JAPAN IN BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
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gists need to demonstrate more sophistication in handling Japanese historical
data before they can command respect and emulation.
Although anthropology generally has difficulty in accepting historical
data, as we have noted, anthropologists studying Japan have used such
materials extensively as a foundation for studies of contemporary Japan.
The problems and modes of anthropological research emphasize field work
and face-to-face contact between researchers and living subjects. In dealing
with a society of large scale and a well-documented past, the anthropologist
is at a disadvantage when compared with the historian, and at an advantage
when compared with the ethnologist studying tribal society.
The Microsocial Focus
The most general statement one can make about the anthropological and
other behavior science literature on Japan is that it is dominantly concerned
with contemporary microsocial phenomena: studies of communities, special
groups, and segments of society; particular cultural patterns, slices of be-
havior, and psycho-social-linguistic concepts; and particular patterns of
social relationships and social processes. These studies of parts of the whole,
if synthesized, provide a basic ethnography of Japan. Microsocial research
is not usually concerned with the nation or the society as a whole, but some
cultural phenomena investigated in the studies of Japan do attain a national
representativeness. Ruth Benedict’s famous book is in this latter class, as
are Takeo Doi’s studies (1956; 1962) of amaeru and similar psycholinguistic
phenomena. Considering their immense possibilities, detailed semantic
studies on the Japanese language, either informal or with disciplined
methods, have been surprisingly few (Passin 1966). Dore’s (1959) and Vogel’s
(1963) use of the urban community and the “new middle class” to observe
trends in the national society are also attempts to use segmental studies for
more comprehensive ends. Abegglen’s perhaps overly-well-known book on
“the” factory is a classic example (1958).
The basic problem confronted by anthropologists and many other be-
havior scientists interested in large social entities is how to attain true
representativeness. In anthropology, the community study has been criticized
as not being relevant to problems of trans-community magnitude. The
methodological problem has become increasingly important because of
the growing relationships among all units of society, and the increasing
need for people to consider external forces and institutions in their adapta-
tions to local conditions. Anthropologists see two solutions to the method-
ological problem of gaining representativeness: (1) to select for study larger
or more comprehensively typical units (i.e., regions instead of communities)
and study these so far as possible in the classical participative manner; or
(2) shift toward the methods of sociologists and institutional social scientists
and study true samples of the national society and, where possible, back