Our good friend and frequent collaborator in Tokyo, Jonathan Harlow (also a high school classmate of Rika’s), just contributed the following blog post, sharing his unique perspective as a gaijin (foreigner) living and working in Tokyo, regarding the East Japan Great Earthquake and the future of Japan.
For the past nine years, Jonathan has operated a Tokyo-based boutique consultancy focused on qualitative consumer research and marketing planning, working on projects in a range of areas including product development, advertising, and branding. He works with multinational clients, research agencies, and advertising agencies on projects in a wide variety of categories, including financial products, health care, personal care, fast moving consumer goods, and wines & spirits. Prior to starting his consultancy, Jonathan spent two years as a member of the qualitative research division of Research International Japan. He began his career as an assistant equities research analyst at Goldman Sachs Tokyo. Jonathan pursued university studies at both Harvard University and Keio University and is fluent in Japanese, graduating with an A.B. in Japanese Social Studies from Harvard University in 1999. Jonathan has been a permanent resident of Tokyo for 12 years.
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Over the past week, Japan has been shaken to the core by an unprecedented combination of terrible events. First, a series of massive earthquakes. Next, tsunami. Then, the terror of nuclear disaster.
In Tokyo, it will take time for things to stabilize, for the resources of daily life to come back online, and for life to start to feel “normal” again. For those in the Northeast most profoundly affected by the tragedy of the earthquakes, the tsunami, and the nuclear disaster, the loss cannot be expressed in words. Life will never again be “normal,” but it will go on.
What does all of this mean for Japan?
I see this as a turning point for Japanese society. It is the end of the Postwar Era. It is the end of 20 years of post-Bubble malaise. It is a new beginning in a world where the relevance, and meaning, of Japan as it has been for the past 50 years has been increasingly questioned by domestic stagnation and the rise of other powers, particularly China.
I believe that the shared experience of the East Japan Great Earthquake (higashi nihon daishinsai) has profound implications for the future of Japan. I think that this will be a time history remembers as the moment when the people of Japan come together as a people, shaking off the growing uncertainty and dysfunction of the past 20 years. This is a time when Japan will come together to share the strength, and value, of what it means to be Japanese.
And I think that the Japanese culture, the spirit of what it is to be Japanese, will serve as engine, keel, and rudder to guide Japan into this new era. The cultural resources of Japan are incredibly rich and powerful.
It is firstly the spirit of perseverance in the face of seemingly insurmountable difficulty, as evidenced through the extraordinary rebirth and flourishing of Japan that brought the nation from an island of ashes and twisted wreckage in 1945 to the pinnacle of the industrialized world in a span of only a few decades. This is the engine of resolve to rebuild what has been lost, reflecting on what has been, and then setting to work putting life back together and building the future.
It is secondly the distinctively Japanese way of approaching life as a collective. The power of the Japanese value of coming together, establishing a harmony of thought and singleness of group purpose. This is the keel that stabilizes the energy of resolve. It grounds Japanese society and is the foundation of the Japanese approach to life.
And thirdly it is the unflagging Japanese attention to detail, to particularity (kodawari) about how things should be. This is a rudder that guides towards the pursuit of the essence of living, refusing to waver until things are put together “just right”. This last point is, I think, one of the essential strengths of Japanese culture as I have come to appreciate it – the Japanese skill at imagining, then actually creating, physical tools and psychological spaces that are each in their own way “perfect” for their purpose.
These cultural assets are reflected in all of the things that amaze the outsider visiting or living in Japan. They are assets that Japanese people are justly proud of. And yet, as someone who has studied, lived, and worked in Japan for the past 15 or so years, I think that perhaps it is important for me to point out these cultural assets once again. I sense that it may be that these assets are something many in Japan take for granted – sensing they are there, but perhaps not quite realizing the incredible strength and power of what Japanese culture offers. It is a richness of assets that every Japanese person has available to them right now, by virtue of having been born and raised in this society.
It is knowing these assets are there that gives me the confidence to say what I have said.
Now, what about those of us who aren’t in Japan? What is the role for those of us who aren’t Japanese?
All of us must try in whatever ways we can to send our human support.
This support may be take form as money or materials – each of us contributing what we are able. It may for some be possible to offer assistance in the form of physical presence through volunteer work.
Most importantly, however, regardless of what else we do, we can offer our resources in a form that resonates in the heart and mind (the kokoro). This is support both for those who have lost everything, and for those who have lost little in a material sense, but suffered psychological damage from the terror of the past week and the continuing privations brought on by this disaster. All of us have the capacity to do at least this in some way – reaching out with our minds and words and thoughts to remind those who have lost so much that to whatever extent we can offer, we are standing behind them.
We are standing together in spirit with the people of Japan as they set about building the foundations of a new era.
Jonathan Harlow, March 19, 2011
jonathan@jonathanharlow.com
