How an American changed Japanese culture
The American military viewed Japan as “the most alien” people it had encountered in war. Understanding Japanese culture was critical to the post-war effort. Understanding that culture from the perspective of everyday Japanese citizens was not. Pixabay
By Amanda Price
Before launching into this article, I wanted to address some concerns raised by readers of last week's article, “Japan's killing culture.” Having received comments ranging from “I agree to a point, but what about Korea's 'accidental catch' loophole,” to “I hope you get eaten by a whale,” I felt some clarification was called for.
Without a doubt, the article was hard-hitting. While I am normally not afraid to enter the boxing ring, I usually do so with my gloves on. When writing last week's article, my gloves came off.
Surprisingly, among the volume of emails that filled my inbox, the most positive ones came from Japanese readers who didn't want the slaughter of whales to be seen as part of their culture.
That was, of course, the issue, that the Japanese government had employed culture as the justification for killing whales. What other nations did, or didn't do, had no impact on that decision and, as a result, were not mentioned.
No matter our opinion on who are the worst offenders, or who should eat what, it is wrong to meddle with culture, and the consequences, as seen in the whaling debate, can have a dangerous and long-lasting impact.
But the Japanese ruling elite are by no means the first to meddle with Japanese culture, nor are they the worst.
But first, let me put my gloves back on.
When the horrific Second World War came to an end, it is no secret that Japan was left in tatters.
The possibility of defeat, and such an overwhelming and devastating defeat, did not exist in the Japanese mindset. No doubt, the thought must have occurred to those wise enough to read the signs, but to voice those concerns would have branded them traitors.
As the unthinkable happened, and the Instrument of Surrender was signed on board the U.S.S. Missouri, a deathly silence descended on an entire nation. The Japanese, so accustomed in modern times to winning, found themselves locked into the hellish dark side of conquest.
A generation of conquered, demoralized and wounded Japanese also had no idea of who they were as a defeated nation. No precedent or past history existed to provide them with answers.
The nation of Japan was in search of an identity and an understanding of how and why this catastrophe had occurred.
In the American War Office, the victors were asking a similar question, but for different reasons.
The American military considered Japan as “the most alien people” they had ever encountered, both in war and peace time. Consequently, the military had not the vaguest understanding of Japanese culture, nor knew what to do with these “alien” people now under their jurisdiction.
During the war, an American anthropologist had been employed as a special officer to provide information on how best to deal with the people of occupied territories.
Germans and Italians, Americans somewhat understood, but the Japanese enemy left Americans completely and utterly perplexed.
The special officer previously mentioned now assisted the American military to understand Japan and its culture.
Renowned American anthropologist Ruth Benedict is credited with unravelling and explaining the Japanese culture to Western and Japanese readers. Benedict never visited Japan, did not speak Japanese and used newspaper clippings, Japanese literature and films to conclude that the Japanese culture defined the Japanese identity. The American public were informed that the Japanese were incapable of feeling guilt and were acting according to their culture when they waged war. World Telegram staff photographer - Library of Congress. New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection.
Her name was Ruth Benedict.
To those who have not heard of her, you will, more than likely, have been taught her views at some point of your education.
Benedict, writing for the winning side, wrote what is considered by many as the most influential and accurate interpretation of Japanese culture written, a book called “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword.”
Benedict never visited Japan during her lifetime, she did not learn how to speak Japanese, nor did she gather information from Japanese nationals. She did not interview people living in countries once occupied by Japan, nor consult with anyone who had previously fought with or against Japan before World War II.
In fact, any consideration that, at the time of study, Japan was a military expansionist empire enforcing its own distorted ideologies did not factor into Benedict's investigations. She seemed to take these ideologies as the norm without questioning whether they represented Japanese culture or the goals of imperialists.
Today, such oversight would be considered an omission that would render any study completely invalid.
The sources for her highly acclaimed and seminal work were Japanese newspaper clippings, films, literature and translated interviews with Japanese prisoners of war. Her “man on the street” source was a gentleman named Robert (Bob) Hashima, an American with Japanese parents, who had returned to Japan as an American, trying to assimilate into a culture he knew little about.
In terms of timing, Benedict was making conclusions about what was “typical Japanese culture” at a time when Japanese citizens were facing their most devastating, dislocating and atypical moment in history.
From this scattered collection of mostly secondary sources, and during exceptional circumstances, Benedict concluded that all Japanese were governed by, and united under, a single overriding culture that had remained unchanged for centuries.
This holistic, homogenous and all-pervasive culture, Benedict explained, was the lifeblood of all Japanese citizens, fed to them like mother's milk from infancy.
It was a rigid culture based on a hierarchal structure that transcended class, politics and the influence of other cultures.
So far, it is likely that much of this will seem to be perfectly acceptable. But let's proceed.
Throughout the book, Benedict juxtaposes Japanese and American culture, with the latter subtly, but decidedly, emerging as superior. The Japanese culture receives affectionately condescending attention as a culture that is unique and exceptional in all of Asia, and indeed the world.
From Benedict's assessment, Japan's path to freedom, which its culture denied it, was by following the example of American democracy. In terms of Japan's future, its defeat by Western, particularly American, forces was an act of salvation.
Benedict's work greatly influenced how America occupied and helped rebuild Japan. The goal was for Japan to evolve toward American ideals while maintaining its culture as Japan's singular sense of empowerment and identity. Pixabay
The book was a polite exposition of Wilsonian interventionism, in which America's empire of liberty would supplant and transform Japan's empire of unbending ideologies.
The most surprising thing of about this book, which draped America in a thin but glistening cloak, was its immediate popularity among the newly vanquished Japanese. Hungry to understand who they now were, many Japanese citizens eagerly saw answers where once there were none.
Because of the beautifully, almost poetic way in which Benedict's book was written, it was easy to miss the courteous prejudice, the subtle condescending comparisons, and the broad hand strokes of a person writing from far, far away, and slightly above the culture she defined.
What mattered was that these were answers that explained to Japanese readers why they felt devastated, why they had fought in the first place, and perhaps most importantly, why they had lost.
The shame they felt, and the shame that was imposed on them by their emperor, was no longer soul-destroying, it was part of their ancient Japanese culture, part of who they had been for generations.?
Benedict asserted that Japanese lived under “a shame culture.” Guilt was an American emotion, or rather quality, the result of free thinking and democracy. The Japanese, Benedict argued, were incapable of emotions outside of what their culture allowed.
In Japan, shame was felt, was met with punishment, and then it ended. Japanese culture provided a way to deal with shame, but their culture had not yet advanced to guilt. Their culture, Benedict asserted, absolved them of much.
In fact, everything, Benedict claimed, could be explained by culture. Though not just any culture, an inescapable culture that pervaded every aspect of every human being born on the islands of Japan.
“The Chrysanthemum and the Sword” assured and even convinced many in that post-war period that to be Japanese was essentially a cultural state of being.
In Benedict's Japanese world, Japan effectively fought fiercely to defend its culture, it fought ferociously to protect its honour, and it fought relentlessly because to do otherwise would be shameful for the entire nation.
The idea Japan fought to colonize the Asia-Pacific region, or as a brutal grab for power, did not factor into Benedict's assessment or conclusions, conclusions that, among far too many, are still widely respected and accepted to this day.
Marilyn Ivy, an anthropologist from Columbia University, wrote: “Benedict let the Japanese off the historical hook.” Ivy claimed that by creating dichotomous cultures of Japanese shame and Western guilt, Benedict created a moral loophole that Japan could ethnically pass through.
Modern anthropologists have since become aware that no culture has exclusive rights to guilt or shame, and that shame and guilt are just two sides of the same coin.
Neither shame nor guilt can be blamed for our actions. It is what we do with them that defines us.
Benedict wrote that the Japanese were inseparable from their culture. We understand today that we are affected by our culture, but at the same time we are culture makers. If we are to believe Benedict's assertions and those of the Japanese government, the Japanese must hunt whales because it is part of being Japanese. Unsplash
When cultures are forced into these pre-made boxes, morality is no longer an absolute, and showing remorse depends on whether one lives under shame or under guilt, not the needs of the victims.
Benedict, who has been venerated in many academic circles as America's pre-eminent anthropologist, did not invent Japanese culture. She gleaned bits of culture, collected from a scant number of sources, and meddled with it until it became something it wasn't before.
Benedict shaped a Japanese culture for the American military and the American public that affirmed Japan's need for American oversight. She asked for understanding and tolerance from Americans, as she explained that the Japanese were driven by cultural instincts that were beyond their control.
The American military now had an understanding of Japan's “alien ways” and could now set about rebuilding a Japan in their own image, while respecting the culture that Benedict explained.
For Japan's part, its shame was internalized. When Japan had tried to protect its honor, it had committed crimes of which it was ashamed. But this was a cultural instinct and America, at least, had benevolently begun to forgive them. Their shame was being dealt with and would soon be gone.
Benedict, writing in the language of a compassionate conqueror, remodelled Japan's complex, multi-layered and multi-faceted culture into a holistic sense of the Japanese self. In this sense of self, Benedict turned Japanese culture into a coat hanger, and shame into an excuse for ignoring past wrongs.
The fact that culture was a shared thing and that Japan had borrowed culture like almost every other nation was dismissed. An American anthropologist, for reasons that were less than pure, led the campaign and even provided the fuel to create a bonfire of nationalistic fervor that burns even today.
Benedict has been widely criticized for misjudging the cultures of Japan, but those judgments have also been widely accepted. For those who accept her conclusions, they have become a creed, the bible on Japanese culture.
For those who see inherent flaws in an anthropological work without primary sources and written from a victor's not the vanquished's perspective, Benedict's work is a way to identify what Japanese culture was there before it was meddled with.
The famed American anthropologist claimed to have unraveled Japanese culture by setting it on a throne then crowning it with thorns.
Japanese culture was noble but in need of redemption. The Japanese were honorable but in need of guidance.
By elevating Japanese culture to dizzying heights, by establishing it as the justification for an inexcusable brutality, Benedict weaponized culture.
A culture that has been meddled with is used as a justification for killing whales. It is a culture that washes over Japan's shores like a bloodied tide.
Many nations can make a claim to history and to culture when it comes to whaling, but only Japan claims the world would be killing Japan's culture by allowing whales to live.
And because an American anthropologist, with questionable motives, declared that Japanese culture is unique and all-pervasive, and because that teaching has subtly infiltrated the mindset of so many, Japan will continue to whale until the culture has been satiated.
It will be left to the young and to the wise, to those who read history in the full light of day, to ask, “What was Japanese culture like before the meddling began?” and “How can we restore it again?”
Amanda Price (amanda-price@bigpond.com) is the former Director of Hillcrest College's International Student Department. She has a background in science, history and literature and has been consulting on Asian affairs for more than 10 years. Her special interest is world history and she is the founder of Griffith University's History Readers. She writes full time.