MITTOMONAI — Why Japan Needs No Lock

On a roadside in Japan, a wooden box sits with no lock, no camera, no one watching. By dusk, the vegetables are gone and the coins are left behind. Nothing is stolen. Why? This is a quiet meditation on mittomonai (見とも無い) — a Japanese word that points to a sense of shame that rises not from being seen by others, but from within oneself. It is the feeling of not wanting to look at one's own unsightly figure, even when no one else would ever know. From the unmanned vegetable stalls of the countryside, to the everyday morality of Edo-period farmers and merchants, to Inazo Nitobe's answer to a question he could not answer in Europe — this film traces something older and smaller than law or religion. Something that lives in the space between the self that is seen by others, and the self when no one is watching. This is not a story about Japan being better. It is one way of living, among many. The same quiet thing may live in people of every country. — This film uses both filmed footage and digitally created images. — 00:00 Mittomonai 00:23 What Is This 01:46 A Quiet Contrast With the World 02:44 Though No One Is Watching 04:10 The Witness Within 04:59 The Compass of Morality 05:43 From the Samurai, to the Common People 07:19 Otentosama 08:03 Upon the Unseen 08:46 What Lives in You as Well 09:29 A Promise, Spoken in No Words 09:56 The Landing 11:07 Epilogue — IMAGE & ARCHIVAL CREDITS Inazō Nitobe (1922), photograph by Auguste Léon. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain. Émile de Laveleye (no later than 1892). Source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain. Quai de la Goffe, Liège (1890), photograph by Jules Martigny. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain. Bushido: The Soul of Japan by Inazo Nitobe, cover. Houghton Library, Harvard University (Hearn 92.40.10). Source: Wikimedia Commons. Public domain. Samurai, Yokohama (1864–65), photograph by Felice Beato. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gilman Collection, Purchase, Robert Rosenkranz Gift, 2005 (2005.100.566). Public domain (CC0). Some footage sourced from Pexels and Pixabay. — #Japan #Japaneseculture #mittomonai