{"id":764,"date":"2007-11-24T10:01:05","date_gmt":"2007-11-24T01:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=764"},"modified":"2008-06-05T23:22:36","modified_gmt":"2008-06-05T14:22:36","slug":"john-spiri-reviews-gregory-clarks-book-understanding-the-japanese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=764","title":{"rendered":"John Spiri reviews Gregory Clark’s book “Understanding the Japanese”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Japanese and Ware Ware Non-Japanese
\nA review of UNDERSTANDING THE JAPANESE by Gregory Clark
\nBy John Spiri, former Assistant Professor at Akita International University<\/a><\/b>
\n(written for a mass media outlet, unpublished)<\/p>\n

UNDERSTANDING THE JAPANESE: Gregory Clark. First published 1982 by Kinseido, Tokyo<\/a><\/p>\n

It is difficult to imagine a book written by a Japan \u201cexpert\u201d having as little of substance to say as Understanding the Japanese by Gregory Clark. The book, awash with trivial generalizations, simplistically attempts to dichotomize everything\u2014brains, societies, and the entire world\u2014while presenting \u201ctheories\u201d that would be better left to barrooms and pubs.<\/p>\n

The mother of all Clark\u2019s dichotomies is between \u201cJapanese\u201d and \u201cnon-Japanese.\u201d Clark writes, \u201cFor us non-Japanese peoples the identity of a nation lies in its ideas and culture.\u201d Clark even goes so far as to title a section, \u201cThe Non-Japanese Nation\u201d citing stereotypes about the French (who are happy to accept even millions of refugees and workers), Chinese (who have even refused to accept Western technology), and Americans (who exclude homosexuals since they are seen as a threat to Christian ideology). The conclusion is \u201cculturally advanced non-Japanese peoples are more exclusive to foreign ideas and culture than they are towards foreigners\u201d while Japanese are the reverse. <\/p>\n

Later, after generalizing that Japanese have a \u201cdual morality\u201d (with his evidence being banal inconsistencies that exist within every human), Clark claims, \u201cWith non-Japanese it is not possible to admit to such a dual morality. Our behavior is supposed to be guided by law and principles.\u201d One example of Japanese morality that Westerners supposedly lack is the \u201cgenerosity\u201d of booksellers who allow customers to read books for free. Clark might be a little shocked to see evidence of this \u201cJapanese morality\u201d in any Barnes & Noble bookstore in the United States, where customers sit around in lounge chairs reading unbought books. <\/p>\n

Towards the end of the book readers are told the Japanese negotiate \u201cheart to heart\u201d while all the other peoples in the world negotiate \u201cmind to mind.\u201d \u201cIt is as if Japan were to insist on playing shogi while the rest of the world plays chess.\u201d Oh, those Japanese are so, so, what\u2019s the word?, different!<\/p>\n

As the thin book wears on, we learn that \u201cnon-Japanese\u201d might not really be meant to include everyone; only the \u201cadvanced\u201d peoples are worthy of the ultimate comparison. After telling his readers again that \u201cthe Japanese seem to be very different from other peoples\u201d Clark claims the reason is that all the other \u201cadvanced peoples\u201d had protracted conflict with foreign nations. \u201cMeanwhile,\u201d readers are told, \u201cthe rest of us, for the past thousand years or much more, have been constantly involved in fighting each other.\u201d Besides the historical falsity, Clark doesn\u2019t bother to explain how the experience of warring samurai factions of generations past has failed to affect modern Japanese in the same way that warring knights in medieval Europe has supposedly affected modern Europeans. <\/p>\n

Clark\u2019s efforts to engage readers in Socratic dialog are juvenile: \u201cDo the Japanese lack a sense of morality?\u201d (answer No! their morality is different from ours), and, \u201cWhy does (Japanese flexibility) exist?\u201d (answer: Japan is a nation without ideology!). Then, Clark resorts to citing \u201csomeone\u201d to modify: \u201cSomeone once said that the ideology of Japan is Japanism!\u201d One would think an \u201cexpert\u201d would be held to higher standards.<\/p>\n

However, readers learn that if a writer tosses around enough unsupported opinions and generalizations, some will resonate. My favorite was the section about the Japanese propensity for booms. Clark notes that when he first came to Japan there was a \u201chula hoop boom,\u201d followed by the bowling boom. \u201cThe businessmen had convinced themselves,\u201d he writes using his finest prose, \u201cthat the Japanese people wanted to do nothing else for the rest of their lives except throw large balls at distant pins, and the relics of their emotionalistic judgment still dot the nation in form of unused bowling parlors.\u201d Hopefully, one day the same can be said of pachinko parlors.<\/p>\n

The Japanese, according to Clark, are comparable to one other nation. The Chinese? Never! They are like Westerners. The Koreans? Perish the thought. The Mongolians? They\u2019re not \u201cadvanced.\u201d It may come as a surprise, but the one nation that resembles the Japanese are Cretes! Like Japan, the Cretes could \u201cborrow the ideologies of the advanced rationalistic societies around it\u201d and was also a \u201cvery durable civilization, lasting almost 1,500 years.\u201d Of course, concrete comparisons are tough to make considering the fact Crete society perished 2,500 years ago in a massive volcanic eruption. \u201cPerhaps there is a message there for Japan,\u201d Clark tells readers, without elaborating.<\/p>\n

Some of the stereotypes are downright mean-spirited. \u201cUnder the Christian ethic stealing is forbidden,\u201d Clark tells readers, \u201cBut that does not stop taxi drivers from trying to short-change their passengers.\u201d The recent stories of the New York city cabbies would undoubtedly surprise Clark. One returned a bag of diamonds; a second sped to the airport to return a forgotten wallet containing thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n

The book, constantly hammering home the theme that \u201cJapanese are unique,\u201d is clearly trying to cash in on a writing style, and topic, that appeals to Japanese. Clark frequently tosses in yokeina (superfluous) Japanese: tanitsu minzoku, gyousei shidou, and nantai doubutsu, to either benefit the Japanese reader or put his knowledge of the Japanese language on display, and ends with 13 pages of notes in Japanese. <\/p>\n

If Clark weren\u2019t writing with apparent seriousness, the book might be amusing; the illustrations, however, give a hint that the book is not to be taken seriously. As Clark himself has (according to Brad Blackstone, a former associate professor at AIU) been heard to say, \u201cI milked that baby (Understanding the Japanese book) for 20 years, going to speaking engagements around the country.\u201d So, in a sense, it\u2019s \u201chats off\u201d to the author for getting away with elevating barroom blather to social theory and still maintain status as a culture commentator and Japan expert.
\n======================<\/p>\n

More on Gregory Clark, columnist at the Japan Times, on Debito.org at
\nhttps:\/\/www.debito.org\/gregoryclarkfabricates.html<\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/www.debito.org\/HELPSpring2001.html<\/a>
\nENDS<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Spiri on Gregory Clark’s research: “It is difficult to imagine a book written by a Japan \u201cexpert\u201d having as little of substance to say as Understanding the Japanese by Gregory Clark. The book, awash with trivial generalizations, simplistically attempts to dichotomize everything\u2014brains, societies, and the entire world\u2014while presenting \u201ctheories\u201d that would be better left to barrooms and pubs.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,22,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-cultural-issue","category-ironies-hypocrisies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}