Japanese Society

Japanese Society: A Practical Guide to Understanding the Japanese Mindset and Culture.

While many studies of contemporary Japan have been concerned primarily with its changing aspects pointing to the ‘traditional’and ‘modern” elements as representing opposing qualities – thereby implying that when Japan is sufficiently modernised it will or should become the same as the West Professor Chie Nakane asserts that modern Japan’s progress is founded on persistent social patterns which existed centuries ago almost as if decades of modernisation have had little effect on the core of society. It is thus not simply that Japanese society has been torn into pieces of two kinds but rather that one well integrated entity remains one aspect of which is the traditional. Although capitalist and industrialised Japanese society functions along very different lines from societies in the West.

Using the structure of the society as the basis of her analysis rather than explaining it in cultural or historic terms Professor Nakane begins by examining one to one relationships following through to the structure of the group and finally to that of the society as a whole. The author shows how the vertical principles of rank and hiearchy dominate all relationships – professional personal industrial political – whatever the environment.

The book is thus not a description of Japanese society or culture of the Japanese people as suc; rather it is the author’s intention that it will offer a key (source of intelligence and insight) to an understanding of Japanese society and those features which are specific to it and distinguish it from other complex societies.

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