Lot In Life

Lot In Life

Once upon a time, the fairy-tale story of a prince seemed like the ideal life.

Whether born into royalty or poverty, this is what is know as one’s lot in life—and just to be clear, royalty is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Here in lies a deep conundrum for the Japanese and their innate struggle between the instinct to advance an individual cause, or to join a collective for the betterment of all.

Even now, for the most part, the Japanese are conditioned to accept their lot in life—almost like societal programming, which is as old as Yamato itself.

When querying a spectrum of younger Japanese about their dreams, desires, and aspirations, one is mostly left with blank stares, or them fumbling around trying to understand exactly; “What does this all means?”

It seems as if having something to aspire to is an alien concept not worthy of further consideration, if not absent altogether.

Perhaps this is why the Japanese are fundamentally disadvantaged at inventing, but excel unlike any others when putting concepts and ideas into the machine of Form, Order, and Process.

For certain, Japan is a tate shakai, and the distinction between the Japanese classes is glaringly apparent for all to see—one only has to look.

Consider the tate shaka of Japan, and the class system embedded within it as the basis for the evolution of Japanese society.

As Professor R. Taggart Murphy saliently points out in his seminal work: Japan and the Shackles of the Past:

“In the West we like to say that if a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well. In Japan, even if a job is not worth doing—and everyone knows it—it is worth doing well.”

Regardless of the GHQ inscribing the foreign concept of “freedom and democracy” into the Japanese constitution after WWII, the Japanese cannot shake the Shackles of The Past, and will forever be enslaved by their lot in life via the rigid social class system in the tate shakai of Japan.

It is at one’s own peril to venture too far outside the acceptable prescribed parameters, and seeing past one’s lot in life.

Here is a cautionary tale to those who seek to challenge the system of Japan.

Takafumi Horie, also know as Horiemon, is a Japanese entrepreneur who founded Livedoor, a popular internet portal in 1995.

Cultural point: It is often said “The wind blows from thew west.” This refers to harbinger trends originating in West Japan, and who are renowned as mavericks with superior business and entrepreneurial skills.

In 2004, Horiemon tried to buy the Kintetsu Buffaloes baseball team.

Keep in mind, Kintetsu has been serving its customers since September 16, 1910.

To no ones surprise, the team flatly rejected the offer.

This incident brought him the attention of the murky figures who enforce the Form, Order, and Process protocol of Japan—particularly in matters of commerce.

It was after he attempted a hostile takeover of a major terrestrial television station in 2005, where the Japanese prosecutors then raided Horiemon’s home on suspicion of securities fraud.

This was seen as politically motivated and a stark cultural warning from the defenders of the status quo.

They successfully discredited him personally, along with his brash and aggressive American-like business practices, and deemed him and his ilk—“distasteful” and “un-Japanese.”

Humiliation and punishment of Horiemon was on the news blanketing the nation of Japan, for all to see, on terrestrial TV.

This is a classic case of Japanese protocol and its application punishing those who dare to see, lest reach beyond, one’s own prescribed lot in life.

Never forget that it is always best to keep in mind in the nation of Japan:

The nail that sticks up will be hammered down.