7 - Gauging Japanese Responsibility

Summary

Never had the United States fought against a country that it knew so little about. In her postwar classic analyzing Japanese culture, the anthropologist Ruth Benedict wrote that Japan was “the most alien enemy the United States had ever fought in an all-out struggle.” Japanese studies in the West was in its infancy. Benedict was one of several social scientists called to Washington during the war to try to figure out what made Japan tick. Her book The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946) grew out of the discussions among these social scientists. She brought a formidable intellect to her task. She had been instrumental in moving the field of anthropology away from its existing view of behavior as racially determined. Rather, behavior was the expression of customs, institutions, and ways of thinking inherited from the distinctive histories of different people.