Sitting listening to some exquisite, spacious Ike Quebec
from the album “Heavy Soul.” I wasn’t
aware of his story. I just read up on
this gentleman from Newark New Jersey.
This 1961 release, so broad and measured at a time of hard bop
angularity. It was a bit of a comeback
for this full-throated tenor. A short-lived
resurgence, he’d be dead from lung cancer two years later.
Yesterday I talked about “early markers” in China. This term comes out of the scenario planning
technique, developed originally and evangelized by the founders of Global
Business Network, (GBN) (the firm was later bought out by Monitor Consulting.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Business_Network
It’s a rich, multidisciplinary technique used to consider
multiple divergent futures. I was
trained by GBN years ago and have run a number of scenario planning
exercises.
I would love to host a session here in Beijing at some point
on the central question of the topic of “The Seven Deadly Starbucks” (7DS);
namely, the future of North East Asian relations. There are a fine collection of sharp Chinese
minds, sharp international minds here in my social circle. The challenge would be, without funding, to
get everyone to commit a few days, as the technique generally takes that long
to do a convincing exercise that is robust and really challenges people’s ideas
of the future.
The “early markers” came up yesterday and perhaps for a few
days now on this recurring theme of Red Guard who appear compelled to
publically seek absolution for the violence and abuse they were involved in
during their youth. This hadn’t been
part of the public dialogue and appears to increasingly be so. This, I argued was an “early marker” for
China’s ability to make a deeper reconciliation with Japan. Professor Zhu Dake rather eloquently stated: “In a nation without a
tradition of confession, this apology can be viewed as rare evidence of the
awakening of humanity.” (See “No Time Like the Present”)
This, I
suggested, this awakening of humanity, in his words, is an early marker for a
China that can also accept the apology of another group of people, namely the
Japanese. And for that discussion not to
sound like one hand clapping, the Japanese need to show up for the exchange.
I
suggested that it was noble for the Red Guard generation, who are now in their
sixties, and seventies, to drive this discussion of atonement
domestically. Chaff, they missed out on
all formal education, they missed out on being able to xia hai and jump
into the private sector, they were the first to be made redundant during the
SOE reform. And they are wondering now
if their, go-go children who inhabit this brave, new, world will ever have time
to visit them or bother to fund the retirement they could never have properly
prepared for. This generation can
certainly do something remarkable by forcing a discussion on their “lost”
years. Years that were seen as
irrelevant and wasted but are perhaps critical to the awakening that professor
Zhu mentions, in these frenetic, amoral times.
How
different the same generation in Japan!
That generation came of age in a Japan that finally was regaining its
confidence. The same time China was gearing
up to destroy itself, Japan hosted the world for the Olympics, it’s coming out
party. That generation grew up in
confidence and drove the nation to become the second largest economy in the
world, a power that rode astride the planet and lived to shed so much
inferiority and shame they were born into.
And as this generation began to prepare for retirement and enjoy the
fruits of their salaryman labor, the subsequent generation screwed it
all up.
I
discuss in 7DS this phenomenon in Japan, where in the conservative, majority
gerontocracy stands in the way of reform.
Old people, the baby boomers who vote, and do not want to experiment
with a Japan, reimagined. “No” to
immigration, “no” to policies that encourage women in the work place, “no” to
children making noise in public parks. “No”
to change, and “yes” to the status quo, to a future where Japan is weaker,
poorer, and isolated. Japanese boomers:
that is a shameful legacy.
And yet
this may be the generation that we need to look to, to find our early
markers. Just like in China perhaps it
will be this consequential group who begin to adjust their posture
domestically. “I can not go to the grave
easy, remaining silent.” I will be
looking for practical voices of reform amidst that group that are brave in the
face of knee-jerk conservatism. Can we
imagine a Japan where the conservative gerontocracy considers legislation that
is for the good of future generations in Japan, and not just for themselves?
I have
wondered aloud and spoken ad naseum with Japanese contemporaries about the
woeful stasis of their generation. They
too, of course, could take action, could organize. Perhaps, not unlike in China, incipient seeds
as Mencius would say, sprout first with the generation who are preparing to
exit the scene. Certainly the Japanese
born during the War and immediately thereafter have a tremendous amount to be
proud of. But they will leave a terrible
legacy if, in the face of a pressing case for change, they instead used their power to
prohibit it.
Two
civilizations that venerate the old.
Peer groups from across the East Asia Sea with polar opposite formative
year experiences. Divergent years of
maturation that naturally hardened a mutual suspicion, a mutual hatred. And age is the great equalizer. Perhaps you both now have more in common than
you would have ever suspected. The next generation
of Chinese, the next generation of Japanese are both a bit lost. Reckoning with your legacy, freeing the
subsequent generation to evolve out from under your shadow, what a triumphant
comeback that would be, as you prepare for the long meander.
Seize
the moment you Chinese and Japanese children born in the forties, born in the
fifties. 机不可失.[1]
Be swift, less your comeback
is cut short like old Ike Quebec. He was
certainly on to something.
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