The Japan that can say No … maybe

For anyone familiar with the late 1980’s, one of the major trends of that era was the growing strength of the Japanese economy and concerns about its impact on the United States.

In Japan, the shifting financial balance led to calls for a reexamination of the political relationship between the two countries and confirmation in people’s minds of the uniqueness of the nation’s culture, seen as the basis for its rise. A somewhat extreme manifesto of this movement was Shintaro Ishihara’s best selling book, “The Japan that can say No” subtitled “Why Japan will be first among equals”.

Co-written by Sony’s Akio Morita, the book created controversy for some of its more outlandish ideas such as the possibility of Japan withholding electronic components for American weapons systems as political leverage. The book also repeated unreconstructed prewar propaganda, such as Japan’s beneficial rule of countries it colonized and its status as the victim rather than the aggressor in the run-up to the war. A good review of the book in on Amazon here.

The reason I bring up this ancient history is because of a situation in Baseball which has some similarities. One criticism of Major League players in Japan over the last several decades has been that they won’t conform to the standards of team conduct expected of them. One reason for this behavior (besides the players belief in the superiority of MLB) is the conviction that the training routines in Japan are not designed for improving performance as much as they are for reinforcing concepts like team harmony and admitting shame for poor play.

In an interesting twist, Boston pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka is in the news for refusing to follow the Red Sox rehabilitation program, claiming that all his success in the US so far has been due to the Japanese routines he’s followed. Though the Sox have a well regarded program for pitchers, Matsuzaka says their scientific arguments for their approach don’t take into account his being Japanese. He further states that he won’t change his behavior as he’s fighting for the good of future players from Japan who’ll come to MLB and be ruined by it’s western centric practices.

This is a disturbing interpretation of Japanese conformism as being only to Japanese norms and not that of institutions that the individual has voluntarily joined. Like Ishihara’s discredited theses two decades earlier, success for Japan in the World Baseball Classic doesn’t imply Japanese exceptionalism in a globalized world.

A very different explanation is given in an excellent book on Japanese culture today by David Matsumoto. His work makes the argument that the current generation in Japan are far more individualistic and less interested in group harmony than Americans. Matsuzaka’s behavior is then reflective of a trend in young Japanese from all walks of life and presents a challenge to global organizations looking to integrate them into a group with other cultures.

Ironically it appears that the inculcation of traditional American values like self sacrifice and team play are the necessary factors for success in this environment.