Lost Japan

Ngisi liburan musim semi yang super panjang ini akhirnya ngubek-ngubek isi perpus,tapi bingung rasanya belum nemu satu buku yang bener-bener cocok dan pingin dibaca. Last minute sebelum ke meja peminjaman akhirnya milih buku judulnya Lost Japan karena covernya yang eye catching, ditulis sama Alex Kerr.
Secara umum isi buku ini tentang analisis si penulis terhadap hal-hal tradisional Jepang yang sudah mulai hilang. Sebenernya ada beberapa bagian yang aku skip karena nggak paham berkaitan sama kaligrafi, konfusianisme, dkk. Di bawah ini aku mau ngutip beberapa analisisnya Pak Alex tentang Jepang yang menurutku cocok banget berdasar dari apa yang aku lihat dan amati dari orang-orang dan lingkungan sekitar.

Kabuki's themes provide much insight into Japanese society. For instance, many plays are about the relationship between a lord and his retainers, or that between lovers, but there are none about friends...True friendship is not easy here. Long term foreign residents complain that after ten or twenty years in the country they are lucky to know one Japanese they consider to be a true friend. Yet the problem goes deeper than the culture gap between foreigners and Japanese. The Japanese often tell me that the cannot make friends with each other...One reason for this could be that the educational system traditionally discourages the Japanese from speaking their mind. They never quite trust each other,making friendship difficult. Another reason might be that the hierarchical structures of the society get in the way. In the old society the master-retainer relationship was a familiar one, relationship between equals were not.

I can remember almost nothing of interest regarding the time I spent at Keio. That was a partly a result of Japan's university system. High school students must study relentlessly to pass college entrance examination, giving up all extracurricular activities, and commuting to cram schools, in which is called examination hell. But once they got into college, the pressure suddenly relaxes and the next four years are spent almost completely at play (Really true! But unfortunately not for me). Companies put little stress on what new employees know before they are hired, the real education begins on the job.The result is that college classes do not matter much and academic rigor lags far behind Europe or the States. The lectures I attended on architecture were deathly boring and almost inevitably put me on sleep.

It has been pointed out that the Japanese educational system aims to produce a high average level of achievement for all, rather than excellence for a few. Students in school are not encouraged to stand out or ask questions, with the result that the Japanese conditioned to a life of average. Being average and boring here is the very essence of society, the factor which keeps the wheels of all those social systems turning so smoothly...in Japan, people are conditioned to be satisfied with the average, so the cannot fail but be happy with their lots.

Japan maintained peace in the marketplace by supporting cartels which set prices high, to the disadvantages of the consumer. It avoided the competition in communications or film industry by restricting the number of companies involved in service industries. And through every possible means, the impact of the outside world was kept to a minimum, foreigners were not allowed to run companies here, to design or construct buildings here, to make movies here, etc. It worked all too well. Because of the high wall of regulation and the cozy systems which exclude them, foreign firms are now giving Japan a miss as they move into the rest of Asia. 

Japan's national problem is homogeneity. The school system teaches everybody to say and think the same thing, and the bureaucracies restrict the development of new media, such as cable tv, the information highway and even movie theaters. As a result, no matter you go, from Hokkaido to Kyushu, all the houses look the same, the clothes look the same, and people's  lives center around the same humdrum activities. With everyone so well behaved and satisfied with their mediocre lives, Japan specializes in low level pressure.

Japan coats all culture from abroad, transforming it into a Japanese style pearl. The finished pearl is a thing of great beauty but the essential natural of original is lost.