Ee

### Personality

Mine also takes great interest in Western culture. He speaks fluent English and keeps encyclopedias and phrasebooks in French, Italian, and German in his office. His phone background is a photograph of the New Town Hall in Munich, Germany. He collects foreign art (notably a replica of the east frieze of the Parthenon depicting the Greek gods Zeus and Hera), drives foreign cars, and his drink of choice is bourbon, an American whiskey.

Described as a "wannabe Westerner," his interest in Western Culture in active opposition to Japanese culture. The best example of his attitude may be his hatred of "people like [Kiryu] who live solely by the principles of *giri-ninjo*" (義理人情, *giri-ninjō*, lit. "moral obligation and human feeling"), though it requires cultural context to explain.

One interpretation of *ninjo* defines it as "knowing how to
[depend and presume upon another’s benevolence] properly and how to respond to the call of [it] in others." It has a history of being considered "specifically as Japanese," and as a concept "Westerners 'do not understand.' " By opposing *ninjo*, a Japanese ideal of dependence, Mine implicitly aligns himself with "the Western ideal of personal independence," where "one might just as well depend upon oneself or become independent, since there is nobody else to depend upon."

In contrast to Japanese society, where "parental dependency is fostered and its behavior pattern institutionalized into the social structure," Western society (ideally) values an individual's success over their background. One example is the American myth of the "self-made manWP," which Mine describes himself as in the original *Yakuza 3*. As an orphan, his rejection of Japanese society is rooted in feelings of alienation and an unmet "dependency need," a component of *ninjo* that develops in early childhood towards a parent or carer.

With no one to depend on and often facing loss, abandonment, and betrayal when he tried to, Mine avoids relying on or trusting others for most of his life. He is independent not because it comes naturally to him, but because of how dependence has hurt him in the past. Having come to expect loss and betrayal as a consequence of dependence, he goes as far as to say fostering dependence in children is a form of victimization, projecting his experiences onto the children of Morning Glory.

However, Mine does accept and acknowledge the concept at the heart of *ninjo* when he admits, "People yearn to trust others. And to be trusted in return."

Yeah, actually. This all goes back to Kiryu's backstory, because in Japan, an orphan has lower societal status than you might expect. They're nobody's kids, and they're not always given much respect. Because your roots play a bigger role there, whereas here (in the U.S.), whether or not you have parents, if you grow up to be something, that's who you are. The fact that you're an orphan doesn't necessarily follow you the same way it might in Japan.

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1. ↑ Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; no text was provided for refs named `Understanding Amae: The Japanese Concept of Need-Love - Amae: A Key Concept for Understanding Japanese Personality Structure`
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; no text was provided for refs named `Understanding Amae: The Japanese Concept of Need-Love - Giri-Ninjo: An Interpretation - Ninjo and Giri`
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; no text was provided for refs named `Understanding Amae: The Japanese Concept of Need-Love - Japanese Psychology, Dependency Need, and Mental Health`
4. ↑ Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; no text was provided for refs named `Understanding Amae: The Japanese Concept of Need-Love - The Japanese Patterns of Communication and the Concept of Amae`
5. ↑ Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; no text was provided for refs named `Understanding Amae: The Japanese Concept of Need-Love - The Concept of Amae and its Psychoanalytic Implications`