The Japanese

Előszó

Préfacé
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the river of history flows fast in Japan, and each bend reveals the country in a new light. The time is ripe for a reappraisal of Japan from the perspective of the late 1970s. In the past I have attempted in various works to outline this flow or to describe the conditions of life, social Organization, motivating ideas, and international relations of the Japanese people. In the several editions of The United States and Japan, for example, I wrote of them as they followed the road to war, as they responded to the wrenching reforms of the American occupation, and as they reacted to their own brilliant postwar economic success. All these phases of recent history, however, are receding into the past and are merging with a much longer tradition that helps shape what the Japanese are today and may be in the future. The time has come to take a fresh look at Japan and the Japanese from our present vantage point.
In viewing Japan from the perspective of the late 1970s, however, I have tried to avoid a close concentration on the present Situation for fear that emphasis on current issues might distract our attention from the more fundamental and lasting aspects of the picture that can give us better insights into what Japan may be in the future. I have thus sought to achieve a wide focus on contemporary Japan as seen in the light of its whole past experience. Naturally the basic facts about the past do not change, and in describing these I may at places have unconsciously fallen into the same phraseology I used in earlier books. But even these un-changing facts often appear in a new light when viewed from a new point in time. This book thus is not merely an updating of my previous writings. Vissza

Fülszöveg

Here is japan as only Edwin O. Reischauer can illuminate it-a brilliantly rounded portrait of the background, culture, and values of a country that may well play a unique role in solving the problems of the twenty-first century. After piacing Japan and its people in their historical and geographical setting, Reischauer weighs the paradoxes and particularities in contemporary Japanese society. He explores, forinstance, the contrast between group emphasis and individualism and the strong sense of hierarchy coexisting with a lack of classconsciousness and a highly egalitarian educational and social system. He offers a penetrating analysis of Japanese personality, identifying the ways in which the Japanese really are different from Westerners. Hc alsó provides a revealing description of the Japanese government and an up-to-the-minute discussion of Japanese politics, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of Japanese democracy and assaying its prospects. Finally, Reischauer evaluates Japan as a world power. He finds that Japan's very strengths-strong selfimage, exceptional homogeneity, close-knit society -often become handicaps in foreign relations. But, as Reischauer contends, the Japanese could contribute significantly to the future. As an economically successful country that has renounced war and the arms race, as harmonizer of a dynamic cultural mix and developer of effective skills to solve the problems of industrial, úrban life and mass democracy, Japan has the opportunity to lead the way toward establishing the "global community" of the new century. Reischauer has given us an elegantly simple and direct work that at once draws fully upon the wealth of his scholarship and experience and is infused on every page with his life-long rapport with the subject. Richly illustrated, The Japanese is certain to delight and reward readers everywhere. Vissza