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Japan: A Culture in Transition
| Article
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11412 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1986 |
6,484 Words |
| Author
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Rene Peritz
Rene Peritz is a professor of political science at Slippery
Rock University in Pennsylvania, specializing in comparative
politics. He has spent the last several years writing on East
Asian affairs. |
Harumi, twenty-six, disembarked from a Northwest Orient flight from Tokyo to Minneapolis. A violist, she had enrolled at the University of Minnesota to study music education. It was her first trip abroad.
Masao, thirty-two, a marine biologist, was waiting for her in the arrival lounge. It was to be the first meeting between the two. They had only indirectly heard of each other and neither one knew what to expect on this first encounter. Each wore an identifying scarf.
She approached him: "I am Harumi. Somehow our mothers arranged our marriage. Konnichiwa [good afternoon]." He: "Konnichiwa. Are you tired? Did you have a good flight?"
The formal marriage lasted not quite a year. The Japanese court granted a divorce in 1985 on grounds of incompatibility.
The ways Harumi and Masao came together and separated are instructive, for much of contemporary Japan is reflected in this unhappy relationship. Furthermore, even though World War II ended nearly half a century ago, certain legacies continue. Nations that lose major wars tend to lose their moral moorings, their sense of purpose in the global community, and confidence in the stability of their social and political institutions. Political values, national symbols, and social norms are affected, questioned, and reinterpreted to fit the new realities. Yet for the Japanese, the past has not been shunted aside and traditional patterns of authority and power have continued. Indeed, there have been reinterpretations of accepted mores but national objectives have survived physically as a state and socially as a viable society. The national focus now has shifted dramatically and overwhelmingly to economic affairs. National growth meant meeting demands for increases in the standard of living, and while the 1945 world of Japan lay undefined and indeterminate, the old myths of political power were exploded even as the older myths of social control were being maintained the Harumi Masao example noted above remains very much a part of daily established living patterns.
What is of fairly recent vintage in this instance of marital disharmony is the easygoing acceptance by both partners to terminate, an unacceptable arrangement. Recourse to the courts and hasty out-of-court agreements to find a socially and legally accepted reason for dissolving marriage have ceased to be seen as novelties. As divorce rates slowly climb, the Diet (parliament) and the modern judiciary pay increasing attention to the
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