Final Thoughts: Dogs and Demons

Well, I ended up burning through that "Dogs and Demons" book pretty fast but instead of writing my thoughts on it while it was fresh in my head, I opted to wait a good week to forget a lot of details thus weakening anything relevant I had to say. Success!

All in all, I still strongly recommend anyone read the book with the warning that it can be cynical when it doesn't have to be, and potentially misguiding a lesser educated reader on certain subjects.

One part I found was when he wrote about the school system and how all it is there for is to bleed children of free time to repress personal thoughts (everybody is doing everything the same all the time leaving no time for personal growth) making them easier to manipulate into the system of Japanese life. To train children not to question authority's and to generally "teach them how to be Japanese". He goes on to say that the children all over the country hate school and he brings up all these numbers showing suicide rates among school kids.

Seeing as I teach these same kids he's talking about, I took the time to talk to some kids about what they think about school and generally observe school life and with my findings it doesn't look like they absolutely hate school at all. Everyone had some complaint, but so did I in a Canadian school and everyone had a majority of good things to say about school. You can mark that up to ignorance of not being able to compare it to any other school life, but my point is, school isn't a complete shit fest/ brain wash (well parts of it is) he added it up to be. Even though he is accurate when he says that these childrens school years are almost all spent at school or preparing, studying, thinking, and playing club activities at school and there is an over focus on memorizing facts to simply answer exam questions and not actually build free thoughts but the way he exaggerated it makes me question the other material he writes about in his book.

I'd say all of the stories and examples he brings up are true, but maybe he went a little adjective crazy here and there painting a gloomier picture than what is actually there. But then again, the subjects he talks about can't afford any writer to be modest about things. These are real problems that the fate of the country balances on so anyway he can get some attention towards them I say power to him. Just don't get sucked into it yourself and in some cases subtract what he says by 2 for clearer vision of Japan today and not 2002. (Has the country changed that much since then?)

The entire book was incredibly easy to read through always bringing up fresh ideas and subject matter, although the middle gets somewhat number/statistic heavy but he pulls it back in the end with some interesting stuff.

Recommended.

Next book on the list: Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Mansion Murders

Picked it up at the airport for the trip but didn't start it till now. We'll see.