} ! { LUSIONS } ! {


Skeleton for a Suggestive Body
of Evidence
Revealing the Secrets
of Corporate Organisms,
Japanese Industrial Anthroculture
and Most Modern Diseases of the Biosphere

< Section III of III >

Mind-Binding & Social Conditioning
for Terminal Incorporation

In studying the reactions of a social group we deal with the character structure of the members of the group. That is, of individual persons; we are interested in, however, not the peculiarities by which these persons differ from each other, but in that part of their character that is common to most members of the group. We can call this character the "social character"... The social character comprises only a selection of traits: the essential nucleus of the character structure of most members of a group which has developed as the result of the basic experiences and mode of life common to that group... If we want to understand one individual most fully, the differentiating elements are of the greatest importance. However, if we want to understand how human energy is channeled and operates as a productive force in a given social order, then the social character deserves our main interest.

Escape from Freedom

The changes in Japanese society in the course of modernization have attracted much research and discussion. It has often been argued that war brought a fundamental change in the Japanese. It might be truer to argue that since the circumstances and supports of life in Japan have altered radically, ideas and attitudes to life have in turn changed, just as clothes are changed with the seasons. But a superficial change of outlook, as facile as changes in fashion, has not the slightest effect on the firm persistence of the basic nature and core of personal relations and group dynamics.

While the outlook of Japanese society has suffered drastic changes over the past hundred years, the basic social grammar has hardly been affected. Here is an example of industrialization and the importation of Western culture not effecting changes in the basic cultural structure.

Japanese Society

Mind-Binding: A History

Medieval society did not deprive the individual of his freedom, because the 'individual' did not yet exist; man was still related to the world by primary ties. He did not yet conceive of himself as an individual except through the medium of his social (which then was also his natural) role... The lack of self-awareness of the individual in medieval society has found classical expression in Jacob Burckhardt's description of medieval culture:

In the middle ages, both sides of human consciousness - that which was turned within as that which was turned without - lay dreaming or half awake beneath a common veil, the veil was woven of faith, illusion, and childish prepossession, through which the world and history were seen clad in strange hues. Man was conscious of himself only as a member of a race, people, party, family or corporation - only through some general category.

The structure of society and the personality of man changed in the late Middle Ages. The unity of medieval society became weaker; capital, economic initiative, and competition grew in importance; a new moneyed class developed...feudal class stratifications became less important. From the twelfth century onwards nobles and burghers lived together within the walls of the cities. Social intercourse began to ignore distinctions of caste. Birth and origin were of less importance than wealth and power...At the same time we begin to find urban masses of exploited and politically suppressed workers. As early as 1231, as Burckhardt points out, Frederick II's political measures were 'aimed at the complete destruction of the feudal state, at the transformation of the people into a multitude destitute of will and the means of resistance, but profitable in the utmost degree to the exchequer'.

Escape from Freedom       

Perhaps the most important division in Japan's period of feudalism is that between the decentralized form, in which subordinates of the Shogun retained a considerable amount of power and control over their respective provinces, and the centralized form, in which the Shogun managed to exercise quite direct control over his subordinates called 'daimyo.' Centralized feudalism began with the brief rule of Toyotomi Hideyoshi at the end of the sixteenth century and culminated during the 250 year hegemony of his successors, the Tokugawa family.

Several significant points should be made about Japan's feudalism. First, it resulted in the establishment of a military government and raised the status of warriors to powerful rulers, of whom even the court aristocracy had to take heed.

Second, military rule meant that the society sanctioned male dominance. The former high status of court noblewomen was now gone. Arranged marriage and even political marriage, in which women were simply pawns in the political chess game, became a common practice among warriors.

Third, a political system based on personal loyalty became entrenched in feudalism. It is important that kinship as such was not a crucial consideration in the feudal system, as can be seen from a number of occasions when kinsmen as close as brother and brother and father and son fought against each other for power.

Fourth, this personal relationship between the leader and the follower was rationalized into the normative concept of 'on'. On is personal indebtedness which binds subordinates to their leader. It is a debt which the subordinate accrues as his master grants a favor, a benefice like land or employment, which the subordinate desires but cannot obtain in any other way because he does not control the resource. This favor or debt is to be repaid by the subordinate in the form of personal loyalty and service. As we shall see, the political value of on has played an enormously important role in Japan's modernization.

In addition, centralized feudalism, perfected in the early Tokugawa period, has special significance for modern Japan because this period immediately preceded the modern period and thus provided the base line for Japan's modern transformation.

Japanese Society

Socialization is the process through which individuals come to internalize moral norms and become committed to institutional patterns, as in all societies, the family was the primary focus of socialization. It is important to remember that the family in Tokugawa society was in many ways a microcosm of the total society: it had largely the same value system and was penetrated with the same tensions as the total society. It was not, then, a refuge from society... In early childhood children were treated on the whole with great indulgence and permissiveness. As the child grew into the years of pre-adolescence into the world of rigid conformity with customary forms and high expectations of performance that would form the context of his adult life. The high expectations of conformity and performance were enforced more through psychological pressure than through physical punishment, though moxa cautery was apparently widely used by all classes for misbehaved children. The basic psychological pressure was the threat of rejection symbolized most pointedly, perhaps, by disinheritance. To be cast adrift in a society such as Japan was indeed the worst of all possibilities.

Tokugawa Religion

Authoritarianism is the tendency to give up the independence of one's own individual self and to fuse one's self with some body or something outside oneself in order to acquire the strength which the individual self is lacking. The more distinct forms of this mechanism are to be found in the striving for submission and domination, or as we would rather put it here, in the masochistic and sadistic strivings.

The most frequent forms in which the masochistic strivings appear are feelings of inferiority, powerlessness, individual insignificance. Their feelings are more than rationalizations of actual shortcomings (although they are usually rationalized as though they were); these persons show a tendency to belittle themselves, to make themselves weak... Quite regularly these people show a marked dependence on powers outside themselves, on other people or institutions. They tend not to assert themselves, not to do what they want, but to submit to the factual or alleged orders of these outside forces.

Escape from Freedom

Ecclesiastic Adhesives

Japanese morality and the fundamental doctrine of 'on' then were rooted in the idea that man is the humble recipient of endless blessings from divinity, nature, his social superiors, and quite helpless without these blessings... Religious action was thus conceived as a return for such blessings from benevolent superordinates and was based on a view of man as weak and helpless by himself. Only with the help of his benevolent superiors can he live, and the blessings he receives are so much greater than his ability to return them that he can actually only return an infinitesimal fraction of the amount owed. By devoting himself utterly to returning these blessings he assures himself continuation of them, and in some sense he is thereby saved from his weakness. But he can never truly repay; he perpetually stands in debt. The obligation to make the effort, however, is unrelenting, and not dependent upon the feasibility of the task... selfless devotion, however, establishes a 'perfect' relation with the benevolent superordinates and at the same time allows the individual to identify with him, lose himself within him...

To achieve such selflessness, for the destruction of self, 'ko' (filial piety) is the best means:

"All the errors of mankind arise from 'self' as we think 'this is my body', 'this is mine', but 'ko' slays self."

Such material is interesting because it contributes to a rather complete 'theology' for a 'religion of filial piety'. Moreover, this theology is derived from elements of the general religious system, and is furthermore a religion with no necessary connection with sect, shrine, or temple.

And just as we may speak of a 'religion of filial piety,' so also we can speak of a 'religion of loyalty'. Actually, this term has been used to denoted Bushido, the status ethic of the samurai class, but loyalty was also one of the prime tenets of the family religion. Filial piety did not compete with loyalty, it reinforced it. Nakae Toju, when questioned as to whether the obligation to preserve one's body as a gift of one's parents would prohibit one from going into battle, replied that the obligation to preserve one's virtue was higher than to preserve one's body, and that if need be one should willingly die for one's lord or master. This is true filial piety. We may see in the following quote from Nichiren that filial piety in the last analysis meant loyalty for the Japanese:

"When a father opposes the sovereign, dutiful children desert their parents and follow the sovereign. This is filial piety at its highest."

The influence of Confucianism also worked in the direction of political 'rationalization' through these centuries. The Classic of Filial Piety (Hsiao Ching) was especially widely propagated. By the end of the eighth century it was taught in every school, and every child who knew how to read could recite it by heart. By order of the Empress Koken (reign: 749-758) a copy of the Classic of Filial Piety was required to be kept in every home. Even in Kamakura times the samurai, high and low, even though they might have no other book, were apt to have a copy of this one. The unparalleled importance of the book can be perhaps be seen as a rough measure of the increasing importance the ethic it preaches was coming to have in Japanese society. As long as filial piety yields precedence to loyalty as the highest virtue, and as long as it is taught in a context of political values, the increasing institutionalization of the Confucian ethic of filial piety can be seen as a major evolutionary step in the direction of political 'rationalization' [and centralization of social control] - the family itself is penetrated by [and subordinated to] political values and authority, indeed becoming a miniature polity...

The net effect of these various developments was to lead to a conception of loyalty, ostensibly to the Emperor, which could override all other religious and secular commitments. This clearly was a necessary step in overcoming the "primitive traditionalistic objections" to the extension of centralized power. We may quote a single concrete example from Shinto teachings to illustrate the process:

"Under an Imperial order to build ships, Kawabe-no-Omi, disregarding admonishings by the people, felled the trees on mountains sacred to the Thunder God. Then it thundered very violently, but the Thunder God - a deity in the nature religion - could do no harm to Kawabe-no-Omi because he did what he ought to as a loyal subject under the command of the Empress Suiko (reign: 593-629), who was a deity by far superior to the divine Thunderer."

Tokugawa Religion

It is instructive to note that those centuries which saw the almost fanatical exaltation of loyalty, should have seen the lowest ebb of the fortunes of the actual imperial families... Still the cultivated regard for the Emperor when linked to this identification of loyalty and filial piety has some very interesting implications for the concept of the state. God, emperor, lord and father tend to be made into equivalents. The whole nation is a single family. The Emperor is 'divine', he is 'lord', and he is 'father' of the national family. The people are worshippers, retainers and children. Loyalty is the 'great filial piety', and devotion to the parents is the 'small filial piety' which exists only so that the great filial piety can be fulfilled...

As loyalty and filial piety became almost identified with each other, the training of the child in filial piety was so that he might fulfill loyalty as an adult:

"A samurai who possesses the spirit (filial piety) when he enters service will thoroughly understand the way of loyalty, regarding his life as nothing when carrying out a warrior's fealty. And so, though the terms 'parent' and 'lord', 'filial conduct' and 'loyalty' are distinct, they are in no way different in meaning. There is a saying of the ancients, 'Look for loyal retainers among the filial.'"

What has been described above is one aspect of what is meant by 'kokutai' [the 'mystical body' of the state]. It is a concept of the state in which religious, political and familialistic ideas are indissolubly merged... and consequently all action is governed by the concept of 'on'.

Further, 'kokutai' is also conceived as the identification of the Emperor and the gods, and the people are identified with both. The Emperor's will is the gods' will, and the people's will is the Emperor's will. To be thus united in will with the Emperor and deities is what is meant by being 'sincere', having a pure heart, etc. 'Kokutai' then is also an identification of the religious body and the political body.

Tokugawa Religion

The same considerations hold true with respect to religion. An example of the tendency to value religion for its [political] results rather than for its own sake would be the attachment of the warrior class to Zen Buddhism. It was seen almost as a system of training which aided in the self-abnegating performance of actions expressing loyalty to one's lord. The latter remains the central value and religion is subordinated to it (or subsumed in it).

Additionally, religion supplied a context of ultimate meaning to the central value system through the fact that the primary collectivities in the society were conceived of as religious as well as secular bodies. Loyalty to these collectivities and their heads had not only a mundane significance, but also an ultimate meaning: fulfillment of obligations to them was in one sense a religious duty. Acting in closest accord with the political values of the society, that is, giving one's full devotion to one's superiors, and expressing this devotion in vigorous and continuous performance with respect to the collective goals, was seen as the best means to acquire the approval and protection of divine beings.

Tokugawa Religion

Human existence begins when the lack of fixation of action by instincts exceeds a certain point; when adaption to the environment loses its coercive character; when the way to act is no longer determined by inherited injunctions. In other words, human existence and freedom are from the beginning inseparable. Even the Christian myth of Eden identifies the beginning of human history with an act of choice... From the standpoint of the Church, which represented authority, this is essentially sin. From the standpoint of man, however, this is the beginning of human freedom. Acting against divine order means freeing himself from coercion, emerging from the unconscious existence of pre-human life to the level of man. Acting against the command of authority, committing a sin, is in its positive human aspect the first act of freedom, that is, the first "human" act. The act of disobedience as an act of freedom is the beginning of reason.

Escape from Freedom

Unpayable Debts, Unbreakable Bonds

Action with respect to deity as a benevolent superordinate takes us once again into the theory of 'on'. Deity in some form dispenses 'on' [blessings] and it is the obligation of the recipient to make return for these blessings ['hoon']. (It is interesting to note that the theory of 'on' holds for superordinates within the social system, such as parents or superiors, in exactly the same terms as it holds for entities above the social system, gods or buddhas, etc. The significance of this will become clear at a later point.)

The term 'on' appears in Mencius and in the Li Chi several times, but 'hoon' seems to be of Buddhist origin and reflects an important aspect of Buddhist ethics, the stress on indebtedness. The Anguttara Nikaya, an early Buddhist work, quotes the Buddha as saying, 'the wicked person is one who is not grateful and who does not bear in mind any good rendered to him.' Another quote from the Anguttara is interesting because it shows the early connection of the theory of 'on' with filial piety, and because it maintains that 'on' can never be fully requited:

"We may carry our mothers on one shoulder, and our fathers on the other, and attend on them even for a hundred years, doing them bodily services in every possible way, and establishing them in a position of universal sovereignty: still the favour that we have received from them will be far from being repaid."
The theory of 'on' and 'hoon' is prominent in Japanese Buddhism, especially the great 'reform' sects of the 12th and 13th centuries. In his great work Kaimokusho, Nichiren quotes with great approval the following passage from the Saddharma-pundarika Sutra:

"We are greatly indebted to Sakyamuni. He loved us and taught us and bestowed on us grace. We cannot repay his great benefits to us even if we endeavored to do so for countless aeons... Even if we take his feet on our upturned palms and carry him on our shoulders through eons countless as the sands of the Ganges, or honour him with all our hearts; or offer ambrosia or innumerable robes, or costly bedding, or build him great monasteries with wood of sandal and adorned with precious jewels, yet shall our debt remain unpaid."

This sentiment is echoed in a common exhortation of the Jodo Shin sect, 'one returns thanks to the source of the Buddha's benevolence by pulverizing one's body and breaking one's bones for countless kalpas.'

The compelling and overriding loyalty toward authority must [therefore] be seen in the context of the idea of 'on'. Political authority, for instance, has the obligation of bestowing blessings upon the people subject to it, e.g. peace, famine relief, public works, favorable economic and political conditions, etc. In theory loyalty was not dependent on the actual carrying out of these blessings but was an absolute obligation, but there can be little doubt that in fact the failure of 'blessings' to materialize undermined authority.

Coordinate with the concept of 'on' is the concept of 'hoon' or the return of 'on'. This involves the general obligation to respect and comply with the orders of political authority. The official notice board on which were posted the latest governmental decrees in every town and village, and the respect shown toward it, are evidences of the degree of compliance with political authority even at the lowest levels of the social structure. The relatively high degree of public order, as compared with even China, for example, is another instance of this compliance, as is the readiness of samurai to commit seppuku when so ordered. These and other examples which could be given illustrate the considerable degree to which authority could exercise control through influence, that is, through the manipulation of sentiments. The central and local governments of course had force at their commands with which to compel compliance, but sociologically more interesting is the fact that in so many contexts compliance was voluntary. In the last analysis this depended on the fact that people identified with the polity. They felt themselves part of what became known as the 'kokutai', the national polity (or 'mystical body' of the state), a symbol of great importance, especially in Meiji and post-Meiji periods. They received gratifications through their identifications as members of it, they participated in the prestige and meaning of the polity, and thus they voluntarily submitted to the requirements of its authority, feeling its interests to be identical with their own.

Tokugawa Religion

Collective Response Ability

Buttressing this adherence to prescribed forms was the principle of group responsibility. Serious failure to conform to the norms was considered not merely to be a matter of individual responsibility. Rather, families, five-family groups, and even villages and wards might be involved in the responsibility for the act of a single individual. Thus every person in his social actions was in a representative role with respect to his primary collectivities. A wrong step would jeopardize not only himself but could bring disaster upon his group or at best leave it open for contempt and ridicule. Further, the group itself tended to place conformity with the social norms higher than group membership, and, thus, in addition to external social sanctions, a transgressor was more apt to receive rejection than support from his primary group. This situation leads to a close identification with the collectivity and a tendency for all the sub-collectivities to support the morality of the total collectivity at whatever cost to themselves, which is perhaps close to what Durkheim was talking about when he used the term 'mechanical solidarity'.

Tokugawa Religion

Although long, the length of gestation for man is insufficient; it is prolonged by an extra- uterine gestation during which the child builds up its bodily organs and at the same time undergoes the fashioning effected by the family and social environment... The respective confines of biological and cultural existence cannot be exactly determined, but the idea of some biological inscribing of culture onto the human species cannot be rejected... Man's historical and cultural generation by means of pedagogy is indissolubly related to his physical generation by natural means. According to Portmann, the Swiss biologist, 'human heredity in its own proper way, is not essentially genetic, but social.'

Heredity, Encyclopedia Brittanica

The family, too, is the polity writ small. Practically all that has been said above about the value system of the total Japanese society can be applied to the family. Instead of loyalty the highest value is filial piety ('ko'), but its function is the same. It implies the same attitude toward the head of the collectivity and the same central concern for the collective goal... On the broadest level, in fact, family and nation are conceived as one, the Imperial family being the main house of which all Japanese are branches... But it is still important to stress that in the dominant value system filial piety is subordinate to loyalty; polity overrides family; and in the case of conflict of loyalty the first duty is to one's lord or superior rather than to one's family. This is in clear contrast to China (and most other cultures) where the reverse holds true...

Further, the family tends to be the fundamental unit of society rather than the individual. The status of the family head is both internally central and externally the lowest 'official' role in the polity. Family does not stand over against the polity but is integrated into it and to an extent penetrated by it.

Tokugawa Religion

Baby as Part, Baby as Whole

In Japan, the infant is seen more as a separate biological organism who from the beginning, in order to develop, needs to be drawn into increasingly interdependent relations with others. In America, the infant is seen more as a dependent biological organism who, in order to develop, needs to be made increasingly independent of others.

"Maternal Care and Behavior in Japan & America"

The emergence of the individual has two aspects: one is that the child grows stronger physically, emotionally, and mentally and simultaneously as intensity and activity in each of these spheres increase they become more and more integrated. An organized structure guided by the individual's will and reason develops. If we call this organized and integrated whole the personality of the self, we can say that the process of individuation is the growth of self-strength.

The limits of the growth of individuation and the self are set, partly by individual conditions, but essentially by social conditions. For although the difference between individuals in this respect appear to be significant, every society is characterized by a certain level of individuation beyond which the normal individual cannot go.

Escape from Freedom

The close affective interdependence between mother and child which develops as a result of the relatively lenient child-rearing practices in Japan is turned into a mechanism of social control... As the child develops dependence on the mother's affectionate indulgence, the mother in turn begins to seek satisfaction of her emotional needs through her child's dependence on her. The child attempts to act contrary to the mother's desire (and thus act independently) tends to provoke anxiety in the mother, since she is thus no longer needed and can no longer satisfy her emotional needs. The mother's anxiety and consequent suffering, when communicated, is likely to cause the child to feel guilty... As a parental suffering tends to be interpreted by the child as a result of his failure or deviance, he tries to relieve it by conforming.

Japan: An Anthropological Introduction

Sadistic tendencies are often entirely covered up by reaction formations of over- goodness or over-concern for others...The sadistic person quite manifestly 'loves' those over whom he feels power. He may think that he wishes to dominate their lives because he loves them so much. He actually loves them because he dominates them. He bribes them with material things, with praise, assurance of love, or by showing concern. He may give them everything - everything except one thing - the right to be free and independent. This constellation is often found particularly in the relationship of parents and children. There, the attitude of domination - and ownership - is often covered by what seems to be the 'natural' concern or feeling of protectiveness for a child. The child is put into a golden cage, it can have everything provided it does not want to leave the cage.

Escape from Freedom

In Caudill and Weinstein's (1969) comparative study of mother-infant interaction in middle-class families in Japan and the United states, they discovered that at the early age of three to four months, Japanese and American babies already behave differently and also that mothers in these cultures interact with these infants rather differently.

Their findings show among other things that infants in the United States tend to be left alone, be much more active (in bodily movements), and express vocally either to themselves or to the mother significantly more than Japanese infants. Japanese infants, on the other hand, tend to make more frequent protests or complaints to be satisfied by their mother than American infants do. American mothers tend to talk to their infants more, physically stimulate them by patting or positioning them and show overt affection toward them more often than Japanese mothers. Japanese mothers, more than American mothers, tend to quietly rock the infants rather than provide vigorous physical stimulation. These differences even at so young an age in infant behavior and maternal care already point to later personality differences between Japanese and Americans. For example, because they are often left alone, American infants must learn to handle the problem of emotional security by themselves, whereas Japanese infants tend to rely on the constant physical presence of their mothers for emotional security. Another important difference is that mother-child interaction in the American sample tends to stimulate the infant's physical activity as well as verbal responses, whereas in the Japanese sample interaction tends to be less active and less verbal and instead tends to have a soothing and quieting effect on the infant.

Feeding patterns may also influence behavioral development. In contrast to the traditional Japanese practice of feeding on demand, scheduled feeding forces the infant to keep crying and to learn to somehow manage by himself the emotional tension which develops with hunger. If left alone in a room, as an infant often is in the U.S., he must learn in addition to cope with the insecurity of being alone. It is important to note that an American develops the capacity to deal with his emotional problems alone and that this emotional independence serves in the ideology of individualism. The on-demand feeding, on the other hand, tends to create the opposite effect, not only eliminating opportunities for developing emotional independence, but creating further opportunities for reinforcing dependence.

Sleeping habits also appear significant. Japanese family members tend to sleep in groups of two or more in the same room, rather than spreading themselves throughout the house, even when there are enough rooms to accommodate all members separately. In the United States solitary sleeping starts only a few weeks after birth in many cases, and as we saw is a method of training a child to manage his emotional security by himself. Japanese sleeping arrangements emphasize the opposite: mutual dependence for emotional security. Japanese, indeed, find it deeply satisfying to sleep in the company of others. Here again, one sees the primacy in Japanese emotional life of sharing each other, as it were, over the idea of privacy. As one sociologist puts it, among Japanese the very desire to sleep alone is somewhat suspect.

Japan: An Anthropological Introduction

Falling into the Greater Whole

Inevitably what is of value and meaning to individual spheres of life - especially matters of ethics and personal growth - becomes entangled with the machinery of great political and social ambitions. Economic large-scale efforts recognize and attempt to create a specific kind of ideal person suited to the requirements of large-scale mobilizations.

For Japan's economic and military development... a disciplined and dedicated populace was of crucial importance. Here, personal character became entangled with issues of the efficiency of the modern state... a pattern of state-sponsored moral education and military training gradually emerged that aimed at efficient mass action. The requirements of large- scale mobilization thus provided further reason to set aside the (educational) ideal of gradual and highly individual progress.

Distortions took place most visibly in the worlds of public institutions and political schemes... Political authority was inserted where personal experience and perhaps a personal teacher had been appropriate. What was to be learned from life was replaced by codified rules and principles. Action of service to the state was made the central concern.

"The Promise of Adulthood in Japan"

The importance of the collectivity and of one's particular relation to it, is indicated by the enormous symbolic importance of the head of the collectivity, whether this be family head, feudal lord, or emperor. This tended to be a representative role - the head stood for the collectivity. Thus one's particularistic tie to one's collectivity is symbolized as loyalty to its head. Given the enormous importance of loyalty in Japan...it is important to note that this loyalty is loyalty to the head of one's collectivity, whoever that person may be. It is loyalty to a status rather than to a person. As such it implies the possibility of a deep loyalty to a person (of rank or perceived power) with whom the individual has no personal relation at all, and thus of a powerful political influence far beyond the sphere of mere personal respect.

Tokugawa Religion

The social function of education is to 'qualify' the individual to function in the role he is to later play in the social body; that is, to mold his character in such a way that it approximates the social character, that his desires coincide with the necessity of his social role. The educational system of any society is determined by this function. Therefore we 'explain' an educational system by the necessities resulting from a given social and economic structure... However, the methods are extremely important in so far as they are the mechanisms by which the individual is conformed to the required 'shape', the means by which social requirements are transformed into 'personal' qualities.

Escape from Freedom

In-Structing for Incorporation

After experimenting briefly with the American elementary-school plan in the late nineteenth century the Japanese found they could not adjust to the local autonomy of the American school-board system and switched to German models. With the German influence came school uniforms, military calisthenics, a central Ministry of Education, and the principle that schools were "not for the sake of the pupils but for the sake of the country", as the first Minister of Education phrased it. From 1930 to 1945, the school system was "a gigantic factory for the production of soldiers or of well-indoctrinated workers on the home front," in the words of historian John Whitney Hall...

The Occupation planted the concept of general education in college curriculums, but it is not thriving. Former minister of education, Michio Nagai contends that as Japanese universities tried to compress the transition form the European medieval model to white-collar general education, the schools "came to be characterized by easy adaptation to the practical needs of society rather than by long term contributions to culture or the detached pursuit of truth. Education designed to develop men who think for themselves has already been abandoned..."

The bitterest battle over the shape of lower-school education, meanwhile, has been fought over the teaching of 'morals'. Until the end of the war, morals meant devotion to the kokutai (the 'mystical' body of the nation) and exaltation of the state. "I was taught to die for duty - you are not a good Japanese if you think of your own welfare," recalled the principal of a grade school I visited. The Occupation banned morals instructions, but no sooner had the Americans gone away than the Ministry of Education revived the subject in another form. Now "social ethics" courses, made compulsory in 1985, inculcate codes that vary with the teachers inclinations... The issue still stirs strong emotions. Takao Kusu, 56, company president: "if in our society everyone starts doing what he wants to, believing erroneously that this is the way to guard one's privacy, can any organization ever attain its purpose or realize its ideals?" Masami Sakurai, 20, student: "the kind of moral education enforced by the state is designed to create characterless people who are obedient to the Establishment."

Japan Today

The suppression of spontaneous feelings, and thereby the development of genuine individuality, starts very early, as a matter of fact with the earliest training of the child... His education too often results in the elimination of spontaneity and in the substitution of original psychic acts by superimposed feelings, thoughts, and wishes. (By original I do not mean that an idea has not been thought before by someone else, but that it originates in the individual, that it is the result of his own psychic activity and in this sense is "his" thought.)

To choose one illustration somewhat arbitrarily, one of the earliest suppressions of feelings concerns dislike. To start with, most children have a certain measure of rebelliousness as a result of their conflict with a surrounding world that tends to block their expansiveness and to which, as the weaker opponent, they usually have to yield. It is one of the essential aims of the educational process to eliminate these antagonistic reactions. The methods are different; they vary from threats and punishments, which frighten the child, to the subtler methods of bribery or explanations which confuse him. The child starts with giving up the expression of his feeling and eventually gives up the very feeling itself. Together with which he is taught to suppress the awareness of hostility and insincerity in others; and sometimes this is not entirely easy, since children have a capacity for noticing such negative qualities in others without being so easily influenced by words as adults usually are...

Escape from Freedom

Extracting "me", Inserting "We"
Out-sourcing the Inner Voice

Recent research of suggestibility hypnotic phenomena have demonstrated how feelings and thoughts can be induced from the outside and yet be subjectively experienced as one's own, and how one's own feelings and thoughts can be repressed and thus cease to be part of one's self. Such phenomena, however, are by no means to be found only in hypnotic situations. The general fact that the contents of our thinking and feeling are induced from the outside and are not genuine, exists to an extent that gives the impression that these pseudo-thoughts are the rule, while indigenous mental acts are the exception....

What holds true of thinking and feeling holds also true of willing. A great number of our decisions are not really our own but are suggested to us from the outside. We have succeeded in persuading ourselves that it is we who have made the decision, whereas we have actually only conformed with the expectations of others, driven by he fear of isolation or more direct threats... In watching that phenomenon of human decision-making one is struck by the extent to which people are mistaken in taking as 'their' decision what in effect is submission to convention, duty, or simple pressure. It almost seems that 'original' decision is a comparatively rare phenomenon.

Escape from Freedom

In his everyday existence the Japanese acts, feels, thinks, decides, as if Japan would act through him. If asked to what extent his acts emanate from himself, and to what extent from his group, he would not only be unable to give a rational account but he would also be unwilling to admit the validity of the question... He stands to his group in a relation in which we imagine the life of a cell stands to the life of an organism.

Mirror, Sword & Jewel

Such a man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he actually wants what he is supposed to want... The particular difficulty in recognizing to what extent or wishes - and thoughts and feeling as well - are not really our own but put into us from the outside, is closely linked up with the problem of authority and freedom. In the course of modern history the authority of the church has been replaced by that of the state, and that of the state by the anonymous authority of common sense and public opinion as instruments of conformity. Because we have freed ourselves of the older overt forms of authority, we do not see that we have become the prey of a new kind of authority that propagates the illusion that we are self-willing individuals. Gradually the self of the individual is weakened, so that he feels powerless and extremely insecure. He lives in a world to which he has lost genuine relatedness and in which everybody and everything has become instrumentalized, where he has become a part of the body of the great machine that his hands have built. He thinks, feels, and wills what he is supposed to think, feel, will; and in this very process loses his unique self upon which all genuine security of a free individual must be built.

The loss of the self has increased the necessity to conform, for it results in a profound doubt of one's own identity. If I am nothing but what I believe I am supposed to be, who am 'I'? The loss of identity then makes it still more imperative to conform. It means that one can be sure of oneself only if one lives up to the expectations of others. If we do not live up to this picture we not only risk disapproval and increased isolation, but we risk losing the identity of our personality, which means jeopardizing sanity. By conforming to the expectations of others, by giving up spontaneous individuality, by not being different, these doubts about one's own identity may be silenced: I have no identity, there is no self excepting the one which is the reflex of what others expect me to be: thus I am "as you desire me."

Escape from Freedom

Where the quasi-magical force of rite and custom prevails, the give and take, address and reply, the warp of daily life, assume the harmonious aspects of a self-regulated organic process. The movements of a Japanese seem not to originate in his frail body but to avail themselves of it... making him bend and bow and vibrate like a tree in wind and rain.

Mirror, Sword & Jewel

It is the inherent mental make-up of the Japanese that allows the formulation of such over-riding group decisions. One of the factors dominating Japanese thinking and aspiration is relativism, to put it in a Japanese way, 'a desire to be level with or similar to the other person who is supposed to be higher than oneself.' The Japanese have no religious practice or belief that controls individual thinking and behavior on the strength of a supernatural being. The vital role is played not by religion or philosophy, but by a very human morality. The yard-stick of this morality is always determined by contemporary trends. The feeling that 'I must do this because A and B also do it' or 'they will laugh at me unless I do such-and-such' rules the life of the individual with greater force than any other consideration.....

Japanese Society

Vicarious Virility

[The corporate core] is not a class in the old sense of the word, it does not aim at transmitting power to its own children. The continuity of an oligarchy need not be genetic or physical. Hereditary aristocracies have always been short-lived, whereas, adoptive organizations such as the Catholic Church have sometimes lasted for hundreds or thousands of years. The essence of oligarchic rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life, a ruling group is a ruling group as long as it can nominate its successors. It is not concerned with perpetuating its blood but with perpetuating its blood but with perpetuating itself. Who wields power is not important, provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same.


Now, if the cooperation of some thousands of millions of cells in our brain can produce our consciousness, a true singularity, the idea becomes vastly more plausible that the cooperation of humanity, or some sections of it, may determine what Comte calls a "Great Being".

Essays on Science and Ethics

To Be Dragged Out...
To be extended, augmented, interpolated, annotated and otherwise enriched.
If you know of any other relevant quotes, passages or sources
that might aid or abet this effort, please suggest or send contributions to:



Essays on Science and Ethics, J.B.S. Haldane, 1932

Japan: An Anthropological Introduction Harumi Befu, Tuttle, Tokyo, '81, 162

Japan Today, W.H. Forbis, Tuttle, Tokyo, '75

Japanese Society, Chie Nakane, Univ. of California Press, '86

Mirror, Sword and Jewel, Kurt Singer, Croom Helm, London, '73

Tokugawa Religion, Robert Bellah, Falcon's Wing Press, Glencoe, Ill., '57

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