Why BUSHIDO Is The Root of All Social Problems in Japan

If we don't do anything about it, BUSHIDO will soon completely fade away, and at some point it will be impossible to remember even what the good and positive teachings were about. Then what can we do? My answer is… Hello everyone and welcome to Let's Ask Shogo! If you study about samurai culture and history, you'd most certainly come across BUSHIDO, the way of the warriors. I'm sure you know about it as the samurai code that made the samurai bolder and stronger, and there are many movies, video games, and music that praise it as something great. But what if I told you that cherishing BUSHIDO might be ruining Japan? I was very shocked to read this book… 日本人という嘘 Nihonjin to iu uso The Lie of Japanese People where he explains that we must discard BUSHIDO right away if we want to have a brighter future. So today, I would love to share with you what I've learned from this book, and also my opinions as a Japanese man studying multiple traditional cultures, by summarizing the content into three sections. 1. Japan is a strange groupism society 2. BUSHIDO is the virtue of a groupism world 3. Should we really discard BUSHIDO? By watching this video, you will be able to deepen your understanding towards the characteristics of Japanese people, and find out about the fundamental reasons for many of our social problems in Japan today. However, the definition of BUSHIDO is quite ambiguous, and even among the Japanese, there are many people with different ideas. In this video, I will fully stick to the definition explained in this book to avoid confusion. I understand that this is a very complicated topic, so I hope you can comment your thoughts below, so we can have a constructive discussion together. And even if you get confused somewhere during the middle, that's okay. I will wrap everything up again at the end of the video in today's conclusion. So then, let's get started! In order to understand why BUSHIDO may ruin Japan, we must first understand that Japan is a society based on groupism. To make a long story short, groupism is a term that refers to ideas and tendencies that value groups rather than individuals. The opposite is individualism, the idea of denying the authority of the state and society, and respecting the rights and freedoms of individuals. You might be able to express it as socialism vs. capitalism, or seniority system vs. merit system too. There is a high chance that these terms have different definitions in your language, but here I will follow the definition in this book. How did Japan come to be a society based on groupism? Let's take a look at these two main reasons, the natural environment, and the social system during the Edo period. 1. The natural environment Japan is an island nation with a lot of natural disasters. Japan is merely 0.28% of land on Earth, but has 7% of all active volcanoes and 10% of earthquakes. This is because Japan is located above 4 crustal plates out of 10. What's more horrifying is that out of all earthquakes that are stronger than magnitude 6.0, 20% of them happen in Japan. Also, an average of 26 typhoons pass near or above Japan every year, and sediment disasters often occur after heavy rain because about 70% of land in Japan are mountains. These environmental characteristics forced Japanese people to cooperate with each other in order to survive, because we had nowhere to run. No matter how strong a leader or warrior you were, you could not beat natural disasters. It also meant that the people were very sensitive, and would attack or kick out anyone who were incooperative or could not blend into the group, because having one selfish person could lead the whole group to danger during emergencies. So as a natural instinct, Japanese people learned that the best survival technique is not to stand out and to not seek personal interests, which is exactly what groupism is. By the way, it is very interesting that in many Japanese movies, scenes of despair are expressed by the characters facing the oceans. From this, you can understand that from ancient times, Japanese people have suffered thinking, I want to change my life, but I can't run away from this reality or community, due to Japan being an island nation. 2. The social system during the Edo period However, you might be thinking, but Shogo, weren't the periods like the Sengoku era pretty chaotic? Yes, there were times in Japanese history where it seems like many people were fighting for their own ambitions, and cooperating with each other in order to survive was quite normal anywhere in the world to a certain point. The critical event that established groupism in Japan today is the social system during the Edo period, the third and last shogunate of Japanese history. This period's biggest characteristic was that it was peaceful for more than 250 years with hardly any wars, which in some studies is considered to be the longest term of peace within one nation in the history of the whole world. Such a long term of peace was possible due to the clever political measures laid out by the Tokugawa Edo shogunate that basically strengthened the groupism system in order to keep everyone in their place. 1. Dividing the land into clans and creating the family register system so people cannot easily leave their hometowns 2. Dividing the people into social classes and determining where they can live, what they can do, and what they can wear, etc. 3. Restricting trade and movement to foreign countries 4. Excluding Buddhism teachings and introducing Neo-Confucianism to educate that protecting faces and always obeying superiors are a virtue During the Edo period, it was very common for samurai clans and individual families to have their privileges taken away by the government if they ever were to not act like a noble warrior or go against discipline and lose their honor. This is why they were always afraid about how people would see them or what people would say about them, which is a characteristic you can see among Japanese people even today. It's hard to believe that a single government was able to come up with this many effective measures, apply them, and actually succeed in controlling the people and changing their way of thinking, but looking back from the present day, you would know that this is true. By putting much emphasis on such harmony, not only was it peaceful for 250 years, but it also caused an unusual situation of hardly no economic growth at all during the whole period. Next, let's take a look at what kind of characteristics were born due to these reasons. 1. Keeping harmony is the top priority. It's more important than actual progress and development. 2. People have an advanced ability to breathe the air and sense relationships between people within the group. 3. Each person will try to act good and be polite to not stand out, regardless of what they are truly thinking. 4. People will automatically trust the people within their community, because there is hardly any merit in betraying or creating disorder within the group. 5. People will be extremely exclusive against outsiders, because the common rules and system of the group won't be applied against strangers. It sounds really Japan-ish right? The author of this book points out that all the things Japanese people praise of themselves is not because Japan is a nice or special country, it was simply a survival strategy for Japanese people to live within the system. For example… 1. Good manners and discipline were only for you to not be seen as a person without common sense. 2. Humbleness was only for not standing out from the crowd and staying hidden. 3. Cleanliness of the environment was only for not getting in trouble with any neighbors By the way, there is an interesting experiment introduced in this book that asked Japanese people two questions. 1. Do you think Japanese people are individualists or groupists? 2. Are you an individualist or groupist? The results might surprise you. 90% of people answered that Japanese people are groupists, but at the same time 50% answered that they themselves are individualists, which means that about half of the people said that everyone else are groupists, but not me. This might sound like a contradiction, but it proves that most people just go with the crowd because they believe that everyone else would attack and slander them otherwise, and they don't actually care much about what the benefits of the group really are. Groupism in Japan is not about everyone caring about each other and that's why the group is more important, but more of everyone only cares about themselves, and as a result they chose to act good and not speak out for their personal benefits. Even if the group was heading towards a cliff, if we are all falling and going to suffer together, that's okay, because I don't want to be the one to stand out by speaking up and pointing out the actual problem. However, I must make it very clear that this doesn't mean that groupism is bad and individualism is good. Obviously there is no perfect social system, because if it did exist, we should have solved most of our social problems by now. The 250 years of peace during the Edo period was a miracle, and the politeness of the people and cleanness of the environment, regardless of the motivations, are a good thing. The problem is not about whether groupism is good or bad, it is. Japan does not have an environment suitable for the old groupism anymore. Japan is not an isolated island like it once was in the past, and capitalism has already been imported since the end of the 19th century. We can wear whatever we want to, can change our jobs, and move to any city anytime. However, as I've pointed out in my past videos, Japan strangely clings on to the groupism culture by teaching the young to be normal through education, always prioritizing the elderly's opinion, and believing that earning money is evil. My mother for example, when she used to scold me for any mistakes I've made when I was a child, she would say, you are going to embarrass me in front of others. She was more afraid of what others would think of her. Having a son that doesn't behave properly, more than my own future or consequences, I will experience. I'm not the only one that was told this. When my mother told her mother that she wanted to get divorced, my grandmother said, you are an embarrassment. If you are going to get divorced, do it after I die. Take another example, the tiresome rules in the business world, like the greeting cards, upper and lower seats, and overtime work. Have you ever wondered why Japan can't stop following these annoying rules? Why do Japanese people work for long hours but have very low productivity? Why can't Japanese people just run away or change jobs before they end their own lives? It is because again, harmony and how people will see you are still more important than actual results. The benefits of following these rules and systems in the past were because the group would protect you, provide you a place in society, and cooperate with you when you were in trouble. However, most companies have abandoned the lifetime employment system, local communities are disappearing or losing connections, and families are becoming more and more isolated. This means that we have inherited just the negative parts of groupism, and are not taking in the positive parts of individualism. Why is Japan continuously suffocating itself? Why do we care so much about what the society would think when there's hardly any benefits? Yes, it's because we still see Bushido as a virtue. Before we start talking about why and how cherishing Bushido is having a negative impact on Japanese society, we need to make the definition of this word in this book clear. To put it simple, Bushido is the ideal human image formed mainly in the Edo period, in other words a virtue in the groupism world, which means it is the perfect person that fitted the ideal control of the samurai administration during the Edo period. These are some of the fundamental morals and teachings of Bushido that are introduced in this book. 1. Protect rules and traditions 2. Follow those stronger than you and be loyal 3. Be brave and exclusive to keep strangers out 4. Take revenge to defeat enemies 5. Lie if it is necessary Again, the ultimate purpose of all of these morals are the unity of the members that are part of the group. Bushido taught Japanese people that keeping things the way they are is always the priority, and the orders of the superiors are absolute. They were exclusive in order to keep any outsiders from invading the community, and anyone who was brave enough to fight and take revenge if necessary were considered heroes, because they were the ones who were protecting the peace of the group the most. If you are familiar with the stories of the 47 ronin or 新生革命, which are both considered representative stories of beautiful Bushido in Japan, you would probably immediately realize that their actions and purposes to kill others are not logical at all, but come from pure loyalty to their lords. You might think that the last lie if it is necessary is surprising, but again the goodwill of individuals being honest is shunned, and for unity, harmony of the group, or following the orders of your lords, lying to yourself and others were considered something good as well. Because the Edo shogunate was able to make the samurai actually follow these morals, they were able to create a peaceful era with no wars, in exchange for almost no economic growth for more than 250 years. Whenever social problems such as bullying in schools, the corruption of politicians and businesses, and the young going bad are shown on the media, there are many Japanese people who say… Oh, where has our noble dignity gone? We need to revive the good and old honorable minds of the samurai. If you go to a bookstore in Japan today, you will find many self-development books talking about how great the mind of Bushido is, and many of them are quite popular. However, I believe you already understand that trying to promote Bushido is completely going against the modern era. It's almost like you're trying to ride a boat even after you've reached land, and you're making the young suffer and die by making them row that boat on the ground, and saying that this is the right way things should be done. Much concrete data like the most number of young committing suicide in the world, the most number of mental hospitals in the world, being one of the countries that has the biggest gender gap, hundreds and thousands of cats and dogs being slaughtered by the government, and the most amount of pesticides and food additives in the world, are proof that there is something wrong with Japan. It is repeatedly emphasized in this book that Japan is not suitable for groupism anymore. You can leave your hometown or country anytime you want to, communities and companies will not protect you anymore, and there is no such thing as a lord that you have to die for. What we need are actual results and productivity, not a diploma of a good school or a good status within a company. That's only meant to be seen as an excellent person within the group. We need real connections with people linked with honesty, not being fearful of the system that forces you to be normal and keeps you under surveillance. We need deeper relationships with countries around the world, not hating people that you've never even met before just because they have a different nationality. Before I end this video, I would like to share my opinions about this topic with you. As a man training in multiple traditional cultures that often talks about Bushido, I had one big question in my mind when I closed this book. Should we really completely discard Bushido? You too might have studied about or have trained in Budo martial arts, and have seen Bushido as a positive attitude to create discipline. Although I completely understand that it might have negative effects on our society, good manners, cleanliness, punctuality, are all the things for example that are seen as the good parts about Japan, so my answer to the question is no. Because again, we are not talking about whether individualism is good or groupism is bad, and there is no correct answer anywhere in this world. I personally believe that Japan should try to seek a good balance between the two, and preserve the good and change the old. Unfortunately, no matter how slow Japan might be in making progress, evidently it will eventually shift to an individualistic society. If we don't do anything about it, Bushido will soon completely fade away, and at some point it will be impossible to remember even what the good and positive teachings were about. Then what can we do? My answer is to preserve the traditional cultures. In our daily lives, we might not need Bushido and the groupism ideals anymore, but I think that training in Budo martial arts, tea ceremony, stage arts, etc. would be a great occasion for us to remember what were the good things about Bushido and Japan in the past. This is why I'm training in multiple traditional cultures. It's so that one day I can also help to carry on what Japan has nurtured throughout its few hundred years of history. Of course, this includes many challenges. 1. There are less and less people training in traditional culture, and it's becoming more difficult to sustain. 2. Even the large organizations of each traditional culture can be corrupt, and the top people are far from living the way of Bushido. 3. The term Bushido is sometimes used by Japanese right-wing organizations under the belief that Japan should militarize to attack and fight other countries. I am very very far away from having an answer to solve the social problems in Japan, and the idea of Bushido itself is very ambiguous, and it's just a floating image today. But I can promise you one thing, that I will dedicate my life defining my Bushido through my training, and I will do everything I can to try to preserve the good things about Japan that many people around the world look forward to. This is my dream, and this is my path. Then lastly, today's conclusion! Groupism is a term that refers to ideas and tendencies that value groups rather than individuals. Japan developed groupism from its environment that had a lot of natural disasters, and the social system during the Edo period. Although the 250 years of peace during the Edo period was a miracle, today Japanese society has imported capitalism and globalism, and it's not suitable for the groupism system anymore. Japan today inherited just the negative parts of groupism, and it's not taking in the positive parts of individualism, for example by forcing the young to obey the elderly under any circumstances but not providing them a safe environment to live in. This is because many people still see Bushido, which is the image of an ideal person in groupism, as a virtue. The author of the book I've introduced explained that Japan must discard Bushido to stop Japan from ruining itself. However, I think that there are pros and cons in any social system, and there must be something that we should pass down in the teachings of Bushido. I know it's a long path, but I will dedicate my life to training and teaching traditional culture to preserve the good things that Japan has nurtured through history. So that's it for today! Thank you very much for watching! If this video helped you to deepen your understanding towards the characteristics of Japanese people, please hit the like button to help me boost this video to more people! My goal is to achieve 1,000,000 subscribers by January 2023, so your help is what I need! In this channel, you can take a closer look at Japanese traditional culture, tips on traveling to Kyoto, and social problems in Japan. So learners and lovers of Japanese language and culture, be sure to subscribe to enjoy more content! Please check out our sub-channel and membership through the link in the description box! Thanks again, and I'll see you in my next video!