David Pillin 2002-2008 in Tokyo writes silly book. READ IT?

[torasan]

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/ar ... 2003580317

Book review: Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival

David Pilling presents an eye-opening portrait of Japan’s peculiar charms

By John Kampfner / The Guardian







Japan and the Art of Survival, by David Pilling.



Is Japan the most culturally specific country on Earth? Each time I go there I marvel at the eccentricities: the taxi and bus drivers with their gloves, the ritual of the onsen bath house and the incessant bowing. Nowhere else induces in me such feelings of amused amazement.

David Pilling is an Anglo expert on Japan. Some might say that’s an oxymoron, but he is at least one of those foreign correspondents who does not have to try very hard to show his knowledge. Pilling spent most of the first decade of the 21st century in Tokyo and went back to cover the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake. The result is an authoritative and entertaining attempt to explain the mysteries of the shimaguni, the island nation, and its centuries-old determination to withstand outside influences.

The story begins and ends with the disaster that struck the coastal city of Sendai and destroyed the Fukushima nuclear station, with consequences for hundreds of miles around. The author points to systemic failures in the nuclear industry, a combination of the use of casual labor and a management culture that encouraged unquestioning loyalty over robust risk-assessment.

Some still struggle to take in the idea that Japan could be anything but efficient. But Pilling helps to explain the extent to which a business model that served the country so well during the great recovery after the second world war has also been at the heart of its more recent economic stagnation.

The postwar Japanese company was modeled as a social organization and most continue to be this to this day. Teams of graduates are recruited each year on the assumption that they will stay with the same firm until retirement. It is, the author suggests, a form of indoctrination, turning them into obedient employees. “It was a career escalator determined not by merit but by length of service, a system that encouraged loyalty and cooperation, not a battle among employees to prove who was most worthy of advancement.”

[legion]

For women, the prospect of promotion or even meaningful employment remains slim. Women still single at 25 have long been referred to disparagingly as “Christmas cake,” an item that plummets in value after Dec. 25. Home and hearth are assumed, the wife to wait quietly each weekday night until the “salary man” gets home after a heavy evening’s drinking. The after-party drink, niji kai often involves the boss and his team going to a massage parlor, discussing corporate strategy while being entertained carnally by hostesses. This might give a new meaning to the term bonding exercise.

I've never heard of this, where have I been ?

[torasan]

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants women like Tomo Tamai to go back to work.

Tamai is eager to do so, nearly two years after her first child was born, but so far the 35-year-old former national government employee has only been able to find an internship.

Abe, who took office a year ago, has made the advancement of women a pillar of his economic revival policies in the most aggressive and ambitious initiative to back the rise of Japanese women in years. Tamai’s struggles show why doubts remain about whether it is enough to overcome entrenched discrimination in the workplace.

“It is a bunch of flag-waving,” said Tamai, who holds a doctorate in literature from Nihon University. “I don’t see how he has the vision to realize the goal of helping us, those people struggling to raise a child, working and doing housework.”

The government is beefing up childcare. It is encouraging companies to grant three years of maternity leave, or flexible hours during that period. It is also asking publicly held companies to promote women to leadership positions so they hold 30 percent of such posts by 2020.

Although women make up 40 percent of Japan’s workers, they face discrimination in hiring, promotion and pay. On average, a Japanese woman makes 70 percent of a man’s wages for equal work, according to government data.

The government also says women held just 12 percent of private-sector managerial jobs last year and fared even worse at higher levels, making up only 5 percent of section chiefs. Some critics and women workers say they tend to be confined to second-class status, not taken seriously for what is considered “a man’s job.”

They are underrepresented in government as well, comprising 11 percent of the more powerful lower house of parliament, 18 percent of the upper house and just 2.5 percent of managerial positions among public servants.

Japan has a less fluid workforce than many Western countries, because employees tend to stay loyal to one company for life. That puts women at a disadvantage because they tend to take time off to have children and are then consigned to lower-rung jobs, analysts say. Sixty percent of working women quit after their first child is born.

The Geneva-based World Economic Forum ranked Japan 105th out of 136 nations in this year’s Global Gender Gap Report, which measures economic equality and political participation. Iceland was No. 1, followed by the Scandinavian nations. Germany was 14th and the US 23rd.

Women make up 3.9 percent of board members of listed Japanese companies, compared with 12 percent in the US and 18 percent in France, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

“Most major companies are not serious about utilizing the talent of women,” said Junko Fukasawa, a senior managing director at Tokyo job-referral company Pasona Group, which is unusual in having three women on its 11-member board. “They are very male-dominated.”

When Fukasawa meets people from other companies, they often turn first to her male underlings to exchange business cards and are surprised to learn later that she is the boss. People on the telephone have demanded to speak with a man and she has had to tell them she is in charge, she said.

Under Fukasawa’s leadership at human resources, Pasona has set up counseling for women executives and mentor programs. Male employees are encouraged to take paternity leave, dubbed a “hello baby vacation.”

•1

[torasan]

For women, the prospect of promotion or even meaningful employment remains slim. Women still single at 25 have long been referred to disparagingly as “Christmas cake,” an item that plummets in value after Dec. 25. Home and hearth are assumed, the wife to wait quietly each weekday night until the “salary man” gets home after a heavy evening’s drinking. The after-party drink, niji kai often involves the boss and his team going to a massage parlor, discussing corporate strategy while being entertained carnally by hostesses. This might give a new meaning to the term bonding exercise.

I've never heard of this, where have I been ?

I am sure both Mr Kampfer and the author Mr Pilling meant well, but as someone else from the West who lived and loved and worked in Tokyo for 5 years in the 1990s, both the review and the book are silly. Item: 1. the incessant bowing? what about the incessant handshaking in the West? 2. the ritual of the onsen bath house? not a ritual just good hygiene! sheesh. 3. the christmas cake story is 20 years old and not in use anymore. now its called Dec. 31 girl, and even that nobody says anymore 4. lavoratory seats were not heated in 99 percent of Japan that is only hotels and rich people homes 5. Japan is NOT racially homogenous: in fact, over half the people have DNA of Korean lines and 25 percent have DNA from the indigenous Ainu people of long ago, and the rest are of Chinese DNA: in fact there is no Japanese race, they are Chinese/Korean/Ainu halfbreeds all of them, face facts 6. nobody ever ever sprinkled gold leaf on their food in bubble days come on! 7 low crime, yo mean low reported crime: tell that to my friend Taro who was knocked down on his bicycle late at night while riding home in Tokyo by a group of joyriders in a car who bumped him and left him for dead? you never saw the dark side of Japan. I did! 8. Japan is a pathologically mentally sick country run by 100 rich families in cahoots with yakuza and is basically a semi-police state where the people cannot vote for their prime minister and is a democracy in name only. wake up Pilling-san, wake up John-san. You are fetishing the East. Bad boys. it is just as sick as the West.

[torasan]

LudicrousPrune writes from ethersphere:


''Women still single at 25 have long been referred to disparagingly as "Christmas cake", an item that plummets in value after 25 December.''

Can this be sourced somewhere? I don't think this is common in Japan.


The after-party drink, niji kai, often involves the boss and his team going to a massage parlour, discussing corporate strategy while being entertained carnally by hostesses.

I don't think you've got that quite right.

As for Japan's refusal to face up to its war record, the author PILLIN says the Americans are partly to blame. In order to re-establish order, US occupying forces restored the power of the emperor. They also imposed strict censorship, to keep discussion of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to a minimum. This in turn made it harder to discuss the terrible actions of Japanese forces in China, Singapore and elsewhere.

Again, is this sourced somewhere? For example Tetsuzo Ishikawa's war novel novel "Ikiteiru heitai", for which Ishikawa had been convicted under the "Shinbunshiho" in the 1930s, was published uncensored in December 1945. If the US censorship was disallowing discussion of "terrible actions", how would that have been possible? And there is no shortage of research materials and historical debate in Japan. Rather, it seems that historical research is being stifled in China where it contradicts government propaganda.

The Japanese scoffed at the "British disease", feckless and workshy nation, and the "American disease", a society riddled with violent crime, drugs and divorce.

Really? I don't think many Japanese people are even much aware of what British people are like, let alone discussing the "British disease".

No matter how speedy or sluggish the growth, the most remarkable aspect of Japan is its refusal to embrace globalisation beyond a veneer of McDonalds and Krispy Kremes (where the queue stretches round the block).

Even Ian Buruma would be embarrassed to come out with this kind of stuff. The only sources for the statements are reading a lot of sub-par books about Japan and walking around seeing people queueing for doughnuts.

depressing

[matsuki]

''Women still single at 25 have long been referred to disparagingly as "Christmas cake", an item that plummets in value after 25 December.''

Can this be sourced somewhere? I don't think this is common in Japan.

Hear this from many a youngin' still but more along the lines of they are worth the most right before the 25th, start losing their value after the 25th and go on fire sale after the 31st.

The Japanese scoffed at the "British disease", feckless and workshy nation, and the "American disease", a society riddled with violent crime, drugs and divorce.

Really? I don't think many Japanese people are even much aware of what British people are like, let alone discussing the "British disease".

Never heard it referred to as a disease but there is definitely a snubbing of the US as a violent, drug addicted nations where everyone owns a gun. (Thank you Hollywood)

[kurogane]

5. Japan is NOT racially homogenous: in fact, over half the people have DNA of Korean lines and 25 percent have DNA from the indigenous Ainu people of long ago, and the rest are of Chinese DNA: in fact there is no Japanese race, they are Chinese/Korean/Ainu halfbreeds all of them, face facts .

Aside from being childish and sophomoric quibbling, that is also racist, a charge of which so far the author of the silly book seems innocent. The old term Race simply needs to be replaced by the newer term Ethnicity, which is a nebulous and devilish term but probably still preferable to the old Spencerian formula, seeing as where that ended up. Unless you actually are retarded enough to argue that Japanese are really just island dwelling Mongolians. In which case, you've already lost.

What is amusing is that your objections and comments are as trivial as the shopworn information you rightly argue he is trotting out yet again. That hagiography by the reviewer was rather comically cliche as well. In MYHOMO, the real problem is that there is no viable readership wanting to read anything about Japan except the same old "what a polite and exotic little yellow people that do such lovely little weird things". And to double the amusement, it's really all the Japanese want to read about themselves as well. Orientalism, whether emic or etic, is the only formula that will get a book on Japan published it seems.

You Racist!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[torasan]

5. Japan is NOT racially homogenous: in fact, over half the people have DNA of Korean lines and 25 percent have DNA from the indigenous Ainu people of long ago, and the rest are of Chinese DNA: in fact there is no Japanese race, they are Chinese/Korean/Ainu halfbreeds all of them, face facts .

.......[encrypted by NSA and cannot be read here]
You Racist!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kurogane, i plede guilty as charged. I was being a bit silly there. And yes, no such thing as race; ethnicity is what
this is all about. We are the world, we are the ethnics. Yes.

As for Pillin-san's book, he wrote to me via tweet and said "Hey, Torasan, i think from you comments you have NOT even read the book yet, right? You were just commenting from reading the REVIEW of the book by the Guardian reviewer in the UK who knows little about
Japan, Mr John Kampfner's review. Please read the book first, Torasan, and then we can chat. Don't judge a book by a single review."

I told Mr Pillin he was right, i had not read the book yet, would like to, and plan to, but yes, guilty as charged
as i was just commenting on the silly review. Who knows the BOOK itself might be very well done. He is top reporter at the Financial Times in London and spent 6 years in Tokyo and knows the country well. NOTE: has anyone here read the the book or seen it in bookstores, and will be trans-salted, er, translated into Japanese for Japan market?

[torasan]

But the ECONOMIST magazine in the UK has a much better take on Pilling's book and worth a read to offset the
negative reviews so far:

http://www.economist.com/news/books-and ... ting-tight

excerpt of REVIEW:

David Pilling is the Asia editor of the Financial Times. From 2002 until 2008 he was the paper’s bureau chief in Tokyo. During that time he became near-fluent in Japanese and plainly fell in love with the place and its baffling, yet fascinating, idiosyncrasies. So when the disaster struck he immediately went to see what had happened and to try to think about the possible consequences.

The result is “Bending Adversity”, an excellent book for which 3/11, as the event is known in Japan, is as much pretext as subject matter. For Mr Pilling’s thesis is that, horrifying though it was, the triple disaster three years ago was neither a game-changing event nor truly novel.

The way in which Japanese people have reacted to the disaster represents continuity with centuries of Japan’s history. They adjust and adapt, they dust themselves off and get on with their lives, perhaps a little differently but not radically so. As the book’s title indicates, they may “bend” adversity to whatever interests they have, or adversity may “bend” them, but change is unlikely to be more radical.