Chrysanthemum and sword

The study was launched in June 1944 on behalf of the US government, as America faced the need "to find answers to many questions about our enemy - Japan" ^[2] .

Since the United States and Japan were at war , Benedict could not resort to the usual method of field research in such cases. Therefore, she collected material for the book using the following methods:

• interviewing Japanese living in the USA;
• acquaintance with literature about Japan and the Japanese - both Western and Japanese authors;
• watching films - propaganda, historical, artistic.

The book examines the system-forming concepts for Japanese society: ^[3]

• debt;
• hierarchy;
• shame;
• sincerity;
• self esteem

and others.

“ Duty ” ( it ), which determines (and subjugates to itself) the life of every Japanese, is divided into two categories:

1. bad debt ( gime )
   • debt to the emperor (as well as the country as a whole) ( ty )
   • parents (and therefore ancestors and descendants) ( co )
   • duty to work ( nimmu )
2. debt that can be paid ( weights )
   • debts to the world
     • to the prince
     • to relatives
     • to other people for what he received from them
   • duty to honor the honor of the name.

The hierarchy is considered by Benedict through the concept of "due place" - that position in society and the family that a member of Japanese society should occupy according to

• social status of the family
• the floor
• age.

• the child is taught reverence from infancy, bowing his head when his mother bows;
• ordinary Japanese did not have a family name until the middle of the 19th century: it was not needed, since loyalty to the prince, and not the family, was considered the main virtue;
• using one of the most popular expressions of gratitude, sumimasen , the Japanese mean something like this: thank you for doing me a favor, and I'm sorry for not doing this for you first.

Douglas Lummis noted that “ After a while I realized that I could never live in decent relations with the people of this country, if I didn’t get rid of this book, and its politely-arrogant view of the world, from my head ” ^[4] .

Lummis, who visited the archives of Vassar College to check the links with Benedict, wrote that some of the important things in the book are based on an interview with Robert Hashima, a native of the United States of Japanese origin who was brought to Japan by a child, studied here, and then returned to the United States before the outbreak of World War II. Lummis, who interviewed Hashima, notes that this circumstance helps to reveal bias in the study of Benedict ^[4] :

For him, who had come to Japan for the first time as a teenager in the middle of the militarist period and had no memory of the country before, what he studied at school was not “ideological”, such was Japan for him.

Original text

For him, coming to Japan for the first time as a teenager smack in the middle of the militaristic period and having no memory of the country before then, what he was taught in school was not "an ideology", it was Japan itself.

Lummis believes that Benedict too trusted in Hashima, who told a deeply alien experience of life in Japan ^[4] :

It seems he has become a kind of touchstone, the authority on which she checked information from other sources.

Original text

seems that he became a kind of touchstone, the authority against which she would test information from other sources

In Russian

• Benedict R. Chrysanthemum and the sword. Models of Japanese culture. / per. from English N. M. Seliverstova, ed. A.V. Govorunova . - SPb. : Science , 2004 .-- 359 p. ISBN 5-02-026868-2
• Benedict R. Chrysanthemum and the sword. Models of Japanese culture. - M.: Russian Political Encyclopedia , 2004. - 256 p.
• Benedict R. Chrysanthemum and the sword. Models of Japanese culture. - M .: Nauka , 2007 .-- 360 p.