The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture is a 1946 study of Japan by American anthropologistRuth Benedict compiled from her analyses of Japanese culture during World War II for the U.S. Office of War Information. Her analyses were requested in order to understand and predict the behavior of the Japanese during the war by reference to a series of contradictions in traditional culture. The book was influential in shaping American ideas about Japanese culture during the occupation of Japan, and popularized the distinction between guilt cultures and shame cultures.[1]
Although it has received harsh criticism, the book has continued to be influential. Two anthropologists wrote in 1992 that there is "a sense in which all of us have been writing footnotes to [Chrysanthemum] since it appeared in 1946".[2] The Japanese, Benedict wrote, are
both aggressive and unaggressive, both militaristic and aesthetic, both insolent and polite, rigid and adaptable, submissive and resentful of being pushed around, loyal and treacherous, brave and timid, conservative and hospitable to new ways...[3]
The book also affected Japanese conceptions of themselves.[4] The book was translated into Japanese in 1948 and became a bestseller in the People's Republic of China when relations with Japan soured.[5]
This book which resulted from Benedict's wartime research, like several other United States Office of War Information wartime studies of Japan and Germany,[6] is an instance of "culture at a distance", the study of a culture through its literature, newspaper clippings, films, and recordings, as well as extensive interviews with German-Americans or Japanese-Americans. The techniques were necessitated by anthropologists' inability to visit Nazi Germany or wartime Japan. One later ethnographer pointed out, however, that although "culture at a distance" had the "elaborate aura of a good academic fad, the method was not so different from what any good historian does: to make the most creative use possible of written documents."[7] Anthropologists were attempting to understand the cultural patterns that might be driving the aggression of once-friendly nations, and they hoped to find possible weaknesses or means of persuasion that had been missed.
Americans found themselves unable to comprehend matters in Japanese culture. For instance, Americans considered it quite natural that American prisoners of war would want their families to know that they were alive and that they would keep quiet when they were asked for information about troop movements, etc. However, Japanese prisoners of war apparently gave information freely and did not try to contact their families.
Reception in the United States
Between 1946 and 1971, the book sold only 28,000 hardback copies, and a paperback edition was not issued until 1967.[8] Benedict played a major role in grasping the place of the Emperor of Japan in Japanese popular culture, and formulating the recommendation to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that permitting continuation of the Emperor's reign had to be part of the eventual surrender offer.[citation needed]
As of 1999, 350,000 copies were sold in the US.[4]
Reception in Japan
More than 2.3 million copies of the book have been sold in Japan since it first appeared in translation there.[4]
John W. Bennett and Michio Nagai, two scholars on Japan, pointed out in 1953 that the translated book "has appeared in Japan during a period of intense national self-examination—a period during which Japanese intellectuals and writers have been studying the sources and meaning of Japanese history and character, in one of their perennial attempts to determine the most desirable course of Japanese development."[9]
Japanese social critic and philosopher Tamotsu Aoki said that the translated book "helped invent a new tradition for postwar Japan." It helped to create a growing interest in "ethnic nationalism" in the country, shown in the publication of hundreds of ethnocentric nihonjinron (treatises on 'Japaneseness') published over the next four decades. Although Benedict was criticized for not discriminating among historical developments in the country in her study, "Japanese cultural critics were especially interested in her attempts to portray the whole or total structure ('zentai kōzō') of Japanese Culture," as Helen Hardacre put it.[9]C. Douglas Lummis has said the entire "nihonjinron" genre stems ultimately from Benedict's book.[10]
The book began a discussion among Japanese scholars about "shame culture" vs. "guilt culture", which spread beyond academia, and the two terms are now established as ordinary expressions in the country.[10]
Soon after the translation was published, Japanese scholars, including Kazuko Tsurumi, Tetsuro Watsuji, and Kunio Yanagita criticized the book as inaccurate and having methodological errors. American scholar C. Douglas Lummis has written that criticisms of Benedict's book that are "now very well known in Japanese scholarly circles" include that it represented the ideology of a class for that of the entire culture, "a state of acute social dislocation for a normal condition, and an extraordinary moment in a nation's history as an unvarying norm of social behavior."[10]
Japanese ambassador to Pakistan Sadaaki Numata said the book "has been a must reading for many students of Japanese studies."[11]
According to Margaret Mead, the author's former student and a fellow anthropologist, other Japanese who have read it found it on the whole accurate but somewhat "moralistic". Sections of the book were mentioned favorably in Takeo Doi's book, The Anatomy of Dependence, but he is somewhat critical of her analysis of Japan and the West as respectively shame and guilt cultures, noting that while he is "disposed to side with her," she still "allows value judgements to creep into her ideas."[12]
In a 2002 symposium at The Library of Congress in the United States, Shinji Yamashita, of the department of anthropology at the University of Tokyo, added that there has been so much change since World War II in Japan that Benedict would not recognize the nation she described in 1946.[13]
Lummis wrote, "After some time I realized that I would never be able to live in a decent relationship with the people of that country unless I could drive this book, and its politely arrogant world view, out of my head."[10] Lummis, who went to the Vassar College archives to review Benedict's notes, wrote that he found some of her more important points were developed from interviews with Robert Hashima, a Japanese-American native of the United States who was taken to Japan as a child, educated there, then returned to the US before World War II began. According to Lummis, who interviewed Hashima, the circumstances helped introduce a certain bias into Benedict's research: "For him, coming to Japan for the first time as a teenager smack in the middle of the militaristic period and having no memory of the country before then, what he was taught in school was not 'an ideology', it was Japan itself." Lummis thinks Benedict relied too much on Hashima and says that he was deeply alienated by his experiences in Japan and that "it seems that he became a kind of touchstone, the authority against which she would test information from other sources."[10]
Reception in China
The first Chinese translation was made by Taiwaneseanthropologist Huang Dao-Ling, and published in Taiwan in April 1974 by Taiwan Kui-Kuang Press. The book became a bestseller in China in 2005, when relations with the Japanese government were strained. In that year alone, 70,000 copies of the book were sold in China.[5]
↑ Ezra F. Vogel, Foreword, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1989)
↑ Archived 2014-06-30 at the Wayback Machine Plath, David W., and Robert J. Smith, "How 'American' Are Studies of Modern Japan Done in the United States", in Harumi Befu and Joseph Kreiner, eds., Otherness of Japan: Historical and Cultural Influences on Japanese Studies in Ten Countries, Munchen: The German Institute of Japanese Studies, as quoted in Ryang, Sonia, "Chrysanthemum's Strange Life: Ruth Benedict in Postwar Japan", accessed January 13, 2007
↑ Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, page 2, 1946
1 2 Fujino, Akira (January 8, 2006). "Book on Japanese culture proves a bestseller in China". The Advocate of Stamford, Connecticut. Tribune News Service.
↑ Robert Harry Lowie, The German People: A Social Portrait to 1914 (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1945); John F. Embree, The Japanese Nation: A Social Survey (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1945
1 2 Hardacre, Helen, "The Postwar Development of Japanese Studies in the United States", (Brill: 1998), ISBN90-04-08628-5 via Google Books; the Bennett-Nagai quote may be from John W. Bennett and Nagai Michio, "The Japanese critique of Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword," American Anthropologist 55 :401-411 [1953], mentioned at "Reading notes | Benedict, the Chrysanthemum and the Sword". Archived from the original on 2008-04-05. Retrieved 2008-01-14. Web page titled "Reading notes for Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946)" at the Web site of William W. Kelly, Professor of Anthropology & Sumitomo Professor of Japanese Studies, Yale University; both Web sites accessed January 13, 2007
Shannon, Christopher. "A World Made Safe for Differences: Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword", American Quarterly 47 (1995): 659-680. doi:10.2307/2713370. JSTOR2713370.
Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The term sociocultural anthropology includes both cultural and social anthropology traditions.
Margaret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist, author and speaker, who appeared frequently in the mass media during the 1960s and the 1970s.
Ruth Fulton Benedict was an American anthropologist and folklorist.
Nihonjinron is a genre of historical and literary work that focuses on issues of Japanese national and cultural identity.
Ralph Linton was an American anthropologist of the mid-20th century, particularly remembered for his texts The Study of Man (1936) and The Tree of Culture (1955). One of Linton's major contributions to anthropology was defining a distinction between status and role.
Robert Harry Lowie was an Austrian-born American anthropologist. An expert on Indigenous peoples of the Americas, he was instrumental in the development of modern anthropology and has been described as "one of the key figures in the history of anthropology".
Morris Edward Opler, American anthropologist and advocate of Japanese American civil rights, was born in Buffalo, New York. He was the brother of Marvin Opler, an anthropologist and social psychiatrist.
Japanese values are cultural goals, beliefs and behaviors that are considered important in Japanese culture. From a global perspective, Japanese culture stands out for its higher scores in emancipative values, individualism, and flexibility compared to many other cultures around the world. There is a similar level of emphasis on these values in the cultures of the United States and Japan. However cultures from Western Europe surpass it in these aspects. Overall, Japanese society exhibits unique characteristics influenced by personal connections, consensus building, and a strong sense of community consciousness. These features have deep historical roots and reflect the values ingrained in Japanese society.
"Wall of Shame" is a phrase that is most commonly associated with the Berlin Wall. In this context, the phrase was coined by Willy Brandt, and it was used by the government of West Berlin, and later popularized in the English-speaking world and elsewhere from the beginning of the 1960s. Inspired by its usage in reference to the Berlin Wall, the term has later been used more widely.
Marvin Kaufmann Opler was an American anthropologist and social psychiatrist. His brother Morris Edward Opler was also an anthropologist who studied the Southern Athabaskan peoples of North America. Morris and Marvin Opler were the sons of Austrian-born Arthur A. Opler, a merchant, and Fanny Coleman-Hass. Marvin Opler is best known for his work as a principal investigator in the Midtown Community Mental Health Research Study. This landmark study hinted at widespread stresses induced by urban life, as well as contributing to the development of the burgeoning field of social psychiatry in the 1950s.
John Fee Embree was an American anthropologist and academic who specialized in the study of Japan. He was a professor at Yale University when he was struck and killed by a motorist.
National character studies is a set of anthropological studies conducted during and immediately after World War II. This involves the identification of people, ethnicity, and races according to specific, indomitable cultural characteristics.
Ruth Landes was an American cultural anthropologist best known for studies on the Brazilian religion of Candomblé and her published study on the topic, City of Women (1947). Landes is recognized by some as a pioneer in the study of race and gender relations.
"The Chrysanthemum and the Sword" is the fifth episode of the fourth season of the American television drama series Mad Men, and the 44th overall episode of the series. It was written by Erin Levy and directed by Lesli Linka Glatter, and it originally aired on the AMC channel in the United States on August 22, 2010.
Gaman (我慢) is a Japanese term of Zen Buddhist origin which means "enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity". The term is generally translated as "perseverance", "patience", or "tolerance". A related term, gamanzuyoi, a compound with tsuyoi (strong), means "suffering the unbearable" or having a high capacity for a kind of stoic endurance.
Ruth Murray Underhill was an American anthropologist. She was born in Ossining-on-the-Hudson, New York, and attended Vassar College, graduating in 1905 with a degree in Language and Literature. In 1907, she graduated from the London School of Economics and began travelling throughout Europe. During World War I, she worked for an Italian orphanage run by the Red Cross.
C. Douglas Lummis is a writer, former professor at Tsuda College in Tokyo and former U.S. Marine.
Ruth Leah Bunzel was an American anthropologist, known for studying creativity and art among the Zuni people (A:Shiwi), researching the Mayas in Guatemala, and conducting a comparative study of alcoholism in Guatemala and Mexico. Bunzel was the first American anthropologist to conduct substantial research in Guatemala. Her doctoral dissertation, The Pueblo Potter (1929) was a study of the creative process of art in anthropology and Bunzel was one of the first anthropologists to study the creative process.
Gitel (Gertrude) Poznanski Steed was an American cultural anthropologist known for her research in India 1950–52 involving ethnological work in three villages to study the complex detail of their social structure. She supplemented her research with thousands of ethnological photographs of the individuals and groups studied, the quality of which was recognised by Edward Steichen. She experienced chronic illnesses after her return from the field, but nevertheless completed publications and many lectures but did not survive to finish a book The Human Career in Village India which was to integrate and unify her many-sided studies of human character formation in the cultural/historical context of India.
In cultural anthropology, the distinction between a guilt society or guilt culture, shame society or shame culture, and a fear society or culture of fear, has been used to categorize different cultures. The differences can apply to how behavior is governed with respect to government laws, business rules, or social etiquette. This classification has been applied especially to what anthropologist Ruth Benedict called "apollonian" societies, sorting them according to the emotions they use to control individuals and maintaining social order, swaying them into norm obedience and conformity.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
