The Roles and Functions of Seken: Platform of Conformity

Literally, the word, seken, is composed of characters meaning, “among the world.” The oldest uses of the synonyms of it are traced back in Man’yoshu, which is the oldest literally anthology of Japan containing poems made as old as early seventh century. The concept and idea of seken has been the basis for the expression of human feelings and Japanese emotion and mind for the past 1,400 years. Author Ihara Saikaku in early Edo period titled his last story as “Seken, Calculation of Money in Chest,” published in 1691, vividly describing people’s struggles over money, actions and trickeries of money lenders, and fights between husband and wife over money. The proverbs such as, a protruding nail will be hammered down, are buried deep down in the Japanese mind. It was skillfully used under Ieyasu’s ruling for Tokugawa reign, started 1602. Red light, you do not be afraid of getting caught if everyone goes and crosses the traffic together, is another saying. Throughout the two big social reformations, the Meiji Restoration of 1868, and the Post-war Reformation of 1945, after the more than 260 years of feudal systems, there is no civil revolutions experienced in Japan’s history. There are many new foreign concepts and words imported to Japan at early Meiji era. The ideas of society and individual are among those that are still hard to digest, even accept into Japanese mind.