This is my response to Kakusa’s comments.
Kakusan: Of course in the case of the Potato Famine, there were many other historical factors that induced the dependence upon potatoes, but when one has the choice it is certainly preferable not to rely upon a single variety of crops.
Yuri: In Ogasawara Islands which is located in the south of Tokyo, there were about 350 endemic insects, but alien species are exterminating most of them. In particular, a green anole (lizard) has had a profound impact on the native insects and plants. This is only one example and alien species have been doing a lot of damage to endemic insects, plants, fish and animals throughout Japan.
Kakusan: In genetics, too, we see that if we have two specimens that are weak due to high homozygosity, but they are highly heterozygous with respect to one another, so to speak, their offspring will be much stronger, larger and healthier.
Yuri: I do not see why you need to be large. I do not fight hand-in-hand combat or hunt animals. I’m sure that I have enough muscle strength, and Japan has the world’s highest longevity rate. I think this means Japanese people are healthy.
Kakusan: However, if one society comprises many cultures rather than just one, then it is much more likely that the society as a whole will be able to find within itself those cultural resources with which to equip itself against the new difficulty. In this way, we can learn from those who are different from us how best to cope with unfamiliar situations.
Yuri: We can learn from other countries because we can study abroad when necessary. I do not see why you need to live together in one society.
Kakusan: In turn this eventually leads to a more peaceful society.
Yuri: Do you know that Japan is very safe and girls can walk outside alone in the middle of the night wearing skirts and high heels? I do not think the UK and the US are more peaceful.
Kakusan: People will always find reasons to hate one another. Whether they be religion, culture or skin colour,
Yuri: The Japanese do not hate people because of religion or skin colour. I do not see why you hate people for such reasons. Japan persecuted Christianity in the 17th century, but that was just to prevent being colonized by Western countries.
Kakusan: I understand what you are saying about "reading between the lines" and hearing what is left unsaid. However, when we have to learn how to do this with a new group of people with different mores, we leave our "comfort zone" and both exercise a new area of our brain and learn something about ourselves which could not have otherwise been revealed.
Yuri: In Japan, when you are starting out in a new workplace, after introducing yourself, you communicate that you know hardly anything and ask to be shown the ropes. This is the Japanese way to say things. We do not expect our co-workers to tell us everything, but we act like this because we find the attitude of self-confidence when you first meet people despicable. On the other hand, Western people always show their self-confidence, and if you were to act like the Japanese, your co-workers would hate or look down on you, right? I believe this way of behaving comes from the Japanese spirit. Do we need to change our culture and spirit? I do not want to.
When we go abroad, we conform to your way, but in Japan, we want to be ourselves.
Kakusan: Obviously there is the long-term history of the "Bamboo Curtain",
Yuri: My response about this topic seems to become long.
I will write next time.
Kakusan: So, to take a very broad, overall message from history, one could get the impression that Japanese interactions with the "outside" have had a tremendously unfortunate negative tendency.
Yuri: Yes. In addition, our culture and spirit is different from yours; so when you behave ordinary, sometimes we can’t help feeling you are overbearing because we do not have the culture of debate. I think Japanese people sometimes feel we have been argued down by foreign people.
Kakusan: In this sense, it seems to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, that Japan has benefited from an exclusive kind of "multiculturalism of ideas" in a way that few other nations can claim to have done.
Yuri: Yes, you are right. So, I do not see why we have to live with foreign people when we can get a lot of information about foreign countries easily.
I don’t dislike foreign people, I love foreign countries, but still I personally prefer to live in a monocultural society rather than a multicultural one.
Thank you!
Kakusan, thank you for the revision.
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Indeed, in order to maintain the very diversity that I espouse, it is sometimes necessary to follow a policy of isolationism or protectionism. When a unique variation is in danger of being crushed by overwhelming external force, for instance, something must be done to preserve it. If that is the course that the Japanese people, or any people, decide through a democratic process to follow, then that is entirely their prerogative.
返信削除We too face problems with foreign wildlife out-competing our native species, such as the red squirrel.
Yurisan, I do not mean to imply that you need to be large! That was in reference to animals and plants in general. In humans in particular high heterozygosity serves as a guard against the genetic defects that can arise through inbreeding. It results in offspring that are more resistant to all sorts of diseases. Let me be clear, I am not advocating some kind of eugenic cross-breeding programme! I was merely pointing out that diversity has it's advantages in various arenas, and so it should not surprise us to find that multiculturalism, in an analogy with genetic diversity, can also be advantageous.
I agree that studying abroad is a good thing. However, I think there are some things that you learn from living next door to someone who came from another country, or growing up in the same class at school as someone from another culture, that you cannot learn from reading or from spending a short time with people in another country.
I genuinely believe that a spirit of common understanding is fostered over the long-term by multicultural societies. I acknowledge that clashes happen, and that they can have terrible consequences, but in the long run when we are confronted every day by the reality that we are all human beings, it is very difficult to foster baseless prejudice.
As for the UK and the US, I contend that the crime rates are hardly attributable to multiculturalism. The fact is that we used to have police on the streets walking the beat, and if anyone were to shout for help a policeman would be there. Nowadays the police spend most of their time doing paperwork, eating curry and getting into car chases. Now that's a slightly simplistic take on the problem, but suffice it to say that it represents the main cause for the current climate and attitude towards crime.
...I did not mean to accuse the Japanese of bigotry! I apologise if I was unclear — I meant that human beings in general tend to find reasons to discriminate against, segregate and persecute others. These are usually false reasons, and such people would hate others even if they couldn't find a reason. The supposed reasons are just a way of rationalising baseless hatred.
返信削除I understand about Christianity in Japan in the 17th century. It was the same all over the world. The views of the Church at that time were very bigoted, albeit well-intentioned for the most part. The majority of missionaries thought they were doing God's work and making the world a better place, and in some cases they did a lot of good. However, many of the Church's doctrines were harmful and certainly overbearing. So the reaction of the Japanese, who already had their own very effective ethical code, was entirely understandable and quite natural in my opinion. I don't think there is ever a good reason for killing, but certainly some reaction to suppress the cultural invasion was inevitable.
I understand what you are saying about starting in a new workplace. In fact I usually tend to be like that myself, but I know what you mean about Western people in general. Rest assured that we're not all like that! I appreciate that some precious aspects of diversity can be lost by assimilation, and this is a great shame. As with the out-competition of native species, this is something to be avoided and I feel that protective measures are most certainly warranted in such situations. You are most certainly entitled to be yourselves, I do not deny that. All I am saying is that we can learn a lot about who we are as human beings by living alongside people who do things differently and come from a different background.
On the other hand I accept that there is a danger, in an environment of total multiculturalism, of losing one's roots and of losing the uniqueness of our own cultures. In order to prevent this some protectionism is warranted, as long as we remember that we are still a part of a greater whole.