Strength of the Japanese

Much has been said about the stoic demeanor and resilience of the Japanese in face of the triple calamity in the country. The orderliness at the shelters, the patient queues for basic necessities, the absence of looting, the caring spirit and the calmness in resuming work routine whenever possible evoke admiration from the world all over. One journalist describes it as almost zen like calmness admist the unbelievable tragedies and uncertainties of what may yet to come.

I believe that every world netizen that watches these footages will stop to ponder how they and their own countrymen will behave or react should such tragedies strike in their own country. In my mind the underlying difference has to be selflessness and the fundamental perception of individual versus society.

This helps me recall certain points made by Archbishop Vincent Nichols at a LSE public lecture advocating religious freedom. The topic may seem irrelevant in the context of the discussion above but certain words are meaningful and may be relevant to understanding how different cultures perceive self and society:

"Nevertheless there remains a pervasive assumption within our culture (referring mainly to the West) that we are little more than separate individuals who happen to share the same space, who ultimately owe nothing to society and have no necessary bonds with others – as it has been called, the “unencumbered” self. The only thing we have in common is the ‘market’ – or as it was quaintly put: ‘Tesco ergo sum’. This leaves us with the challenging question about how we actually link the individual with society.... promoting religious freedom, understood in its richest sense, invites us to inhabit a subversive and different story. This begins with the acceptance that we do not come into life as separate individuals but as fundamentally relational. It acknowledges that to be fully human is constituted by our deepening relationships with others, and I would add, with God. ......It is not just that we are born into relationships of dependence, or even that without our relationships we could not grow or develop. It is that only through our relationships – of love, friendship,the enlargement of our social ties - that we can be fulfilled. To be fully human is to be more than an individual - it is to be a person-in-relationship, self- transcendent, creative and emergent.....such a person flourishes in his or her relationality, not living alone in his or her castle, but mixing freely in society, a human being composed never of oneself alone but always through connections with others as well"

Perhaps the Japanese are different because they have this 'self-transcendent' characteristic, probably also ingrained for centuries from a Buddhist culture.