Japan: A Reinterpretation | Patrick Smith

Japan: A Reinterpretation | Patrick Smith | Very interesting read

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Japan: A Reinterpr...

	Japan: A Reinterpretation Patrick Smith Vintage, 1998 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 22 reviews view larger image
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Current Affairs/Asian Studies

Winner of the Overseas Press Club Award
for the best book on Foreign Affairs
A New York Times Notable Book of the year

"A stimulating, provocative book . . . fresh and valuable."
--The New York Times Book Review

In 1868, Japan abruptly transformed itself from a feudal society into a modern industrial state. In 1945, the Japanese switched just as swiftly from imperialism and emperor-worship to a democracy. Today, argues Patrick Smith, Japan is in the midst of equally sudden and important change.

In this award-winning book, Smith offers a groundbreaking framework for understanding the Japan of the next millennium. This time, Smith asserts, Japan's transformation is one of consciousness--a reconception by the Japanese of their country and themselves. Drawing on the voices of Japanese artists, educators, leaders, and ordinary citizens, Smith reveals a "hidden history" that challenges the West's focus on Japan as a successfully modernized country. And it is through this unacknowledged history that he shows why the Japanese live in a dysfunctional system that marginalizes women, dissidents, and indigenous peoples; why the "corporate warrior" is a myth; and why the presence of 47,000 American troops persists as a holdover from a previous era. The future of Japan, Smit suggests, lies in its citizens' ability to create new identities and possibilities for themselves--so creating a nation where individual rights matter as much as collective economic success. Authoritative, rich in detail, Japan: A Re
interpretation is our first post-Cold War account of the Japanese and a timely guide to a society whose transformation will have a profound impact on the rest of the world in the coming years.

"Excellent . . . a penetrating examination."
--International Herald Tribune

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On Target

Patrick Smith has taken a lot of flak for his diagnosis (mostly from academics with an ax to grind) but somebody had to come out and state the obvious. Basically, he says that Japan has already undergone two revolutions--economic and political--and needs to undergo one more--a revolution of individualism--before its chronic problems can be solved. Currently, there's way too much groupthink and conformism that stifles creativity and leads to a stagnant, stultified society. This is most evident in Japanese institutions of education, where the primary and secondary schools teach entirely by rote method and enforce consensus thinking, while colleges are nothing but playpens of childish inanity and perpetual drunkenness, four years of riot and respite for overworked, undereducated kids who will soon go off the spend the rest of their lives in unrelieved drudgery for giant corporations where advancement is by seniority only. I've seen the results firsthand and, let me tell you, it ain't pretty.

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Very interesting read

What made me add a review here is the following: It is very ironic that Patrick Smith is being excused of peddling stereotypes in his book, given that his main intention is to counter the prevalent stereotypes that people are so fond of. Regardless of what you know about Japan, this book will make you think about it - provided you are willing to do that.

You might also get the impression from some of the other reviews that Smith's book is some sort of academic study or something like that. I haven't found a single occasion in the book where he claims anything like that - and at the end of the book, he says the exact opposite.

So one might ask whether those reviewers who trash the book here aren't showing exactly the kind of behaviour that Patrick Smith discusses in some detail: People, according to Smith, are way too attached to an unrealistic image of Japan, and they don't want to let go of it.

If you want to find out why that might be the case read the book. Smith discusses a fairly large variety of examples, many of which you will not find elsewhere that easily. And even where one is inclined to disagree with him - for example when Smith dismisses most contemporary Japanese literature as fluff - his writing and ideas are still interesting enough to make you think about it.

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Good anecdotes, poor conclusions.

Much like the other reviewers of this book, I too have spent time in Japan; a little over two years. Most of that was spent studying at University and thinking about the country and society I was transplanted into. As such, I have read many books on the subject and have had countless conversations with Americans, other foreigners, and Japanese about such subjects that are brought up in Smith's book.

A major problem that books such as these have is that they are either too simplistic and too naive, or they are too academic and thick. Smith's attempt is one of the rare, decent meldings of these two approaches. The problem is that it only succeeds at times.

I had spent years knowing of this book but never bothering to read it. Some friends I studied with offered their insights into it. One commented that he was required to read it alongside John Dower's "Embracing Defeat" in a university class to show the difference between good academic research (Dower) and bad (Smith). A few years later this same friend finally read Smith's book in its entirety and recommended I give it a crack. Another friend had read it twice and recommended I read it too. Both friends have extensive experience studying in and of Japan and had enough first-hand knowledge to be critical of the narrative while also absorbing insights. At least that is what I hope they felt, because that is what I felt after reading this book.

Smith has made a book that dances with academics while inviting the casual reader along for a cut on the sociological rug. It is a tough order for a work just over 300 pages and I feel was destined to be half-appreciated. The history of an entire nation--over 125-million people, 1600 years of written history, and its interactions throughout, especially the last 150 with the United States, all summarized with pronouns such as "Japan" and "they" (meaning Japan), and "us" and "we" (meaning the United States), makes for manufactured pitfalls of perspective and judgment and easy (and deserved) criticism. For me, it was thoughts such as I was thirty-four years unborn when WWII ended. I was a part of this "we" only in the most symbolic sense. The same applies to all the "they"s that I know: my Japanese friends.

As such, "Japan: A Reinterpretation" makes for good anecdotal reading. The conclusions reached can only be appreciated if the reader agrees with them through experience (meaning the reader has studied Japan and spent time there) or if the reader is very gullible. Where this leaves the disagreeing and the ignorant of Japan is in a confusing and unsatisfying world of thought.

At best, Smith's book makes a good spotlight illuminating areas of interest in the reader's mind. Such varied topics as the US occupation, burakumin outcasts, education, sexism, litterature, and the royal family are touched upon in this work. Those who are still curious about certain things brought up should be encouraged to other works. For US-Japan foreign policy, I recommend the works of Chalmers Johnson, despite his obvious polemical tendencies. For insight on the US occupation, a topic covered in the opening chapters, "Embracing Defeat" by John Dower cannot be topped for detail and lucidity. For environmental concerns and bureaucratic problems, Alex Kerr's "Dogs and Demons", though venomous, is a far more detailed account of such topics mentioned in Smith's work. The list of recommendations could go on, but in the end I come away from Smith's work mildly pleased. I was expecting a polemic that over-assumed and was a joke in a research respect. What I got was a decent work that works best as a primer for the already initiated to Japan. A mixed result from a mixed book.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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