Japan: The Paradox of Harmony by Keiko Hirata, Mark Warschauer (review)

“Paradox” seems to me a dull relation. Less generative than chiasmus or dialectics, it derives its rhetorical effect from the absoluteness implied, where somehow a is equal to not-a. I distrust claims of paradox. But I also distrust claims of harmony, so this book meets me halfway. Further, any broad study of “Japan” recalls Ruth Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, which, as a study of national character that eventually was espoused by the people it depicted, goes against today’s anthropological grain with a vengeance. So I read The Paradox of Harmony with some curiosity: about paradox, harmony, Japan, and studies of national character.

The authors introduce each of their topics with a vignette about a particular event or a representative (yet personal) fate and then spin it into a fuller exploration of one of the tropes of Japan — hierarchy, aging, war commemoration, insularity, Fukushima, English pronunciation, and so forth, enriched by some statistics and more anecdotes. The aim seems to be to evoke the emic perspective of today’s Japanese, caught between the uncompromising demand for harmony at home, with all its ramifications, and the changing demands of a globalizing world — for which insistence on harmony is a hindrance. The Japanese have changed since Ruth Benedict’s day, and the authors regard the Summer Olympiad of 2020 as potentially a milestone: an indicator of whether Japan will be able to balance its love of harmony against its need for flexibility, openness, and innovation. The details are endlessly fascinating, though little will come as a surprise to the readers with a half-knowledge of Japan, since the book underpins superficial understanding with select data and vivid anecdotes. The surplus is wa, glossed as “(social) harmony” and presented as the master value that — paradoxically! — undermines all it is supposed to achieve. This is a strange book, which ends by reinforcing preconceived notions, including the one that not all is paradox that produces tensions.