I read the book named in the subject after a coworker of mine lent it to me.
It was written by Ruth Benedict, a famous America anthropologist, in 1946, just after the end of the second World War.
The purpose of the book is to explain Japan and its culture to American people, and to serve as "manual" to the American army, which was then debating how to manage, and for how long, the occupation and reorganization of Japan.
According to Ruth Benedict the values and convictions of Japanese people made it very difficult to most Americans to understand the ideas of Japanese people and to predict how they would react to different situations. In particular, she says that Japanese people value over everything the "having the right place" in world and society, and that putting things to their rightful (deserved) places was a Japanese motivation for starting the war. Then, she describes the importance, for Japanese people, of the duties and obligations to society, family, and one's own honor (on, gimu and giri)
She also writes about the importance, in Japanese culture and art, of the the theme of the "conflict" of different obligations and duties, compared with the western theme of conflict of moral issues of "good and bad".
The book goes on to describe Japanese education of children and to speak about the issue of "shame" versus the western, and in particular American, feeling of "guilt". In her words, Japan does not value guilt as much as shame and the judgement of society.
Speaking of the religious mentality, she compares the Western vision of Heaven to the Japanese vision of doing the right thing because of following one's rightful nature. She draws a lot, I think most of it not completely rightly, from Zen stories and morality, equating the Zen attitude to Japanese culture.
To write this book, Ruth Benedict never went to Japan. She instead based many of her observations on the opinions of Japanese Americans she knew, especially of mr. Robert Hashima, a Japanese born in America who had lived 20 years in Japan and had become a teacher there before returning to America at the start of the war.
I think this book is still interesting, and some of the considerations still valid. However I don't think that everything is right with her views. First of all, Ruth Benedict was an expert on Indian American (tribal) cultures. While she insists that her method is universally valid, I think studying a tribal culture, where the transmission of the cultural values is entirely oral and "person to person", is not the same thing as studying the culture of a nation. Specifically, she does not consider too much how the propaganda of ideological groups in the period in Japan may have changed the popular culture or the views of the people she met and studied. Plus, the people she studied were a small sample, and it seems like a single person, Robert Hashima, influenced her views more than most of the others (I read a review online which included an interview made to Rober Hashima himself about this). That single person had a very ideological view about Japanese culture and a strong conviction that the culture HAD to change, because he had suffered a strong culture shock, mainly due to the (very ideological) education system, after moving from America to Japan as a kid.
Then the author puts too much emphasis on the way the education of small children inside the families influenced the culture of the country. My reflections about this were that the education methods she cites disappeared totally, or almost, but Japanese culture has not changed as much as her ideas would imply. Also, sometimes the author seemed bent on proving her points on Japanese culture by citing what is really "military" culture or samurai culture. And, in the chapter devoted to religion, she goes as far as taking Zen Buddhism as exemplary of Japanese culture, which is not totally correct, since she fails to consider both the place of Zen inside the larger frame Buddhism, and the fact that Zen schools are actually more important in other Asian cultures, like Korea or even China, that they are in Japan after the EDO period. This not to underly the fact that indeed Zen Buddhism did influence Japanese culture and the Japanese mindset. Also, by pointing out that Japanese don't believe in afterlife or in heaven, she fails totally to consider the strong influence other Buddhist schools, like Shingon or Shodo shu and Shodo shinshu, have had in the Japanese views. This without considering that many Japanese people who belong to Zen schools and are religiously active do actually believe either in rebirth or in an afterlife.
At the end, my opinion is that this book is interesting, but it is not to be considered really reliable in exposing to the world Japanese culture. However, I am glad I could read it, as it surely offers some interesting points in both Japanese culture, and American culture and its view of the world.
