The 7 Highly Ineffective Habits of the Japanese Education System

I'm an athiest, and usually when I have a crisis of faith and panick that I might be pissing off some omnipotent being that is concerned whether I believe in him or not but not concerned enough to go to any effort to convince me of his existence... the remedy I find is just to think a little.

I think the only faith I observe as being able to crop up anywhere anywhen in anycommunity is atheism. Maybe pantheism, but get any more specific or detailed you get into something I just can't see people spontaneously discovering those faiths. And people don't/didn't. The Inca had monotheism before the Spanish bought Catholicism, and right or wrong their god that they discovered was not Catholocism.

There's certain beliefs right, that need no reinforcement, they get reinforced every day. Like gravity, you may not understand it, nobody does - but you don't need to go to a meeting once a week to get told that if you jump off a cliff gravity will punish you. Whereas if you believe that lightning (or a tsunami) will strike you for being a homosexual you do need to go to a meeting once a week where a person has dedicated their life, their entire life's worth of energy to reinforcing this belief because it is the only way that such a belief can persist because lightning and tsunamis certainly aren't going to reinforce it for you.

That said, nationalism to me is just another form of belief that needs constant reinforcement. You take any two people on the planet and throw them down anywhere on the planet and they will act... like people. They will eat, sleep, shit, talk and with a little luck probably bone. They will show generosity and selfishness, they will get frustrated, fall in love and where all their emotions on their face. And no matter which two people you grab (provided they both have faces) they will be able to read each others faces and understand the tones in the voice.

The point being that what binds us together will always be greater than what sets us apart. My oft cited 'best response ever' to my question at the intercultural forum held in melbourne a couple of years ago when I asked how some 'new Australians' felt when Australia day rolled around and Today Tonight and A Current Affair do stories on 'Australian Mateship' and shit and one panelist said 'there's nothing Australian about being decent and polite and a human being'.

Nationalism always makes me angry, no matter when it shows up like on 'Black Saturday' when the news anchors started talking about how great Australians were for giving to charities and helping out people effected by hardship. Here's a news story: Everybody, everywhere helps out in times of hardship. Human beings are social animals.

Manager Tools have a great podcast about 'Cultural Diversity' that addresses the damage of generalisations.

But there is one 'culture' you will come across from time to time if you live in the world that does come across as particularly unique but in practice is actually a 'system' that is reinforced in one of the most energy intensive wastes of time ever: The Japanese Education System.

Here's a rundown:

1. Nakama: Any human being meeting another human being is going to approach a stranger warily, and probably in most circumstances actively try to determine wether they can trust them or not. Probably stemming from Humanity's early evolution where it was hard to tell whether coming across another tribe was going to bring competitors for food or fresh breeding partners to stave off inbreeding.
The Japanese education system reinforces a concept of 'Nakama' or groupism, actively. Many teachers have been caught up in the bullying of the students, all comonly stemming from 'Nakama hazure' lit. 'cut off from the group' these games teach children that their very life depends on group membership and it flows through to every centrally organised manner of Japanese life. 'Kaisha' the word for company is a reversal of the characters for 'Shakai' and company life reflects Japanese society in the same way. You share the fate of your group or 'tribe' people are 'ie' (house/tribe) or 'soto' (outsiders). There is no grey area.
Classes are organised into tribes so that for the most part you will follow your class through high-school with very little mix up. Softball teams and baseball teams study together, eat together, practice together and sleep together.
The net result is that by design Japan has isolated itself as a country and has become 'Nakama Hazure'. Oh the bitter irony. But is their any other country that has more willing devotees, fanboys and girls from all over the world besotted with the cutesy comic culture and 'crazy' fashions that just think Japan is the bees knees and study the language, apply for teaching positions and go on rotary exchanges arms wide looking for Japanese friends and... they get pushed aside, given a 'gaijin' (outsider) card to produce for the police at any time on demand, denied loans at 0% after 20 years residence, denied citizenship, their children labelled 'halfs' and then treated 'specially' or 'differently' from the pure Japanese. As an outsider you are never permitted entry into any existing 'Nakama' and it stands to reason (since it was taught through Juniour and Senior schooling) that you as an outsider are not to be trusted, not to be treated respectfully (just condescendingly 'honored' as a visitor for your life).
My experience has been that the older a person in Japan up to say 60-80 the more they are just a human being like everyone else and I think its the distance they have lived from the education system. It is ironically the younger friends of mine that are less progressive often than their parents, that you feel the real push to stay out of their inner circle as 'you can never be one of the Nakama'.
Nakama is ineffective because it A) invariably leads to xenophobic behaviour. B) inveriably envolves bullying in its reinforcement.

2. Nihonjinron: The laughable thing about Nihonjinron - the study of 'Japaneseness' is that it tells every Japanese kid educated in Japanese schools that Japanese people are homogenous. Which annoyingly qualifies every Japanese kid as an expert in being Japanese, because it in effect states that 'If Japanese people are homogenous, then a sample of 1 is statistically significant for determining Japanese behaviours, I am Japanese, therefore I am a statistically significant sample of Japanese people to infer the behaviour of all other Japanese people from.' Which shows up as 'It's not Japanese.' and 'This is the Japanese way.'
But what people are really saying is 'I'm not like that' and 'I like doing this' the former set of statements are almost certainly going to be false, where the later sets are unequivocally true.
Nihonjinron is ineffective because it A) contributes to the 'Nakama' obsession. B) Is very easy to invalidate, and refute (given the large size of possible exceptions to any hard and fast rule about Japaneseness). C) is just plain racist.
Nihonjinron has been used to try and ban foreign ski-gear companies because Japan has 'special snow' and justify blocking US Beef because 'Japanese intestines can't digest it' the whole study is just a waste of fucking time.

That's really it, and they both follow on from eachother, but they are responsible for pretty much everything that through my long affair with Japan has ever made me go 'that's it I FUCKING HATE this country.' even though rationally I know countries and cultures only exist in the mind.
I could talk about the coupling of cleanliness and beauty and how it has destroyed nature and shit, but there are much better books on the topic.

This post could have gone much quicker if I'd just written:

'Japanese schools teach Japanese kids they are in a gang, and when you are in a gang you can't trust anyone outside the gang, and if you are thrown out of the gang then nobody else will trust you and they shouldn't and you are better off dead. AND you are all part of one uber gang - the Japan gang and every member is a member because they are the same but we are unique because their is no such thing as a gang called 'Humanity' there are just Japan gang members and outsiders.'

Can you see the trouble this could cause?