The Globalization at a
Civilizational Level

Eshun Hamaguchi

Earnest cooperation has never been more necessary than at present if we are to protect our living earth, Gaea, which is quite irreplaceable for humankind. Yet a large number of international and ethnic conflicts are flaring up around the world, and economic friction is becoming increasingly harsh. As you are aware, the atmosphere between Japan and the United States in particular is becoming even more stormy.

The problem does not simply involve such economic issues as trade imbalances and Japan's growth into a huge surplus-registering power. A lot of interest is also focusing on structural differences - the so-called "Japan problem." The socioeconomic setup in Japan is outstanding when it comes to efficiency and productivity, but this system is said to be characterized by features that are limited to Japan. The closed nature of the system makes it difficult for other countries to adopt it. Japan's makeup does not allow them to participate in fair and free competition. And what is more, this makeup is not easily visible from the outside. This lack of transparency is often cited as a problem.

For example, the practices of corporate groupings and exclusionary business deals that are very noticeable in Japan look quite mysterious when viewed from the perspective of an economic system that conforms to the principle of laissez faire. To make clear this mysteriousness gave rise to Chalmers Johnson's explanation of Japan as a "capitalist developmental state," which kicked off the move to review the economic theories of the Western orthodox school, which argued that everything was universal and applicable to any society, and launched a round of revisionism. In this revisionism, however, the standards for comparison are put constantly and firmly in the Western system. From this viewpoint, Japan was always alien. It was on the basis of this theory of Japan as alien that a group of Japan-bashing revisionists appeared.

Recently this revisionism has come to discuss two opposite types of capitalism. The first is Japanese-style capitalism, based on long-term transaction ties and cross-shareholding among corporations. The second is the Anglo-Saxon style of free capitalism, which places hope on the autonomy of the market mechanism. Very recently this debate has expanded to the level of civilizations, with thought even being given to a conflict between Western civilization and non-Western civilizations. The rather extreme thesis of Samuel Huntington discusses the economic friction between Japan and the United States in this context.

According to Huntington, the idea that a universal civilization exists is precisely the Western way of thinking, a universal civilization will not appear for some time, and in the meantime the world is going to be divided into a variety of civilizations ("The Clash of Civilizations?" Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993). In the sense that it goes against a recurrence of Western-centered thinking, I think that this relativist theory of civilizations is quite reasonable. It is not very adequate, however, in trying to grasp the special features of present civilizations. Even if we accept the unavoidability of mutual relativism rather than absolute universalism, we will not be able to explain the complicated situation of the present if we see the various systems as independent and individual existences. The mutual relations among them are an essential point. Indeed, as Augustin Berque says, "relativism" and "relations" are going to become key words from now on.

Japan and the countries of East Asia have traditionally placed importance on "relations". In particular, one of the special features of Japanese civilization has been the formation of a society based on mutual relations or human nexus. A typical example is the small group activities, such as quality control circles and the zero defects movement, which characterize Japanese-style management. Although they are frequently misinterpreted, Japanese organizations are not operated on the basis of groupism as a means of keeping members within the whole. In practice, they are based on "corporativism" that takes account of human relations within the organization and enables members to join forces together. It is possible to say that an organization and its members are linked by the same kind of symbiosis that can be seen between the sea anemones and anemone fish.

General speaking, it seems that thinking that puts the focus on relatedness is better able to explain reality than conventional methods that emphasize only individuality. This is because social systems are not simple accumulations of individuals but networks of relations among these individuals. The human beings that make up these social systems are not "the individual" but actually "the contextual" as "relatum" system. I would like to propose this new human model to the West as a notion stemming from East Asia.

For the time being the relativism on civilizations will be a necessary measure to conflict between them. But in the longer term, the globalization at a civilizational level will require even more positive efforts to bring about a shift from "individualism" to "relatum-ism" and try and handle international relations with this new paradigm.