Ethics and behavior in Japan's traditional
last centoquarant'anni were many Westerners who for various reasons, have come in contact with the world of Japan, both cultural and commercial exchanges, both for reasons of political or military. The first witnesses of these meetings were reported to have met people polite and courteous, respectful and treats, but also very combative, tough, and able to fight until the ultimate sacrifice. In addition, the manners and customs of the Japanese people in telling passengers who had been in Japan before the Second World War, were often presented as strange, incomprehensible, difficult to place in our cultural world.
reads, for example, what he wrote Enrico Hillyer Giglioli the Italian explorer, who was in Japan in 1866, in the historic voyage of the Magenta ship around the World: "For the Japanese seem to treat occult law, in many cases, in a sense quite opposite to what we we have the habit of believing the best and most rational: they write down, from right to left, perpendicular lines, instead of horizontal in this way, when they begin their books are our purpose. Their locks, though imitated from ours, were all built in a way that closed by turning the key from left to right. In that country I have seen adults and old to fly kites, while boys remained spectators. (...) The Japanese mounted their horses on the side where we go down, while the horses were in stables from the corner where we put the head and the bells were attached to all their gear behind, and not on the front of the body. The ladies of Japan blackened, instead of maintaining white, the gold teeth, and I could go. "(1)
Nearly forty years later things had not changed substantially, as is evident from the story of an exceptional witness The marine engineer Salvatore de Vincentiis Positano, which in 1904 had given the Admiralty Japanese two battleships produced by Ansaldo Shipyards, the Kasuga and Nisshin, initially intended to Argentina but later sold secretly to Japan.
De Vincentiis, initially not knowing the Japanese world in depth, it was struck by the differences between the behavior of Japanese and Westerners. For example, after meeting a wealthy industrialist in Tokyo, he became a friend and began to attend his family: "One day he invited me to join him on stage, announcing that he would lead his wife. We walked all three together, at the entrance, and I stepped aside to pass the lady, who flatly refused. The husband said, without ceremony, the woman has no right of man. Then he added that it was a bad thing that their wives knew compared to what the woman is surrounded in Europe. " Called home from the rich man, says that "I noticed that the wife and servants, to come down to us, were a long way and walked on a strip of canvas (...). I asked for an explanation and surprised the landlord with stiffness axiomatic, he replied \u0026lt;You, me, all respectable people, pass this way, but women should not put your foot where puts the master>. I protested with great energy to the replicas of his friend, who claimed to not have respect for women ". (2) anecdotal
These facts allow us to understand how difficult it is for a Westerner to deal with customs and traditions very different from their own. This is true especially when one tries to grasp the ethics of a people that has developed along lines largely different from ours.
Japanese ethics, the result of a different worldview
In the Western world the basic concept from which philosophical speculation is that matter: there are things really as they are made of substance. This substance and its characteristics, for example, allow a human being to have such characteristics that may be similar to others (belonging, for example, to the same species), but at the same time stand out from anything else: it is, practice, a well-defined, beyond its relationship with the surrounding world. All our traditional view of the world starts from here, and gives an interpretation of man, after all, static.
In China, there has developed a very different view of this concept: do not know what something is in itself, what matters is your current state of transformation. In practice, everything is a process of transformation and all I can say is that it is located in one or another stage of this process. This means that it is determined only in relation to something, such as the passage from one state to another, or the relationship between these states. We are faced with an interpretation of dynamic and relativistic.
the typical structure of Japanese society is the result of a long cultural process characterized by very different contributions: the primitive code of loyalty related to the clan of ancient times, founded and passed down from the first mythological texts, we passed through the absorption of Chinese culture, a code of conduct marked imprint of Confucian, where everything has meaning only if it has its rightful place in a structure. I exist, I sense, truly live, if they are related to something else, if they are "a function", not because they are equipped with a life of its own, independent from the environment. If we remove someone from her "rightful place", we face an individual no sense, because disconnected from the hierarchical system in which everything has its true meaning.
The Confucian ethical system is based on five basic relationships: ruler / subject, father / son, elder brother / younger brother, husband / wife, friend / friend. Except in the latter case, the relationship is strictly hierarchical, so the second element of the report is subject to the first. Are created among the members of this structure, the relations that characterize each member (who has also taken its "rightful place") and determine its behavior.
An example of recently
One thing that occurred during World War II shows a completely different way of assessing the behavior that was typical of the Japanese consciousness. Towards the end of the war, there were many to believe that was necessary to defeat Japan's invasion of the archipelago, with apocalyptic visions of defense at all costs by the local population and appalling losses on the American side (there was talk of a few million of soldiers killed or wounded). Japan, which still had several well-armed organized and aggressive on some fronts, but surrendered at the same time that the Tenno, the Emperor, he read his message of surrender. The country moved from war to peace within a second then immediately stopped firing. Except in very rare cases (missing troops, who were unaware of the surrender, or a few diehard fanatics) troops, who fought with incredible dedication in the name of the Emperor, laid down their arms and began to treat the Americans with the same respect and deference given to the allies that they would ever.
Undoubtedly this behavior left many stunned, but not the one who knew the value system of the Japanese. The absolute value of the word of the Emperor required that his order was executed at all costs, and so was he, and the Japanese laid down their arms, while fully respecting the first of the Confucian hierarchical relationships of which it was, the one between sovereign and subject.
The code of ethics of the traditional Japanese
The structure of the five fundamental relationships of Confucian tradition of ancient origin but extended in an almost maniacal in all aspects of social life, especially in the Tokugawa period (1603-1867), when Neo-Confucianism became the state religion, may be given as a lattice over the entire Japanese society structured so hard. These relationships involve mutual obligations, which are called "on", and determine the entire life of the Japanese. They, as in less restrictive measure (especially among the younger generations), exercise influence even today.
When a Japanese born, the very fact of being in the world, against a debt twice: against the Emperor, whose role was to act as a protection of Japan, according to its function as an intermediary between the country and the gods, and against their parents, who had given birth. According to the Japanese view, these debts were so great that they could never be fully repaid, so they justified the extreme measures taken by the people: for example in the case of the bomber, who sacrifices his life to serving the Emperor (then trying to pay off the huge debts incurred at birth) or in that of the child who accepts, without any opposition, the imposition of the mother to divorce his wife . It is, in these cases, the practice of payment, even if only partial, of course, call gimu, against the Emperor and parents. In the first case, the gimu called chu, in the second, ko.
addition to this type of debt, which could be called natural because they are not chosen by the individual, but acquired by the mere fact of its existence, there are other debts, which are normally contracts in a more or less voluntary: this is called on the contract against his teacher, your boss, friends or acquaintances from whom we received the benefits of various kinds. The action undertaken to repay this debt constitute the so-called revolutions.
A typical example is that of the samurai turns against his master (for example, a daimyo), whose relations are based on the feudal system of vassalage. The Lord protects and maintains the samurai, the samurai protects his master, even at the cost of their lives. Then, when the lord is killed, it is for the samurai and avenge him, if it can not to accept the idea of serving another master, taking his own life, as did the marshal Nogi in 1912. Marshal Nogi, winner of the Russians in Port Arthur and Tsushima, he would not survive to their emperor, Meiji Tennō, and killed himself quoting the story of the 47 Ronin, "A samurai does not serve two masters." Indeed, it was inconceivable for Japan's traditional refusal to pay its debt, increasing weight, the greater was the obligation itself. Chu, the task of repaying the debt with the Emperor (and therefore also against the law and the country) was so strong as to dominate on everything and conduct in the war it was determined, in any way. The soldiers fought valiantly to the end, did not give (the percentage of Japanese soldiers surrendered were incredibly low, and most had been captured because unconscious), and if the chapter had committed suicide.
E 'which is also the reason behind the terrible treatment meted out by Japanese soldiers for prisoners of war since they were defeated, they, that they should kill himself or die fighting, they were considered dead to the world, larvae that had no right to be treated with contempt. Something quite different the spirit that animated the countries applying the Geneva Convention.
A similar form of debt was contracted by the Japanese also against his name, he should not ever become the object of ridicule or contempt, to support the cost of any sacrifice. It contained three fundamental duties: the duty of vengeance for the dishonor of an insult or an accusation of failure, the duty not to admit failure or ignorance, the duty to respect the rules of Japanese society of convenience. (3) An extreme example is represented by the person who was in debt and could not settle its debt: as a tradition, beginning New Year, the debtor insolvent, unable to keep his word, offered his own life, committing suicide. A similar suicide was considered honorable, and, as such, avoided the disgrace of failing to pay.
social relations based on the burden and speed
Now you can understand why it is so difficult for the traditional Japan, finding the right type of interaction between different people: on the one hand, it is things easier, because relationships are established in detail in the very structure of society, as in the case of the various social strata of the Tokugawa era, coded at the point of forcing members to wear certain clothes, to behave according to specific codes, and even buy games for their children of a different type than the children belonging to another stratum. Second, it is all very difficult, because every action, there is, as we say today, a reaction which should be at least equal magnitude. If someone loses an object on the street, and someone else picked it up and returned to those who had lost, the person who received the benefit from a stranger was uncomfortable, because the act done by the latter required the person & rsquo ; obligation to repay the benefit, which was quite difficult to do against those who do not know. This was not proper to make valuable gifts to persons with whom the relationship did not justify such an act: it is an obligation imposed on them that could be considered excessive bear, but that would still have had to reciprocate adequately binding, if necessary throughout life, the need to repay.
Guilt and shame
At this point we understand it is linked to the claims at the beginning, namely that the ethical approach of the Eastern influenced by traditional thinking Confucianism and was a dynamic and relevant to the specific situation in which they had come to find. Therefore we will not have an ethics based on eternal principles of good and evil, with the possibility for a person to feel a sense of guilt for improper conduct made, but still secret, unknown to everyone, but we will have, on the contrary, ethics based on a deep sense of shame for having done something that arouses the disapproval of those with whom we relate. This hierarchical system requires that each behave according to what is expected and demanded their "rightful place" in the structure itself, and any action taken against this results automatically in the social disapproval, the shame and the sense of shame that led to extreme acts that we have presented. (4)
Notes 1. Enrico Hillyer Giglioli, Japan lost, Luni, Milano 2004.
2. Salvatore de Vincentiis Positano, on the outskirts of the century Japan, Travel & Adventures, Milan 1990.
3. Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, published by Dedalus, Milan 1993b
4. An article that appeared in the magazine Arts of the East, March-April 2006.
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