You see, we had been shopping in the local department store for a new coat, some gifts to take home, a hat and some bags of cow dung. Yes, Japanese department stores, more than an article, too much for an essay, there is a doctoral thesis in that particular subject! Anyway, one thing led to another, via a pint in the department store bar, and the next morning whilst gardening I found that I had mislaid the cow dung. For a moment, imagine your response to this if you had mislaid your two bags of cow dung on a shopping trip in England! The honourable Takayama however, immediately responds to the situation by phoning the department store's customer service.
"Yes, they have the cow dung and we can go in and collect it from the customer service counter." she announces without a hint of mirth. But this is just the start of my wonder in this land where the customer is king.
So off we set at five o clock on Thursday evening to walk to the local department store. Whilst I am not going to write the thesis here maybe a few research notes would be in order. One of the most endearing qualities of Japanese society is its stout and steadfast resistance to AngloAmerican supermarket culture. I am sure you know the sort of thing, where Tescos build huge hyper markets on the edge of a town thus destroying the local traders overnight, creating environmental chaos as huge queues of cars are needed to get the shopping in and reduce local workers to drone mentality for bare minimum wages whilst profits swell the purses of such as Dame Shirley Porter.
Dame Shirely Porter, the butcher of Westminster"Jack, Japan, Japan, Japan, no more of your consumer farming theories. And my mother says you are to take your Chinese medicine." Takayama shouts as she leaves with mother in search of fresh fish for the evening meal.
So Japan still has local traders, street markets and viable social communities wholly unconnected to the fact it has turned down all of Tesco's bids to enter such a valuable market place. However, what the Japanese love is a department store. Every local borough has a department store or two. These provide floor after floor of bargains, goods and services, you can even get gardening supplies and, if you are lucky, the odd bag of cow dung.
Daiei Department Store, Meguro, TokyoSo off we head to Daiei which is about a twenty minute walk from the Takayama residence. This walk is actually very pleasant, up narrow back streets, past houses, schools, shops, small engineering works and a meat packing factory. As I have mentioned previously the Japanese society is a mixed economy where no district is designated as residential or industrial, everything sits quietly and contentedly side by side. Such an idea in England would be inconceivable but then clean spotless streets without rubbish are equally inconceivable in England but not Japan.
This is the clue to why such a "mixed economy" works at street level. As an example, and one Takayama and I will go out to photograph on this trip, there is a cement factory on the main Meguro Road and it backs its huge form into the streets behind. In those quiet residential streets there is a parking space for the cement mixers. Each one of those hefty trucks is spotlessly clean, gleaming in fact.
When you next see an English cement mixer take a good look at it. Is it covered in dirt and grime? Is it battered and rusting in parts? Would you want a fleet of those parked up near your home?
As I said, we intend to photograph the cement works and trucks but in the meantime you will have to take my word for it, where they are parked up it looks like a showroom set of brand new condition trucks.
The small engineering works are the same, these sit in between domestic houses but is there any waste or rubbish out front of them, hell no! They have flowers in pots and a boy sweeping the forecourt clean on a regular basis. So you can imagine that the walk to Daiei produces a whole host of treats to my investigating eye. However, last Thusday I also enjoyed one of those special moments when as a foreigner you get to interact with local people.
These Tokyo back streets are phenomenally quiet peaceful places. Traffic is of an absolute minimum and scaled down buses traverse the lanes and byways providing public transport in every backwater. As we were walking along we came to a traffic junction maintained by traffic lights. This is not a big affair, perhaps the roads are not more than twelve paces wide. As we waited to cross we were joined by two very excitable ladies, about 30 to 35 years old, who were babbling away in the local dialect (Japanese!). The cause of their anxiety was plain, there was a bus at the bus stop on the other side of the junction.
What a dilemma. Imagine this in England. You are one side of the road waiting for the traffic light to change and thereby display a green man so you can cross. However, that will only happen when the traffic light changes at which point the bus across the junction will then move off and carry on its way. What do you do?
Maybe you dodge the traffic and try and get across the road and catch the bus? Well do you consider that?
OK, let's now add another key factor into this little scene, there is absolutely no traffic anywhere except the car waiting at the traffic light opposite and the bus waiting behind it at the bus stop.
Yes, our two Japanese ladies are standing waiting for the green man to show even though there is no traffic in either direction and you can see down the road each way for at least a quarter of a mile. You see, in Japan you obey the rules, the man is red so you can't cross.
Admittedly in these times standards even in Japan are eroding but I would still say that 95% of people will not cross a road until the green man appears even if there is no traffic whatsover. I even have to admonish Takayama when she crosses against the red man. I feel dreadfully ashamed that my wife is letting down social values and feel that everyone is looking at her and then me and nodding:
Anyway, having said that, I realised that I had to take decisive action to get these ladies on their bus. I stepped quickly onto the crossing, took a couple of paces and shouted, "Go, go, go!"
You see by stepping into the road, after all I was happy to wait for the green man because I wasn't after the bus, I had broken the taboo and then in shouting in the imperative I had activated another Japanese trait, the need to respond to authoritative command without question. The ladies charged across the road and got to their bus.
Footnote: Obviously the bus driver had closed the doors and was waiting for the lights to change but was still besides the bus stop. On seeing the ladies approach the bus he immediately, without question, opens the doors. After all, he is providing a customer service.
As the bus pulls away I wave to the two ladies who appear to be giggling like schoolgirls and give me a big smile, then quickly put a hand over their mouth whilst waving to me with the other hand. They had benefited from a chance meeting with a foreigner, no doubt they would tell their friends over coffee and cakes once they had finished shopping.
We continued on our way to Daiei and in due course we collected the cow dung from the customer service desk and made our way to the bar on the top floor where I enjoy a pint of Kirin whilst looking at the Tokyo skyline from this seventh floor vantage point.
In matters of cross cultural research proper attention
should be paid to all details and customs of the society.
As I looked across the skyline at the battalions of tall buildings sparkling with lights in the black night I thought about the prime qualities I attribute to the Japanese character, pragmatism and a dislike of uncertainty. The light is either red or green, if it is red you don't cross, if it is green you cross, simple, everyone knows exactly where they stand, everyone understands the rules.
This was the problem for Japanese politics this year. Over recent years there have been a succession of Prime Ministers who simply were not up to the job of being a Japanese Prime Minister. But to become the Prime Minister you have to had worked your way up the honours and favours system of Japanese political society. The truth was that the men in the job and those in line were simply not men of the times and this is always a problem in deeply conservative societies with conservative values, how do you manage change?
I am using the word Conservative Party because that will make sense to the English reader, of course the name is different in Japan but it is only a white label on a well known conservative political position. So, for the Japanese Conservative Party who had been in power since the end of the Second World War, the problem was how to bring in a fresher, younger face, jumping the succession line and recreating the party in the eyes of an electorate who had started to loose faith. In other words, how to change everything without anything changing.
Step forward the grandson of one of the party founders and watch him create a new party, with new politics and new agendas. Key members of the ruling party defect to the new set up thus giving it credibility in terms of governmental experience. A populist campaign is launched which is dynamic against the tired old men and their dated rhetoric. During the campaign every indicator predicted a landslide majority for the new party and the establishment of new politics in Japan.
I remember Merryn Somerset-Webb of MoneyWeek writing sometime earlier in the year about how she had asked an old Japan trader what he thought the difference would be when the new party was elected. She said that he scoffed at her question and replied, "This is Japan, nothing will change."
And so it seems to be. The electorate have accepted that politics is politics and despite the election pledges being rescinded now the new party is in power life will carry on as normal. There is no uncertainty, everything is as it was and pragmatism has set in once more. As I said previously, well done sir!
Well done indeed
This is the clue to why such a "mixed economy" works at street level. As an example, and one Takayama and I will go out to photograph on this trip, there is a cement factory on the main Meguro Road and it backs its huge form into the streets behind. In those quiet residential streets there is a parking space for the cement mixers. Each one of those hefty trucks is spotlessly clean, gleaming in fact.
When you next see an English cement mixer take a good look at it. Is it covered in dirt and grime? Is it battered and rusting in parts? Would you want a fleet of those parked up near your home?
As I said, we intend to photograph the cement works and trucks but in the meantime you will have to take my word for it, where they are parked up it looks like a showroom set of brand new condition trucks.
The small engineering works are the same, these sit in between domestic houses but is there any waste or rubbish out front of them, hell no! They have flowers in pots and a boy sweeping the forecourt clean on a regular basis. So you can imagine that the walk to Daiei produces a whole host of treats to my investigating eye. However, last Thusday I also enjoyed one of those special moments when as a foreigner you get to interact with local people.
These Tokyo back streets are phenomenally quiet peaceful places. Traffic is of an absolute minimum and scaled down buses traverse the lanes and byways providing public transport in every backwater. As we were walking along we came to a traffic junction maintained by traffic lights. This is not a big affair, perhaps the roads are not more than twelve paces wide. As we waited to cross we were joined by two very excitable ladies, about 30 to 35 years old, who were babbling away in the local dialect (Japanese!). The cause of their anxiety was plain, there was a bus at the bus stop on the other side of the junction.
What a dilemma. Imagine this in England. You are one side of the road waiting for the traffic light to change and thereby display a green man so you can cross. However, that will only happen when the traffic light changes at which point the bus across the junction will then move off and carry on its way. What do you do?
Maybe you dodge the traffic and try and get across the road and catch the bus? Well do you consider that?
OK, let's now add another key factor into this little scene, there is absolutely no traffic anywhere except the car waiting at the traffic light opposite and the bus waiting behind it at the bus stop.
Yes, our two Japanese ladies are standing waiting for the green man to show even though there is no traffic in either direction and you can see down the road each way for at least a quarter of a mile. You see, in Japan you obey the rules, the man is red so you can't cross.
Admittedly in these times standards even in Japan are eroding but I would still say that 95% of people will not cross a road until the green man appears even if there is no traffic whatsover. I even have to admonish Takayama when she crosses against the red man. I feel dreadfully ashamed that my wife is letting down social values and feel that everyone is looking at her and then me and nodding:
"Ah, she married a foreigner!"
Anyway, having said that, I realised that I had to take decisive action to get these ladies on their bus. I stepped quickly onto the crossing, took a couple of paces and shouted, "Go, go, go!"
You see by stepping into the road, after all I was happy to wait for the green man because I wasn't after the bus, I had broken the taboo and then in shouting in the imperative I had activated another Japanese trait, the need to respond to authoritative command without question. The ladies charged across the road and got to their bus.
Footnote: Obviously the bus driver had closed the doors and was waiting for the lights to change but was still besides the bus stop. On seeing the ladies approach the bus he immediately, without question, opens the doors. After all, he is providing a customer service.
As the bus pulls away I wave to the two ladies who appear to be giggling like schoolgirls and give me a big smile, then quickly put a hand over their mouth whilst waving to me with the other hand. They had benefited from a chance meeting with a foreigner, no doubt they would tell their friends over coffee and cakes once they had finished shopping.
We continued on our way to Daiei and in due course we collected the cow dung from the customer service desk and made our way to the bar on the top floor where I enjoy a pint of Kirin whilst looking at the Tokyo skyline from this seventh floor vantage point.
In matters of cross cultural research proper attentionshould be paid to all details and customs of the society.
As I looked across the skyline at the battalions of tall buildings sparkling with lights in the black night I thought about the prime qualities I attribute to the Japanese character, pragmatism and a dislike of uncertainty. The light is either red or green, if it is red you don't cross, if it is green you cross, simple, everyone knows exactly where they stand, everyone understands the rules.
This was the problem for Japanese politics this year. Over recent years there have been a succession of Prime Ministers who simply were not up to the job of being a Japanese Prime Minister. But to become the Prime Minister you have to had worked your way up the honours and favours system of Japanese political society. The truth was that the men in the job and those in line were simply not men of the times and this is always a problem in deeply conservative societies with conservative values, how do you manage change?
I am using the word Conservative Party because that will make sense to the English reader, of course the name is different in Japan but it is only a white label on a well known conservative political position. So, for the Japanese Conservative Party who had been in power since the end of the Second World War, the problem was how to bring in a fresher, younger face, jumping the succession line and recreating the party in the eyes of an electorate who had started to loose faith. In other words, how to change everything without anything changing.
Step forward the grandson of one of the party founders and watch him create a new party, with new politics and new agendas. Key members of the ruling party defect to the new set up thus giving it credibility in terms of governmental experience. A populist campaign is launched which is dynamic against the tired old men and their dated rhetoric. During the campaign every indicator predicted a landslide majority for the new party and the establishment of new politics in Japan.
I remember Merryn Somerset-Webb of MoneyWeek writing sometime earlier in the year about how she had asked an old Japan trader what he thought the difference would be when the new party was elected. She said that he scoffed at her question and replied, "This is Japan, nothing will change."
And so it seems to be. The electorate have accepted that politics is politics and despite the election pledges being rescinded now the new party is in power life will carry on as normal. There is no uncertainty, everything is as it was and pragmatism has set in once more. As I said previously, well done sir!
Well done indeed
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