20
RlCE UNIVERSITY STUDIES
ture has been undergoing extensive change, it seems such a study is long
overdue.
We also lack any published study of a typical region in Japan from a
geographical or ecological perspective that shows the interrelationships
among the various productive niches. Work has been done by Japanese on
these problems, although much of it has been practical in orientation. We
lack also a really detailed study of the relationships of Japanese localities
to the external society and bureaucracy. Here anthropologists have been
unwilling to do research on Japan comparable with that done on their own
society, despite the current preoccupation with the subject in studies of
“peasantry.” Only a few such studies have been produced by Westerners,
notably the pieces on agricultural change by Ishino and Donohue (1962)
and Smith and Reyes (1957), and in greater detail, although specialized,
the studies of buraku politics by Erwin Johnson (1962).
The legitimate heir of the community study in Japanese society is the
study of the relationship between the community microcosm and the macro-
cosm, via the networks of kinship and friendship, and of the way the local
community manages the inputs and constraints emanating from the national
society and its organizations. Studies of this type could easily accept the
original community focus of analysis but use the community as a point of
departure for tracing the influences of the larger society and the way the
local people manage these in the pursuit of their ends.
Despite a spate of books by academic reporters and general commentators
on the important new religions of Japan (e.g., Thomsen 1963; McFarland
1967), and one new sociopolitical analysis of Soka Gakkai (Dator 1969),
we lack a full-length study by a professional anthropologist of one or more
of these cults and their social and psychological functions. This is all the
more curious since anthropologists have shown great interest in revivalistic
religions and messianic cults and have produced a number of classic studies
of these evidences of alienation under modernizing conditions. We also
lack a full-dress study of Japanese poverty groups, although there are two
brief accounts (Calderola 1969; Taira 1969).
No anthropologist has published on the sociocultural aspects of megalo-
politan trends in Japanese cities and transportation systems, although there
are studies of danchi, urban neighborhoods, and other segments of urban
life with community characteristics. Environmental architects and urban
planners such as Richard Meier (1967) interest themselves in the Tokaido
megalopolis and its effect on communication, mobility and achievement,
but sociologists and anthropologists remain aloof from this subject.
In other words, the most distinctive characteristic of contemporary
Japanese national culture—the transformation of social communalism
into massness—has had little attention except for such indirect analyses
as those by Plath (1964) and Vogel (1963) and some provocative essays by