Support and Be Supported

READING PROFESSOR INOGUCHI'S SPLENDIDLY COMPREHENSIVE and suggestive account of Japan's external policies as modes of coping with/balancing/sustaining interdependence, I was irresistibly reminded of a phrase I learned in 1950 at the first meeting I attended of our local Tokyo neighbourhood council — the committee of the 300-household precinct where I lodged. I think the issue was the smoke coming out of the chimney of our one and only factory. We did not know then about NOx and SOx, but it ruined the housewives' washing when the wind was in the wrong place, and that was bad enough. In a circumspect speech which reminded us that the factory owner was, also, far and away the largest contributor to the annual shrine festival, a particularly articulate ex-leader of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association preached a little homily on the principle of neighbourliness in a country of densely-packed, cheek-by-jowl communities. Mochitsu motaretsu was his key phrase; the slightly archaic grammar gave it a somewhat venerable weight; support and be supported. And it did not just mean ‘support in order to be supported’. It meant also: ‘don't be deterred from accepting support by a sense of the irksome constraints of dependence. We are all dependent on the community; others too, as much as you. Accept it. It is the community which is your security, not just the indebtedness, or the goodwill, of individual others

Economics · Management · Political science · Precinct · Sociology · History · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US

• The Nature and Functioning of Japanese Politics

  Open Access•Takashi Inoguchi•Government and Opposition•1991

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