Friends indeed
Sir: How irksome for Mr Parris (Diary, 10 August) to have his social life complicated by the ancient Christian custom of regard- ing all human beings as being of equal worth!
He should come and spend a few weeks in Japan, where the problem of how seri- ously to take one's fellow-travellers has already been efficiently and completely solved. The only people who count are those who can, if they so wish, make your life a misery. Anyone else is, for all practi- cal purposes, ignored.
This means, for example, that someone who changes jobs or moves house abruptly loses contact with all his friends: once he leaves their area of influence, they simply have no further interest in him.
Many non-Japanese teachers here are astounded at first when last year's bright, friendly students this year pass them in cor- ridors with an air of pained indifference. Why should they greet him or return his 'hello'? He has nothing more to offer them.
In a previous job I used to have lunch every day with my Japanese workmates. One Monday they all melted away at five minutes to twelve, to mysterious and press- ing engagements. This performance was repeated every day, much to my bewilder- ment, for two weeks, after which I found out that a company reorganisation was going to deliver me the sack. I didn't know it at the time, but my workmates had been told about it that first Monday. They saw no point in the social equivalent of 'throw- ing good money after bad'.
The idea of order in human relationships which so attracts Mr Parris, makes for an extremely impersonal, not to say paranoid, social atmosphere. It's a godsend to the 'Hello, Directory Enquiries? I thought you might like our phone number.' greedy and selfish and spreads easily beyond the purely personal, into corruption of the type now being unveiled in the Japanese financial markets, where profits are being reserved (at the expense of the small investor) for politicians and the already-rich.
Japanese bureaucrats and industrialists apply this type of self-centred cost-benefit strategy as a matter of course to every aspect of foreign relations — which is why Japan hasn't got a friend in the world. Nei- ther will Mr Parris, if he's not careful.
Eric Sheldon
Kisaiehi Yamate 1-7-7, Katano, Osaka-fu, Japan
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