The Lonely Japanese

Fernando V. Beup Jr.

Japanese Studies 100



THE LONELY JAPANESE
An Impression and Interpretation of Japan’s Representation of its Lonely Self

Every culture is unique. This is notwithstanding the fact that some cultures do share many things in common owing to the countries' geographical proximity or historical commonality. The reasons of a culture’s uniqueness are varied, but these can be more or less divided into two broad categories: natural and artificial. For our purpose, the natural causes of a country’s uniqueness will be defined as those that are inherent to the country that cannot be created nor altered through human intervention. These factors include a country’s geography, climate and, to some extent, racial homogeneity. On the other hand, artificial causes include those that are caused by humans themselves—factors such as cultural influences brought from outside of a people’s immediate geographical location. These may happen as a result of socialization, migration, or better yet, as a result of some historical accident of which contact with some foreign entities is a necessary antecedent. Natural causes are therefore necessary, while artificial causes are largely adoptive if not adaptive.
Japan is a country whose uniqueness is drawn from, among others, these two factors. But to define its uniqueness solely on these two can be problematic without elaboration because it does not offer us any new information about the subject. Hence, it would be more helpful to pinpoint some specific uniqueness of the Japanese so that a more meaningful discourse can be made that can lead to the better understanding of the people in relation to the factors mentioned above.
It is the purpose of this paper to point out one specific characteristic of the Japanese where the natural and artificial causes meet to produce a kind of cultural expression that most non-Japanese would find rather interesting or peculiar. The paper will deal mostly with impressions derived from such characteristic and will proffer interpretations based on empirical and theoretical knowledge. This characteristic, oftentimes present in Japanese cultural expression but largely overlooked, is loneliness.

The Geography of Loneliness

The Japanese are a lonely people. This is partly due to the fact that Japan is a country fairly isolated from mainland Asia to which it claims its cultural roots, China. From its east to its southwest is located the Pacific Ocean where powerful typhoons form to whip the country in summer, and to its north is the eastern tip of Russia where it shares much of the punishing cold of winter. To its immediate west the Korean peninsula, like a jealous brother, blocks Japan direct access to China. In a sense, Japan's relative distance from its acknowledged cultural motherland gives it a picture of an abandoned child constantly in peril of being quashed by climatic forces.
This is not to say, of course, that the Japanese are lonely in a sense that they are deprived of happiness. The loneliness that will be referred to from here on is a concept derived from a complex synthesis of geographical and conceptual isolation, encompassing physical and philosophical dimensions. The dynamics of proxemics spills over to many aspects of Japanese culture, as we shall soon see.
Foremost, Japan’s geographical distance from mainland Asia seems to have had a profound impact on the Japanese as it replicated itself in the recurring themes of loss and longing in Japanese culture. Indeed, its stories are replete with themes of separation, from the geisha who has to leave her family at a tender age, to the modern salaryman alienated from society by rapid industrialization. It appears then that this recurrent Japanese theme is one that puts the person in the center of things but at the same time distant or not quite a part of them: The geisha, in the pursuit of her profession as entertainer of the highest breeeding and caliber meant to “sell fantasy” to her clients must distance herself from the rest of society as if to sustain her world of make-believe; while the salaryman, after a long day at work, must retreat to his tiny abode and shut himself from the competitive world outside. The Japanese seems to stand all alone, ironically unassisted by even the Confucian emphasis on the group which he is almost always committed to uphold but in which he is oftentimes denied a right to be himself.
The paradoxical nature of the Japanese’s relation to his family and society— of being one with them and yet not belonging to them—tends to reinforce the drive to secure one’s roots if only through historical records, as if this can give him comfort and solace. Hence, the concept of ie or “household” and the importance given to family registry function not only to put one in his respective social class but more so because they provide the bases for one’s origins, a sense of belonging, of rootedness, not to the present that is within his grasp, but to the distant past.
The search for the Japanese past takes on an interesting twist when viewed in relation to the theme of loss and longing previously mentioned. For the Japanese, the forgotten past is a loss, and the search for his roots is an expression of longing for a home. Perhaps no other evidence of the desire of the Japanese to solve the puzzle of their origins can be stronger than the amount of work they put into anthropological research, most notably in the origins and practice of rice cultivation.

Rice as Self

The myth of Amatersu, the Sun Goddess from whom the Japanese believe themselves to have originated provides a very promising key to unlocking the mystery of their historical and cultural origins through a most ubiquitous commodity: rice.
Rice is believed by the Japanese to have been a gift from Amaterasu and is said to possess her spirit. This makes rice so vital to the Japanese that it even serves as an object of worship even to this day. The rites associated with the object has become a subject of study for Japanese anthropologists as rice becomes an important point of reference in tracing the roots of the Japanese. By being able to determine how rice reached and started to be cultivated in Japan, anthropologists hope to provide answers to questions on the history of the Japanese people.
This search for the Japanese roots through rice arouses curiousity when viewed in relation to the country’s long assertion of its uniqueness as incorporated in the Nihonjin ron. Through the Nihonjin ron, the Japanese articulate their uniqueness as a consequence of their having been descended from the Sun Goddess Amaterasu. Yet, as a consequence of their intrest in tracing their origins through rice which they theorize to have come from southern China, are the Japanese now ready to see their uniqueness not so much as a result of having been descended from Amaterasu as having been descended from a human ancestor? The longing of the Japanese for their past while at the same time asserting their uniqueness has been a paradox all along. The road to the cultural home that the Japanese have been longing for seems to be within sight; and home seems to inevitably lead to China.
How the scholars will give their verdict on the studies still remains to be seen, but certainly the theme of loss and longing is played out again as Japan tries to discover its true self by going back to its past. In other words, its objective seems to be to bridge the geographic and conceptual distance which historically separated it from mainland Asia and the rest of the world so that it will finally come to terms with its isolation and, ultimately, with the loneliness of being Japanese.

Loneliness as Cultural Expression

The Japanese story could easily have been lifted from a melodrama, a story of loss and longing for a home, only it is tempered by Confucian restraint and Buddhist stoicism. It is therefore not surprising that the Japanese language would possess words that tend to romanticize, more than to merely express, sadness or loneliness. The word sabashii serves as a good example. Sabashii has been described by Boye Lafayette De Mente as “an acute sense of loneliness, of an ‘ocean of nothingness,’ which was most common in the fall when the fading and falling of leaves was a powerful reminder of the fate of all things.”[1] Another word related to sabashii is shinmiri, a concept integrated into Japanese arts and translated into English as “serene sadness,” or “lonely tranquility.” De Mente further writes about this word:

The shinmiri concept in [Japanese] culture…became an essential ingredient in art, handicrafts, music and literature. In order to be truly Japanese and evoke expected feelings, a piece of art, a handicraft or a poem had to incorporate the essence of shinmiri.
Shinmiri remains a common colloquial term in modern-day Japan, regularly used to express the kind of intimate tranquility and sad contentment that is a key part of the atmosphere of a Japanese-style room overlooking a garden, the ocean, or a mountain ravine—especially on rainy days.[2]


It is at once obvious that the concepts of sabishii and shinmiri have direct references to nature or environment, unavoidably pointing to the cultural spaces created by the fusion of geography (necessary cause), and Buddhism and animist tradition of Japan (adoptive causes).
The feeling of loneliness that one gets when contemplating the postcards or “nature” calendars of Japan is not merely accidental but a product of the projection of the Japanese’s idea of their unique sensibilities. The image of tranquil mountains or quaint inns on the hillsides, the image of snow-capped mountains, of cherry blossoms or of autumn foliage as a bullet train “quietly” speeds through them create a sense of isolation, contemplation, even sorrow. This observation acquires greater significance when one relates the concept of loneliness to Japan's minimalist art where a simple point of interest is put in relation to the overall emptiness of a given space. Here, the subject is positioned in relative isolation from other components, consequently highlighting its "singleness" and creating a sense of identification of the observer with the subject. Minimalism is, in effect, an “aestheticization” of loneliness, if not a method of the observer of distancing himself through the subject so that he may see himself in isolation and in relation to his surroundings. Somehow the art of bonsai or dwarf trees may also have a bearing on the desire to see oneself in relation to one's natural surroundings. Where this is impossible to do in one's natural setting, the Japanese may have opted to reproduce nature in miniatures in an attempt to visualize himself in it.
Of course, some scholars hold different opinions on this. Edwin O. Reischauer, an eminent professor of Japanese history, is inclined to believe that the practice of miniaturization of trees may have to do with the preponderance of mountains in Japan which makes it imperative for the Japanese, who are ardent nature lovers, to replicate nature in small forms.[3]
Be that as it may, it does not diminish the fact that the Japanese always put themselves in intimate relation with their environment. They almost always appear as part of the landscape, most likely because the Japanese, being farmers, have always been a people closely tied to the land. For instance, a look at some pictures of their fishing villages would give the impression that these people would most likely come back to the comforts of their home after a fishing expedition as opposed to their Western counterparts who appear likely to venture far out into the sea. Hence, it appears as no coincidence that it would be the West that would spearhead the colonization of other lands, while Japan would sleep through most of the period of Western expansion.
Perhaps the sensitivity of the Japanese to their surroundings cannot be more evident than in their literature. The works of some of Japan’s most famous writers (i.e., Yasunari Kawabata and Yukio Mishima) are uniquely Japanese in their keen awareness of the most trivial details of nature and how these relate to the emotional and psychological states of their fictional characters.
The haiku poetry, remarkable for its creativeness and brevity, commonly deals with sudden sparks of illumination derived from the writer’s acute sensitivity to his surroundings. In this regard, the isolation of the Japanese tends to fuel the imaginative drive resulting in works that are distinctively lonely and melancholic, if not outstanding in their spatial economy and magnification of the minute.
For the Japanese, the faintest movements or gestures can reveal meanings—some kind of Freudian slips—that are otherwise insignificant to the inattentive. The noh theater is a good study regarding this subject, as well as the profession of the geisha whose part of the job it is to study and exercise the faintest nuances in her gestures as she serves tea and entertains her guest.

Loneliness and “Japonism”

It is obvious that there are distinctively Japanese manners of expression. As has been pointed out in the foregoing, isolation, loneliness, introspection and economy of spatial and material elements—all interrelated—are especially significant and cannot escape notice.
This distinctive character of Japanese culture was obviously and inevitably brought to the world’s attention with the “discovery” of Japan by the West and the country’s subsequent rise to economic and military power. The attention given to many things Japanese would result in the fusion of Japanese cultural elements particularly in the arts with foreign ones, and vice versa. This process of mixing Japanese elements with foreign ones has come to be known as Japonism, a term that, despite its reflexivity, implies more of cultural inspiration taken from Japan.
Japonism was first coined by the French to refer to the artistic inspiration taken from the Japanese. Hence, Japonism is at once a perception derived from either side of the fence: of the foreigners about the Japanese, and later, in reverse, of the Japanese about themselves. Japonism has been employed largely in the field of fashion and other arts, but it has been used in the field of literature as well. In an apparent display of Japonism in literature Snow Falling on Cedars, a novel that deals with Japanese immigrants in the United States presents a very good example. Here, Japanese sensibility and imagery has been incorporated into the work by its American author David Guterson. Obviously, as a tribute perhaps to the Japanese characters in the novel (who are incidentally ordinary farmers and fisher folks), Guterson has created a very atmospheric novel reminiscent of the winter images in Mishima’s Spring Snow.
The palpable coldness and sense of isolation in the novel is at once a reference to the bitter immigrant experience, but more than that it is an allusion to the image of the Japanese as cold, distant, and different—an image reinforced no doubt by the Japanese representation of themselves in their culture and arts as lonely, isolated, restrained. Hence, it is not surprising that the paperback edition of Snow Falling would picture a mountain covered with trees engulfed in fog—a lonely image most likely lifted from Japanese paintings if not from pictures of some distant Japanese countryside suffused with shinmiri atmosphere. Kazuo Ishiguro, a British writer of Japanese descent, comes extremely close to this “Japonist” writing style by the attendant placidness and picturesque-ness of his works, noticeable by merely looking at their titles: A Pale View of Hills and The Remains of the Day, among others.

Conclusion

So far it has been established that the Japanese are unique as a consequence of several factors, among them their environment and historical experience. They are unique but not in a sense that they are special or “chosen”, but because they have developed a distinctive way of expressing themselves. The Japanese appear to possess a remarkable talent of transforming the most ordinary thing into something significant by magnifying its simplicity and imbuing it with “life.” This may in part be attributed to the synthesis of its animist tradition and Zen Buddhism; and partly, this may also be attributed to its geographical distance from mainland Asia which prodded it to make the most of the cultural “residues” from China as it had been filtered through Korea. (Here, it is worth noting that the grandiosity, color and pomp of Chinese culture appear to become more and more subdued as it spreads eastward, with Japan receiving the least of this dispersion).
The impression that one can get from the Japanese experience is that they have always been in search of a figure to emulate, or to absorb as much as they can those which their geography had denied them access. This may perhaps explain why the Japanese have always been accused of being prodigious imitators. Nevertheless, the Japanese, by the very scarcity of cultural influences from outside, have remarkably created a distinctive character. The image of the abandoned child looms large in their cultural expression of loneliness, isolation, distance, stoicism and serenity. It is no wonder then why the geisha served an important purpose in ancient Japan; that is, to sell fantasy as if, even just for a moment, one can get away from the sadness and isolation of it all.
Indeed, the Japanese are an extremely lonely people, but instead of wallowing in that loneliness, they instead chose to accept it as a way of life, an inevitable fact that does not merit resistance. Loneliness has in fact been elevated by the Japanese into an art where it assumes a sublime and ethereal character.
Japan’s lonely self is of course present in all humankind, though it is largely seen as a negative force by most cultures: The Japanese’s sense of isolation and outlook about the precariousness of life is comparable to Nietszche’s idea of his existence as absurd; Jean Paul Sartre’s existentialist philosophy as elaborated in his Being and Nothingness meets its counterpart in Keiji Nishitari’s Religion and Nothingness, both of which deal with questions of faith, existence and the meaning of life; the moment of illumination in the Japanese haiku is no different from James Joyce’s “epiphanies.”
These parallels are not readily apparent, nor do they take a one-to-one correspondence with remarkable exactitude. Yet it is undeniable that the Japanese aestheticization of loneliness all points to the bigger and universal question of life, its origins and meanings. This is not in the least surprising as the representation of the Japanese of his lonely self has, in many ways, been a product of philosophy. One need only contemplate a Japanese Zen garden, or sit under the autumn foliage alone in order to make sense of Japanese loneliness and why they consider it “serene sadness.” For some cultures, this may appear to be a masochistic act, but one can come closer to understanding the concept when one has grasped the meaning of “bittersweet,” of what might and could have been, or when one has experienced standing on top of a mountain at dusk or dawn—in silence, when there is no word to describe the innermost thoughts and feelings. In other words, to be really alone with oneself.
There is a Japanese in every culture, yet it took only the Japanese to elevate these feelings, sentiments, and “absurdities” of life to the realm of the beautiful. As in most cultures, people are in constant search of the umbilical chord that connects them to their origins, but in the end they will all go back to the land, as a Japanese farmer would to his farm. Perhaps, as the Japanese continue to search for themselves in their past, it will become clearer to us why the Japanese have chosen to find beauty in what is otherwise painful and emotionally troubling to many. If only for this, the Japanese can be considered undeniably unique. This interesting facet of the Japanese deserves more attention and careful analysis in order to gain a better understanding of this fascinating people, and perhaps of ourselves. As finally everything will end in death, the world can take a lesson from the Japanese even if only in gracefully and beautifully surrendering to the grand plan with the heart of a samurai.

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[1] Boye Lafayette De Mente, NTC’s Dictionary of Japan’s Cultural Code Words (Lincolnwood, Illinois: National Textbook Co., 1994), 310.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Edwin O. Reischauer, The Japanese ( Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1981), 10.



SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

De Mente, Boye. 1994. NTC’s Dictionary of Japan’s Cultural Code Words. Lincolnwood, Ill.: National Textbook Co.

Guterson, David. 1995. Snow Falling on Cedars. New York: Vintage Books.

Ishiguro, Kazuo. 1990. A Pale View of Hills. New York: Vintage Books.

Kawabata, Yasunari, trans. by Edward M. Seidensticker. 1970. The Sound of the Mountain. New York: Knopf.

Mishima, Yukio, trans. by Michael Gallagher. 1968. Spring Snow. New York: Pocket Books.

Nishitari, Keiji, trans. by Jon Van Bragt. 1982. Religion and Nothingness. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Reischauer, Edwin O. 1981. The Japanese. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press.

Sartre, Jean Paul, trans. by Hazel E. Barnes. 1956. Being and Nothingness. New York: Philosophical Library.