Role of Partners 64
Expectations of a Wife 65
Expectations of a Husband 66
Social Role of a Housewife 67
4. QUALITY CONTROL OF HUMAN RESOURCES 68
Paternalism—Philosophy of Japanese Management 71
Lifetime Employment (Cohesiveness) 72
Seniority-Based Promotion (Hierarchy) 74
In-Company Union (Exclusivity) 76
Competition at Employment Entrance 77
Indoctrination of New Employees 79
Periodic Transfer 80
Balance-Keeping Appraisal 81
Overtime Work as a Safety Valve 82
Company Expenses for Sociable Leadership 83
Ringi Conference for Consensus 85
Enriched Welfare Program 86
Bonus for Bon and the New Year 87
The Selective Retirement System 88
5. THE SUCCESSFUL ORGANIZATION MAN 90
The Company Man 90
Grasp the "Air" 90
Be a Jack-of-All-Trades and Master of One 91
Don't Try to Be a Star 92
Tactfully Communicate No Without Saying No 93
Pick the Right Habatsu (Clique) and Stay in Touch with It 94
Don't Be Afraid of Making Mistakes 94
Grow over Drinks on the Way Home 95
Never Fail to Consider the Mysterious Power of Women 96
Be an Expert at Haragei 97
Don't Kill the Problem, Solve It 99
Japanese Leadership 100
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 104
1. ISOLATION SPAWNED THE CULTURE
The geographic factor of greatest importance in molding the culture of Japan has been its isolation.
Like Italy, Japan is a mountainous country, and like Britain, Japan is an island country—the four main islands and numerous smaller ones are all surrounded by the sea. In total area Japan is about as large as the state of California. The straits between western Japan and Korea, the nearest continental land, are over 100 miles apart, many times the width of the Straits of Dover, the narrowest point between Britain and continental Europe. And some 500 miles of open sea stretch between Japan and China. In the days of primitive navigation, these water barriers were quite broad and made Japan the most isolated country of large population in the world. This geographic isolation has led the Japanese to develop extremely distinctive national traits.
The origins of the Japanese people have never been traced to the satisfaction of scholars. The first inhabitants of the islands seem to have been the ancestors of the modern Ainu, who came from the north, where the climate is severely cold. According to historians, the Ainu were a tribal group which branched off from the white race at such an early time that not all the characteristics of Caucasian stock had as yet developed. This race might once have inhabited all of Japan, but in many ways its culture was inferior to that of the early Mongoloid peoples, who came to Japan from the Chinese continent. Accordingly, the Ainu were gradually pushed northward, and they now exist only as a vanishing people in the remote sections of Hokkaido and in the small islands in the north. However, blood of the Ainu surely remains in the Japanese people of today.
Linguists suggest that there is a strong oceanic and Malaysian strain in the Japanese race. It is a popular theory that oceanic races arrived in Japan from the south by way of Formosa (Taiwan) and the Ryukyu (Okinawa) Islands. At any rate, the ancestors of the Japanese people were an exquisite mixture of unneighborly races that arrived from the north, the west, and the south—quite contrasting areas. (See Figure 1.) Thus it is a plausible proposition that the nature-loving character of the Japanese people, manifested in the art of flower arrangement, landscape gardening, and the like, was brought in from the north and that the pugnacious temperament, evidenced in so much warfare, was inherited from the south. A unique and exclusive culture, which sometimes strikes foreigners as contradictory today, was thus spawned over thousands of years within the isolated Japanese islands.
The state of virtual isolation affected the culture in many ways. First of all, it produced a homogeneous union of people, whose cohesiveness led to monarchy as early as the seventh century. Or it may be put the other way around: isolation forced the people to be unified and unification created a strong cohesiveness among the Japanese people. In any case, cohesiveness has been a basic characteristic of the Japanese nation and its culture ever since.
According to the old Chinese concept of sovereignty, the monarch enjoyed the "mandate of Heaven," but only so long as he was virtuous. If he lacked sovereign virtue, he could be overthrown by Heaven. This was, in Chinese history, often accepted as the justification for a political rebellion. In fact, both China and Korea were ruled by several dynasties which were overthrown one after another. In Japan, by contrast, although there have been countless instances of civil strife and warfare, there has been only one Imperial dynasty. Speaking only one language and acting essentially as one race, the Japanese people are completely unified.
In the course of time, the people enclosed in the isolated areas—later to become overcrowded—developed a strong competitive spirit, and keen competition has been taking place among them ever since. Thus the observation that Japan is not a society of competition but rather a society of consensus is not 100 percent accurate. The Japanese are among the most competitive people in the world; otherwise they could not have achieved their recent economic successes. Consensus was established to keep the society cohesive and to control excessive competition, which would cause friction and make tireless rivals of the people in the isolated areas. So the comment that Japan is a society of consensus is only one side of the story.
It is proved in Japan's ancient history that every feudal lord with his samurai (subordinates) was intensely competitive with neighboring lords and was always prepared for any unexpected challenge from others. Even today, despite the waves of social criticism, intense competition continues in the renewed system of scholastic examinations. A fanatic "examination war" is going on among high school students who wish to enter prestigious universities in order to ensure advantageous future careers. In no other country is the learning fever of the youngsters described as akin to war. It should also be noted that the competition among Japanese commercial enterprises is very fierce in their particular battlefield, the marketplace. This flaming competitive spirit certainly played a large part in building up the Japanese industries of today.
In the early centuries, knowing the nature of the people, the ruling class of Japan searched for a balanced social ideal that would keep the people in harmony and prevent the tragic outcomes of excessive competition. When the centralized state was established by Prince Shotoku in AD 604, after the conflicts among various clans had ended, wa (concord) was stressed as the most important principle of the community. Prince Shotoku emphasized harmonious human relations and prescribed "con cord" in the first article of the Seventeen Article Constitution. This was the first piece of legislation in Japan, and is, so to speak, its Magna Carta.
Some observers have noted that the Japanese people possess an excitable and volatile temperament and suggest that the traditional code of manners was adopted as an essential check on the social disorder that could follow from the free exercise of hereditary emotion. It is a fact that wa, a harmonious concord, has been the highest ideal of the nation since Prince Shotoku proclaimed the constitution. Those who visit a company president's office or a main office of a factory in Japan very often find a calligraphic wa in a frame hanging on the wall.
This suggests that the traditional code of wa has not come naturally to the Japanese—that the people need a constant reminder of their social ideal. Their impassive attitude and reserved manner toward others in an effort to maintain harmonious relations are the result of years of discipline. In other words, wa is the acquired characteristic of a people who have been confined for long centuries to a limited, traditional circle, and it is certainly a meritorious basis for creating national consensus.