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$Unique_ID{bob00327}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Japan
Chapter 2B.   Climate}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Emma Louise Young}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{japanese
social
japan
group
areas
individual
population
development
society
higher
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see
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}
$Date{1981}
$Log{}
Title:       Japan
Book:        Japan, A Country Study
Author:      Emma Louise Young
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1981

Chapter 2B.   Climate

     Lying in the middle latitudes of the northern hemisphere, Japan is
generally a rainy country with high humidity. Its climatic range is often
compared to that of the east coast of North America, from Nova Scotia to
Georgia. Tokyo is located at about 36 degrees north latitude, comparable to
Tehran, Athens, and Los Angeles.

     The generally humid, temperate climate exhibits marked seasonal
variations justly celebrated in art and literature, as well as regional
variations ranging from cool in Hokkaido to subtropical in Kyushu. Climate
also varies with altitude and with location on the Pacific or on the Sea of
Japan. Two primary factors influence Japanese climate: location off the Asian
continent and the existence of major oceanic currents.

     Spring and summer are marked by hot, wet weather brought by tropical
airflows originating over the Pacific Ocean and in southeast Asia. These
airflows are full of moisture and deposit substantial amounts of rain when
they reach land. There is a marked rainy season, beginning about the first of
June and continuing for about a month. It is followed by hot, sticky weather.
Five or six typhoons pass over or near Japan every year in August and
September, sometimes resulting in significant damage. Annual precipitation,
which averages between 1,000 and 2,000 millimeters, is concentrated in the
period between June and September. In winter a high-pressure area develops
over Siberia, and a low-pressure area over the northern Pacific Ocean. The
result is a flow of cold air eastward across Japan, which brings freezing
temperatures and heavy snowfalls to areas on the Sea of Japan of the central
mountain ranges, but clear skies to areas fronting on the Pacific.

     Two major ocean currents affect this climatic pattern. The Kuroshio or
Black Current flows northward on the Pacific side of Japan and warms areas as
far north as Tokyo. A small branch, the Tsushima Current, flows up the Sea of
Japan side. The Oyashio Current (Parent Current), which abounds in plankton
beneficial to cold-water fish, flows southward along northern Pacific Japan,
and cools adjacent coastal areas. The meeting point of these currents is a
bountiful fishing ground.

     Japanese flora and fauna are much the same as those of the temperate zone
elsewhere. Maples, Japanese beeches (fagus crenate), and magnolias (magnolia
lilifluer) are common; pines, willows, and bamboo play important roles in myth
and ritual. The variety of natural environments in the country supports many
different species of wildlife, and the seas around Japan abound with fish,
including native cold and warm water migratory species.

Earthquakes

     A tenth of the world's active volcanoes are found in Japan, which lies in
a zone of extreme crustal instability. Many earthquakes also result; more than
1,500 are recorded yearly. Minor tremors occur almost daily in one part of the
country or another, causing a slight shaking of buildings. Major earthquakes
occur infrequently, the most famous in this century being the great Kanto
earthquake of 1923, in which 130,000 people died. Because of the danger they
pose, Japan has become a world leader in research on causes and prediction of
earthquakes. The development of advanced technology has permitted the
construction of skyscrapers even in earthquake-prone areas. Extensive civil
defense efforts focus on training in protection against earthquakes, in
particular against accompanying fire, which represents the greatest danger.
Undersea earthquakes also expose the Japanese coastline to danger from tidal
waves.

Pollution

     In recent decades much of Japan's natural beauty has been destroyed or
defaced as a result of overcrowding and concentration on industrial
development at the expense of the environment. Individual health has sometimes
been adversely affected by environmental pollution. For example, in the 1960s,
many inhabitants of a small town on Minamata Bay were found to be suffering
from degeneration of the central nervous system after eating mercury-poisoned
seafood taken from the bay. Other examples included photochemical smog from
automobile exhaust, noise from trains and airplanes, and debris left on
mountainsides and in national forests. In Japan sunlight plays an important
role in heating homes in the winter, drying clothes, and powering solar water
heaters, but in many neighborhoods tall buildings close off the sun from much
of the area.

     Opposed to those Japanese who are apathetic on environmental matters are
others who have organized themselves into pressure groups in local areas
concentrating on single environmental issues. Pollution and other defacement
of the environment is viewed as a public injury (kogai) (see Consumers' and
Citizens' Movements, ch. 6). The principle has been established in court that
the industry that has created the pollution must pay for its effects. The
national government has been slow to respond to environmental issues, but once
it has responded, it has been effective. Strict auto emission standards have
reduced photochemical smog, and Tokyo residents can now enjoy views of Mount
Fuji that were obscured in recent years. Electronic billboards report sound
levels and proportions of common air pollutants such as sulfur dioxide.
Environmental pollution will continue to be an issue in coming years, and
efforts to control it will result in the further development of new
technology.

Population

     Having a population of 118 million persons in 1981, small and mountainous
Japan was the most densely populated of the world's leading industrial
nations. Its population had more than tripled between 1872 and 1975, rising
from 34.8 million to 111.9 million, although since World War II its growth
rate has been declining. The annual rate of growth averaged 1.3 percent in the
1970-76 period, as compared with 0.6 for Europe and 2.2 percent for all
countries combined in the same period.

     Two aspects of the country's population structure are likely to continue
to exert significant influence on future social and economic development. The
first is its density; the second its age structure.

     Density for the country as a whole was more than 300 persons per square
kilometer in 1981. Actual density in many populated areas was actually
considerably higher. The population per square kilometer of arable land in
1980 was 2,256 persons, compared to 1,019 in Indonesia, 820 in the Federal
Republic of Germany (West Germany), 103 in the United States, and thirty
persons per square kilometer of arable land in Australia.

     Three-quarters of the population lived in urban areas in 1981,
particularly on the eastern and southern coast between Tokyo and Osaka.
Population density in some areas of Tokyo has exceeded 20,000 persons per
square kilometer. Consequently urban dwellers have been confronted with high
prices for crowded housing, residential land far from urban centers, long
commutes, and a lack of parks and other natural green spaces. In 1981, more
than one-fifth of the commuters in Tokyo lived more than an hour from their
work place. Japan's largest cities average one-tenth the ratio of parkland to
inhabitants that is found in major cities in Europe and the United States.

     The adverse effects of such conditions on family life are
counter-balanced in densely populated urban areas, however, by efficient
transportation systems and an active urban life-style. As people come to
demand social amenities in return for the sacrifices they have made to
economic development, plans for reduction of overcrowding are likely to become
more and more prevalent. Recognition of existing problems has already led to
the creation of "New Towns"-owner-occupied new developments in rural areas-and
to national plans to disperse concentrated populations by developing
industries, social services, and educational institutions to make regional
towns and cities more attractive.

     The second problematic aspect of the population has been its age
structure. Both birth and death rates have been declining, resulting in an
aging population. The birthrate dropped to 14.3 per 1,000 in 1979. Family
planning, primarily through use of contraceptives, was entirely accepted and
was supplemented by abortion, legally available on a fee-for-service basis.

     The death rate declined from over fifteen per 1,000 through 1945 to 5.9
per 1,000 in 1979. Tuberculosis, once a major cause of death, has been
superseded by diseases characteristic of urban, industrialized
societies-cerebral hemorrhage, cancer, and heart disease.

     Life expectancy has increased dramatically and, at seventy-eight years
for women and nearly seventy-three years for men, was the longest in the world
in 1978. As recently as 1935 it had been less than fifty years for both men
and women. The sharp increase has resulted from a decline in infant mortality
and better health care.

     These changing patterns of fertility and mortality have resulted in an
age pyramid with successively fewer numbers of young people and greater and
greater percentages of the aged. This change has already had an effect on the
industrial sector where young, unskilled workers were in short supply. Caring
for the aged would pose a major challenge to the social and political system
in years to come.

     Japan has already undergone the experience of massive urban migration
characteristic of industrializing nations. In the 1970-75 period migration to
urban areas accounted for only about 2 percent of the overall 10.2 percent
increase in population in large cities. This overall rate of increase compared
with 15 percent in the 1960-65 period. In the late 1950s migration had
accounted for some 86 percent of overall urban growth. Suburban areas were
growing, while inner cities and peripheral rural areas were declining in
population.

     Major universities and many less well known institutions of higher
learning are located in the large urban centers, attracting thousands of high
school graduates from rural prefectures each spring. Having completed two or
four years of higher education, some of these students have remained in the
urban metropolitan areas. Others, however, have returned to their birthplaces
or have settled in regional towns and cities, a pattern termed the "U-turn" or
"J-turn" phenomenon. National policy has given some of the regional towns and
cities the resources to attract the graduates.

     In the late 1970s external migration was not a significant demographic
factor. Permanent emigrants numbered only 5,000 to 6,000 persons annually. A
total of about 1 million Japanese have emigrated in the past century, but 70
percent of this total occurred before World War II. Through 1920 most
emigrants went to Hawaii and the mainland United States; later the majority
went to South America.

     In contrast to permanent migration, which has declined, travel by
Japanese to foreign countries has increased enormously since the 1970s. Other
countries in East Asia, Western Europe, North America, and Southeast Asia have
been the principal destinations. Hawaii, Guam, and other Pacific islands have
been favorite destinations of honeymoon couples. Extensive travel and longer
residence in foreign countries have not been encouraged unless the individual
is sent by an employer. Foreign-educated high school and university graduates
have had difficulty finding employment commensurate with their educational
achievement.

     Ethnic Japanese, speaking the Japanese language, have constituted the
vast majority of the population for more than a thousands years. By the ninth
century A.D., Korean and a few Chinese immigrants and nonrelated indigenous
tribes had been absorbed into the basic Japanese stock, which is thought to
have developed during the Jomon period (see Early Japan, ch. 1).

     In the contemporary period three minority groups can be identified:
outcast peoples (burakumin), who although they are in fact ethnically and
culturally Japanese, are discriminated against more than any other group; the
indigenous, but ethnically distinct, Ainu; and among immigrant peoples, the
Koreans. Some members of the Korean community are descended from Koreans
brought to Japan as long ago as the sixteenth century; nonetheless the
Japanese treat Koreans as resident aliens and as inferiors.

     The burakumin, numbering about 2 million persons, are the largest
minority group. Their minority status stems from their historical association
with trades involving blood and death, such as butchering, tanning, and
shoemaking, and is passed from generation to generation. Burakumin are
physically indistinguishable from Japanese, but their social status remains
that of an outcast group and social intercourse with the rest of the Japanese
population is precluded by barriers erected by the majority, who tend to see
the burakumin as contaminated by inherent moral defects. Some burakumin have
tried to "pass" as members of the ethnic majority by moving away from the
segregated communities and ghetto slums where they were born or by taking up
other occupations and severing ties with relatives and friends. Every inquiry
into a person's background, however-and such inquiries are common when an
individual seeks education, employment, or a marriage partner-threatens to
reveal the burakumin origin. Being thus stigmatized often leads to lack of
educational achievement, economic deprivation, and social deviance. Liberation
movements and government policy have not yet erased this negative image.

     Persons of Korean ancestry, numbering about 675,000 in 1981, constitute
the second largest minority group. Many are laborers or descendants of
laborers brought in from Korea between 1930 and 1945. Others were born in
Japan and speak Japanese as their native language; nevertheless they continue
to be officially regarded as alien residents. Koreans in Japan have
experienced discrimination in education, marriage, and employment.

     In the early 1980s "pure" Ainu numbered about 16,000 and were confined
primarily to a small area of the island of Hokkaido. They are the descendants
of an indigenous population, having its own language and culture, which
occupied the northern part of Honshu as late as the Nara period. A nomadic
hunting and fishing people, the Ainu were unable to compete with an expanding
Japanese civilization and, suffering a fate that closely parallels that of the
American Indians, were forced to leave Honshu for the more rigorous climate on
the island of Hokkaido. Japanese in general have considered the Ainu and their
culture one of quaint primitiveness, but young Ainu have been awakened to
their heritage and wish to restore its pride.

     Persons who are different for one reason or another are considered
"polluted" and not suitable as marriage partners. As anthropologist Harumi
Befu notes: "The notion of pollution and attendant discrimination and refusal
to marry are indigenous to Japanese culture." Such persons may include those
of mixed ancestry and the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, the hibakusha, whose offspring, scientific evidence to the contrary,
have been considered to be especially susceptible to rare diseases.

The Social Setting

     The homogeneity of Japanese society, in which order and harmony are prime
virtues, has been emphasized by specialists in Japanese culture. According to
this view, not only is the society ethnically homogeneous, but its members are
unified by common language, history, culture, and a shared body of concepts
about human life. Local, regional, and occupational diversity exists, but the
nation is intrinsically far more unified than any other industrial nation.

     Language is first among the sources of unity. Although modern Japanese
has been influenced by a variety of sources (it is encoded in a writing system
imported from China, and its vocabulary includes many words from English, West
European and Indian sources), its use has been confined almost entirely to the
Japanese islands. Japanese has played no part in international discourse.
Hence the language has both united people who live in Japan and has isolated
them from the rest of the world.

     The language supports a rich literature and common culture. The country
has one of the highest literacy rates in the world. Students throughout the
country have used the same government-endorsed textbooks; and newspapers,
radio, and television programs have been prepared for a nationwide,
Japanese-speaking audience.

     The common culture arises from a history marked by long periods free from
foreign invasion. There have been no large influxes of foreign populations for
more than 1,000 years. The perception of common identity among Japanese is
bolstered by a mythology that presents all Japanese as the descendants of the
mythical creators of the land itself.

     Compatible with this view of contemporary Japanese society as a
harmonious, homogeneous entity is the notion that modern Japanese have tended
to rank themselves on a hierarchical scale of status positions rather than in
terms of a sharply defined system of social classes. The ranks of hereditary
nobility were decimated by the policies of the government under the Meiji
Restoration (1868), and the 1947 Constitution abolished them entirely, with
the exception of the members of the imperial household. Since then, the
tendency has been for nearly everyone to be seen as an ordinary person, and
according to opinion surveys, 90 percent of Japanese perceive themselves as
belonging to a great middle class. In the early 1980s Japanese neighborhoods
presented an appearance of relative equality. Loose zoning regulations ruled
out the strictly demarcated areas of wealth or poverty, and the executive's
mansion was often adjacent to his employee's cramped apartment building.

     This does not mean that status differences have not, in fact, existed.
Males have been ranked higher than females; older persons higher than younger
ones; and persons having permanent membership in a group over those having
temporary membership. More education improves one's status. Employment in a
large, prosperous, nationally known firm conveys greater prestige than working
at a small, marginal, local one. The president of a company is addressed more
respectfully than is a section head. In marriage negotiations it has been
important to avoid alliances with those whose families contain outcast,
foreign, or diseased elements (see Social Values, this ch.).

     Those persons in lower status positions, however, have explained this as
a result of their own individual failure of will, not as an ascribed position
in a rigidly stratified class structure. The "new religions" that appeal to
persons in the less prosperous segment of society promise not alteration in
the economic structure of society, but greater success through overcoming
obstacles by determined individual striving.

     The Japanese ideal is that each individual (or, perhaps more accurately,
each man) is endowed at birth with equal abilities. What he makes of
himself-his success-is dependent on whether he cultivates his abilities and
takes advantage of the opportunities presented to him by applying himself and
working hard. In theory, each person has an equal opportunity, and in fact,
education and occupation have become vehicles of upward social mobility in the
post-World War II period. As economic growth has slowed, however, and as the
competition to enter elite institutions has increased, wealthier parents may
find it easier, and less wealthy parents more difficult, to give their sons
the supplementary schooling necessary for success. In this case the ideal of
equal opportunity based on hard work could be discredited to the detriment of
the national unity created by the perception of equal opportunity. The
emphasis on achievement also shows that in reality social relations can be as
competitive as harmonious.

     In the past a married couple and their children were submerged in the ie
(a household, usually comprising a group of lineally related males, their
wives, and children), which participated as a corporate entity in the
economic, social, and political life of the community. Throughout much of
rural Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate, related households were organized
into dozoku. Structurally the dozoku was hierarchically arranged under the
domination of a core household, its member households held together by a set
of compelling social values and by economic need.

     The forms of Tokugawa society and the concept of the family in that
traditional era were somewhat altered during the early modernization under the
Meiji emperor. After World War II and the social reconstruction that ensued,
the concept of the family was radically transformed. In rural areas the family
shifted from its primary role as a unit of production to that of a unit of
consumption. Household composition also changed from the traditional
three-generation type prevalent before modernization to the nuclear family,
consisting of a husband, his wife, and their children.

Social Values

     Japan is a secular society, and religion plays a much less obvious and
direct role as the source of social values than is the case in many other
countries. The proper fulfillment of social roles and an ethic of obligation
and reciprocity are far more prominent than any notion of the individual's
relationship to a transcendant God, existing apart from society. Order,
harmony, and individual development are three of the most important values in
contemporary Japan.

Order

     The concept of order is one that originates in Confucianism, a system of
ethics and body of political thought brought from China, which has exercised a
formative influence on social values for many centuries. A phrase in The Great
Learning, one of the basic Confucian texts, reads: "Their persons being
cultivated, their families were regulated. Their families being regulated,
their states were rightly governed. Their states being rightly governed, the
whole kingdom was made tranquil and happy." This philosophy suggests that
social welfare is dependent upon the proper ordering of individuals and
families. This order is supported by a system of hierarchy. Each person
occupies a rank subordinate to the one above it. Differing ranks and statuses
are natural and inevitable. Social harmony is achieved when each person
sincerely acknowledges and acts on the requirements of his or her appropriate
rank. What is appropriate or inappropriate is common social knowledge,
manifested in appreciative or critical comments that a person is acting "like
a professor" or "not like a woman." It is assumed that persons who fill their
roles properly will achieve greater success than those who do not.

     The requirement that individuals observe their proper ranks is found in
the concept of giri, the "duty or obligation of a person to behave in certain
prescribed ways toward another, to whom he is indebted." Social roles have
been defined in part by the flow of benefits downward from the higher to the
lower ranks, as in the relationship between parents and children, teacher and
student, or employer and employee. These benefits have created an obligation
that binds the inferior to the superior in an unequal but reciprocal
relationship. The form these obligations take is fidelity to one's social
role. Failure to fulfill its requirements can result in strong feelings of
shame, a sentiment which has had a central place in the dynamics of
interpersonal relations.

     Two sources of hierarchy, the qualities by which one determines which
individual is deemed superior to another, have been sex and age. Males have
been ranked higher than females, and older persons have been superior to
younger ones. The relationships between men and women have continued to be
unequal, although less so in contemporary than in prewar society (see Women,
this ch.). Ranking by age is pervasive, and there is an awareness of minute
distinctions based on seniority. Persons in the same company are ranked
according to their year of entrance, and two alumni of the same school will
determine who graduated first to see who has senior rank.

     In a hierarchical society one has basically two choices in regard to
another person: one can display respectful, formal behavior or familiar,
informal behavior. When two unknown persons meet each other, they exchange
meishi. Meishi are essentially business cards that list a person's name,
address, position, and the firm to which he belongs. They are important for
more than mere identification because they indicate a person's rank within a
firm and hence the degree of deference one assumes.

     The Japanese language employs special forms of speech (keigo or honorific
language) that convey recognition on both sides of status differences between
speakers. In Japanese, verbs express a relationship of superiority or of
inferiority. The language has a luxurious vocabulary of expressions that
indicate a person's status. There is even a special vocabulary formerly used
only in speaking of the emperor and the imperial family. In talking with a
person one must decide, first, whether he or she is superior in rank or not,
and, secondly, whether he or she is a relatively unknown person or an intimate
member of one's own group. Different verb forms must be used in talking with a
higher ranking stranger, a lower ranking stranger, a higher ranking familiar
or a lower ranking familiar. Men and women employ somewhat different ways of
speaking, even to using different words for the same concept. Women's speech
tends to concentrate in the formal/honorific corner; men's in the
intimate/humble quadrant. Women professionals who wish to advance in the work
place will speak more like men. Conversely, as sexual distinctions have become
less marked in postwar Japan, the speech of young men has become more
feminized.

     Although hierarchical ranking may seem authoritarian, it is not conceived
of as oppressive, but rather as a sort of merit system. Persons higher up are
deemed to deserve their rankings by virtue of their personal character
development through endurance and hard work. If one works hard, one can
achieve similar ranking. In addition the constraints of obligation are
tempered by sentiment. Superiors offer benign paternalism to their
subordinates in the form of concern for their personal lives and care for
their prospects. White-collar employees polled in surveys since 1955 have
consistently reported that they prefer a supervisor who demands more of them
but has a fatherly concern for their welfare to one who limits himself to a
distant and fair perspective.

Harmony and Affiliation

     The concept of harmony, wa, is a second important social value. Harmony
is created and maintained in the context of group membership. While each
person has an appropriate status, one's status exists only in relation to
other people. This idea has two corollaries: the individual is not
self-sufficient, and each person's life is made meaningful when he or she
carries out an appropriate portion of a common group task. Harmony arises from
proper participation by individuals in group activities.

     Japanese in general prefer the satisfaction of working with others to
individual activity. Membership in a group gives one a social identity,
provides a feeling of security, and enables one to receive the rewards of
strong bonds of human interdependence. In traditional society the household or
the village was the important group. In the 1980s colleagues at work, fellow
students, neighbors, or family members are likely to constitute the groups
from which one acquires social status and identity. This emphasis on the
formation of groups is not confined to interpersonal relations but is
important in other sectors of the society, such as industrial structure, as
well.

     In general it is difficult to establish connections between groups that
display a high level of self-sufficiency and insularity. The go-between,
nakodo, plays a central role in intergroup relations. This term most generally
refers to the person involved in marriage arrangements who does the work of
checking each party's background, guaranteeing his or her reliability,
conveying questions and criticisms, smoothing out difficulties, and concluding
the terms of the marriage agreement between the two families. The term is used
much more widely than this, however, and a mediator is necessary to initiate
almost any interaction. Japanese educators, for example, will respond to any
scholarly request, but they will respond wholeheartedly and enthusiastically
only if the person who makes the inquiry is first introduced by one of their
colleagues. The mode of introduction, whether it be in person, by letter, or
merely by handing over a copy of the mediator's business card, makes no
difference; what counts is that there be an introduction.

     Harmony is the desired quality of behavior within groups. It results from
a process that takes a large amount of effort and a great deal of time. It is
assumed that each person has something important to contribute. Members of
groups encourage each other to do better. They are supportive of individual
difficulties and confident that, with time, problems will be overcome. People
downplay their own contributions, suppress criticism of others, and willingly
assist each other in the completion of specific tasks. Hence even the most
inept student will go home from a flower-arranging class with a perfect
arrangement, even if it results from the teacher's tearing apart the pupil's
own work and redoing it again from scratch. People pay attention to each other
and welcome each other's contributions. Decisionmaking involves large numbers
of people and is carried out by consulting everyone.

     Group spirit is also created in overt ways. One training program for new
employees of a bank has them spend many weeks together participating in a
variety of morale-building exercises. Groups often have identifying symbols: a
school uniform, a tour-group flag, or a company song. Doing things together
and doing many different kinds of things together is crucial. Convivial
drinking is one such fundamental activity. Singing is another that obscures
individual differences and unites everyone both physically and emotionally.
Holiday trips to vacation spots and places of historic interest are still
another.

     Group membership in Japan has many pleasures but also many tensions.
Despite all efforts to agree, harmony cannot always be achieved. Japanese
groups have great difficulty handling conflict. Minor issues are sometimes
dealt with by appeals to higher authority, but they may well smolder
unresolved for years. Major issues are more troublesome. One response is to
ignore the controversy and pretend it does not exist. This is particularly
necessary when the group is facing outsiders. One anthropologist noted a
peculiar reticence when what the members of the community were doing was
concealing a decisive internal rift. Unresolved disagreements will get
progressively worse, widening and deepening the areas of conflict. Unless a
skilled mediator having strong ties to both parties can be found, a rift may
go on to be marked by bitterness on both sides and may go so far as an
irreconcilable breakdown in communications. Eventually the group may split in
two, or the offending member may be ostracized and deprived of all
communication with group members. In this way groups are peculiarly
vulnerable to fission.

Individual Character Development

     Japanese social values emphasize group ties. Yet a positive concept of
the individual is not entirely lacking. Individual development is not tied to
individual rights or to individualism. Rather the Japanese philosophy of
human development is summed up in the idea that a person's worth is judged by
the degree of his or her effort to approximate his existing self to an ideal
self. This concept, arising from the Confucian tradition and found in the
traditional disciplines of Zen, tea ceremony, flower arranging, and martial
arts, is the essence of what is called the seishin philosophy.

     Seishin-shugi is a term meaning "spiritualism." It implies a philosophy
that people are perfectible individuals who can develop their own characters
through hard work and determination. To some Japanese the concept has negative
overtones associated with the paramilitary activities of extreme right-wing
fanatics, but the spirit of striving that it connotes is a tenet with which
many Japanese are sympathetic. Hard work, persistence, and optimism are the
keys to individual development.

     Labor is seen as essential to personal growth. Those whose lives are too
easy will never develop the character or strength of mature individuals. Hence
members of the prewar generation question whether youth raised in postwar
affluence will achieve the maturity of those who experienced poverty and
deprivation. Persistence is a second essential to the development of one's
character. Success does not come easily, and those who are ambitious must
endure long periods of unrewarding work in order to prepare them to meet
future challenges easily. To conform to labor, although it is not immediately
productive, and to suppress one's ego and personal desires, is to develop
inner strength. One must come to terms with the world. This philosophy seems
gloomy, but optimism is also one of its cornerstones. It assumes that there
are no innate differences in human ability. All human beings have the capacity
to improve themselves. Doing so is a lifelong effort and will be rewarded with
satisfaction. Failure to do so stems from a failure of will, weakness, and
flawed effort.

     This set of ideas manifests itself in several forms. It generally comes
to be more important to people in middle age, those whose careers are set, and
those whose lives are stable, yet without meaning. It is found in volunteer
movements where it motivates efforts to solve social problems. Members of
these movements have faith in the goodness of people and confidence that,
since the social world is an interconnected one, reinforcement of people's
spiritual qualities will make the world a better place in which to live.
People should abandon their selfishness, pessimism, and reluctance to
participate, and become optimistic, less interested in themselves, and more
concerned about others.