Ruth Benedict's Obituary for Japanese Culture: An Exchange

Extract

What is the nature of Japanese Culture? Japan Focus published Douglas Lummis's critique of Ruth Benedict's Chrysanthemum and the Sword, arguably the most influential work ever written on Japanese culture.

Below find a response from Toru Uno and Lummis's rejoinder. Japan Focus welcomes further contributions to this debate.

Ruth Fulton Benedict's intellectual presence is still being felt in the field of comparative cultures and beyond, even though almost six decades have elapsed since her passing. We have come to see her epistemological orientation as our own as much as uniquely hers. So much so that we are no longer conscious of our indebtedness to her pioneering work today. In observing a culture different from our own, we try, almost instinctively now, to elicit a discernable pattern while being mindful of its own internal logic. This disciplined perspective toward a foreign culture seems even more relevant and indispensable in the often emotional “kulture kampf” debates we encounter in the post 9/11 world.