Tatemae (Public Front) and Honne (Private Intention)
These days there is little greenery left in the urban areas of Japan. Citizens all over the nation are interested in improving the situation and making their towns better places to live. But when election season comes around, this interest seems to vanish: the towns are transformed overnight into gigantic billboards, with posters plastered on walls, electric poles, bus stops, and train schedules, and with handbills scattered here and there. Yet if we listen to the speeches of the candidates represented in these posters and handbills, they're all the same: "I want to devote myself to righting the wrongs of our world. I want to make our town a better place to live." They are, on the contrary, industriously uglifying the town with their promotional literature; and their ceaseless loudspeaker announcements beaming from sound trucks make it nearly impossible for people to live in peace.
There is nothing wrong with the personal ambition of a Diet candidate who wants to be elected—if his personal desire is consonant with his professed concern for the group will—in this case, making the town beautiful. The problem arises when personal ambition is so strong that it pays no heed to group desires and instead pastes posters all over town and makes the city an ugly, unpleasant place. In this case, the candidate is exploiting the group will for personal ends, hiding behind the skirts of the public. If the candidate were sincere about beautifying the town, he would not put up posters so indiscriminately. This is an example of the double self I am referring to. It is not unlike certain souvenir foods that people buy at tourist spots: from the outside, the food container looks quite large—the public front; but upon closer inspection, it has a very shallow false bottom—the private ambition. The point is that people know of its falseness but buy it anyway and give it to a neighbor or a friend. The people approve the double standard.
This double self, which pretends to work for the group and hides a real intention to serve its own ends, is a worldwide phenomenon. It is the oldest trick of politicians, everywhere and at all times. But in some countries public figures are more fastidious about covering up such behavior, because they know if they are caught red-handed their career is over. In Japan, however, such two-facedness is rather an accepted practice: personal ambition (honne) is typically hidden beneath the guise of group interests (tatemae). The citizens pretend not to notice the conflict of interests, much like the citizens pressed down by the samurai class in the Tokugawa era. So traditionally rooted is this practice that the public feels it is impossible to insist upon rectification. The Japanese seem to be resigned to the double standard.
Company Consciousness and Work Consciousness
It is often remarked that workers in the West, particularly in America, are dedicated to their work, while workers in Japan are dedicated to their companies. There is a difference between a "work consciousness" and a "company consciousness."
In the prewar society of Japan, everyone devoted himself to his country, and self-sacrifice was the ideal governing the nation. With the defeat of Japan in World War II, that nationalism was destroyed and the Japanese were thrown into a spiritual vacuum. A naive opportunism became the guiding principle in a land where no one had ever had the experience of simply serving himself and enjoying personal freedom. The people were somewhat at a loss and looked for a new spiritual basis for joining together. A "group opportunism" was forged, and all energies were poured into the company organization—the people's economic reliance.
In this reorientation from nationalism to "companyism," the group orientation of the Japanese experienced a renaissance. If you look into the giant conglomerates like Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, and the National Railway, the "company is the family" concept existed years before the war. But this budding companyism had to surrender to nationalism during the war. All the families were unified in devoting themselves to their nation. After the country was defeated, nationalism diminished and "companyism" came on the scene with renewed vigor. Though in the larger society the company is only a private organization, for those who work there it is a society in toto, a public institution. The notion of "public" has always been little appreciated in Japan, and it has been easy for a worker to mistake his private place of employment for his only "public."
In the West, some workers do regard their place of work as their sole means of sustenance, but this sustenance often carries no more than an economic meaning. Beyond that, these workers have little interest in the workplace. In Japan, the workplace has become the repository of the workers' hearts and souls, a source of total sustenance; as a result, the company has come to be regarded as the equivalent of a feudal fief. Shokuba (workplace) in Japan has quite a different connotation from "workplace" in the West.
Very few people deny that the unimpeded, all-embracing company-consciousness rooted in "industrial feudalism" was the main support of the Japanese economy in the postwar development period. The cultural force that contributed to strengthening this consciousness has built three pillars of Japanese management: lifetime employment (cohesiveness), the seniority system (hierarchy), and the in-company union (exclusivism). These will be discussed in Chapter 4.
Now in order for a company to be continuously accepted by the workers and to encourage them to devote their whole life to it, the company must provide the dependability and objectivity of a public institution. When the company starts cutting corners and eliminates its middle-aged and older workers, retaining the younger ones because their lower wages make them more economical, an economic ideal may be realized, but the company loses any claim it might have on workers' loyalty and trust. Then company-consciousness weakens among employees.
The relationship between labor and management today may be as close as it was in the past, but it has changed a little. Loyalty to the company has weakened, and in its place a new self-defense mechanism is operating. The recent self-development boom in Japan is evidence of just this. Since there seems little possibility of ever returning to the national self-sacrifice theme of the prewar years, the company must find some way to keep company-consciousness from becoming another relic of the past. With the slogan "new organization man," management hopes to rekindle an awareness of and pride in the company. At present, the retreating specter of the "company mentality" and the sprouting of professional pride combine to create the self of the Japanese worker. There is obviously a contradiction here. The company mentality is a manifestation of the group ego, but the new professional pride is an individual phenomenon. Traditionally accustomed to contradictory practices, the Japanese worker resolves this contradiction by earnestly displaying the company mentality outwardly while burning with a new professional pride inside.
Since workers are forced to retire between ages 55 and 60, it is impossible to block this new self-awareness. Today many workers are considering other alternatives, such as another job if need be or other work following retirement. So, while one part of the Japanese self is devoting its energies to the group, another part is preparing for advancement outside the confines of the group. The company may try to "cure" these employees, but any on-the-job education programs will have a limited effect as long as the conditions which create the double self remain.