The Chrysanthemum and the Sword

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN, $3.00

MRS. BENEDICT’S study of Japanese culture is brilliant, provocative, irritating, and highly readable. The brilliance lies primarily in her method, an application of a kind of anthropological analysis to everyday Japanese life. She is at her best in describing the way in which a Japanese child gradually learns the patterns of Japanese culture, particularly the patterns of self-discipline, of hierarchy, and of obligations to parents, to friends, to the state, and to the Emperor. She is amazingly successful in exposing — and, we trust, in forestalling — certain possibilities of conflict between the Japanese and our occupation forces, and she strikes some telling blows against the American provincialism which has been so conspicuous in the behavior of our troops abroad.

Thanks to her skill in narration, certain pages, notably those on the Japanese belief that their idealism would give them military victory over American materialism, and those on the distinction between the “shame” culture of the Japanese and the “guilt” culture of America, have an exciting march and sweep to them. She gives a convincing analysis of why Japanese prisoners freely revealed military secrets, and there is an interesting discussion of the Emperor as South Seas “Sacred Chief.”

The Chrysanthemum and the Sword is, however, an irritating work because of many unnecessary and careless errors in minor details of history and linguistics. These will probably provide happy hunting for the experts whose special provinces she has invaded. A more serious weakness is that she discusses Japanese ethics without much reference to the Japanese economy. Surely the elaborate system of obligations within a fairly large group which she describes so well is in part a protection against the ever present menace of disaster from famine, fire, and earthquakes. There is a certain inflexibility in Mrs. Benedict’s concept of patterns of culture; perhaps more allowance could have been made for factors which are gradually changing the Japanese way of life, such as industrialization.

In spite of its limitations, this is a significant pioneer work on the everyday matters which cause friction between cultures. At times it gives the reader the exhilarating sensation of standing as a dispassionate observer outside both his own culture and that of the Japanese. A similar work on Russia, written with a better knowledge of history and a more critical approach to the materials, might conceivably be a major factor in preventing a third world war.

JOHN ASUMKAU, JU.