1/1/2018 Which culture is of higher quality?

              I would like to compare Japanese culture with Anglo-American culture and ask for your evaluation.
              In the battle of Singapore in the Second World War the British commander Arthur Percival surrendered to the Japanese commander Tomoyuki Yamashita. Winston Churchill described it as the worst disaster in British military history. Percival must have experienced deep humiliation. After the war Yamashita was put to death by hanging (not by shooting) in a prison uniform. Percival was invited by Douglas MacArthur and attended the execution.
              There is a similar story concerning the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Each member of the American SOF that made a surprise attack on his hiding place in Pakistan had a camera on his helmet to video the full details of his death. President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and several other top leaders of the USA gathered in a room in Washington to watch the on-the-spot video.*
              Maresuke Nogi was a Japanese commander in the Russo-Japanese War and allowed the Russian general Anatoly Stessel to wear a sword in the surrender meeting. In addition, Nogi tried to prevent Stessel from being exposed to many people.
              Which do you think is of higher quality, Japanese culture or Anglo-American culture? These facts will be kept recorded in human history and show what all these people thought inside.

* http://www.afpbb.com/articles/-/2798163?pid=7163291

Comments and questions are welcome.
Kazuhiro Arai’s English twitter:        https://twitter.com/araikazuhiroe88
Kazuhiro Arai’s Japanese blog:         https://araikazuhiro.blogspot.jp/
Kazuhiro Arai’s Japanese twitter:      https://twitter.com/araikazuhiro88
Kazuhiro Arai’s Japanese home page:   http://araikazuhiro.world.coocan.jp/





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Nature of Economics (7)

Image
The Nature of Economics (7) Neoclassical economics does not consider efficiency of the whole economy because the production function and utility function are exogenously given. Since I do not think that this point is made clear in books or papers, I would like to discuss it in some detail. Consider two economies E1 and E2. The workers in E1 are more cooperative and hard-working. Those in E2 are selfish and lazy. Hence, the labor productivity in the firm in E1 is higher for equally given levels of physical inputs. However both economies are efficient in neoclassical economics! Both E1 and E2 are efficient as far as all firms maximize their profits subject to exogenously given (different) production functions! It is obvious that E1 is more affluent than E2. I would like to emphasize that efficiency differs from affluence in neoclassical economics. Next consider two economies E3 and E4. The people in E3 are more harmonious and other-regarding within the household. Those in E4 ar...
Read more

The Nature of Economics (5)

Image
The Nature of Economics (5) We see here a good example for the fact that the values researchers possess affect their choice of the topic and method of research generating bias in ‘scientific works.’ 　 Researchers who want to support individualism do not analyze firms or households seriously. They simply introduce exogenously given production functions and utility functions. Economists tend to ignore or distort social aspects that are inconvenient to build models with conclusions they like. It is really hard to establish social sciences that are value-free. Researchers need to recognize this. On the other hand, a unified theoretical model may be formed to explain the cultural difference mentioned in the example given in the above third reason. It may be done by introducing a measure of the degree of cooperativeness as an exogenous variable. In such a model different types of equilibrium may arise for different values of the measure. If we can endogenize the variable for that m...
Read more

7/11/2017 Why Japanese people are poor speakers of English

Image
              I think Japanese people are the poorest speakers of English in the world. There are several reasons for the poor ability. The first is that Japanese and English are completely different languages. The word orders of the two languages are almost opposite. For example, an object is placed before the corresponding verb in Japanese. The second is that there are virtually no etymological similarities between the words of the two languages. * Hence, it is hard for Japanese to memorize English words. The third is that few Japanese people have necessity for English speaking ability. Most university students can learn their specialized fields using Japanese textbooks only. Almost all businessmen work speaking Japanese. The fourth is that Japanese people rarely have opportunities to practice English. There are many Japanese who are interested in English and would like to speak it. However, an average Japanese does not have even one chance ...
Read more