The general will is similar to the sense of reading the air.

from The World and Japan 100 years from now How will the Internet change the world? The general will is similar to the sense of reading the air.

In Japan, there is a word “air” and another way of saying “read the situation,” but “reading the air” and “reading the general will” are almost the same thing, aren’t they? In Japan, it is said that “reading the air” is a socially unacceptable practice, but “air” is, in a sense, “general desire”. No one expresses it directly, but everyone is thinking about it silently. To be able to understand this is to “read the atmosphere. In a word, what Rousseau meant by “the general will” is very close to the Japanese word “kuki” (air).

This discussion is reminiscent of Rousseau's "general will" and the Japanese sense of "reading the air." The "general will" is a concept that represents the common interests and goals of society as a whole, and Rousseau saw this as the foundation of democracy. On the other hand, the act of "reading the air" in Japan refers to the behavior of sensitively perceiving and following the atmosphere and tacit understanding of a place.

Past thinkers whose ideas are related to this include Alexis de Tocqueville. and Emile Durkheim. Tocqueville discusses “tyranny of the majority” in “American democracy,” suggesting that social atmosphere and majority opinion can suppress individual freedom and opinion. Similarly, Durkheim’s “social fact” is seen as something that exists independently of the will of individual people and has the power to strongly influence society. These are common to phenomena such as “air” in Japan, where tacit agreements and shared values have a strong effect on individual behavior.

Also instructive is Hannah Arendt.’s discussion of “publicness. She emphasized the importance of dialogue and consensus building among people in the public sphere, but also warned of the danger of this process being impeded by fixed atmospheres and peer pressure. The Japanese culture of “kuki wo yoroshiku” (reading the air) is close to the general will and public nature, but it also has this aspect of peer pressure.

In summary, while the Japanese culture of “reading the air” and Rousseau’s “general will” are very close in the process of social consensus building, their relationship to individual freedom and diversity is also an important point of contention when considering the effects of that peer pressure from Tocqueville and Arendt’s perspective.

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