Will 'neurotic' Japan go postcapitalist?

Is Japan on the threshold of postcapitalism? If it is, as Morris Berman suggests in "Neurotic Beauty: An Outsiders Look at Japan," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe doesn't seem to have received the memo.

Abe is intent on growth, on driving down the yen to push up exports, cheerleading the Central Bank as it floods the economy with fiat money, prodding companies to spend more and dole out more in dividends — all part of his program to get Japan economically back on track.

Meanwhile, the country continues to have the highest level of public debt in the world and is halfway through another decade of dismal growth. But what mainstream politician is going to come out and say that low (or no) growth is the new norm — or that capitalism is kaput?

Certainly not Abe.

Berman's "Neurotic Beauty" considers the possibilities of postcapitalism in Japan. But this is just one piece in the puzzle of Berman's study of the contemporary face of the country: He includes discussions on Japan's craft traditions, the great chasms that separate America and Japan, as well as the Americanization of Japan. Only the last chapter deals with postcapitalism — but it's an engrossing one.

Could Japan become the world's economic bellwether, an unlikely leader for other deindustrializing nations to follow?

Berman suggests two potential templates for how Japan may transition into a new economic mode: The country could enter into a modern version of the Edo (or Tokugawa) Period (1603- 1868), or this state may also come into being through "the emergence of alternative experiments in energy, currency, geopolitical formations and modes of living," as he writes.

"I don't envision any type of direct return to the Tokugawa model," Berman tells The Japan Times. "But I do think some form of modified sakoku (literally, "locked country," referring to Japan's period of self-enforced isolation) is not completely unrealistic, and probably necessary when Japan finally hits a wall through non-immigration, more Fukushimas — god forbid — an aging population and a degree of resource stress that makes neoliberal economics no longer a viable option. It will mean the resurrection of a no-growth or low-growth, sustainable, homeostatic economy — one not organized around growth and profit."

Berman, a prolific author and astute critic of the U.S., expects Japan to pour scorn on any official deviation from the neoliberal capitalist dogma until the country hits this "wall."

"Then, Japan could emerge as a model worth emulating and learning from," says Berman. "Especially if it was the first to make the transition to a craft-based, recycling way of life."

This "archaic modernism" as Berman's terms it — a return to a Tokugawa-style way of life — "offers Japan emptiness as fullness rather than nihility." This nihilism is a spiritual void, "an odd kind of 'hole' in the center" of everything from Japanese consumerism, art and politics and national identity to the Tokugawa shogunate and the Pacific War.

Berman points out that he is not the first to pick up on this theme, but he makes it a central tenet in understanding Japan. Another is the country's living traditions — something Berman believes separates Japanese modernity from that of the U.S.

In many ways "Neurotic Beauty" is a paean to traditional craft. Berman references Soetsu Yanagi, a major promoter of the Folk Craft movement that arose in the 1920s, and visits the pottery center of Mashiko in Tochigi Prefecture, interviewing practicing craftspeople along the way.

But can traditional craft save Japan, or at least offer an alternative to capitalism? Berman believes it can, through a relocalization of manufacturing linked to a culture of reuse and the revival of a "sharing economy" — an idea which journalist Paul Mason echoes in his new book "Postcapitalism."

The problem is, while there is evidence that capitalism is failing us, the postcapitalist landscape is unknown and, to make matters worse, instead of a road map we only have theories about how to navigate ahead.

The strength of Berman's book, and its view of where Japan is going, lies in his refreshingly candid tone and wide scope. It encompasses key figures such as the Kyoto School's philosophers of "nothingness" and Commodore Matthew Perry of the United States Navy — the man credited with forcing Japan to reopen itself for trade in 1853, effectively beginning the Westernization of Japan.

And the "Neurotic" in the title?

"As Takashi Murakami has said, 'The mode of life of the victor was not really suited to the mode of life of the loser,' " says Berman. "This was crazy-making for Japan — it made it severely neurotic in terms of its identity, and so what the country was left with, to this day, is a neurotic beauty: the clash of its great Zen traditions (for example) with a way of being that began in 1853."