This document discusses the challenges Western scholars have faced in understanding Japanese concepts of selfhood due to using dichotomous frameworks that contrast Western and non-Western societies. It notes that Western thinking emphasizes individuals as independent and rational actors, while viewing non-Western societies as prioritizing emotion, relationships and collective conformity over individual autonomy. However, these dichotomies fail to fully capture more complex non-Western notions of self. The document examines how early 20th century studies of Japanese culture projected these dichotomous views and struggled to understand Japanese society outside this framework.
This document discusses the challenges Western scholars have faced in understanding Japanese concepts of selfhood due to using dichotomous frameworks that contrast Western and non-Western societies. It notes that Western thinking emphasizes individuals as independent and rational actors, while viewing non-Western societies as prioritizing emotion, relationships and collective conformity over individual autonomy. However, these dichotomies fail to fully capture more complex non-Western notions of self. The document examines how early 20th century studies of Japanese culture projected these dichotomous views and struggled to understand Japanese society outside this framework.
This document discusses the challenges Western scholars have faced in understanding Japanese concepts of selfhood due to using dichotomous frameworks that contrast Western and non-Western societies. It notes that Western thinking emphasizes individuals as independent and rational actors, while viewing non-Western societies as prioritizing emotion, relationships and collective conformity over individual autonomy. However, these dichotomies fail to fully capture more complex non-Western notions of self. The document examines how early 20th century studies of Japanese culture projected these dichotomous views and struggled to understand Japanese society outside this framework.
10 Indeed, Kasulis's approach allows r o o m for the role of
ideology in shaping selfhood, permitting us t o perceive that many of the dii- fcrences in kinds of selves lic largely in the rotes o r functions (social, politi- cal, psychological, exbortatoq, constraining, etc.) ascribed t o the self by the society in question, I n the introduction t o her anrhotvgy Jdpanese Sense a f S e y , Nltncy Rosen- berger points o u t that, until recently, the study of Japanese selfhood has been severely hampered b y the conceptual aypararus-most conspicucausly, di- chotomous thinking-with which w e (Americans) have appraached the sub- ject, Tlie dieht->tomybeewecn individual and society emerged from Galileo's and Copernicus's refiguring of the worfd on a matf~ematicaland mechailicaf basis. . . . A dichou)my of Western ("us") versus non-Western ("them ") became ern- bedded in the dichottsmy of individual versus society, with the first term supe- rior in each case. Westerners living in industrial, economically "modern" soci- ceies idealize tbemsclves as individuals, in control of emotions and social relations, able to think abstractly by cause-and-effect logic. Westerners often af- firm tliis ideat by viewing ncsn-Westerners as swayed by emotion, relation and context-only able to think in the specific case and then only by metaphor. It follows that Western societies can take the "higlicr" form of democracy because decision making can be entmsted tts the hands of rational individuals, whereas non-Western societies require a strong collectiviry for cohesion and control of people enmeshed in the immediacy of r e j a t i ~ s h i pand superstit;ic)n.ll From Roscnbcrger's perspcctke, these attitudes continue t o prevail: This point of view remains with anthropologists, even those studying complex, industrialized non-Western societies. Wbcthcr anthropologists cliaracterize Japanese as disciplined and sulsmissive (overcontrolled from withc>ut)or as re- scnthl and insubordinate (unctcreontroflcd from witliin), we stifi tend to locate them on the negative side of the individuallsociety Jichottsmy. We often portray Japanese as the opposite of our idtat selves: as concrete thinkers, parcicularlstic moralists, situational confc>rmists, unintegrated selves; as intuitive rather than rational, animistic (undiviJed from their environment), an J unable to separate body and rnind. The temptation of such general coneIusions coneinually bedcv- ils Western-trained scholars of Japan.12 Ruth Benedict's pioneering World War II study of Japanese culture and psyche, The G h r y s n n c h e m ~ mnrzd the Sword, exemplifies the dichotomous thinking that Rosenberger critiques and suggests h o w difficult it is t o under- stand the matter using such t-hinkilig: All tlicse contradictions . . . are trtrc. . . . Tlie Japanese are, to tlic higlicst de- gree, both aggressive and unaggressive, both militaristic and aestfietic, both insolent and polite, rigid and adaptable, submissive and resentful of being pushed around, loyal and treacl-reruus, brave and timid, conservative and hospitabte to new ways. They are terribly concerned about what other people
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