Japan's path from
Within a
imitator to world-
beating innovator
By FLORIAN COULMAS
CULTURE AND
TECHNOLOGY IN MODERN
JAPAN, edited by Ian Inkster
and Fumihiko Satofuka.
London/New York: Tauris,
2000, 169 pp., unpriced.
The relationship between culture
and technology is complex and
multilayered. Technological
innovations that had profound
effects on culture are easy to find:
Think of the printing press and the
automobile.
Seeing how things work in the
opposite direction is more difficult,
if only because culture is such an
all-encompassing and diffuse
notion. After all, technology itself
can be regarded as a part of
culture. What, then, is cause and
what effect?
We must investigate the interaction
of technology and culture if we
want to advance our understanding
of the development and economic
performance of nations.
This book is a collection of articles
examining features of Japanese
culture and their significance for
industrial growth in such critical
periods as the Meiji era and post-
World War II reconstruction. During
the eventful Meiji decades, Japan
proved remarkably capable of
meeting the challenges of
modernization by adopting
Western technologies.
relatively short time, it became one
of the world's major suppliers of
new technologies. Are there
specific cultural features that are
conducive to this outstanding
achievement?
It is well-known that Japanese
companies put a lot of emphasis
on creating and maintaining
company cultures; it is also known
that these corporate cultures differ
significantly from each other. Is
Japanese national culture uniform
enough to serve as a common
framework for these variable
company cultures? This is one of
the questions tackled in this book.
A catchword that supposedly
characterizes a Japanese
propensity that appears time and
again in the book's eight chapters
is "fusion." Japanese culture is
said to encourage or facilitate the
merging of homegrown and
imported technologies, of
traditional and new procedures.
For a long time, Japan was a net
importer of patents. The strength of
Japanese industry was seen as
imitating and improving upon
technologies developed elsewhere.
However, as one of the
contributing authors notes, "about
100 years after 1868 imitative
activity had reached exhaustion."
Transition from imitation to
development through creativity
then became inevitable.
Fusion, several authors
emphasize, is Japan's forte.
Recognizing the potential of
combining two existing
technologies to form something
new is surely an aspect of
creativity. Examples such as the
connection of ceramics and
industrial chemicals and the linking
of mechanical technology and
electronics to create "mechatronic"
machine tools and robots are cited
repeatedly. They provide
something like a red thread
throughout an otherwise rather
heterogeneous book; in fact, in
terms of "fusion," little is
accomplished.
In a sense, the papers are like
variations on this theme.
Presumably there were guidelines
to make sure that the contributions
really were variations on a
common theme. But there was no
director to turn them into anything
resembling a coordinated
performance. The chapters are
extremely diverse, not only in
content, but also in quality. They
range from the carefully reasoned
research report on a specific
project to the repetition of
generalities and stereotypes that
one might have supposed were
buried long ago, together with
"nihonjinron."
Yet it seems as if this funeral never
happened, since we are informed
of "the unique and homogenous
Japanese society," that the
Japanese prefer "intuition over
logical thinking," that in Japan
"disagreement is never expressed
directly as this is offensive" -- in
fact, the whole range of stale
cliches.
Even racist precepts occasionally
surface -- for example, when one
of the authors, who cannot be
suspected of having any
knowledge of neuroscience, bluntly
asserts without a shred of
evidence that, as opposed to
Western left-brainers, the
Japanese rely on the right cerebral
hemisphere. "New technology
culture: the fusion of East and
West, right and left": Such is the
flabbergasting upshot of this
exercise in banality.
On the other hand, there are some
well-organized and well-thought-
out papers that offer new insights
about "innovation avenues." At
every historical juncture and,
perhaps, in every country, the
paths toward innovation are
charted between market forces
and the endogenous forces of
national cultures. The Japanese
path remains an object of curiosity
and fascination in the social
sciences, because more than a
century after the first push toward
modernization it remains distinct.
Some insights about this path can
be gained from this book, which
would have benefited from a firmer
editorial hand. This reader gets the
impression, but almost hesitates to
say so, that culturally motivated
considerations stood in the way of
enforcing universal standards of
writing, which is, after all, the
technology of the mind.
Florian Coulmas is professor of
Japanese studies at Duisburg
University