The Structure of Japan

Exposing the True Nature of Invisible Conformity Pressure

If you have stayed in Japan for a long time, you have likely encountered a unique social structure possessing a vast and ambiguous realm that refuses to be neatly divided. I call this an ambiguous realm because its form creates a sense of wrongness distinct from the state as understood in the Western world, and within it, an incomprehensible invisible something is fused. Because it is an invisible something, it naturally cannot be fully identified by modern dissection and thus feels like a monster. The problem is that unless you were born and raised in Japan or have lived firmly in Japanese society for at least three years, this invisible something remains a presence you cannot touch. And despite being an untouchable invisible something, its fusion with other elements makes it impossible to extract as a specific entity. This trouble is easily relabeled and cut down as “village society,” but that amounts to saying nothing, and discussing this type of problem is certainly not easy. Yet it is important to examine the reality of this mysterious Japanese system that goes beyond strange to sometimes feel terrifying. This is because the errors inherent in the origin of modernity appear there explicitly.

One who could be said to have gently approached this problem is Yamamoto Shichihei, who exposed the troublesome issues held by the Japanese community in his 1977 work The Study of ‘Kuki’ (invisible conformity pressure) about fifty years ago. However, his work merely presented the invisible existence of invisible conformity pressure as a force influencing Japanese behavior and decision-making. He notes in ambiguous terms that invisible conformity pressure is a monster possessing truly great absolute power and might be a kind of supernatural ability, or that if we do not grasp the true nature of this thing called invisible conformity pressure, we will have no idea what might happen in the future, but his argument actually contains a rudimentary defect. This lies in the fact that the root of his point, that the behavior and decisions of the subject are swayed by invisible conformity pressure, is narrated on the premise that a subject exists. In other words, Yamamoto Shichihei holds absolutely no doubt regarding the absence of the subject problem in Japan.

In fact, what is placed at the root of his argument is a unique assertion called Rinzaikan-teki Haaku [臨在感的把握] or a grasp based on a sense of presence. Simply put, this is a state where empathy toward a certain object becomes powerful and absolute to the point where it cannot be considered mere empathy. It argues that the intensity of empathy rises, and eventually one loses even the sensation that one is empathizing with the object, and this defines speech and action. This object includes various ideologies such as the Second World War, the postwar leftist movement, or the Anpo protests. In his view, the Japanese are regarded as losing the human subject through immersion in the object, but a subject concept fitting the Western context does not exist in Japan. The fact that this subject problem does not exist does not indicate negativity or primitiveness. It means that although such a problem itself does not exist in Japan, this type of problem possesses a standpoint disguised as a universal of the world.

To put it differently, there is no need to perceive the object as a subject-object relationship, nor to perceive it as an object or objective existence. This is an inevitability born from the linguistic structure of Japanese, but Yamamoto Shichihei, like the majority of scholars since Meiji, does not consider the viewpoint that his own language itself has a structure completely different from English or German. Therefore, he assumes the individual subject is determined by a mysterious monster called invisible conformity pressure. But if one discusses invisible conformity pressure from this mistaken premise, the standpoint remains shifted as it proceeds, and ultimately the distance becomes too great to touch the structure of Japan. In other words, a reverse action occurs where one moves away from the structure of Japan while intending to discuss it.

Certainly, the argument of Yamamoto Shichihei in that book can be called insightful. Especially for the foolish people who want to think universally that Japanese is the same as Western languages, it holds an impact leading to enlightenment. In fact, even now as fifty years have passed since publication, the book is frequently praised and used often in critiques of Japan within Japan. But when viewed from the perspective of language structure that a subject cannot exist in the existence called Japanese itself, the viewpoint of Yamamoto Shichihei vanishes all too simply. Therefore, it becomes visible that this type of problem will absolutely never reach a solution with only a gentle approach like that of Yamamoto Shichihei. The only thing we can extract from Yamamoto Shichihei, who is excellent in his pointing out, is limited to the ambiguous point that invisible conformity pressure exists above decision-making in Japan. This alone is persuasive, but on the other hand, the existence of invisible conformity pressure acting on a community is surely not limited to Japan. It is self-evident that there is no country where such a thing does not exist. There is merely a difference in intensity. In contrast, the familiar theory that Japanese empathy toward an object is too strong compared to Westerners amounts to saying almost nothing. Above all, he himself does not realize the fact that the concept he advocated as a grasp based on a sense of presence actually claims there is no subject problem in the Japanese. This is because the very character of the Japanese subject achieving total immersion in the object clearly indicates that neither subject nor object exists in Japan in the first place. In other words, he seems to be talking about the structure of Japan but is saying almost nothing.