"Be far from Japanese/Nihonjin-banare shita" is commonly regarded as a compliment in Japan, which is often applied to a person who is good looking or has dynamism. It may safely be said that it is one of the typical expressions of Japanese admirers of the West. I, however, think if there is a relationship which involves emotions to a certain degree not like a deal by two people who "use" each other, they shall feel an inherent contradiction sooner or later.
A Japanese psychoanalyst Kishida Shu claims that originally the contradiction was caused by "Perry Shock"; Japan's opening to the world under compulsion by an American military force in the Edo era, and her subsequent division into an internal self and external self instead of her identity.
There are several methods for analysis of mass phenomena. Some explain it by economic factors without treating human psychology, some by the individual psychology of each leader of his/her group without reasoning about why the followers chose him/her, and so on.
Prof. Kishida states that individual and group are indissolubly connected by common illusions because they are born at the same time, and common illusions exist officially and unofficially, that is, in manifest culture and latent ones. As predominant common illusions will be passed on through generations, and also in working places, educational fields or at home. On the other hand the rest of the common illusions can cause revolutions or various sub-cultures.
The first time I read one of his historical/psychological essays a long time ago I took little notice on his hypothesis on common illusions. But the more I learn English, and about Western cultures, and meet Westerners, the more I believe his theory. Especially when I talk to Westerners in English, I feel that I am still rather timid toward them. Many Japanese learners of English are most probably the same and they tend to think their shyness makes them feel so, but I am quite doubtful of that. As I remember I was not able to collect my senses well because I was constantly influenced by the attitude(s) of the one I was talking to. What I really cared about then was not the subject, but his/her feeling: in other words, I was busy trying to read if his/her feeling towards me was positive or negative, meaning indifferent.
Later I learnt about Christianity more and understood that a Westerner is expected to have an ego ideal which confronts the absolute being. On the contrary a Japanese person tends to depend on another so he/she is even ready to become zero in order to avoid conflict.
In the past Japanese people were like children, who were allowed to play with their favourite friends only and could live in an autistic world of narcissism, and then suddenly they were forced to act like adults. Having been urged to fit herself to Western ways of thinking and living, her internal self was left behind. The common illusion of civilization and enlightenment was somewhat empty and Japanese people have not been able to get a new identity.
For this reason Japanese people including me are excessively conscious about criticism by foreigners: one of the symptoms of identity crisis. In bookshops there are so many books critical of Japan by numbers of foreigners or so-called well-informed Japanese essayists who are living or have stayed abroad. I am much interested in the identity of those "would-be westerners."
It is obvious that you can't form your political, social, economic, cultural identity by collecting views of others but yours.
Another symptom - Japanese smile - the Japanese often expect others, especially foreign people to have the similar kind of perception of subtle indications. I believe that it is sometimes hard for even some Japanese people to grasp the hidden meaning of non-verbal language which is full of fertile sensibility. When the external self submits tamely to another, the internal self finds another unnecessarily threatening and also frustrating; - the feeling flows that there is utmost trust or humiliation.
A famous Japanese word "Wa-kon yo-sai" means " you must have Japanese soul and Western skills." That has been considered as a clever defense mechanism to use the external self and internal self separately. In the Meiji era on the one hand Westernisation was drastically executed, on the other hand the idea of reverence for the Emperor was hammered home very strongly. Both were not done with spontaneity and for this reason Japan gradually reached an impasse and then suddenly changed from one to the other: from following the footsteps of the U.S., to attacking the very country first in the Second World War, from all or nothing (die for your Emperor!) during the war, from a warm welcome to the American occupation army, to international economic war (die for your enterprise!), and today I wonder from where Japan goes and to where.
We westernised Japanese people can't go back to the pure Japanese soul and skills any more, i.e. what the Japanese can present as pure Japanese things to foreigners are almost all very old, maybe the things made before the Meiji era. I, however, think that if we continue to copy Western ways, we will have to have an inferiority complex forever as Westerners originally had the ways, and the originals or traditions, in general, should be respected. So Japan has expressed her own charms by arranging the models of each suzerain country mainly through their products and literature without contacting directly with many foreigners who exist behind them.
What we need now is to consciously unite the external self and internal self to find a well-balanced base to search for our new identity. Japan must take on the fundamental contradiction, not avoiding or removing it so that her civilization gradually will shift from heteronomy to autonomy, that is, from a dependent orphan - ethnically, religiously and linguistically alone on the globe - with hidden refraction being forced to be westernised thoroughly, to a flexible adult who have succeeded to mix major civilization of the West and East well in her.
By doing so Japan can sublate things and ideas of the West and East better and freer, not only projecting material and economical activities like before, but also introducing spiritual and cultural ones with her own perspective. Then, to countries who have protected their traditions she can give novel impressions or fresh experiences with a certain sense of incompatibility and mental tensions, which might be the same kind of feeling Japan received by westernisation.
