60
RICE UNIVERSITY STUDIES
Ren leaders and followers as well as Soka Gakkai Youth Group members
and volunteer members of the Japan Defense Corps.
For the study of youth in any country, the problem of identity is a crucial
subject. Japanese youth is no exception, or, as Lifton pointed out (1962,
1963), the problem might be amplified in Japan because it is inseparable
from the problem of national and cultural identity of the Japanese nation
as a whole, which I called in the beginning of this paper the alchemic
crucible of East and West.
At first overwhelmed by the Western world’s great power, Japan caught
up with the West in an amazingly short time. Then feeling a sense of re-
jection over unequal treatment, she appointed herself the champion of
non-white Asians, and in this role she boldly tried to win a place in the com-
pany of white imρeralists. Failing disastrously, Japan found herself
receiving a “democratic education” from her American teachers toward
whom she felt the greatest rivalry, a rivalry mixed with admiration. I
pointed out elsewhere (Wagatsuma 1967; Wagatsuma and Yoneyama 1967)
that the diffuse ambivalence of the Japanese toward Western civilization is
often reflected in their ambivalence toward physical features of white peo-
ple. Among ordinary women, one often sees hair dyed a purplish or reddish
hue; plastic surgery, especially to alter eye folds and to build up the bridge of
the nose, has become almost standardized practice among the younger
movie actresses and actors. Many more women use a small tool to fold single
eyelids into a double crease. Many women also try numerous devices to
change the apparent or actual size of their breasts. All these apparent or
actual physical alterations that the Japanese, particularly women, impose on
themselves have Caucasian physical features as their model. Few mannekins
in show cases, with their hair any color but black, look Japanese. In women’s
magazines, Caucasian fashion models often appear first, followed by
mixed-blood girls; those with clearly mongoloid features appear only on
the last pages.
When Japan was trying hard to catch up with the West, Fukuzawa Yuki-
chi, in 1885, stressed the necessity of the Japanese nation getting out of Asia
(“Datsu A”). Twoyears later, Inoue Kaoru, the Minister of Foreign Affairs,
proposed to the Prime Minister “to transform our Empire and our people
into what will be like a country in Europe and people in Europe.” All the
efforts spent on physical alteration by Japanese women seem to be geared
toward such aims.
Parallel to what I call llCaucasianization" (haku-jin-ka) of sexual
esthetics among recent Japanese is the tremendous number of English and
other European words flooding TV commercials, newspaper advertise-
ments, and daily conversation, mostly mispronounced and therefore un-
noticed by inexperienced outsiders. Such eagerness to accept, or perhaps a
weak resistance to, things Western is related to what I pointed out as the