Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • Free Essays • My Term Papers • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Religion Me Myself and I Me Myself and I Reading T. R. Reid's new book brought me back to that conversation. ''Confucius Lives Next Door'' is aptly named. Reid, a longtime reporter and Asia correspondent for The Washington Post, has nailed his copy of the Analects to the mast. Drawing on the experience of his own and his family's life in Tokyo and other east Asian points, he has written a paean to what he terms ''east Asia's social miracle -- how the Asians have built modern industrial societies characterized by the safest streets, the best schools and the most stable families in the world.'' Asians, he holds, have ''a sense of civility and harmony that you can feel,'' and they ''achieved their social miracle primarily by holding to a set of ethical values -- what they call Confucian values.'' About the values he is correct -- at least as far as the Japanese and to a great extent the Chinese and the Koreans are concerned. Few of us who have lived in Asia have failed to be struck by what the less reverent might call the harmony imperative -- stay together, don't do anything out of line and remember that you are each and every one a part of society. Reid, who knows Japanese and has studied things Asian for many years, lived in a Japanese community, sent his children to an excellent Japanese public school and learned to put up cheerfully with his Japanese neighbors' codified concerns. ''The Japanese,'' he happily notes, ''are people who love rules.'' Written with grace, knowledge and humor, his book is a sympathetic Baedeker to the Japanese way of life. It is well worth reading for that. Not many foreigners have been able to fit in so well with their neighbors. His explanations of modern Japan and its Confucian background are accurate and useful, if occasionally wrongheaded. (Anyone who thinks that a lightweight writer like Akiyuki Nosaka deserves a Nobel Prize should take another reading course.) But he is certainly right that members of a grossly individualistic American Me Generation could learn a lot from the thoughtful groupiness of Matsuda-san and Reid's other orderly Japanese neighbors. In Japan, for all its business and technological skills, social values take priority over purely economic ones. Reid's interesting description of a new-employee ceremony at a large Japanese corporation, in this case the electronic giant NEC, highlights his celebration of how Confucian ritual dignifies life in the Japanese workplace. He is well aware that his defense of Japan's tight society is subject to criticism, and at the end of his book he concedes the widespread corruption underlying so many Confucian societies, the diversity that makes overall judgments tricky and the racial homogeneity that may play a great part in enforcing Confucian harmony. But he sticks to his central thesis, fortified by his obviously pleasant recollections of living in Japan. There are, however, two flaws in this book that are hard to ignore. I share his fondness for Japan's national neighborhood. I lived there for 10 years with my family, and very happy campers we were. For the foreigner residing in this Confucian country is like a person given almost total access to an excellent, well-run and well-stocked club -- but without the need to pay any of the membership dues. When my friend the golfing executive talked about Confucianism, he was not smiling. He was, rather ruefully, acknowledging his membership in a society where conformity is inbred -- no need to be enforced -- and where the ethics of social relationships become a binding morality from which there is almost no escape. Over the years he became accustomed to making ritual bows to people he hated, promoting grinning idiots because their managers said they were ''sincere'' and ritually respecting authority that he knew to be defective. Which leads to an inescapable comment about Japan's present state of economic sickness -- a sickness that may yet drag the whole world down with it. The sheer business facts are bad enough. Still, some $800 billion worth of bad bank loans, most of them the result of crony capitalism, are no laughing matter. Mass layoffs from the much touted full-employment society are in themselves shocking. (They include, not so long ago, the announcement of 15,000 jobs to be chopped off at NEC -- a ritual in reverse for a large number of new employees.) But the answer to these problems far transcends mere economics. Japan's real crisis is one of governance. Caught in the decades-long ecstasy of rising G.N.P., the Japanese electorate sold its collective soul to a corrupt, faction-ridden political party, backed by a decadent father-knows-best bureaucracy that has yet to grasp the virtues of real free enterprise. No society in the world has a higher threshold of political indignation. Why? Because subservience to the Government is rooted in the ritual. It is not polite to protest, or to argue with those above you. Reid is right about Japan being a Confucian society -- more so, I believe, than any other country in Asia, including China. Unfortunately, the one fatal legacy left behind by the Master is the imperative to respect any lawful authority whatever. (It is no accident that partly Christian Korea and Buddhist Thailand, caught in the throes of even more obvious economic crises, have been able to throw out at least a part of their badly flawed governing structure.) Admittedly, the Master's ritual and his sense of group responsibility tided the Japanese over the difficult postwar half-century, just as they did for centuries past during the troubled times of the old Tokugawa shogunate. But in a world that for better or worse has become globalized, marked by computer-assisted innovation, unsparing competition and virtually automated international money markets, it's about time to send the old boy packing. The core of this book suggests that societal deficiencies in the West (the US in particular) might be ameliorated by following the "Asian Way." Roughly speaking- the "Way" implements Confucian teaching and cultivates a benign/less aggressive populace, which places greater good ahead of individual gratification. The author suggests (occasionally contradicting himself) and makes compelling arguments about why Asian cities are so much more pleasant and safe to live in. The narrative is based on the author's (and family) experiences during a professional stint in Japan. The instances/examples/arguments described in this book are fascinating and eye-opening. Reid is obviously a Japanophile (if there's such a word) and I wish he would've stayed true to this theme throughout. Instead, he introduces some minor drawbacks in this work by clumsily attempting to portray his views as "neutral"-- by throwing in misplaced dashes of vitriol aimed at Japanese customs. While these comments might be factually correct, they are tossed in gratuitously. Also the chapter in which Reid gives his own suggestions for improving urban life in the USA could've either used more thought or been eliminated entirely. Personally, I would've enjoyed this part if it had been presented with serious detail instead of as a haphazard mishmash (much like the verbiage of the idealistic freshman after a couple of beers.) Last bit of minor criticism- Reid subsumes every nuance he observed in Japan as typical of Asia, which is a load of crock. In the epilogue, he does concede this point but only in passing. All in all- this is book is worth reading...if only to become aware of some shocking contrasts between the US and East Asia. Also if you intend to visit Japan sometime, read this book. If you plan to read the "Analects of Confucius" sometime, it might be a good idea to read this narrative first...kind of prepares you for the abstract thoughts of the Analects. Bibliography: Word Count: 1277
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