Presentation Script

1. Cultural background of Japan
(1) The structure of dependence
Many of the central characteristics of Japanese culture were properly described by Dr. Takeo Doi's masterpiece, "The Anatomy of Dependence." Plainly speaking, Japanese culture has never experienced a separation-individuation process in its history. Chie Nakane clearly explained this interdependent relationship in her one-to-one relationship model of a higher and lower ranked workers in a vertical organization.

Speaking in the language of Kleinians, the system presents a "queen-peasant object relationship", which does not exist in a horizontal structure in the Western world.

In a different language, the Japanese have an inflated super-ego. The vertical organizational structure molded their super-ego and repressed their ego ideal. This is what Max Weber calls Confucian culture.

Japan went into a national mobilization regime in the 1930's, with this as a cultural background. This industrial structure continued until the late 1970's and to Karl Marx's great surprise, Japan was the only communist regime that succeeded in practicing a form of religion called Shinto. We are able to categorize the Japanese-style management observed, including Toyota's manufacturing methods and lifetime employment, into an integrated controlled economy.

Thus, you will be confused if you consider Japan as a liberal society. It is easier to demystify Japan's unique regulations by seeing them as the outcome of the actions of numerous bureaucrats. We must understand these bureaucrats as actors under a structure of dependence, in a vertical organized society with a queen-peasant object relationship that is even more controlled than those of typical communist countries.

(2) Structure of shame
Ruth Benedict argues in her masterpiece, "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword" that a culture of shame forms a basis of Japanese. A famous combat lesson of the Japanese imperial army taught Japanese soldiers, "Never to live and endure the disgrace of capture," which later became a spiritual backbone of kamikaze suicide attack bombings. According to a post-prisoner survey conducted after the war, there were many prisoners who identified themselves with false names due mainly to fear of being ostracized from one's own village ("mura-hachibu") had the fact that they were captured by an enemy be discovered by the townspeople back in Japan.

Under this Japanese chivalry system, no excuse for consolation match is allowed and one-time failure forces them to commit hara-kiri (ritual suicide). Thus, there is a primitive barbarity antithetical to infancy where we can observe a group attribute in which scapegoat leaders and defiant leaders are rejected.

(3) Hollow-centered structure
As Hayao Kawai described in his book, "the Japanese Psyche," the sun god in Japan is female. The son who kills his father does not appear in the mythology but the son who refused to be swallowed by his great mother will be exiled out to a non-cultural domain.

Here the basic assumption proposed by Bion takes a subordinate role. Hence a "hollow-centered structure" emerges where a task leader and emotional leader play a sub-leader role. Founders are the only leaders with responsibility principally transferred to the next generation through inheritance. The rules established by the founder are universal.

The origin of these groups are said to be found in Micronesia. According to anthropologists the shelf of coral in Micronesia is the only place where people live within an existence margin (Their coral island will be submerged unless coconuts trees are planted constantly.) A seniority system emerged out of this environment.

(4) Tokyo underground world
According to Robert Whiting, 7% of Japan's GNP is money-laundered by "yakuza" gangsters. This is easily more than twice as much laundering as goes on in the United States. As is widely known, Japan is famous for the world's highest individual savings rate but such amount is said to be invested overseas. It is a well-known fact that these funds are routed to the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the Japan's governing party. It is they who can bring public-work projects back to local election districts and this is how organized votes are gathered as opposed to votes for the Liberal Democratic Party whose election base is mainly in urban area.

Considering such a background, you may have noticed the Dark Ages of Western world where the seniority system and Japanese management are mutually dependent in the context of inflation of super-ego and self-reliance anxiety within the container of Great Mother such as LDP legislator and yakuza. General Douglas MacArthur said before his leaving to the Korean War, "This nation needs no laws. They create their own. Their mental age is that of a high school student."

(5) Society of depression
It has been shown that rates of clinical depression in Japan far exceed those of the United States. Depression is so prevalent as to be able to be called a national disease, with an unprecedented number of alcohol dependent workers. Typical Japanese salary men have less time for leisure than their Western counterparts and Sundays are generally consumed with organizational activities apart from their employers such as local community meetings and attending their children's events.

We should not overlook the socio-pathological phenomenon that has created a society with the highest suicide rate amongst middle-aged men, and a comparatively low divorce rate. These go on despite perfect hospitality at ryokans, the Japanese inns, in the old capital of Kyoto.

Self-sacrifice is a virtue and personal opinion is evil. This society never initiates change unless under threat of external force.

2. Globalization
(1) Licenses in Japan
Licenses in the Western world are the evidence of skill of those who have obtained them and are taken as one criterion for the granting of permission to participate in freelance business (apart from previously established entities). In this regard, licensees attain the prerequisites to become business managers similar to company managements. In a competitive free society, lower ranked public servants are not highly regarded even though they may succeed as owners of a company, license holders, elite employees or public servants.

On the other hand, choices are limited to independent farmers or lower ranked public servants (or lifetime employees) in the Eastern societies, especially in Japan. There are virtually no professional positions available save for medical doctors and engineering positions at manufacturing companies.

In a society where the crime clearance rate exceeds 90% (i.e., crimes are rare) men's personal frustrations are diffused by hurling complaints at hostesses of the local gentlemen's clubs, there are few lawyers and psychotherapists who can live on their own profession in this culture of shame.

With rigid and extremely effective tax audits (except for yakuzas and LDP legislators) and withholding taxes and a universal healthcare and pension system on wage earners (lower ranked public servants and company employees account for 80% of total workers), there is no way to evade taxes.

In this regard, lawyers and CPA's are honorable appellations and charters granted by the government. These certifications are status symbols and should be considered differently in Japan where job-hopping is not considered a part of career building.

To make the point differently, one could go as far as saying that degrees from universities are also little more appellations. Japan does not have an established business school system and practical education is provided on the job. Thus, colleges and universities are seen as holidays that precede the employment moratorium.

This leads to important phenomena. Since vocational school diploma holders have better job finding rate, university graduates flock to evening courses at vocational schools and prepare for license exams.

There should be no need for vocational schools since practical educations are provided at companies; however, this can be explained by the following:
l Adoptability where charters granted by government can be memorized with perfection
l Anxiety that not having a certification will cause them to feel isolated from society
This is why vocational and prep schools are so popular and where the peculiarity exists in Japan's schooling system.

(2) Softnomics
The combination of agrarian society and machinery fabrication as described by Max Weber resulted in remarkable success.

From the perspective of general economic history, it is a traditional economic theory that migration of labor forces from agricultural community to urban areas forms a civic community, and this leads to people's revolution before industrial revolution has to succeed. Japan was an exception to this rule.

Of course there are major assumptions. Most of the technologies were copied. Profits are earned by maximizing productivity. In this case, those from an agricultural community were well equipped to be integrated into the group effort. The often praised effects of TQC (Total Quality Control) are well suited for repetitive routines by group efforts, and in fact the village community meetings are all about TQC.

This reaches its limits when kaizen or continuous improvement flattens or where available patents are all copied. Creativity does not emerge out of dependency and anxiety.

The origin of creativity is found at meetings of adventurous spirits and heterogeneity.

Hence, Japan lost its dependency subject, forfeited a good enough mother which was the government lead economy, and without a new standard for bearing leaders. Japan started a collective retrograde movement after the burst of the bubble economy and the end of cold war.

(3) Certified Public Accountant
Presently prep schools that provide Western license courses in Japanese language are host to a record number of students. One CPA review course run by an entrepreneur expanded to a national level and occupied examination sites in Alaska and Guam, which are geographically close to Japan. This created a panic-like situation for local candidates.

Only one percent of those who pass the CPA exam will ever be able to practice public accounting in the United States. Most of those Japanese who pass the exam do not have language backgrounds or psychological control. Thus, the reason for the frenzy over obtaining a license that has no use presents itself. Students study for the exam in a closely controlled environment of the prep school which is a far cry from the liberalistic U.S. educational system. Yet, this is an exact projection object for Japanese society as a container of a defense mechanism and it treats regulations in the U.S. as a precisely new transitional object.

It is ironic that the United States, a nation and culture with a schizoid-paranoid position, is the most freely independent and least likely to be a dependent object.

(4) Double bind situation
Since Japanese society does not have a self-purification capacity as a group, external forces are the only windows to change and this mislead transitional objects or even results in selection of shadow with reversal compensation by projective identification.

This leads the group to a double bind situation, and causes phenomenon such as bullying, suicide, flunky, myopic management, and self-sacrifice of salary level, unremunerated overtime, and alcoholic dependence. Japan's citizens are trapped in a pathological syndrome as if they were schizoid patients or secondary gainers (structure of dependence).

3. Case study
From 2000 to 2002, the author held a position as a Planning Manager at International Business Department of "O" CPA Review School. This school is a long established vocational school specializing in preparation for the Japanese CPA examination. My main task was to establish a strategic alliance with an affiliated program in the United States for university accreditation. We established an alliance with with California State University "S1".

This subject case describes the project from its inception to the end from a viewpoint of project participant.

(1) The prep school "O"
The prep school "O" was established in 1950's. With 27 branch schools throughout Japan it is the largest in the business segment. The school started as CPA review courses and expanded nationwide in a very short period of time.

Despite having no prominent school management, their unintentional specialization in indistinctive review course caught students' popularity. This school is similar to Devry Institute or Becker's CPA Review Program in the U.S. but it is surprising that a school with such offerings could build a business with sales of 3 billion yen.

A prep school per se only plays a complementary role to university accounting courses. However, where university classes are purely theoretical and exams are skewed toward rote learning and their students take courses for the reason of ego identity anxiety; such a great business success resulted by providing a solution for group fantasies.

Similar phenomenon can be observed at other prep schools and as result there are more subject courses than formal university classes.

Though the founder had little creativity, pure luck was the only ingredient for their success. Management is extremely proud of the school's respect for EQ and sees it as a management virtue. But its substance is that they exploit course graduates as instructors by guaranteeing lifetime employment and barely maintaining their management charisma. Their ego ideals are exchanged for that of the school O and to put it in human resource terminology they are a mass of firm specific assets. The school O must hold on to its top position in the industry just to maintain its corporate bond and diversification strategy is out of line.

(2) Hereditary system
The school employees are basically apprentices and mercantile clerks of the Middle Ages who are residing in a homogeneous commonwealth of CPA license holders without practical professional experience or even prior outside work experience.

Those who dare to experience the outside world and to propose their own opinion are already screened out (as new hires are recruited from school graduates). There is a natural process of pushing troublesome managers to back corner offices so there finally emerges a group of employees who are just like a bunch of feudatories in the Middle Ages.

It is a chicken-or-egg question but there are no significant differences in employees' capacity as most of them are generally tired and crippled warm body employees. Or maybe it is the founder's intention to have his son takeover the school. These Japanese enterprises have no other choice but to adopt a hereditary system for selection of their leaders.

Mr. A, owner and the chairman of the board of the school, being dependent on hierarchical authority, ends up marrying a queen of hearts and misbegotten daughters and a son out of the marriage of "beauty and beast." Consequently, he needs a puppet administration until his son is old enough to take over.

He must elect the most incapable mercantile clerk out of the employees from the founding era. Here the hollow-centered structure comes into being.

Needless to say, two other daughters are married to sons of LDP legislators. The accumulated earnings exploited out of employees' labor are used to pay for new local branch schools that are contracted out to specific general constructors. Of course a part of the money here goes to political funding for his daughter's husband in his efforts to ban the invasion of American CPA prep school business onto Japanese shore.

(3) The managing director of the board, Mr. K
Mr. K as a relay runner for Mr. A, the chairman has been failing on every new business due to his inability. He becomes a laughingstock of other employees and ends up in a collision with outside consultants. However, he is doing all right to protect the chairman of the board. By so doing, those who want changes are out placed and most of all there will be no diversifications emerging other than the one that the founder started. The emperor with no clothing maintains his eternal power.

(4) U.S. CPA review course business
Here comes a black ship that the course purveyors never thought of. Integration of international accounting standards is now lead by the United States and UK. Japan has its own system for the certified public accountants. (The exam consists of bookkeeping, financial statements, cost accounting and audits but also economics, business management, civil law and commercial law extensively.) As explained earlier, it is rather an honorable charter similar to China's rigid public official exam in its ancient history. It is a long two-day exam separated into three parts and covers drafting of opinions in addition to general accounting subjects. This is far more detailed than its U.S. counterpart with multiple choices from four subjects of FARE, Audit, Business Law, and ARE.

Furthermore, it is in English. No one at School O has such linguistic capability. It is really a foreign invasion that they cannot manage.

A venture company called a started to dominate this business. The company invincibly marched into the market during the 1990's as though School O did in 1950's. It was so natural since there was no competitive advantage on the part of its competitor.

On a matter of honor, Mr. K recklessly entered into the war by hiring outside consultants since there was no one supporting this idea (it was naturally impossible as they have no English language capability). School O eventually discontinued the business after incurring annual loss of 300 million yen during the period 2000 to 2003.

It was similar to Japan's declaring the Pacific War against the U.S. and subsequently being horribly crushed after luckily winning the war against Russia and not renewing armaments. This is the subject of this article.

On the contrary, School A will in no way democratize its business even if they are successful in the American CPA review course. Even worse, their employees are part time. They bluff that it is a Harvard style flexible competency based human resource policy. However, it means that they lose career opportunities after the age of 40 in Japan where job-hopping is not considered part of career. Recent entrepreneurs in Japan take an expedient policy of adopting Japanese style management when it comes to favorable lower wage measures and escaping unfavorable matters such as guarantee of employment in the American style. To make the matter worse, management scholars who have no deep understanding of Japanese management praise these people so the Ministry of Labor and Health is hesitant to take any measures. After all, School A is School O ten years from now.

4. Politics on the Couch
(1) Phase process
The story is characterized by three phases.
l The phase where Mr. K, the managing director formed a sub-group without prior nemawashi or behind-the-scene maneuvering of Mr. A, the chairman including hiring of an outside project team. His intention was to enter the U.S. CPA market even though there were no supporting employees within the organization. In fact, there was no one who had capability to do so or anyone who had the entrepreneurial spirit to start a new business.

l The phase where Mr. K did not kill his father, Mr. A. (before School O played second fiddle to School A in reaching the strategic alliance with a state university in the U.S.) Outside staff that had no loyalty caused an accident in the process and escaped the project.

l The phase where Mr. A, the chairman sent his daughter as an outside staff to maneuver Mr. A, the deputy director (No. 3 in the hierarchy) causing Mr. K, the managing director to lose his power and to be forced back to take a corner office. Also Mr. A encouraged California State Univ."S2" to interfere with Mr. K's accreditation of Univ."S1."

l The phase where Mr. K involved Mr. N, the senior advisor to the board (No. 3 in the hierarchy) (strangely enough, even though he is the head of the department) and terminated the outside staff. As a result, it is now difficult to continue this business, as there is no one with English speaking capacity.

l The phase where Mr. A, deputy director nailed down the termination of International Business Department at a board meeting due to unprofitable operation.

l The phase where Mr. K was downgraded to a puppet director again.

l The phase where School A dominated the U.S. CPA Review course market in Japan.

(2) Ordinary phase process
In a normal course of business (where a work group is formed and a basic assumption is undertaken), Mr. K would have to have succeeded in the killing of father, the new business should have successfully entered the market and School O diversified its business lines, and School O should have set aside management resources and a channel to acquire School A.

These inhibitive factors that are particular to phase development process of groups in Japan will be reported in the next APA. The following can be sited at this time:

l Sub-leaders are caponized from the point of recruitment and are incapable of inducing fight-flight culture.

l They lack an experience of utilizing outside consultants because of lifetime employment within a homogeneous village community. Those professionals are used for scapegoat purposes.

l They are not motivated internally or externally to initiate new businesses as they only receive practical experience and on-the-job training within the organization.

l The culture of putting ministerial interest over national interest (the department to which the managers belong is more important than growth of the school as a whole) plays a disincentive role of not helping outside project members.

l There are no dictatorial task leaders as there are in other Asian countries. Hence, sub-leaders fight dog-eat-dog competitions.
l Leaders are puppet figures and gain their positions through hereditary.

(3) Political factors
The political science phenomenon such as what Andrew Samuels calls a psychopathological family can be observed in those groups with sluggish phases that have no self-purification capacity (even within a profit seeking organization).

This was seen in the case of Mr. A, deputy director and with the chairman's daughter who were added by Mr. A, the chairman behind the scene.

This is a factor that cannot be explained by the unsuccessful separation-individuation process of Mr. K with respect to Mr. A, the chairman of the board and self-defensive management by rejection of maturity.

In this report, we looked into phenomenon other than group psychotherapy in considering social-defense mechanism of School O.

That is, we see added political scientific intervention, violence, and sanction from a supra system in addition to regular conflicts within the subsystem where basic assumptions are controlled more rigidly than normal standards.

Such a phenomenon is not limited to a severe psychopathological family but can also be observed at straight conflicts between East and West in Kosovo and the contraposition between Christian-Islam worlds. It is a frequent occurrence, as they do not have strong leaders in Japan.

(4) Bureaucratic regulations
From the viewpoint of the Ministry of Finance, it is a peaceful matter from the national interest as School O no longer dominates the CPA review course market and the segregation of the market was achieved between Japanese and American license review courses. Also, it is a very happy ending as the owner successfully transferred the power to his innocent son (although he lost a significant amount of money and the potential market).

From the emperor's historical view, this is called unbroken decent and the retention of the national policy.

"Long live the Emperor!" banzai!

Reference:

Wilfred R. Bion, the Experience in the Group, 1961, London
Robert Whiting, Tokyo Underground World, Kadoka-Shorten, 2000, Japan
Takeo Doi, the Anatomy of Dependence, Kadoka- International, 1973, Tokyo
Ruth Benedict, the Chrysanthemum and the Sward, Meridian, 1946
Manfred Kets de Vries, The Neurotic Organization, Jossey-Bass, SF, 1989
Larry Hirschhorn, the Psychodynamics of Organizational Life, Temple Univ. Press, Philadelphia, 1993
Hayao Kawai, the Japanese Psyche, Iwanami-Shoten, Tokyo, 1990
Randy Howard, Kotaro Anjo, and Irvin N. Gleim, Global Demand for the CPA Exam, CPA Journal, MD, Dec/2001.
Paul Watzlawick, Janet Helmick, Beavin, and Don D. Jackson, Pragmatics of Human Communication, W.W. Norton, NY, 1967
Andrew Samuels, Politics on the Couch, Profile Book, UK, 2001