방랑 홍선생

Japan has long been such an enigma for me, with several questions never being easily answered: how come this kind and sincere people invaded their neighbors and finally broke out one of the cruelest war in human history, costing immense casualties from both parties?  What makes Japanese people casually lives such an extreme scene divided by two different worlds - nostalgic islands for tradition adrift in the concrete ocean?    Why Japanese who’s in love of frugal and simple life style on one hand invents and manufactures such unnecessary gadgetry and weird stuffs, pointlessly, wasting energy and resources on the other hand?  etc.

Honestly, I was inclined to seek for an answer from negative peculiarity of Japanese culture and history – perfectionism, fastidiousness, subtle way of communication being represented by ‘Honne and Tatemae’, indecisiveness, excessive collectivism, cruelty and male chauvinism embedded in Samurai spirit, blindly idolized and mystified linage of Japanese Emperor and so on.

Indeed, some of such inherent traits seem to contribute to how Japan appears today for its darker side. But the idea, ascription of irrationality to generic or intrinsic nature left much discomfort to me. No specific human race or group of people can be naturally evil or destined to commit crime. I’ve been longing for more fair and elaborated explanation not losing historical context.

In this book, an insightful journalist with unique experience, Patrick Smith literally shed me a light finding proper answer, by his smart coinage of ‘being modern’ distinguished from ‘modernization’ (i.e. ‘westernization in terms of material progress’) and by explanation how the ‘east Asian context’ entrapped Japan half and a century ago to lead to a falsified ‘modernization’. Thus, I could agree that the mistake was not made singularly in Japan but in east Asia in general, where the divisional view between ‘spirit’ and ‘thing’ was broadly adopted and ‘modernization’ simply mapped to development of ‘things’. All the tragic scene we’re observing today in the other east Asian countries like Korea and China proves it – immense scaled ripping off of past times including nature and vulgarizing by ‘fancy modern architectures’. Look at the crazy project like Korean Peninsula Grand Carnal (Now, only the name changed to 4 Major River Improvement to detour the opposition).

This generalization doesn’t mean Japanese can be excused for their war crimes and ordeals they inflicted on their neighbors in modern Asian history. However, as an effort in reparation, they’d rather have an opportunity to correct the problems of modernization and share their experiences with neighbors who may exemplify Japan as a ‘forerunner of modernization and then post-western era’ one more time. Patrick Smith is optimistic that Asia will find their way to reach to that future state of heterogeneous society of Asian and Western Values in harmony and Japan will be able to demonstrate it earlier than other countries.