JAPAN IN BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
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Japanese intellectuals. Japan presents the unique case of a society with a
social system based on preindustrial (though highly developed) patterns
that has found these congenial for managing some of the individualizing
trends of an industrial society. If there is one key to the analysis of macro-
cosms in Japan, it is this feature, and the anthropologist making use of it
could probably produce the first successful study of culture at the national
level.
The study of kinship in rural Japan is probably the subject most thoroughly
investigated by scholars in the behavior sciences, at least by anthropologists.
Yet there are no detailed studies of kinship in the urban setting or of affilia-
tive networks of rural-urban scope (although every social scientist writing
on Japan mentions them) such as those by Schneider (1968) and Firth
(1956) of Chicago and London.
Training Anthropological Specialists
The output OfWestern anthropologists specializing in Japan is not great.
A tentative check of universities showed that in the past decade approxi-
mately three times as many doctorates in anthropology were awarded to
candidates doing research on India and twice as many to candidates study-
ing Thailand and Taiwan (combined). The small output of anthropologists
specializing in the study of Japan has at least been steady. Nevertheless, the
output does not seem to be in proportion to the contemporary importance
of Japan as a modern nation, or to the intellectual significance of Japan as
anon-Western example of successful modernization.
There are many reasons for the relative scarcity of Western anthropolo-
gists specializing in the study of Japan, of which the difficulty in mastering
the language is the most important. At many institutions, such as the
writer’s own, the teaching of Japanese is less than thorough, and learning
the language is in any case a long and frustrating experience. Sufficient
competence in the language to permit anthropological fieldwork can seldom
be gained in American or European institutions. Prolonged residence in
Japan itself is necessary, and such residence doubles or triples the time
required for research. Hence, many field studies tend to be brief and yield
relatively few data. Most language training programs have an inescapable
orientation toward literature and primarily prepare graduate students in
history, the institutional social sciences, and art history, fields in which
documentary materials are usually more important than a knowledge of
colloquial idiom. The lone anthropologist trying to study Japanese in a
class full of document readers is at a disadvantage and often gives up in
despair.
In spite of much lip-service to the contrary a persistent trend in anthro-
pology has been to favor anthropologists who study tribal societies. It is
noticeable that the heyday of anthropological studies of Japan, the 1950’s,