The ‘nihonjinron’ is a body of writing and thought which constitutes a major and highly thought of academic industry in Japan. It analyses the Japanese identity and presupposes that the Japanese differ radically from other people in their make-up. It believes that their uniqueness is due to linguistic, sociological and philosophical differences.
First published in 1988, this book is a critical analysis of the thought on which the ‘nihonjinron’ is based. Placing particular emphasis upon psychoanalysis, which constitutes the centrepiece of the book, Peter Dale reasons that the ‘nihonjinron’ should be treated as a mythological system.
1. On ‘The Otherness of the Other’ 2. The Quest for Identity 3. A Uniqueness Rare in the World 4. The Dialectics of Difference 5. The Warp of Language 6. The Linguistics of Silence 7. Silence and Elusion 8. Omnia Vincit Amae 9. The Complex of Japanese Psychoanalysis 10. The Shame of a Shame Culture 11. Monkey Business 12. On Identity and Difference
Biography
Peter Dale
Dale offers a challenging explanation of the foundations of one of the most influential streams of modern Japanese thought. All of us who try to understand twentieth-century Japan must digest these new observations. Political Studies
