Japan:Culture and Society

Japanese culture, and the various social manifestations that have embodied its expressive attributes throughout history, has fascinated the Western world ever since Marco Polo's imaginative accounts from the 14th century. Thought to be a land dripping in gold and silver, the Portugese traders and Jesuit missionaries of the mid-16th century dispelled those illusions in letters to their superiors--documents which may be seen as the first systematic ethnographic accounts of the people, society, and culture of the archipelago (see Boxer 1951 for a generous sample). In many ways, all subsequent renderings of Japanese culture and society have followed the same conceptual grids of the early missionaries, as text after text focuses on class structure, status, relations between the sexes, kinship, conflict, harmony, and cultural expressions of art. There are a few ambitious accounts by such sequestered scholars as the German physician Siebold of Nagasaki (early 19th century)--yet it is not until Lafcadio Hearn's journalistic dispatches of the late 19th and early 20th century that the Japanese begin to come alive as authentic human beings possessing mythologies, social structures, systems of belief, legends, and personalities as vivid as any in the Western world. Through works such as his Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation (1904) he (as well as other foreign-born intelligentsia "imported" to speed the Meiji period's drive to modernize) documented the momentous changes occurring in Japan and sensed that its traditions and values would never be the same.

I. General Works

The first scholarly study of Japanese society was done by John Embree in 1939 and has help up well over five decades. A student of Radcliffe-Brown, he established a prototype for subsequent studies by focusing on one small rural community, Suye village, and analyzing its social structure. But with the war and Ruth Benedict's 1946 best-seller, the particularlism of village studies was temporarily swallowed by a need to understand the ideology that motivated the "most alien enemy the United States has ever fought" (p.1). Not only was she concerned with obvious aspects of socio-cultural layerings--the practical ethics, structured disciplines, and many-faceted group--the book also, in Geertz' words (1988:125), "aimed for mechanisms of socialization (heavy diapers, taunting mothers, peer group tyranny) that induced psychological dispositions." In effect, like the early Jesuit missionaries, she too charted the cognitive territories of Japanese society in ways that scholars have had to contend with ever since.

Of similar works that attempt to provide sweeping perspectives of Japanese society and culture, only a few stand out. George Sansom's 1931 classic was among the first to provide an authoritative overview of Japanese culture. Nakane's work (1970) created a new vocabulary for thinking about Japanese society and remains a seminal work still frequently cited for its discussions of verticality, attribute and frame, and socialization practices.1 Befu's 1971 text is one of the most comprehensive anthropologies of Japan-- sound in methodology of analysis and cautious in making generalizations. Ishida (1974) supplements and amends Benedict with his own origins and characteristics of Japanese behavior, as does De Vos (1973) and Lebra and Lebra (1974), both of whom will be discussed again below. A few years later, Craig (1979) takes a cross-cultural approach in trying to broaden the discussion beyond psychological determinants.

Three of the most enduring works for a general reading audience have been Edwin Reischauer's The Japanese, Paul Varley's thrice printed and updated Japanese Culture , with its emphasis on the artistic and cultural attainments of the merchant classes, and the German educator Kurt Singer's (1973) perceptive Mirror, Sword, and Jewel. Robert Smith's (1983) lecture series entitled Japanese Society begins a drift into more critical perspectives, ones that are made fully explicit in Mouer and Sugimoto's 1986 edited volume that holds Japan to be a repressive place with ample institutions and ideologies to carry out the oppression. Doubts they voice about the "consensus/group" model, "national" culture," "Nihonjinron ", and social stratification are useful but hampered by hastily drawn conclusions, poor organization, and literary overkill. Their work, with a better editor, could have generated the sensation that awaited Karel van Wolferen's 1989 book The Enigma of Japanese Power. His analytically piercing style applied to the breadth of Japanese society and its political, educational, economic and religious institutions will be cited for years to come, though scholars such as Field and Harootunian (1989), in dealing with this same post-modern Japan, present a more literary-inspired analysis of many of the same themes.

II. Social Structure, Class, and Status

The brief discussions that follow in parts II to V make no claims to inclusiveness of all works dealing with the indicated topics, nor do they pretend to fairly represent the totality of each author's views. Part II, for example, is a subjective, yet not wholly arbitrary, compilation of useful and important references for anyone attempting to understand the complex interrelations between social class and status as they operate within the framework of rural and urban social structures.

Embree's 1939 work on the social institutions and customs of a small farming village is once again the archetype for English language texts, seeking through actual observations and direct interviews to show levels and interactions in personal, family, and broader social relations. Beardsley (1959) continues along these same lines, examining the buraku or mura as a unit in which residents expect to provide most of their own public services and goods and therefore foster a sense of solidarity. One of the first solidly analytical accounts by a Japanese scholar in English, that of Fukutake in 1967, adds a wider range of interpretation to many of Embree's categories, such as that of the ie as a continuing entity transcending individuals. Fukutake's 1982 work amplifies his earlier text, enriching it with sayings from popular rural culture (such as an ideal family consisting of three children: "one to sell, one to take over, and one to stand by" [1982:30]) and extensive fieldwork. His discussions of such structural institutions as the ie and oyakun-kobun add depth to similarly poignant discussions by De Vos 1979, Hsu 1975, and Befu 1980. Especially useful are his contrasts between the ie of pre-war Japan and the "my homeism" of post-war industrialization. In the former, direct lineal continuity--secondary to the primary resources of house and property in realizing occupational goals--prevented human equality and fostered sexual discrimination, while the latter serves as a "new land" receiving "refugees" from the old system.

Moeran (1984a), in his presentation of the social structure of a rural community of folk-craft potters, deromanticizes any notions about them existing in pristine harmony with their environment. "People idealize nature," he writes, "only when they are not involved with it in a struggle for survival" (225). He generally affirms Fukutake's discussions of the mura , adding that to understand its social organization one must understand how it controls the use of water (in distinction from the ie as an institution for controlling property). He also names the ie as the frame of organization in which individuals are classified, noting that the Japanese age-grade system continues to be important because it provides an alternative to wealth in the determination of status (177) [for other well-written discussions on the ie see Murakami 1984 and Shimizu 1987]. Discussions of class and status are varied and plentiful, ranging from many of the works mentioned above which generally discuss these topics from the externalized perspective of an outside observer looking in (Dore 1973, Smith 1978), to studies of the Japanese language's status-specific constructions (Miller 1977, Moeran 1989), to those focusing on the psychological processes whereby class and status are internally socialized. George De Vos has been at the front this latter field for nearly two decades, examining not only the dominant formations of class and status within the family (1986, 1979, 1973) but also the way Japan's minorities--the Koreans, delinquents, and outcastes--have struggled with these norms of hierarchy, deference, and guilt (rather than Nakane's emphasis on "shame"). By focusing on role behavior within the family and community he shows that even in a modernizing society like Japan there can still be strong tendency to value "acquired" as well as "achieved" status. Ideal models of "teacher", "father", "religious leader", "mother" all hold validity despite the idiosyncrasies of the individuals that fill the roles. Furthermore, because they are "acquired" they are based on non-economic or overtly political ways of achieving higher status (1973:173).

De Vos, along with Wagatsuma and others, was among those in the early 1950's turning their attention to studies of urban communities. Dore's 1958 book on city life in Japan was the first sustained attempt to apply anthropological methodology to document the city's amazing rejuvenation following the devastation of the war. Other studies highlighting the main trends in the development of urban life include Yazaki's 1968 Social Change and the City in Japan , Seidensticker's tracing of the shitamachi cultural milieu's influence on the arts and letters of the Meiji and Taisho periods (1983), and Bestor's well-written ethnography (1988) Neighborhood Tokyo .

III. Social Change

Anthropological discussions must avoid two potential oversights that threaten their credibility when trying to gauge how much or how little change a society has undergone. First, the very notion of "change" can be charged with the subjectivity of the author as he alone provides the criteria for judging it. Books about the transformation of Japanese society after the war often have, as their discussion's point of departure, an idealized construction of the past that the local people do not share. Second, "change" is often presented without any means to empirically or logically measure its effects on a society. To say grandiously that a religious custom or educational curriculum has "dramatically changed" must be contrasted with historical contexts as they were actually lived, not merely imagined. With these points in mind, the following works on social change in Japan largely avoid the theoretical shortcomings mentioned above. One of the ways to understand the transition between pre-war and post-war Japanese society and culture is to examine the transition period between these periods. As Thomas Haven's Valley of Darkness shows, (1978) the energy that has gone into creating and maintaining post-war urban cohesiveness stems in part from the nightmare, experienced by millions, when social institutions break down completely. Beginning with the crackdown on "decadent" popular culture and the prohibition of everything Western in the 1930's, the book is an oftentimes chilling reminder of the authoritarianism responsible for attempting to reshape the Japanese wartime national "spirit", as well as the chaotic dissolution of this "spirit" in Tokyo during the American bombing raids. The book further documents the resiliency of the city dwelling populace to not only rebuild their charred neighborhoods but to draw upon earlier attitudes that accept rather than resist momentous social change. These attitudes could be said to originate, as Alan Grapard (1990) argues, in the 6th and 7th century period of Sinification when Buddhism, medicine, administrative bureaucracies, and a system of writing transformed the Yamato tribal state into that of a nation. At the heart of this change, however, is a religious orientation to the world that, in its general definitions of society, self, and phenomena, encouraged rather than inhibited accommodation of radical change. Since notions of the Shinto Kami could be either beneficent, destructive, or both, this same internalization of reconciling opposites has permitted the Japanese to be extremely passive when manipulated by their ruling elites into confrontations with radical social change. This tendency to rely on earlier traditions as mediating forces was most obviously used in the way the Meiji ideologues decked Shinto and Confucian symbolism around the Imperial household, shaping an ideology that could sanction sweeping technological change and considerable social reorganization (Bellah 1965:213).

Returning once again to rural studies, two works published in 1978 convincingly document the trickle-down effects of urban industrialization and modernization on village life. The books by Robert Smith on Kurusu village and Ronald Dore on Shinohata, expand Edward Norbeck's 1957 study on Takeshima in which he wrestles with the "westernization"/"tradition" dichotomy. By 1976 however, Norbeck has changed the terminology (and Smith and Dore continue the discussion) to "modernization". Again, it is important to note that it is not merely an influx of western technology that grounds Japan's modern culture but it is, in Bellah's view, the culture which gives scope to this modernization (1965:195). Virtually any ethnography of Japan written after 1970 devotes at least a chapter of discussion to the progression of modernization. Ezra Vogel's Japan's New Middle Class (1971) is one of the first works attempting to understand the scope of the forces operating on the psychologies and values at the core of Japan's economic "miracle." Wagatsuma and De Vos (1980, 1984) stress the "enduring heritage" of family socialization which persists in spite of industrialization; Ohnuki-Tierney (1984) shows how traditional medical beliefs and notions of inside/outside, pure/polluted, remain part of modern medical practices as doctors prescribe a trip to a temple or shrine for exorcism along with the latest medicines. In a similar vein, Margaret Lock (1987) contrasts new and old "mythologies" in the way Japanese women view menopause, while Akira Esaka--along with the other contributors to the special issue of Japan Echo (1988) devoted to social change--and Merry White (1988) have studied the effects of domestic and international job transfers on the family and the way this institution is forced to cope with an entirely new kind of social transformation. Another kind of family, the yakuza gangster clans (Kaplan 1988), has also undergone dramatic alterations as a result of the younger generation's less-firmly held values of loyalty and dedication to the central figure of authority and threaten to disrupt the easy familiarity with which the police have customarily bestowed upon the yakuza and their activities. An additional area of Japanese society to examine for elements of social change would be the explosive rise of new religions, frequently referred to in the literature as vehicles for helping their constituents cope with the breakneck speed of modern industrial life (Thomson 1963, Arai in Hori 1972, and McFarland 1967). The argument is that since so many of the workers required for rebuilding Japan's infrastructure of factories and commerce came from rural areas to the city, they not only felt anxious about managing their lives according to the unstated rules of modern urban life, they felt displaced from their ancestral homes as well--a combination leading to anxiety, anomie, and depression. While not discounting these reasons entirely, Byron Earhart's 1989 ethnography of a small new religion called "Gedatsu-kai" shows that it and other new religions have developed not only out of a response to social change but that the influence of dominant religious traditions and the innovative decisions of their founders also play crucial roles in how these institutions attract adherents. Social change, according to Earhart, may result in the development of a new religion--but it may just as easily result in the strengthening of traditional religious traditions or in the pursuit of secular activities that provide a similar sense of group solidarity and support (239). Robert Smith (1984:104), writing in a volume supporting Umesao's "civilization studies" project, states that this traditionalism of the Japanese should never be underestimated. In his opinion, the tendency to revert to animistic religious practices underlying contemporary Buddhist or Shinto-structured religions is at the center of expressions of personal faith (such as making obeisance to a shrine while walking by, depositing coins in front of statues of the Buddha or Jizo for sale in department stores, or the way clearly drawn lines in the West between man and deity, living and dead, and the forces of nature and those of culture are blurred in Japan)--and that this personal faith has withstood the test of even the most dramatic and violent social change. As an acquaintance in Nagasaki used to say, "We Japanese are like cockroaches--put us in any environment, subject us to any political system, even drop an atomic bomb on us, and yet we will regroup, prosper, and again try to take over."

IV. Kinship, Lifecycle, and Gender

The amount of scholarship that has been done on the three symbiotically interrelated topics above is staggering, of which only a small and relatively current sampling will be presented here. For general or edited volumes that inclusively cover all three categories, Takie Lebra's 1984 Japanese Women: Constraint and Fulfillment is probably the standard reference, yet it should be seen as an extension of Joyce Lebra's earlier work (1976) on the ways that women are adapting to a changing Japan which presents them, for the first time, with viable choices concerning careers, marriage, and semi-autonomous lifestyles in a variety of contexts (small business, corporate, media, political, sports) removed from the traditional family structure mentioned in part two of this chapter (see also Imamura 1987). While these works appear to be mostly about women if one looks at the title alone, the discussions are inseparable from intergenerational relations within both the nuclear and extended family, the expectations women as well as their family members have for their lives, and the successes, frustrations, and "structural impediments" they encounter in a predominantly male-centered society. Sex polarization/role specialization is a recurrent theme, highlighting the ambivalence women feel in hindsight towards marriage as a source of satisfaction. One of the approaches to consider in reading about contemporary family and kinship relations, is the way earlier discussions about the ie and the family are now used as "ideological constructs to shape organizational relations and inform educational and political rhetoric" (Beer 1990). Though there have been important women's movements through the Meiji, Taisho, and Showa eras--and works such as Sievers' (1983) and Hane's (1982) tries to see the past through women's eyes--probably more women are currently active in a political organization than ever before. Susan Pharr's Political Women in Japan (1981)--a work that implicitly applies many of De Vos' earlier models-- shows that activism is directly related to gender-role socialization in the way that a "permissive" family encourages role experimentation, a complex dynamic in the mother-daughter relationship, and alternative role models exemplified by other family members. Bernstein (1983) mentioned earlier, Pharr's earlier work (1976), and more recently Johnson (1985) and Ueno (1987) all present possibilities for increased political activity for women if they are to better their social positions. By and large, however, the majority of Japanese women still find fulfillment and value in their expectations concerning the institution of marriage. While teaching at an elite women's college in Nagasaki, I continually saw the best and brightest students in my classes forego any thought of pursuing a career in deference to a romantic notion about marriage that was largely culled from women's magazines and television. As a mechanism for allowing two individuals (and, more importantly, their families) to pivot and merge with each other--marriage is examined by Bernstein's study (1983) of a farm woman whose husband gains status in running for political office; in Smith and Wiswell's (1982) restudy of Embree's Suye Mura and the women therein; by De Vos (1984) in equating the family with a "religious ideology"; and by the nurturant factors of Doi's two studies, the classic Amae no kozo and the more recent (less well-received in 1986) Anatomy of Self . Mention should also be made of the 1988 Japan Echo special issue on the contemporary family and generation gap as they respond to social change, especially Kamata's article on retirement as the end result of a life centered on work and the family. For images of masculinity and femininity in Japanese popular cultural genres--ranging from pornography, gangster films, comic books, Tora-san, and the all-girl Takarazuka review--Ian Buruma's Behind the Mirror (1983) is well-documented and persuasive, again echoing psychological themes of dependence and conformity, although with a psychoanalytic look towards popular heroes as "deviant" loners. One of the most enlightening studies of contemporary marriage and the aspects of kinship, lifecycle, and gender it entails is Walter Edward's Modern Japan Through its Weddings (1989). Valuable as an inside look at the wedding institution in Japan, it also raises important questions about the ways this "invented tradition" preys on the culturally constructed gender-specific identities of men and women. Introducing the notions of "competence" and "completeness", he argues that Japanese society, with its stress on interdependence between people as a sign of social maturity (in contrast to the West's autonomy), creates a view of men and women as not fully able to function in society on their own, requiring partners of the opposite sex to balance and complete their inadequacies. 2 Yet, if a man goes too far in his accommodation of his wife, he is stigmatized by his cohorts as aisaika or a "wife lover." At issue here is the power of the wife in creating a conflicting sense of loyalty for her husband, who becomes torn between the home, to which his wife offers complete allegiance, and his place of work. Children are, of course, essential to the successful outcome of a marriage in Japan, yet in spite of this apparently obvious truism, a study by Iijima (1987) points to a tradition in folk culture of seeing children as "liminal", not fully human until their seventh year. They were thought to be reborn quite easily (and thus "sent back" in the practice of mabiki or "culling" when food was scarce), buried apart from adults, and frequently served in Shinto rituals as mediums, child gods, and messengers. The still widely observed tradition of shichi-go-san , or taking children to the shrine at ages 3, 5, and 7 can be viewed as a contemporary survival of this earlier "liminality." Fawcett's edited 1974 study on the value of children in Asia and the United States was an early attempt to pursue cultural variation regarding attitudes towards children. Caudill and Weinstein's study in the same year about childrearing practices and maternal care in Japan point to the importance of the first three-to-four months of age, by which time, they argue, infants have learned to behave in different and culturally appropriate ways. A more recent edited volume by Stevenson and Azuma (1987) continue this theme into the educational process, as they examine the development of the child throughout his or her grueling years of schooling. Merry White (1988) examines what happens to children who have been exposed to foreign lifestyles and then, along with their families, try to reenter the educational system. Taking a more holistic approach, Rohlen (1983) focuses on the high school, and the ways it meets and thwarts not only the aspirations of individual emotional and intellectual growth of the children but of the administrators and teachers as well. One of the most influential books in broadening scholarship on individual lives beyond an ethnographic present was Plath's edited volume in 1983 on work and lifecourse. Covering such topics as aborted careers (Skinner), the tempo of family formation (McLendon), and the changing employment patterns of women (Holden), Plath stresses a vision of adulthood as "a cluster of concurrent timetables for personal conduct" (1983:2). The book charts three timelines along which to chart the flow of social action--the historical time of a whole social system, the structural time of its institutions, and the lifecourse time of its members--yet guards against the first two swallowing up individual biographies. In stressing individual stories, Plath directs his contributors to continue a theme from his 1980 work on maturity in modern Japan--namely, that the emphasis on "group identity" and the identification of the Japanese as group-oriented individuals is a stereotype and an ethnic snub. Judging by Western standards, any individual who is not his "own man", who is dependent on others and has permeable ego boundaries is thought "immature." Yet, as Plath argues from the Japanese perspective, anyone who tries to be complete in himself and heedless of his interdependence with others is wagamama or "immature." Plath, like Edwards' work on marriage, endorses the perspective of Kondo (1982) on maturity--that the meaning of being an adult is to realize one's connectedness to others and to learn how to maintain those links--yet he stresses that a distinction needs to be made between how adults feel about other individuals and how they feel towards their careers. The contributors to his volume find that, like workers everywhere, individual subjectivity is quite strong, allowing the 65% of Japanese who are not a part of the "lifetime employment" corporate world to maintain a healthy detachment towards their careers. Yet Robert Smith (1983) finds the lifecourse of the Japanese structured around one exacting and unattainable philosophical goal: that of perfectibility. Connected with the notion of seishin or "spirit" (see also Frager and Rohlen (1976) and Moeran (1984b) for discussions of "Japan's internal cultural debate"), which is to be cultivated despite adversity and suffering, Smith sees historical Confucianism as the culprit for considerable contemporary malaises. Since the center of the cosmos is human society and manifold human relationships, there is what he calls a "crushingly heavy burden" that the individual and society are perfectible. When reality eventually alters the expectation of achieving this goal, the result is a sense of isolation and despair that he feels frequently characterizes the literature, art, and entertainment of mature adults. The continuing practice of ancestor worship (Smith 1974, Morioka 1986, Plath 1964) is a means of mediating this anomie, but ultimately falls short of providing the individual with a frame of reference that liberates as well as integrates the interrelationships of human beings to their social constructions of gender, lifecourse, and family.

V. Conflict, Harmony, and Power

Until the mid-1970's, the general image of Japan as presented through micro level studies of individuals and small groups portrayed its people as "polite" individuals who sought social harmony above all else. After the tumult of the student revolution in the late l960's and early 1970's (see Nagai 1971), this model of a harmonious society was no longer tenable. Smith's Kurusu (1978) showed a village still seething with acrimony and tension even though the controversial event responsible for this atmosphere (a chicken processing factory to be built in the village) occurred two years before his arrival. Other influential studies have included Najita and Koschman's Conflict in Modern Japanese History (1982), Moeran's Lost Innocence (1984) and Okubo Diary (1985), but none have presented such a comprensive view as the 1984 edited volume Conflict in Japan . As a way of systematically analyzing conflict in Japan, the editors merged various conflict theories into a fundamental axiom: that conflict is ubiquitous, normal, and integral to the workings of every society. In the past, Western scholars missed so much of the conflict in rural societies because, as Lebra points out, they were overly concerned with social structure and culture. She continues that conflict is not considered "normal" in Japan but an embarrassment, something to be hidden from overt expression or "managed". One of the ways this is done, according to Yoshida's essay, is for spirit possession to mediate the conflicts of rural people who secretly envy and hate each other yet must interact often and frequently even cooperate as neighbors. In his study, as in others, one of the unifying themes is that it is the individual, not the group or even the family, that ultimately bears the effects of conflict and the responsibility for its management or resolution. When this responsibility becomes too overbearing, or when the source of conflict seems incapable of being handled, suicide is sometimes resorted to as a viable way "out". De Vos (1973) traces the Japanese tendency towards suicide as a result of "role narcissism" and a vulnerability towards socially induced crises. He also sees suicide as a way of reasserting individual power over others by inflicting suffering and one's own death upon them as a last resort. Many of these ideas are elaborated upon by Iga (1986) who, while often opting for easy explanations about "groupism", a "mystical merging of the self in society", and "pessimistic Buddhist teachings" that create a negative self-image/attitude, nonetheless indicates that Japanese cohesiveness is maintained by the subordination of the individual's desires to a collective conscience. This socialization for self-restraint leads to emotional outbursts in difficult situations, one of the manifestations being suicide. And yet, suicide in Japan should not be seen, warns Wetherall (1983), as a disposition that is "naturally" a part of Japanese culture. His essay traces a number of anti-suicide traditions--ranging from Buddhist canons linking self-destructive acts as threatening to the religious and political authority constituting the social order to recent suicide prevention associations. Japan is much like Europe with the self-destructive act remaining a part of society; but what is important, he claims, is the way culture predisposes people to think about the act. An interesting aside is that, even with the increased attention given "altruistic" and "egoistic" suicide (to use De Vos' terms) by popular film and literature in Japan since the end of the war, the actual number has declined (according to Kato 1974). Central to any discussion of conflict is the way strategies are developed by the concerned parties to manage the situation. When this "damage control" reaches proportions of a national or corporate level, ideologies involving the concept of "harmony" or "consensus" (wa in Japanese) are frequently resorted to as a way of diffusing overt expressions of conflict. The Minamata case (as outlined by Kaplan 1987, Upham 1987), the burakumin 's attempts to attack discrimination against their outcaste status (De Vos 1966, Neary 1987), Japanese professional baseball's use of disruptive but talented foreign players (Whiting 1988) or the continuing controversy regarding the separation of religion/state evidenced by Yasukuni shrine and the government's sponsorship of Imperial household rites (Hardacre 1989) are all examples of situations in which the persistent collective behavior of a group has not been co-opted by what van Wolferen (1989) calls the "myth of consensus" which his model of the "System" thrives upon. Similar examples, though on a more limited scale, are to be found among Japan's minority and "deviant" groups.3 Articles dealing with the hotrod- motorcycle gangs, the bosozoku , indicate the nature of the group as well as the points of conflict it sees itself as having with the dominant society (Loftus 1977). Rohlen's study of violence in a high school (1976), some of which was instigated by bosozoku -like hoodlums although "normal" students (and teachers) participated as well, also indicates open confrontation rather than a willingness to be accommodated. Lee and De Vos' work on Korean minorities (1981) shows again a different attitude towards authority than that evidenced by Japanese, but it is one also linked to the maintenance of an ethnic identity in the face of legal and social discrimination. Frustrated in their more individually-oriented achievement goals by the hierarchy of group- oriented Japanese society, Koreans channel this hostility into political action groups, criminal activity, unresolved ambivalence about future purposes, and withdrawal from society and its goals (363). Wagatsuma and De Vos' work with the burakumin (1966) was a forerunner of the Korean study, with many of the same modes used for expressing dissatisfaction. Neary (1987) adds to the complexity of the burakumin issue by documenting the fairly recent nature (Edo period) of regulations imposing a pattern for the treatment of outcastes; when removed in 1871, the group's strong social stigma persisted--as it does to this day in the way official family registers and private information-gathering agencies enable employers and parents of marriageable youth to eliminate members of the burakumin and other minority groups from consideration. The discussion of this segment must conclude with how power is exercised in Japan. Van Wolferen has presented the most systematic and persuasive argument (1989), but the same theme of "power out of focus"--or the way that political arrangements have been crucial in determining the limits on Japanese religious, social, and cultural life and thought--has been addressed by other writers as well. Bayley (1976) hints at this use of power in his study of the police force at a variety of levels throughout Japanese society, as does Upham (1987), Beer (1984) and Buruma (1984). The dilemma, if it is that, might be posed in a way similar to those used by Upham and Smith (1983), that if people are to live together peacefully, they must surrender a certain amount of autonomy and self-interest for their communities to cohere. The kinship, lifecycle, and gender constructions specific to the Japanese may be seen as manipulated in a way to foster maximum social order and malleability at the cost of personal freedom--the United States, on the other hand, has so inflated the value of individual autonomy and independence that it now runs the risk (from a Japanese perspective) of dissolving its communal bonds, especially in urban environments. Future studies on these topics will hopefully guide each respective cultural system to a more amenable stance regarding the interrelationship of the individual to society.

1 Her assertions are challenged by scholars such as Peter Dale (1986) who sees in Nakane a champion of "Japanese uniqueness" because she cites "ideological testaments" from Nihonjinron as if they were empirical descriptions or statistical fieldwork.

2 Men, for example, can not control their impulses, defer gratifications, and are generally irresponsible regarding money, therefore they need women, who lack the strength and perseverance to function in a "man's world", to help them manage their lives.

3 Though used extensively by De Vos and Wagatsuma (among others) I find this term problematic for the normative model it implicitly evokes, yet use it here as an "emic" term drawn from the literature on minorities. --John Nelson, formerly Japan Faculty, UT Austin