Posts
The costly fallout of tatemae and Japan's culture of deceit
There is an axiom in Japanese: uso mo hōben
— "lying is also a means to an end." It sums up the general attitude in
Japan of tolerance of — even justification for — not telling the truth.
First — defining "telling the truth" as
divulging the truth (not a lie), the whole truth (full disclosure) and
nothing but the truth (uncompounded with lies) — consider how lies are
deployed in everyday personal interactions.
Let's start with good old tatemae
(charitably translated as "pretense"). By basically saying something you
think the listener wants to hear, tatemae is, essentially, lying. That
becomes clearer when the term is contrasted with its antonym, honne, one's "true feelings and intentions."
Tatemae, however, goes beyond the "little
white lie," as it is often justified less by the fact you have avoided
hurting your listener's feelings, more by what you have gained from the
nondisclosure.
But what if you disclose your true feelings? That's often seen negatively, as baka shōjiki
("stupidly honest"): imprudent, naive, even immature. Skillful lying is
thus commendable — it's what adults in society learn to do.
Now extrapolate. What becomes of a society
that sees lying as a justifiably institutionalized practice? Things
break down. If everyone is expected to lie, who or what can you trust?
Consider law enforcement. Japan's lack of
even the expectation of full disclosure means, for example, there is
little right to know your accuser (e.g., in bullying cases). In criminal
procedure, the prosecution controls the flow of information to the
judge (right down to what evidence is admissible). And that's before we
get into how secretive and deceptive police interrogations are infamous
for being.
Consider jurisprudence. Witnesses are
expected to lie to such an extent that Japan's perjury laws are weak and
unenforceable. Civil court disputes (try going through, for example, a
divorce) often devolve into one-upmanship lying matches, flippantly
dismissed as "he-said, she-said" (mizukake-ron). And judges, as
seen in the Valentine case (Zeit Gist, Aug. 14, 2007), will assume an
eyewitness is being untruthful simply based on his/her attributes — in
this case because the witness was foreign like the plaintiff.
Consider administrative procedure. Official
documents and public responses attach organizational affiliations but
few actual names for accountability. Those official pronouncements, as
I'm sure many readers know due to arbitrary Immigration decisions, often
fall under bureaucratic "discretion" (sairyō), with little if
any right of appeal. And if you need further convincing, just look at
the loopholes built into Japan's Freedom of Information Act.
All this undermines trust of public
authority. Again, if bureaucrats (like everyone else) are not expected
to fully disclose, society gets a procuracy brazenly ducking
responsibility wherever possible through vague directives, masked
intentions and obfuscation.
This is true to some degree of all
bureaucracies, but the problem in Japan is that this nondisclosure goes
relatively unpunished. Our media watchdogs, entrusted with upholding
public accountability, often get distracted or corrupted by editorial or
press club conceits. Or, giving reporters the benefit of the doubt,
it's hard to know which lyin' rat to pounce on first when there are so
many. Or journalists themselves engage in barely researched,
unscientific or sensationalistic reporting, undermining their
trustworthiness as information sources.
Public trust, once lost, is hard to regain.
In such a climate, even if the government does tell the truth, people
may still disbelieve it. Take, for example, the Environment Ministry's
recent strong-arming of regional waste management centers to process
Tohoku disaster ruins: Many doubt government claims that radioactive
rubble will not proliferate nationwide, fanning fears that the nuclear
power industry is trying to make itself less culpable for concentrated
radiation poisoning by irradiating everyone (see www.debito.org/?p=954!)!
Apologists would say (and they do) that lying
is what everyone in positions of power does worldwide, since power
itself corrupts. But there is the matter of degree, and in Japan there
is scant reward for telling the truth — and ineffective laws to protect
whistle-blowers. It took a brave foreign CEO at Olympus Corp. to come
out recently about corporate malfeasance; he was promptly sacked,
reportedly due to his incompatibility with "traditional Japanese
practices." Yes, quite so.
This tradition of lying has a long history.
The Japanese Empire's deception about its treatment of prisoners of war
and noncombatants under the Geneva Conventions (e.g., the Bataan Death
March, medical experiments under Unit 731), not to mention lying to its
own civilians about how they would be treated if captured by the Allies,
led to some of the most horrifying mass murder-suicides of Japanese,
dehumanizing reprisals by their enemies, and war without mercy in World
War II's Pacific Theater.
Suppressing those historical records, thanks
to cowardice among Japan's publishers, reinforced by a general lack of
"obligation to the truth," has enabled a clique of revisionists to deny
responsibility for Japan's past atrocities, alienating it from its
neighbors in a globalizing world.
Even today, in light of Fukushima, Japan's
development into a modern and democratic society seems to have barely
scratched the surface of this culture of deceit. Government omerta and omission kept the nation ignorant about the most basic facts — including reactor meltdowns — for months!
Let me illustrate the effects of socially
accepted lying another way: What is considered the most untrustworthy of
professions? Politics, of course. Because politicians are seen as
personalities who, for their own survival, appeal to people by saying
what they want to hear, regardless of their own true feelings.
That is precisely what tatemae does to
Japanese society. It makes everyone into a politician, changing the
truth to suit their audience, garner support or deflect criticism and
responsibility.
Again, uso mo hoben: As long as you
accomplish your goals, lying is a means to an end. The incentives in
Japan are clear. Few will tell the truth if they will be punished for
doing so, moreover rarely punished for not doing so.
No doubt a culturally relativistic observer
would attempt to justify this destructive dynamic by citing red herrings
and excuses (themselves tatemae) such as "conflict avoidance,"
"maintaining group harmony," "saving face," or whatever. Regardless, the
awful truth is: "We Japanese don't lie. We just don't tell the truth."
This is not sustainable. Post-Fukushima Japan
must realize that public acceptance of lying got us into this
radioactive mess in the first place.
For radiation has no media cycle. It lingers
and poisons the land and food chain. Statistics may be obfuscated or
suppressed as usual. But radiation's half-life is longer than the
typical attention span or sustainable degree of public outrage.
As the public — possibly worldwide — sickens over time, the truth will leak out.
Debito Arudou's novel "In Appropriate" is now on sale (www.debito.org/inappropriate.html) Just Be Cause appears on the first Community Page of the month. Twitter @arudoudebito. Send comments on this issue to community@japantimes.co.jp
No comments:
Post a Comment