image vs content

A tentative judgment about Japanese society: the Japanese value presentation and image much more highly than American counterparts. And the corollary: content or value is downplayed. To minimize the risk of generalizing, of course, by American I mean me and by Japanese I mean my experiences of Japanese!

Over and over again, I'm reminded by how much the Japanese love presentation, display, protocol. One example is the nuclear power plant disaster management training I got to take part in today. My advisor is one of the responsible doctors for the Ikata power plant, which apparently provides power to all of Shikoku. As such, he was able to arrange it so that I could participate in the training, masquerading as a doctor. We had a fake patient who was supposedly injured by something radioactive in level 4 security. (Level 4 security is such that basically you need to get naked before entering! Thankfully, we started the simulation just outside that area, though I did see a lot of old men and occasionally young men going through in their underwear.) There were several public health nurses with all sorts of equipment, including a stretcher (!). The two 'doctors' (i.e., me and my advisor) were wearing white lab coats. Everybody was wearing yellow vests that said "training" in big letters. The fake injury was really just a piece of rubber made out to look like a gash to the bone, with something (actually) radioactive stuck in the wound. I watched as the public nurses taped on the rubber wound to the fake patient's leg, then bandage over the rubber wound, then splint the leg, then put the leg in a plastic bag, then tape the plastic bag shut. All with the utmost care. Then, we sat around and waited. And waited. And waited. Apparently, we were on a time table and so we weren't supposed to leave that area until exactly 9:20. Finally, the patient heaved himself onto the stretcher (so much for realism here). He was wrapped in a towel, and zipped into a body-bag like bag, supposedly to minimize radiation contamination of the surroundings. The nurses took several tries to figure out how to configure the stretcher into its various states of collapsed-ness. We wheeled him downstairs, to right outside a huge door. And then, we waited some more! Still ahead of schedule. Finally, at exactly the specified time, the huge garage door opened and we were greeted by the press and an ambulance. More fiddling with the stretcher. I watched again as the ambulance stretcher was oh-so-carefully and slowly wrapped in plastic. The patient was transferred to the other stretcher, and into the ambulance, and was off to the hospital! We actually did make the drive to the hospital…with the ambulance stopping at each stoplight. I actually rode in a car behind the ambulance. So much for realism, again. In fact, the whole thing was so ridiculous with the timetable and the slowness that rather than reassuring me that "Wow! This power plant is so careful, it trains its personnel about disaster management every year!", I am now absolutely convinced that were an injury actually to happen on the premises, the poor person would no doubt die or suffer massive radiation poisoning as the nurses fiddled with the stretcher and checked things off their clipboards. In fact, the whole thing had the inescapable feeling of being a show, a mockery, a display for the press. See? We're responsible. See? We're prepared. Nevermind that this is nothing like real conditions. Nevermind that this kind of training would be absolutely useless for real conditions. I had the idea that this kind of training would focus on speed, efficiency, etc. That they would time how long it would take to get the poor patient into medical care. But nope. Anyways, so that was a long-winded example from today.

One of the things that got me thinking about this topic came up in Japanese class. One of our exercises had to do with analyzing different types of apologies. In Japan, whenever some scandal hits a company, it isn't unusual to see the whole board bow deeply to the press, and the CEO crying in remorse, apologizing over and over again. In our exercise, we had a cartoon of two different CEO's apologies. In one, the CEO was crying, bowing profusely, and saying "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! There's no excuse! It's all my fault! I'm sorry!" etc. over and over again, in the humblest of language. The other CEO was sweating, saying something along the lines of "It was reported to me during construction of this building, there was something amiss with the numbers. I will prevent this from happening in the future" or something like that, focused on investigation, reasoning, and prevention in the future. Of course, neither apology is perfect, but we were discussing how the Japanese would overwhelmingly prefer the first apology, while the second apology would be considered grossly unsatisfying. During the discussion, the teacher explained to us that in Japan, when one apologizes, the remorseful expressions come first. I'm sorry! No excuse! I'm sorry! Etc. You have to look like you feel bad, and be polite. It helps to cry--drums up sympathy. But the reason for the mistake is merely secondary. She pointed out that in Western cultures, when one is late, one typically emphasizes the reason like "AHH! The traffic was so bad today. There was an accident on the road." The listener then has some sympathy for you--it was out of your control, not your fault, It's okay, you don't need to apologize. Whereas, Japanese people don't want to hear the reason until you've already apologized sufficiently remorsefully. Who cares why you're late? You're fucking late. So in the case of the construction company screwup, I was totally amazed that the Japanese would prefer the remorseful display to the reason. (Of course the second CEO probably should have apologized in his statement somewhere). I feel like for Americans, saying "I'm sorry" is an empty expression unless one can back it up with action. Americans want to know why. Americans want a full-scale investigation, with criminal accountability. Americans want compensation. Americans want guarantees that this shit will never happen again. Saying I'm sorry is basically useless, though sometimes helpful for PR. Again, Americans seem to prefer action and content over displays of remorse.

Finally, she showed us a small TV clip from some sort of variety show contrasting Japanese and American CEO apologies. It was made out to be quite absurd, such that even I laughed at the funny American CEO. But one of the hilarious-at-the-time explanations for why Americans are not so quick to apologize was Christianity. A screen flashed up with a cartoon of Jesus kneeling and praying while looking upwards. The narrator then said "God will forgive me!" The whole class burst out into laughter at that point because it was just so ridiculous. However, it really reminded me of Zielenziger's arguments about the lack of Christian influence in Japan (see earlier post about that). According to him, a lot of Japanese culture can be explained by the lack of Christianity. Without Christianity, he argues, there is no inner sense of right or wrong, no inner moral compass. "Right" is determined by society or social consensus. So, to apply it to this situation, the Japanese value apologetic displays so much because they are designed to elicit sympathy from society and from the wronged. The Japanese want more than anything else forgiveness, which can then pave the way to social harmony and peace again. Whereas in Western culture, such extreme social harmony is not as important as inner harmony and peace. If all is right with God, then all is right in my soul. It doesn't matter how the external masses judge one. I think the explanation has a point.

And finally, something lighthearted and amazing. My teacher exhorted us to write our assignments neatly. Mind you, these are short in-class assignments, done on the fly in a few minutes. She said, if you are using a ballpoint pen, please use white out and don't scratch out your mistakes. That way, your writing will look better, you'll make a better impression on the teacher, and I won't be ashamed to show your work to other teachers. My jaw nearly dropped. Neat handwriting, sure. But white-out? Obviously, it's all about presentation and impression on the teacher. I'm used to thinking that the content of my writing is of paramount importance to the impression I would make on the teacher. On an in class essay exam, nobody is keeping track of whether you start a word, scratch it out, and restart. So long as its legible and not totally inane, it's okay. Apparently, I should start using white-out. Or a pencil.