goes against the trend of the age of multiple identities, I stress that my view is not in the least contradictory. It is because a definition of your culture in terms of a lifestyle can vary, unlike identifying myself as Japanese and not Indonesian.
It can be changed by the influence from abroad just as we have been changed, affected by European and Asian countries. In this sense, I consider a lifestyle as changeable and a culture as dynamic.
It is a shared view today that we influence one another on a global scale. As Dr. Iokibe mentioned earlier in making a comparison between the Great Kanto Earthquake and the Great Hanshin Earthquake in Japan, the disaster of the Great Hanshin Earthquake was watched by the world. It may be said that when we plan to reconstruct Kobe anew or build new urban communities, we are expected to undertake the reconstruction of Kobe by the people of Kobe for a global community, rather than by the people of Japan for themselves or by the people of Kobe for Kobe. When Kobe is restored in this way, it will be visited by other people living in the Pacific Rim, in countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines, that are all located in earthquake zones. Will they build a city similar to Kobe in their countries when they return home? It is unlikely. They will create what they can, learning a lesson from Kobe. This is also concerned with Dr. Lee's question. When a country, not necessarily Japan, has something to be admired by other countries, its people will, in response, begin to reflect on such points when considering where to navigate their country. Japan has conceived how Japan should be, while watching Europe and China. By observing Korean politics, Japan learned how to work out the kind of government Japan would be able to establish. To admire or to be admired by other cultures increases an awareness of national identity. Japan, however, has few things to admire and to be admired. Some say that among universal things for us to admire is, for example, money, and natural science as Dr. Yamano mentioned before. Money and natural science, however, are only means, though technology of natural science may be universal. What is being made using such technology is important. I believe that only something unique has substantial and ultimate value. The inevitable nature of history is not involved in such creation, but when we look back at what happened, we consider it inevitable. A clue to the question of what Japan should do next cannot be found unless we ourselves determine to start, It is most unlikely, I think, that Japan, as it is, will have a civilizing influence.
｡?NANDY
Three points. First, the nation-states are always more comfortable with one people, one language, one culture, one religion -- all backed by ardent nationalism. Unfortunately it is likely that this option will not be available in the next century, Professor Kawakatsu has mentioned 3,000 communities. Ms. Elise Boulding has somewhere mentioned 10,000, She says 10,000 ethnic communities are waiting to become nation-states. For me, it is a little difficult to imagine the United Nations and the other intentional organizations with 10,000 members. I suspect that we shall have to learn accommodate that kind of plurality within larger political aggregates. But how to organize such aggregates? What kind of resources are there for that? That is the real issue.
Second, I grant that there are cultural flows. But I am slightly uncomfortable when Dr. Kawakasu speaks in terms of flows from high cultures to low cultures. There may be elements of truth in that model, but any talk of high and low cultures tend to get Sucked up in the social evolutionary framework, wherein it becomes the binding duty and responsibility of some cultures to engineer or improve or steer the other cultures. An easier way might be to conceptualize all exchanges between cultures as self-enrichment, of which both the cultures involved in the Row, China and Japan in this instance, should be proud. That is probably a safer way of looking at the issue.
Third, it is not really a question of recovering buried historical treasures, I was not trying to return to the past to a golden Or romanticized past. I was talking of the democratic process of reaching out to the margins of our societies, represented by a large number of people who are believers or who live with traditions. In Asia, democratic faith is a pathway to cultural traditions, It is also a way of reaching out to those parts of ourselves which we would like to forget. The next century may well belong to economics and business, as Dr. Yamano has pointed out. But I would hate to think of the 21st Century only that way. When the Japanese think of rice and the agronomy of rice only in terms of economics and pricing, or try to produce rice cheaply for the Japanese market in India, by genetically altering Indian rice, something will be lost of the Japanese worldview and life style.
｡?TANAKA
I would like to use one minute for each of the three questions.
First, I will answer the question whether we are experiencing radical changes in civilization or not, judging from the fact that we can hold such a symposium now, things may not
