Alan Booth seems to speak fluent Japanese, he sticks to his plan, and he writes well about what he sees as he walks two thousanNot quite Sata-sfactory
Alan Booth seems to speak fluent Japanese, he sticks to his plan, and he writes well about what he sees as he walks two thousand miles from the northernmost point of Hokkaido down to the southernmost cape of Kyushu. I liked his descriptions of the land and the towns very much. He has a very English sense of humor which emerges from time to time to make the trip a bit lighter. However, overall I didn’t really like this book a lot and there’s only one reason.
The author had lived in Japan for seven years already when he did this long walk over four months in 1977. He is married to a Japanese as well. So, he must have been aware that outside of Tokyo and maybe a few other cities, foreigners are like hen’s teeth. A lone foreigner would attract constant comment and often unwanted attention, kids would make fun of him, and people would be sure that he could not speak Japanese, sometimes to the point of not understanding when he spoke it fluently enough. The Japanese language, he must have realized, is full of foreign words and expressions—not unlike his own tongue—which are almost always mispronounced and often bear changed meanings. Lone foreigners passing through English villages, especially those of other races, may have their own tales to tell. My wife, from India, certainly has more than a few. A few unlucky Japanese in America have been shot dead, something never heard of in Japan for sure. Ultimately then, it’s quite wearing to be told over and over how he was treated like an “it” instead of a normal person, how Japanese English is quite amusing (to us English-speakers), and how people didn’t “get it” that he was walking the length of Japan. That is part of the gaijin (foreigner) experience in Japan.
Did he understand Japan? Well, I did like the fact that he doubted that anyone can understand it. I agree that you can’t “understand” a whole nation, especially big ones. It’s hard enough to understand your own spouse or your home town! Did he like it? Well, that’s a question each person would have to decide. I admit that there’s a lot of things wrong with America, yet it’s my home and I love it at the same time that I wish it were different. Why couldn’t he be the same about the country he lived in?
I concede that this is an extremely existential book, with little or no history or information on the areas he covered. It’s just a book about a long walk with great descriptions of the land. I was also impressed by the amount of beer or sake the author managed to drink on a very large number of occasions. Though he did note some kindness shown, and it IS interesting to read of bizarre goings on at times, the general tone is Annoyance. I felt that he lacked cultural relativity. What would the experience of a Japanese be, if he or she walked all alone from the top of Scotland down to the end of Cornwall and stayed with people who had almost never encountered a foreigner (if there are any such left in Britain)?
No, folks, maybe it’s just me, but that’s why I got very tired reading yet another incident in which Japanese “let the side down” and irritated a wandering Briton. You can give it a try and see what you think.
A strange, but insightful pioneering effort that is outdated today
I’m giving this work more stars that it might deserve because it was an early effortA strange, but insightful pioneering effort that is outdated today
I’m giving this work more stars that it might deserve because it was an early effort to understand Japan, started perhaps when WW II was still raging, but finished in the aftermath when American forces had occupied Japan and, in 1946, were still trying to understand what the best way to administer the country would be. It had been a terrible war, ending in the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the fire-bombing of Tokyo and other cities. After that, Americans predicted that there would be fierce resistance. It didn’t happen. The acceptance of American occupation contrasted startlingly with the brutality of Japanese forces during the war. Why? We can say that Ruth Benedict, an anthropologist who did not speak Japanese and did not have the opportunity to go to Japan, wrote an amazingly insightful book in such a situation. Whether all her observations were true or if they still hold water today is entirely another subject.
Before WW II, most anthropologists concentrated on far-flung tribes and islanders supposedly little-influenced by outside contacts. They traveled to various remote points in Australia, Africa or the Amazon, the American West, the Andaman Islands, or to small Pacific islands like Tikopia, Dobu, and the Trobriands. Few investigated complex industrial societies or even peasant cultures in Europe, though there were some. That’s why I think you can say that Benedict’s effort was pioneering. Also, in comparison with British anthropologists who tended to look at functional aspects of culture, she, as part of the American tradition, was more interested in the psychological side—for example, how childhood training influenced adult behavior and world view.
After an exploration of Japanese history leading up to the opening of the country to the West in the 1850s, she discusses the “extreme hierarchy” in Japanese society of the time, a hierarchy which she says continued up till the war began. She starts to talk about the Meiji reforms and says “The strength, and the weakness too, of [its] leaders was rooted in traditional Japanese character and it is the chief object of this book to discuss what that character was and is.” (p.79) She discusses Japanese ways of thinking and behaving, starting with such concepts as on, giri, and chu—concepts which you’ll have to read the book to fully grasp. She talks about the importance of recognizing gratitude and repaying it through action. That gratitude started with feelings towards the Emperor. She comments that “the Japanese point of view is that obeying the law is repayment upon their highest indebtedness…” (p.129) and contrasts that with the American resentment at government interference in individual freedom. Do 21st century mask mandates come to mind?
Drastic renunciations, different ideas of revenge, the Japanese view of sincerity and self-respect, and an analysis of the “Chushingura”, an early 18th century tale most popular in Japan up to now, fill out the pages of this still-interesting book. And there is a section on shame cultures vs. guilt cultures which has been endlessly discussed over the years. All in all, it’s a fascinating effort to understand a culture from afar. I think it may be lacking a lot, for instance the idea that Japanese culture was not as monolithic as she may have shown it. Also, being part of the modern world for the last 75 years has certainly changed the society a lot. Nevertheless, as an attempt to create a portrait of a society, it is still noteworthy with the caveats that I have mentioned....more
You may pray to God continuously. Though in the tales my grandfather told me and in the Bible, God spoke, it is Symbolic sins sink soul……….or do they?
You may pray to God continuously. Though in the tales my grandfather told me and in the Bible, God spoke, it is certainly literary license. God is silent and it is we who must answer our own questions. If you do not study yourself, trying to glean knowledge in any way possible, never giving up no matter how old you are, then no answers will ever appear. Almost certainly no answers will ever appear anyway, but we must keep trying because the search is the key. Knowledge is hard won, even through an epiphany. The only answer is that we can never know all and understanding is ephemeral. There is no one correct path, but silent oblivion is for the one who chooses no path but the material world.
Endo writes sympathetically of those Western (Portuguese) priests who came to Japan hoping to convert the nation in the 16th and early 17th centuries. They were not successful and I am not sympathetic to them, though their suffering and that of their converts was terrible. Instead of trying to crush Japanese beliefs in the name of drawing them closer to God (your God), it would have been better to help people with their lives and to open their eyes to the human dilemma in a context that connected to their own beliefs. That, of course, could have been done within Japanese society. What led these courageous priests to sacrifice themselves in the effort to divorce others from their own traditions? I may say it was because they were convinced that their way was the sole proper way. And that is always a mistake, then and now. It is a major human failing. Each religion contains truth, each fails to realize the whole of human experience. Therefore one condemning the other is a useless project. Converts accept a new path with a blaze of faith, but that does not mean that one religion is superior. Perhaps it just means that some new ideas gave relief to someone who had no hope or had lost their way. Most religions, however, follow certain similar paths. We should not be silent in proclaiming this fact. Love and empathy should trump blind faith. So often they have not.
More specifically, this is the story of one of the last Portuguese priests to smuggle himself into Japan with no expectation of ever leaving. Martyrdom was almost inevitable. Apostasy was the price of life. The story, based on real people, is interspersed with some philosophy and a reasoning about the “silence of God” in the face of heartfelt prayers by someone who followed “the correct path”. What happened to this man and why is what you will learn if you read this novel. There are over three thousand reviews on here, so I don't think I can add much more....more
Starting with the origin myths of ancient Japan, Ian Buruma traces patterns of Japanese culture as revealed in popSlashing swords, sob stories and sex
Starting with the origin myths of ancient Japan, Ian Buruma traces patterns of Japanese culture as revealed in popular forms. If those myths, folk tales and stories of old-time samurai heroes are now somewhat passé, if the famous kabuki theatre has congealed into time-worn, but still beloved stories, many patterns of thought, action, and feeling continued up to the 1980s, when this book came out. American anthropologist Ruth Benedict wrote a book called “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword”, published in 1946, which examined far more formal aspects of Japanese cultural behavior and sensibilities. While the tea ceremony, flower arranging, cherry blossom viewing and so on are widely known to be Japanese proclivities, talking about them does not in any way cover the world of Japanese popular culture.
A JAPANESE MIRROR deals especially with the ties between men and women, not only sexually, but in terms of family relations. While men sometimes appear as tough, even murderous samurai or yakuza (gangster) heroes, they also can be portrayed in films, comics, or literature as weaklings, dominated by “demon women” who turn out to be mothers or wives. There’s an entire chapter called “Making Fun of Father” with a very sadistic twist to some of the examples. There is a long chapter about prostitution and attitudes towards it. Unimbued with Western morals and Christian principles, the Japanese pop culture contained much more violence, sadistic torture, and non-heterosexual views of the world than the West did up to very recent times. Males played all the female roles in kabuki from long ago. The famous Takarazuka all-female theater did the opposite. Image is everything, according to Buruma, and form is much more important than content. The most murderous samurai hero or gangster has to have style. The fact that he’s a killer is far less important—that is, unlike most Western pop culture, there are no moral lessons to be learned. If you read this book, you are going to find endless interesting examples from a very different pop culture, which has nevertheless exerted its influence on the Western variety, especially through animé films and manga styles.
Japanese society tends to be far more group-oriented than Western ones. The individual continually bows to social pressure and conforms. Buruma discusses tatemae---the outward form of behavior in which conformity to group positions and group standards is paramount---and contrasts it with honne—the true feelings that one has, but seldom exhibits. Characters who step out of tatemae and living apart from groups, continually give their actual opinions, are often idealized but seldom emulated---from Botchan (Natsume Soseki’s character in a novel by that name), to Tora-san, the unlikely hero of around 50 movies in a film series (Otoko wa Tsurai yo---It’s Hard to Be a Man!)
Buruma, like Ruth Benedict, discusses some of the Japanese cultural concepts that underlie a lot of behavior….on, giri, wa, and so forth…concepts not much favored in more individualistic societies. Many people, both Japanese and foreigners, pronounce Japan’s culture, and so, Japanese people, to be unique, unfathomable by outsiders. I would not agree at all. Of course, to understand another culture takes time, it takes effort, but in all cases it can be done. We are all human beings. Kekkyoku no tokoro ne, watakushi-tachi wa minna ningen da. There are no separate species!
Back around fifty years ago (1972), a Japanese journalist worked six months for Toyota to find out what life was like in oneThe robotic life revealed
Back around fifty years ago (1972), a Japanese journalist worked six months for Toyota to find out what life was like in one of those giant plants churning out thousands of cars. This is his report. Like Dennis Smith’s “Report from Engine Company 82”, this book provides a vivid picture of a life nobody knows who hasn’t actually participated in it. Automobile factory workers are not, after all, cowboys, top executives at snazzy companies, politicians, or astronauts. All of us meet teachers and shopkeepers in our lives. We almost never meet auto workers unless we live in those few cities where they work. We don’t see them at the movies either. Novels focus on detectives or soldiers. We hop into our cars, drive to the supermarket and seldom, if ever, think about the people who put our convenient machines together. Well, it turns out that at least in Japan (I drive a Toyota) life was not a bowl of cherries for the guys on the assembly line. It was more like hell. Dropout rates were extremely high. Accidents occurred often, involving injury or death. Japanese culture, which emphasizes group behavior and not rocking the boat, led to acceptance of conditions that similar auto workers in the US or Britain would not have put up with.
Single auto workers (they were all men) lived in shabby dorms with bad food. Privacy received little regard. Guards prevented easy visits by anyone, no women were allowed in, and mandatory overtime work was almost a daily occurrence, though it was paid. Weekend days off could be cancelled as well. Individualism, never well-accepted in Japan, was frowned on. The hours were long and working conditions brutal. It took the author a couple of months to be able to keep up with the assembly line production. He writes of his exhaustion and his mental depression—problems he shared with his workmates. Meetings full of exhortations filled up more of his time, the nominal labor union was hand in glove with management and did zip for the actual members. Even today, robots have not replaced many of the workers at Toyota, though Japan is the world leader in producing industrial robots.
Yet, in his fascinating, well-written, day-by-day account of his time at Toyota, Kamata decries the conditions suffered by the thousands of workers at the same time as he himself becomes a model worker. When he’s leaving, his superiors implore him to stay. The picture is blurred then. If Western auto workers might have become alienated, the Japanese didn’t. There was little or no sign of open hostility or aggression. The Japanese workers conformed to the culture of a factory that treated them like disposable parts. Maybe that’s why the Japanese title of this book was “Automobile Factory of Despair”. It’s a fascinating, easily-read study of a life far away from most of ours.
Back in the 1960s and early `70s, Carmen Blacker conducted an intensive study of Japanese shamans and their practices. At that tFine for Folklore Fans
Back in the 1960s and early `70s, Carmen Blacker conducted an intensive study of Japanese shamans and their practices. At that time, they had already grown scarce and were limited to remoter parts of Japan. No matter what the situation today is (I have no idea but I suspect a decline), the details of their beliefs, their world view, and their activities are preserved for us in THE CATALPA BOW. The sacred beings which contact or speak through the shamans, the spirit animals--especially foxes--, and the methods of `crossing over' to the sacred realm to contact various spirits are detailed here. The author spends considerable time describing the need for asceticism to get shamanistic power and what kind of ascetic practices are used---for example, fasting, pouring thousands of buckets of cold water over oneself or standing under waterfalls, going on pilgrimages or alternately, living the life of a hermit with extremely limited diet. Oracles and exorcism form the topics of other chapters. It is all in amazingly great detail with numbers of personal interviews with various shamans, men and women, and even with Blacker's personal experiences included. Certain sections are thus very readable and full of interest. The overall effect that Blacker achieves is also very worthy, that is, she leaves the common, but inaccurate division of Japanese religion into "Buddhist" and "Shinto" behind and even briefly places the new religions in her framework. Too bad she didn't do more of this. However, I don't think I can refer to this book as "anthropology", rather it is a `folklore' study because there is virtually no reference to the work of any other anthropologist, while she relied heavily on the work of Japanese folklorists. Shamanism or shamanistic practices are found throughout the world, but little reference is made to studies of such. Without anthropology and its wider gaze, this book becomes too detailed for anyone not intent on knowing the full panoply of Japanese shamanism. Nobody could possibly remember the huge wealth of names and terms that pepper the text, but for students of the subject I would guess that THE CATALPA BOW would be indispensable and certainly a five star book. Some fairly good black and white photographs are included....more
When Japan began to modernize around 1870, it was, in most ways, no different from many countries in Asia or Africa. TReforms seen from the bottom up
When Japan began to modernize around 1870, it was, in most ways, no different from many countries in Asia or Africa. The two things that might be said to have distinguished it then were 1) a higher level of literacy and 2) an extremely well-organized society held together with a wide variety of local ties which merged with broader ones. The story of Japanese industrialization and military ambition is too well-known to go into here, plus that story is not the theme of this book. However, the end result of that century of history (if 1955-1975 may be considered “the end”) really is the main topic of SHINOHATA, published in 1978 as one of the last of Pantheon’s series on villages of the world.
Dore wished to study what effect the land reforms of the American occupation had had on rural society. He went to this mountain village in 1955 and carried out a very detailed examination of family relationships, land ownership, housing, sources of income, education, mechanization, and village organization (among other things). He followed this up with visits in the 1970s to see how things had changed. They had changed immensely, but Shinohata still functioned as a village. He made many friends there and was obviously liked in the village. To read a dense, but well-written study of a Japanese village of that era, you ought to turn to SHINOHATA. You will learn of rice growing, silk production, their forestry projects, and how the pull of the cities affects the village. You will meet (at least briefly) a number of the village characters and hear about some of the quarrels and odd things they got up to. You find out about the endless gift giving, saké parties, marriage and funeral arrangements and a hundred other interesting details. He looks at both men and women, he interviews the poor and the rich, the oyabun and kobun (“those obliging and those with obligations”). Each of that Pantheon series has its own style. Dore’s style is mostly straight-out sociological, but with a large number of Japanese voices illustrating various points he wishes to make. It also provides some British humor which makes for more enjoyable reading. Overall, you will get the flavor of a Japanese village of those times. Though the village was much better off materially, some of the cohesiveness and social life had gone.
If anthropology is more an art than a science, that is because it relies so much on interpretation. Interpretation will always be subjective. Dore hoped to be as objective as possible, that is why he delved into history from Tokugawa times; that is why he perhaps decided to insert a heavier load of statistics and hard facts than found in some other books in this series. Those interested in Japan should definitely include this book on their reading list, but be aware that it is not quite bedtime reading....more
When we were in high school, we learned that Admiral Perry “opened” Japan in 1853 and Japan began to change rapidly as they feared soJapan Goes Dutch
When we were in high school, we learned that Admiral Perry “opened” Japan in 1853 and Japan began to change rapidly as they feared some powerful nation of the world might try to take over. When I studied Japanese history in college, I did read about the 1639 banning of contacts and trade with foreigners, especially the Catholic nations of Portugal and Spain due to their scary success---from the Japanese rulers’ point of view---in converting ordinary people to Catholicism. Japan became a closed country. No one could leave and return. No one could visit. This long period was called “sakoku jidai” or “the closed country era”. Outside trade was limited to China, and on one extremely tiny island in Nagasaki harbor (Deshima) with Holland. This situation lasted till the 19th century. The Dutch traded with the Japanese and once a year sent a few emissaries to pay homage to the shogun’s government in Edo (Tokyo). If you have an average history background, you will probably have gleaned this knowledge somewhere along the way.
However, what you will learn through this volume is the extent to which Japanese curiosity about the rest of the world led numerous scholars, doctors, political figures, and proto-scientists to gravitate to that tiny island in Nagasaki harbor over the 18th and early 19th centuries. You will read about what they wanted to know, how they managed to communicate with the Dutch, what kind of Dutch people could be found at Deshima, what influence their newly-acquired knowledge played in Japan, and how they digested or didn’t digest the knowledge they received. Navigation, ship-building, medicine, and geography are only a few of the subjects the Japanese found useful. There are also sections on relations with Russia at the time because unlike the western nations who approached Japan by sea, Russian expansionism came across Siberia and had begun to infiltrate Kamchatka, the Kuril islands, Sakhalin and even Hokkaido. In those days, Japanese sovereignty over Hokkaido and the other northern areas was anything but sure. They thought these areas mentioned should be part of Japan as well, but had hardly any presence there. There are some interesting short biographies of two figures of the time, Honda Toshiaki and Mamiya Rinzō. Both were connected to the spread of European knowledge during Tokugawa times, and both had something to do with the exploration of the northern lands beyond Honshu. They represent to us the broader desire of many Japanese to either open Japan to the world or at least to open it to new ideas and technologies. The choice of these two men is apt because the different attitudes of Japan towards the West in later years is already reflected in them. Honda wanted contacts and was open to any new ideas, feeling that Japan had a lot to learn, while Mamiya comes across as a super-patriot absolutely sure that Japan was superior to any other country. He wanted to take technology, but nothing else. An appendix contains a longer excerpt from the writings of Honda Toshiaki. In summary, this is a well-written, jargon-free story of an interesting period in Japanese history which introduces little-known people and events. The way in which the Dutch language and Dutch takes on general Western culture influenced Japan before its formal opening is a fascinating story. If it was only a molehill compared to the mountain that grew after 1853, the book shows that Japanese already knew something about the West and Perry would have been seen as a great chance for many who wished to know more....more
Noguchi Hideyo who died of yellow fever in Accra (then Gold Coast) in 1928 was an eccentric genius who worked in bacteriolEver try to swallow a brick?
Noguchi Hideyo who died of yellow fever in Accra (then Gold Coast) in 1928 was an eccentric genius who worked in bacteriology. Born in an extremely poor family in Japan in 1876, he managed to get a medical education and go to America to work in Philadelphia and New York laboratories. Eventually he made important discoveries about syphilis and leprosy, aided many countries in Central and South America to fight various diseases but got involved in some heavy inquiries as to the ethics of his research methods. You could find out all this and more by reading a Wikipedia article on him and I strongly advise you to do so. This is one of the worst-written books it has been my bad luck to run across. I bought it at a university library sale in the early 1960s and unknowingly kept it over half a century only to have it turn out to be a total clunker. I have never before found a biography written in the present tense! That and the strange manner of innumerable sentences that seem to have been written by someone with only a glancing familiarity with the English language (didn’t they have editors back in 1931?) really put me off. I had never heard of Dr. Noguchi before and after 100 pages I still had no idea why a book had been written about him. The author was no doubt a renowned psychologist in Cincinnati, but his ability to transmit interesting information about Japan or scientists must be questioned. If I persevered it was only worthwhile because I can tell you---don’t read this book! ...more
After Admiral Perry “opened” Japan in 1853-54, Japan went through a rapid transformation. The Japanese,The righteous and the rogues of the Rokumeikan
After Admiral Perry “opened” Japan in 1853-54, Japan went through a rapid transformation. The Japanese, isolated for over two centuries, hungered (or at least many did) for the new, the industrial, the powerful, the scientific. Japan changed in an historically extremely short time; between 1860 and 1905, she had built up such an industrial and military base as to be able to defeat Russia and join the colonizing nations instead of the colonized. [I wonder if we can call this “progress”, but that was the trend of history.] Westerners represented to Japanese all that was progressive, all that was modern and new. Deserving or not, Japanese listened to them, even aped them before there was a backlash. The old culture, the old ways, and the formerly respected arts all bit the dust while Western styles and technology captured most of the elite, mainly in the big cities. There was a sumptuous center built in Tokyo with a ballroom, with French chefs for the dining room, and games-room for suitably attired gentlemen. This building, called the Rokumeikan, symbolizes the period for many writers and has given its name to the whole age of Japan’s transformation. It was built at government expense for the express purpose of “proper communication with foreigners”.
Although the title of the present book refers to the English translation of “Rokumeikan”, the contents are far more varied and interesting than just a zeroing in on a single pleasure palace. Ms. Barr fills her work with tales of many of the variety of Westerners who came and ultimately wrote about Japan---Pierre Loti (a romantic cad), Isabella Bird (doughty English lady traveler in the Japanese “outback”), John Batchelor (missionary to the Ainu), Lafcadio Hearn (Irish-Greek writer of ghost stories and travels who even changed his name to a Japanese one), William Griffs (a schoolteacher from New Jersey), and J.H. Snow (sea otter hunter off the Kuriles and Hokkaido). Missionaries and medicos, travelers and tramps are all described with ironic humor that keeps you reading what Barr has chosen, from dozens of narratives available, to put in her well-written book. You will not read this to learn about the Japanese; it is rather a book about the Westerners who worked, traveled or just hung about in Japan. The last section presents the views of Frederick Villiers, a war correspondent to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, especially the siege of Port Arthur, and of a Russian sailor who survived the disastrous (for Russia) Battle of Tsushima Straits when the whole Russian fleet was destroyed by the victorious Japanese. It’s all very fascinating. One wonders if the mix of Westerners had been different, if Japan’s trajectory might have been different too. They were certainly a motley crew. ...more
Walter Weston came to Japan in 1888 to serve as an Anglican missionary. Whether he saved any souls, I don’t know, but becauseOf Mountains But Not Men
Walter Weston came to Japan in 1888 to serve as an Anglican missionary. Whether he saved any souls, I don’t know, but because from early in his life he was a very keen alpinist or mountaineer, climbing in the Alps etc, he became one of the founders of the sport in that country, helping to popularize the name “Japanese Alps” and writing several books on Japanese mountains. Though he alternated his total of 15 years of Japanese service with postings in England, he seems to have loved Japan and wrote of it with considerable empathy. However, as he was a missionary, he must have thought “they needed changing” because he wrote that he “tried to understand the soul of an undeveloped people”. Well, what does that sound like to you? Nevertheless, despite my 21st century feeling that such attempts are wrong, you can read this book which starts off as a commentary on Japan in the mid-1920s and then becomes a travelogue, describing Nagasaki, remote villages, valleys, and mountains in Kyushu and parts of Honshu south of Tokyo. He ends with graphic descriptions of the disastrous 1923 earthquake in Tokyo-Yokohama which pretty much destroyed both cities. Obviously you will read this as a description of Japan some 90 years ago or more when old customs and pre-WW II conditions still prevailed in the countryside. Though his loving sentences about waterfalls, groves of giant trees, and quaint villages may make you sigh and wish you could have seen them, there is very little of the Japanese people. Just occasional, often humorous mentions. He skips over larger cities where Western influences had already been brought in by the Japanese, eager to modernize and he does not deal with such popular tourist venues as Kyoto or Nara. At that time Japan was still 60% agricultural and the most important export was silk. He did not foresee the rise of the military which would set off the invasion of China and WW II in Asia. In fact, he wrote that the inferior training and physical condition of the Japanese Navy meant that they would long be below the British standard. Sixteen years later (1941)----oops! So, fellow readers, you won’t peruse AWUJ because you’d like to get an accurate report about politics or society in that time, but rather as a partial description of the Japanese backblocks back before TV, the Internet, and a much more tightly-knit world. If that’s your great love, then you may disagree with two stars, but I think they’re sufficient. ...more
Lafcadio Hearn lived a kind of loose cannonball life, but both interesting and productive. Born half Greek on an Awed analysis by infatuated foreigner
Lafcadio Hearn lived a kind of loose cannonball life, but both interesting and productive. Born half Greek on an Ionian island to a British military doctor and local woman, he grew up there, in Ireland, England, and France with little or no home life. Deserted by his parents and ultimately by all his relatives, he was sent to America where he struggled to survive but eventually became a newspaperman in Cincinnati. He married an African-American woman for a couple of years, but they separated. He then worked ten years in New Orleans and reported from Martinique for a couple of years as well. He translated works of Zola, Maupassant, and Flaubert into English. Sent to Japan as a correspondent, he fell in love with the country, became a Buddhist, married a Japanese, changed his name and became a citizen. He taught English in the provinces, but eventually wound up a professor at Tokyo Imperial University, dying of a heart attack at age 54 in 1904 after 14 years in Japan. If I were you, I’d read any of his interesting writings on all these places where he lived or his collections of ghost stories and other tales. I probably wouldn’t read this particular volume. The reason I say this is that Japan basically flummoxed him. Westerners had scarcely begun to delve into Japanese history or culture. Anthropology was quite new and had nothing written on Japan yet. I found this book in the tone of “Wow! These people are so strange and different. You will never understand them, no matter what. You may love the place, but it will remain outside your ken.” In 2019, I don’t think this is a plausible direction. If you learn the language, if you come to know the culture and history, if you live among them, you may understand quite well. On the other hand, I don’t believe anyone can totally understand any large country, nor even small societies. It’s a question of your personality and your personal history as to how you perceive what surrounds you. So, the intoning and constant comparisons with Greece, the defense of Japan as a “great civilization worthy of respect and study” are very much out of date. You may grow tired quickly of such stuff. However, the man himself deserves to be remembered as one who did not look down on the Japanese, who did not want to convert them to Christianity, and tried to explain their ways to the West....more
Turmoil reigned in early 17th century Japan. The emperors had long since been relegated to political ciphers who led cultured lives inYume no ukihashi
Turmoil reigned in early 17th century Japan. The emperors had long since been relegated to political ciphers who led cultured lives in Kyoto, but could not effect much outside the palace grounds. The lives of the court, the nobles and a few samurai families who had intermarried with them were suffused with poetry, literature, music, and romance. Outside raged civil war and murder. In this atmosphere a young imperial concubine got involved in a sex and wild behavior scandal, angering the emperor no end. She was banished with others to a remote island, didn’t arrive there due to a shipwreck, and subsequently passed 14 years in a rural hamlet where she is still remembered. Pardoned in 1623 by a new emperor, in her early thirties, she returned to Kyoto, but wound up in a Buddhist convent where she ultimately became the abbess and died aged eighty, in 1671.
The actual knowledge of this erstwhile concubine, Nakanoin Nakako, is slight. Women were not often mentioned in historical records. The reason you might read this book is that it provides an in-depth look at the wider society of Japanese nobles and rulers at the time, covering many families and individuals with Nakako at the center. The rich data obtained through what must have been extremely difficult research impressed me no end. You’ll have to have patience to wade through a sea of Japanese names and complex family ties. But, if you persevere, you’ll become absorbed in this tale of family origins, shenanigans, imperial displeasure, exile, and expiation during the time when the Tokugawa clan was taking over Japan. Some illustrations, photos, and good maps will help you along the way. Nakako emerges from the fog of the past, only to disappear again over the floating bridge of dreams [yume no ukihashi]....more
Back in the 1970s, the author of this short, descriptive study lived with a Japanese family in a villaa Japanese farm community on the cusp of change
Back in the 1970s, the author of this short, descriptive study lived with a Japanese family in a village in Ehime-ken, on the island of Shikoku. She had her troubles adjusting to the restrictions and expectations of Japanese villagers, especially her host family, but she wound up fitting in. She was able to carry out the research that she wanted as well as learning how to behave in a more Japanese way. The individualistic Westerner had to put family and local society above her personal desires. Focused primarily on the Utsunomiya family—married couple, two children, and grandmother—she describes daily life for the family, more especially Haruko, the wife. Raised to be a farm wife like all the women of the hamlet where they live, Haruko harbors dreams of a more middle class, urban life, but cannot rise beyond work in the rice fields, caring for pigs, and occasional part time work in local factories or orchards. Her husband is more socially and politically active, taking him away from farm work, which remains a sore point for Haruko. They hope to educate their children so that they will not depend on agriculture. Haruko learns to operate new farm equipment that is coming in along with rectification of land holdings so that each family’s land is in one larger parcel instead of many small ones in separate locations. We learn about the family’s social life [that takes place separately, not as a couple], about women’s clubs, about politics, and about the local patterns of drinking and sex. The author provides useful comparisons with other women because Haruko is something of an extrovert and hardly typical of Japanese farm women in general. In the 1970s, Japanese agriculture was changing rapidly. New techniques, new crops, and new methods of earning a living were becoming available. Things were not going to remain the same. Young people left for the cities more often than not. Still, traditional expectations of female behavior, related to Japanese concepts like “giri” and “on”, remained prominent. All in all this is an interesting book, if somewhat dated today. As I’ve said before, all anthropology turns into social history and this work is no exception. The author returned to the village only 7 years later and found that circumstances had already changed. Haruko’s husband was campaigning for town chief, the family’s economic situation had improved, though the election was costing an arm and a leg. In 2019, we can only guess at what that village looks like today. If you are interested in how Japan has changed over time, get ahold of this book. ...more
“nobody wants to know ya when you’re down and out”
Japan is often presented as perhaps the most monolithic society in the world and perhaps Japan prese“nobody wants to know ya when you’re down and out”
Japan is often presented as perhaps the most monolithic society in the world and perhaps Japan presents itself that way too. But it really isn’t. Various journalists, historians and anthropologists have pointed that out over the years, so I’m hardly the first to say so. There are various ethnic minorities, there are the famed burakumin---something akin to India’s Untouchables---and there are other social and economic groups that don’t fit the “salaryman”, middle class picture so often given. In this brilliantly done work, Fowler describes life in a small area of Tokyo inhabited by large numbers of transient or rootless workers who form a labor pool exploited by contractors who want temporary help paid by the day. Alcoholism is rife, conditions (compared to the rest of Japanese society) are tough, and the usual politesse and reserve are absent. These Japanese are more individualistic and more insecure, perhaps the modern version of poor ronin---those outside social norms. After a rocky start, Fowler, fluent in Japanese, was able to penetrate this down-at-heel worker’s society, shunned by the rest of Tokyo. He lived in the tiny rooms, he ate at local ‘greasy chopsticks’ and drank in the local dives, talking with everybody and anybody who would chat. He came to know San’ya as perhaps no other Westerner ever has. He depicts this world via numerous conversations he had with men from all over Japan, through descriptions of his life as he moved in and out of the area over several years, and through descriptions of how he actually worked on construction labor gangs for a short time one summer. For me this is anthropology at its best. If you want a web of complex theories, shot through with jargon adapted from vaguely similar French sociological terms, forget this book. If you want to know what it was like back in 1989-1991, when Fowler was there, if you want a fantastically rich description of a part of Japan seldom seen or heard from, this is your book. Fowler not only studied the community, he became a part of it as much as he could. The resulting work brings to mind Oscar Lewis’ work on Mexico---if shorter---to Laurence Wylie’s “Village in the Vaucluse”, “Akenfield” by Ronald Blythe or Elizabeth Warnock Fernea’s “A Street in Marrakech”. The style is somewhat different, but the effect is the same. Fowler creates a portrait of a time and place that is not easily forgotten. ...more
Not so far from my house here in Massachusetts, there is a long, sandy beach. A lone pine stands guard by the small dunes near the enthumans are crazy
Not so far from my house here in Massachusetts, there is a long, sandy beach. A lone pine stands guard by the small dunes near the entrance. On a windy day, you can hear the wind singing in that tree as you look out over a group of rocks that sleep like turtles at the waterline. The cold sand strewn with clam shells and the often-gray skies stretching to the horizon can take your mind flying to the past or the future. How can I imagine the pointless violence of a Japanese samurai army that set off to conquer China and even India because of the wild hubris of a Japanese military strongman? Korea wasn't even their main goal; they only wanted to pass through on their way to "conquer Ming China". Back in 1592, a huge Japanese army suddenly landed near Pusan, the southernmost port of Korea, which had been at peace for two centuries. The Japanese had been involved in civil wars for several centuries and so were supremely ready to fight. The Koreans not only were unprepared, but they argued and refused to cooperate among themselves. Some of their top generals simply ran away. In a blitzkrieg, and with the use of arquebuses (better than the Korean weapons), the Japanese reached the Yalu River in the space of a few months, but supply problems, the Korean guerrillas that sprang up, and the appearance of a huge (if inept) Chinese army come to help the Koreans, turned them back. Only the famous Korean Admiral Yi Sun-sin kept his head and inflicted several major defeats on the Japanese at sea, causing those supply problems later. The Japanese had to retreat to the southern coast where they built a chain of forts and hung on for 6 years. In 1598 it all started up again. Several more huge battles and though the Japanese won most of them, the military strongman (Toyotomi Hideyoshi) died back home and the whole idea collapsed. What was the idea? Well, as I walk along that beach, I can't perceive any idea at all. The Japanese killed hundreds of thousands of people, sent innumerable baskets of salted human noses back to Kyoto, looted, raped and burned most of Korea, and created the conditions under which starvation and disease killed a huge number more. Were they the only ones who ever did this? I despair. We are crazy monkeys. If, however, you are interested in military history or the history of East Asia, this book is a must. It is filled with illustrations, excellent maps, and a very readable text. It is the first book in English that I have ever seen that covers the topic of these tragic events which definitely affected Korean and Chinese history for centuries afterwards. The author does not take a side, does not cast any blame. (Though one must say that the Koreans were hardly to blame for all this.) I can't imagine a better book on a subject about which I knew nearly nothing before. So, while I still feel that the human race hardly learns anything from history, maybe as individuals, we can. Reading this book is one way. ...more
Sometimes the way things repeat themselves is uncanny. Just as the American literature of the early 20th century"The Vanishing Ainu" are still there !
Sometimes the way things repeat themselves is uncanny. Just as the American literature of the early 20th century reflected the idea that the Native Americans would soon vanish, and writers in Australia and New Zealand pontificated on similar lines on their aboriginal neighbors, so in Japan, the aboriginal Ainu have long since been labelled "mysterious, but vanishing". To tell the truth, I thought they had already gone by the 1980s. I was wrong. Here is an autobiography, written by Kayano Shigeru, an Ainu of around 60 when he originally wrote, that informs us that the Ainu are far from gone. Kayano is personally responsible for building up a collection of Ainu artifacts, for preserving a great number of `yukar' or epic poems, for writing an Ainu-Japanese dictionary, for helping establish Ainu language primary schools in Hokkaido, and working in the political sphere to improve the lot of Japan's only aboriginal people. This memoir tells in very simple, matter-of-fact style about his early years of grinding poverty, the hardships suffered by all his fellow villagers, about being a draft laborer, about life hunting, fishing, and logging in the deep forests of Japan's northernmost island. Kayano's life is not specifically "Ainu", it is life in a mixed world of changing conditions. Japanese, Ainu, and even Western cultural strands mingle, but the author never tries to separate them. Whatever Ainu people of his generation faced, that, for him, is Ainu life. This is very effective in a way, though foreigners without much knowledge of Japan will be hard-pressed to figure out what is unique here. Kayano tells a straightforward tale, but natural reticence and perhaps lack of higher education mean that he does not delve much into psychology, he seldom develops other characters. A few sentences at most suffice. He often reports events with little comment. His feeling for his land and for his people's condition come straight from the heart, though. Nobody can remain unmoved by that.
OUR LAND WAS A FOREST reminds me very much of Native American memoirs, though in this case there is no attempt whatsoever to play up "mystical" aspects or try to be a "wise, traditional guru". The Ainu experience has been close to that of other aboriginal peoples from Siberia to Sydney, from Boston to Buenos Aires. The harmony of their life in nature was disrupted by the coming of greater numbers of more organized, materialistic peoples. The book is easily read and contains a number of useful black and white photographs. If you need much background knowledge on the Ainu, this might not be the place to begin, but if you are looking for an interesting book on a little heard-from people, choose this one....more
Holt, Rinehart and Winston published this huge series of ethnographies over at least 15 years, betweenInteresting data squeezed into a well-worn frame
Holt, Rinehart and Winston published this huge series of ethnographies over at least 15 years, between 1960 and 1975, perhaps later. They are ideal for students who want to get a basic idea of a particular group of people or for first-year students who need to get a feel for what ethnography is (or was). This book on the Ainu of a small region of Sakhalin island covers the same territory as the others---economic activities, daily life, the life cycle of an individual, kinship and marriage, the community, social rank, and finally, beliefs, rituals and world view (i.e. religion). Everything is presented in more or less severe description, with little chance for either anthropologist or the studied people to speak out. It is anthropology in a rather dry mode and certainly without much reference to any sort of theory whatsoever. I have used a number of books in this series. They are very good for what they are----just don't have very high hopes about what you will get. Other good ones I can recommend are Barnett's study of the Palauans, Friedl's study of a Greek village, and Beals' study of a South Indian village. They are out of date, but still useful for making students aware of what anthropology is (or used to be) about. The Ainu of the northwest coast of southern Sakhalin all left their homeland after the war and fled to Japan to avoid the Russian army. Thus, Ohnuki-Tierney's book is definitely a work of preservation, recording the ways of a culture that no longer exists. She approaches the people sympathetically, giving us a clear picture of their life style, without really revealing anyone's life. She also deals very well with the Ainu as a people, brushing aside all the mysticism and romantic nonsense once spread about "the lost Caucasian race of hairy Ainu" etc. I learned a lot about the possible origins of the Ainu as well as their relationship with the Chinese and Japanese in previous centuries. If a reader combines this book with Kayano Shigeru's "Our Land Was a Forest", a good picture of Ainu life in the 20th century can be acquired. I recommend this book with the caveat that it represents an earlier style of anthropology that is no longer in fashion. It can be useful nevertheless....more
It makes you feel so smart to read books that ask questions that you can answer. This happens most often when you pick up booLand of the rising gun ?
It makes you feel so smart to read books that ask questions that you can answer. This happens most often when you pick up books like this one, over 40 years old, a volume that raises rather shrill warnings about increased militarism in Japan and its connections to business, politics, and the gangster world. With hindsight, you can smile very authoritatively and say, "Oh, well, he was way off the mark there !" Not so easy to do with such journalistic quickies that are still being turned out today, yet be sure that a lot of them will not turn out to be any more prophetic than Axelbank's BLACK STAR OVER JAPAN, written (in a hurry) in 1971. While Japanese expenditure on the Self-Defense Forces did rise precipitously back then, Japan has not developed nuclear weapons, it has not become a menacing power, it recognized and invested heavily in China, it definitely has not tried to invade Taiwan ( !) and it was only just in 2004, under great pressure from Uncle Sam, deploying the first few Japanese soldiers overseas. Of course, the Soviet Union and communism have long ceased to be the threat they once were. China still figures to be Japan's chief rival---North Korea at the moment being the main threat if any. Nobody could fault Axelbank for not foreseeing the end of the Cold War. But, he seems to have combed Japan for facts and figures that would prove the rightist danger, overlooking Japan's deep conservatism and tendency towards conformity, consensus and precedent. He mentions but casts aside this extremely important aspect of Japanese culture, giving more weight to extremism and leadership of a generation that died out by the mid-80s. He spends several chapters telling about Japan's Communists, about radical students (remember the Zengakuren ?), about relations with Russia, China, and Taiwan, and in general blowing up the threat of rightist militarism far more than was necessary. The Japanese right wing was resurgent then, but breathless warnings turn out to have been overwrought. In short, this is a journalistic book dashed off in a hurry. It shows. Nobody needs to read this book in 2018 unless they are interested in what alarmists were thinking about Japan back in the early `70s....more
For many years, Japan's hardworking salarymen (men working in middle and large size companies engaged in various businesses)Massage Parlors of the Ego
For many years, Japan's hardworking salarymen (men working in middle and large size companies engaged in various businesses) have repaired to special clubs after hours to drink and be entertained by women of a demi-monde. Geishas worked in this way in their day, but now, the traditional aspects of Japanese culture that were personified in the geisha are outmoded. The salarymen want ( or at least get) a more modern style woman. What goes on in such clubs ? What is the relationship of businesses to the clubs ? How do such clubs fit into the overall picture of Japanese culture ? Anne Allison became a hostess in one club for some months back in the 1980s. She didn't hide the fact that she was an anthropologist, but was accepted as a hostess anyway. The result is this most interesting and well-written book which answers all three questions very ably. Not only is the description of the research engrossing, but the author contests or agrees with the views of various Japanese sociologists very capably. It is a very good idea to discuss what Japanese intellectuals think about hostess clubs, though most such people disparaged her research plan and thought that she would learn nothing. People like myself, who have not read such Japanese academics as Aida, Tada, Minami, Nakane, Ishikawa, Wagatsuma, or Yoda, but are interested in their arguments, will find the subsequent discussion most fascinating. Allison also weaves in some arguments from such theoreticians as Barthes and Lacan, but does not engage in the jargon which makes their work so difficult to digest. Hostess clubs, while seeming an innocuous, if titillating part of Japanese culture, turn out to be a nexus where attitudes and expectations about work, play, sex, gender roles, identity and money come together. The ethnographic descriptions of behavior and conversations in the club make fascinating reading. By making `play' an extension of `work', by cutting the salarymen off from family life, the companies, she says, are able to maximize the work they get from their employees. She challenges the naturalness of working late at night by `playing' at a club, though Japanese sociologists claim that it IS natural because Japanese think of themselves as forever part of groups, especially the work group. Paying hundreds or thousands of dollars for short periods of drinking and mostly insubstantial chat with hostesses, Japanese companies believe that their business deals are enhanced and that human relations among bosses and workers are improved. Allison argues that in addition hostess clubs function as a place where men's egos (but nothing else) are massaged by the attentive, flattering behavior of the hostesses. She explores the relationship of Japanese salarymen with mothers and wives and concludes that "whatever men say they need, think they're doing, and justify as necessary `for work' in the demi-monde is effected symbolically and ritualistically through women and the sexuality they represent"; the sexuality they almost never exercise in fact.
Like Edward Fowler's "San'ya Blues", this is an ethnography of modern Japan, far removed from Embree's "Suye Mura" or Beardsley, Hall and Ward's "Village Japan"---the ethnographies of yesteryear. If you are teaching a course on Japanese culture or society, if you're a graduate student in Japanese studies, or if you are interested in gender and role formation in any society, this book is a must, so well-organized and clearly-written....more
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