SOME OBSERVATIONS ON WESTERN
ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN JAPAN
by John Bz. Bennett
Introduction
The accomplishments of anthropological and related behavior science
research on Japan by Westerners are better than one might expect consider-
ing the recency of the effort and the language handicaps, but poorer con-
sidering the capabilities of Western social science. Social research on Japan
has emphasized microsocial phenomena, neglected the larger society and
its changes, and has not yet made significant contributions to social and
cultural theory.
A major reason for these limitations is that the accelerated modernization
of Japanese society has confronted anthropologists with a familiar dilemma.
On the one hand, the need to understand an exotic culture is pressing, and
the anthropological skills for such an endeavor are available. On the other
hand, the increasing national integration and urbanization of Japanese
society and culture make traditional anthropological methods unsuited to
the task of studying the whole society and its changes. The same problem
exists for the study of China (Maurice Freedman 1963) and the United States.
Although Western anthropologists have studied Amerinds and African
and Oceanic peoples for three generations or more, the first serious anthro-
pological study done by a Westerner in Japan was John Embree’s Suye
Mura published in 1939. In some ways it is regrettable that this pioneer
undertaking took the form of a village study, in the familiar manner of the
tribal ethnography, since it set a pattern for anthropological research on
Japan after World War II. However, Western anthropologists really knew
nothing about Japan and one way to begin finding out was to live in Japanese
communities for a while. Thus the community studies made by Beardsley,
Cornell, Norbeck, Grad, Robert Smith (see references), and others made
their distinctive contribution. The most imposing single piece of research
carried out by the Occupation’s Public Opinion and Sociological Research
Division also took the form of village studies, a book on thirteen rural
communities (Arthur Raper et al 1950). Their effort was directed toward a
practical study of the effects of rural reforms on representative communities.
In contrast with later academic studies, a large sector of Japanese society
was brought into view. The sociological and economic elements in Raper’s
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