Nihonjinron

First 20 Days in Kyoto - What the Teacher Learnt - #4 Nihonjinron and Kokusaika "

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• published: 06 May 2016
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Nihonjinron and Kokusaika - "We Japanese" and Internationalization The term Nihonjinron (or "Ware Ware Nihonjin") is a "We Japanese" mentality. It is part of the Uchi-Soto mindset except it is almost always applied in a "Japanese and everyone else" kind of way. Japan is the center of the world -- and if you buy a map of the world don't be surprised to find Japan in the middle of it. This can be very bewildering to westerners in Japan. If there's a Japanese news report of a plane crash somewhere in the world with 398 non-Japanese and 2 Japanese people, the news report will focus on the crash and then the lives, family, and friends of the 2 Japanese. The rest of the people? They don't exist. They're never even mentioned. Another example is when 2 Japanese baseball players, Hideo Nomo and Hideki Irabu, made it on US teams. Suddenly, you start seeing lots of major league baseball games on Japanese TV, with the promos blaring "Major League Baseball--Nomo!!" as if he were the captain, manager, and God's greatest gift to the team. Other MLB games without Japanese players are not shown. And all this in spite of the fact that Nomo became a persona non grata in Japan's leagues because he wanted to throw the ball his way, not the way the manager dictated. (Nomo now says he'll never play baseball for a Japanese team ever again. And he's still hailed as the baseball hero of Japan.) As stated, when Japan is involved in an issue, the Japanese often find it hard if not impossible to look objectively. If a foreigner criticizes some act of corruption in the Japanese government, many Japanese will feel offended that this foreigner is attacking "us". In other words, in a society where show takes precedence over substance and getting along with the group is more important than work performance, there are more than a few Japanese who'd take anything even slightly negative against Japan as a sweeping condemnation of everything Japanese as well as insulting their mother's honor, and might be answered with "then why don't you just go home, you racist foreigner". Japanese don't have a monopoly on this attitude by any means, but it can be quite surprising to suddenly get such a retort. Hypocrisy is something attacked in the West, but in Japan it is often standard procedure. Even today, when western nations ask Japan to open its markets (to the benefit of the whole Japanese population), many Japanese initially see it as an attack on the Japanese way of life and culture. Rice, the most heavily protected product in Japan, is the by far the biggest example of this. The agricultural unions cranked up their propaganda machines about how rice is the soul of Japan and how "unsafe" foreign rice is. And the Japanese people bought it hook, line and sinker. The current recession is testing this notion however, and due to GATT Japan has been forced to grant "minimum access" to foreign rice. The powerful yen also has sent many Japanese shopping overseas. Yet instead of wondering why Japan is so expensive, the typical reaction is how weird it is that other nations are so cheap. This old system, as well as attitude is slowly changing, however. The term "Kokusaika" or "Internationalization" is another trendy buzzword being bounced around the country. Everyone is supposed to become more international these days. However, since the Japanese never bothered to define what exactly "international" is, it is just another vacuous idea. To many Japanese women being international is carrying a Louis Vuitton bag and drinking Budweiser. To others it's meeting foreigners (i.e. white people--the rest of the world doesn't matter) and speaking English. And many Japanese can't even picture anything of what "international" is supposed to be. This is not surprising since many Japanese haven't a clue as to what "being Japanese" is either. It is often the subject on tv shows. McDonalds was first told they'd never make it in Japan, since "Japanese eat rice-balls, not hamburgers". Coca-cola got the same message with green tea. Now both have billions of dollars in revenue from Japan. Some Japanese even ask Americans if Kentucky Fried Chicken is in America, as if it were a Japanese invention, or even ask if there are 4 seasons in your country, believing that Japan is the only nation in the world where the seasons change. Since no working definition exists however, "being Japanese" usually means doing things the traditional way -- a backwards looking view. Whenever some big reform happens, it's always decried as anti-Japanese, but Japanese soon adapt and it disappears from mind. And Japan is still Japan.