The uncertainty of the self: Japan at century's end

World Policy Journal, Summer, 1999 by Masaru Tamamoto

Oe suggests that Japan's ambiguity began with the advent of modernity 120 years ago, and that since then Japan has been unable to reconcile the meaning of the West and itself. As long ago as 1875, Yukichi Fukuzawa, Japan's foremost Enlightenment thinker, warned that true independence for Japan could not be achieved until every Japanese acquired the spirit of "independent self-esteem" (dokuritsu jison). Fukuzawa likened Japan's antimodern character to that of a palace maid, envious, scheming, and sycophantic, struggling for improvement of her status in a world where objective rules for promotion did not exit, and where winning the personal favor and attention of the palace lord was key.(17) Fukuzawa's warning continues to resonate in contemporary Japan.

The American Model

There is no precise equivalent of the word "identity" in Japanese; some use the English word. Others prefer the word shutaisei, commonly defined as subjectivity, independence, identity of existence, or the rule of individualism. But none of these words or phrases correspond exactly with the Japanese term. Most Japanese thinkers agree that Japan lacks shutaisei, and many argue that Japan is in need of it. But nobody seems to have a satisfactory idea of what a Japan with shutaisei would be like, or what it would take to bring shutaisei to Japan. Still, Japanese thinkers see shutaisei everywhere in Western political thought and practice: in individualism, liberalism, Marxism, and pacifism, and in freedom of action, thought, and expression. This muddled Japanese conception of national identity, suggests Masao Miyoshi, a Japanese-born naturalized American and literary critic, that "the uncritical pursuit of shutaisei in Japan may be still one more example of Japan's gestures toward Westernization, and thus ironically proof of its lack of shutaisei."(18) Perhaps it takes someone like Miyoshi, with a Japanese sensibility but with enough cultural distance from Japan, to cut through the mire of Japanese thinking on national identity.

That Japan has no national identity is, of course, a curious proposition. Japan certainly has values, and its own language, art, literature, and customs. Its economic, social, and political structures and manners are distinct from those of other countries. It has a national history. Why then do the Japanese today think of their country as lacking in identity? The answer lies with the war that ended half a century ago.

August 15, 1945, the day Japan surrendered unconditionally to the United States is the single most important source of contemporary Japanese national identity. The Japanese continue to refer to the era after 1945 as sengo, the postwar era. Sengo does not simply denote a time frame; it embodies a historical consciousness. The postwar era has been an era in which Japan embraced America as the dominant model. And yet, despite the longstanding Japanese penchant to seek out foreign models in its pursuit of modernity, Japanese society has had little ability to recognize these models in the abstract. Rather, the models have been understood as embodying concrete characteristics of certain countries. Democracy, for example, an important theme in postwar Japanese thought, has held meaning in the context of American democracy and Japan's relationship with America. Postwar Japanese national identity has been bound by its images of America, images that, according to Oe, have evoked in the Japanese feelings of "shame and envy."(19)