Show Japan could stand a good dose of dignity Bruce Wallace Los US Angeles Times The annual autumn sumo tournament concludes Sunday in Tokyo a two- two week-long week sporting pageant loaded with ceremonial traditions but this time missing its Mongolian born superstar The ferocious grand champion or was in seclusion at a Mongolian hot spring having slipped out of Japan to seek treatment for what is officially being called depression The s reputation has taken a beating over his flight from public scrutiny He has been derided for playing hooky and his disappearance has given rise to a new Japanese verb roughly meaning to shirk responsibility by faking an illness Pulling an sum sucu is also how some here have described the unusual r resignation sign of gf Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who quit his job without warning on Sept 10 After a rambling farewell news conference where he never gave a complete explanation for his departure Abe then checked into a Tokyo hospital where he has remained throughout the short campaign to pick his successor reportedly suffering from a chronic intestinal ailment and from stress His condition has been no protection from the storm of public ridicule that hit him for walking away from his responsibilities To many people here throwing t h I 1 in III t me un e towel seemed more Inure than a bit hypocritical given Abes Abe's political mantra of cultivating a beautiful country that respects discipline and has dignity The opprobrium directed toward and Abe springs in part from froma a sense that they have acted without suitable dignity as it is called in Japan has long been a venerated cultural value But the concept of dignity is currently enjoying a particularly public moment spurred by loud protests from those who believe the Japanese people are losing it Take the case of The brash Mongolian had been a burr in the backside of the traditionalists running the Japan Sumo Association who were appalled by his refusal to act with the humble stoicism expected of champions There were complaints about his disdain for opponents an hours after-hours street brawl and an ugly incident of hair- hair pulling in the ring So when skipped sumo's annual summer exhibition tour due to what he said was his badback bad badback back and then was caught on film kicking a soccer ball around the Mongolian steppes in a charity match the sports sport's governing body pounced It fined the and suspended him for two tournaments something it had never previously done The behavior complained executives of the sumo association lacked the dignity expected of a The dignity boom can be traced to the publication in 2005 of the selling best-selling lament for a lost Japan called The Dignity of The Nation in which author L r Masahiko Fujiwara vara blasted the Japanese faith in western values of logic democracy and individualism The patriotic tome urged the Japanese to put an equal emphasis on their emotions such as feeling a unique melancholy toward autumn Fujiwara also demanded a restoration of the samurai spirit the only way for Japan to avoid having its culture dragged down by association with the perceived vulgarity of the West Fujiwara's call for Japan to embrace values a loosely defined moral code that emphasizes charity courage and justice leapt off bookstore shelves and continues to sell well In response publishers pumped out so many other tomes on or books with dignity in the title that many bookstores had to dedicate entire sections of shelf space to the subject The word dignity alone has often been enough to sell a book One current seller Best is Dignity of a Woman in which author Mariko Bando offers advice to women on op ho- ho how hov v to recover the etiquette and social habits of old that she sees necessary to succeeding in modern modem Japan Japanese society is becoming more conservative more appreciative of its cultural traditions says Bando who says the sale of copies has been heavily driven by the publics public's appetite for books bookson on traditional values But she complains that while her book has sold well by association it is also misunderstood Her theme she says is how women can bring a softer approach to relationships in order to change the cold rapacious character of corporate Japan Im actually afraid of those old values she said in an interview referring to The Dignity of the Nation Some of them are good But some are dangerous The inability to specifically define dignity may have been part of its appeal Trend spotting agencies declared the most popular buzzword of 2006 Companies started to welcome specialists into staff training And Japanese athletes and celebrities discovered that their mojo with the public could be tied to their dignity quotient whatever that was Baseball star Ichiro Suzuki was said to possess it in spades more than any other Japanese public figure according to Style a market data company known best-known for its music charts None of this was lost loston loston loston on Abe and the crowd of cultural conservatives who accompanied him into power in the fall of 2006 Abes Abe's career had risen on the back of a nationalist political movement within the Liberal Democratic Party that not only questioned the standing narrative about Japans Japan's war guilt but which was appalled by what it saw as collapsing social morals infected by Western notions of what they called egotism In power they sought to roll back the clock of liberalism They urged a patriotic Japan that valued personal discipline strong family ties and communal obligations They amended the basic education law to force teachers to teach pride in being Japanese And Abe created a task force charged with identifying excellence in Japanese culture so it could be used it to promote his beautiful country That task force was ignominiously disbanded Friday the latest sign that the Abe vision is now in ashes His conservative agenda was repudiated in partial elections during the summer in which i voters handed control of parliaments parliament's upper house to the main opposition though the prime minister staggered on in office for a afew afew afew few more weeks The final collapse was his bizarre departure a tearful incoherent performance t. t that was anything but an example of dignity The prime ked ked rJ ked to use the term tenn u but he took the least dignified way of resigning said political commentator Hirotaka Futatsuki The governing Liberal Democratic Party is now running as fast as possible away from the Abe brand of politics On Sunday they will almost certainly hand the leadership to Yasuo 1 Fukuda 71 a party veteran I Iwho who they dismissed just a year ago as being too soft on China too soft on North Korea too too willing to play th the apologist for Japans Japan's wartime role I 1 1 |