Sibling rivalry, rivals in love, factional rivals, rivalry between nations: There seems to be no level of our lives not riddled with rivalry. Like its relatives, competition and conflict, rivalry is found in all societies and cultures.

The reason for this is clear to see just by looking at rivalry's underlying conditions. Basically, rivals vie for something they both want but can't -- or think they can't -- both have. Siblings vie for parental affection and approval; rivals in love strive for the beloved's affections; factional rivals jostle for power and influence; nations struggle to secure their interests despite the opposition or competing interests of others.

Clearly, all this competition has the potential to get out of hand quickly. As a result, all societies need to channel and restrain both rivalry and competition so they do not threaten the social fabric. Wa is a Japanese word, and as a concept it may appear characteristically Japanese, but in reality it is simply one culture's attempt to control competition by calling for its opposite: cooperation.

Though different societies may devise different ways of controlling rivalry, they are all dealing with the same basic human reality. At first glance, the factional system of Japanese politics may seem worlds removed from the divisions of traditional societies such as those in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. These are famous in anthropology for the sophistication of their factionalism, in which a leader, or "Big Man," must wheeler-deal and dole out resources among rivals to create and sustain his authority. In the complexity of these maneuverings, any Big Man would outclass any Japanese leader -- and one suspects he would have little trouble understanding the seemingly arcane machinations behind Makiko Tanaka's recent Cabinet demise, for example.

Even the United States, a country often held up as an example of unrestrained competition, seeks to regulate rivalry by meting out approval and condemnation. One of the first things that George W. Bush spoke of on assuming the presidency was his desire to build a cooperative relationship with Congress. This was a smart move practically, as an attempt to overcome the legislature's gridlock between the evenly matched Republican and Democratic parties. It was also politically astute, because by asking for cooperation he took the high moral and cultural ground, and made any opposition look unreasonable.

Beyond current circumstances, though, the U.S. Constitution and its famed separation of powers is a good example of the channeling and regulation of competition for the benefit of the whole. Back in the 1770s, the Constitution was drafted on the assumption of rivalry between the various branches of government because they have fundamentally different interests at stake. However, the men who wrote the Constitution were sophisticated enough not to try and stamp out such competition. Instead, realizing that would be impossible, they succeeded in harnessing rivalry's power -- by permitting it to operate, but in a system where neither the legislature, the judiciary or the executive branch of government could get what it wanted without cooperating with each other.

As the U.S. social system does not explicitly embrace cooperation as the Japanese does, this is often a point of misunderstanding by both sides. If the Japanese constantly talk about cooperation and "wa," and the Americans about "competition" and conflict, then the Japanese must be less contentious than Americans, mustn't they?

Maybe not. As is so often the case, it is better to watch what people do, rather than what they say. The U.S. system is structured and operates on a fundamental notion of cooperation, albeit an "enforced" cooperation born out of the institutional control of rivalry. This may seem counterintuitive, but the stability of U.S. democracy over more than 200 years suggests that it works. The Japanese system, on the other hand, makes endless exhortations to cooperation, but, as the last decade's ongoing crisis indicates, it has found no effective way to force the factions to work in cooperative ways for anything larger than themselves and their factional interests.

It may come as a contentious proposition to some, but if you want an example of the social damage caused by ineffective control of rivalry, then look to Japan -- rather than across the Pacific.