Prepared for the IIPS Symposium on

Upcoming Changes in Japanese Society and theFuture Shape of the Nation
Wednesday, 7 December 2005
TokyoSession 3

The Conflict of Culture and Civilization

Yasuki Hamano
Professor of Graduate School of Frontier Sciences
University of Tokyo

The Conflict of Culture and Civilization
Yasuki Hamano
Professor of Graduate School of Frontier Sciences
University of Tokyo
The tastes of the Japanese can be changed so easily
After World War II, soy sauce makers came begging to Ms. Appleton, the head of theEconomics and Scientific Section of GHQ for the Supreme Commander of the AlliedPowers, which controlled the distribution of soy beans. She is reported to have said “thetastes of the Japanese can be changed so easily.” Soon thereafter, 1,500 soy saucefactories were forced to close their doors, and like a self fulfilling prophecy, Japanese
dietary habits quickly changed.
The twentieth century saw mass production, mass consumption, and mass disposal
grow to global proportions. During this period, cultural diversity was greatly reduced as
the power to impose a uniform lifestyle won out. This trend was embodied in the wordsof Ms. Appleton.
In Europe and the U.S., a backlash against twentieth-century lifestyles has given us
the Slow Life and Slow Food movements, and Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability(LOHAS). However, the Japanese have long seen nature as something to coexist withrather than something to take from, and this concept is so fundamental to Japanese
lifestyles that it was never questioned or verbalized. There was much wisdom in how tolive a happy life with limited resources, as shown in the concepts of shindofuni(harmony of health and the environment) and ichibutsuzentai (synergy of the whole), as
applied to food, and the 100-year kimono. However, the Japanese came to believe that
all the better things in life come from overseas, and they abandoned this lifestyle oftheir own free will.
The elimination of diversity through imitation
The French understood that culture was the ultimate marketing tool for their products,
and they used a colonial method by first penetrating the privileged and moneyed classes,with the belief that over time it would eventually trickle down to the rest of society. By
the end of the nineteenth century, the French had a cultural monopoly on the lifestyles
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of the wealthy. They created the standards against which everything was gauged, fromthe arts to cuisine to fashion.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the U.S. leveraged the developing
info-communications technology and the increasing incomes and leisure time of thegeneral population to propagate a wave of pop culture to the masses.
The envy of the American way of life set new standards of living and redefined
expectations in all aspects of life. Adopting the western way of life became a national
policy as a means to modernization, but the collective desire of a population to imitate
this way of life resulted in a one-way flow of western culture that blanketed Japan, andindeed all of Asia.

Global standards
In the West if something cannot be documented, it is not considered to exist. For
restaurant guides and the like, they create evaluation procedure manuals and rating
standards checklists, like recipes, so that even a novice could easily become aprofessional critic with a little study.
A checklist itself is premised on the belief that the whole is the sum of its parts, but
the Japanese do not think that way. The sense of taste is like perfect pitch, it issomething one is born with, and for those who do not have it, no amount of training orpractice will allow them to achieve it. The synergy of the whole also applies in food.
Eating is a behavior that arises from natural urges, and it sustains life. We eat the whole,made up of many ingredients, and we prepare foods to make them edible. Sometimes,
we eat things that do not necessarily taste good, but we are happy to be able to eat, andwe are thankful for the nutrition that gives us sustenance. This sort of thing is notaccounted for in the Western standards of evaluation.
Those who do not have a standard of their own can drape themselves in the banner ofglobal standards, which they self righteously push. Because advocates of global
standards believe so fervently that what they are promoting is good, things become
more difficult than they need to be. The problem with global standards is that they
confuse civilization with culture. Civilization promotes the physical comfort of humanbeings and creates convenience by allowing people to achieve things beyond their2

physical limitations. In this respect, civilization is a common goal of all people and canbe considered a universal objective. Light allows people to be active even at night, andairplanes allow people to travel great distances. Culture is spun from the land and its
history, so while civilization tends to bring together and unify, culture tends to separate
and individualize.
Everyone thinks that their culture is the best, and for this very reason, all cultures
must be tolerated. The cultures that people have come to love and protect do not have anorder, relative position, or rank. The term “global standard” represents a blind certainty
in the superiority of one’s own culture and a narrow mindedness that does not allow for
cultural diversity.

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