What Is the Social Energy That Can Replace Violence?
Requiem and Silence as Alternatives to Violence
Giri, Ninjō, and Moral Responsibility in Japanese Culture
In traditional Japanese society, human relationships were shaped by two ethical concepts:
giri and ninjō.
Giri refers to social obligation—the duty to repay kindness, loyalty, and support.
Ninjō expresses human feeling: empathy, compassion, and emotional closeness.
Unlike Western moral systems that emphasize individual rights, Japanese ethics historically placed greater weight on mutual responsibility and emotional restraint. These values helped sustain social harmony for centuries. From this cultural background emerged distinctive forms of storytelling and popular culture.
From Feudal Ethics to Popular Cinema
After World War II, Japan experienced rapid modernization and social disruption. Many people felt disconnected from traditional values. During this period, ninkyō films—chivalry movies about yakuza figures—became popular.
Although centered on criminals, these films portrayed their protagonists as tragic figures bound by giri and ninjō. Like Western westerns or gangster films, they dramatized conflict. Yet they differed in that moral duty often outweighed personal desire. Through these stories, audiences found emotional stability in an unstable era.
When Moral Stories Collapsed
By the late 1960s and 1970s, audiences began to lose faith in idealized heroism. Political unrest, social movements, and generational conflict weakened traditional moral frameworks.
Filmmakers shifted toward “true account” films that emphasized chaos, corruption, and raw violence. The influential series Battles Without Honor and Humanity rejected heroic myths and depicted crime as morally empty. With the deaths of major actors and producers, the genre gradually declined.
Outlaws Without Codes
In today’s media, criminals are rarely portrayed as figures bound by ethical principles. Instead, they often appear as purely self-interested individuals.
“It’s the victim’s fault.”
“Might makes right.”
“Rules are meant to be broken.”
Such attitudes reflect a worldview shaped by competition rather than responsibility. While Japan is internationally known for safety and politeness, hidden forms of violence—bullying, fraud, exploitation, and addiction—continue to harm ordinary lives.
Physical confrontation has decreased, but psychological and economic violence has grown.
Where Crime Begins
Outlaw behavior does not arise in isolation. It is influenced by poverty, educational inequality, social isolation, rigid expectations, and fragile self-esteem. In a society under strong pressure to conform, failure and exclusion can silently accumulate. Crime is often a symptom of deeper social fractures.
Violence and Memory: A Personal Witness
When I was a student, during the period of campus protests in Japan, I once witnessed an elderly professor being beaten by students. My heart began to race, and my mind went blank. I felt as if all the blood had drained from my body. Even now, more than fifty years later, I can recall that scene as vividly as if it were a moment from a film. I did not know the professor. I did not know the students who attacked him. Yet the violence carved itself deeply into my memory, without my consent. It left a wound not only on the victim, but also on those who merely witnessed it.
Sometimes I wonder: What are the children who run through today’s battlefields seeing?
What images will remain with them for the rest of their lives?
What Can Violence Really Solve?
Violent films once offered audiences emotional release. Through dramatized conflict, people temporarily processed frustration and anger.
Yet unabsorbed social tension often returned in real tragedies, such as political extremism and collective violence. History suggests that violence—whether fictional or real—never resolves fundamental problems. It merely postpones them.
Requiem and Silence as Paths to Renewal
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Ink sketch after Noh “Atsumori”
by Michiko Kaneyasu |
There is no such thing as “small” or “large” violence.
Violence is, at once, an expression of rejection toward others and an expression of losing oneself.
What, then, can replace it?
I believe the answer lies in requiem and silence.The true alternative to violent expression is art that connects human hearts through mourning, and prayerful silence that honors suffering.
Only through such practices can individuals and societies begin to recover from violence.
In Japanese culture, silence has long been valued not as emptiness, but as a space for responsibility, memory, and compassion.
Requiem and silence do not erase pain.
They transform it.
Perhaps genuine social energy is born not from confrontation, but from listening to the wounded, remembering the forgotten, and enduring together.
In that quiet space, the possibility of peace slowly takes root.
Study after Dürer / Pencil on paper
by Michiko Kaneyasu
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