Author: S. Watson

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Early in this story, two schoolboys are fighting and everyone wants them to stop. Miss. Keiko Furukura, a schoolgirl, sees the situation clearly, takes a shovel, and hits one of the boys in the head. Problem solved; the fighting stops, right? But everyone is shocked as if something wrong has been done. Miss. Furukura is an intelligent, fully functional female human who sees the world with precise, logical reasoning but has only faint human emotions. What follows is her approach to the world of humans contrasted with the emotionally driven worldview of normal humans.

We human beings are amazing animals in that we have great abilities to look at the world logically, but much of our societal organization, motivation, and survival is driven by instincts and emotions that sometimes bear only indirect relationships to reality (read Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman). While this novel is often interpreted as the struggle of an emotionally deprived individual in the normal human world, or as a satire on the norms of human society, I see the real value as a contrast between a purely logical view of society and the real-world complex view of ordinary people.

In childhood, Miss Furukura shocks those around her with her logical response to situations. After the shovel incident, there is strong backlash that mystifies Furukura.

They held a teacher’s meeting, and my mother was called to the school. Seeing her bowing to the teachers, apologizing over and over, her face strangely serious, I finally realized that maybe I shouldn’t have done what I did, but I still couldn’t understand why.

She gradually learns the reactions to some of her perfectly logical actions. While she still doesn’t understand them, to avoid the negative attention from society, she decides to quiet her actions to maintain an appearance of normality. She is coached by her younger sister on how to react to societal situations. She is able to avoid the reactions of society, such as after the shovel incident.

so I decided to keep my mouth shut as best I could outside the home. I would no longer do anything of my own accord and would either just mimic what everyone else was doing, or simply follow instructions.

She never really understands why normal humans have these illogical expectations, but she becomes quite proficient at acting the part of a normal person.

I stole a glance at Sugawara and tried to mimic the way she moved her facial muscles as she spoke, the same way I did in training, and parroted, “Really, he left us…

By chance she discovers the perfect environment for her highly competent, logical mind. The Hiromachi Station Smile Mart is a demanding but highly structured environment where Miss Furukura’s intelligence and energy can be channeled into a societally acceptable mode of existence. While the work is demanding, it is entirely scripted. There is no need for an emotional reading of customers and situations; the manual and the training prescribe all.

When I first started here, there was a detailed manual that taught me how to be a store worker, and still I don’t have a clue how to be a normal person outside the manual.

The convenience store is a contrived environment that caters perfectly to the human rational/emotional public, but is easy to script and reproduce. Rather than use the full range of human interaction to sell products, it scripts the words and actions of workers down to every detail. As a business, it is successful because it can make low knowledge/experience workers productive quickly by scripting their every action. For Furukura, it is a perfect environment to hide in plain sight. By enthusiastically following the script, she can disguise herself as a highly functional human.

For eighteen years, the convenience store has been her refuge, but it is disrupted as she ages into her thirties. She starts to get negative attention from family and friends as they become alarmed that she has not proceeded like a normal person to get married and find more serious work. She has no interest in that normal life but wants to avoid negative pressure from those around her.

In addition, her interactions with a new character, Shiraha, affects her view of her situation. At first, we might see him as a fellow traveler, as he too has trouble fitting into normal society. But we soon learn that his problem is that he has all the emotional instincts of these normal people, but is just too lazy to succeed. He blames all his problems on society and Furukura, constantly trying to understand the world, sees some logic in his outpourings.

“This society hasn’t changed one bit. People who don’t fit into the village are expelled: men who don’t hunt, women who don’t give birth to children. For all we talk about modern society and individualism, anyone who doesn’t try to fit in can expect to be meddled with, coerced, and ultimately banished from the village.”

So perhaps seeming normal is even an existential issue. For Furukura, blending into the world takes on new urgency.

The normal world has no room for exceptions and quietly eliminates foreign objects. Anyone lacking is disposed of.

So that’s why I needed to be cured. Unless I’m cured, normal people will expurgate me.

Finally I understood why my family had tried so hard to fix me.

She explores new options to deal with what she is being told is normal now that she is in her thirties. She considers quitting the convenience store and getting a better job, faking a romantic relationship with Shiraha, maybe even a fake marriage, maybe even a real marriage and bearing children. But as she moves on at Shiraha’s urging, she feels lost.

Since I’d left the store, I no longer knew what time I should wake up in the morning. I slept whenever I felt sleepy and ate when I woke up. I didn’t do anything all day except fill out the resume forms, as ordered by Shiraha.

I no longer knew what standard to live by. Until now, my body had belonged to the convenience store, even when I wasn’t working. Sleeping, keeping in good physical shape, and eating nutritiously were all part of my job. I had to stay healthy for work.

One day Furukura is on the phone with Shiraha’s sister-in-law, who is trying to collect a debt from him. Furukura has a strange thought and asks a strange question:

In the background, I heard the sound of a baby crying. It suddenly occurred to me that no longer having the convenience store manual to follow, perhaps I should use animal instinct as the standard on which to base my judgments. I’m an animal of the human species so perhaps having children to make my species prosper would be the correct path for me.

“Um, may I ask you something? Is having children good for humanity?”

“What?”

She sounded so taken aback on the other end of the line that I thought I’d better explain what I meant.

“After all, we’re animals, so isn’t it better for our species if we multiply? Do you think it would be best for me and Shiraha to quickly get on with mating and play our part in making humanity prosper?”

For a while she was so quiet I thought she’d maybe hung up, but then I heard the sound of such a long, heavy sigh that I could almost feel her warm breath spewing out through the receiver.

“Give me a break! How do you think a store worker and an unemployed good-for-nothing are going to be able to raise children? Please don’t even consider it. You’ll be doing us all a favor by not leaving your genes behind. That’s the best contribution to the human race you could make.”

“Oh, really?”

“Keep those rotten genes to yourself for the course of your lifetime and take them to heaven with you when you die without leaving even a trace of them here on earth. Seriously.”

“I see,”

I said nodding to myself, impressed at her ability to think so rationally.

With her eyes opened by this enlightened advice, Furukua realizes the alternate paths she is looking at are not right for her. But what next?

I would carry my genes carefully to my grave, being sure not to rashly leave any behind, and I would dispose of them properly when I died. I was resolved on this, but at the same time it left me in a bit of a limbo. I understood the end point perfectly, but how was I to spend my time until then?

On the final page, Furukura throws off all the expectations of those normal humans and charts a return to her scripted world of the convenience store with its detailed manual and routines.

This novel is not a satire on Japanese or modern society, nor the story of a neurodivergent-coded consciousness struggling to fit in. By separating the human capacity for reason from our emotional drives, it examines the complexity of the human mind. We don’t usually think about it, but our survival depends on both functions of the brain. By inserting this divergence in a plausible story, we are treated to the reality of this contradiction.

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Why is China so hostile to the United States? China often interprets American actions as having anti-Chinese intentions. Most of China’s military innovation is aimed at the United States and its interests in the eastern hemisphere. China makes cyberattacks on American government agencies and companies. China conducts provocative military encounters with the U.S. military. China’s hostility may appear to be paranoia, but upon examining history, it becomes logical. China has faced foreign threats since the beginning of Chinese civilization. Leaders of China from ancient times up to now have been preoccupied with the defense of their territory because foreign invasion has always been an existential threat. Note that China borders fourteen countries; the United States borders just two. From history, consider the following:

· Oracle bone inscriptions from the Shang Dynasty (商)(c. 1600–1046 BCE) record invasions by tribes to the north.

· The earliest recorded histories tell of invasions in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties (周) (1050–256 BCE), Chinese resistance, diplomacy, and the building of fortified walls.

· During the Han Dynasty (汉) 206 BCE — 220 CE), the Xiongnu(匈奴), a nomadic tribal confederation on the Mongolian plateau, continually attacked the northern borders. Their hundred thousand-strong armies of mounted archers terrorized China. Han Gaozu (汉高祖 — reign 202–195 BCE), the first Han emperor, was surrounded and nearly captured in one encounter ( 200 BCE).

· After the fall of the Han Dynasty, there was constant civil war and invasions by nomadic tribes.

· During the Tang Dynasty （唐）(618–907 CE), the Tibetan Empire waged serious campaigns against China, even briefly capturing the Chinese capital, Chang’an （长安）, in 763 CE.

· In 1127 CE, the Song Dynasty (宋) (960–1279 CE), the capital Kaifeng （开封）was captured by Jurchen invaders, and Song rule was relegated to southern China.

· In 1279 CE, the Mongol leader Kublai Khan invaded and conquered all of China and established the Yuan Dynasty (元) (1271 -1368 CE).

· In 1644 CE, Manchurians conquered China and established the Qing Dynasty (清) (1636–1912 CE), China’s last imperial dynasty.

An obvious symbol of China’s focus on foreign threats is the Great Wall of China. Defensive walls were built during the earliest times of Chinese recorded history. As Chinese dynasties became more centralized under the Qin Dynasty (秦)(221–206 BCE) and Han Dynasty, these walls were unified. In subsequent dynasties, the wall was extended and strengthened.

Until the nineteenth century, threats to China were from neighboring nations and tribes. As the Industrial Revolution in the West developed, powerful nations were able to project military might far beyond their borders, and China faced threats from Europe, America, and Japan. Rapid advancements in military technology were beyond China’s defensive capabilities. A century plunder ensued.

· In the Opium Wars, Britain forced China to import opium, cede Hong Kong, and open five treaty ports (including Shanghai. France, Russia, and the United States soon demanded equal trade access to China. England instigated the First Opium War (1839–1842), and France joined the U.K. as a belligerent in the Second Opium War (1856–1860). The United States was a minor participant, attacking some Chinese river forts in 1856. As a result of these wars and the resulting concessions, China lost much of its control over trade.

· The Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) was a rebellion against the Qing rulers. It was a nominally Christian struggle against the corruption of the rulers and the dire poverty of the masses. While international powers were initially neutral, they eventually joined forces with the dynasty. The struggle was among the deadliest in human history, resulting in 20–30 million dead.

· The First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) was fought over which country would be the dominant power in East Asia. For millennia, that had been China, but with Japan’s modernization during the Meiji Restoration starting in 1868, Japan achieved political, military, and technological advancements similar to the Industrial Revolution of Europe and America. First, Japan gained effective control of Korea (which had been a Chinese tributary state), and then of Chinese territories. Like the European countries, Japan forced the opening of treaty ports. Soon afterwards, other countries such as Germany and Russia gained territory and trading rights.

· The Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901) was an anti-foreign influence rebellion. The Empress Dowager Cixi (慈禧太后) initially resisted, but eventually joined forces with the rebels. The uprising was eventually defeated by a combined force of Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They destroyed the imperial Summer Palace in Beijing and enforced a huge indemnity. (Many years later, the United States returned part of the indemnity to fund scholarships for Chinese students and to help establish Tsinghua University in Beijing.)

· In the early twentieth century, Japan continued its aggression against China.

o In 1915, Japan presented the newly founded Republic of China with twenty-one demands that included territorial concessions, such as the Shandong peninsula, expanded privileges in Manchuria, and effective political control over China. Japan threatened force if they were not accepted. China’s weak President Yuan Shikai (袁世凯) accepted most of the demands; only opposition by other foreign powers prevented the political control demands. The ultimate humiliation to China was at the end of the First World War, when the Treaty of Versailles awarded German concessions in Shandong to Japan rather than returning them to China.

o Through various pretexts, the Japanese expanded into China. In 1931, based on the manufactured Mukden incident, Japan took control of Manchuria and established the puppet regime of Manchukuo with Puyi (溥仪), the last emperor of the now fallen Qing Dynasty, as the puppet ruler. In 1937, after a skirmish at the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing, Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China, capturing Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing, where they launched the horrendous Nanjing Massacre, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians.

After the end of the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union influenced the civil war between the nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek (蒋介石) and the communists under Mao Zedong (毛泽东). The U.S. provided large-scale military aid to the nationalists. Two days after the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and dispatched a large force to occupy Manchuria. They turned over captured Japanese weapons and equipment, including hundreds of aircraft, tanks, artillery, machine guns, rifles, and ammunition to the communist forces.

When the Communist Party came to power and established Chinese sovereignty in 1949, what became known as China’s Century of Humiliation came to a close. But China’s worries of foreign threats continued. American actions in the region were perceived as hostile.

· At the end of the Second World War, the United States maintained large occupation forces in Japan and South Korea, which projected a significant military presence close to China.

· In 1950, North Korea, a Chinese client state, invaded South Korea, which the United States supported. The U.S. military, as the main component of a United Nations force, came to the aid of South Korea. U.N. forces quickly pushed back the North Korean attack and soon neared the Chinese border at the Yalu River. At this point, the Chinese came to North Korea’s aid. Eventually, an armistice near the 38th parallel was agreed.

U.S. General MacArthur, commander of the U.N. forces, advocated aggressive action against China, including bombing Chinese territory, a naval blockade, and using Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces on Taiwan to open a second front against mainland China. U.S. President Truman eventually fired MacArthur, but the perception in Chinese strategic thinking was impacted. They will never forget MacArthur proclaiming Taiwan an unsinkable aircraft carrier.

· While the U.S. was initially neutral over communist claims to Taiwan, with the Korean War, the U.S. shifted to a defensive posture. The Nationalist government had retreated to Taiwan. The U.S. provided extensive military assistance and built up a military presence on the island. After U.S. recognition of the People’s Republic of China, U.S. forces were withdrawn, but military aid continued.

· Throughout the 1950s, the United States kept military advisors in South Vietnam. In 1964, this escalated into the Vietnam War with significant U.S. forces again near China’s borders.

· The United States expanded its military presence and alliances in the Philippines, Thailand, Australia, and Guam.

· The United States has imposed sanctions on China for human rights abuses, trade practices, and national security. Chinese rulers believe the real reasons for these sanctions are to hold back Chinese economic development and to hinder military technology development.

China openly claims rights to a sphere of influence in East and Southeast Asia, as it has had for millennia. They see U.S. objections as hypocritical, considering the Monroe Doctrine, which claimed similar rights for the U.S. in Latin America. They see American counteractions as hostile to these rights.

As I have described, China, throughout its history, has focused on military preparedness against the most threatening powers of the time. During the ancient dynasties, it was the nomadic peoples to the north thus the building of the Great Wall of China. In the nineteenth century, threats were from the European powers, America, and Japan.

Today, it is the United States that has surrounded China with military forces and alliances. The greatest affront to China is the continued separation of Taiwan. Taiwan was part of China from 1683 and was only separated by the Japanese conquest. After the Second World War, it was returned to China, which at the time was ruled by the Nationalist Republic of China under Chiang Kai-shek. As most of the world now recognizes the People’s Republic of China as the legitimate ruler of China, the communist leadership argues that Taiwan should come under its rule. As a practical matter, for 76 years, Taiwan has developed in a very different direction, becoming a vibrant democracy and an economic power. It is now the source of 90% of the world’s most advanced semiconductors, the driver of technical advances in today’s world.

Although the U.S. no longer has a military presence on Taiwan, its continued supply of advanced military technology is seen as threatening. While the rulers of Taiwan have, until recently, agreed that there is just one China, only divided politically, the currently elected government openly advocates Taiwan becoming a separate country. While China may no longer see a threat of invasion from Taiwan, its military strength threatens its ambitions to expand influence in the South China Sea. Should Taiwan become independent, who knows what military alliances it may form?

Through most of China’s history, it has been the most advanced country technically, culturally, politically, and militarily. It has seen breaks in this pattern before and sees its falling behind since the 19th century as one more temporary setback that strong, centralized Chinese leadership will reverse. The United States is a great, fearsome opponent, but it has only been around for 200 years, nothing compared to China’s thousands of years.

As the threats to China were continuous for thousands of years, the political mentality of its successful rulers was military preparedness and strong control of the military by central authorities. This thinking continues to this day as threats (or perceived threats) have not subsided.

Afterword:

Like most Americans, I think our military presence in East Asia is to defend our allies Japan, South Korea, and others. Based on history, I can understand why China might think otherwise. With this article, I am not suggesting one side is right or wrong or what policies should be followed. My purpose is that if we are to find a way to coexist, we must understand each side’s point of view.

Sources:

This is not a comprehensive bibliography, but a list of sources that readers might find interesting.

Sima Qian, the Grand Historian:

China’s greatest historian, Sima Qian (司马迁) (145 BCE — 86 BCE wrote the history of China up to his time in the Shiji (史记) (or historical record). My Chinese copy is in ten volumes, a total of 3,322 pages. In many chapters, the Shiji tells of the Xiongnu threat from the earliest dynasties through to the Han Dynasty. Chapter 110 Account of the Xiongnu, tells the history of the Xiongnu and their conflicts with China. Chapter 6 Basic Annals of Chin Shihuang (秦始皇本纪) is the biography of Chin Shihuang (秦始皇), the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty (reign 221–210 BCE), and tells of struggles and diplomacy with the Xiongnu and early work on what became the Great Wall of China. Chapter 88, the Account of Meng Tian (蒙恬列传), tells the story of Meng Tian, a Qin general responsible for leading many campaigns against the Xiongnu and directing construction work, joining together and building defensive walls that later became the Great Wall of China.

The Shiji is not only a meticulous history but also a great work of literature. Much of the Shiji has been translated into English, the most complete being those of Burton Watson and William Nienhauser (whose project is to eventually translate the complete work).

Patriotic Poetry of the Song Dynasty

The Chinese mindset of an established civilization was expressed deeply by poets of the Southern Song dynasty after Jurchen invaders took the Song capital, Kaifeng in 1127 CE and established the Jin Dynasty (金) (1115–1234 CE) in the north. A great among these poets was Xing Qiji (辛棄疾), who was also a government official and advocated fighting the Jin to reunite China. In his poems, he expressed great sorrow of loss. One example follows:

少年不识愁滋味，

爱上层楼，

爱上层楼 ;

为赋新词强说愁。

而今识尽愁滋味，

欲说还休，

欲说还休 ;

却道天凉好个秋。

Translated by Stephen Watson:

In my youth, I knew not the taste of grief

I climbed the tall towers

I climbed the tall towers

Composing the new lyric rhymes, I often wrote “grief.”

Now having chewed my fill of grief

Want to say, but stop

Want to say, but stop

Instead remark “Cool weather, comes an autumn fine.”

Note: As in much Chinese poetry, there is a tragic pun — the Character for grief is pronounced the same as the character for autumn.

Spence, Jonathan D. The Search for Modern China. 3rd ed.

Jonathan Spence’s book tells the history that created modern China. He begins with the Ming Dynasty, representing the long dynastic tradition, then describes the invasion of the Manchus and the Qing Dynasty, then the Republic of China, through to the current People’s Republic. Spence reveals the thinking and the factors that formed Chinese leadership policies, especially the Century of Humiliation, then the problems with the United States and the Soviet Union.

The Century of Humiliation — An Analysis

Alison A. Kaufman’s testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in March 2011 gives an excellent summary of the events of that period and their effects on Chinese thinking.

https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/3.10.11Kaufman.pdf

Movie: Farwell My Concubine

Movie: Farwell My Concubine, directed by Chen Kaige tells the story of two Peking opera performers and is set from the early days of the Republic of China through the Cultural Revolution. While the plot is about the relationship between the main characters, their story is largely affected by the turmoil of those times.

Book: The Changing World Order by Ray Dalio

Dalio’s book covers his research and thinking on all aspects of the current world order, how it came to be, and where it might be headed. Relevant to our subject are two excellent chapters on China and its relations with the United States. Dalio is more concerned with economic issues, but military issues are closely related. Of particular interest is a graph on page 369 showing China’s relative standing versus the other major world powers from the Tang Dynasty until now.

Statements by General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping (习近平)

Xi’s statements echo the many millennia of concerns of Chinese leaders about foreign aggression.

In Xi’s speech marking the centenary of the Chinese Communist Party (July 1, 2021), he included:

“We Chinese are a people who uphold justice and are not intimidated by threats of force. As a nation, we have a strong sense of pride and confidence. We have never bullied, oppressed, or subjugated the people of any other country, and we never will. By the same token, we will never allow any foreign force to bully, oppress, or subjugate us. Anyone who would attempt to do so will find themselves on a collision course with a great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people.”

Full speech can be found at: https://english.www.gov.cn/news/topnews/202107/01/content_WS60dd8d8ac6d0df57f98dc459.html

Xi made some strong statements in his speech commemorating the Korean War: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3106759/china-ready-fight-xi-jinping-says-korean-war-address-aimed-us

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Will the World Revert to the Four Millennia of Chinese Preeminence?

The United States is currently the world’s top civilization. American military power extends globally through presence on every continent, American companies dominate international markets, including technology and entertainment, and American culture permeates societies worldwide. The dollar is the world’s reserve currency, American universities attract the world’s brightest minds, and American diplomacy shapes international policy. For most people, this American exceptionalism appears natural, perhaps even inevitable, being the natural result of democratic values, free markets, and technological innovation.

This widespread belief in American dominance as the natural order might reflect a historical myopia. Looking at all human history, America’s current position is not the inevitable destination of human progress, but a dramatic, perhaps temporary deviation from patterns that have prevailed for millennia. Since ancient times, China, not the West, was the world’s major power, wielding unmatched economic strength, military might, technological sophistication, and cultural influence. There have been competitors before. The Roman Empire challenged Chinese supremacy with great success, creating a powerful Western alternative that endured for a few centuries before falling to the deeper historical trends.

From archaeological records, China has been an organized civilization starting at least two millennia BCE. From approximately 200 BCE onward, we have documented records of China’s establishment and maintenance of superiority over the world economy, technological innovation, and civilizational development. During the Han Dynasty, China’s population and economic production already exceeded all other civilizations. Chinese agricultural innovations supported high population densities, Chinese manufacturing supplied highly prized goods across vast trade networks, and Chinese administrative systems governed territories with great consistency and effectiveness.

The Chinese developed organizational principles that proved durable. They perfected centralized, authoritarian governance through professional bureaucracies selected by merit rather than birth. They developed technologies like paper, printing, gunpowder, and the compass that would transform the world, and created cultural and philosophical systems that provided stability regardless of political change.

Significantly, this Chinese preeminence is resilient. Dynasties rose and fell, foreign invaders conquered parts, and sometimes all of China; natural disasters ravaged regions, and internal rebellions fragmented the empire. Yet the historic pattern endured. After each trauma, China reasserted its centralized authority and resumed its position as the world’s leading civilization.

The persistence of this pattern would suggest that the world will, eventually, return China to its dominant role.

But possibly the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the United States present a new reality that will shift these historical patterns. As mentioned above, there have been other challenges to China’s top position, but this time, there are exceptional circumstances that might change everything.

China’s rise and long supremacy took place with little contact with the outside world other than its immediate neighbors. There was little interaction and competition with other large civilizations. For example, Rome’s rise to a great empire had little interaction with China. In our modern world, with the ease of long-distance travel, instant communications, and the extension of military power worldwide, global isolation has ended. Countries share knowledge and culture. They compete economically and militarily. This places the long pattern of Chinese civilizational exceptionalism to the test as never before.

Another factor we should consider is the unprecedented wealth created by Western civilization and Japan during the Industrial Revolution. Over the millennia before, human wealth increased slowly, and the great mass of people lived at subsistence levels. The technical and organizational advances in the West in the 19th and 20th centuries increased human productive capacity by orders of magnitude within decades. China has started to catch up, but largely by borrowing elements of Western civilization, such as free enterprise and aggressive trade policies.

Could these new developments bend the arc of history to new forms of organization and development? Will the United States continue to be the center of this trend? These are questions unlikely to be answered in our lifetime. But now is a good time for us to think deeply about how we organize human activity on a global scale. The changes starting in the 19th century and escalating now are creating new opportunities and problems for human society. If the old mold is to be broken, what will replace it?

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