The standard curriculum for officially certified driving schools in Japan includes a driving aptitude test (unten tekisei kensa) that incorporates a personality inventory. One question asks the student whether she frequently wakes up in the middle of the night. Another asks if she gets happy or sad in response to trivial matters. Another asks if she often hears voices that come out of nowhere. Others ask whether she hates to lose, whether she has ever doubted anyone, whether she makes friends easily, whether she frequently gets into debates with superiors, and whether people often intentionally ignore her. Another asks if she sometimes gets sick of the world and wants to die.

These questions may seem unusual in the context of a driving aptitude test. Yet psychologists involved with these tests point to anger, aggression, emotional stability, confidence, and considerateness as dispositions that can affect safety.

Automobility, or the individualized control of motorized transport, affords great flexibility and a sense of freedom, yet involves the potential for a great number of accidents. In 1970, traffic fatalities hit 16,765 in Japan (Naikakufu 2008). The grim toll of the early years of automobility in Japan motivated various agencies within the government to regulate driving through such measures as the institution of stricter licensing requirements, ongoing traffic safety campaigns, and stiffer fines for the violation of traffic laws.

Governmental efforts may have helped spur a popular discourse on driving safety, or may have been motivated itself by the widespread concern with the increasing numbers of accidents. Many newspaper and magazine articles from the 1960s and ‘70s criticized aggressive driving and urged people to be considerate and to give way to each other (yuzuri-ai) on the road.

Yet the personality inventory, given to tens of millions of Japanese driving students over the years, suggests a concern among some authorities that efforts to control individual driver behavior is not uniformly effective. The test's concern with the emotional disposition of student drivers indicates the authorities’ understanding that when drivers are confronted with difficult situations on the road, they may react in varied and sometimes unwelcome ways, regardless of the kind of the book learning that they had gotten in driving schools. The test suggests an acknowledgment on the part of certain government agencies of the limits of moral suasion through safety campaigns in shaping a cautious driver. As we will see, however, the test is now being used to spur self-reflection, with the hope that self-reflection can help overcome unconscious emotional propensities.

Sheldon Garon criticizes Foucault and his followers for giving too much emphasis to the idea of discipline and social control (Garon Reference Garon1997). Garon prefers the term “social management” to social control, management better capturing how government elites foster active participation in policies among a broad range of civil society organizations. Implicit in Foucault's (1990; 1991) formulation of social control is the ongoing dichotomy between government elites and the rest of society. Garon's study shows that in fact there was substantial overlap in social background of government and business and civil society leaders. The aspirations of the rising middle classes and ideas about what constituted modern society were widespread in all of these groups. The university system played an important part in this development. Garon writes that since the late 19^th century, “would-be civil servants rubbed shoulders with those who would make up the new middle class of lawyers, journalists, educators, engineers, physicians, and salaried employees” (Garon 2006, 19).

While Foucault overemphasizes the power of government rationality to shape subjectivity, Garon suggests mutual influence. The implication, however, is perhaps more consensus and coherence than really has characterized Japanese society. Lacking in both Foucault and Garon is a sufficiently developed understanding of subjectivity, or “the emotional experience of a political subject” (Luhrmann Reference Luhrmann2006, 359). Without such an understanding, it is hard to account for the sometimes unpredictable and unruly ways in which people react to efforts at both control and management.

The depths of subjectivity are often difficult to fathom, and many studies do better at describing programs of government rationality than they do in explaining how those programs shape subjectivities. Drawing primarily on articles from car magazines, as well as from interviews with drivers, driving school administrators, police officers and insurance officers conducted during six months of research in Japan starting in August 2007, this article explores the evolving discourse on driving manners, governmental efforts to promote safety, the regulation of emotion, and the relation of manners to emotion. By taking seriously the authorities' concern with emotion, we may be able to better understand the dynamics of self and social control in Japan.

Driving and Regulation in the Era of Mass Motorization

The Tokyo Olympics in 1964 served as a stimulus for the tremendous growth of infrastructure construction. The high-speed bullet train began service in that year with much fanfare, while at the same time the road system was similarly developing. Sections of the Tokyo Metropolitan expressway opened in 1963, and the Tomei highway between Tokyo and Nagoya began operation in 1968. Rising wages and lower costs made personal cars affordable for many people who could only dream of owning one prior to the 1960s (Plath Reference Plath, Gluck and Graubard1992). Although the cars that people could afford were very economical, they allowed a sense of participation in a consumer-based modernity, captured by the term “mai-ka” (literally, “my car”). The Japanese media identify 1966 as the first year of the My-Car era, when the number of vehicles in use surpassed the 10 million mark, even though just 3.8 million were cars (Plath Reference Plath, Gluck and Graubard1992, 230; JAMA 2011, 3). In 1967, the animated television series Speed Racer was launched and became an immediate sensation. By 2006, there were almost 76 million vehicles on Japan's roads, of which 57.5 million were cars (JAMA 2008, 3). The novelty of driving in Japan in the 1960s, and the excitement of so many embarking on a newly motorized lifestyle, resemble Peter Hessler's description of Chinese car culture in the first decade of this century (Hessler Reference Hessler2010).

However, a darker side of car culture in Japan was documented by filmmaker Tsuchimoto Noriaki in his 1964 documentary On the Road [Rojô Dokyumento], a poetic record of congestion and chaos on Tokyo's roads. Traffic fatalities increased steadily until they hit their high of 16,765 in 1970, for a rate of 16.2 deaths per 100,000 people. Fatalities declined thereafter to 7,358 in 2002, a rate of just over 6 per 100,000 (National Police Agency 2011). The overall decline in fatalities in Japan has been striking considering the much higher numbers of vehicles on the roads in the 2000s compared to those 30 or 40 years ago, and despite the rapidly aging population. Mandatory use of seat belts and safety innovation in the form of air bags certainly have played a large role in the decline in fatalities. Better-designed intersections and signage, and anti-drunk driving laws have likely also contributed to this trend (IATSS 2005, 7). By contrast, in the U.S., there were more than 43,005 traffic related deaths in 2002, with a fatality rate of 14.95 per 100,000 (NHTSA 2008, 5), although they have dropped substantially in the last decade, to 37,261 (12.25 per 100,000 population) in 2008.Footnote ¹

In addition, we should consider the effects of Japanese safety campaigns, driver education, and licensing requirements, in cultivating a more cautious driving subjectivity. Since the 1960s, an enormous number of resources have been dedicated to traffic safety. The National Police Agency generates copious data on traffic accidents. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport also publishes an annual white paper on traffic safety, as does the Traffic Safety Policy Office under the Management and Coordination Agency. In addition to publishing data on these issues, agencies have developed and enforced traffic regulation, licensing requirements, and drivers' education programs, and have helped develop and regulate the insurance system. Many of the technologies implemented to control driving behavior in Japan can be found in the U.S. and other countries as well, yet the balance between them is somewhat distinctive in Japan, with relatively greater emphasis given to driver education reminiscent of the emphasis on driving safety from the 1930s to the ‘50s in the U.S. (Seiler Reference Seiler2008, 129–48; Packer 2008, 27–75) over economic incentives (e.g. fines or hikes in insurance premiums).

Officially certified driver education schools are an important place to examine attempts at fostering safer driving habits. One striking dimension of official driver education curricula is psychological profiling and the concern with “emotional” driving. The pedagogy of emotion rests on the assumption that people can be taught to reflect on their dispositions and act rationally to compensate for them.

Emotion and Safety

In his study of Chinese driving, Peter Hessler comments that the wrong answers to the multiple-choice questions that appear on driving exams “describe common traffic maneuvers with such vividness that you can practically see the faces behind the wheel” (Hessler Reference Hessler2010, 30). For example:

1. 81. After passing another vehicle, you should

   1. a) wait until there is a safe distance between the two vehicles, make a right-turn signal, and return to the original lane.

   2. b) cut in front of the other car as quickly as possible.

   3. c) cut in front of the other car and then slow down. (Hessler Reference Hessler2010, 30)

By contrast, the content of questions appearing on the Japanese personality inventory cannot be read to reflect anything about actual driving practices. If the test does anything at all, it reflects and shapes a culture of test-taking, and perhaps an assumption on the part of authorities that knowledge of one's temperament may help one better modulate one's behavior.

The personality inventory used as a part of the driving aptitude test is a stripped down version of the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) devised in the 1930s in the U.S. Personality inventories were developed to replace psychiatric interviews as a screening device for military recruits during World War I (Wiggins Reference Wiggins2003, 165). The MMPI has been used to evaluate mental health patients and help in treatment planning, evaluation of treatment effects, and a host of research projects involving such things as personality changes over time and cross-cultural differences. In addition, it has been used in occupational screening where emotional stability is deemed relevant for the job. Starting with the screening for neurosis among military recruits, it has been used to appraise personality in a variety of public safety positions in the U.S. including “police, fire, airline pilot, and nuclear power plant personnel” (Wiggins Reference Wiggins2003, 12). It has been used in “classification of convicted felons at incarceration,” “evaluation of parents in family custody disputes,” and evaluation of personal injury claimants where mental health is part of the suit (Wiggins Reference Wiggins2003).Footnote ²

The MMPI has been translated into many languages and adopted in many countries (Butcher Reference Butcher1996). But rarely has it been used on such a broad scale as in Japan, where it is a standard part of the drivers' education curriculum in officially certified driving schools in which tens of millions of students have enrolled over the years. The large majority of Japanese drivers have attended these schools despite the high costs (almost $3,000 for the regulation 60 hours, 26 hours in the classroom and 34 hours behind the wheel). In Saitama Prefecture outside Tokyo where I conducted my research in 2007, approximately 94% of driving exam takers went to officially certified driving schools. Their pass rate was over 70%. The pass rate for those who studied on their own or went to other less expensive, uncertified schools was only 35% (interview at the Saitama Licensing Center, September 2007). Through the mid 1990s, the personality inventory was administered without any discussion of the results or advice on what those who received low scores should do to compensate for their deficiencies. But neither was it used as a screening mechanism to disqualify potentially dangerous drivers in the licensing process.

Since then, however, the test has been used as a means to stimulate self-reflection on the part of student drivers. Psychologists and staff at a driving aptitude testing company explained that the rationale for the personality test is to help students become more aware of their predispositions so that they will be better able to compensate for them when driving (interview at driving aptitude testing company, December 2007).

The inclusion of psychological profiling in the official driving school curriculum constitutes a remarkably explicit attempt on the part of the government to shape a self-reflective subjectivity with the goal of creating safer drivers. From the answers to these questions, testing companies generate a scoring profile of the student driver along seven discrete psychological scales. For each scale, the exam indicates whether or not the student has any deficits, and provides very brief advice:

1. 1. Sensitivity. You tend to worry or brood. While driving, forget about things that have passed, don't focus on anything but what is at hand.

2. 2. Mood swings. Avoid driving when you feel depressed. And just because you may feel good, don't drive with abandon. Be very careful not to overlook dangers.

3. 3. Distractibility. Don't get caught up in conversations with passengers and forget that you are driving. Endeavor to control your feelings.

4. 4. Self-assertiveness. No matter how much you are abiding by the rules or whether you have the right of way, give way when it seems necessary. It's too late if you cause an accident.

5. 5. Cooperativeness. The road doesn't belong to you. Recall the time that others have given way for you, and try to actively give way to others.

6. 6. Ostentatiousness. Don't drive in a showy manner until you have developed the requisite skills. Try to drive in a subdued manner. Zigzagging is not good.

7. 7. Emotional stability. When driving, always focus your attention on driving. Worry about other thoughts and concerns after you have gotten out of the car.

Without psychologists working at the driving schools themselves, it seem unlikely that the brief, preformatted suggestions above are sufficient in themselves to substantially affect driving behavior. Nevertheless, the test and the emphasis given to self-reflection suggest policy makers' faith in the efficacy of education more generally to shape people's behavior and subjectivities. An instructor at a driving school explained that different policies were appropriate for different countries. He added that while economic incentives such as fines or variable insurance premiums may be the only way to get through to Americans, more educationally oriented programs still made sense for Japanese. Studies of Japanese education have emphasized schools' efficacy in socializing students to feel a strong sense of group membership through the cultivation of introspection (hansei) (Rohlen Reference Rohlen1989, 18–26; Lewis Reference Lewis1984). Thomas Rohlen and others have shown that parallel processes involving “spiritual education” take place in adult institutions (Rohlen Reference Rohlen1984; Kondo Reference Kondo1990). While the more limited time spent in driving school generally does not involve the expectation of group solidarity, other contexts for learning in Japan suggest that students in driving school may not bridle at the authority which imposes personality profiling.

Thus what initially may seem a heavy-handed imposition by government administrators in shaping a self-reflective subjectivity may not be experienced that way at all. As Sheldon Garon suggests for other contexts, this may be a case of more active collaboration between state and society, where the government appeals to shared standards even as it attempts to sway people in certain directions (Garon Reference Garon1997). Certainly government did not have to work too hard to promote the idea of traffic safety. In fact, the horrible traffic deaths in the early years of mass automobility made safety an imperative for many, as we will see in the following section on safety and manners. Government agencies worked hand in hand with civil society organizations such as driving schools and the car owners' advocacy group the Japan Automotive Federation (JAF).

The effects of government policies are not limited to shaping particular moral stances. While the ultimate goal of personality profiling may have been to create safer drivers, we should consider the way in which its emphasis on self-improvement through regular test taking, self-reflection, study, and practice helps shape an understanding of the self as mutable. Tests hold out the possibility that greater effort and study can lead to better performance, and a culture of test taking may habituate people to the practice of self-improvement.

There is another popular discourse on driving and emotions, however, that casts into doubt the notion that self-reflection can help people compensate for dangerous psychological dispositions. Articles in Japan Automotive Federation's monthly magazine JAF News (later called JAF Mate) have described a number of driver personality typologies that suggest an understanding of psychological dispositions as deeply rooted. An article from 1985 categorized drivers according to blood type (JAF Mate 1985, 62), a popular medium for discussing personality types in Japan. In this article, type O drivers tend to cause accidents when they are learning how to drive. They are slow to acquire skills, but once they do they really master them. Type A drivers love speed, but they tend to be skilled, and careful drivers. Type B drivers tend to be skilled too, although somewhat careless. Type AB drivers tend to be most moderate, and have great reflexes. Another article from 1989 advises drivers on appropriate measures to take when encountering different driver types on a narrow road (JAF Mate 1989, 62). It says that you can tell the driver type by the movement of their eyes.

1. 1. The overbearing type (gouin-gata 強引型). Best to pull over to the side right away or risk collision.

2. 2. The anxious, confused type (fuan, konran-gata 不安、混乱型). Stay calm, reduce speed, roll down window and call out.

3. 3. The safe driver type (anzen unten-gata 安全運転型). No need to worry. If you don't have confidence, just pull over and let the other driver know how you feel.

An article in April 2001 suggests that people do not necessarily drive the way they behave in other contexts of daily life (JAF Mate 2001, 16–9). It suggests that people could be classified into several distinct types according to how driving transforms them:

1. 1. those whose language becomes foul

2. 2. those whose driving becomes aggressive and violent

3. 3. those who become quiet, who clam up

Authors of popular magazine articles were not the only ones to emphasize typology over the transformative potential of self-reflection. In fact, the last article on driving typologies was based on a study done by psychologists. When I interviewed psychologists and others who work at a company that designs driving aptitude tests, several mentioned that they had come to view self-reflection about the results of their exams to be of limited efficacy in altering driving behavior (interview December 2007). A police officer who worked in a prefectural licensing center in the department overseeing officially certified driving schools expressed a similar lack of confidence in the efficacy of self-reflection.

Government regulated test taking regimes, including the way that personality profiles are used in the driving school curriculum, serve to support the perspective on the self as mutable, and bolster an assumption about the moral obligation of individuals to cultivate a safe, or calm, style of driving (Roth Reference Roth2011). Yet, it is clear that some elements of popular discourse resist such a notion, emphasizing instead more fixed personality typologies. Such typologies may in fact represent a range of variation among Japanese drivers in how they react emotionally both to situations on the road, and the limits of effectiveness of government efforts to modulate driver behavior. However, both the perspective on the mutability of the self, as well as that of fixed types, reinforce the understanding that drivers are fallible, that they are the cause of many accidents and deaths, and that the government has a justifiable role in ameliorating the dangers that emotionally unstable people bring to the roads. A similar notion emerges in the discourse on driving manners, which holds out the possibility of improvement while also easily falling into reifying identity types.

Manners and Safety

This account appears in a November 1969 article on tailgating in the Japan Automotive Federation's monthly magazine JAF News. Traffic accidents were increasing at an alarming rate in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the government responded with stricter traffic laws and licensing requirements, more thorough driver education programs, and widespread safety campaigns. The author of this article goes on to criticize tailgaters for “driving greedily” (gatsugatsu unten ガツガツ運転) and urges them drive in a more relaxed (yoyû 余裕) or generous (ôraka おおらか) way. This advice provides a sense of how the legalism of new traffic regulation was translated into a moral framework, a framework that was elaborated in numerous articles that constitute an evolving discourse on driving manners.

Discourse on manners is pervasive in Japan (Bardsley and Miller Reference Bardsley and Miller2011). Most bookstores have an entire section dedicated to various books on etiquette covering such issues as business manners, dress codes for women, table manners, letter writing etiquette, wedding speeches, and overseas travel behavior. The contemporary discourse on driving manners coincides with the governmental concern with safety.Footnote ³ Government agencies, in fact, have participated in the propagation of driving manners, through various forms of moral suasion common in Japan. Up to four times a year all over Japan, the police carry out traffic safety campaigns in which banners with safety slogans are hung across roads, many pertaining to manners. One of the most famous is from 1973: “Narrow Japan, where are you rushing to?” (semai nippon, sonnani isoide doko e iku 狭い日本そんなに急いでどこへ行く) (Kobayashi Reference Minoru2003, 57).

Slogans continue to adorn the roads throughout the country, with many sprouting anew with every traffic campaign, while others linger on throughout the year. National and local competitions are held in which hundreds of thousands of people submit safety slogans for use in this way. School children all over the country paint traffic safety posters every year, which are often displayed not only in the school hallways, but also in city halls and police stations.

In this section, I draw primarily on the monthly magazine of the Japan Automotive Federation (JAF) to explore the evolving discourse on driving manners. JAF was founded in 1963. Much like the American Automotive Association (AAA), JAF provides emergency roadside and trip planning services, and has acted as a consumer advocacy group to lower taxes and loosen regulation.Footnote ⁴

While the JAF magazine contains a wide range of materials on car culture and regulation, most interesting for our purposes is the forum it provided for a discourse on safety and manners. In its first year, JAF News included a column called “Etiquette Corner.” One short entry in this column discussed the tradition of the uphill right of way on mountain roads. The author describes the “beautiful friendship” (utsukushii yûjô 美しい友情) of mountain people who would give way to people in cars climbing uphill. Climbing uphill was arduous enough without having to recover from a break in momentum if someone coming downhill was not thoughtful enough to give way. This was especially true for many cars in the 1960s, which had very limited horsepower and often overheated when ascending steep roads in the mountains. The author notes that the beautiful traditions of the mountains were being threatened by a lot of the new drivers who drove violently (ôbô 横暴) and did not give way (JAF News 1963, 9). A number of articles in the 1960s suggest a more generalized breakdown of traditional Japanese driving etiquette.

At the start of the era of mass automobility, a critique of Japanese driving habits frequently emerged in comparisons with developed countries like the U.S. and Great Britain. One author contrasts the orderly and polite manner of driving in Great Britain in the 1950s to the “scary surprise driving” (okkana bikkuri unten おっかなびっくり運転) she encountered upon her return to Japan in 1959 (JAF News 1967, 8–9). In another case, the author portrays Japanese driving as immature (mijuku 未熟), reflecting a shallow history. He criticizes Japanese disdain towards the old rust buckets that foreigners drove around the U.S. military bases, noting that Americans understood cars as a functional part of daily life. The author criticizes Japanese drivers as being consumed by the immature desire to show off their cars and their driving. He also criticizes their misplaced sense of special privilege, which, when combined with the qualities of impatience (sekkachi せっかち) and competitiveness, leads to terrible driving manners (doraibu manaa no warusa ドラブマナーの悪さ) (JAF News 1969c, 8–9).

The same author advocates adopting the “beautiful morals of humility” (kenjô no bitoku 謙譲の美徳)(JAF News 1969, 8–9). The author of another article writes that well mannered drivers give way to each other, and drive in a way that avoids creating a nuisance (tagaini yuzuriau manaa ga ari, tagaini meiwaku o kakenai handoru sabaki ga ikizuiteiru 互いに譲り合うマナーがあり、互いに迷惑をかけないハンドルさばきが生きづいている) (JAF News 1968, 36–7). In many articles, the term “yuzuri-ai” (譲り合い mutual giving way) most typifies mannered driving. The term “meiwaku o kakeru” (迷惑をかける cause trouble for others) most typifies a lack of manners. While mannered drivers are considerate and give way to others, nuisance drivers cut others off. While mannered drivers are safe drivers, nuisance drivers are dangerous.

The author of one article uses an analogy to pigs and elephants to make his point about driving manners. While pigs will stay inside fences, elephants are wise, and do not need fencing to walk in single file. If anything, humans are worse than pigs, for they have just a limited amount of reason, allowing them to jump fences and get into accidents. Elephants do not jump over things or ahead of each other to gain advantage. The author concludes that Japanese drivers need to be more like elephants (JAF News 1968, 36–7). The analogy with pigs recalls the term the author of another article used to describe greedy driving – gatsugatsu unten – the term gatsugatsu often used to describe greedy eating, like that of a pig (JAF News 1969a, 38–9).

Many articles connected bad manners and a mistaken sense of privilege with accidents, injuries, and death. In May 1970, one entry in the readers' column described the case of a Japanese couple who had just returned to the country after spending seventeen years in the Soviet Union. This couple had brought with them a thirteen-year-old son, who was run over and killed shortly after coming to Japan. In an interview, the parents noted that in Russia, sidewalks were raised slightly above street level, in contrast to Japan where sidewalks were barely even marked with a painted stripe. Moreover, they said that Russian drivers stopped when people walked into the street, whereas Japanese drivers did not (JAF News 1970b, 20–1).

It is no coincidence that many manners related articles appeared in the late 1960s and early 70s when traffic related deaths spiked to unprecedented levels. Safety had long been a concern of JAF, but the organization began to make more concerted efforts to curb accidents and fatalities by the late 1960s. In 1969, JAF News ran a column called Proposal for Calm Driving (anshin unten no teishyô 安心運転の提唱, lit. proposal for peaceful heart driving).Footnote ⁵ In November of that year, JAF encouraged members to make the “Calm Driving Pledge,” reminiscent of the pledge advocated by the Eisenhower administration's “Crusade for Traffic Safety” in 1954 (Packer 2008, 29). JAF doesn't actually define “calm driving,” but it is clear that safety is the objective. The letter notes that JAF members could not be silent given that annual traffic fatalities had risen over 10,000, and that by signing the pledge, members could mark a new epoch in their own driving history (untenrekini hitotsu no epokku o kaku suru 運転歴に一つのエポックを画する). It stated that the pledge movement was “the backbone of JAF's activities, and forms the basis of our increasing contributions to society” (JAF News 1969c, 9). Those who made the pledge received a bumper sticker that read: “Calm Driving Participant” (JAF News 1969b, 38–9). Within a few months, more than 10,000 members had taken the pledge. But one member wrote in February 1970 that he still didn't see that many calm driving bumper stickers on the roads, and that occasionally someone with a sticker drove recklessly (JAF News 1970a, 8–9). Whether or not the pledge movement had any real impact on accidents, it is an example of the kind of public campaign that no doubt helped shape people's understanding of safety and manners in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The discourse on manners emerges in discussions of issues from minor infractions of etiquette to more serious threats to public safety. A highway administrator wrote an article condemning those who deliberately sought to “disrupt harmony and order” (chôwa o kakimidashi, taisei ni meiwaku o kakete 調和をかき乱し、体制に迷惑をかけて) through the vandalism of the public rest areas, misuse of emergency telephones, and thoughtless disposal of garbage and cigarette butts out of car windows (JAF News 1970c, 22–23). Similar critiques were made of those who threw garbage on the newly planted grass and shrubbery, or urinated alongside highways despite the construction of rest stops (JAF News 1980, 44–5). To some extent, the issue here is middle class respectability, much as we can observe going on in China today (Notar, Reference Notar2010) yet the authors seem to suggest that it is the same uncaring attitudes revealed in such breaches of etiquette that can very easily end up causing accidents.

In Japan, the discourse on driving manners is in many ways a safety discourse. Yet compared to defensive driving, driving manners invests the concern with safety with a moral overlay. Over the decades, the pages of JAF Mate hosted a discussion among authors of articles and letters about everyday encounters on the road and whether or not other drivers lived up to certain norms of interaction. This discussion suggests that the governmental concern with the population, and the conduct of conduct, was accepted as normative by a large section of the driving population. In some ways, a kind of fit between governmentality and subjectivity that Foucault (Reference Foucault and Robert1990; Reference Foucault, Burchell, Gordon and Miller1991) describes for modern times seems to gradually emerge in the era of mass motorization in Japan. As accidents decline, driving becomes more orderly, and Japanese evaluations of conditions on their own roads shift from widespread critique towards relative satisfaction in comparison to conditions overseas. And yet things become more complicated once we consider the relationship between manners and emotion.

Manners and Emotion

Manners and emotion, while very different things, both relate to the governmental concern with safety. We might think of manners and emotion as being defined in opposition to each other. Manners involve the control of emotion. Manners involve conventional, ritualized forms of interaction, while emotions arise spontaneously. If manners are controlled, they are also contrived. If emotions are unpredictable, their spontaneity may convey some sense of authenticity. Manners may be interpreted to fall within the realm of outward appearances (tatemae), as a formality that facilitates the smooth interaction of relative strangers, and thus, far removed from the realm of true feelings or emotion (honne). Manners and emotion both are related to safety—manners positively so (an increase in manners brings about an increase in safety), emotion negatively so (a decrease in emotion brings about an increase in safety).

But some anthropologists have argued that emotions are not completely idiosyncratic, individualistic, and spontaneous, in opposition to social constraints. Rather, emotions themselves may be culturally and socially shaped (Lutz Reference Lutz1988; Luhrmann Reference Luhrmann2006). So how then do manners and emotion interact with each other? Perhaps we should not think of them in ways that are binarily defined, as in opposition. Is it possible to have emotional manners, or mannered emotions?

I observed drivers and conducted interviews with administrators and teachers at several driving schools, one of which used as its slogan the English language neologism “heartful driving” (http://www.tsurugashima.co.jp/talk/index.html). The chief of driving instructors at the school explained that heartful driving was driving that was considerate of others. It was mannered driving. But the notion of heartfelt driving, and other related keywords in the manners discourse, do not reside in a realm of pure formalities, completely devoid of emotion. The heart (kokoro), after all, is the seat of authentic feelings in contrast to superficial and contrived ceremonies. Even what may be considered banal phrases, like “calm driving” from the calm driving campaigns of the late 1960s and early 1970s, pack more emotional significance than may be apparent on the surface. “Calm” (anshin) literally means “peaceful heart.” The peaceful heart is neither agitated nor fearful. It is calm and collected. Peaceful heart driving is possible when everyone drives with consideration, and no one feels that other drivers endanger him or her. Peaceful heart driving also involves a certain amount of resolve. In one article, the author urges people to “commit (kokoro-gakete 心掛けて) themselves wholeheartedly to driving safely” (literally, hang their hearts on driving safely) (JAF News 1969a, 38–9). Likewise, manners require the same resolve on the part of drivers. One member of JAF wrote a letter in which she “commits herself wholeheartedly to learning good driving manners she will not be ashamed of” (haji nai manaa yoki unten ni kokoro gake 恥ないマナー良き運転に心がけ lit. hang her heart on good driving manners…) (JAF News 1979a, 3). In the calm driving pledge that JAF members were urged to sign in 1969, the federation presented calm driving as a “basic principle” (kokoro-gamae 心構え, literally that which is “heart-held”) (JAF News 1969b, 38–9). Thus readers were urged to “hang their hearts” (kokoro-gakete 心掛けて) on the “heart-held” principle (kokoro-gamae 心構え) of “peaceful heart” driving (anshin unten 安心運転).

All of this heartfelt driving suggests that manners are not merely a superficial means of easing social interactions among strangers. Despite the formalism of manners in Japan, they are imbued with a strong moral valence that accesses an emotional vein. One letter from a JAF reader describes two very gentlemanly drivers who give way to each other, and asks whether we can all drive with a generous heart (kokoro yutakana kimochi de kuruma ni noru 心ゆたかな気持ちで車に乗る)(JAF News 1979c, 47-8). Those who drive recklessly and lack consideration for others are described as not holding learning close to their hearts (fukokoroemono 不心得者) (JAF News 1970b, 20–1). These bad apples “disrupt the harmony of all other drivers, and are a public nuisance” (Ikani zentai doraibaa no chôwa o kakimidashi, taisei ni meiwaku o kaketeiru koto ka! いかに全体ドライバーの調和をかき乱し、体制に迷惑をかけていることか！)(JAF News 1970c, 22). In another article, the author warns people that the appearance of their cars reveals their hearts (kuruma no ato sugatani, anata no kokoro ga 車の後姿に、あなたの心が), and urges them to drive with care and consideration for others (JAF News 1971, 20–21). The terms for consideration used in these articles literally mean to “attach one's spirit/breath” (kihari 気はり) (JAF News 1979b, 26–9) or “attach one's heart” (kokoro-hari 心はり) (JAF Mate 1988, 16–17).

This implication here is that we should aspire for a convergence of our hearts and social norms. Norms do not necessarily stamp out heartfelt feelings. Rather, they should inform the cultivation of a pure heart. As Dorinne Kondo suggests in her study of a corporate ethics retreat, participants strive to polish the kokoro. The heart cannot be left to itself, lest it

The true or sincere heart (magokoro) thus is a heart that is polished into alignment with social norms. And yet, kokoro generally suggests not just consideration for others, but an emotionally and morally charged consideration. Brian Moeran writes that kokoro has a special relationship to individuality (kosei), one that treads “a semantic tightrope strung between the two points of spontaneity and social exchange, on the one side, and outright individualism and ‘negative reciprocity’, on the other” (Moeran Reference Moeran1984, 262).

If a person's attachment to manners is heartfelt, then we may expect that they would not be complacent in the face of violations of manners. One taxi driver with a head of white hair, perhaps about 60 years old, mentioned that selfish driving (jibun kattena unten 自分勝手な運転) made him angry. Examples he provided of selfish driving included not giving way to ambulances, bicycles or pedestrians. This accords with the emphasis in the manners discourse on giving way (yuzuri-ai) as a crucial practice. Indeed, many people I interviewed suggested that anger is not specific to certain people, but rather that it arises in specific situations. When we take a look at some of these situations, it becomes clear that there may be a direct connection between heartfelt manners and anger. This can be expressed in the syllogism:

Sociologist Jack Katz (Reference Katz1999), who conducted research on driving and anger in Los Angeles, suggests that anger when driving and the subsequent discussion of driving experiences constitute a widespread negotiation of social norms. As such, he doesn't condemn anger as a danger to society. Katz argues that it is precisely because we view each other as moral persons that we get angry when someone fails to live up to some standard of behavior. He suggests that if we viewed other cars as large buffalo or robots without any moral center we would not get angry at their behavior. In my interviews with Japanese drivers, it becomes clear that anger and manners (as expressions of social norms) are intimately linked to each other. Some express more annoyance (ira ira) than anger (ka ka), but the line between the two is often blurry.

The white-haired taxi driver also pointed to the connection between anger and safety. He mentioned that he had had numerous accidents in the past, but that recently he doesn't get so angry and that he hasn't been in any accidents. He attributed his decline in anger to age, but perhaps he has come to take a Zen approach to driving. Perhaps he sees the other cars around him as large buffalo, potentially dangerous objects but ones without moral agency. But the implication of such a possibility would be that he no longer holds manners close to his heart, for heartfelt driving should lead to anger when manners are violated.

The discourses of manners and emotion may work at cross-purposes. On the one hand, heartfelt drivers may place a moral value on driving manners and feel that manners help promote safety. But their heartfelt embrace of manners may lead to a more impassioned response to the inevitable violations of certain norms of civil interactions on the roads. There are those who may emphasize safety in a more dispassionate way, through a careful calculation of risks and benefits. Their driving manners, however, may be more robotic than heartfelt.

Discourses of manners and of emotion at times may work against each other, yet one area in which they are in accordance is in their strong emphasis on the notion of self-control. Discourse on manners stresses the need to avoid selfish driving and idealizes consideration for others. The discourse on emotion also stresses the need to suppress one's inner demons in order to remain calm and collected in the public domain of the road. Both of these discourses ultimately conform to what we might expect of a liberal governmentality, which attempts to maximize overall freedom (understood as minimal coercive authority) through the cultivation of self-regulating citizens (Rose Reference Rose1999, 61–97). Nevertheless, if we go beyond the superficial opposition of the realm of manners and emotions and recognize that manners can be heartfelt (and that emotions can be socially shaped), we find that manners, promoted for the purpose of safety, may lead to the unintended consequence of increased emotion and risk of accidents.

Government Policies and Unruly Subjectivities

In the Western philosophical tradition, subjectivity is contrasted with objectivity. While objectivity implied a neutral, overarching perspective, subjectivity implied one that is limited to a particular vantage, in which personal experiences and emotions clouded perception (Biehl et al. Reference Biehl, Good, Kleinman, Biehl, Good and Kleinman2007, 5). Modern subjectivity is conceived more heroically, as the locus of individual creativity (6). In both cases, whether positively or negatively framed, subjectivity is conceived apart from its surroundings (Biehl et al. Reference Biehl, Good, Kleinman, Biehl, Good and Kleinman2007, 6). The literature on governmentality produces a different understanding of subjectivity, one which conceives of it in terms of processes of subject making (Ong Reference Ong1996, Reference Ong2006; Rose Reference Rose1999). While Ong, Rose, and other proponents of the governmentality approach are sensitive to the complicated and multiple determinants of subjectivities, the approach easily slips into an overly deterministic mode, locating in policies and institutions the absolute power to shape the emotions and inner lives of subjects. Sheldon Garon's approach to social management emphasizes the mutual influence of government and civil society, yet does not account for the range of subjectivities that are possible within a given society and the very different reactions individuals and groups may have to government policies.

Tanya Luhrmann defines “subjectivity” as “the emotional experience of a political subject” (Luhrmann Reference Luhrmann2006, 359). Other anthropologists have explored the social dimensions of emotion – how culturally specific display rules, moral frameworks, and understandings of emotions can shape the way people experience what psychologists have assumed to be universal human mechanisms (Briggs Reference Briggs1970; Rosaldo Reference Rosaldo1980; Lutz Reference Lutz1988). To this social part of emotion Luhrmann adds a focus on a more individualized perspective, one that allows for tension between the individual and various forms of authority. She proposes that we consider the emotional experiences of “the subject caught up in a world of violence, state authority and pain, the subject's distress under the authority of another” (Luhrmann Reference Luhrmann2006, 346). While Luhrmann emphasizes the negative experiences of distress or despair, it is clear that scholars may productively examine a whole range of emotions in people's reactions to power and authority. The key point is that while social institutions and discourses help shape subjectivity, they may also provoke an assortment of unruly feelings that differ markedly from person to person.

Those who have promoted the psychological assessment of student drivers in Japan are concerned with the overall behavior of individuals on public roads—not just their reactions to authority but also their interactions with other drivers and pedestrians. It is precisely their insight into the range of temperaments in the population that allowed them to recognize that certain drivers' behavior was somewhat impervious to book learning in driving schools or moral suasion of safety campaigns. Their answer was to encourage self-reflection among student drivers on their temperaments, in the hope that greater awareness would allow them to modify their behavior or take special precautions.

But some authorities seem to have had a change of heart, and now think it was naïve to assume that students could modify their own behavior based on the results of a psychological test. And since 1996, the Japanese government introduced reforms of the insurance industry that indicate a move away from the somewhat prescriptive attempts to shape a safety-conscious driving subjectivity. Insurance companies now set rates themselves, rather than follow government rates, and have introduced policies to “responsibilitize” (Baker and Simon Reference Baker and Simon2002) individual drivers by adjusting rates for policyholders to reflect individual driving histories. This policy creates some tension with the Japanese style of managing traffic disputes which, for many years, almost always has involved shared responsibility for accidents (Tanase 1990).Footnote ⁶

Some proponents of neoliberalism suggest that the rather large investment in educational programs to cultivate self-control is not as effective as simply exposing people to market forces. Pat O'Malley describes this as actuarial governance (O'Malley Reference O‘malley, Barry, Osborne and Rose1996). Actuarial governance is indifferent to the disciplinary approach to shaping subjectivities as a part of a larger programmatic effort. It allows people to make their own decisions, and to face the consequences of their actions. Proponents suggest that such an approach ultimately shapes subjectivities more profoundly and efficiently, albeit less directly, than can any formal educational institution. Institutions like insurance have risen to buffer some of the consequences, but under an actuarial regime insurance rates themselves are set according to individual behavior. In addition, there has been a shift towards engineering safety into design, thereby attempting to avoid altogether the complicated issues involved in shaping subjectivities (Burnham Reference Burnham2009).

Statistics on accidents provide evidence of both the successes of safety design, as well as the failure of governmental projects to shape effectively drivers' subjectivities. On the one hand traffic fatalities have declined dramatically in Japan since the early 1970s, especially so since the 1990s. In 1990, there were 11,227 traffic fatalities. That number fell to just 6,871 by 2005 (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications 2006). On the other hand, the total number of road accidents involving injuries has increased by almost 50% from 643,097 in 1990 to 952,191 in 2004 (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications 2006). Technology in the form of air bags and anti-lock brakes, and faster emergency rescue and better medical treatment may have reduced total fatalities. But the greater number of accidents suggests that, if anything, technology has exacerbated dangerous driving behavior.

But we should not overemphasize a transition from a national identity that was coherent to one that is fractured, and a strategy of governance based on moral suasion to one that is actuarial in approach. Subcultures of bosozoku (暴走族 kamikaze riders) emerged in the 1970s, whose goal was to make a spectacle of themselves and cause a nuisance for everyone else, roaring though streets in the quiet of night, and blocking traffic by driving abreast on highways at busy times (Sato Reference Sato1991). Their antics explicitly overturned what they viewed as petty middle class driving manners. The efficacy of safety programs was not limited just with regard to the lower and lower middle classes from which most bosozoku were recruited. Since the 1980s and ‘90s, street racers (hashiriya 走り屋), more middle class and clean cut than bosozoku, have raced around urban expressways as well as mountain roads at frightening speeds, terrorizing unknowing drivers with whom they share the public roads (Roth forthcoming). These racers are known collectively as “dorifuto zoku” (drift tribe) or “roringu zoku” (rolling tribe), and individually as “hashiriya.”

These subcultures should not be dismissed as aberrations that just prove the norm, for they both stimulate and are shaped in part from the “automotive cultural industry” (Fuller Reference Fuller2005, 10)—that nexus of the automobile and popular culture industries that includes films, car shows, video games, advertising, car magazines, motor sports, and street racing. In addition to the popular anime and manga about street racing, sophisticated television/video game software that reproduces the experience of racing on specific mountain passes and highways has come on the market, and car magazines have published articles highlighting challenging stretches of actual road along with target times for speed trials (Kobe Shimbun 2002).

Yet within the diverse influences on the field of driving in Japan, “heartfelt driving” continues to have a taken-for-granted quality for many Japanese. It does not generally lead to knowing smiles or dismissive smirks. Those who hold desires for speed fanned by the automotive cultural industry may readily agree about the importance of safety as promoted by driving school curricula and safety campaigns. And those who occasionally become agitated, angry, and aggressive while driving may do so precisely because they have a well-formed idea of what heartfelt driving should look like. Further research into the nexus of safety and speed, of risk and desire, and the unpredictable and emotional ways in which people react to authority, entangled as they are in multiple, sometimes contradictory rationalities and modes of behavior, may illuminate the complexities of governmentalities and subjectivities in modern times.

Acknowledgment

Thanks go to Beth Notar, Kathleen Zane, Michelle Bigenho, Julie Hemment, Barbara Yngvesson, members of the Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology at Mount Holyoke College, and the anonymous reviewers for this journal for their insightful comments on drafts of this article. Versions of this article were presented at conferences and in university lecture series and benefitted from the comments of Emily Chao, Helen Siu, Mitch Sedgwick, and Christopher Hood among others.