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Article Excerpt
Abstract. This paper deals with intercultural aspects of privacy, particularly with regard to important differences between Japanese and the Western views. This paper is based on our discussions with Rafael Capurro--a dialogue now represented by two separate but closely interrelated articles. The companion paper is broadly focused on the cultural and historical backgrounds of the concepts of privacy and individualism in "Western" worlds; our main theme focuses on different concepts of privacy in Japan and their sources in related aspects of Japanese culture. The interrelationship between our two papers is apparent in our taking up identical or similar topics in each paper. Reading our two papers in conjunction with each other will bring about deeper and broader insights into the diverse values and worldviews of Japan and Western cultures that underlie concepts of privacy that at a surface level appear to be similar.
Key words: autonomy, culture, denial of subjectivity, Ikai, Japan, Musi, Privacy, Seken, self, Shakai
Contradictory Japanese attitudes towards privacy
Japan is a complicated country--even for Japanese people themselves. Indeed, their lives are full of contradictory matters, including the problems related to privacy. People want to be free and pay attention to a 'right to control one's personal information,' but at the same time they want to get 'true' friends by sharing their secret information concerning their private, personal experience. According to our recent research data (conducted in Japan, 2005), 70.6% of the respondents said 'yes' to the question, "Do you want to get 'true' friends by expressing or sharing secret information concerning your or your friends' private or personal experience such as disappointments, moments of shame, or guilty conscience?" While 75.0% of the respondents of the same research said that media should take care not to invade the privacy of the victims of crime, 66.8% said that personal information on such victims, including their occupation, human relations, personality, life history, etc., are needed in order to know the 'deep' meanings of the crime. (1)
In order to understand these contradictions, we propose here a framework that demarcates a plurality in the worldview(s) of Japanese people. In our view, Japanese people's otherwise apparently contradictory attitudes towards privacy and individualism cannot be separated from the plurality of their worldview(s). In our past research and related studies on this plurality, we have found a dichotomy between Seken and Shakai in Japanese minds. Seken is the aspect of the world that consists of traditional and indigenous worldviews or ways of thinking and feeling. Shakai is a different aspect of the world that includes modernized worldviews and ways of thinking influenced in many respects by the thoughts and systems imported from 'Western' countries. We believe that this finding of a dichotomy of Seken and Shakai provides us with deep insights into Japanese minds and that the contradictions mentioned above can be at least partly explained by this dichotomy. But at the same time, we also feel that we have to add another or the third aspect to this dualism of worldviews, if we want to understand the apparently contradictory features of Japanese society and culture more deeply and broadly. Thus we want to add the concept of Ikai to our previous dichotomy of Seken and Shakai, thus transforming it into a new trichotomy of Seken, Shakai and Ikai. Ikai is the world of 'the other(s)', i.e. the hidden or forgotten meanings or values in Seken or Shakai as normal aspects of the world; Ikai is the aspect of the world from which evils, disasters, crimes, and impurity--along with freedom and the sources of energy related to art and spiritual meanings--seem to emerge. While our research has con-firmed the dualism of Seken and Shakai in many ways, the concept(s) of Ikai has not yet been confirmed by research. But at least for the Japanese scholars who have sympathetically documented the hidden and forgotten part of our world--such as Yoshihiko Amino, Masao Yamaguchi, Yujiro Nakamura and Bin Kimura--the concept(s) of Ikai (even if referred to in other terms as Muen) are crucial to looking into Japanese minds, culture and society most deeply. Hence we believe that by adding the concept(s) of Ikai to the dichotomy of Seken and Shakai, we can more deeply and clearly grasp the meanings behind the contradictions noted above.
A homicide in Tutiura
The starting point of this paper, and of our discussions with Prof. Capurro, is our dialogue about diverse interpretations of a homicide in Tutiura in Japan. More precisely, we thought that the ways of portraying this homicide in a respected Japanese newspaper reflect important differences between Japan and "Western" worlds regarding concepts and evaluations of "privacy". Hence we start with a possible Japanese interpretation of a typical homicide news report in Japan.
It seems that we Japanese have a different scheme for understanding privacy than in Western countries. We should analyze these cultural backgrounds more deeply if we want to understand each other better. We also need to know ourselves more deeply because some important aspects of our social life still remain unclear for ourselves, including the contradictions shown above.
We were surprised by a newspaper report about a homicide that happened in October, 2004, in Tutiura, a city near Tsukuba in Ibaraki Prefecture. This homicide happened in a family. The 28-year-old jobless son of a certain family killed his parents and his elder sister. What surprised us was the public portrayal in Asahi Shimbun (viewed as a quality newspaper in Japan) of what we might otherwise expect to be private details about the victim's family. This portrayal included photos of the victims, the floor plan of the house, an illustration of the place where the homicide happened, personal history (job, education, marriage and even aims of life), a map of the surroundings, a report on the human relations within the family, and interviews with neighbours and family friends. We believe that publishing such private details in a respected newspaper would be unacceptable for Western people. But at least most of the nearly 50 students in the class of one of the authors on Information and Media Studies seem to believe that this kind of information is very important in order to know the 'truth' of this case. Some students explicitly said that this kind of news report provides them with frameworks through which they can share certain aspects of the meaning of this tragedy. (2)
We believe our students' attitudes to be representative of Japanese attitudes more broadly. According to our tentative interpretation, where Seken is an old and indigenous aspect of the world for Japanese people--some important matters like disasters, crime, war, and illness are thought to come from outside Seken. Seken seems to be derived from the traditional Japanese culture, including the values influenced by Shinto, Buddhism, Confucianism and the relationships between people and nature as well as natural...
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