Japanese Financial Crisis

I have been reading several articles on the impact of the financial crisis in Japan.

http://www.economicshelp.org/2008/10/japanese-financial-crisis.html

http://www.heritage.org/Research/AsiaandthePacific/BG1530.cfm

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94876656

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20090308x1.html

Lookig at the last, and most recent article of these it makes me think that:

I experienced the 1995 crisis during fieldwork and somehow, some of the accounts, specially accounts narrated from an 'economic' point of view do not always make sense.

The one that I enjoyed and struggled with was the most recent one on accountability and acknowledgment of 'responsability', civil or otherwise. There are lots of many good things in the article, it is a shame that the concluding paragraph contains a slight misconception. More anthropology (specially economic anthropology of exchange and production) could be used to address some of these issues.

On crises management: had it been a crisis management, and had it been managed as a crisis-management it would have had disastrous consequences..and it did.

How to get there in Japan:

Try getting to some address you have never been to in Japan. At the point you get lost ask people, those who kindly will not walk away because they know in advance they probably don't know the answer to the question you are going to make, will look at you with embarrasment. Most likely, they will not know the place where you are going. "Not knowing" is never an excuse, you get always giving directions anyway, trhuthful attempts to 'take you there'. Obviously, if you follow the polite directions you always get to the wrong place. It will be very difficult for people to tell you they don't know it, they can 'risk' telling you about it because it is nto a risk, in the 'western' sense of the word (see Mary Douglas on Risk in Japan). You will end up lost, in the wrong place. Way to go around? Don't go asking strangers, don't bother them in their busy lives, you should know better than to do that...so my friends responded to me. In Japan the person who is sending you to the address you are going will make you a map, a map you can then give to a taxi driver, whom otherwise would be equally lost. I collected so many maps in Japan, I treasure them, small maps written in a piece of paper, in corners of a magazine, in a napkin, ways to navigate...

I am using this metaphor for understanding the economic crisis, why Japan navigate it with some beliefs and not others, yes, in simplified way, that is, because understanding the crisis as a whole is far too complex in formal economic terms [I am not interested in the kind of reductions of complexity that formal economic narratives will make of this period, I am interested on how the people find they way around though].

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About social responsability 'from a social point of view' says a voice in the article: these kinds of acknowledgements also happen in 'western' contexts, and sometimes it also fails in 'Japanese' contexts as the article brings out well.

Claiming that Japanese are more 'in tune' with the 'social point of view' of things is something ethnographers and people that study contemporary Japan should be cautious about. Whilst it is not always the case, some of these expressions are a kind of 'nihonjinron' and a kind of accentuating of exclusive cultural uniqueness.

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Apologising is common in every-day life in Japan, as it is to thank and to appreciate other people's feelings. It is also common, when driving on motorways, that these social prerrogatives are rarely met. People do not apologise for overtaking, and certainly hit-&-crash are common and underly a significative problem with the theme of the article about where to locate 'accountability' for 'failure', 'mistakes', and largely conceptualised 'inauspicious' occurences.

It is also the case that the corporate instances of 'us-family' and taking care of employees through their life time, a topic in the literature in 1980s and early 1990s, is not longer the case. Corporations, business, firms are and will become ruthless about firing and reducing 'kinship-like' kind of social dependency from employees.

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The conclusion, although I understand the point is making, is not a complete picture of judicial system in Japan, it is the easiest to understand though.

During fieldwork I was involved in several cases that involved the judicial system. In all of these cases there was no settlement outside court and the courts overtuned claims very easily. Companies can buy settlements, not in the sense of an out-of-court (there are plenty of out-of-court settlements, not denying this) settlement, but in the fact that those cases that are run through courts and set precedents are those that are often won by companies rather than individuals. It is better for an individual, if allowed to, to settle out of court because in court, he or she will rarely win the case. When in court, the cases I have experienced, it is very difficult for small groups and individuals to have access to the kinds of information and resolution strategies that would enable them to win such cases. It does not mean they will resolve them out of court either. It may happen but it may not always be possible for individuals to reach that far.

For the ordinary Japanese person courts and legal procedures, and most functions of governmentality is felt very removed from the self. If there was something that all my informants, time after time would comment is how "distant" individuals were from politics, how innacessible to navigate the space between individual concerns and policy making.

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I wished more analyis would worry with Douglas' article on Risk (Risk and Blame) in Japan. In the absence of 'risk' the two key concepts in Japan, 'abunai' (danger) and 'anzen' (safe) correlate many positions of social responsability.

I have recalled this story many times, so just once more. During one of my fieldwork periods in Japan I happened to pucture one of my car's tyre. I was a student with little money, no income, no job, only doing research with magre savings, no grant either. I couldn't afford buying a spare tyre. I went about without one for few days. As I told my friends it create a near abhorrent feeling in them. I was 'abunai', it was soo dangerous! It wasn't for me, I was taking a risk. I wasn't taking a risk for my informants, I was just playing with danger, big time. In the absence of a calculation of risk, from my point of view, I learned a valuable lesson about how accountability is formed. One must ensure that one does not enter situations of 'abunai' as conceptually defined within the Japanese society and context. For some people, abunai is (pre-)treated with doing the correct actions of seeking auspicious protection, from car talismans, blessings, visits to temples, and donations of gifts.

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I remember a lesson from the crisis. Regardless of the crisis Japanese people trusted cash, if cash circulated, if you had cash in your 'pockets' you were pre-empting and avoiding symbolic dangers to do with money and exchange. It sank like a ship, the Japanese financial core, not only because of interelated globalised conditions, but also because it was a symbolic danger that could not be averted despite the fact that symbolically, all had been done to avert it. My informants believed it could not happen, even after the experience of the 1995 bubble, finances would not enter an 'abunai' situation...

Another lesson from studying gift exchange, when dealing with inauspicious conditions and if ('pre-emptive strikes' through ritual action can not be put into place, if it is too late) one starts looking for scapegoats. Scapegoating is common to many societies dealing with inauspicious chains of exchange, it is a specific polititical situation. It is a way to manage how to remove specific inauspicious instances that kinship networks (fictional kinship included)can not resolve from within and specific political management of inauspicious accumulative exchange between groups.

will return to the other articles later....