books Archives - understand-culture

Powers Beyond the Constitution

In 1978, the jurist Jorge Carpizo published El presidencialismo mexicano (Mexican Presidentialism) with Siglo XXI. Among the causes of the president’s dominance, he listed “las amplias facultades constitucionales y extraconstitucionales, como son la facultad de designar a su sucesor y a los gobernadores de las entidades federativas” (the broad constitutional and extraconstitutional powers, such as the power to designate his successor and the governors of the states).

In a text published by the Law Faculty of UNAM, Serrano Migallón writes that legal doctrine calls some of the president’s attributions “facultades metaconstitucionales” (metaconstitutional powers). A footnote there refers readers to Carpizo’s book.

The Carreño

The Manual de urbanidad y buenas maneras, a manual of civility and good manners, was written in 1854 by the Venezuelan Manuel Antonio Carreño. A chapter published by the UNAM’s Institute of Historical Research refers to it as “el texto más conocido y difundido a la vuelta del siglo” (the best-known and most widely circulated text at the turn of the century).

The chapter describes the manual as “un puente entre la socialización familiar y la socialización escolar” (a bridge between socialization in the family and socialization at school).

Three Books

On December 3, 2011, at the Guadalajara International Book Fair, Enrique Peña Nieto, then seeking the presidency, was asked to name three books that had marked his life. He mixed up titles and authors. He attributed La silla del águila to Enrique Krauze. Its author is Carlos Fuentes. He corrected himself on Twitter, and he was a popular topic on social media for days.

On October 16, 2001, at the International Congress of the Spanish Language in Valladolid, President Vicente Fox named the Argentine writer as “Jorge Luis Borgues.” The slip still appears on lists of presidential blunders.

Great Masters of Folk Art

In 1999, Fomento Cultural Banamex set out “dar a conocer en 1999 el trabajo de grandes artistas de los 32 estados de la república” (to make known the work of great artists of the 32 states of the republic), according to Chilango. It did so with a book called Grandes Maestros del Arte Popular Mexicano (Great Masters of Mexican Folk Art).

Mexican Mischief

On September 15, 1960, Armando Jiménez published Picardía mexicana, a book that dealt openly with the albur and with the way Mexicans speak. It had four new editions in its first year. According to Excélsior, it was reprinted without interruption until 2007, “alcanzando más de 150 reediciones” (reaching more than 150 reprints).

Sensei’s Testament

In Natsume Sōseki’s novel Kokoro, the narrator tells Sensei that he wants to learn from Sensei’s past. Sensei presses him: Anata wa hontō ni majime nan desu ka. “Are you really serious?” His past, he says, has taught him to doubt people, and he doubts the narrator too. But before he dies, he wants to trust another person, even just one.

He then agrees to tell the narrator his whole past. In his testament, he gives the reason: the narrator was serious and wanted a living lesson from life itself. Sensei writes that he is now breaking open his own heart to pour its blood on the narrator’s face.

The Birth of Tardiness

In the late Edo and early Meiji periods, Western visitors to Japan often complained that the Japanese were careless about time. A Dutch naval engineer in Japan at the end of the shogunate was one of them.

The 2001 essay collection Chikoku no tanjō (The Birth of Tardiness) studies how this changed. Most of its essays discuss systems introduced in the Meiji period. A co-organizer of the research writes that time discipline took hold fast in modern institutions such as railways, factories and schools, but spread to the rest of life only after World War II.

Within about 150 years, the old complaint had turned into its opposite.

Contracts as a Front

The business site Gentosha Gold Online summarizes the view that the legal scholar Kawashima Takeyoshi set out in Nihonjin no hō-ishiki (The Legal Consciousness of the Japanese). The Japanese, in this view, tend to treat laws and contracts as tatemae, a mere front, and do not always give them much weight. When trouble actually arises, they expect to solve it through talks and personal relationships.

The Need Behind the Need

Tajiri Nozomu, a former employee of the sensor maker Keyence, writes about selling in President Online. Customers, he says, often grasp their problems and needs only on the surface and have not noticed the essential ones. He calls the real need nīzu no ura no nīzu, the need behind the need.

A proposal built only on what the customer says, in his view, will not satisfy the customer.

The Frame and the Attribute

In Tate shakai no ningen kankei (Human Relations in a Vertical Society), published in 1967, Nakane Chie set shikaku, an attribute such as an occupation, against ba, a frame such as a company.

The publisher, Kōdansha, sums up the book’s question: why do Japanese people value sharing a frame more than sharing an attribute? Its description says that the book examines a social structure that stresses the frame and is strongly aware of uchi and soto, inside and outside.