Happiness and Harmony - The Akihabara Lesson

Japan likes to call itself the ‘Land of Wa’, or harmony. Before the 8th century, the Chinese called Japan ‘wo’, which is where the sound comes from, but ‘wo’ had the rather unflattering meaning of ‘dwarves’, and the ‘dwarves’ were one of the peoples the Chinese usually summed up under the phrase ‘Eastern Barbarians’. The Japanese took it upon themselves to find a more suitable character to denote their country. Wa. Harmony. This, they felt, distinguished their country from other countries. This was their most essential feature.

Indeed, Japan has a low crime rate. Lost wallets and mobile phones are usually turned in at the nearest police station, and foreigners living in Japan cite safety as one of the great advantages of living in Japan.

The Japanese have a very simple three step recipe for harmony. One. You do what you are told. Two. You follow the rules. Written and unwritten. Three. If you cannot comply with points one and two, you dispose of yourself.

One important concept in Japanese society is ‘kimatteiru’. Every time something is given the attribute ‘kimatteiru’, you can safely identify a rule in Japanese society. When you ask a Japanese person why they impractically dip the sushi in the soy sauce fish first, not rice first, so the fish falls off every time, they will usually shrug, smile apologetically, and answer with ‘kimatteiru’.

The most natural sounding translation would be something like ‘that’s just the way it is’, or ‘that’s just how you do it’, but it is interesting to note the more literal semantics of the word. Really, it is the intransitive form of ‘decided’. It implies that it has been decided, but it also implies a lack of individual input in this decision. It is simply something that ‘is decided’. Not by anybody in particular. But for everybody in general.

Another important concept in Japanese society is ‘Sou desu ne’. This can be translated as ‘that’s how it is, isn’t it’, and falls into the Japanese word group of so called aizuchi, or ‘phase hammers’, which are expected to be uttered by a listener in order to show the speaker that he is listening. This is kimatteiru.

Whether you do in fact agree with what the speaker is saying or not is irrelevant to the choice of phrase. The phrase is kimatteiru. So in reality, the meaning behind the words ‘Sou desu ne’ ranges from ‘You’ve hit the nail on the head’ over ‘I couldn’t agree less’ to ‘When will you finally shut your mouth, you F***ING SUNOVA B**CH?!” I use ‘sou desu ne’ in everyday conversation and can report about its wide semantic range based on my own experience.

With kimatteiru and sou desu ne a high level of harmony can be achieved. And in the rare event that somebody feels too much friction between these two and their rebellious individuality, a third Japanese concept comes into play. This is better known to us Westerners in its traditional form ‘hara-kiri’, which is no longer practised today, but has not changed much regarding its purpose. If somebody fails to be of service during his life time, he commits suicide, making the most valuable contribution he can to the common goal: harmony. It is a brilliant societal framework.

Sadly, for some time now, Japanese harmony has been experiencing difficulties. For one thing, a continuing influx of foreigners who have no understanding of kimatteiru and sou desu ne and unabashedly act upon their individual impulses has sent ripples through Japanese society for a while now. But ever concerned about harmony, the friendly Japanese have erected a nation wide empire of English conversation schools and intermarried with disorientated English teachers and other aliens. Restaurants now considerately advise their foreign guests to fly their begetable skewers on the flying pans at their tables. With touching enthusiasm, the Japanese are trying to cope with the situation that is threatening harmony in the Land of Wa.

The situation becomes more alarming, however, when the Japanese themselves jump out of character, instead of windows, and turn their individual incompatibility with society against society, and not, as tradition demands it, against themselves. When a Japanese individual finds the hidden trap door from kimatteiru to kimeru. Does not follow what is decided, but decides for himself. Does not validate the system with a suicidal sou desu ne but crashes it with a murderous ‘chigau’ – ‘That’s not how it is!’

Tomohiro Kato’s recent rampage in Tokyo’s Akihabara district has made headlines around the world. On 8th of June 2008, at 12.30 noon, the 25 year-old temporary worker drove into the crowd at Akihabara with a rented truck and fatally injured three people in the process. He then got out and stabbed another twelve, four of which died, raising the death toll of the indiscriminate killing rampage to seven.

He did not know any of the people he attacked. His killing spree was completely random. Why did he kill them?

The motive is the same one that has driven Japanese dwarves into suicide throughout history. The outside pressures of society become unbearable. Pressure builds up on the inside, until despair kicks in and makes a decision. The traditional decision is suicide. I am incompatible with society. I should punish myself by killing myself. The new decision is murder. Society is incompatible with me. I should punish society and kill somebody. Any representative will do, the higher the number the more satisfying the result.

Kato’s outburst has already caused a flood of enthusiastic imitators. Like Kato, they have posted messages on mobile phone websites, threatening to wreak similar havoc. It is a scary development. How can we stop it?

When Kato was questioned about his family, he sobbed. Ever since he entered a prestigious high school and failed to obtain good grades, he and his parents got more and more alienated from each other. He failed university entrance examinations, a common suicide motive, and trained as an auto mechanic. As a mechanic, he got a temporary job, which was likely to be cut at the end of June.

Kato considers himself unattractive and says it is the tragedy of his life that he cannot find a girlfriend.

He is a compulsive real time blogger, posting messages describing his feelings and plans on a mobile phone website every few minutes. These also included warnings of what he was about to do in Akihabara.

A recent Daily Yomiuri article discussed the sky-rocketing trend of individual blogging among young Asians, identifying it as a new development towards individual expression, which is ‘not traditionally fostered in Asian cultures’.

While this trend is certainly to be welcomed, the anonymous abyss of cyberspace hardly offers an appropriate forum for the tender first fledglings of young Asians’ self expression.

The first day after the Akihabara rampage, the papers talked about possible amendments to Japanese knife possession laws, as Kato had used a dagger in his killing spree. Considering that three out of the seven victims were killed by the truck, not the knife, this seems a blatantly short-sighted solution. Should we maybe also ban rental trucks? Stockings? Glass bottles? Fists?

Where there is a will, there is a way. The will is the problem. And the will to kill stems from unhappiness. Happy people do not spend their free time stabbing random victims in Akihabara.

And with this, there finally seems to be a little tumour in the tissue of Japanese harmony. Kimatteiru and sou desu ne might be a good way of avoiding conflict, and many of us pig-headed Westerners can certainly learn the odd lesson from the impressive Japanese skill of self-effacement, but this is also where the Japanese can learn from the egocentric Western alien.

Respect. It is time to talk about respect, something emphasised frequently by both Japanese and foreigners as a main aspect of Japanese culture. But studying Japanese culture and living in Japan, I have seen with my own eyes what Japanese respect really is. It is precisely the kind of respect called for by kimatteiru and sou desu ne. It is respect for rules, and respect for hierarchical status. But it lacks one aspect that is the main feature of respect in Western culture: respect for the individual.

It is not that Westerners have no respect. On the contrary, our intrinsic respect for the individual, validated and reaffirmed in its importance throughout centuries of philosophical thought, key factor in the development of psychoanalysis and all its sister disciplines, is what makes it difficult for us at times to adhere unconditionally to rules and superiors.

Our respect for the individual is what makes us treasure the fruitful exchange of views and opinions. We do not use sou desu ne. We say ‘I disagree’, and ‘yes, but’. Our culture is full of conflict and debate, pushing forward with a view to a more advanced perspective that takes every individual aspect into account. Nothing is kimatteiru. We encourage dialectic development.

Our respect for the individual is what makes us cringe when we hear about Japanese working hours and marriage conditions, about people living in capsules, and sixteen year olds committing suicide for failing to give the correct answer to a maths problem.

Our respect for the individual is what makes us respect ourselves, and seek happiness. A happiness whose content is not kimatteiru but custom made to our individual taste and experience. We accept the search of happiness as a driving force behind our own and other people’s actions.

In Western culture, self-expression is traditionally fostered as an important gateway to fruitful communication and personal happiness.

This is the factor I find lacking in the near perfect construct of Japanese harmony. Nowhere do we find the key ingredient of personal happiness. A harmonious society without happy individuals is like apple pie without apples. It is a non-sustainable, absurdist concept, and it tastes bland to any human palate, not just the Western one.

By no means can Western society claim to have attained perfect saturation of personal happiness, but as this is something we actively seek, we are actively striving for it.

Where an individual finds himself overwhelmed by the situation around himself in the Western world, he has the socially accepted and widely available option of psychological counselling. It requires no changes in the law. It is not an immediate solution, but it is a path with a long-term view towards improvement.

In a culture where individual expression is not traditionally fostered, it will of course be difficult to take root for a useful mental health care system, a cure that relies on self expression for both diagnosis and therapy. People need help, people need friends. Firing self expression randomly into cyberspace is unlikely to make unhappy people happy, give friends to the lonely, or provide solutions to the troubled. People need human feedback, especially if they are still inexperienced in th medium of self expression. It seems like a steep climb ahead, but still, I cannot help but hope. I fall asleep at night, out of the world of kimatteiru and sou desu ne, and straight into utopia.

Here, we all live in happy harmony. It is lunch time, 8th of June 2008. We are sitting in a restaurant in Akihabara, a district in Tokyo known world-wide for its cheap electronics and geeky appeal, talking about future job options, exploring actual and fantastic possibilities, exchanging useful advice and cynical jokes.

“Why do you dip the sushi in the sauce fish first?” I ask. “I wonder,” says my friend Kato. And while he tries to dip the sushi rice first, I try it fish down. It tastes better than before. “Ah, I see now,” I comment, enjoying the flavour repercussions of the sauce-soaked fish in my mouth. “It tastes better this way.” “Sou desu ne,” says Kato, convinced after his unconventional rice first digression, and smiles. Sizzling pans are flying across the tables, offering paradise on skewers, leaving mobile phone websites empty while they fill our stomachs with warm flavours of friendship, happiness, and harmony.