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Aspects of Personal Character in Japan*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Douglas G. Haring
Douglas G. Haring
Affiliation:
Syracuse University
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Extract

Psychological characteristics of enemy peoples were studied almost frantically during the recent war with a view to more effective psychological warfare. Answers were sought to questions like the following: How does the average enemy individual think and feel? Can his mentalemotional constitution be exploited to disrupt his will to fight? And how did he get that way?

Prior to 1941 almost no one investigated the phenomena of personality development in Japanese society. Even the Germans were subjected to very little systematic study. After the bombs began to fall, when collection of essential data had become impossible, both governmental and private initiative backed research into “character structure” among enemy peoples.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , November 1946 , pp. 12 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1946

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References

1 See Benedict's, Ruth F. “The concept of the guardian spirit in North America,” Memoir no. 29, American anthropological association (1923) and Patterns of culture (Boston & New York, 1934)Google Scholar; also Mead's, MargaretComing of age in Samoa (New York, 1928)Google Scholar, Growing up in New Guinea (New York, 1930) and Sex and temperamentin three primitive societies (NewYork, 1935). Edward Sapir's pioneer contributions, less directly pertinent here, are cited in detail in the paper by Kluckhohn (note 2, below).

2 Bateson, Gregory, Naven (Cambridge, Eng., 1936)Google Scholar and Bateson, Gregory and Mead, Margaret, Balinese character, a photographic analysis (New York academy of sciences, 1942)Google Scholar; Beaglehole, Ernest“Character structure, its role in the analysis of interpersonal relations,” Psychiatry: journal of the biology and pathology of interpersonal relations, 7 (May 1944), no. 2Google Scholar; DuBois, Cora, The people of Alor, a social psychological study of an East Indian island, with analyses by Abram Kardmer and Emil Oberholzer (Minneapolis, 1944)Google Scholar; Erikson, Erik Homburger, “Hitler's imagery and German youth,” Psychiatry, 5 (Nov. 1942), no. 4Google Scholar and Observations on the Yurok: childhood and world image. University of California publications in American archaeology and ethnology, vol. 35, no. 10 (Berkeley, 1943)Google Scholar; Linton, Ralph, The cultural background of personality (New York, 1945)Google Scholar; Mead, Margaret, “Character formation in two South Sea societies,” American neurological association, transactions 66th annual meeting (1940)Google Scholar; Thompson, Laura and Joseph, Alice, The Hopi way (U. S. Indian Service, 1944)Google Scholar; Whiting, John W. M., Becoming a Kwoma: teaching and learning in a New Guinea tribe (New Haven, 1941)Google Scholar; Leighton, Dorothea C. and Kluckhohn, Clyde, Children of the people: the Navaho individual and his development (Cambridge, 1946)Google Scholar. For a historical summary of the influence of psychiatry on anthropology, see Kluckhohn, Clyde, “The influence of psychiatry on anthropology in America during the past one hundred years,” One hundred years of American psychiatry, edited by Hall, J. K., Zilboorg, G., and Bunker, H. A. (New York, 1944)Google Scholar.

3 See DuBois (note 2, above) and the three works of Kardiner, Abram, The individual and his society, with a foreword and two ethnological reports by Ralph Linton (NewYork, 1939)Google Scholar, “The concept of basic personality structure as an operational tool in the social sciences,” in The science of man in the world crisis, ed. by Linton, Ralph (New York, 1945)Google Scholar and Kardiner with the collaboration of Linton, Ralph, DuBois, Cora, and West, James, The psychological frontiers of society (New York, 1945)Google Scholar.

4 Quoted without page citation by Wittels, Fritz, Freud and his time (New York, 1931), p. 171.Google Scholar

5 Beaglehole, op. cit., p. 155.

6 Studies frankly confined to Japanese internees in the United States are omitted from the scope of this paper. By the time this is in print, Ruth Benedict's forthcoming book on the Japanese probably will be available; it should be included among the papers listed below.

Gorer, Geoffrey, “Themes in Japanese culture,” Transactions New York academy of sciences, ser. II, 5 (March 1943), 105–24Google Scholar; Meadow, Arnold, An analysis of Japanese character structure (New York: distributed privately by The Institute for Intercultural Studies, 1944)Google Scholar; Benedict, Ruth F., Japanese behavior patterns. Office of War Information, Area III, Overseas Branch, Foreign Morale Analysis Division, Report #25 (Washington, 1945)Google Scholar; Parsons, Talcott, “Population and social structure,” chapter 4 in Japan's prospect, ed. by Haring, D. G. (Cambridge, 1946)Google Scholar. See also chapter 1 in the same book, passim; LaBarre, Weston, “Some observations on character structure in the Orient: the Japanese,” Psychiatry, 8 (August 1945), no. 3Google Scholar, an excellent summary; Spitzer, Herman M. (in consultation with Dr. Ruth Fulton Benedict), Bibliography of articles and books relating to Japanese psychology. Office of War Information, Area III, Overseas Branch, Foreign Morale Analysis Division, Report #24 (Washington, 1945)Google Scholar.

7 Unconscious criteria of selection on the part of the Japanese in the process of cultural diffusion are discussed in preliminary fashion by the present writer in chapter 7 of Japan's prospect (see Parsons entry, note 6, above).

8 Henderson, William and Aginsky, B. W., “A social science field laboratory,” American sociological review, 6 (February 1941), no. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.