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Papua
New Guinea is a country comprising islands in the South Pacific
with about five million people living in the total land area of 460,000km2 (about the size of Japan's
mainland and Hokkaido). Belonging to Melanesia, Papua New
Guinea is the largest island country in Oceania (while Australia
being the largest country as well as the smallest continent)
including Polynesia and Micronesia. It is an amazing country
containing about 800 languages and tribes, and thus it could
justly be qualified as a treasure house of anthropology. It
is then only natural that many anthropologists have researched
Papua New Guinea as their field since the beginning of the modern
era, for in the country primitive tribal societies that became
extinct 100 or more years ago in other countries are right in
front of their eyes. Even in the 1980's, previously unknown
tribes became "discovered" as if they were new varieties
of butterfly.
Tribal strife still continues
(especially among highland tribes) and it is sometimes reported
in newspapers and other media. Traditionally, men's
work is to fight. As its symbolic representation, there
exits a social custom called "payback". It is a
form of retaliation as when you are hit, you hit them back. It is easy to contend that
the custom is "primitive" but its psychological root seems to be by no means shallow.
There is
"potlatch" that might as well be considered
as the contrary of payback. Reportedly, it is a custom seen
among those so-called American Indian tribes in the Northwest of
North America; however, a practice similar to it has also been
observed in Melanesia and other areas. As its archetype is
that affluent ones
occasionally seize opportunities to give their possessions away to
their own tribespeople, it is explained as a mechanism to
redistribute the wealth and at the same time as a custom for those
fit for leaders (so called "big men") to display their
power. Potlatch seems to connote that by it one shows off
his power to others or flaunts the power represented by his
wealth. However, when such behavior is directed toward other
tribes, it brings about more complex implications.
A novel that humorously
portrays these subtleties is Potlatch War by Yasutaka
Tsutsui. One tribe gives a substantial gift to another
tribe. The gift is a way to communicate the intent of no
harm indicating good will and at the same time meant to flaunt
the tribe's power. The recipient of the gift feels obligated
to return the favor to indicate its own good will as well as feels
it necessary to also show off its own power suspecting the giver's
true intent. As a result, the recipient ends up giving back
a gift even greater than the one given. If this cycle
continues, the situation begins to take the shade of war trying to collapse
the other by gift-giving, and this implies the essence of potlatch
that is also akin to payback.
One could also argue on
what potlatch and payback have in common considering potlatch as a
modified form of battle. However, I see in such
psychological swings as portrayed in Potlatch War a more
important commonality between potlatch and payback. To
exaggerate a little, that we can't stand remaining beaten would mean that
we can't stand going on living with our dignity compromised. As
long as we do nothing after receiving a great gift, we would keep feeling indebted psychologically. What
underlies both potlatch and payback is the sense of necessity to "balance the books of the
mind".
While there are times
when "payback" can be accomplished right away, there are
also times when the books of the mind can't be balanced
immediately. When defeated by overwhelming power, one needs
time to save power for payback. There may be situations in
which one has to go look for the person to be paid back. In
such instances, one needs to "register" the books of
his/her mind so as not to forget them, and so carves them into a
tree. This is one function of the totem pole, as so
explained. The pole I saw in a museum in Port Moresby, the
capital of Papua New Guinea, indeed had a hook on top, which
looked to be there to hang the head of the foe.
The son of
John O. Rockefeller with the same name collected many totem
poles in Melanesia, and we can see the fruit of his efforts in an
exhibit room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Obviously, he must have paid huge amounts of money to obtain these
totem poles from many tribes. Among them, there may be those
that served as the books of the mind. Perhaps, it should be
considered that each tribe decided to sell its pole to Rockefeller
since he had given collateral money necessary for the tribe to balance
the books of its mind. It seems to be natural that there is
a theory on the disappearance of the son of Rockefeller,
pointing out the possibility of his existence itself being the
target of payback.
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There is another
social custom called cargo cult in Melanesia and it is considered to
be one of the mysteries in cultural anthropology after the World War
II. Its archetype is a prophet's oracle that some ancestor of
the tribe or some man of power from the outside promised a ship or
airplane full of cargo for the tribespeople. The cult is said
to have a function to stabilize
tribespeople mentally when a substantial change is brought about to their
society by outside influence. When a tribe in primitive
society suddenly encountered the overwhelming material abundance of
the West for the first time in the 19th or 20th century, the
tribespeople's surprise must have been beyond their wildest
imagination. Upon encountering various products from the West
-- clothes, tools and canned food, for instance, and further
automobiles and electric appliances, the tribespeople must have felt
that if even a few of these were given to them, it would be
impossible for them to give back something tantamount. Much
less they could compete with the power symbolized by such abundance.
Perhaps, the tribespeople's explanation for taking back the tribe's
dignity while feeling such agonizing indebtedness is the cargo
cult. Probably, the cargo cult is a "system for
tribespeople to
convince themselves" when their mind is out of balance.
Let us think about the sense of the
need for "balancing the books of the mind," which appears
to be implied in the psyche of payback, potlatch and cargo cult.
Anyone can understand that when we hit someone, we may be hit
back. Even if we were not hit back, we would feel that we
could be retaliated somewhere. Then, it would not be so odd if
we had a sensitivity to feel that though there may not be any
immediate impact even if we destroy nature, we are in store for
tit-for-tat sometime, somewhere.
There is a novel titled Oi, detekoi
("Hey, Come Out") by Shin'ichi Hoshi, who was known as a
master hand of short short stories. One day, a deep hole
appeared in front of the human race. Suspicious at first,
people called into the hole, "Hey, come out." A
person threw a small stone into the hole and soon many people
started to throw away garbage into it. Eventually, people came
to solve all that were inconvenient including nuclear wastes,
throwing them into the hole. In a little while, a voice
calling "Hey, come out." was heard from somewhere and a
small stone fell from the sky, but no one noticed. As this is
the way the story goes, it is a lucid fantasy.
If we express everything that
surrounds us as environment, it becomes clear that the environment
nurtures us and that no matter how trivial our behavior may seem, it
inevitably influences the environment and the influence gets back to
us. I think that there is a connection between sensibly
grasping that chain of influence and balancing the books of the mind
mentioned above. This is a sort of outlook on the universe,
which can be linked to animism that finds spirit in everything in
the natural world.
I believe that the sensitivity like
that is immensely important in the world tomorrow. Ordinary
people who have such sensitivity cannot be few worldwide even today,
and once a whole lot more people must have had it and more strongly,
I wonder. It is, I believe, exactly this kind of sensitivity
that has been gradually lost due to the development and propagation
of information and communication technologies.
I have taken part in a technical cooperation
project in Papua New Guinea by JICA since May of this year
(2005). In the suburbs of Port Moresby, the capital, there
exist over 70 so-called settlements of tribespeople, in which some
100,000 people, close to 40% of the capital population, live.
Deteriorations of the living environment and peace and order in the
capital have been discussed as related to these settlements.
The purpose of the project is to improve the capacity of the
residents, NGOs and the local administration through planning and
implementing pilot projects together by mutual cooperation for the
settlement community development. While pursuing possibilities
for better urbanization of the metropolitan area with the settlement
development as leverage, raising my awareness about those issues
mentioned above through exchange with the local people is my
personal agenda.
[Trans.: TS]
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