Old article, but there is something to learn from Japan!

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2004/10/...

Living And Dying In Tokyo
VIEW FROM THE RIGHT

Adam Sparks, Special to SF Gate

Monday, October 4, 2004

My mother-in-law passed away last week, and I attended the funeral in
Tokyo. The five-day wake was a mind-blower in so many ways. It made me
think of just how different Japan is than the United States and how, in
so many ways, it is so far superior, both culturally and
technologically. We have much to learn.

First, the treatment of death is much different. My mother-in-law's
body went directly from the hospital, where she passed away, to the
home of her husband. There, the body was placed on the floor in the
home's tatami room, a traditional chamber, lined with woven straw
matting, that doubles as a living room and an ancestral shrine. There
was no coffin; the body, covered, except for the tranquil face, in only
a simple white shroud, lay beside the ancestral altar that accents
every Japanese home.

Incense was burning, and the deep, droning pattern of the prayers the
mourners offered made them sound like Gregorian chants. Relatives,
friends, neighbors and the local Buddhist monk all made a pilgrimage to
pay their respects.

Finally, the body was taken in a solemn procession to the cremation
ovens within a sprawling funeral parlor's compound. Outside of the
cremation area was an idyllic Japanese garden, replete with swaying,
young bamboo trees and a rock garden. (To the Japanese, this is already
a classic view of heaven.) Groups of mourners silently waited behind
glass doors for their turn to have their loved ones incinerated. Each
group looked as though they were waiting for St. Peter to open heaven's
gate for them. The scene was surreal.

At the conclusion of the wake, the body was put into a high-tech oven
heated to some 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

The ritual of the long wake, in which the body is kept at home, seems
at once primitive and cathartic: It offers the proper amount of time to
mourn. American funerals, by contrast, are sterile. Often, the body is
never seen again, or at any rate spends little time with the surviving
family members. The Japanese ceremonial style, however, feels right.
It's a very long good-bye, but why not?

Ancient Culture Alive And Thriving

The antiquity of the Japanese funeral ritual is strong part of the
culture. The Japanese, despite their renown for high tech, are
themselves a living, ancient culture. They're one of the few
civilizations in Asia that have never been colonized. They can trace
their roots back some 3,000 years, compared to a mere 230 years for us
cowboy Americans. And longevity matters: When a culture has stewed and
simmered for that long, it tends to evolve into a very fine broth.

Many of the police ride around on bicycles and don't carry guns. Why
bother? The crime rate is among the lowest in the civilized world. The
few criminals the Japanese do have often turn themselves in within a
week; they simply feel too guilty, and honor dictates that they face
the music of justice rather than hide.

There is a strong samurai-like fidelity of the Japanese to both their
family and their work. It's normal for an employee to be loyal to his
first company from the time of his college graduation to his
retirement. Loyalty and honor still matter. Ritual suicides for those
who gravely dishonor family or company still occur: Now, that's
accountability.

There is no graffiti on school walls. That's due in large part because
there are no janitors. The schoolchildren do all the custodial work.
They clean their classroom, the hallways and the bathrooms. Children
are unlikely to vandalize that which they must repair the next day.
That can't happen here, though: The unions might scream, "You're taking
away our jobs!" or the ACLU might cry, "Unconstitutional -- it's forced
labor!" But it works, inculcating in children a respect for property.

And schoolchildren stand up when the teacher arrives in the classroom,
greeting him or her with a deep bow. The respect for others is also
already transparent in the deep bows offered at every greeting. The
older the person you're greeting is, or the more senior he or she is in
status, the deeper one bows.

Homeless? No Problem

The nuclear family is a tight-knit unit; the mother still generally
stays at home to care for the young children. And offspring usually
stay at home until they marry; it's not uncommon for three generations
to live under the same roof. Furthermore, the village, akin to our
neighborhoods, is like a city-state. It helps in medical emergencies,
senior problems and family tragedies, and Tokyo is essentially a
conglomerate of hundreds of very old, extremely cohesive village units.

Why does this social structure matter? It helps explain why there are
virtually no homeless people on the streets. Families will not tolerate
it; nosy villagers would notify any kin, who would get their relatives
off the streets. In the rare circumstances in which a homeless person
has no family, the home village will take responsibility to make sure
he or she has a home and any rehabilitation treatment he or she needs.
That system works in Japan because of a strong sense of self-respect
and self-worth, a strong moral upbringing and work ethic and a loving
caring family and village unit.

In the United States, by contrast, there is no stigma to being
homeless. In cities such as San Francisco, homeless people are
celebrated and even have lobbyists called "homeless advocates" who
grind out press releases and control budgets in the millions. Go
figure. Also, we are so isolated and disconnected from our families and
our hometowns, and the only "help" homeless people get is from the ACLU
and the courts, which declare that these people have a right to
panhandle aggressively and to sleep, defecate and die on the streets.
This is the tragedy of misplaced American compassion.

Against the backdrop of ancient thinking, the Japanese are, by far, the
most advanced society technologically. Their bullet trains speed around
the country at 130 miles per hour, boasting service, seating and
amenities that compare to those of first-class airline service, right
down to the back rubs. Compare that to our Amtrak trains, which lumber
down the track at about 40 mph and still derail somewhere about once a
month.

Taxi doors open and close automatically, and cabs are no more than one
year old. Compare that to some of our cabs, which look like they have
survived a demolition derby. Cars are hoisted three levels high on
mechanical lifts in crowded parking lots to make the most of their
limited space.

Japanese cell phones already have video conferencing, and can convert
into televisions. Similarly, the global positioning systems in their
new cars can also be used as TVs that turn off instantly whenever the
gear is moved out of neutral -- great for traffic jams.

Caring for the Earth

Environmentally, too, the Japanese are far ahead of us. Household
recycling is mandatory: There's not enough landfill. Water from
bathroom sinks flows into toilet tanks for reuse. Not only are toilet
seats heated, but toilets universally include a bidet or a more general
water spray from below -- your choice.

The high-speed trains are the primary mode of transportation. Bicycles
get you to the train stations scattered throughout Tokyo -- where few
of the thousands parked there are locked -- and apartment buildings
feature two-story-high covered carport-type units at their apartments
for bicycle storage. The cars there are much smaller than Japanese
vehicles sold in the United States. The homes are tiny and minimally
furnished, and a typical family lives in a home the size of a
one-bedroom apartment here, using up less electricity and gas. All
faucets are hooked up to water heaters that provide hot water on
demand, rather than continuously, to prevent water from needlessly
being heated all day long.

Architecturally, it's as if the Japanese have given the world's most
brilliant architects carte blanche. High-rise buildings appear in all
shapes, including the letter T. Some buildings have their own
underground cities, where people can live, sleep and shop in
eight-story underground malls. Everything is computerized,
miniaturized, sanitized and high tech. It's like visiting the Jetsons'
hometown. All this infrastructure, however, is set against a backdrop
of a pure and ancient culture, where kimono-clad women still head off,
giggling, to the temple to offer their obeisances.

The Japanese middle class is dominant. Few are mired in poverty, and
there are few large, ostentatious homes, as the upper class is small.
Middle-class homes are furnished in a spartan manner despite the
ubiquity of high-tech gadgetry throughout the society. The Japanese
have traded the bigger-is-better philosophy of the struggle for ever
more material goods for a lifestyle of simplicity, meaningful
relationships and societal harmony and security -- all of which they
have in spades.

Let's Party

Entertainment districts consisting of what appear to be office
buildings but are in fact "entertainment" buildings feature bars,
parlors for playing pachinko (the Japanese version of slot machines),
restaurants and nightclubs. Tokyo boasts about eight major
entertainment neighborhoods, each the size of downtown San Francisco.
The Shinjuku district -- which makes New York's Times Square look like
a sad little plaza in Sacramento -- is filled with flashing lights
throughout the pedestrian malls, and wall-to-wall mobs of people bustle
about.

Tokyo has more daily newspapers -- eight -- than any American city.
Tokyoites, an intellectually curious people, read insatiably and have a
healthy, open respect and admiration for Americans -- and you can't say
that about too many cities in the world. And, despite the fact that we
bombed two of their cities to smithereens in World War II, ironically,
they thank us for rebuilding their nation and bringing them into the
community of advanced, civilized nations. They still have respect and
honor for us. This is one of the reasons Japan is now an ally of ours
in Iraq. Another reason is that they can easily relate to President
Bush, whom they perceive as a simple, honest and straight-talking,
straight-shooting country cowboy. It's time we learned a little from
them.

Adam Sparks is a Bay Area writer. He can be reached at
adamst...@aol.com.