Japan fact of the day

If you pay for space what the Japanese do, anything less would be better left vacant.

My Asian (‘being an asian’) perspective:

1) I don’t know where this “Classless” society idea from, but in most Asian country, Japan included, your wealth defines your class, and they seldomly pretend the otherwise. So, other than just simply “vanity consumption” and “peer pressure”, buying an expansive bag is a way to masquerade as a ‘upper’ class. Of course, the truely rich then has to up the war and use other means to signal their wealthiness.

2) Being in a warring society since 12th centuries until before their Meiji restoration, the craftsmanship and other manufacturing skills were cultivated by warlords in order to empower their army. This is a long tradition and has a spillover effect. It is just like the competition of European cities has generally improve the standard of art and clock design.

This is only possible when we fought in old style warfare (usually small and limited in scale, battle ended in days after initial conflict). The ‘Total War’, on the other hand, encourages mass production, and quantity trumps quality (e.g. U.S.A)

Before the Meiji Reformation Japan was highly class stratified into castes. The caste were defined by their societal value and “cleanliess” according to Shinto and Buddhist tradition.

The Rank were:

Samurai/Royal Family -There were several divisions of Samurai, not all were wealthy warlords or “knights” some were civil servants, tax collectors, etc.

Artisans – this included Geisha but also smiths, potters, thespians, etc.

Farmers

Merchants – although next to the lowest class because they were seen as a type of parasite, they were often wealthier than many Samurai.

Eta/Burakumin – basically untouchable, because they did jobs that were “dirty”…undertakers, slaughters, etc.

After Meiji the Samurai and extended Royals took various upper-level societal positions from politicians, to professors, high level bureaucrats, military officers.

After WWII, much of the old society was reformed again and gave way to more of a meritocratic system. Many of the old guard were still at the upper levels but there was much movements in the social structure and much less resistant by the old “blue bloods” as compared to in Europe or even America.

This is where the “classless society” comes from.

For instance there are no ghettos in Tokyo (although there are poor who live in poor housing in mixed income neighborhoods). Most people say they are middle class, the income inequality in Japanese society is one of the lowest in the world, CEOs get paid far less than in America.

The Japanese fascination with brand names is an East Asian cultural thing.

Having cool things gives one more “face” in society so they like to have things they can show off.

This is true in Japan, Korea, and China (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc). I would say that Japanese don’t act as nouveau rich as the Chinese tend to or as overly, “in your face” with their stuff.

A Chinese friend once told me when I asked why he had a 5 year old low end BMW but lived in a relatively crappy apartment…”Most people see what kind of car you drive but most don’t know where you live”. That about sums it up I think.

Ray:

I lived there from 2001-2002…most of that stuff is not really true anymore.

White skin is still favored by women, but often you will see tan Japanese men on TV, which makes the skin color difference extreme between people of the same ethnicity. My wife (who is Japanese) told me it looks more “manly”.

I don’t think this is true in Korea, as when we visited all the guys on TV are as pale as the women. Japan goes through a lot of fads though, in the late 1990′s a lot young girls (and some guys) kogaru would spend a lot of money to tan themselves as dark as possible which older people found disgusting but it was quite popular. Now that fad has faded. Dyed hair (blond, red, auburn) was also quite popular but now black hair/dark brown is back in style. This also bled into when hip hop started spreading into the Japanese teen mainstream.

White car thing? Never heard of it, probably another fad (ryuko).

I never had an issue of people not sitting next to me in Tokyo (where I lived). Now if you go outside of Tokyo that is a little different. I notice that older women are the least likely to sit next to foreigners, younger men are the most likely. My wife told me they think foreigners smell bad. I sat next to some continental European once on the train and yeah he smelled bad as they don’t wash or use deodorant as much as American. I wouldn’t be surprised if that stereotype came from Europeans in Japan.

I would say if you are ever on a bus in Hong Kong in the summer some people don’t smell so great either, but I noticed in Japan, even men in suits don’t sweat much in the summer and I never met a Japanese guy who ‘smelled’(other than the homeless people in the stations). My wife thinks it is diet. She says Japanese people often say gaijin smell like meat/butter. Could be.

Barkley

For this topic I didn’t feel it was necessary to differentiate between Royal Family/Daimyo/Samurai.

The Royal Family routinely married with the Daimyo and especially with the clan of the Shogunate in power.

Samurai were loyal to the Daimyo or directly to the Shogunate..blah blah blah…point was there strict class differences

In some ways the Japanese system was very much like Medieval Europe, much more than China was as China routinely had peasant emperors (due to the mandate of heaven) and a meritocratic system of sorts that created powerful civil servants, many of who came from humble backgrounds. There is much less class mobility but then again the Tokugawa thought this up and I’m not sure exactly when it was initiated but that shogunate lasted from 1603 to the Meiji Restoration so before that I’m not sure.

In any case I don’t believe Japanese are really class consciousness in the Western science. Wanting to show off certain things due to status is not “class” as we think of in Western Europe, which is based far more on family.

Regarding luxury goods stores, there are specialty stores like Tiffany and Harry Winston.
In terms of a more general luxury goods store, the most famous is Wako in the heart of the
Ginza, the most valuable real estate area in the world. The building it is located in is
famously one of the few in Tokyo to survive the WW II firebombing of the city, with the
imperial palace (consciously not bombed), the Diet building (which looks a lot like the
LA city hall), the Kabuki theater not far from Wako, and the main building of the central
railroad station (along with some temples and shrines), being among the few others to do so.

Regarding Okinawa, it is the poorest part of Japan and was long the center of the independent
kingdom of the Ryukyus, which was allied more with China than Japan, as was Korea, until the
late nineteenth century, when the Japanese came in. The Okinawans have their own dialect, now
mostly faded, but a continuing sense of a distinct ethnic identity, including a distinct cuisine
and their own distinctive (and spicey) form of sake, known as awamori.

Regarding class, it is clear that as time has gone on, with major breaks both with the Meiji
Restoration that basically ended the power of the samurai, and after WW II, the old hereditary
based class system has pretty much broken down, although apparently the Eta/Burakumin continue
to be discriminated against. Otherwise, education matters, and if one can get into one of the
top universities, with the University of Tokyo at the pinnacle, one can get into the upper
levels of the hierarchy, which depend on positions in the government or major keiretsu businesses,
with income tending to correspond to those levels.

There is definite hierarchy, but it is not nearly as much tied to heredity as it used to be.

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