調和主義の社会のよいところは、住み心地が良いところにある。大樹の下で守られているように心地よい。それは欧米に長く住んだ日本人ならだれでも感じると思う。それはぬるま湯の世界であり、灼熱の砂漠の世界とも、ヨーロッパの厳しい契約の世界とも異なる。
でもすべてには裏と表がある。調和主義にはよいところもたくさんあるが、欠点も多い。一番の欠点は、世界の他の社会のシステムとあまりにもかけ離れており、なかなか理解されないこと。さらに日本人が、なかなか世界市民になれない理由ともなっていることだろう。

PART THREE:
Outcome of Harmonism (1)

By Shun Daichi

In General
Our society has been pursuing relative harmony through Harmonism for the past 400 years if not 12000 years, and there are both positive and negative effects to the outcome of the Harmonism in Japan.

The positive effects are easy to note and many of them are already very well known even outside of Japan.

Good sides:

1. We have only a few swear words in our language. So, we do not fight much at least on surface.
2. Cities are relatively safe, even at night. This is changing rapidly recently due to increase of none Japanese workers in Japan. One of the reasons Japan does not want foreign worker to work in Japan is that they might break our harmony. Harmonism of Japan is not easily understood. It will take long time to adjust to Japanese society that we prefer not to receive any refugees from abroad. At the same time most Japanese feel odd to live abroad that most Japanese want to live in Japan where people understand our way of life, Harmonism.
3. Industrial relations are good. We have almost no major strikes. Company management and Labor Unions work harmoniously together to achieve maximum business success in Japan.
4. Elderly people live with younger families in harmony (in Tokyo 46 percent of those over the age of 60 live with their children's family.)
5. We have fewer disputes on surface compared to the Western countries and have fewer lawyers. We have dispute of course, however, we prefer to solve the matter by private negotiation and without involvement of lawyers. Bad side is sometimes Yakuza (Japanese Mafia) may be employed to solve the problems.
6. Workers work very hard and we are very successful in business. This is because we have work as a family in the company harmoniously.
7. Japan is relatively united and heading to one direction when we have any direction. In the society of Harmonism, we feel we are all belongs to a middleclass and share similar view on everything. That is why sometimes we feel hard to have two political parties.

Now we look at the bad side of Harmonism. There are always two sides to everything. I think this side needs more explanation.

(To be continued)