The Japanese Mind: Understanding Contemporary Japanese Culture

£6.40

nihonjinron -nothing useful - I ve lived in Japan for 5 years and speak the language fluently and quite frankly this book offers nothing but tired concepts and a trite superficial rehash of nihonjin-ron ideology, pleasant to Japanese right wingers and japanologists . The section on AMAE offers nothing but direct quotes from Doi who s work, popular in the 1960s, is largly anecdotal and discredited. Try Peter Dale s the myth of Japanese unique-ness of Sugimoto s excellent 2003 book An introduction to Japanese society which is based on scientific research and fact not silly notions of Japanese as a homogenous borg like organism that can be studied from afar and defined by a few key concepts .

Are the Japanese so unique? - Readers seeking to gain insight into Japanese lives, rather than read this kind of one-sided nihonjinron (theories of Japaneseness - a kind of propaganda that was fashionable in the 70 s but quickly discredited), with its claims to exploring the uniqueness of the Japanese (what, all of them?), would do better to look at Understanding Japanese Society by anthropologist Joy Hendry. Instead of claiming any uniqueness for the Japanese, that book offers a very readable, insightful, and ultimately human (holistic) exploration of the ways in which the various realms of Japanese society (home, school, work, government, ritual, religion, play etc.) function, for various members, at different life stages, from their point of view. Readers of that book will come to see that Japanese ways of thinking make sense in context, and are not so unique after all.

Fascinating but imperfect view on Japanese culture - The series of short essays on various topics of Japanese culture offer a fascinating and insightful viewpoint on what makes the Japanese tick.While there are some real gems here (I found the chapter about Japanese learning and the seep-down attitude a great help), there is a lack of integration between the essays. Well worth a read for anyone who (like me) finds themselves working with the Japanese, but this is not a encyclopaedic work by a long stretch -- you need to read more to gain a more complete understanding.

Interesting intoduction to the unique character of the Japanese mind - This is a wonderful introduction to the peculiar thing that is being Japanese. Even some Japanese people find it hard to pin down what it is to be Japanese and what it means. This may sound pretentious, but it s not.If you are studying Japanese, you should definitely learn about Japanese culture and history and ideas and this is the ideal start. If you start to get serious you should get Boyé Lafayette De Mente s book Japan s Cultural Code Words: Key Terms That Explain Attitudes and Behaviour of the Japanese (Paperback) ISBN 0804835748. [I have the hardback, I assume the paperback is the same inside].All things considered, you could do much worse than get this book to delve beneath the surface of the Japanese mind.

A good start. - Although far from perfect, this book is a good introduction to Japanese thinking and behaviour. Each chapter mainly considers one concept, but a few are found in several parts which makes it a bit repetitive but also helps memorising them. The essay questions at the end of each chapter are worth reading too. They sometimes contain a few more explainations and also help put things in perspective by contrasting Western and Japanese attitudes. Overall it s an interesting book, easy to read and understand, even if a bit unclear at times, some parts would benefit from being developped.

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• Japanese Etiquette & Ethics in Business 6/e
• The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture
• Understanding Japanese Society (Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies)
• Japan - Culture Smart!