John Lie Japan, the Sustainable Society Review

Japan, the Sustainable Society 

CONTENTS

Preface
1. From Japan as “Number One” to the Lost Decades
2. Growth Reconsidered
3. The Regime as a Concept

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4. Ordinary Virtues
5. The Book of Sushi
6. The Artisanal Ethos in Japan: The Larger Context
7. The Book of Bathing
8. Ikigai : Reasons for Living
Postface

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JAPAN, THE SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY: The Artisanal Ethos, Ordinary Virtues, and Everyday Life in the Age of Limits | By John Lie

Oakland: University of California Press, 2021

John Lie, one of the most versatile and provocative writers we have on society in contemporary East Asia, offers in Japan, The Sustainable Society a proudly polemical argument about lessons that a troubled world might draw from Japan, rumours of Japan’s global irrelevance notwithstanding. Lie positions the book as a challenge to an overarching emphasis on growth, a broad political and intellectual preoccupation that has leapt beyond its key constituencies of economists and macroeconomic policy makers and become an all-encompassing, disciplining drive for many around the globe. With a surviving if perhaps fragile “artisanal ethos,” its practice of “ordinary virtues,” and the seeming acceptance by many that the country and its residents might still thrive even without a return to its heady promise of global economic leadership in the 1980s, Japan offers hints about how we might survive “the age of limits.”

After a brief preface, Lie opens with an account of Japan’s oft-overstated “decline” from its economic peak during the bubble years of the late 1980s through the early 1990s, then moving in chapter 2 to an extended critique of an ideology of growth that, while perhaps especially pronounced in postwar Japan, is global and tied to powerful academic, policy, and political institutions in the advanced industrial world. In doing so, he simultaneously undermines any rationale for depicting Japan as irrelevant to global debate because it is no longer the expansive economic dynamo of East Asia while also suggesting that the complex and sometimes heartening reactions of its people to supposed “decline” provide a powerful counter to the soul-crushing obsession with growth for growth’s sake. 

Lie turns next to the idea of a “regime,” which feels similar to Bourdieu’s conceptions of habitus and field, though perhaps longer in duration. This is important because Lie depicts postwar Japan as a kind of crystallization of elements of the Meiji regime: growth-as-modernization, other values be damned. He compares this, mostly unfavourably, to the varied ethical positions and ways of life that emerged during the Edo era, a period frequently depicted, he says, as merely backward rather than rich in social and cultural flexibility that might be useful guides for life today. Although Lie offers frequent caveats about the difficulty of drawing a straight line between the Tokugawa period and today, comments like “twenty-first-century Japan, in its acceptance of different sexual orientations and lifestyles, has returned to its Tokugawa roots” (201) seem to posit continuities that other researchers might question.

In chapter 5, “The Book of Sushi,” Lie takes readers through a concise history of sushi as a food, focusing on the “artisanal ethos” that drives many chefs to aim for the sublime even as low-cost options abound and many customers seem oblivious to the craft and care behind the food. Lie articulates the artisanal ethos his informants—from sushi chefs to hand-crafted goods makers—espouse, with transformative quality produced through creative and imperfect repetition as opposed to the more lucrative but unsatisfying routines of a salaryman’s life. They also drink a lot, several hasten to add. 

And in chapter 7, “The Book of Bathing,” Lie uses the comforting routines of Japanese bathing (from onsen hot springs through the sentо̄ public baths to personal ofuro bathtubs at home) to reflect on how people can find satisfaction from the repetition of ordinary virtues, like relaxation and personal cleanliness. 

His final chapter, “Ikigai,” examines how people can find meaning in their lives from these ethical commitments and practices that seem “unproductive” by the merciless standards of contemporary capitalism. A brief postscript explains the book’s unusual approach in part by noting that “sushi was great to think with, that onsen were great to think in, and that eating sushi or enjoying onsen is not a bad first step in the search for a sustainable future” (219).

Amen, of course, and it’s refreshing to see a social scientist extol the pleasures associated with these miracles of everyday life. Indeed, among the book’s many strengths is Lie’s willingness to move seamlessly between erudite command of French and German social theory and the precise details of a sushi chef’s work and even the physical sensations of stepping out of a hot bath. It offers no shortage of insights about alternative ways in which to draw meaning about our lives, with the possibility that these will offer more sustainable paths than does the road to economic growth for its own sake. He might have gone further, as he reflects only briefly on the relationship between sushi and declining maritime resources, and even less on the environmental footprint of Japan’s onsen industry. Neither would require a fundamental rethinking of the book, but everyday virtues and an artisanal ethos may in their own ways contribute to tightening limits on global capacity.

My own sensation in reading the book was similar to the one I’ve experienced in my rare foray into a high-end sushi bar: pleasure at the virtuosic craft on display, combined with deep and uncomfortable anxiety that the chef might consider me unworthy of the meal. Part of this sprouts from Lie’s faint praise for the institutional environment in which I myself work: “A Japanese university may not be the best in the world, but it is pleasant, convenient, and satisfactory” (92)—words I’ve learned to avoid in describing my own research in grant applications. But it also speaks as well to Lie’s approach, making few concessions to readers in his rapid-fire references to figures as diverse as Condorcet and Vespasian before one even gets to the Japanese material.

Lie need not be concerned about my own imposter syndrome, but this does raise questions about the book’s target audience. After all, his references to writers like Shiba Ryōtarō or Nakajima Atsushi come and go so quickly as to be likely bewildering to anyone educated outside of Japan. Scholars in Japanese studies, however, might be equally confused and even dismayed by Lie’s apparent decision to avoid much of the recent social-scientific work published about Japan in English. Quite aside from my sense that critiques of growth and of “Japan is in decline” discourses are more widespread than he indicates, Lie occasionally implies problems in the literature that seem misplaced. He writes, for example, “perhaps my having dwelled among academics—fond as they are of generalizations, such as that the Japanese are hierarchical or holistic, collectivistic or compulsive—made me resist the proverbial unum noris omnes (know one, know all), blanket generalizations that occlude more than they illuminate” (219). Here I wondered to whom he might be referring. Although these generalizations animated debates in the field decades ago, they are far to the periphery of leading work today in anthropology, political science, or sociology, let alone the humanities or cultural studies.

None of this undermines the book’s many insights, but it raises questions about how best to specify the book’s contributions to a field that has long debated growth, decline, and their cultural consequences. Few studies do so with the kind of learning and panache Lie brings to bear in Japan, The Sustainable Society, but they usually are careful to note how they build upon or challenge existing research on contemporary Japan. And for these reasons, I myself am struggling with how to use the book in my classes; I admire its ethical vision and its dazzling erudition, even as I worry it presents a misleading picture of the current state of scholarly debate. But I hope to find a pleasant, convenient, and satisfactory solution.

David Leheny

Waseda University, Shinjuku

Last Revised: August 31, 2022

Pacific Affairs

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Japan, the Sustainable Society: The Artisanal Ethos, Ordinary Virtues, and Everyday Life in the Age of Limits

John Lie

Copyright Date: 2022

Edition: 1

Published by: University of California Press

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2j6xf7g

Pages: 342

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv2j6xf7g

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PREFACE

PREFACE (pp. ix-xii)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2j6xf7g.3

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1 From Japan as “Number One” to the Lost Decades

1 From Japan as “Number One” to the Lost Decades (pp. 1-38)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2j6xf7g.4

In 1979, the sociologist Ezra F. Vogel published Japan as Number One: Lessons for America.¹ It had modest sales and a tepid response in the United States. As Vogel recalled seven years later, “The general reaction [was that the book was] ‘fascinating and amusing.’ The implication clearly was that the professor had spent a little too much time in the Orient … for he vastly overestimated … the extraordinary successes of Japan.”² A month after the initial publication, when the Japanese translation appeared, Japan as Number One became one of the best-selling nonfiction books in Japanese publishing history. What was...




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2 Growth Reconsidered

2 Growth Reconsidered (pp. 39-60)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2j6xf7g.5

The idea of modernity, along with associated notions of growth, progress, and improvement, remains at the heart of the Western, and the Western-influenced, way of life. Against the pernicious and perfidious past—which saw the reign of stasis instead of growth, of cycles rather than progress, of continuity over disruption, and of tradition in lieu of innovation—we can regard the advent of modernity only as an unalloyed good. Who, after all, could possibly be against modernity, except perhaps a few tree-hugging environmental activists or antediluvian reactionaries?




But has Japan since the Meiji Restoration (1868–1912), Japan in its mad...




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3 The Regime as a Concept

3 The Regime as a Concept (pp. 61-77)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2j6xf7g.6

The date of 11 March 2011 is a fateful one in modern Japanese history. Remembered as 3/11, it was the day the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami shattered buildings and swept them away, along with many people. Even more devastating was the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, a disaster that threatened Japan’s very survival.




I happened to be in the air on that day. My plane touched down at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport a few minutes before the earthquake struck. I was actually on my way to the Tōhoku region itself, to Sendai, and was thinking about my connecting...




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4 Ordinary Virtues

4 Ordinary Virtues (pp. 78-107)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2j6xf7g.7

In the mid- to late 2010s, a curious trend swept through the rich countries of the world. Against the capitalist virtues of accumulation and consumption, Marie Kondo proclaimed the emancipatory gospel of decluttering, that is, the practice of dispossession and the principle of minimalism.¹ The so-called KonMari method (its name combines the author’s surname and given name, Kondō Marie, as they are styled in Japanese) poses a simple question to the person overwhelmed by a particular possession: Does it “spark joy”?² If yes, keep it; if no, toss it. As the Kon-Mari method launched a thousand tweets and retweets, and...




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5 The Book of Sushi

5 The Book of Sushi (pp. 108-142)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2j6xf7g.8

There is a sushi restaurant in central Tokyo that I have been patronizing for more than thirty years.¹ It is somewhat typical of the city’s postwar Edo-style sushi purveyors. There are only nine seats. There are three different omakase (prix fixe) courses, ranging in price from the equivalent of roughly ten to thirty US dollars, including tax and tip. And the dishes are served in a matter of minutes, in keeping with sushi’s origins as fast food or street food. The establishment serves primarily walk-in customers, as was usual during the postwar period, though many customers are jōrensan (regulars), and...




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6 The Artisanal Ethos in Japan: The Larger Context

6 The Artisanal Ethos in Japan: The Larger Context (pp. 143-174)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2j6xf7g.9

In Tokyo, not more than a five-minute walk from the sushi restaurant described at the beginning of chapter 5, there was a tempura place I used to go to about as often and as long as I had gone to that sushi shop. Its U-shaped counter seated eleven people, and the standard lunch set cost the equivalent of about seven US dollars, including tax and tip. Like the sushi shop, the tempura place hadn’t raised its prices in years. The chef had been deep frying fish and vegetables for more than a half century. He displayed masterly facility with his...




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7 The Book of Bathing

7 The Book of Bathing (pp. 175-192)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2j6xf7g.10

It is a commonsense observation that most Japanese people bathe before they retire for the night. They may not bathe every day, and some, especially young urbanites, may prefer to shower in the morning.¹ Yet few Japanese people would deny that bathing is normative in Japan, and many have much to say, often with eloquence, about the virtues of bathing. An office worker in his fifties told me, “During the day, there’s nothing I look forward to more than going home, sinking into warm water, opening a cold beer, and relaxing.” “It makes me feel Japanese,” a restaurant server in...




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8 Ikigai: Reasons for Living

8 Ikigai: Reasons for Living (pp. 193-218)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2j6xf7g.11

The polymath Hashimoto Osamu, born in 1947 and therefore a member of the postwar dankai generation, recalls his upbringing in Suginami Ward in west central Tokyo. His grandparents, from a modest background, lived in a house on a lot larger than 3,500 square feet. Today that would be a gargantuan estate. Half the lot was a vegetable garden, with potato flowers, strawberries, and corn. But this paradise vanished after Hashimoto and his parents moved in with his grandparents. First an expansion of the house eliminated the garden. Then Hashimoto’s father cut down the chestnut and fig trees to build a...




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POSTFACE

POSTFACE (pp. 219-220)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2j6xf7g.12

It is tempting to believe, with the long-forgotten Friedrich Gundolf, that “Methode ist Erlebnisart” (“method is experience”), and therefore to narrate the genesis and genealogy of this book.¹ But to do so would be tantamount to producing another volume, maybe a book longer than this one. It is true that my protracted if intermittent residence in Japan made me skeptical toward one or another of the grand narratives about Japan. Perhaps my having dwelled among academics—fond as they are of generalizations, such as that the Japanese are hierarchical or holistic, collectivist or compulsive—made me resist the proverbial unum...




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NOTES

NOTES (pp. 221-272)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2j6xf7g.13

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INDEX

INDEX (pp. 273-286)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2j6xf7g.14

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Back Matter

Back Matter (pp. 287-287)

https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2j6xf7g.15

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