Opinion What I'll miss about Japan By Juliet Hindell	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
日本を離れたとき、懐かしく思うのは・・・ 不況に伴うリストラ、就職率の低下などで日本の将来には明るさが見えてこない。ほかの国だったら暴動が起こってもおかしくない状況に国民は耐えている。6年間住んだこの国を離れ、香港へ行くことになった筆者が日本の強さと弱さ、美しさについて語る。

This is my last opinion piece for Shukan ST. In June, I will be leaving Tokyo for Hong Kong. It is a bittersweet time for me. I have lived in Japan for the past six years, much of it as the bureau chief for the BBC. The contrast between what I reported about Japan and what it is like to live here could not be starker.

Japan, the foreign media relentlessly reports, has lost its way after its miraculous post-World War II recovery. A new generation of 20-somethings face a bleak future — getting any job, much less a rewarding one, is increasingly difficult. Worse, unlike their compatriots in Europe, China or North America, there is little hope of taking a brilliant entrepreneurial dream and becoming the next Bill Gates.

Not since the last days of the Soviet Union has a nation presented such a hopeless, dreary future to its young. But instead of causing havoc, the young skirt reality, absorbed in what seems like a never-ending keitai conversation as they wait for nothing to happen on corners in Harajuku, Hokkaido and Hiroshima.

Meanwhile, their parents' generation precariously clings to the fruits of prosperity that they worked so hard to achieve. With each corporate belt tightening, allowances are cut and the dream of a new set of golf clubs grows even more distant. The unforgiving forces of deflation and bad debt mean not only that once-proud companies are now bankrupt, but the value of homes are a fraction of their original cost.

Most cultures would have cracked under such pressure. But Japan's greatest weakness is its greatest strength: The nation's ability to gaman through even the toughest times by simply refusing to change. The prevalence of the shoganai attitude is both a source of apathy and social stability. Despite the occasional horror story, Japan is as safe as it was the day I arrived.

This reminds me of a story told by a foreign reporter who arrived in Tokyo just after the end of World War II. The reporter stood in awe as he watched a train traverse through the rubble between Yokohama and Tokyo, packed with early morning commuters. Where are they going? To what job, he wondered.

The portrait of terminal gloom is at odds with the Japan I live in, which is a Japan that has an almost genetic obsession with orderliness. This is one of the things that I will miss in chaotic Hong Kong. In Japan, I feel sure that no matter how bad things get, the trains will run on time. It is knowing that just as road construction crews will appear in early March to replace curbs on already perfect roads, cherry blossoms will bloom in April.

It is knowing that at five o'clock, music will tinkle over loudspeakers, reminding children to go home. It is the comforting knowledge that despite troubles, restaurant masters will create the finest seasonal ryotei-offering and mama-sans will elegantly offer whiskey poured over hand-chiseled ice cubes.

But even if that orderliness is eroded by economic hardship, I know that what I will miss even more will always be here when I come back to visit — the intensely unique aestheticism of Japan. You do not have to be a Zen master to be awe-struck by things wabi-sabi, to marvel at a polished cedar sushi counter or an elegant temple in a quiet pine forest on Sado Island. That may be "old Japan" to many, but I predict that this aestheticism will endure, whatever the economic future may bring.

Shukan ST: March 29, 2002

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