Kazakhs and Japanese. Fortitude and perfection

“In the cinema, in the car, in the office, people calmly throw cigarette butts, empty bottles, banana peels, candy wrappers, and other garbage on the floor. As far as neatness is inherent in Japanese housing, the Japanese office looks so sloppy.”

Now let’s talk about our problems

There is one central street in the city of Aktobe. Probably there are such “central” streets all over Kazakhstan. But I remember this street especially. Not the whole street, but its edge, which is adjacent to Sankibaya Avenue. Three hundred meters from the intersection, this part of the street was flooded with water all the time. In autumn and especially in spring there was a whole lake. Cars overcame this section at a first speed, the spectacle was literally like crossing a river into a ford. In the spring, when snow was just melting, thawed pits appeared, actually from pits and snow edges – a real obstacle course turned out.

So what? – the reader will say. There are always such roads in the spring.

The fact is that private owners built mansions on the edges of this plot. Private traders had been driving out of their own gates directly onto the obstacle course and into the swamp for more than ten years. I am 100% sure that everything is dry, clean, and beautiful in their yard.

This psychology of “my hut on the edge” applies to the whole society and the whole state. Everything is fine at home, but there is a puddle in the state.

Chapter 4

Japanese nationalism

Nomadism and nomadism are the worst conditions that market relations would have to face. Although the former nomads have already met with Western civilization and its mission, today the market trend throughout history through an intermediary is Russia.

If we were looking for the reason for Asia’s lag. However, the Asian civilization had such cradles of civilization as Egypt and Mesopotamia. Although these civilizations were not created by nomads, not nomads in the sense that we understand today. The long stay of the people in one place creates a deep root of the traditional elite. European civilization also seems to have been created exclusively by migrants. Although migrants are also a kind of nomads, we are not interested in such “nomads”. Such massive independence of character, directed at any small property of migrants and “travelers” – contributed to modern Western civilization. All migrants in the world, even the ancients (Darians, Latins, migrants from the Old World to America) had new laws in use. These laws rejected the “tails” of the old privileged clans, peoples, and families. Slowly, informal laws were replaced by formal laws, which were recorded and observed by everyone.

In Asia, the opposite is true. No one migrates and everyone has been fine for centuries. That’s why a kind of eternal Asian conservatism has turned out. Whatever country you take, dictators rule everywhere. Because tradition is based on the root. Of course, you understand that. Why didn’t people fly into space from Egypt and Mesopotamia? Because huge pyramids caught on the tail of ancient civilizations and were not allowed into space.

It is better to be a migrant in this picture of a market-democratic future because all migrants are rootless. There was nothing pressing on them and nothing is pressing on them. They found it difficult to show their arrogance. Who are you? – they could have told every upstart.

It’s better to be a migrant, but not a nomad.

Nomads made annual raids along the old routes, essentially repeating the farmers’ sitting in one place, only some moved and returned to their original place. It is important for a nomad to go as far as possible along the route. Take up more space. Or to designate your nomad. This designation is repeated in time. The farmer “likes” to sit in one place. This community and the state of farmers are expanding, and the farmer himself dreams of acquiring a new plot. This perpetual movement with a small “rest” predetermined the technical lag of the nomads from the farmers. It’s not even about the late development of technology and, consequently, then modernization in a cruel way (from anyone, but we are only interested in the Bolsheviks and why it happened. Without Stalin’s brutal modernization, it would have been even more difficult for the modern descendants of nomads to get used to Western civilization, even more, perhaps, they would have been threatened with complete disappearance. Even today, after the Soviet experience of modernization, Kazakhs remain imitators and consumers. Actually, who doesn’t imitate and consume in this world today? The only thing that remains as hope is a centralized state. This is very important for any nation. Without a central authority, every person is a miserable loner, a small boat in a market ocean. We must protect our state. But first, you have to come to him, so that you can appreciate him later. Meanwhile, the nomads never loved the state, they loved freedom. Because they loved freedom, they called themselves Cossacks.

The Japanese people, for example, have spent a lot of effort and time on centralization, for almost 200 years. The samurai first took power from the aristocracy, then staged a civil war with each other. Tokugawa Shogun overcame the feudal fragmentation of the island. Of course, the island situation and the lack of large resources interesting to Europeans helped the Japanese. The Japanese managed and met with the Europeans – the future world colonizers – already in the form of a centralized state. This was of paramount importance. The Japanese did not have to jump through formations like the Kazakhs immediately into socialism. After the shogunate, the imperial power helped to carry out rapid reforms. Already 36 years after the “Meiji restoration” – the beginning of reforms – a victory was won over tsarist Russia and ten years before that over China. In 1904, Japan showed the power of the imperial navy and the skill of its admirals.

Moreover, a form of state nationalism or nationalism under the leadership of the emperor himself helped Japan. Japan has followed the path of all Europeans – turned into a nation of militarists in a very short period. The German National Socialists, that is, the European analogue of state Nazism, had a much larger time reserve – several centuries, although formally Prussia and Bismarck also united all Germans only in 1870.

Did the Japanese have an intelligentsia to educate chauvinists? Not so powerful scientific and intellectual, but it was (in the form of storytellers, myth-makers, syncretisers, but Japan has its own scientists, and its own professors).

Japan needed resources.

Japan was poor in mineral resources, but all Japanese ministers were great-grandchildren of samurai. If Japan opened the doors to European technology and culture, then the inevitable happened: the imposition of modernization, economic growth, and population on the traditional Japanese craft – on the war. The Germans also had the Prussian military in reserve, and the Prussian military relied on the tradition of the Teutonic Order. There is nothing unexpected in this world!

There were no other ethnic groups in Japan except the Japanese. Where did the so-called Japanese nationalism come from?

There was no nationalism in the form in which the layman understands it in Japan. This is a state nationalism invented and controlled by imperial ideologists. The Japanese elite gathered and decided for the whole nation. Japanese nationalism is rather Japanese patriotism because it was completely governed by the state. Every Japanese before Emperor Meiji and the crossing of borders was inspired that the Japanese were the chosen race on earth. Watching East Asia die under the onslaught of European merchants and colonization, the Japanese could think that they were the best. And it affected the Japanese character.

If the Japanese seemed depressed after 1945 after the deposition of the emperor, this defeat resembled the failure of the soldiers and did not affect the Japanese character. So, a temporary setback. The main thing is that the bulk of modern Japanese has a reflection of the Remids, the Remids of the statesmen. This is because the modernization of Japan took place under the leadership of the Japanese themselves. But most importantly, the aristocracy has been preserved in Japan. The aristocracy never steals. Never and nowhere.

The power of the emperor, and the state had a paternal influence on Japanese society. Every government must take care of its Remids, including every sovereign government (especially former historical nomads), otherwise, it will lose centralization. Centralization is the main value of all people. Without centralization, there will be a quick end. Rapid disintegration under the influence of tribal or feudal culture. This is called a “fraternal massacre” (and the Kazakhs did not fully survive the zeref reflection) The market excites degradation, especially if the people have never had so-called citizens. Citizens appeared all over the world when people had private property. Then these citizens fought for democracy. If the people have never known private property, and the nomads have never known it, then the people are always threatened with a “fraternal massacre”. It is the state that saves from the massacre.

The state may not be able to stand it, the state is just a form of organization of people. Unless, of course, the government will continue “reforms” based on the traditional (primitive) personnel policy. The future of this state depends on which people are at the top. Either the state or death! If people still remember, even symbolically, and ritually, their kind, this is the greatest danger. Each physical majority forms its own leaders.

If market reflection penetrates into people who are not independent, complexed, but immediately militant and proud, these people will only accumulate material values to show their superiority. This is a primal quality. Therefore, the value of reflection is in the first place here.

What is nationalism? This is a massive desire to dominate yesterday’s artisans, townspeople, and peasants. They were humiliated by the traditional elite. Now they want to “humiliate”, and put any arrogant president in his place.

If feudal consciousness meets with market nationalism, then it turns out not a mass of free citizens as in Europe, but only a mass of feudal lords. And feudal lords always tear the state apart. The feudal lords of the state do not need anything. It’s wet in the yard, start over.

Chapter 5

The voice of blood

It is very far to Japan from Kazakhstan. Despite such a distance since the Kazakhs from the Union time were well aware of the Japanese. First of all, they knew according about the famous Toyota, Nissan, and Mitsubishi cars, these cars began to arrive in Kazakhstan en masse from the beginning of the 90s, when the USSR collapsed. Before that, everyone knew Japan by its world-famous electronics. In the late 70s and early 80s, nothing better than Sony and Toshiba items were produced in the world so all Kazakhs thought.

For the mass of viewers, Japan was known for films such as “The Death of Japan”, “The Legend of the Dinosaur”, and “The Legend of Narayama”. If the film “Legend of Narayama” was a wonderful illustration of feudal Japan, then movies with the participation of Takeshi Kitano showed the character of the Japanese of all times.

In 2003, the Warner Bros company film “The Last Samurai” was released with the participation of Ken Watanabe and Tom Cruise. The last samurai Moritsugu Katsumoto interested in the exploits of the Indians against the Americans from Captain Nathan Algren.

Despite all the pathos of the film, the Japanese could repeat the fate of the Indians. But the samurai lost in the Boshin war to the forces of the emperor. Is it possible to say that modern Japan is a blessing than the folklore savagery of the past? All modern Kazakhs will say with one voice that modern Japan is cool, you can’t think of a better one. What happened in Japan that Kazakhs lack? There are Kazakh patriots who would dream of a Japanese fate for the Kazakhs. Such Kazakhs are ready to blame Russia and the USSR for why Kazakhs did not become like the Japanese.

But is this really the case?

Could Kazakhs follow the path of Japanese Meiji and create a “Kazakh miracle” long before the world-famous economic miracle in Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, and Hong Kong, or at least repeat the path of the “Southeastern tigers”?

Why did the people of pure blood lose to the people of pure reason?

The principle of pure blood is suitable in the fight against pure blood when a tribe opposes another tribe. If the people of blood do not have a seer to overcome the voice of kinship, the voice of blood is bad for folk. To do this, every people must have a monarch and his undivided authority. If a person of blood has many leaders, these people will never break out of primitiveness. The Japanese had an emperor in 1867. Visionary officials gathered around the emperor. They went to Europe and the USA and returned to Japan, the Japanese began to wildly copy everything European, all the creations of pure reason. The Japanese have no less personal vanity than the Kazakhs. But the personal anarchy of every Japanese was limited by the power of the emperor not so that each of the Japanese could show off an expensive dress or a katana from a famous master. The Japanese have turned into one samurai. The Japanese have become a nation in one generation. This incredible leap from savagery cost the Japanese many victims, but the Japanese turned into the Japanese that the world knows today. The Japanese have no problems with the language. No Japanese person would ever think of asking guests to speak Japanese. The Japanese know when to use the voice of blood, and when the voice of reason. This balance is also familiar to Kazakhs but the existing Kazakh inertia is not the merit of the Kazakhs, it’s as if we continue to roam like former nomads even living in cities today. Moreover, there is a current of nationalists who want to put the voice of blood ahead of the voice of reason. In the 21st century, this means only one thing – the bad way of the Indians. This means control by the external mind of the Kazakh instincts of the voice of blood.

Chapter 6

Adequacy and efficiency of the Japanese elite

On July 8, 1853, the American squadron of Commodore Matthew Perry anchored in Uraga Bay near Edo. Japanese officials already knew about the approaching threat, but they did not have time to prepare. The bureaucratic apparatus of the Tokugawa Shogunate is mired in formalism and the inactivity of officials. The old shogun entrusted the affairs to his minister.

Why did a formidable military squadron land on the shores of Japan?

Japan continued its self-isolation regime. The closure of Japan – the Sakoku regime – happened because of aggressive, too arrogant behavior – according to the shogun of the Portugal Jesuits in the XVII century. Since then, foreign ships could not enter ports, replenish food and water supplies, whaling ships were shipwrecked, and the Japanese arrested the surviving sailors. Now Commodore Matthew Parry had instructions from President Millard Fillmore to force the Japanese to trade by force.

Surprised Japanese for the first time saw innovative American ships releasing black smoke. In order for the Japanese to understand everything, the Americans made an empty hall of guns for suggestions. Of course, after such a show, the Japanese accepted Perry’s delimitation – according to all the canons of Japanese diplomacy. However, at first, they played the game “who are you?” when minor officials talked to Perry. Perry realized this, so he ordered the Peisan cannons to be uncovered.

What to do? The Japanese tried to save face – they referred to the shogun’s illness. Perry agreed to wait one year.

But the natural death of the elderly shogun hastened the events. Perry sailed back to Uraga Bay exactly six months later. What for the Japanese to do again?

The head of the Bakufu, Abe Masahiro, did not dare to assume a responsible role and called an All-Japanese Meeting. Abe Masahiro soberly assessed the situation – resistance was impossible. Representatives of the emperor, Bakufu, regional nobility – daimyo, on the contrary, were conservative. The agreement with the Americans, then with the Russians was, of course, signed. With the help of the Dutch, Abe Masahiro immediately began to modernize the fleet, began to cast new guns and even founded an intelligence agency in order to study new technologies and information from abroad. But Abe Masahiro didn’t have enough time. His compromise with the Americans, Russians, and British was a signal for other representatives of the opposition nobility. “He signed a humiliating contract!” After the British shelled Kagoshima with cannons in 1863 everything became evident to everyone. Because the British are usually not enough for one trade agreement, they needed a bonded contract of the same type as the Chinese one, which they signed with the conquered China in 1860.

If the samurai power could not protect the homeland, this mean the shogun and his people have lost divine mercy.

That’s how the salvo of Matthew Perry’s squadron became the signal for a new era in the history of Japan. Those samurai and daimyo who felt humiliated did agree to change the old course of self-isolation. Everyone already knew what had happened to China, that China had lost its independence and something had to be done. The invaders will soon come to Japan.

Who will save? Of course, the emperor.

The emperor is the son of the sun, which means hope, so in the spirituality of his emperor, there was a new way out for the new Japan. A group formed around the emperor against the shogun and Bakufu. It took another thirteen years for the shogun to agree and proclaim the transfer of power to the emperor.