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Selections from: "No man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes. He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking." Ruth Benedict was an accomplished prof. of anthropology at Columbia University. When the U.S. anticipated occupying Japan at the end of hostilities in WWII, the Pentagon commissioned Prof. Benedict to write a book to explain Japanese culture to the average high school educated G.I. who would be stationed in Japan for a year or two. |
Because we were at war with Japan, Prof. Benedict could not visit the country. Instead she interviewed Japanese-Americans who were incarcerated in ten internment camps like Manzanar. Experts on Japanese culture continue to argue about the accuracy of Benedict's book. Nonetheless, it is a classic. It is very useful for our purposes, which are to illustrate two points:
how totally different an important discourse community may be from those we are familiar with
that there are no universal terms, such as moral terms, that are the same in all cultures
Benedict describes a discourse community we can identify as Confucian, using the term as broadly as we might use Christian to describe Western values. Frequently, the first question to ask in trying to understand a comprehensive system is, "what is human nature?" Marxism, Freudianism, Utilitarianism (cf. capitalism), & Christianity all say very different things.
Who am I? Here is a kind of anecdotal illustration of how identity is constructed from a Confucian view. Imagine that we are all monkeys swinging in the trees. One day a few monkeys climb down to invent new games. This is not a command from God, nor a brilliant discovery of scientific truth. The motive & attraction is that the new games are more sophisticated. They offer a more elegant life than that of swinging in the trees. Let's image that the game they invent is basketball. We sketch out a court, erect a hoop, & bicker with each other as we play. Then one day Michael Jordan shows up. Now we really know how to play the game because his performance is authoritative. Once again, what he does is not prophetic, nor is it an announcement of some truth or theory. Jordan's authority is purely performative. He is elegant. That is why we want to "be like Mike." That is why many young people used to adulate him, following his every gesture. His formal performance establishes a standard (ritual: li) that others seek to imitate before imagining that they might creatively surpass it.
5 Human Relationships: Confucian society is not democratic or egalitarian. It sketches a meritocracy. The only person worth listening to (for example, when you are physically ill) is someone who has demonstrated that he knows what he is doing (such as, in this example, a licensed physician). The contemporary world offers thousands of games to play. Most of these are complex enough to foster subcultures or expert discourse communities. Ancient China specified 5 games that distinguished human beings from monkeys:
- Parent/child relationship. A child respects his parents, being deferential, grateful, & obedient. A monkey knows only it own immediate desires.
- Emperor/citizen. Like one's parents, the Emperor has invited you to play sophisticated, elegant, & interesting cultural games. You have been given the benefits of civilization without earning them. Patriotic gratitude characterizes the human being above the monkey who is only interested in "what's in it for me?"
- Spouses. Remember that almost all marriages are arranged. Marriage is not very much about your feelings. It is about fiscal, social, & political alliance. It is about prestige. Naturally it is about children. Above all, it is about family continuity & heritage. You owe your parents, grandparents, etc. healthy, educated children who will carry on the legacy of the family. How you romantically feel about your spouse is your own private feeling. No one else is much interested. Do your duty to your family, i.e., your ancestors.
- Elder brother. He was being groomed to become "boss" or custodian of the extended family. Today much of this relationship has shifted to one's employer. In Japan, twice a year you give your boss/supervisor presents to express your gratitude for being taken care of, for being given the opportunity to earn a living.
- Age. Most people are illiterate & there is not a great deal of scientific or abstract theory. Age & accomplishment have some association. The idea is that older people are usually worth listening to for advice, guidance, & history.
These are the 5 games that matter most. The person who is elegantly accomplished at these games is respected. Conversely, those who stumble & offer embarrassingly flawed, slipshod performances of these relationships are mocked & marginalized.
Duty: As you know, the Western outlook starts with the premise of inherent rights. Much of our social experience prompts us to be concerned about safeguarding our individual rights & freedom. No one has any innate rights in the Confucian outlook. As in our basketball game, one learns to play social roles. Apart from these, identity cannot be construed. It makes no sense to imagine that you have some primal identity that precedes learning language & other social games. What would such an identity be? It could not have a form. All forms/games are the product of socialization. In any case, the emphasis in Asia is on duty, not rights. The moral person is the one who struggles to do his duty & meet his obligations. The monkey who simply enjoys himself is contemptible; not entirely human, much less elegant.
Status: Naturally money offered a scale to measure status in Asia. But it is a crude, peasant measure that ignores elegance, skill, charm. Strangely, Chinese civilization does not look back at a religious text (like the Bible), nor to a text exalting a hero (like The Iliad), as its founding document. Instead, it looks back to The Book of Songs. In contrast to other ancient literary cultures, which begin with epics, prose, legends, or hymns to the gods, the Chinese tradition begins with lyric poetry. These poems were prized, not because they offered simple, lyric innocence or charm, even though most of the poems in the Book of Songs are charming love poems. The Book of Songs offered a game. One must first memorize it, then analyze it, because citation of one of the poems was often used to clinch a point in an argument or, more subtly, to express an opinion that one would rather not say openly. As with Homer's epics in early Greeceknowledge of The Book of Songs was considered an essential part of cultural education in early China. This is still not blunt enough. One dominated others in elite social situations by being deft & creative in making exactly the right allusion or quoting the most apt line from The Book of Songs, somewhat like the Western "game" of quoting the most appropriate passage from the Bible. There is still a difference in focus. With the Bible, attention is fixed on God or the Word of God. The Book of Songs is more like a deck of cards. Attention is fixed on the skills of the mandarin who plays a winning hand. He is respected, envied, deferred to, honored. See this illustration.
The five human relationships elevate human beings above monkeys. Each relationship specifies ethical behavior. Except for the gender driven relationship (spouses), we all find ourselves initially in the dependent side of these bi-lateral relationships receiving benefits that we did not earn & consequently do not deserve. Unless we are sociopathic (i.e., not really human), we are grateful & feel obliged to return the favors we have been given. In the West the theological model from the Greeks through Islam looks like this: God gives, we receive & are thankful. Let's turn to Benedict's text to continue.
98: Debt/Obligation: Much of what Westerns name ancestor worship is not truly worship & not wholly directed toward ancestors: it is a ritual avowal of man’s great indebtedness to all that has gone before [tradition: li]. Moreover, he is indebted not only to the past; every day-by-day contact with other people increases his indebtedness in the present. From this debt his daily decisions & actions must spring. It is the fundamental [moral] starting point.
Virtuous men do not say, as they do in America, that they owe nothing to any man. They do not discount the past. Righteousness in Japan depends upon recognition of one’s place in the great network of mutual indebtedness.
99: On [debt] is in all its uses a load, an indebtedness, a burden, which one carries as best one may. A man receives on [obligation] from a superior [who has done you a favor by hiring you to do a job or by accepting you as a student, etc.]. When they say, "I wear an on to him" they are saying, "I carry a load of obligations to him."
100: Loyalty: Hachi is a cute dog. As soon as he was born he was taken away by a stranger & was loved like a child of the house. For that reason, even his weak body became healthy & when his master went to his work every morning, he would accompany him to the street car station & in the evening around the time when he came home, the dog went again up to the station to meet him.
In due time, the master passed away. Hachi, whether he knew of this or not, kept looking for his master every day. Going to the usual station he would look to see if his master was in the crowd of people who came out whenever the street car arrived.
In this way days & months passed by. One year passed, two years passed, three years passed, even when ten years had passed, the aged Hachi’s figure can be seen every day in front of the station, still looking for his master.
The moral of this tale is that loyalty is only another name for love. [There is, in fact, a bronze statue of this dog standing outside the rail station in Shibuya, a Tokyo district.] A son who cares deeply for his mother can speak of not forgetting the on he has received from her & mean that he has for her Hachi’s single-minded devotion to his master. The term, however, refers specifically not to his love, but [a recognition of] all that his mother did for him as a baby, her sacrifices [to raise him, educate him, etc. Everything he is, he owes to his mother & other supporters.] . . . all that he owes her from the mere fact that she exists. It implies a return upon this indebtedness & therefore it means love. But the primary meaning is the debt, whereas we think of love as something freely given unfettered by obligation.
On is always used in this sense of limitless devotion . . . . This is one’s debt to the Emperor, which one should receive with unfathomable gratitude [for the gift of receiving Japanese/human culture. Otherwise you would have remained a monkey or a barbarian].
103: Time does not lessen the debt. It increases rather than decreases with the years. It accumulates a kind of interest. As their common saying has it: "One never returns one ten-thousandth of an on."
The attendant habits diligently pursued make it possible for the Japanese to honor their moral indebtedness to a degree that would not cross the mind of an Occidental. This is easier to do if the superiors are regarded as well-wishers [successors to the position of parents].
104: Imposing on another by doing a favor! People do not like to shoulder casually the debt of gratitude which on implies. They are always talking of "making a person wear an on" & often the nearest translation is "imposing upon another" – though in the U.S. "imposing" means demanding something of another, & in Japan the phrase means giving him something or doing him a kindness [for which he must feel indebted. If he does not, it is even worse. He has demonstrated that he is no better than a monkey or sociopath; someone without conscience.]
They would prefer to avoid getting entangled in all the consequences of on. The passivity of a street crowd in Japan when an accident occurs is not just lack of initiative. It is a recognition that any non-official interference would make the recipient wear an on. [No one is going to casually tell you to have a happy day.] The Japanese are extremely wary of getting entangled in on.
105: The Japanese are extremely wary of getting entangled in on.
The J. have many ways of saying "Thank you" which express this same uneasiness in receiving on. The least ambivalent, the phrase that has been adopted in modern city department stores, means "Oh, this difficult thing" (arigato). The J. usually say that this "difficult thing" is the great & rare benefit the customer is bestowing on the store in buying. Shopkeepers who run their own shops most commonly say literally: "Oh, this [on, obligation to you] doesn’t end" (sumimasen), i.e., "I have received on from you & under modern economic arrangements I can never repay you; I am sorry to be placed in such a position." [Tokyo department stores feature two young women dressed in the department store uniform, bowing to customers who enter & telling them sumimasen.]
107: In accepted structuralized relations the great indebtedness it implies often stimulates a man only to put forward in repayment all that is in him.
109: This is the clue to J. reactions to on. They can be borne, with whatever mixed feelings, so long as the "on man" is actually oneself; he is fixed in "my" hierarchical scheme [family, business, politics], or he is doing something I can imagine myself doing, like returning my hat on a windy day, or he is a person who admires me" & wishes me well. Once these identifications break down, the on is a festering sore.
114: Morality is like money. It will help Americans to understand this matter of virtue in Japan if we keep in mind the parallel with financial transactions & think of it as having behind it the sanctions against defaulting [on moral obligations, on] which property transactions have in America. Here we hold a man to his bond. We do not count extenuating circumstances when a man takes what is not his. We do not allow it to be a matter of impulse whether or not a man pays a debt to a bank.
115: Lacking the basic J. postulate of great indebtedness automatically incurred by every man & woman born, we think that a man should pity & help his needy parents, should not beat his wife, & should provide for his children. But these things are not quantitatively reckoned like a debt of money [by Americans] & they are not rewarded as success in business [by Americans]. In Japan they are regarded quite as financial solvency is in America & the sanctions behind them are as strong as they are in the U.S. behind being able to pay one’s bills. They are not matters that must be attended to only at crises; they are one’s constant shadow" comparable to worrying about whether you have enough money in the bank to cover a check you consider writing.
116: [from a chart]
- Gimu: The fullest repayment of these obligations is still no more than partial & there is no time limit:
- chu: obligation/duty to the emperor, the law, Japan;
- ko: obligation/duty to parents & ancestors;
- nimmu: obligation/duty to employer.
- Giri: These debts are regarded as having to be repaid with mathematical equivalence to the favor received & there are time limits:
- duties to in-laws; reciprocation for favors, gifts, help;
- duties to distant relations because of common ancestors;
- a duty to clear one’s name (the ancestor’s name which you are obliged to hand down in tact, at a minimum) from gossip/insult;
- a duty not to let your employer down;
- a duty not to embarrass J. propriety (curb excess & follow precedent).
120: Arranged marriage. It is taken for granted in respectable families that the parents select their son’s wife. The family, not the son, is chiefly concerned about the matter of a good selection, not only because of the money transactions involved but because the wife will be entered in the family genealogy & will perpetuate the family line through her sons.
The good son’s repayment of parental on does not allow him to question his parents’ decision. After he is married his repayment continues. [His mother may find] fault with her, & she may send her [bride] away & break up the marriage even when the young husband is happy with his wife. The husband is doing ko in submitting to the break-up of his marriage.
124: To "work for ko" is not necessarily to achieve loving-kindness in the family [which is presumable the goal of Westerners. When this is not achieved in marriage, spouses often feel that the relationship has failed & that they are authorized to divorce & remarry other partners to achieve this end, which they no doubt think is self-evidently valuable.] In some cultures this is the crux of the moral law in the extended family. But not in Japan. As one J. writer says, "Just because he esteems the family [genealogy] highly, the J. has anything but a high estimation of the individual members or of the family tie between them." That is not always true, of course, but it gives the picture. The emphasis is upon obligations & repaying the debt & the elders take great responsibility upon themselves, but one of these responsibilities is to see to it that those below them make the requisite sacrifices.
129: Crime. The tax collector, the policeman, the local conscription officials are instrumentalities through which a subject renders chu. The J. point of view is that obeying the law is repayment upon their highest indebedness, their ko-on. [Cf. with Americans, especially adolescents, who feel that breaking the law is an assertion of personal freedom, & even heroic behavior.]
130: The J. judge that we are a lawless people. We judge that they are a submissive people with no ideas of democracy [or individualism]. It would be truer to say that the citizens’ self-respect [morality], in the two countries, is tied up with different attitudes [moral theories]; in our country it [self-respect, moral dignity] depends on his management of his own affairs & in Japan it depends on repaying what he owes to accredited benefactors.
140: Obligation: The pressure of public opinion which compels a person to do giri against his wishes. They say, "I am arranging this marriage merely for giri"; "merely because of giri I was forced to give him the job"; "I must see him merely for giri." They constantly talk of being "tangled with giri," a phrase the dictionary translates as "I am obliged to [do] it." They say, "He forced me with giri," "he conned me with giri," and these, like the other usages, mean that someone has argued the speaker into an act he did not want or intend by raising some issue of payment due upon an on.
141: It is in this "circle of giri" that the parallel with American sanctions on paying money one has borrowed helps us most to understand the J. attitude. We do not consider that a man has to pay back [minor] favors with the stringency [down to the penny & by the close of the business day] that is necessary in keeping up his payments of interest & his repayment of a bank loan. In these financial dealings bankruptcy is the penalty for failure – a heavy penalty. The J., however, regard a man as bankrupt when he fails in repaying giri & every contact in life is likely to incur giri in some way or other. This means keeping an account of little words & acts Americans throw lightly about with no thought of incurring obligations.
192: The J. define the supreme task of life as fulfilling one’s obligations. They fully accept the fact that repaying on means sacrificing one’s personal desires & pleasures. The idea that the pursuit of happiness is a serious goal of life is to them an amazing & immoral doctrine.
207: The hero we sympathize with because he is in love or cherishes some personal ambition, they condemn as weak because he has allowed these [private, personal] feelings to come between him & his gimu or his giri. Westerns are likely to feel it is a sign of strength to rebel against conventions & seize happiness in spite of obstacles. But the strong, according to J. verdict, are those who disregard personal happiness & fulfill their obligations. Strength of character, they think, is shown in conforming not in rebelling.
208: Even when a marriage is happy, a wife is not centrally placed in the circles of obligations. A man should therefore not elevate his relation to her so that it seems to be on a level with his feelings toward his parents or his country [or perhaps his employer].
219: It is as if they had set up their ethics like a bridge game. The good player is the one who accepts the rules & plays [well] within them. Good intentions, in the American sense, become irrelevancies.
In Japan "respecting yourself" is always to show yourself the careful [considerate] player. It does not mean, as it does in English usage, consciously conforming to a worthy standard of conduct.
221: This way of defining self-respect does not allow a man to claim an alibi for his failure on the ground of good intentions. Each move has its consequences & one should not act without estimating them.
224: A failure to balance obligations or to foresee contingencies is a shame. [Worse yet is losing your temper & reverting to the level of an infant or a monkey who cannot control his emotions.]
233: A people who have organized their lives around such elaborate reciprocal obligations as the J. naturally find self-sacrifice [& guilt] irrelevant.
234: They pay much closer attention to behaving competently [correctly, morally] & they allow themselves fewer alibis than Americans.
287: The group. One striking continuity connects [childhood to old age]: the great importance of being accepted by his fellows. This, & not an absolute standard [God] of virtue, is what is inculcated in him.
Here are two informative Japanese aphorisms:
The first one admonishes against individualism & counsels deference to authority & conformity to group values. The second one suggests that you would do well to keep your mouth shut & not constantly inform everyone about your feelings. No one cares; simply do your duty without complaint.
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