56
RICE UNIVERSITY STUDIES
rigid class system and supremacy of society over individuals with the
strong assertion and rebellion of individuals against society. The book
implies that in the history of Oriental vegetarians these trends, derivatives
of meat and bread eating, are characteristically lacking. In another book,
Sabata (1964) contrasts various trends of West and East, for instance, “open
society” of the West vs. “closed society” of the East; social consciousness vs.
family consciousness; mercantilism vs. physiocracy; active pioneer spirit vs.
passive dependence on tradition; clear-cut logic vs. ambiguous eclecticism;
intolerance vs. tolerance; and masculine principle vs. feminine principle.
The author’s logic may be far-fetched in several places but the book still
deserves our attention.
2. Social Class Position and Social Mobility
Little work has been done on psychological characteristics pertaining to
a particular class position or social mobility in Japan. Tanaka and Matsu-
yama (1960) collected data from children of different occupational groups
and found that children of wealthier families tend to look at life as the
place for hard work, achievement, and enjoyment, while children of lower
economic strata tend to look at life in terms of money and practicality.
Their data, however, are not very clear-cut and more studies of this kind
are needed.
Mannari’s careful examination of the socioeconomic and educational
background of business leaders of Meiji, Taisho, and Showa eras (1965)
is valuable, but unfortunately his work does not include a personality
study of executives such as those done for American executives by Henry
(1949) or Warner and Abegglen (1955).
What also seems to need more inquiry is the presence of two apparently
different motivational patterns in occupational achievement. Emphasis by
many researchers of Japanese occupational achievement on such traits as
“importance of collateraIity,” “dependency upon, and loyalty to, collectiv-
ity,” or “nenkô joretsu sei," has often presented the Japanese as people
who want to belong to a large collectivity to which they feel loyal and in
which they feel secure. They certainly work very hard but, without “sticking
their neck out,” they quietly sit on the occupational conveyer belt and await
their turn for raise and promotion. Such a picture is one-sided, because it
leaves out the people who do not belong to a large organization but own and
operate a small-scale industry and business, employing only a few workers
or none at all other than their own family members. They are the people
DeVos and I call “lower class capitalists” (DeVos 1965; DeVos and
Wagatsuma MS). They are the “small-scale entrepreneurs” whom Lock-
wood (1954) gave an important role in the development of modern
Japanese economy. Among these people, the occupational mobility
pattern is not to “sit tight on a conveyer belt in a large collectivity,” but,