Approaches to the psychological understanding of the Japanese and their society
Andreas von Wallenberg Pachaly
prologue
The problem of the Japanese corporations operating in different cultures includes:
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Germany is a new world not a new branch.
2 Global Organizations, i.e. the corporate headquarters, must provide fertilizers, food, etc. to the local branches “according to the respective local conditions”.
New tasks will arise for the Group Executive Board and the “branch managers”:
(a) The branch management must become an insider of the local market by decentralising the group management and the head office must maintain an equal distance from all local markets. The top managers of the group management swarm out where they are most needed and do not sit at home and receive visits from the branch management.
(b) There are therefore regional headquarters and a group headquarters.
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c) The supreme commandment and most important task is that invisible bonds hold identity together. A common value system is considered to be the most effective adhesive. This must replace the glue of “nationalism” or an extremely short-sighted exaggerated “shareholder value” concentration.
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d) Common visions and values shared by corporate headquarters and all regional headquarters are crucial whether this succeeds or not.
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e) Time is needed to penetrate the local culture and gain a foothold. Checkbook mentality and political protectionist pressure do not work.
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f) The values of the company must be defined and communicated and the values of the regional culture must be perceived, appreciated and opened up beyond its common ground.
(g) the need to establish a network of regional organisations
Local interests and commitment and at the same time a strong set of transnational values are the ingredients that make international corporations successful global players.
In order to develop an important understanding of a foreign culture in this context, we need:
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a) a knowledge of the myths of a culture, as an expression of a common attitude towards people and relationships,
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b) a personality model to understand the individual, and
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c) a group model to develop an understanding of group dynamic processes!
introductory remarks
It is probably thanks to Ruth Benedikt and her investigations that Kyoto was not bombed or even targeted by the nuclear attack. From this the significance of an anthropological-psychological preoccupation with the culture of a country with which one maintains relations of whatever kind may be derived.
It is clear to most of us that the range of human being within a society is wider than between societies, but what I will try to present here is a totality of a relationship pattern where many characteristics found in our culture interact with each other in a very specific configuration.
I can also justifiably say that we are a hopelessly backward developing country in the field of Japanese studies, when we consider how many hundreds of thousands of Japanese have devoted themselves intensively to the study of the West over generations.
For, it is not always a matter of picking up the other person where he stands and only an encounter in the deeper sense can take place. Well, I hope I can do that with you today.
I can also warn you right away that my analysis is quite conservative, although I would not necessarily classify myself as such, but as a psychoanalyst I feel closer to historical influences than to fads.
After the lecture you definitely know more about me, because every attempt at understanding cannot be separated from the understanding person. And a look at another culture is always also a look into the mirror of one’s own culture.
The Nature of Man in the Myth
I would like to begin my attempt at a psychological understanding of the Japanese with a consideration of the early Japanese myths about the nature of the world and the role of man in it. We can identify influences on the psychology of the Japanese from the Ur-Japan, Shintoism, Buddhism and Chinese philosophy and ethics and from the West. Here I would like to limit myself to the original mythology, since it most clearly embodies the original Japanese in my opinion. It contains the Empire and Shintoism.
This analysis is based on the Kojiki (712, written in Japanese) and the Nihongi (720, written in Chinese). It was performed by the Harvard Professor of Anthroplogy (Pelzel).
Chinese literature is rational, intellectualized and didactically structured. Chinese literature has confidence in conscious morality and says what man should be like in certain areas of life. Japanese literature, on the other hand, has confidence in human intuition and comprehensively describes its entire existence as it conducts it.
The history of creation
In Japanese creation history, Izanagi and Izanami are the gods of creation, preceded by several pairs of gods, individual gods and chaos (reed shot). Origin is a “signified exegesis”, a united body that came from an original chaos, like an egg consisting of diffuse boundaries and sperm.
Sexual reproduction was invented, accompanied by a wedding rite. They created many gods identifiable with the mountains, the sea, etc. … From this the ancestors of the emperor developed directly. Susanoo, brother of the sun god, descended to the historical place Izumo, where the shrine is still located today. The grandson of the sun goddess, ninigi no mikoto, finally went to earth and ruled it after the other gods had made it habitable. At first he had nothing better to do than sleep with a pretty girl, but since he refused to sleep with her ugly older sister, he became mortal because of this lack of mercy.
One of the grandchildren, son of the younger son of Ninigi no mikoto “Jimmu Tennoo” went down in the annals of the imperial family as the founding emperor.
Up to here goes the mythological part of Kojiki and Nihongi, although much of what follows still belongs to the realm of fables.
The gods and their world
It was governed by a ruler who represented little more than the common will found at city assemblies. The gods felt the same suffering and joys as humans and show similar abilities as humans.
In terms of descent, all Japanese can refer to their origin from the gods, some aristocrats can also refer to certain siblings of the gods. Japanese mythology contains little metaphysics and emphasizes the things of this world. The divine qualities and subtleties of such a human mythology as that of the Greeks, with e.g. Zeus the Thunder God, Hera the Goddess of Fertility and Jealousy, do not correspond in Japanese mythology, where gods have a gentle and social character and events take an almost homely course. They have a gentle quality, without chaos and fear of terror or ecstasy on the other hand.
In Japanese mythology the world is good, with strict taboos everything that concerned death. They believe in the continuation of life and in hope, in contrast to the later imported faith, that life is suffering and its end should be sought.
In the Japanese world of values there was no good-evil, but only the states we find on this earth, dualism is meaningless, the states are in the sense of existing; one encounters each other by chance.
Events, states are evaluated whether they promote or impair human life. The state of being is equal to the state of being the soul, as opposed to an impersonal or willless state.
The world of nature
The world of nature has life and possesses will, both are almost identical with that of man. Like Susanoo, they also use this for antisocial purposes. The achievements of the heroes were not the creation of artefacts to dry out swamps, as in the case of the Chinese, but to civilize nature and to remove annoying, laborious characteristics such as language, mobility and violence ( rocks have roared ).
The myths are filled with valuations of the flora, the scenic attractions of Japan and the message is that this world is a harmonious unity of human life with nature. A comradely sensitivity to nature.
Aims of the people
The unconsciously accepted goal of human beings is to cope with the everyday material problems of daily life. Men and gods are not separated by an unbridgeable trench. The most basic element of every human being is the spirit, the part of the divinity that rests in every Japanese (yamato no tamashii), which comes from a common origin and thus unites all Japanese, and with all other things in the world (:unites in Christ).
This, of course, had the consequence later as Japanese with non-Japanese, for whom no divine lineage could be claimed, even assigned this inhuman character.
In Japanese mythology, the gods are all drawn as members of a family, but with certain characteristic features.
Emotions that are described are love for the other, without ulterior motives, as the most widespread trait and love for oneself.
sexuality
Uncomplicated attraction is often described, after a man and woman have seen each other for the first time and find each other attractive, they go to bed together. And there are few known denials on the part of women, it is a common cause supported by reciprocity. Chamberlain therefore felt compelled in Victorian England to translate entire passages of Kojiki into Latin. Rejections are made for the reason that the other is not found attractive, which is seen as immoral, since it is well known that the emperor became mortal, since he spurned the uglier sister.
Obviously sexual relations do not have to be judged by society and are always good, this went so far with historical generations of Japanese that incest was described as good. This understanding that sexual love should originate from the heart of man and is unconditionally good has probably remained until today, only through Chinese influence in the upper classes in the Tokugawa period sexual love was subordinated to marriage and this to arranged marriage-family policy.
Harmony and Morality
But it is described in the myths not only sexual love, but also the loving care for the other. Harmony is not primarily created by its reciprocity of rights but by its consideration for sensitivities, which are constantly working towards a reciprocity on these sensitivities.
The Japanese have an interest in morality to the extent that someone shows emotional commitment rather than submitting to moral principles in the form of themselves. Immoral is an egoist who frightens others or an emotional cripple.
He shows no ability to show consideration and indulgence. Morality lies in giving total sympathy for a person, not in granting him justice, but in human fulfilment.
Japan has been described as a culture of shame where the Japanese, when they are absent, are laughed at, which may seem very harmless and gentle to us and the Chinese, but nevertheless destructive to them. If he commits a serious offence, he is violated and material support is withdrawn.
However, the greater motivation is to find positive attention and consideration and not the fear of losing it. The intention is valued higher than the actual act. However, when one is drunk, the part of the brain responsible for morale goes on holiday and this is considered good and is often forgotten. Morality is not only not to be able to endure how the other suffers, but to wish him joy. The emphasis on the Japanese justice system is logically less on whether a crime was committed than on whether the offender shows remorse and self-knowledge (accident, hospital visit). Good is what was well intended, not what has good consequences.
There is much confidence in human intuition, events are evaluated whether they promote or prevent life.
bushido
Military Knight Way (bushido) unwritten moral rules and ideals (English Constitution)
Buddhism = calm confidence in his destiny, submission to the inevitable, stoic attitude in the face of catastrophe, where the art of the sword ends Zen begins. Zen represents the human endeavour to penetrate through meditation into spheres which are beyond verbal expression. To bring oneself into harmony with the Absolute.
Shintoism loyalty to the ruler, the forefathers, the fathers. Shintoism has no place for original sin, it believes in the innate good in man, in the divine purity of the soul. Nature worship of holy places of the gods, ancestor worship, worship of the emperor, is the physical representation on earth.
Ethics was derived from the teachings of Confucius and his five moral rules of relationship: Mr-Diener, man-wife, father-son, older-younger brother, boyfriend-boyfriend.
Mencius, Wang-Yang-Ming: “Knowledge and action are one and the same”
Self-control, suicide, the sword, courtesy, the duty of loyalty, honor, sincerity and veracity. Courage, dare and endure.
Honor to avoid shame and gain a name.
Samurai could cultivate fields, but were not traders who could become rich.
The fall of the Roman Empire was accompanied by the fact that few senators, who had the political power, could also become rich.
Feudal rulers felt a responsibility to their ancestors and to heaven. Benevolent kindness, mercy combined with justice. (Bushi no nasake = the soft compassionate feeling, tenderness of the knight) Poetry and love for music are also connected with Bushido.
Women give themselves up to God for the good of their sons and men, as men do for the good of their masters and their country.
Bushidoo, yamatodamashii = religion, emotionally colored morals
The drive to change Japan came from the Japanese. It wasn’t remodelled or colonized. Financial or industrial motives were secondary. The inability to look down on oneself as an inferior power, this feeling for one’s own honour, was the driving motive behind Japan’s modernisation.
Bushido also caused negative consequences, no profound metaphysical thoughts, philosophies, exaggerated sensitivity and vulnerability, betrayal.
Bushido without feudalism is like a way. Neither militarism nor Shintoism could save him. Bushido emphasized the moral behavior of leaders and public figures.
Case study:
One day the owner of a small shop in Tokyo in my neighbourhood died. I had known him well, he had come to me sometimes for a chat of the evening. I was also obliged to his family, because my domestic helper, despising my European bathtub, used to take her hot Japanese bath in her cottage in the evening. It is common in Japan to hand over a small sum of money to the grieving family in the event of death. After I had carefully consulted my housemaid about the amount of money that was appropriate for me, I made my condolence visit and put the money in an envelope on the table next to the old man’s body. Two to three months later the widow gave me a very large box of soap (from her shop, of course). The value may have corresponded to about half of the sum I gave. Of course I was touched, but I involuntarily thought she wouldn’t have had to “calculate” so exactly.
It’s a nice custom, by the way, to have money to help with deaths. Because on the occasion of the funeral ceremonies there are always unusual expenses. Even when houses burn down, neighbours and friends often make money available to those affected without being asked. In Japan, you always think of your fellow human beings when you have a certain relationship with them as a neighbour, friend or relative.
The examples I cited were experiences from the seventies, not old stories. Nevertheless, they are no longer general and necessarily valid. Things are no longer so regulated in the big cities, especially among the younger generation. However, the recognition of commitments and the feeling of gratitude is still more pronounced in Japan today than in the West. And it will certainly remain so, since the Japanese devote their main attention to “human connections”.
Now that the influence of Nipponism on social life has been outlined, the fundamental question, as one might think, of the relationship of Nipponism to religion is to be addressed. For the Japanese, however, the question is not at all so fundamental, because Nipponism is in any case the basis of everything. Religions play second fiddle.
The Japanese and the Jews
In Japan, a book was published at the beginning of the 1970s, the English edition of which is titled “The Japanese and the Jews” and the original Japanese edition of which was on the bestseller list for a whole yea.
The author, who calls himself Isaiah Ben-Dasan and pretends to be a Jew, presents among other things the bold assertion that Nipponism is a religion and like all religions disintegrate into different directions or sects. Today there are the following main directions: The Soka Gakkai (Nichiren Buddhist), the Christian, the Marxist and the humanist-capitalist (represented by the slogan “Peace and happiness through prosperity”). If one first leaves aside the question of whether Nipponism is a religion, one has to admit that the author is telling the truth, albeit in blatant words. Many authors have dealt with this question and pointed out that religions do not play a decisive role in Japan. Again, reference is made to the scholarly work of Hajime Nakamura, who describes how Buddhism was Japanized, that is, nipponized in the sense of this book4. Ben-Dasan did not mention Shintoism in his enumeration of the main direction of the “Nipponist religion”. This can be explained by today’s circumstances, because Shintoism as a religion today is alive only in a few sects.
In the pre-war period we considered Nipponism and Shintoism almost identical. This was perhaps understandable insofar as a Shintoist or allegedly Shintoist high-playing propaganda poured itself on us with great force at that time. It was not only the state propaganda, rather numerous authors have written in scholarly writings in the same sense. Dr. Murakami, who published a book in German in 1934, wrote: “The close relationship between allegiance to one’s subjects and child duty stems directly from the peculiarity of the Japanese state. You can’t find that in other peoples. Nevertheless, the imperial will is nothing other than a necessary requirement of man’s rational nature. It is a moral requirement that should be common to all peoples5.” And another writer wrote in 1936 that perhaps the Emperor would give a new direction to world civilization6.
At that time, however, we did not mean Shintoism as a religion, but the Shinto spirit. It should be remembered that it is sometimes doubted whether Shintoism is to be regarded as a religion at all. There are no holy Shintoist books (unless one considers the old Japanese “historical works” with their mythology as such) and also no Shintoist dogmas. But in this it is similar to Nipponsism! Nevertheless, when we thought of the Shinto spirit, we were in a certain way mistaken. We assumed that the imperial cult in its former form and the veneration of ancestors were essential components of Nipponism. That’s not right. We’ll talk about the emperor’s position later. The feeling of uniqueness and a certain belief in mission has remained unchanged.
One must know that before the war there were two kinds of Shintoism, state and cult Shintoism. Shintoism as a “civil service” was such a typical Japanese invention that it must be mentioned. When the government began to impose Shinto rules of conduct, there were difficulties with the other religions, especially Christians. Some Japanese Christians refused to bow deep before the image of the emperor (as if the tenno were indeed a descendant of the gods) and before the national Shinto shrines, or to offer their pupils Japan’s creation by the gods (as the only true story of world creation). With the Buddhists there were also, but less disputes. Buddhism had long been nipponized more intensively than Christianity. The Christian missionaries also possessed a certain influence and support in the opinion of the Western world, which in this context was detrimental to Japan. In short, the government accepted by declaring that the state Shintoism was not a religion but a civil service. Another complicated Japanese matter: The government declared that its own ancestral religion was not a religion.
Here it became clear that for the Japanese there is something higher than the religions, something to which the religions must subordinate themselves. Yet the way this time was expressed was, so to speak, unnipponistic. Never in Japanese history have such absolute and precise instructions been given, never have such national regulations been given to the people. Nipponism, we repeat it, is a vague basic feeling no dogma. So it was a distorted nipponism. Perhaps a Western influence (National Socialism and fascism) was effective. After the war, state shintoism was abolished at American instigation. Probably the Japanese would have done this on their own. In the meantime, however, customs that originated in the Shinto tradition and which were incorporated into state shintoism before the war have come to life again. This came partly from the government, partly from the people. The conservative government ensured the reintroduction of the Reichsgründungstag (see p. 33). On special days the people flocked to the shrine of Emperor Meiji, to the Yasukuni Jinja (shrine for fallen soldiers) and to other national sanctuaries. The newly elected heads of government – including Prime Minister Tanaka for the first time – have been pilgrimages for years to the great shrines of Ise (sanctuary of the sun goddess) to announce their inauguration to the ancestor of the imperial family. Yes, even leading left-wing socialist functionaries have gone to Ise to show their respect there.
All this happens voluntarily, without any pressure or coercion. That’s why it’s really nipponistic. People act from their feelings. They would be amazed if they were called Shintoists. They cultivate ancient customs and traditions that are part of their national existence.
Quickly a few words about cult shintoism. They are religious groups that emerged quite rightly in the 19th century, that is, in the period when national self-contemplation and renewal were effective. These sects represent different traditions and directions. They had a certain, if not decisive, significance. Today, these sects, including those founded after the war, play a rather minor role.
Anyone who thinks that Shintoism is a closed issue is mistaken. The vast majority of Japanese do not call themselves Shintoists, but all of them adhere to Shinto rites. Weddings, topping-out ceremonies, the planting of the first rice and much more are always carried out with Shinto ceremonials, also by the followers of Buddhist sects. On the other hand, the funerals of all Japanese are celebrated in a Buddhist manner. Buddhism, simply put, knows better about dying and the human soul.
With this Japanese attitude towards religions it is connected that the Japanese religious statistics, at least for us, comes to amazing results. In 1969 or 1970 there were 79 million Shintoists and 79 million Buddhists in Japan according to official statistics. But Japan had only 100 million inhabitants. Many Japanese call themselves Shintoists and Buddhists at the same time.
The ceremony is very important in Japan on many occasions. It’s not so relevant what you believe or what you think at weddings or funerals. The most important thing is that the rites are performed correctly and with decency. Here we have “the human connection” in a broader sense. The connection extended, at least until recently, also to the dead, the ancestors and the gods. Even the traffic with these was precisely regulated.
Is Nipponism now a religion, as the hard-hitting bestselling author Ben-Dasan claims? There is no question that he has met the Japanese inwardly and thoughtfully with his various theses. Otherwise he wouldn’t have had such a huge success. In Japan, due to his excellent Japanese style and knowledge of the Japanese, there has been strong doubt that he is, as he claims, a Jew. He’s probably Japanese. It is probably worthwhile to look at the statements of an author whom the Japanese consider to be such a profound expert on Japan.
I find it absurd to describe Nipponism as a religion. Maybe Ben-Dasan only did it to startle the Japanese and to make them realize with a new formulation that they are actually quite peculiar people.
If one wants to discuss the Japanese being, one should first of all forget terms like religion, philosophy and ideology. These terms are not very sharply separated in Japan and partly also in China. Let us remember that the West sometimes declares that Buddhism is not a religion, but a philosophy. On the other hand, Confucianism is often referred to as religion, which in my opinion it certainly is not. Our terms cannot always be applied to East Asian conditions. Perhaps it can be said that Nipponism is a world view. But that’s not quite accurate either, because he’s so saturated with emotions.
Even Shintoism, as mentioned above, is often not considered a religion because it has no holy books and no dogma. Accordingly, Nippomism would certainly not be a religion, there are not even shrines or rites in its name. This is supposed to be a religion when someone says “I believe in the uniqueness of Japan” or when someone says “harmony is the most important thing”? Nipponism, by the way, has not committed itself to anything. The Nipponists – and all Japanese are Nipponists whether they are aware of it or not – accept, so to speak, all religions and in addition Marxist, capitalist or other ideologies. This is supposed to be a religion? Our linguistic usage and our linguistic feelings are reluctant to use this term. Therefore one should calmly admit that Nipponism is something special, which can hardly be determined with our accustomed terms. Of course, hackneyed expressions like “the soul of Japan”, the “spirit of Japan” or “the Japanese being” can be used. But it doesn’t make anything any clearer.
Since the religions in Japan are not alone determining, one may ask oneself how it is with the religiosity of the Japanese. In fact, this question has often been raised. There are authors, Japanese and foreign, who explain slimly that the Japanese are not a religious people. Others again, especially Japanese Buddhists, consider them deeply religious. Perhaps it is pointless to discuss such delicate issues. After all, the statement might well be dared that the Japanese are less religious than the Indians, but religious than the Christians. In my view, the Japanese are quite a religious people. However, changes in the times must not be overlooked. For a long time the island people were very much influenced by Buddhism, but in recent centuries this has changed. And today the attitude is predominantly secular and little religious. The development in the West has been similar.
But still there is a difference to Japan. In the case of the island people, who were religiously inclined in themselves, the religions were not able to suppress or override a basic feeling that existed from the very beginning. Some feelings that were more or less absorbed by religions elsewhere have remained with all their intimacy in Nipponism. It is significant that for centuries the Japanese have made jokes – often very biting – about Buddhism and the Buddhist bonzes and about Christianity, but never about their ancestral, Shinto gods. Because that would have touched the Shinto basic feeling7.
Related to the question of religiosity is that of tolerance. Mostly it is said – and this is also often emphasized on the Japanese side – that the Japanese are tolerant. Of course the Japanese, that much may have long since resulted from what has been said so far, are religiously and ideologically tolerant and generous. But only in so far as Nipponism is not affected. In this context, Max Weber should be mentioned, who was of the opinion that in Japan the state had not played the role of a patron of Buddhism, but of a religious police8. At any rate, this is true for centuries to come. During the Tokugawa period, Buddhist temples and monasteries were actually only used to support the government in exterminating the very last Christian in Japan. The existence of a “religious police” certainly cannot be combined with tolerance.
Buddhism in Japan has never been very disruptive because it adapted. Many Buddhists once not only wanted to convert the Japanese people, but also their gods, others made Buddhas and Bodhisattvas out of them. One claimed that the Bodhisattvas were only there to serve the Japanese imperial house. The aforementioned sect founder Nichiren explained that all the gods of Japan worshipped the Lotus Sutra. The Buddhists did not turn against ancestor worship, they adopted it along with the patriarchal tendencies in Japan. (The small domestic ancestral shrines of the common Japanese are Buddhist, not Shinto.) Buddhism even merged with Shintoism, and in many Shinto shrines Buddhist bonces prevailed. In the Tokugawa period, the Japanese renewers turned against this. They advocated a clean break. Accordingly, after the Meiji Restoration (1868), a sanctuary was ordered to serve either Buddhism or Shintoism. Only the Ise Grand Shrines, which have existed for about 2000 years (wooden buildings that are demolished and renewed every 20 years!).
The personality of the Japanese
Child rearing in Japan in the first few months
The Japanese mother lulls more with her baby, while the American mother speaks more. With 3-4 months already clear differences can be determined. The American vocalizes more and makes happier sounds. American mothers behave more lively, vocalize more, even when the baby makes sounds.
The Japanese mother carries, swings and lulls her baby to sleep more often. It wakes up more often when it’s put down and wakes up again. The Japanese mother responds more slowly to the baby’s vocal utterances. The importance and communicative value of physical contact is more emphasized.
Overall, the mother sees her child and the mother-child relationship differently:
The American mother sees her child as a potentially independent being who should learn to think and act for herself. For her, the baby is from birth a being with its own needs and desires, which she must learn to recognize and care for. She helps him to express himself verbally through vocalization so that he can express his needs to her. She puts less emphasis on physical contact. To the extent that she perceives her baby as an independent being, she experiences herself as a person with her own needs after her own time with her husband and for her own interests. That’s why she does more with her baby, so that it sleeps at bedtime and she has time for herself.
In Japan the mother experiences her child rather as a part of herself, psychologically the borders are much more blurred, the interdependence is emphasized. The mother knows what the baby needs and there is no need for it to tell her what it needs because they are virtually one. Therefore less vocalization, but also less haste in baby care, since she has no other expectations to have time for her husband or other interests. On average, the Japanese child sleeps with its parents until the age of 10.
What’s the meaning of this?
The significance lies in the fact that babies with 3-4 months have already learned the basic patterns of the respective culturally predominant interpersonal relationships. They are already now in line with the expectations that will later be placed on them in terms of their interpersonal behaviour, long before they have learned the language.
This expectation, that children and parents are one, runs through the whole childhood.
Zita by Keigo Okonogi, leading Japanese psychoanalyst:
In Japan, parents and children are supposed to bo one and often even share a bedroom. Father an mother conceal the fact they are man and woman; consideration is given so that children may be fused into world of their parents.
For instance, when father goes out to play on Sundays, mother stays at home with the children.
Father enjoys evenings outside, while mother and children wait at home for his return. With such customs, we Japanese feel that the man-woman relations are secretly covered up in the daily living patterns of father and mother.
In the process of child raising, stark confrontation with this fact has been skillfully evaded. Since we have been raised in a world where father and mother conceal their beings as man and woman and where parents are fused with children, we have acquired a psychological structure different from that of the Oedipus Complex.
Consequently, when Japanese children see their fathers and mothers turning into mere men and women, they suffer a greater spiritual crisis than Western children do.
And Japanese parents, for their part, feel guilty over their children’s resentment against them. But they can not claim before their children their own proper rights as man an woman. Children come to censure their fathers, who have lost the paternal principle, for their unworthy fatherhood and chastise their mothers, who have been degraded to the status of mere women. “Why are you a woman?” is the often heard criticism.
I should like to call this type of resentment against parents the “present-day pre-birth resentment” (Mishoon)”, which of course is the theme of the Ajase Complex.
It is my understanding that, in the West, it is more common for parents to abuse their children than for children to perecute their parents. I would be interested in knowing whether, in Western countries, and West Germany in particular, there are instance of children directing violence at home against their parents. An if so, in what forms?
Amae or the need to feel dependent on someone
Freud (1931) wrote that everything that had to do with the first mother-child relationship appeared to him elusive, lost in the first dark and shadowy past, so difficult to retrieve, as if it had been lost in a special, impenetrable process of change.
Doi attributes the need for dependence to the ego to the ego instincts of early Freud.
In Japanese society there seems to be a reward for expressing dependency needs, which is in clear contrast to Western societies where dependency needs are seen as something that belongs to the child or regressed patient and is usually beneath the dignity of the adult human being.
Personal independence can be understood as the need for dependence on one’s own self and as a defensive mechanism it presupposes a self which is worth relying on.
Amae (the concept of dependency needs) makes it possible to relate personal and social systems.
According to Takeo Doi, the personal need for independence was a driving force behind many Western achievements.
Japanese not only seek the closeness of a group or people by identifying with the group and seeking close relationships, but they also think in terms of their own advantages and how they can influence the group. They try to turn their own dependence into control of the other. Relationships of dependence are not based on rigid social roles of a dependent and a superior, but are flexible in flow.
The Japanese ability to perceive fish differently from meat or an x-ray is comparable to the ability to perceive nuances of a dependency relationship, which, however, is ego-synton.
The initiative of the Japanese since the Meiji period originates less from a need for independence than from the need to be respected and accepted (the complaint about commodity dependency is a demanding complaint which demands consideration, the complaint about the double Nixon shock). Their energy for modernization comes from free energy, which is neither bound to independence nor through social relations.
Olympic Games were an incentive to modernize Tokyo. This, of course, also explains the anger at not receiving recognition. (It is an interesting fact that there are much fewer murders in Japan than in western societies, but many more parental murders by children who feel neglected by their parents). Recognition is just some value of someone you respect.
Self-realization, psychoanalysis also represent an attempt to reconstitute the threatened defense mechanism of independence (coping mechanism) in order to be able to defy the current threat of an increasingly confused and changing world. The ability to deal with real dependencies, I would hypothetically claim, is better trained in Japan.
Doi means that only those who are free of conflict with regard to their dependency needs (example of physically ill Japanese who can be cared for and flexibly enjoys and uses the state of dependency) and can flexibly make use of it can help others who become ill because they are frustrated in their dependency needs and are not accepted.
According to Gallup, the Japanese youth were the most dissatisfied in 1972.
Kimura Bin’s criticism of Doi
He thinks that Amae means that a merger has already taken place and that the “demands” are now being made and that it is important and adaptive in Japan, since the hearts of fellow men are unpredictable in contrast to the Westerners, while our relationships are based on mutual trust and predictability.
The Ajase Complex
While Freud regarded the Oedipus complex as fundamental for the self-conception of Western man and his psychopathology, Kosawa, the first Japanese psychoanalyst trained in Vienna in 1933, developed a theory corresponding to Japanese cultural consciousness which underlies the ajase myth.
Ajase is the longed-for son who is to keep the love of her husband Binbashara to Queen Idaike even in old age. Of course she suffers from her infertility until she receives the prophetic indication that first a wise man living in the mountains must die, whose reincarnation in her body alone enables her to give birth to a son. After she has murdered the sage, he is reborn to her as her own son, but he is also affected by the curse that the mother has brought upon her, as is she. Despite this fate, the boy grows up until his youth in happy agreement with his parents; but he learns of the secret of his birth after he has become king. The initial hatred, which was initially directed at the father who was then incarcerated and threatened to expel the mother because of her infertility, later turned against the mother when she tried to save her husband from starvation in prison. Ajase, in his anger, plans to kill his mother; but after a servant has told him that sons kill their fathers, but never his mother, Ajase is struck by violent feelings of guilt, which lead him into deep melancholy and bring him a severe skin disease; the smell that emanates from her makes all people around him withdraw, except the mother who forgives his hatred; despite his aggressions, she cares for him with devotion and thereby helps him back to health. The reconciliation with the parents is at the same time the process of his convalescence.
This myth is the starting point for psychoanalytical conclusions: the symbiosis with the mother and the narcissistic omnipotence that can be deduced from it are sensitively disturbed after the son has experienced the circumstances of his birth and the origin of his identity; this is the cause of the most violent aggressions, the desire to kill the mother and the psychosomatic symptoms associated with the feelings of guilt, which at the same time prevent the satisfactory experience of interpersonal relationships. The overcoming of depression takes place in the healing process of the physical illness and at the same time in the medium of a restoration of destroyed communication structures. The final reconciliation with the mother is an index for a successful development of ego and body identity.
This dynamic of symbiosis, initial identity experience, deadly ambivalence, coping with guilt, psychosomatics, and return to motherly love represents the stages of psychogenetic identity development that Kosawa believes underlies Japanese self-consciousness. The transformation of this myth into an ego-psychologically oriented psychoanalytical metapsychology and psychosomatic theory takes place in several steps:
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the division internalized in the identity of the self between the good and the bad mother;
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the integration of this splitting of the identity of the self;
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the integration of this splitting of the body-Idétiété;
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overcoming and accepting the ambivalence towards the mother.
From a psychopathological point of view, Kosawa comes close to Kleinian positions: The fixation on the destructive status of hatred towards the mother would roughly correspond to the regressive stage of paranoid schizoidism and its hypochondriac, as manifest psychosomatic body-eg alienation.
In his works, Okonogi deals with so-called typically Japanese masochism and the “innate attitude of rejection” due to the culture-specific group structure.
At present in Japanese society there is an increasing aggression of young people towards their parents, which leads to a growing problem.
From the point of view of the ajase complex, this is seen as the aggressive solution from the narcissistic symbiosis with the family-parent group.
Another culture-specific characteristic of the Japanese personality structure in the interpersonal relationship field is its dependence on others, a “centring on the other”. Harmonization efforts in verbal and current behavior characterize personal interactions, which can go as far as abandoning one’s own identity and physical integrity.
In a symbiotic fusion with the other, the psychological principle of Japanese masochism emerges:
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the strength of the sense of belonging to a group or organisation; the main sense of life of the individual is determined by identification with an organisation or group.
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renunciation of one’s own life rights, even if they are reasonable. Despite suffering and sacrifice, the satisfaction and gain of other persons and organizations is given absolute priority.