A best-seller book is

What! Yes! Free The Key West Juan!. Ha ha ha, I love it.

Anyway I went to Kinokuniya which is the one of the biggest book stores in Shinjuku. Kinokuniya has a good selection of foreign books. My foreign friends also use the store too. Then I bought a few books, one of them is this best-seller book "Kokka no Hinkaku" (=dignity of a state). I hardly buy best-sellers because I am a perverse person (and maybe I thought what suits my reading pleasure should be a discovery of my own). But I bought the book from the flat display; actually it's very interesting that this book has become a best seller now.

The book is written by the Japanese mathematician Masahiko Fujiwara. He worked as a professor at the University of Colorado in the US and Cambridge in the UK. It was fun to read another book of his about these different cultures, though, this time he wrote about the Japanese--that we should remember the spirit of Bushido.

When I said I am reading a "remember Bushido" book and it's a best seller, my American friend replied "What? Japan is also returning to a conservative Old Japan? (he hates Bush :-p) and will increase militarization?" Hmm, maybe foreign people may misunderstand because of the sound of "Bushi" (warrior).

Actually Bushidomeans the way of the warrior and basically it teaches "how to live" as a warrior, but also it teaches the spirit of mercy, kindness, and courage for everyone.

Inazo Nitobe is well known as a writer of the book "Bushido"(1900). He wrote it in English and it is translated into some other languages too. Nitobe was educated in the UK and Germany and worked as a vice-minister of the League of Nations and inhabited the international stage. He married an American woman and he was a Christian. This person who has such a background is the author of the Bushido. Actually before ww2 he gave many lectures in the world about Japan and Bushido. At the time what he said there was -Japan lost the way and made many mistakes too, but Japan would find it, so give us a little more time-. He worried that Japan would be isolated from the world and also he wanted to stop the world war.

Some people write about "the Kokka no Hinkaku" in their web and blog. Some say they "completely agree," some say "returning to old Japan is too simple." Today I found a big media article theAsahi wrote about "the Bushido" and "Kokka no Hinkaku" on January 1st. I don't need to return completely to Old Japan, but we can pursue new values from old wisdom. (We have the word = onko chishin.) I will enjoy the book.

Comments

[david]

Oh course foreigners misunderstand. Japanese always tell us we cannot understand Japaese culture (but they understand ours, they say).

Bushido. Samurai. During the Edo Period--and others, exactly what mercy and kindness did the samurai class show the farmers who had to hand over huge amounts of rice to them. How are women treated in Bushido tradition? Perhaps that is just fine in Japan.

[Mari]

Hi There
Unique does not mean isolation. As that point, Japanese may learn something from old wisdom "Bushido", "Shinto", those Japanese unique ideas. My impression is Japan is confused and lost the way to go.

[Jonathan]

Claytonain, newer isn't always better. Japan is a country that has one foot in the future and one foot in the past. In the west, we see this as odd and an indication that a country isn't ready for the future. I disagree though. If anything, many countries prefer a gradual transition into the future. Radical change usually leaves a country in a state of shock and causes instability in the nation for many years to come. This is what got Japan into trouble the first time around in 1868. 80 years of radical rule resulted. The ugliest years of Japanese history.

[Claytonain]

from my experiences, I feel like Japan is going "nowhere fast"