Posted on 04/04/2011 9:53:53 PM PDT by JLS
‘Why is there no looting in Japan?” wondered a headline in the Daily Telegraph. So did a lot of other folks. Various answers were posited:
The Japanese are a highly civilized people — which would have been news to the 22 British watchkeepers on the island of Tarawa who were tied to trees, beheaded, set alight, and tossed in a pit less than 70 years ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
Mark Steyn ping.
Freepmail me, if you want on or off the Mark Steyn ping list.
it’s not that they’re more civilized than any other culture, it’s that they’re a homogenous, very cohesive culture. It’s what helps them pull together in a crisis like this. But it’s also what caused them to blindly accept the Bushido ideology and fight with such complete savagery in WWII. Like most things, it’s a mixed blessing.
LOOTING,Raping,killing ? Easy one, there are NO democrats there.
You should read the article. Steyn says no. Steyn’s next paragraph is:
“Alternatively, Japan enjoys the benefits of being an ethnically homogeneous society — which didn’t prevent the ethnically homogeneous West Country of Britain from being wracked by widespread thievery during the floods of 2007.”
I was speaking more of culture than ethnicity. Japan is arguably the most culturally homogenous country on earth. Ethnicity is a part of that, but only a part.
An error of category. For the life of me, I have never understood why the term "civilized", which just means "citified", is taken to me mean "humane" or "enlightened". It only implies ( internalized ) regimentation. When I was in Japan, briefly, on business, I felt like a caveman just walking around Tokyo. You should try it.
Such phenomena on the USA is always determined by the media political event. Intelligence not required.
I suppose 3 to 4 million abortions a year didn’t help the demographics.
Excellent analysis.
Steyn doesn’t read the WSJ, but his story is pretty good nontheless
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703410604576216293024644156.html
Looting Rears Its Head in Japan
(link onlycopyright stuff and all)
Steyn is wrong on this one. The Japanese will clean up and get back to normal a lot faster than anyone can possibly imagine right now.
10 years from now, maybe less, you’re not going to be able to find any trace of the earthquake at all — except for monuments and memorial parks.
Japan is a cohesive family. No diversity.
At least when I lived there, much of the sewage in Japan traveled throgh loosely-covered concrete trenches (aka "benjo ditches") alongside the roads. After the tsunami swept over the land, everything was polluted with human waste.
There is a HUGE difference between scavenging (for survival in a polluted environment) sealed, sterile bottled fluids to drink and ...breaking into stores and running off with big-screen TVs, stereos, and armloads of expensive clothes -- as was seen after Katrina in NO...
A few weeks ago another FReeper said - I can’t remember who or I would ping him - that he had worked with the Japanese, and this extreme civility often worked against them.
The adventerous American spirit has its strengths and drawbacks also. We simply don’t do as we’re told. It is a cultural trait, for good and evil.
After the earthquake, he said all of the Americans in his group ran out of the building because they feared that it would collapse. His Japanese co-workers just sat at their desks, refusing to leave until someone came and instructed them to leave. Apparently, it never occurred to them that the person who was responsible for giving them orders might have perished or been incapacitated in some other way.
A big factor is the concept of face. The loss of face is one of the greatest tragedies of life in the Japanese culture.
One of the most striking (to me) videos of the earthquake was the one in a grocery store. The employees ran along the shelves trying to hold the products up.
It was commendable, but the reaction of Americans I believe would be for protection of themselves and other people, not the products.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hv4BUr9ruQI
There is very little on any front that anyone has said about Japan that I find to be a credible explanation for anything. I am not a Japanese expert, don't speak the language, have never been there, etc. But I have Japanese colleagues and read a lot. Nothing I hear, especially not this, rings true.
Excellent post. The Persians were civilized, too ... far more so, in the classical sense, than the Greeks who coined the word “barbarian” to describe the Persians ...
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