Zen, Japan and the art of democracy

[AsahinaKimi]

Roy Starrs
Published 07 July 2011

Foreign observers have long been baffled by Japan’s self-discipline in the face of multiple disasters, from earthquakes and tsunamis to the financial crash. Yet this fatalism has its dangers.

Western Europe has experienced only one "killer" earthquake of similar magnitude to the one that struck Japan on 11 March 2011. Even so, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, also followed by a tsunami and fire, caused a profound though arguably short-lived crisis in western thought. The indiscriminate loss of life challenged both Christian beliefs in God's benevolence and omnipotence and the Enlightenment's new, humanist conception of a well-ordered universe (the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz's "best of all possible worlds") with man as its rational and progressive centre.

Leading intellectuals such as Voltaire put God and nature on trial and found both guilty. Believers in the wrathful Old Testament God argued, however, that the disaster was divine punishment for the sins of Lisbon. At which Voltaire thundered: "Was Lisbon more sinful than London or Paris?" Rousseau wrote a letter to Voltaire in response, chiding him for his insults - not to God but to nature. If people had dispersed themselves throughout the natural world rather than being pent up in a crowded city, there would not have been so many deaths. The descendants of Rousseau can be found among those environmentalists who see the recent catastrophe in Japan as nature's revenge for the country's whaling.

The Lisbon earthquake was a one-off in European history. Memories of it faded. God was soon back in heaven and all was right with the world. One can only imagine the effect on European thought and culture if such events had become a regular occurrence over the past two and a half centuries, as they have been in Japan. Since 1755, Japan has experienced as many as two dozen major earthquakes, as well as countless smaller ones, reminding the people of the ever-present danger beneath their feet. But, as foreign observers always remark, the Japanese accept these catastrophes with an uncomplaining stoicism and self-discipline, and without the slightest hint of theological or humanistic crisis. To understand why, we must first look at the two major religious traditions of Japan, Shinto and Buddhism.

more..
http://www.newstatesman.com/asia/2011/07/japan-essay-nature-earthquake

[kristopher]

1. "consensus does not work well in an emergency"

I'd like to see this as an examination of the thesis:
"The problem is that consensus does not work well in an emergency, which requires independent, decisive action on the part of a responsible leader."

It is an intuitive position that a strong command and control approach is desirable in an emergency, however the author seems to have missed the point he quotes in the article - that such independent decisive action at the level of a "leader" is a fallacy because most leaders are not blessed with a level of leadership skills that matches their position. Why would he ignore the fact that the story refers to emergency situations?

All one need do is to examine the idea with respect to these recent events:
911>Iraq>Afghanistan>Patriot Act
Katrina
Deepwater Horizon
2008 Economic Meltdown

The author concludes with "Japan today desperately needs that leader who Prince Shotoku said appears only once a millennium...".

That sounds like pointless wishful thinking to me. My experience with the consensus process is that, to the typical western eye, it takes an agonizingly long time. However when the consensus is arrived at, the pace of effecting the corrective action is usually so fast it is, again to the typical western eye, almost magically efficient. So from a systems viewpoint, the intuitive desire to have a strong central figure in control seems to be a dangerous one to accept without far greater proof than an interesting narrative.

summarizing, it is good historical research, but I think the author lacks an objective perspective and is falling into the trap of dressing up a thesis with facile arguments instead of objectively challenging that thesis for validity.

[tiny elvis]

2. good points nt

[struggle4progress]

3. Such generalities are dangerous. Let us read some Ryokan:

For the children killed by the smallpox epidemic

When spring arrives
flowers will bloom
on every tree tip
but those children
who disappeared
with the leaves last autumn
will never return