.
Given the slew of publications trying to deconstruct the socio-economic malaise of this mysterious little island, it seems almost de rigueur to have something negative to say about Japan and cite an example or two. Kerr's Dogs and Demons will equip you with a lot of such satisfying trivia. But where this book out stands out is in its focus on the vacuity of Japan's post-modern culture instead of the tired discussions about Japan-US trade frictions or the incompetence of domestic government and indigenous manufacturers. With a discussion that veers largely around the idiosynchratic construction industry in Japan (a key favorite among Japan bashers and perhaps deservedly so) Kerr argues that "culture" is the underlying source of Japan's malaise some hundred years after sociologist Max Weber first tried to explain away China's backwardness in a similar fashion.
As the author explains, "Dogs and Demons" (from a Chinese metaphor) paints the simple things of everyday life that the West has taken for granted (Dogs) but are seemingly difficult for Japan -- e.g., sign control, the planting and tending of trees, zoning, burial of electric wires, protection of historic neighborhoods, comfortable and attractive residential design, environmentally friendly resorts. The difficult things (Demons) are ostentatious and expensive surface statements, symbolic gestures rather than substantive commitments -- e.g., museums without artwork, monuments without honor, roads without destinations.
Although somewhat wry, this is a well argued and a very readable tirade on what Kerr sees as Japan's dysfunctional value-system, a land fraught with contradictions and mis-spent opportunities -- "nature lovers" who concrete over their rivers and sea-shores, financial regulators who mismanage waning stock markets, technocrats who fail to warn against preventable disasters, and the world's largest creditor nation concealing a national debt approaching 150% of GDP. I found the keen observations and little-known facts that crop up along the way quite entertaining.
Some minor slip-ups are easily glossed over by the forgiving reader -- e.g., "The Prince of Egypt" was not from Disney but from Dreamworks. But sweeping generalizations are more troubling. For example, Mr. Kerr tells us "Japan is the world's only advanced country that does not bury telephone cables and electric lines." The idea is to show that Japan's city-planning lags behind practice in most Western cities. A little research will tell you that Tokyo's twenty three wards boast 90% of its transmission and 42% of its distribution cables buried under ground, while London only records about 43%. No mention also is made of the land here being earthquake prone which definitely has a big hand in the kind of construction that is undertaken.
In discussing how Japan's insular values have isolated its cinema, Mr. Kerr also declares that "there has never been a successful joint Western-Japanese or Asian-Japanese film, or any highly regarded Japanese film set in another country. But this is another example where hyperbole crowds out easily accessible information. "Tora! Tora! Tora!," a 1970 American and Japanese co-production that meticulously dramatizes the attack on Pearl Harbor, garnered an Academy Award for best visual effects in film and was voted one of the 10 best films of the year by the National Board of Review Awards. There have since been countless dubbed versions of anime movies (and I mean the Sen to Chihiro/Spirited Away genre) from Japan that have done well with international audiences. "Sukiyaki" (Ue o muite in Japanese) was among the several songs that garnered international recognition because of cross-border deals.
Indeed, the intriguing question that arises as one reads this book is if Mr. Kerr overdid his murky brush. It seems that for the longtime Japan resident and Oxford-educated businessman, it is not enough that Japan faces dire economic straits -- thanks in part to weak political institutions -- but the entire country has to be seen as "completely backwards, childish and incompetent". This tendency of thought is my main my gripe with this book and in fact with a lot of the current thinking on Japan, where "well-meaning" authors seeking to correct the faulty "Japan Inc." imagery of the past two decades counter with the opposite extreme.
Sooner or later, an astute reader is left wondering: How acceptable would a book portraying modern-day Argentina be if it only described "the culture" in terms of massive foreign-currency debts, supposed deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, AIDS, street children, authoritarianism, business fraud, polluted beaches and inland areas, male chauvinism, a patriarchal class system and latent racial discrimination? While each of these subjects offers us shades of the Argentinian mosaic, they hardly provide a full picture of the country.
So it is with "Dogs and Demons" -- a book that is definitely worth the buck (and I recommend it) because it is passionately entertaining and highly informative, but a slightly imbalanced read...
