National spaces and identities— Public propriety

---

“...The first Kyowa National Conference, convened in Tokyo in December 1940,
adopted the following pledge:
1. In accordance with the wishes of Emperor’s universal benevolence, we pledge to become loyal Japanese subjects.
2. In accordance with the principle of the Imperial way, we pledge to devote ourselves to public service.
3. In accordance with the principle of unity, we pledge to reform and improve our life style.
The Kyowa project was literally designed to restructure the souls of Koreans to conform to an Imperial Japanese society. Included in these programs were the changing of Korean names, compulsory Shinto worship, and the learning of Japanese language and customs.
(Lee 1981a, 162)”

Notions of propriety and civility hold the place in the streets where individual and counter-group behaviors might find expressions. Ideas about public hygiene, rules for driving autos and riding bicycles, expectations of courtesy and of emotional control in public are only a few of the many bodily rules that create the Public Body in Kyoto, as in any city. Throughout this century, the central government of Japan, perhaps more than in any other nation/state of this size (Singapore is similar in scope, but much smaller in size), has chosen to instruct its population on the minutiae of correct behavior in public.

In part this was done to address the severe, class-linked behavioral semiotics that marked pre-Meiji Japan, and can be seen as an effort to include the general population (then called heimin, or “equal-people”) in behaviors that were formerly excluded to them. And in part this was done through a spirit of “modernization” which also contained new demands for bodily discipline (e.g., for factory work). But the position and distinctions of the Japanese nobility (kazoku) and gentry (shizoku) were also maintained until after WWII, and the manners that were taught to the population, and that are still taught, are essentially behaviors of deference, to be practiced in the presence of one’s “superiors” (in social-class, age, occupation, or gender).

“Do former kazoku [nobility] have any role in democratic Japan today in relation to the emperor? It goes without saying that the kazoku no longer constitute a centralized force supporting the throne. Although a large majority still reside in the capital, and the clubhouse in the heart of Tokyo, now called Kasumi Kaikan, provides a central focus for survivors, by and large former kazoku are today more scattered than centralized. Nor do they exhibit the prestige associated with the kazoku status, but rather maintain a low, cryptic profile and joke about their having become shin heimin (“new commoners,” a post-Meiji name for former outcaste)”
(Lebra 1993, 353).
Of course, some people can afford to laugh.

So the central logic of manners in public rests on these long-established, and now unspoken, hierarchies—hierarchies that are most visible at the top (the Imperial Household) and at the bottom (persons dwelling in buraku areas, and non-Japanese, particularly Koreans).

As Pharr notes, the more extreme “manners” required of the buraku dweller in Tokugawa time, were simply one end of a continuum of deference: “If all Japanese, by virtue of being women or junior to others, may occasionally find themselves treated unsatisfactorily or oppressively because of attributes that are beyond their power to change, burakumin experience a far more extreme form of status-based discrimination. Historically, prejudice toward burakumin often denied their humanity entirely; nevertheless, it is important to note that such discriminatory treatment, while extreme, was on a scale that encompassed all deference behavior—for example, whereas in Tokugawa times all status inferiors were expected to bow deeply to their superiors, for a burakumin this meant prostrating oneself before any majority Japanese” (1990 87-88).

Curiously, one of the markers of low-status in Kyoto, levied against kawaramono (people of the river), who included indigent laborers, beggars, and other dispossessed peoples—including the actors who created Kabuki along the Kamo River—was that they wear indigo-died clothing. Today, the market for brand-name indigo-died jeans in Kyoto puts most people under 30 into this type of clothing.

“In fiscal 1993 the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture [monbusho] conducted an exhaustive survey on the implementation of moral education under the new Courses of Study. The survey covered public and private elementary and lower secondary schools and boards of education throughout Japan. The results indicate that almost all elementary and lower secondary schools have now drawn up teaching plans for moral education and are using supplementary readers, and that moral education is being promoted both through the subject of “moral education” and through school education as a whole.
Japanese Government Policies in Education, Science and Culture: 1994”

Acting fully within its established pastoral, paternal relationship to these new heimin¹, (which it had, through its own generosity, created—and without democratic interference) the Japanese state began to inform its population about the responsibilities and behaviors appropriate to citizenship. “Moral education” still occupies a prominent position within public education in Japan.

One strategy that Kyoto City has used to reinforce its image as a “world-class” cultural destination is through the creation and sponsorship of an organization of sister-cities, based upon a claim to historical cultural properties. And in 1994, as a part of its 1200th Anniversary celebration, the City again hosted the biannual meeting of the organization it controls. The meeting was held in the International Conference Center (a building which my son suggested may be the world’s best example of “Romulan” architecture), and its theme was “the wisdom of historical cities.” This organization competes directly with the Organization of World Heritage Cities, [http://www.ovpm.org] which includes cities recognized on the UN World Heritage List.

Since the Meiji period (1852-1912), there have been national programs to conform the public body to expectations acquired through exposure to European cities. Public nudity (for example, laborers washing their bodies at the work site at the end of the work day, in public view) was prohibited. Public toilets were erected to discourage urination on the street. Prostitution was corralled into selected quarters. Police boxes (koban) were distributed throughout the city, giving the police visual access to every major street.

¹At first, buraku dwellers were not included in the heimin status, but they were later added, and given the distinction shinheimin (new, equal persons), a word that continued to mark their separateness from the general population.