living in a
country whose cultural assumptions are vastly different than ones
you learned without thinking at your mother's and father's knee. But
not everybody enjoys the opportunity and some of them use it instead
to complain about how stupid/ignorant/ill-informed the second
culture is instead of using the difference to bring their own
assumptions into awareness. 

So what I'm trying to say is that while everybody makes certain
assumptions as it's convenient for everyday life, how one reacts
to conflicts with other assumptions can be very very different....

Dave

--
Dave McLane  davidg@aegis.or.jp
You're free to copy/quote/translate as long as credit is given. 
Nagaokakyoshi, Kyoto Japan Tel: +81-75-951-1168 Fax: +81-75-957-1087