JAPAN IN BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES 17
K. Ariga’s classic work; Okada 1952). Therefore in this sphere of endeavor,
continuity in the Western anthropological study of Japan extends back
beyond Embree’s book. Both American and Japanese studies of family and
kinship contribute to the understanding of kinship and also show the wider
implications of familial kinship roles in economic and political sectors of
Japanese society. Thus kinship studies imply a theory of the relationship
of micro- to macrosocial phenomena, but on the whole this theory has
remained undeveloped and anthropologists have been more concerned with
kinship and family per se than with its symbolic extensions and bridging
functions in secondary institutions.
I do not mean to ignore the serious practical problems attending research
on large social entities. One reason why anthropological studies on Japan
have been limited in scope and representativeness is that money which
would ordinarily be used in actual research operations must be used for
travel to Japan and expenses in the country. Since research funds for “area
studies” are becoming scarce, opportunities for productive work have greatly
contracted. Japanese anthropologists face extreme shortages of funds for
research of any kind. This situation tends to select people interested in
small-scale studies or documentary work, often on the past. The only large-
scale attempt to use expensive teamwork in the study of Japanese society
from an anthropological perspective was the work of the Michigan Center
for Japanese Studies in Okayama. This effort was made possible in large
part by the much lower costs prevailing in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s.
However, the work did not really provide general knowledge of Japan
because the conceptions guiding the study remained on the level of com-
munity studies (Beardsley 1959).
Anthropological studies of large sectors of Japanese society must be done
using a consistent theoretical perspective and appropriate methodologies.
Anthropology as a discipline is only beginning to evolve such a perspective.
Julian Steward’s notion of “levels of complexity” was considered to be the
emerging model for the anthropology of large social entities. However, the
rapidly-evolving concepts of adaptive behavior offer more. This approach
features coping and problem-solving, with an emphasis on the resources,
social and material, that limit and facilitate goal-accomplishment and the
order of completeness of the cultural profile. The approach has not been
tried on Japanese data, although certain studies, such as Cornell’s and
Wagatsuma’s dealing with the burakumin (Cornell 1967), are moving in
this direction.
Change
The manner in which anthropological students of Japan have analyzed
the problem of change has by and large been on an institutional level.
Change has been visualized as a process of alteration of preindustrial