調和社会の欠点はいろいろある。何しろ本音を率直に言えない社会なので、何をするにも時間がかかり、欲求不満もたまりやすい。欲求不満がたまりすぎると大爆発することになる。
　昨今の中東における自爆テロは、日本の神風特攻隊を思い起こさせる。９･11などはまさにパールハーバーの再現のよう。アラブの人々も欲求不満の臨界点に達したに違いない。だが、本質は日本人と同じではない。日本人は桜の花のように散るが、アラブ人は、粘っこく長期闘争に耐えている。そこには調和主義とイスラム原理主義の違いが見られる。

PART THREE:
Outcome of Harmonism (2)

By Shun Daichi

l. Accumulation of Frustrations
In our society one cannot live apart from others. And we all have to compromise with each other on every subject all the time.

There is no freedom to be different from others. No freedom to express your own true feelings (Honne) in public so that frustrations accumulate. We also take into consideration the color of clothing to be the same as the others so as not to upset them.

It is like living in an "ari jigoku" (the nest of an ant lion).

Everyone tries to pull everybody else's legs and we do not want others to escape from the "ari jigoku." However, once you get used to living in this place, then you will find life is easy and enjoyable. We call this phenomenon "sumeba miyako, " which means, "If you live anyplace long enough, it becomes home."

It is almost impossible to be individualistic in this country and most Japanese don't know who they are, and only frustration accumulates. Your personal identity is decided by others in Japan not by yourself.　　In Japan who you are and your identity is usually decided by what organization or group you belong.

For most Japanese, life is to compromise and to giving up constantly. This has not changed for the past 2,500 years if not 12,000 years and even today, after an economic miracle, 95 percent of the Japanese people have to give up on having a higher standard of living, and live at a lower level compared to other developed countries.

Even corporate leaders lead humble life compared to the US company CEOs. Salary and bonus of Japanese company leaders are minimal compare to the Western top managers.

The reason for this Japanese attitude in life only can be explained by the power of Harmonism.

To maintain harmony in our society, there is a lot of energy, and lots of compromise and negotiations are needed. Accrual of these frustrations can be very high and we need a place to get rid of those frustrations. And we have so many drinking bars and clubs in Ginza, Akasaka and other places.

I think we might have more than 10 to 20 times the number of drinking places in every corner of our towns and cities compared to the United States and other western countries.

Related to this accrual of frustration, there is one other peculiar behavior one can observe with the Japanese people. We try to imprison our frustrations to the utmost limit and once it goes over our limit then we tend to react in a Kamikaze-like fashion.

We usually treat this kind of behavior as being normal, because we know once those frustrations are let out; the person will be back to normal very soon.

This kind of situation happens daily with Japanese, especially when we drink together. A person with too much frustration burst in to anger. People around the person know he is just getting let out his frustrations. We try to help him but never really surprised by such behavior.

Good example of Kamikaze-like behavior is an attack of Pearl Harbor at the start of the World War Two. President Roosevelt was a clever man. He knew the Japanese national traits. He embargoed oil export to Japan and limited our shipbuilding to minimum. Those act of the US frustrated Japanese, and finally Japan took a Kamikaze-type attack on Pearl Harbor.

It was a silly move by Japanese, however, Japanese act like this whenever frustrations go over their limit.

(To be continued)