Jack Cohen

Bhutan is different from any other country on earth.  It has a population of only ca. 700,000 and a size only roughly twice that of Israel, most of which is extremely mountainous. The people of Bhutan are exclusively Buddhist.  It has managed to avoid the commercialization and despoilation of Nepal by limiting the number and type of tourists that it allows into the country, for example it does not allow any backpackers in, it requires every tourist to pay up-front $250 a day, and it requires all tourists to have a native guide all the time.   Bhutan is a very beautiful country, and protects its ecology by not allowing the use of plastic bottles and does not allow littering.  Bhutan is a very poor country according to GDP, but they have invented what they call a “happiness index” that allows them to consider themselves happy without material goods.  An unusual characteristic of Bhutan is that it is a matrilineal society, the people chart their family connections through their mother and not their father.  In fact mothers own the houses and most property and the men move from one place to another.  When a female owner dies her house and property are inhherited by her daughters not her sons. Jews are also a matrilineal society in that the definition of a Jew is someone born of a Jewish mother.  Bhutan has a king, but he is very laid-back and allows people to run their own enterprises.  Although conditions in Bhutan are quite primitive by our standards, no luxury hotels and few roads, nevertheless people like to visit because of its unique way of life.  Israelis are quite popular there, but Muslims are not welcomed.  Visitors are not allowed to stay beyond the time they have pre-booked.  In this way Bhutan tries to preserve its environment and its unique its way of life.

     China, her next country, is as different from Bhutan as it is possible to be.  China has the largest population in the world 1.4 billion people, and is a huge country, the fourth largest in the world after Russia, Canada.and the USA (including Alaska).  Dina focused on the social issues of China, how there are such contrasts between the rural poor and the urban rich, how they manage to organize and implement building huge new structures so efficiently with a very large labor force, yet the social welfare for the poor is so inadequate.  Some 200 million workers go from the country to the city to find work every year, but they are not allowed to stay there, all their rights (to welfare, schooling, etc.) are restricted to their birthplace, so that they will go back. This perpetuates rural poverty.  China has become richer, it is now the second largest economy in the world, after the USA, and its people have become wealthier and more assertive,  Yet because of the huge population the GDP per capita is still relatively low.  As they develop so rapidly they tend to sweep away whole areas and villages without too much concern for the inhabitants, who are supposed to accept the situation as part of the needs of the overall community.  But, people who actually own their own houses can get high compensation for them if they want to replace them with a high rise.  The Chinese manage to maintain contradictory opinions, without it seeming to bother them, for example they extol capitalism and competition, while also supporting communism.  They support the rights of the workers and peasants, while allowing people to be exploited by rich capitalists.  They are supposed to have only one child, but many have more and defy the authorities. They are not religious in our sense of the word, yet they revere tradition.  They allow people to be executed (China has the highest rate of executions in the world) and use their body parts for transplantation, since they do not regard the body as sacred as we do.  It is a strange society in which contradictions are unresolved.  Chairman Mao is still revered, but also they are beginning to poke fun at him, with T-shirts and mugs.  Dina goes to China every year, sometimes several times, and she sees amazing transformations, huge buildings that go up in record time compared to elsewhere.  The only constant in China is rapid change and we don’t know yet where its going to lead.

     Japan, in 2011 suffered the worst earthquake and tsunami that has ever hit a populated country.  The earthquake was at first estimated to be 8.4 on the Richter scale, but then was reassessed at over 9.  The damage wreaked by the earthquake and resulting tsunami and then the nuclear disaster at Fukushima would have brought most countries to a standstill, but the particular culture and stoicism of the Japanese enabled them to deal with the effects of the massive disaster.  The earthquake hit offshore near the northern city of Sendai, but its effects were felt over most of Honshu, the main island of Japan.  The tsunami did most of the damage, rising to ca. 40 meters in height and spreading up to 6 miles (10 km) inland, destroying all roads and communications along the most populated coastline of Japan.  Tokyo was severely affected and electricity and food supplies were cut off.  Millions of people had to leave their homes and stay in communal facilities and an estimated 30,000 people died.  Yet, the Japanese people, used to a high standard of living, nevertheless adapted to these circumstances.  There was no looting, people behaved calmly and there was no panic.  The Japanese are used to earthquakes, since Japan is a very active area, and the children are drilled in how to behave in the event of an earthquake or tsunami. Every family knows where they should go in such an emergency and they all have supplies and material set aside for this purpose.  The Japanese are brought up not to show emotion in public, parents rarely show emotion or affection for their children, the emphasis is on discipline.  Even the news showed almost no pictures of death and suffering.  The Japanese try to maintain harmony rather than face facts.  People do as they are expected to do, and so the Japanese are exceptionally stoic.  This has drawbacks too, since the Japanese generally are conformist, they work exceptionally hard, but are not innovative in their thinking.  In fact, the Japanese believe that they can learn a lot from the Jews who are the opposite in that respect, not conformist and innovative.  The Japanese tend to believe anti-Semitic propaganda, that the Jews are powerful and control the media and the economy, but they don’t hate Jews, in fact they don’t understand this hatred.  So they tend to over-rate the power of the Jews.  In fact the only foreign country that was allowed to send a hospital to Japan after the disaster was Israel.  Japan’s culture is based on shame rather than guilt, and they are exceptionally averse to failure.  This is why they will not try new things and why they have so few start-ups.  Together Israel, the start-up nation, and Japan should be a great combination.