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Too Little Too Much—Part two - Trevor Leggett 1997 This article is the second in a series of pieces by Trevor Leggett which first appeared in magazine form in 1997 Last month I described how at the age of sixteen I heard Dr. Jigoro Kano lecturing in London on the Principle of maximum Efficiency: Saidai Noritsu Genri —yes, I learnt the Japanese words by heart, like a sort of magic charm. But like many charms, the meaning did not seem to be very profound. He told us that the principle means: do not use too much force, and do not use too little. I thought this was obvious, and I wondered why such an awe-inspiring and highly educated teacher should bother to keep on saying it. It was years before I understood that he was referring not only to individual judo waza or to individual actions in life, but also to one’s whole attitude to the world. I came to realize that most of us are either Too Much men, who always tend to force things, or Too Little men, who are always cautious and ‘tap on the stone bridge before crossing’. Whichever class we personally belong to, we have to try to correct the fault. The Too Much men have to learn to appreciate that gentleness, ju, can be very effective without waste of effort; the Too Little men have to realize that precautions are endless, and that we cannot live if we always prepare to prepare to prepare. When I had reached this understanding, it occurred to me that it is not only individuals who have fixed attitudes. Nations and their cultures can be seen in this way —there are Too Much nations, and Too Little nations. Sometimes the clear-sighted ones in the nation are aware of the weakness, and try to correct it by their writings and their political and cultural activities. Sometimes they have some success, but in other cases no one will listen to them till there is some sort of national or cultural disaster. When I had been some time in Japan, I began to notice what seemed to me Too Much-ness. As so often, one sees an unusual idea in some small thing. I was told that a traditional Kyoto hostess would say good-bye to one guest, and then change into new white tabi socks before receiving the new guest. I knew and admired the Japanese passion for cleanness, but I felt this was purity gone mad. I know that it is irritating to be told about history as a guide to character. We feel: ‘Oh, we are not like that today’. But about thirty years ago I was told something which was to me equally incredible. We were talking about a senior NHK broadcaster who had had a fine career. Someone said to me, ‘He is not regarded as quite pure NHK, because at the very beginning, before he joined us, he worked with a commercial company for eight months’. He gave a little laugh as he said this, but he did say it. British people could never make such a comment; we could not even think it. Perhaps Italians could: they have a saying Traduttore è traditore which means, Translators, traitors. A translator must be familiar with many foreign ideas, and so he is not purely Italian in his outlook. And so, he might become a traitor to Italy. British people would think that, though there may sometimes be a tiny bit of truth in the saying, that tiny truth must not be made Too Much. I admit that the Too Much policy does succeed in its first objective: the Tokugawa ban on foreign-learning called Dutch learning through an accident of history —is an example of that success. At the end of the 17th century, there was some reason to fear foreign inventions. Japan did stop their import and then the manufacture of firearms. I checked up, and found that in a typical year, for instance 1705, only 250 pistols were manufactured in Japan and were used just in ceremonies. The Tokugawas did secure peace for over two centuries. This was something unheard of in Europe where it took a long time to disarm the civilian populations. The Japanese did it quickly. But then they carried the policy on Too Much. They banned nearly all foreign-learning. They apparently had the idea that if Japan did not concern itself with the outside world, the outside world would not concern itself with Japan. I checked and found that clear-sighted men such as the scholar Hayashi Shihei tried to warn the government, but they were not listened to, and were even persecuted as ‘war-mongers’. I believe this is a very important point. There are always some who are aware of a national weakness(for instance Too Much or Too Little)and who try to warn. The herd instinct is against them, but when they are respectfully listened to the country has a chance to avoid disaster. I will take up this point it the next article. For an illustration of Too Much, look at new buildings. In Japan in the last forty years, a major new building had to be one or two floors higher than previous ones. It had big signs on every tenth floor, to prove its height. A new hotel had to have the extra floors, though it required more capital, and postponed profitability. When I heard about this, I remembered the Gothic cathedrals of France. Each new one was a few feet higher than the last, till they reached a limit with Beauvais, part of which fell down under the weight of the stone. To us English, the French have always seemed a Too Much nation. Their French Revolution perhaps had some justification. But having executed the King and about 2,000 aristocrats, they continued, and guillotined about 35,000 others. Finally they began to execute each other. Robespierre, their most prominent leader, was himself guillotined; even Thomas Paine, the great defender of the American and French Revolutions through his books The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason, was imprisoned but managed to escape with his wife.
In 1871, the workers of Paris tried to rebel; the French president crushed them ruthlessly, killing altogether an estimated 30,000. It was the same French authorities that in 1889 built the then useless but magnificent Eiffel Tower (984ft. ; in 1959 raised to 1052 ft.). When London built its own Post Office Tower (what an unromantic name!) it would have been easy to make it higher than the Eiffel Tower; but the British engineers never considered that. Nor is the height of a new hotel any important factor in designing it. The questions in British minds are, how good is it as a hotel, and how soon will it begin to make a profit? This common-sense attitude has some strengths, but often it simply lacks vision. And in that sense, I can see that Britain is often a Too Little nation. We are in general cautious; it is not fear, but a balancing of the supposed risks. The attitude saves us from some terrible mistakes. But it has disadvantages. I can sum these up in this incident: a young student in physics suggests a revolutionary solution to a famous problem. His teacher dismisses it, but later the student gets a Nobel prize for it. The teacher is later asked why he rejected it. He says: ‘I knew that ninety-nine suggested solutions to that famous problem would be wrong, and I simply assumed that his solution was one of the ninety-nine! ‘Too Little enthusiasm, Too Little respect for the student, Too Little daring. One the other hand, Britain makes fewer mistakes than some others. In the 1960’s, Japanese students occupied universities and fought hopeless battles to defend them. French students did the same, and also deliberately urinated in the lecture halls and rooms in ‘protest’ as they called it. There was little of either of these things from British students. They did protest, but not in these irrational ways. Perhaps my occasional criticism of France comes from my being an Englishman; up to a mere two hundred years ago, we were traditional enemies. So we still tend to criticise them. But we also have to admit that they civilized Europe —and us. Too Much, Too Little, individuals and nations—the point is, how can we recognize our tendency towards one or the other, and most importantly, how can we change to Dr. Kano’s principle of Right Action? I will try to look at this next time.
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The Kano Society |
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England, the politician and orator Edmund Burke gave the English view.
Where Tom Paine demanded quick radical changes, Burke said that five
months of rage and frenzy can destroy what has taken fifty years of
wisdom, foresight, and prudence to build up. But he also saw the
weakness of this idea of life as slow evolution—gardening in fact. ‘Our
people are sluggish and do not like innovation’, he admitted. In other
words, we are liable to do Too Little.