Cultures in contrast

Clearly, Japan and South Korea have found something in their own culture and language that makes it easy for them to compete with the rest of the world and to pull their people out of poverty

I returned last week after a long time spent in South Korea and Japan. I thought it would be interesting to share my observations about one particular aspect of those countries compared to ours. The aspect I’m referring to is their own cultures and how they have used them to tap into modernity. Let’s look at South Korea first.

The thing to note here is that South Korea has had a not dissimilar history in the 20th century to ours. It was a colony (occupied by Japan), and received its independence around the same time as we did. After they liberalised their economy in the 1950s, it took them about 30 years to become a top 12 economy. In 1988, by which time they had already made their mark, they hosted the Olympics, and in 2002, the FIFA World Cup. India has been a “liberalised” economy for 28 years now and we have not yet, truth be told, made the same sort of impact, and it looks like it might be another three decades, if not longer, for us to get where they are.

And it isn’t as if South Korea’s earlier start on the side of opening up of its economy was particularly advantageous to it. The Japanese occupation was much harsher than the British one of India (thousands of Korean women were kept as sex slaves — the official term was “comfort women”). They did not have the space to develop their civil society, in particular party politics and institutions, as India did right up to 1947.

Seoul got its first elevator only in 1968, while Bombay was a city, at least in its southern part, as modern as any in Europe in 1968. Today, Seoul still has pockets that resemble Indian slums, particularly in the Jongno area, which was where their first industries sprang up. There are many small workshops with lathe machines and welding machines and other basic equipment. However, these are preserved as heritage spaces and protected by the government in part to showcase its history. Everything around it is shiny and big and clean and rich. Today, no part of South Korea really resembles South Asia. 

How did Seoul and actually how did Koreans pick themselves up and transform their economy and therefore their lives, while we have been unable to do so? Why have we remained poor? This should interest us as a society.

Japan, of course, is at another level and anyone who will have visited it and observed its society and people will be struck by how different it is from any other country. Japan has the most modern and efficient transport network anywhere in the world. This is particularly striking because it probably has the most difficult terrain to work with. Japan is a mountainous place, volcanic and prone to earthquakes, and it is a set of islands. Conditions could not be more difficult to put together a rail network and yet they have easily the best in the world. The ones in Europe do not come close to what the Japanese have. How did they do it?

Neither Japan nor Korea has English. In Japan it is very difficult to get anyone to speak in English, though they will likely understand it. And therefore, unlike us, their access to modernity has not been through the English language as it has been for us. What I mean is that the values that we associate with modernity, like liberalism, science and technology and medicine and so on, for us are inextricably linked with English. This is not the case for either the Japanese or the Koreans. In India, the majority of urban professionals are pretty much monolingual in English and while many can read and speak their mother tongue or a bit of Hindi, they do not regularly read in them.

Neither Japan nor Korea has English. Therefore, unlike us, their access to modernity has not been through the English language as it has been for us. Photo: Reuters

The second thing is that they are very deeply rooted in their own culture and their own spaces. For example, the most expensive hotels are the ryokans, which are Japanese-style lodges. The best hotels and many houses still have tatami flooring and floor seating. It is not easy to find McDonald’s and Domino’s and Pizza Hut in Japan or in Korea. They are, of course, present, but the market is dominated by local places. Japan in particular is like France in that its restaurant market is not chain-driven, like ours is, but a universe of individual places, almost all of them serving Japanese food.

The food that they eat the most, and this holds true from the working class to the wealthy, is their own. There is the presence of European-style modernity in their clothing and their architecture. But it is not present in any depth, unlike in India. The more modern one is in India, the most Western and more English and the less local one is. I realise that this is a sweeping statement but if we examine it and look at ourselves and what is around us, we will know it to be true. 

It is not true of Japan or South Korea. English or any other Western language has little or no part to play in their ability to access modernity.

Clearly, they have found something in their own culture and language that makes it easy for them to compete with the rest of the world and to pull their people out of poverty. What is it? And do we have something similar in our own culture? If not, then why not?

These are not the sort of things that many people think about. One reason is that someone who understands economics and the growth of per capita incomes and the conditions under which this growth happens is unlikely to have either interest or expertise in cultural material. A student of sociology who compares the differences between one set of people and another will similarly have little or no expertise in economics.

Of course, for most of the world and particularly the developed world, such things do not matter. But for us, it is something to think about deeply because we have nations to our west and to our east, who have succeeded under differing circumstances, while we have remained more or less where we are: a poor and uneducated society.