International Political Will

On a bus from a Tokyo hotel to the airport, a prerecorded announcement was made (of course in Japanese, of which I understood nothing). Luckily, there was an English translation immediately following:

“Passengers are reminded not to use mobile telephones while on the bus as they annoy your neighbors.”

It struck me as a little odd – not that there would be a request not to use cell phones on a public bus – but that the actual reason for the prohibition was given. There are plenty of places in the United States where signs forbid cell phone use, but the reason – if any is given at all – usually sounds like more of an excuse. In the U.S., I’ve read signs while standing in line at the bank that cell phone use while standing in line at the bank “makes it hard for tellers to communicate with customers,” or that the signal “interferes with their computer equipment.”

The honesty of the announcement on the bus in Tokyo actually seemed to give it value, and probably convinced any person considering ignoring the rule that to do so would be at their own peril.

No one can deny that cell phones have become an integral part of daily life around the world. But while phones have become a status symbol in the United States, where an earpiece is interpreted as a sign that the wearer is a hard-working business person with no time to spare, in Japan there seems to be a different role for such communication technology.

Rather than acting as a foreign object that can change human behavior, in Japan cell phone etiquette appears to reflect society’s desire for balance and harmony. There is no better place to observe this paradigm than the Tokyo subway…

The subway system is actually quite easy to navigate, even if you don’t speak Japanese and can’t even begin to decipher the writing, because most stops and general directions are also written in romaji, or the English transliteration. In fact, I found the Tokyo subway easier to navigate than New York’s – not to mention a whole lot safer. But that wasn’t the biggest difference I noticed.

Everyone else (and I mean, everyone else) on the subway sat or stood quietly and tapped away on their cell phones, either sending a text message or engaged in a video game. I saw quite a few white-collar business men of all ages on the trains that were glued to the video game on their phones. Those that weren’t playing games or text-messaging a friend or family member took the time to doze off.

There was never a single phone conversation occurring on the train. As if to further illustrate their desire not to irritate those around them, I even saw quite a few people exit the train and walk to the nearest wall, where they would then initiate a phone call while facing the wall like a child being reprimanded for not eating their vegetables. In addition, I’ve yet to hear a single cell phone ringing anywhere in the two weeks I’ve been in the country.

Everyone is familiar with the stereotype of life in Tokyo – work hard, play hard, live fast; it has become the hub of business transactions for the Eastern hemisphere where nearly 30 million people scurry about from work to play to home while squeezing through tightly packed crowds of people – and there is some truth to such a stereotype. But there is a method to the madness, one that seems to have derived from a culture based on concern for the community over individual ego, roots that go back to the harmony emphasized in Shintō and Buddhist tradition.

The respect many Japanese appear to have for each other transcends both time and money. In the middle of the bustling subways, where people are packed like pickle jars and financial transactions can be made or lost in an instant, the quiet of the subway car provides a serenity lost in America, where travel time is spent in an oversized SUV with a “Bluetooth” cell phone stuck to drivers’ ears.

Instead of grasping at every possible moment of time and every chance to make the almighty dollar, people in Japan seem to take a respite from daily life in an underground network of tunnels and metal, and perhaps are able to find their own personal space on a crowded subway train.

In the U.S. today, it has become commonplace to see and hear all sorts of people talking to themselves – not just on the street, but in grocery stores, bookstores, cafés, banks and parks.

The modes of transportation typically used by westerners in the U.S. and people in Japan reflects their own respect for others and methods for finding personal space. In the U.S., the desire for maximizing time, space and money leads people to travel independently, insulated from the outside world with the exception of their cell phones.

It has been said that Americans feel they are in a bubble in their beloved cars, seeing only the road and feeling free to sing or talk to themselves, eat, put on make-up or even pick their nose. Many people will curse at other drivers that they normally wouldn’t dare make eye contact with if not for the two tons of steel between them.

More frequently, the bubble Americans put themselves in on the road follows them outside of their vehicle, and they continue conversations over the phone no matter where they are, oblivious to the world around them. In America, the feeling of community is shrinking, as the quest for individual gratification has superseded the social responsibility and interaction that is inherent in living in a country with nearly 300 million other people, much less the 6 billion in the world.

So listening to the announcement on the bus in Tokyo, besides appreciating the candid reason given for the rule, I realized it went beyond the bus, that perhaps the social relationships people have with their neighbors is reflected in the mode of transportation – and vice-versa.

If it annoys your neighbors on a bus, why would grocery stores, banks and cafés be any different?

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