Ethnographic Studies on Japan

Ethnographic studies offer a comprehensive analysis of a given society and its people. An analysis of an ethnography should indicate the manner in which evidence has been gathered, how that evidence has been analyzed and treated, what types of evidence are included and what types excluded, and so on. Two ethnographies of Japanese society may have very different approaches, reflecting the interests and abilities of their authors. Another reason for differences may be the background of the given authors themselves. Chie Nakane in Japanese Society offers a view from the inside, as it were, and seeks to explain the behavior of the Japanese by analyzing the society as it exists rather than with recourse to the historic social structures of the society. Ruth Benedict in The Chrysanthemum and the Sword is an external view that compares Japanese society to that of the United States, taking a historical perspective to show how certain social virtues and behaviors developed and why they persist.

There is no doubt that Americans have been very interested in Japanese society and particularly in Japanese business in recent years given the degree of competition the smaller nation has posed for the larger. There have been many analyses of Japanese business practices and Japanese society in an attempt to discern what aspects of Japanese culture might be responsible for Japan's success, and more particularly which of these elements might be adapted to the American system to improve A

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presumably what it might take to defeat them. It is clear that she is trying to discern deeper meanings and ways of thinking in the behaviors she observes. She gives special attention to the Japanese conduct of the war because that is her impetus for this work, and in this way she indicates her belief that the Japanese and the American people are waging the war for very different reasons, that they have different conceptions of war and of rationales for war, and that their respective institutions have been structured on the basis of these sorts of rationale. Benedict notes that at the beginning of the war, Japan defined the international situation differently than did America, which saw the war as deriving from the aggressions of the Axis. Japan saw the world as being in the throes of anarchy as long as every nation had absolute sovereignty, and the solution was for all nations to come under a hierarchy, with Japan at the top. This leads to a consideration throughout this book of the importance of hierarchy to the Japanese. This includes the idea of taking one's proper station, an idea that is given considerable attention because of its importance to Japanese society and to the role of Japan in the war. An important soci

Category: Foreign - E