The old man at the public bath
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The old man at the public bath Monday August 20
When I lived in Yokohama, there was a public bath down the street that I'd often frequent. In the middle of summer, a quick soak would be so refreshing. In the middle of the winter, ten minutes in the sauna would keep me warm for hours. For 400 yen (USD$3.50), it was a deal. Sure, we use the word "public bath" in English, but this is more-or-less a spa with a sauna, shower area, hot-tub, and lounge area.
At the front of any public bath in Japan, there's someone to collect your money, and if you need it, sell you the odd shampoo bottle or mini-towel. I got to know both people that ran the front -- I saw them every two weeks or so for eight months.
Towards the end of my tenure in Yokohama, the old man started to talk to me more. Really, he wasn't that old: glasses, a warm smile, large streaks of gray appearing in his otherwise black hair, he was maybe only fifty-five or sixty. One night, I went right before close, and I was one of the last people there. As such, on my way out, we struck up a conversation. He wanted to know the normal things: where I was from, why I speak Japanese, so on so forth. I am good at that conversation.
Then, he did something that a lot of Japanese people do: talk negatively about Japan. I shouldn't say "negatively", as that makes him sound like a bitter, senile man. He is far from it. Gentle is the best word that comes to mind. Maybe I should say that he spoke lamentingly of a Japan that was, that is no longer.
I've lived long enough to know there's danger in believing people's recollections of the past: people shape their memories how they want them to be, and as their values change (particularly with age), so do their attitudes about the way things were. They may naturally begin to forget the otherwise-conflicting experiences that no longer match their value system. I don't believe this to be a cognitive process.
That point aside, this man's recollections of the Japan that used to be were clear: people had spirit (Japanese: 精神). They had a will for life that no longer exists in young people today. Young people today, he suggested, have grown up spoiled in a society that emphasizes material possession and, more than anything, money.
His conjecture is that this individualistic, money-hungry generation is ruining his Japan. This is why he spoke so somberly, I imagine. I'm not sure what I was supposed to do on the other end of this conversation.
The old man's final plea to me was along these lines: "Mark, you've come here to learn this language, to learn this culture, and to expand yourself and lead a fuller life as a result of a greater understanding of the human condition; please do not let what you see in front of you today block your vision of what Japanese culture should be or where it came from. There is more than you can see," he suggested.
I really respected this, as this man with whom I barely spoke other than to exchange currency for towels had suddenly an insight that was simply well-thought, well-put, and so pertinent to my situation. It could have been chance, or it could be my romanticization of the circumstances, but he had a great point.
The Japanese populace emerged from WWII cast as a test-case (democracy), a victim (of pre-war and wartime fascism), and a failure (of an ideology). I'll leave the scholars to debate whether or not it is fair to allow the Japanese to consider themselves, too, as victims, considering someone had to do all of the raping and pillaging (literally, not just as an expression), I've included "failure" to cover myself on the point. Certainly, you are better than the rest of the Asian races, Japan... as long as you have enough oil and forced-labor Taiwanese and Koreans.
But I digress -- war is hell, and I'm not here for a rehash.
I'm here to say that given these circumstances: failure, ruin, victimization, and poverty, it makes wonderful sense that Japan was set up in the way that it was post-war. Industrial education system. Focus on manufacturing. The rise of the salaryman. Fair wages for everyone. No one minds that you make the same as the guy next door, because everyone's in it together, and if we just work harder, we'll make some money, make the country rich again, be great, and be respected on a world stage. And that's exactly what happened.
Now cue the loss of the collective spirit. There's no need anymore: Japan is a rich country. Today's children grew up with The Things Their Parents Never Had. Why join in a collective spirit with the next door neighbor? We don't know him. We don't need to know him.
In the absence of a consumerism-driven society, people are left to their social networks and their status (yes, I do mean class status) as a means of driving identity (as identity was based on the group). Consumerism leads to patterned consumption: everyone has the same x or y. Identity driven from ownership. This is just the Keeping Up With The Joneses, and this is not Japan-specific.
The next step is product diversification: my x has more y's than yours. Soon enough, people begin to diversify their identities not by what they do for a living (and I do mean outside of work as well), and they start diversifying their identities by what they buy and what they own. A production-based economy moves to a consumption-based one.
The old man at the public bath tells me that Japanese youth have traded their souls for money and things. It hurts him. They no longer produce their own identities; they mix-and-match them from preselected templates. I need to go visit that old man sometime soon. I want to tell him that I still try my best to derive my identity from who I am, not what I own. I think he'd like that.
