From Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!; Feynman and a colleague are staying at a traditional Japanese hotel in Kyoto:
The next morning the young woman taking care of our room fixes the bath, which was right in our room. Sometime later she returns with a tray to deliver breakfast. I'm partly dressed. She turns to me and says, politely, "Ohayo, gozai masu," which means, "Good morning."
Pais is just coming out of the bath, sopping wet and completely nude. She turns to him and with equal composure says, "Ohayo, gozai masu ," and puts the tray down for us.
Pais looks at me and says, "God, are we uncivilized!"
We realized that in America if the maid was delivering breakfast and the guy's standing there, stark naked, there would be little screams and a big fuss. But in Japan they were completely used to it, and we felt that they were much more advanced and civilized about those things than we were.
I came here to quote Feynman too, but a different part:
This question of trying to figure out whether a book is good or bad by looking at it carefully or by taking the reports of a lot of people who looked at it carelessly is like this famous old problem: Nobody was permitted to see the Emperor of China, and the question was, What is the length of the Emperor of China’s nose? To find out, you go all over the country asking people what they think the length of the Emperor of China’s nose is, and you average it. And that would be very “accurate” because you averaged so many people. But it’s no way to find anything out; when you have a very wide range of people who contribute without looking carefully at it, you don’t improve your knowledge of the situation by averaging.
It seems to me that they asked a bunch of people in the US why they think there is no looting in Japan...
It strikes me as a theory with very poor explanatory power. We've seen many crises in the US as well, and Katrina was an exception. There have been a couple of others within my lifetime, but it's not politically correct to point out what similarities they may have. (I suppose I should point out this isn't a veiled reference to race, it's actually 100% cultural, but it's still not politically correct to discuss.) It is true in the US we always have to be at least a bit worried about looting, we can't quite completely write it off, but in general it doesn't happen, and we do have a very loose society by comparison to Japan's. Whatever the determining factor is, that is not it, at least not directly.
Sorry, not trying to anger anyone or anything, I am genuinely interested. Where in the US was there a natural disaster of significant scale where there was no looting?
I'm actually from Wisconsin, but was living in Cedar Rapids during the floods, and there was looting there. My neighbor was the cop chasing these guys down. I am just curious how other communities were able to avoid looting.
I'm from Cedar Rapids as well. You really need to qualify the claim there was looting in CR. The term is rather loaded and conjures visions of angry Iowans raiding the local Casey's on John Deeres. The burglary rates did rise somewhat; but there was definitely not a feeling on lawlessness or looting. During the height of the flood, thousands of citizens from across the city helped sandbag. The only thing that saved the last remaining water pumping station was a concerted effort to build a large sandbag wall against the Cedar River.
After the waters receded many groups helped clean up countless houses in the hard-hit areas. While I wouldn't say we have quite the serene calm of the Japanese, I think communities in the United States still can effectively work together.
In Japan and other Asian societies, individuals have stronger social ties to their families, neighbors, coworkers. In the US, economic ties are more important. The US was built by people who left their families, neighborhoods, and existing structures to seek their fortune in the US.
I apologize for a non-PC interjection. You can't totally separate race and culture in the US. When a group has differences in language, music, eating habits, values and other social interactions, it becomes useful to think about it as a subculture. At the risk of being non-PC, a 'black urban subculture' may license antisocial behavior that is considered more reprehensible in 'white suburban subculture'.
I hasten to add that people who are white may be strongly associate and be of high standing in 'black urban subculture' (ie Eminem), and people who are black may strongly associate and be of high standing in 'white suburban subculture,' (ie Obama) and that once you start making assumptions about people's values and cultural adherence based on the color of their skin you start crossing the line into racism, which I don't believe anyone of any race is entirely free of.
I think these sorts of occurrences have very strong group effects. If a few people start looting, soon many others will follow, even if they wouldn't really start otherwise. It may be that, in the case of Katrina, there just happened to be those few people who would start the looting.
>when you have a very wide range of people who contribute without looking carefully at it, you don’t improve your knowledge of the situation by averaging.
(I know the excerpt is from the book, but I feel compelled to respond).
No, they're just different. Better in some ways, worse in others.
If I had to summarize Japan in one word, it would be 'harmony', or 'Wa' (和). People here don't rock the boat, and don't want to upset the status quo. The few that do find themselves more often than not pushed to the bottom of society.
Because of this, kids go through twelve years of indoctrination, where they learn to think, speak, and act like a unit. They emerge from this into a four-year vacation (university) where very little is asked of them, after which it's expected that you will either become a researcher, or put on a suit and become a salaryman.
The Japanese system is great in times of crisis.
It sucks if you want to start a company, or if you've got a startup and want to hire employees.
A foreign minister that calls gang rapists "virile" and all sorts of extremely mysoginistic pop culture suggests not that "the Japanese are so civilised", only that they are merely different.
White friends of mine recall looking for a flat in Japan and being constantly rejected with "you're white, we don't lease to whites", which is not a problem there. There are second-generation Koreans living in Japan who can't get citizenship or the vote.
Japan is an awesome place and the people are very different to a great many other places, but can we keep the cultural cringe to a minimum?
I also find it interesting in the story that there is no mention of Feynman making a fuss about a colleague being stark naked in the same room. Does this mean he's also much more advanced and civilised? Why doesn't Fernman mention this; why is it beyond notice? Why is the maid's lack of reaction that much more noteworthy than his own lack of reaction?
all sorts of extremely mysoginistic pop culture suggests not that "the Japanese are so civilised", only that they are merely different.
It's interesting that sexual violence strikes such a chord with us westerners, but we think nothing of glamorizing gratuitous, sadistic physical violence. We have a popular television series where the hero is a psychopath serial killer with a heart of gold. In some of the Hannibal Lecter movies, Hannibal was arguably portrayed as a hero and he cannibalized people!
>>There are second-generation Koreans living in Japan who can't get citizenship or the vote.
It's not about discrimination why Koreans are not becoming Japanese citizen, but it is their choices.
Because Koreans in Japan have privileges and immunities which people with Japanese citizenship or other nationalities don't have.
They don't feel embarrased if naked public, at least until sometime in twentieth when they finally prohibited child porns. They still have public spas that allow both men and women in one tub.
I don't think your story represents Japanese people's personality regarding not looting. Read <The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture>.
He means that they have mixed bathing, so there's no men's and women's side of the onsen and so everyone goes into the same bath, whether they know each other or not.
There are other arrangements, too, though. In addition to simply splitting the onsen between a men's side and a women's side, they can also change from one to the other, so you can have mixed bathing later in the night, while being split the rest of the time.
... A book written sixty years ago with war prisoners interviews as material. A great book, but not really the state of art. (I'm afraid I've got no better advice.)
eh... we cannot characterize this stuff as civilized or uncivilized. It's just different from our(US) way of doing things. Have you used their public bathrooms or restrooms? It feels very very awkward. I don't like it but I wouldn't call it uncivilized. The way we live together here without marriage and stuff is viewed as uncivilized by most of the world.
The story is that a trader working for one of the big foreign banks was staying at one of the top hotels, and would repeatedly call for room service and be stark naked when the (female) staff came in. I might be wrong about them calling security, I think they just told the bank they wouldn't accept reservations for that trader anymore.
The next morning the young woman taking care of our room fixes the bath, which was right in our room. Sometime later she returns with a tray to deliver breakfast. I'm partly dressed. She turns to me and says, politely, "Ohayo, gozai masu," which means, "Good morning."
Pais is just coming out of the bath, sopping wet and completely nude. She turns to him and with equal composure says, "Ohayo, gozai masu ," and puts the tray down for us.
Pais looks at me and says, "God, are we uncivilized!"
We realized that in America if the maid was delivering breakfast and the guy's standing there, stark naked, there would be little screams and a big fuss. But in Japan they were completely used to it, and we felt that they were much more advanced and civilized about those things than we were.