Talk:Nihonjinron/Archive 1

Archive 1

DannyWilde's description

Many of DannyWilde's description was popular internet rumor which don't have any basis and it sounded very malicious. Posted by User:Hskf4

Facts are stilling being worked out. Many of the "examples" given have been around in academia for years. Exploding Boy has provided a sound basis for which to build off of by providing a defination by Kosaku Yoshino. Furthermore, it is our duty not to fall into the nihhonjinron while writing about and discussing it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.168.62.37 (talk • contribs)

You're referring to the bit you removed about Nazism? It said that in the western view it has been compared to Nazism, not that it was or was like Nazism. Exploding Boy 15:35, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Added: I've just gone through the edit history and most, I'm tempted to say all, of what you've removed was unjustified. These things are not just "internet rumours" and vicious lies; they are things that have actually been promoted by people. One that was notable absent was the theory that Japanese people have different intestines than others, and thus have a different diet. Absolute rubbish, of course, but promoted by people who should know better--a doctor in this case. Exploding Boy 15:44, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

The older version was better than this censored one, I would suggest a revert. -- Mkill 16:47, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Cite credible sources for your alleged nihonjinron theories if they are not "internet rumors." What nihonjinron books are they from? Are these books widely recognized as "nihonjinron" in Japan or among scholars? Hermeneus (talk) 17:43, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

I didn't write the bit about nazism. This page was merged into Japanese people, I believe by User:TakuyaMurata, and then I unmerged it again, and that was already in there. I wrote the list of Nihonjin theories, and someone else reedited them after that, with some "justifications". Now, the fact that a reference, complete with ISBN number etc. was removed from the article shows that the recent edits were very untrustworthy and need to be reverted out completely. It's pretty amazing when references are removed from articles, and then people start saying there isn't enough evidence - that just doesn't make any sense. --DannyWilde 22:23, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Listing the titles of two books that you've just read on Japan doesn't make a "reference." Cite the page numbers that you referred to when you write the disputed sentences.

日本語表と裏 (Nihongo Omote to Ura) "Japanese inside and outside" by 森本哲朗 (Morimoto Tetsurō)

Why is this litle essay on Japanese language picked up as a primary example of nihonjinron over more well-known nihonjinron books like Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword?

I haven't read Benedict's book. Morimoto's book is a collection of essays, BTW, not a little essay. I added it to the references since it was my first encounter with the "Nihonjinron" ideas. My Japanese teacher recommended it to me about ten years ago, and I was very surprised by a lot of the contents. Since I read that book, I found that such thinking as Morimoto's (Morimoto is, or was, anyway, a well-known TV personality) is quite common in Japan. I wouldn't say it was good or bad in itself, but something that very few foreign people would credit as being true, such as Morimoto's frankly bizarre insistence that only Japan has four seasons. --DannyWilde 06:26, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Boye Lafayette de Mente, Japan's Cultural Code Words

Is the book with such a subtitle as "233 Key Terms That Explain Attitudes & Behavior of the Japanese" supposed to be a major authoritative work of scholarship on the subject of nihonjinron?

I don't know, I haven't read it. One of the other authors cited it on the discussion about this page's edits on the noticeboard, actually. --DannyWilde 06:26, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't find neither of the titles in three books on nihonjinron that I have at hand:

• Takeo Funabiki (船曳建夫), Nihonjinron Saiko (「日本人論」再考, Nihonjinron Reconsidered, ISBN 4-14-08030-6 C0095).
• Yoshio Sugimoto and Ross Mouer (杉本良夫、ロス・マオア), Nihonjinron no Houteishiki (日本人論の方程式, the Equation of Nihonjinron, ISBN 4-480-08179-8 C0136)
• Tamotu Aoki (青木保), Nihonbunkaron no Henyo (「日本文化論」の変容, Transition of the Theories of Japanese Culture). ISBN 4-12-203399-3

It's interesting that you have three books, and yet you didn't add them to the references of the article. Why is that? Also, since you're in such a frenzy about page numbers, why didn't you provide page numbers yourself? --DannyWilde 06:26, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm working on it right now. Hermeneus (talk) 06:56, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Hermeneus, I think you need to relax a bit. By and large we don't require page numbers on Wikipedia. They wouldn't be helpful if you don't have immediate access to the works anyway, so I don't see why you're so insistent on them.

I haven't read the Morimoto article, but I have read the book by de Mente, as well as several others that support the examples given by DannyWilde. I'd like to point out that "kiku to katana" isn't really an example of Nihonjinron either, though it's sometimes said to be.

Instead of these rather harsh exchanges, why don't you enumarate your issues with the article so we can deal with them? Exploding Boy 07:03, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Benedict's Chrysanthemum and the Sword is the most widely recognized nihonjinron. That you are arguing otherwise just shows that your understanding of nihonjinron is utterly flawed. It's no wonder that Japanese persons like Hskf4 above are offended by the current descriptions that portray the entire nihonjinron discourse as nothing more than a bunch of racist supremacist nonsenses. Hermeneus (talk) 08:03, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

As Exploding Boy said, can you make some concrete points about the parts of the article you think should be changed? I'm sure he would like to work with you to improve the article. --DannyWilde 08:19, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

I made some edits that hopefully have improved the article a little bit, although it is still a decidedly critical read as it stands now. Of course, it's kind of hard to avoid that when you're writing about people who claim that Japanese have an extra meter of intestines, and therefore can't eat American beef.[1] Anyhoo, I pared away some of the commentary on the examples because I don't think it's really needed -- readers can judge for themselves (pretty easily if you ask me) the likelihood that these claims are actually true. If more can be said about Japanese nihonjinron writers and their specific motivations or goals in making these claims, I think it would maybe help offset some the Western criticism, which forms a large chunk of the article right now. — MC MasterChef :: Leave a tip — 10:02, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

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First and foremost, "ron (論)" of Nihonjin-ron (日本人論) is a theory. You don't call any stereotypes "ron." A stereotype doesn't become a ron/theory just because it argues some Japanese uniqueness. No credible scholars would cite "Japan is the only country with four distinct seasons..." as a primary nihonjinron although admittedly it was a widely held stereotype among the Japanese people (esp. older ones). It's a blatant abuse of the word if you include any such stereotypes in "nihonjinron."

You seem to admit that these theories exist, and yet you think that they should not be in this article. OK, let's try to think what we can do, since the existence of the theories is clearly notable and should not have been deleted. Which article do you suggest putting them in? Have you got a constructive suggestion? These theories are known, perhaps mistakenly, as "nihonjinron" by some people. What name would you give them? --DannyWilde 13:37, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Secondly, nihonjinron is not limited to supremacist ideology comparable to Nazism. Nor is the supremacist type the representative type of the vast and various nihonjinron discourse. Like I wrote in the main article many nihonjinron books are critiques of "unique" Japanese features rather than self-glorifying baloneys. If there is a nationalistic literature on the Japanese, it is a nihonjinron by definition since it is about the Japanese people; however, the vice versa is not the case. This is a plain fact and not relative to "Western view" or whatever view.

This paragraph is a little hard to understand. Can you explain what you mean here? --DannyWilde 13:37, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Thirdly, nihonjinron is not a whole bunch of irrational pseudosciences like the Japanese brain theory mentioned in the current article. Nihonjinron includes many genuine scholarships authored by sociologists, anthropologists, and other sorts of scholarly authorities. Ruth Benedict's Kiku to Katana is the widely recognized precursor of nihonjinron. Disregarding it as a nihonjinron just because it is a genuine scholarship or because it was written by a foreign author is flatly wrong.

It seems to me that you would like to improve the balance of the article, and you feel it is POV at the moment. I think that is OK, but can you please make some kind of constructive suggestions or edits? I don't mind people adding to the article, but I do mind people deleting stuff just because they don't like it. If the article isn't representative or is biased, that is because the people who wrote it (one of whom is me) don't have as much information as some others. Obviously I don't have the same information as you, so if you would try to add something rather than censor the article, then you could get it into a more balanced shape without having to remove things. --DannyWilde 13:37, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't deny that there exist some nationalistic or pseudo-scientific texts in nihonjinron. However, portraying the entire nihonjinron scholarship as if it consists exclusively of such ridiculous nonsenses is biased to say the least. It is no wonder that the current selection of nihonjionron examples would appear to the Japanese people yet another "malicious" attempt to bash and make fun of the weirdo Japanese for seriously believing in these racist pseudo-scientific jokes in this day and age a la engrish.

Can you suggest a way to make it more balanced? What do you think the article should say, which it doesn't? --DannyWilde 13:37, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Nihonjinron is an epitome of Japan's agonizing struggle for identity and self-consciousness as the only Asian nation in the the club of modern advanced nations where the leading members are all European in origin. If someone chooses to compltely ingore the long generation of serious scholarship on the Japanese nation such as Benedict's Kiku to Katana, van Wolfren's The Enigma of Japanese power, Ango Sakaguchi's Darakuron (堕落論, On Decadence), Takeo Doi's Amae no kozo (「甘え」の構造, The Anatomy of Dependence), Yukio Mishima's Bunka Boeiron (文化防衛論, A Defense of Culture), and Yasusuke Murakami's The 'Ie' Society as a Civilization (文明としてのイエ社会, Bunmei to shiteno Ie Shakai), and instead portrays Japan's identity struggle with common stereotypes spewed by some Japanese nobodies and books of pseudo science like the four season "theory" and the Japanese brain "theory," s/he is the one with a problem. Hermeneus (talk) 13:22, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

They may be minority views, but that these theories exist is notable, I think - it is not something to be removed from the encyclopedia, just because you don't like it. You obviously have a lot of knowledge to contribute to the article. How about putting some of it into the current article, without deleting things you don't like? --DannyWilde 13:37, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with DannyWilde: you can't disregard as nihonjinron the wacked-out claims made by some Japanese thinkers about the uniqueness of the Japanese people and culture because they're not "credible scholarship." The thinking of normal people about what constitutes Japaneseness is also part of nihonjinron.

For example, Kosaku Yoshino defines nihonjinron as the "vast array of literature which thinking elites have produced to define the uniqueness of Japanese culture, society and national character", as distinguished from rigorous academic research on Japanese society and culture (2-3). According to him, anything can become nihonjinron subject matter.

I don't have time to expand at the moment, but here's the reference: Yoshino, Kosaku. Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan: A Sociological Enquiry. London, England: Routledge, 1992.

Exploding Boy 16:55, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

What if a Japanese Wikipedian creates an article on the 19th century American literature where he introduces no popular authors such as Melville and Thoreau and instead quote some racist speeches and pamphlets of Klansman as the representative examples of American literature of the time? Would this be a legitimate treatment of the subject? This Japanese Wikipedian has no knowledge of major American writers whatsoever, and his idea of the 19th century American literature is that it is all about some wacked-out claims of white superiority. Would not American people be angered if they read his article? 18:30, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

What you say certainly is true, people would get angry about that, but since this is Wikipedia, which anyone can edit, the best thing to do, then, would be for that person not to get angry, but to try to restore the balance, by adding the missing stuff about Melville and Thoreau to the article. If the person just removed the material they didn't like about the KKK, because it is bad for America's image, that would not be right, because the KKK is notable, even if a lot of Americans are probably not proud of them. So let me repeat, if you think the article is out of balance or POV, the best thing to do is for you to add stuff to it to balance it out. --DannyWilde 23:54, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the above, and would add that I'm slighly at a loss as to why you think that these things are not part of nihonjinron. It seems to me that it's because you don't want unsourced bad or biased things said about Japanese people, which is fair enough. But the fact remains that much nihonjinron thinking is wacked out nonsense---for example, the claim that Japanese people have different intestines than other people. It's stupid, it's not scholarly, it's ridiculous, it's obviously untrue.... but it's also nihonjinron. It's not a reflection on Japanese people as a whole, just like fascism isn't a reflection on the Italian people. But just because it makes us uncomfortable doesn't mean that we should leave it out of an encyclopaedia article. This is not about non-Japanese editors bashing Japanese people. Exploding Boy 00:34, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Nihonjinron are not wacked out nonsense by definition. Not even the majority. Claiming so is no more prejudiced than claiming that "most Japanese men are bucktoothed camera-carrying shorties with glasses." Also you don't call any essentialist stereotypes spewed by some Japanese person "nihonjinron" just because they are presented in the form of bogus "theory" and argue some Japanese uniqueness. That is as much an abuse of the term as calling a racist speech coming out of the mouth of Klansman a representative example of "American philosophy." Anyway nihonjinron that merit reference in the article are the major theories that are at the least published in widely read literature. You should be able to cite the title and author of such nihonjinron. I don't have a problem with citing some rudiculous nihonjinron as far as it is from a widely recognized literature and is presented as it is in an appropriate subsection, viz. "wacked-out types of nihonjinron," as opposed to more genuine scholarship of nihonjinron that should be the main object of description. Hermeneus (talk) 01:30, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I think we're getting our terms mixed up here. "Nihonjinron" is discourse on Japaneseness. Nihonjinron refers to the "vast array of literature which thinking elites have produced to define the uniqueness of Japanese culture, society and national character'", as distinguished from rigorous academic research on Japanese society and culture (the source is Kosaku Yoshino, same as given above). In other words, nihonjinron represents an attempt, usually non-academic but sometimes pseudo-scientific, to identify and define what makes Japanese people Japanese, and what is unique about Japaneseness. Nihonjinron absolutely encompasses the nonsense spewed by average (read: non-academic) Japanese people, just as racism encompasses the nonsense spewed by Klansmen. You are absolutely wrong about only major theories of nihonjinron published in widely read literature meriting reference in this article; the wacked out theories of ordinary people merit just as much attention. At the same time, we needn't limit ourselves to such wackiness; there is plenty of evidence of nihonjinron-type thinking going back as far as Bashō and the national learning movement. Exploding Boy 20:45, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Yoshino says that nihonjinron is the (1) vast array of (2) literature which (3) thinking elites have produced."

By "vast array" Yoshino means that the entire nihonjinron industry is not purely academic as it also includes literatures other than rigorous academic research, not that nihonjinron is limited to "wacked-out nonsense." For Yoshino states that "[t]hose who have participated in the nihonjinron include elites of diverse types ranging from academics to journalists, diplomats and even business elites" (p. 6).

Something produced by "thinking elites" such as journalists and the rest is not "wacked-out nonsense" by definition. "Thinking elites" are not "ordinary people," either. Nor does a wacked-out stereotype spewed by some ordinary nobody get published in "literature." Nihonjinron is a genre of "literature," and if so it is only natural to introduce the major literatures written by major authors in the article. Hermeneus (talk) 00:28, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

The terminology used is one question. The name "nihonjinron" may be inappropriate for some of these theories. In order to ensure that this article is NPOV it is necessary for us to think of translating it into Japanese and putting it on the Japanese wikipedia. When this page was interwiki linked, I had a look at the Japanese page and noticed that the contents were very different. From that, it's clear that some of the complaints being addressed by the above editors are true - the article is misrepresentative and not NPOV. That, as I said above, probably represents the lack of knowledge of the current authors, and so more input is needed. However, it is extremely hard to see why the current contents need to be deleted - that is a kind of censorship, since these beliefs are widely enough held to be notable. --DannyWilde 22:53, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

There are lots of issues here but the most striking thing is that no one is actually adding worthwhile contents to the article, but just quibbling here on the talk page. If Hermeneus does have positive contributions to make, other than just blanking out stuff which he or she dislikes, I recommend him or her to start adding them to the page in a non-destructive way. --DannyWilde 22:53, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

It will only be an edit war if you start revising the article extensively without making a consensus here first. Hermeneus (talk) 00:36, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Consensus about what, exactly? I don't see any actual issues being discussed here. By now the talk page is much longer than the article, which must indicate something is going wrong. At the very least you could add your references and a summary to the current article. Also, you haven't responded to the queries I made to you above at all. If you are not happy with the "nihonjinron" title on these theories, apart from deleting them, what do you suggest should be done with the current contents? --DannyWilde 00:47, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

We haven't even agreed upon what constitutes "nihonjinron" yet. I refuse to describe "nihonjinron" as nothing but a whole bunch of "wacked out nonsense" spewed by some ordinary nobody because describing "nihonjin" so is an abuse of the word. The examples of nihonjinron should be the major "literatures" that have been widely read in Japan or ones that are recognized as significant works by relevant scholars. Mere stereotypes of Japanese-uniqueness are not "literatures" and so should not be mentioned as if they are the representative examples of nihonjinron. Hermeneus (talk) 01:10, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

What do you think of Exploding Boy's point that these kinds of theories have become known as "Nihonjinron" in the English speaking world? Even though this was not the original meaning of the word "Nihonjinron" in Japanese, Wikipedia is an English language encyclopedia, so I think these theories should be mentioned in the article under "Nihonjinron". Even if it's an abuse of the word in Japanese to call them "Nihonjinron", we're now talking about the English word "Nihonjinron", which, perhaps unfortunately, is used in English to talk about exactly the stuff which is on the page now. That might be unfortunate, but it is true. What you can do about this, though is to try to get a better balance into the article, for example, you could mention that the original meaning in Japanese is different from this. It's similar to the way the meaning of lots of gairaigo has changed in Japanese, isn't it? --DannyWilde 01:28, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

"Nihonjinron" isn't much of a word to speak of in the English speaking world yet. Such a minor misuse of the word in a little gaikokujin community doesn't merit reference on Wikipedia in the first place. Hermeneus (talk) 01:43, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

But the ideas in the article are notable, so can you please respond to the query which I have repeatedly posted: where do you suggest putting these entries if not under Nihonjinron? --DannyWilde 03:16, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

I think perhaps part of the problem is imprecision. Let's stop talking about "wacked out nonsense" and try to enumerate the actual issues.

I don't suggest that Yoshoni or anyone else claims that nihonjinron is limited to nonsense, however it does include such nonsense as the aforementioned intenstinal length claim as well as some other utterly non-academic, non-scientific claims. It also includes ideas of purity, especially blood purity, and race, both of which Yoshino discusses.

On the other hand, I'm increasingly getting the feeling, especially from your latest post, that you're unwilling to entertain any discussion of nihonjinron that differs from your own narrow view or that in some way is negative. Wikipedia articles are not about preserving the image of any people. Exploding Boy 01:56, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Like I said I don't mind citing nonsensical nihonjinron as far as it is a major "literature" produced by the Japanese "thinking elites." If you want to talk about the intenstinal theory, find the original proponent and introduce it with citation. Hermeneus (talk) 02:15, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Again, it doesn't have to be in major literature. That example, for instance, is so well known as to render a citation unnecessary. Exploding Boy 02:18, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

That the intestines of the Japanese are on average longer than those of Europeans is supposedly a medical fact, not a theory. I don't know if this is really the case or not, but I don't find it so wacked out a claim in itself, like the fact that the Japanese are on average shorter in height than Europeans. The standard "theory" that goes with this supposed fact is that the Japanese have longer intestines because their diet has been grain-intensive whereas Europeans, originally being hunting tribe, have consumed more meat. That the Japanese have an extra meter of intestines and therefore can't eat American beef is most likely a theory derived from this original theory, and is quite possibly something Iwamochi just made up in desperation. Nobody else shares this ridiculous theory. Hermeneus (talk) 02:47, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Wasn't this example something used in a trade war? Whether people really believe it is another matter, but if it is true that this reasoning was used by the Japanese government, that in itself is very notable and worth mentioning on Wikipedia, whether it is under the name "Nihonjinron" or some other suggestion. For myself I think it belongs under the name "Nihonjinron", but since you disagree with this statement, the onus is on you to come up with a more suitable location. Similar examples of "Nihonjinron" were towels being banned because they were too rough for Japanese skin, etc. If this kind of thing is used in a trade war by the Japanese government, it's very notable. --DannyWilde 03:16, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

That's just a stupid comment made by some Japanese bureaucrat. It belongs in nihonjinron as much as William Bennett's statement that aborting black children would reduce crime belongs in the article "Republicanism." Hermeneus (talk) 03:41, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

If it doesn't belong in this article, where do you suggest it belongs? --DannyWilde 04:14, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Possibly Japanese nationalism, as an example of nationalist stereotype. Hermeneus (talk) 04:24, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

My dear Hermeneus, nihonjinron is part of Japanese nationalism. Oh, and I can vouch for the beef thing. It was presented as medical fact (ie: it was psuedo-science), just as it was claimed hundreds of years ago that only Japanese people were makoto enough to appreciate the changing of the seasons. There are dozens of examples. I suggest you re-read Yoshino. Exploding Boy 03:12, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Nihonjinron is not by definition nationalistic. You don't call any form of nationalist expression "nihonjinron" just because there exist some nationalistic types of nihonjinron. Like I said earlier using "nihonjinron" thus is an abuse of the term. Hermeneus (talk) 04:42, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, well, I think that you're only willing to entertain a very narrow -- too narrow -- definition. You alone don't get the final say on what is and is not nihonjinron. Produce some evidence -- you're fond of demanding sources, so now it's your turn. Put up or shut up, as the expression goes. Exploding Boy 04:44, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with Yoshino's definition that nihonjinron is the "vast array of literature which thinking elites have produced to define the uniqueness of Japanese culture, society and national characte." Nihonjinron is at the least a genre of "literature." The beef theory is not. Hermeneus (talk) 05:23, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Issues to clarify

Here are some issues we need to clarify:

1. Who made the trade war, beef, towels, etc. statements.
2. Whether or not these kinds of statements are called nihonjinron in Japanese.
3. What the mainstream of nihonjinron is, if not the current contents of the article.
4. What references there are for the article, how can the references be improved.

Can anyone think of any more? I'd suggest doing some research work now, rather than to go on arguing, since the nature of the arguments here has not changed for the whole of the discussion. --DannyWilde 05:36, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Here are some quotes which may be useful. The following come from Gregory Shepherd [2]

"nihonjinron (roughly, 'the question of the Japanese people') . . . has come to permeate virtually every aspect of modern Japanese culture. Reminiscent of Japan's World War II propaganda, nihonjinron is an attempt on the part of its writers to glorify Japan and Japanese culture, often at the expense of truth."

Nihonjinron is "a movement with deep historical roots in the propaganda of World War II Imperial Japan. In its modern manifestation, nihonjinron might appear to be mere speculative reflection on Japan and Japanese culture, but under more intense scrutiny reveals itself to be a tendencious cultural self-trumpeting in its more benign manifestations and indisputably racist when at its most unsavory."

In his book, "The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness" Peter Dale characterizes nihonjinism writings by three major assumptions or analytical motivations:

"First, they implicitly assume that the Japanese constitute a culturally and socially homogeneous racial entity, whose essence is virtually unchanged from prehistoric times down to the present day. Secondly, they presuppose that the Japanese differ radically from all other known peoples. Thirdly, they are conspicuously nationalistic, displaying a conceptual and procedural hostility to any mode of analysis which might be seen to derive from external, non-Japanese sources. In a general sense then, nihonjinron may be defined as works of cultural nationalism concerned with ostensible 'uniqueness' of Japan in any aspect, and which are hostile to both individual experience and the notion of internal socio-historical diversity."

This movement is not limited to the arts and humanities but rather has managed to pervade virtually every discussion in Japan on Japan itself, on its culture and history, and most often, on what it means to be Japanese.

Perhaps one of the most pernicious manifestations of the nihonjinron movement appeared in a 1978 book entitled Nihonjin no No ("The Japanese Brain") by Tadanobu Tsunoda. Tsunoda is an otolaryngologist at Tokyo University, Japan's foremost university, who took up the study of the brain (more specifically the Japanese brain) as a rather ambitious hobby.

In his book, he basically declares that the Japanese "race" (it is commonplace in Japan to refer to the Japanese people as a race distinct from other Asian ethnic groups) is equipped with brains that operate in a significantly more sophisticated manner than those of other, and by implication, "lesser" races of mankind. Tsunda posits that this difference has its basis in the Japanese language, which he claims changes one's brain-wave functions and hemispheric dominance. Since Tsunoda emphasizes that their is no inherent genetic component implied in his findings, it would follow, presumably, that even a Westerner could have a "Japanese" brain if he or she were born into and raised in a wholly Japanese-speaking environment.

Tsunoda's evidence for his findings is based upon studies done either on himself or on a handful of Japanese and Western subjects with no control group; the results of his experiments have never been duplicated by independent researchers. Yet the public and media response to Nihonjin no No has been nothing short of phenomenal, and the book had gone into twenty seven printings by 1983. Tsunoda thus seems to have filled a rather large need in the populace -- scientific "documentation" of Japanese uniqueness.

It would be a great relief to be able to dismiss Tsunoda and Kojima as quacks who are merely tolerated in the Japanese intellectual community. But this is not possible since both have risen to the top of their respective fields on the very basis of such specious methodology. And in the case of Tsunoda, no less than the late, eminent ethnomusicologist Fumio Koizumi is quoted in Nihonjin no No:

"In the music world, your research has been a source of great edification...with your research we now have a basis for understanding the mechanism within the human body to scientifically prove how sensitivity to sound differs. This is truly a source of inspiration. The Japanese hear the sound of insects as music with their dominant left side of the brain, whereas Westerners and others hear it as noise with the right hemisphere of their brains..."

Given that nihonjinron thinking is not a series of isolated incidents, but rather an entire genre of publication (bookstores in Japan typically have whole sections devoted to such works under the very heading "nihonjinron") and also given the fact Japanese academics have launched careers with such works, the question arises as to how theories such as Tsunoda's and Kojima's could go unchallenged in the Japanese scholarly community."

Exploding Boy 05:47, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

That is a horribly written essay. Someone with "M.Mus degree in Vocal Performance and M.A. in musicology" is hardly an authority on the subject.

The subject of Yoshino's study is nihonjinron as a factor that fosters the larger phenomenon of cultural nationalism, which includes the "receptive or consumption side of the nihonjinron" as well. Nihonjinron authors themselves are not necessarily nationalists. Nor are all nihonjinron literatures by definition expressly nationalistic. What Yoshino describes as nationalism is rather the industry of nihonjinron as a whole than each nihonjinron on its own merit. Yoshino and Mouer (1982) devotes a chapter on nihonjinron developed in foreign countries. As a matter of fact those foreign authors of nihonjinron can't possibly be Japanese nationalists themselves. What could be nationalistic about this is the secondary fact that many Japanese readers love to read nihonjinron books written by gaikokujin (foreigners) because they are concerned about their image as seen by outsiders.

Also Aoki (1990) correctly points out that Befu's definition of nihonjinron as "mass consumption goods" as opposed to academic works is not appropriate since nihonjinron includes excellent scholarship as well such as Murakami et al's The 'Ie' Society as a Civilization (文明とイエ社会) that first appeared on Chuo Koron (中央公論), a general interest magazine, rather than some academic journal (p. 25), and that whether a literature is academic or not cannot be easily determined by its medium of publication in Japan. Hermeneus (talk) 06:02, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

It's excerpts from an essay by an academic who's just as qualified to comment as any of the so-called academics who create some of the more nonsensical nihonjinron theories.

By the way, the claim that Japanese people have longer intestines, so if they eat American hormone-treated beef and imported rice treated with poisonous post-harvest chemicals they are more likely to develop cancer, was made by then-Agriculture Minister Hata Tsutomu in 1987. Oh, and there was another thing about skis too. Apparently Japanese snow is different too. Exploding Boy 06:08, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

A "claim" is not a "literature."

This strikes me as a red herring. You're trying to move stuff you don't like out of the article by saying it's not "nihonjinron", but your definition of "not nihonjinron" seems to be remarkably similar to "stuff that I don't like". --DannyWilde 08:45, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

According to a survey conducted by Nomura Research Institute (野村総合研究所), 698 books on nihonjinron had been published in Japan between 1946 and 1978. The breakdown of the major themes of nihonjinron is as follows:

• General books:
  • Nihonjinron written by philosophers -- 5.5%
  • Nihonjinron written by literary/dramatic authors -- 4.5%
  • Nihonjinron written by social/cultural anthropologists -- 4.5%
  • Nihonjinron written by historians and minzokugaku (folklore, 民俗学) scholars -- 4.5%
  • Nihonjinron written by economists, political scientists, and legal scholars -- 4.5%
  • Nihonjinron written by natural scientists -- 4.0%
  • Nihonjinron written by linguists and literary scholars -- 3.5%
  • Nihonjinron written by diplomats, social critics, and journalists -- 3.5%
  • Nihonjinron written by psychologists -- 3.5%
  • Nihonjinron written by foreign scholars -- 4.0%
  • Nihonjinron written by foreign journalists -- 5.5%
  • Nihonjinron written by other foreigners -- 7.0%
  • Others -- 5.5%
• Investigative reports:
  • General theories on national characters -- 7.0%
  • Surveys on desire and satisfaction -- 3.5%
  • Attitude surveys on work ethics -- 4.0%
  • Attitude surveys saving -- 4.0%
  • Other generic attitude surveys -- 6.5%
  • Time-budget surveys -- 3.5%
  • Survey on foreigners' view on Japanese economic activities -- 6.5%
  • Overseas opinion researches on Japan -- 4.5%

Hermeneus (talk) 06:13, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Nihonjinron is not limited to literature! Good grief! Exploding Boy 06:16, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

That is the definition of your favorit author Yoshino. Nihonjinron is the name of a peculiar genre of literature in Japan. Hermeneus (talk) 06:20, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

One thing that's worth noting is that the books "written by foreigners" are probably written by Japanese. Take C.W. Nicol, for example, who is said to write books on Japan. I've seen him on NHK presenting a programme about environmental protection, and his spoken Japanese is certainly not outstandingly good, so it's clear that he either has his books translated or that they are written by someone else. Other cases of fake foreigners also exist. I remember the Hiragana Times had some bogus "foreigner" called Nicos Coper (Coper Nicus) who was actually the Japanese editor of the magazine, and there are other, more famous cases I believe. --DannyWilde 08:45, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

C.W. Nicol writes his own books. Exploding Boy 15:42, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to believe it, but his Japanese isn't the greatest. --DannyWilde 00:52, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Maybe he has a good editor? CES 01:11, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

The distinctions made by Aoki Tamotsu in the wikipedia article are derivative and not his own. They were copied, with only a very slight modification to cover his award-winning plagiarism, from Dale's book (1986) p.213 21:00, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I think that how nihonjinron is used in Japanese is different from how it is used in English, and I think as distinction needs to be made.

Here's a Quote from William Kelly (Prof at Yale):

Although "ron" usually conntes a field of debate, Nihonjinron is really just a cacophany of competing models of Japanese uniqueness, each balanced precariously on some alledged feature (of ecology, social structure, management type, psycology, aesthetics, language, ethnic origins, etc.) by which Japan may be understood as singular.

If anyone can give an English language quote that solidly contradicts this (this is the English wikipedia, so I don't think it makes sense to give sources that 99%+ of readers cannot understand), I would welcome that, but the fact that a largely negative view of nihonjinron is common in English lanhguage studies is IMHO indisputable. --68.60.169.54 14:30, December 15, 2005

Kelly is correct when he points out that nihoninron as a field is a cacophony, but that is different from claiming that all the nihonjinron discourses are pseudo-sciences or the like negative portrayal of nihoninron at large. Also I don't think that how the word "nihonjinron" is understood among common English-speaking folks is noteworthy because it is not so widely recognized a word as other Japanese words such as anime which does merit reference of its unique usage in English language. "Nihonjinron" is pretty much a technical term in Japanology for most people in the English-speaking world. Hermeneus (talk) 14:23, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

What happened?

Could somebody please tell me what happened to the somewhat agreeable article we had a few days ago? Now its scientific gibberish that is incomprehensible to readers that didn't study sociology or japanology. May I further remind the authors that the purpose of the first paragraph is to give an introduction to readers who never heard about the topic of the article, not to scare them away.

What's even worse, behind the scientific language is just a high-level rant against all Nihonjinron authors that is never and under no circumstances NPOV. The first paragraph is, despite the language, completely unscientific. It claims that all Nihonjinron authors and books are racists, quote: "Japanese equivalent of ... the once obsessive Germanic preoccupation with the putatively ‘unique’ traits and destiny of the Teutonic race". It doesn't even try to explain the completely different views of different authors of Nihonjinron books. It does not take into account that the first Nihonjinron authors were in fact highly critical of Japan. It does not try to explain why certain authors of Nihonjinron books made certain claims. It does not care about the political, academic and economic environment that is behind the nihonjinron thesis of different decades, and their differences. The text does not bother to prove claims with quotes. Quoting Dale is not enough, for he is himself a Nihonjinron author!

I don't know what the author was about, but this kind of text does not belong in Wikipedia. Put it in some left-wing political magazine. -- Mkill 23:08, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

He seems to be the author of the nihonjinron article on the Italian Wikipedia. Most of his observations follow Dale's definition of nihoninron as a form of nationalism. This however has been criticized by later scholars to be too limiting since there exist many nihonjinron works that cannot be categorized so, such as ones written by foreign scholars. Hermeneus (talk) 03:05, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

The fundamental defect of the 'agreeable article' that existed some days ago,apart from its scrappiness, is that it gave the false impression, shared by no scholar abroad or in Japan, that the nihonjinron are a post-war phenomenon, and indeed it was implied in the bibliography that a foreigner gave rise to the whole topic, since Ruth Benedict was the earliest source cited. No one took exception to this. Why? They are, however, the continuation of a long tradition of cultural nationalism. Take a glance at the 'scientific gibberish' of the excellent Wikipedia article on nationalism. Perhaps that should be our model. Most of the post-war nihonjinron can be comfortably fitted into the various sub-categories outlined there. I'm quite happy to rewrite the language in that more 'neutral' style, but whoever rides shotgun here should bear in mind that the scholarly discussion of this subject is one between believers in a doctrine and scholarly analysts of that doctrine. Believers take exception to what outsiders say, because their language does not faithfully reproduce the belief system. But scholarship must stand outside the belief system if it is to understand it.

Articles should not be ‘agreeable’, but comprehensive, informative and precise. Mkill accepts that my contribution has the appearance of being ‘scientific’ but defines this as ‘gibberish’ or a ‘rant’ on two grounds. Firstly, it is asserted that the text is ‘incomprehensible’ to readers lacking a background in either sociology or Japanology. It is rather like complaining that an entry on ‘string theory’ is hard to understand for someone without a grounding in physics. If a subject is complex, then its exposition requires a minimal level of complex detail, if one is to avoid otiose generalizations and misleading reductionism. ‘Dumbing down’ a subject is not necessarily conducive to enlightening the readership, even though, in dumbing the subject down, many might find the result ‘agreeable’, since it leaves no one feeling bad. Simplifications often traduce the matter, and by turns, deceive the reader. I might remind Mkill that several of the references in the bibliography before I chipped in refer to the work of trained academic sociologists like Sugimoto, Mouer and Yoshino.

We are collectively engaged in a community project, which takes dialogue and time. I see no reason why this process of collaborative definition should be held up because one or two people dislike the approach. Mkill is rather like someone who, catching sight of an animal in the throes of giving birth, raises a hue and cry about the fact that he cannot see the whole body of the fetus, but only its protruding head or heels. The comments so far are vague, imprecise, and perhaps maliciously distort what has been written. One would be obliged if instead of wailings and innuendos, critics of the piece took some time to detail and document what they assert. Dale is not the only writer in the genre to take nihonjinron as a form of cultural nationalism. The point is generally accepted (See E.S. Crawcour 1980,1982; Kawamura, Nozomu, 1982; Hijikata Kazuo, 1983; Shimota Shôji, 1987; Tadakuma Iwai, 1987; Amino, 1990, to cite just a small sample)18:54, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

It's one thing to study some type of nihoninron as a manifestation of the larger Japanese nationalism from antiquity. It's quite another to characterize the entire nihonjinron discourse as nationalism. Just how many of the works listed under the subsection "Major Nihonjinron literature" is your definition applicable to? Are the foreign authors of nihonjinron also considered nationalists? Or should they be removed from the list to maintain your definition consistent?

Like the opening sentence of the article states, nihonginron is a genre of literatures that examine "the characteristics, national, social, cultural, behavioural and spiritual, which are presumed to be unique to the Japanese people." Studying a national culture while emphasizing its uniqueness is just that and nothing more than that. That is not nationalism by definition. And that is indeed exactly what the early western anthropologists have been doing, viz. projecting the whole people of an alien culture (mostly from "primitive" third-world nations) as if they constitute a unique, uniform, and exotic group. This is "orientalism" rather than "nationalism." There is a reason why Ruth Benedict is often picked up as the pioneer.

It should also be noted that nationalism and national self-consciousness are not exactly the same thing:

Nationalism: political or social philosophy in which the welfare of the nation-state as an entity is considered paramount. Nationalism is basically a collective state of mind or consciousness in which people believe their primary duty and loyalty is to the nation-state. Often nationalism implies national superiority and glorifies various national virtues. Thus love of nation may be overemphasized; concern with national self-interest to the exclusion of the rights of other nations may lead to international conflict. (Columbia Encyclopedia).

Being conscious of one's national identity is not nationalism as much as being conscious of one's uniqueness is not egoism. Nationalism requires national consciousness, but the vice versa is not necessarily the case. Hermeneus (talk) 12:04, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I fully agree with hermeneus. @anonymous user: My problem with your arguments is, that you don't make distinctions. For you, all nihonjinron authors, all kokugaku authors (what you call pre-war nihonjinron), all nationalisms of all nations... This is unscientific, and it does not help to understand nihonjinron. Of course, both kokugaku and nihonjinron share the same topic, the identity of the Japanese people. But there is a time gap of 100 years between the two, one is a predecessor of the other. But the Japan both write about is completely different.

As for Dale, yes, he is a critic. His position is very important in the whole nihonjinron debate, but his criticism of nihonjinron should be put in a paragraph "criticism of nihonjinron". The problem is, that your text fully agrees with dales criticism, without taking a neutral stance. While this may be the right thing to do for a scientific paper, it is wrong for Wikipedia. We aim for a neutral position.

As for the gibberish: I know it's hard for writers with academic background to write on a level that is understood by everybody. Please try.

Quote: the false impression, shared by no scholar abroad or in Japan, that the nihonjinron are a post-war phenomenon: That is exactly how they teach it here at Bonn University (Dr. Ölschleger), Nihonjinron started as a reaction to the Japanese identity crisis after 1945.

Whether Ruth Benedict started Nihonjinron or one of the Japanese postwar authors, like Kawashima, is a matter of definition. Maybe its a good idea to discuss all foreign authors on Japan in a separate section. -- Mkill 16:47, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, my apologies to Dr.Ölschleger, provisorily. Give me a list of his publications and we can then include his perspective here.

I'll get back to both of you presently. I have just posted another piece, which I hope conforms to Wikipedia standards. I cannot manage to break it up into three or four paragraphs, since, when I do, the additional paragraphs disappear in a window which can only be read with a cursor. If someone can manage to do this, I'd appreciate it. Then we can examine whether it should stand or not.22:01, 8 November 2005 (UTC).

Briefly, the idea that the nihonjinron are a postwar phenomenon is a very recent error. Many Japanese exponents of the genre, and historians of the literature trace its roots back to the Tokugawa period. To name but one example. Minami Hiroshi’s ‘Nihonjinron no keifu’ Kôdansha 1980. Come to think of it, this should be added to the bibliography. If one of you would like to provide the site with a detailed, closely documented, exposition of the case for the idea that the nihonjinron are distinct from nihonron, or nihon bunkaron and from all books with more or less the same ideas that happen to predate 1945, citing who first argued for this distinction, and why it holds up, I think the article we are writing would profit immensely.

Mkill. You are prodigal with kibitzing suggestions, but parsimonous with contributions. Might I in turn suggest you actually try your hand at writing some section of this article, any one of your choice, of course. Most of your comments criticise me for not saying several things you'd like to see mentioned, on the basis of a few short, sample paragraphs about a topic which boasts of a vast literature, and therefore requires extended, and I hope, collaborative commentary.

Hermeneus: I'll answer firstly your remarks earlier on in the piece.

It should also be noted that nationalism and national self-consciousness are not exactly the same thing:

I’d appreciate you citing specific exemplary instances of nihonjinron where ‘national self-consciousness’ is celebrated without any sense of nationalism, as that term is broadly defined on the relevant Wikipedia page. Since the topic is hedged round with claims of tendentiousness, the best way to proceed is for each contributor to document his claims.

The line you prefer is, I gather, that of Aoki and Yoshino. We all have our preferences. There appears to be some problem with my references to Dale. I like his work, despite its dilettantish superficiality and excessively synthetic patches, but, as my additions to the bibliography show, he is but one of a rather large crowd. No need to fuss over him, every time you disagree with me. One curious thing I have noted however is that his ideas are always cited when rephrased by later writers, and less so directly from their source. Thus:-

Also Aoki (1990) correctly points out that Befu's definition of nihonjinron as "mass consumption goods" as opposed to academic works is not appropriate since nihonjinron includes excellent scholarship as well such as Murakami et al's The 'Ie' Society as a Civilization (文明とイエ社会) that first appeared on Chuo Koron (中央公論), a general interest magazine, rather than some academic journal (p. 25), and that whether a literature is academic or not cannot be easily determined by its medium of publication in Japan. Hermeneus (talk) 06:02, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Dale made the same point as Befu earlier. Aoki’s judgement is incorrect because the concept of mass consumption does not exclude high brow literature. Steven Hawking’s book A Brief History of Time was a bestseller, though few understood it.

Again, earlier you said:

I don't have a problem with Yoshino's definition that nihonjinron is the ‘vast array of 'literature' which thinking elites have produced to define the uniqueness of Japanese culture, society and national character.’ Nihonjinron is at the least a genre of "literature." The beef theory is not. Hermeneus (talk) 05:23, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Yoshino’s definition is just a patching together of phrases from Dale ‘that vast array of literature comprehensively referred to under the rubric nihonjinron(1986:Intro. p.1) . . constructed by innumerable thinkers and writers (Intro.p.2) . .to define the unique specificity of Japanese identity .. (p.1) .the handiwork of upper echelon scholars’ (p.15) etc.

It would be nice if we can get a genealogy going in here, since so much of what is said in these books, and in the critical literature is repetitive of earlier views.22:46, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Sugimoto and Mouer's 日本人論の方程式 has a whole section dedicated to nihonhinron written by foreign authors. The research conducted by Nomura Research Institute showed that 27.5% of nihonjinron publications they surveyed were written by foreign authors/institutions. The chance of these foreign authors being Japanese "nationalists" is obviously zero. And when the regular Japnanese people use the common word "nihonjinron," it's definitely not meant to be limited to works by some nationalistic ideologues like you make it out to be.

BTW you might want to register for an account on Wikipedia.Hermeneus (talk) 01:30, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Before I participate more fully, I should like to know if the article is going to wear the 'neutrality disputed' sign forever. Is it supposed to be a sword of Damocles hanging over my head, to concentrate my mind wonderfully, as Dr. Johnson would say. Or, now that we have undertaken some discussion and begun to clarify matters on the principle of consensus based on evidence, may it be taken down in order to allow us to proceed in a more gentlemanly fashion?18:53, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Put all the texts that discuss nihonjinron as a form of nationalism under the subsection "Nihonjinron as cultural nationalism," and keep the rest of the article neutral. Hermeneus (talk) 15:58, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Just a word of clarification, since, previously, when I asked you to explain your peculiar, unscholarly opinions on some aspects of this topic (i.e. give me a practical example from the literature of the distinction you make, which is not one made on the unchallenged article on nationalism in Wikipedia (see Ist paragraph)), you chose to not reply.

The clarification I would like is this. Is this last remark an ukase from someone with editorial authority in here? I was under the (perhaps mistaken) impression that this was a discussion page, where differences of opinion were ironed out by a close exchange of reasoned views, not a director's bulletin board where arbitrary orders are posted by executives who don't actually work on problems, but are fond of handing out orders as to how those problems are to be dealt with by the hoi polloi. If you deem this worthy of acknowledgement, I hope in your clarification you show some familiarity with the Cambridge History of Japan. The editorial perspective on the history of this identity, nationalism and uniqueness problem there is more or less the one I have adopted here.

By the way, the Japanese entry on the nihonjinron is almost as messy as this one, (to take one example the dating of 横光利一's 旅愁) and since you have some hand in it, I hope you can see your way to be as scrupulous in correcting it as you appear to be in riding shotgun on this English version.22:32, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

We are discussing whether the recent input of yours is a neutral description or a biased pov. You are arguing that nihonjinron is a form of nationalism and maintain this definition throughout the whole article. I said that it's wrong to characterize all the nihonjinron discourses as nationalistic literature for the simple fact that quite a few nihonjinron discourses have been written by foreign authors who cannot possibly be Japanese nationalists, and that therefore your input is against the npov rule. Like I said, it's one thing to study some type of nihoninron as a manifestation of the larger Japanese nationalism; characterizing the entire nihonjinron discourse as nationalism is quite another. As far as you put your input under an appropriate subsection of the article, viz. "Nihonjinron as cultural nationalism," that's fine. If you rewrite the whole article with your biased definition, then the npov alert should stay. Hermeneus (talk) 01:17, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:-

’Nationalism is an ideology which holds that the nation, ethnicity or national identity is a "fundamental unit" of human social life, . . Nationalists define individual nations on the basis of certain criteria, which distinguish one nation from another; and also determine "who is a member of each nation". These criteria might include a shared language, a shared culture, and/or shared values; but the most important is probably now ethnicity, the belonging to or membership of an ethnic group. National identity refers both to these defining criteria, and to the "sense of belonging" to that group. Nationalists see membership of nation as exclusive and involuntary, meaning that you can not simply "join it", like any other association. Nationalism sees most human activity as national in character.’

Argue with it by all means, contest Gellner, Smith, Hobsbawm, Alter et al. Embrace Aoki, whose tendentious, rather jejune divagations seem to have convinced you. But don't pretend that your refusal to accept the consensus is based on some respect for neutrality. It is otherwise, and breathes through the interstices of your style. I have asked you three times to give me one clear example in the literature of the distinction you make, i.e. of a nihonjinron devoid of nationalist POVs. Your studious silence speaks volumes.

As for your other pet distinction, i.e. nihonjinron as very much also a foreign genre as a Japanese one, and therefore cannot be, ipso facto, 'nationalistic', it ignores a simple (and, yet once elaborated very complex) heuristic distinction between 'we' discourse and 'they' discourse, between an affirmation of identity (from the inside) and an assertion of difference (from the outside, i.e. 'orientalism/alterism). Ruth Benedict was a nationalist, a civic nationalist, and wrote a book, in the style of Lafcadio Hearn's, to persuade her countrymen to rid themselves of wartime vindictiveness, and to persuade the Japanese to share her nation's values. That does not mean that she wrote a 'nihonjinron'. It is a 'they' discourse endeavouring to transform 'them' into 'us' and thus 'imperial' or 'orientalist'. It means simply that she wrote, within the discursive matrix of Boasian anthropology, a document that was meant to be consequential for Japan's future as a subject of American power and possible future democratic ally. (It's far more complex than that, but this is no place to finesse a brilliant piece of scholarship that is read consistently with such a poverty of insight and close critique as hers is). I wrote a dozen pages on the phenomenology of cross-cultural intellectual commerce this morning, to convince you. But the weather was fine, and the garden beckoned me to attend to autumnal pruning, and, as I went out I thought: 'No. Pointless. At your stage in life, only encounters where you can teach, or be taught'. You evidently cannot teach me anything, and I dare say whatever I might argue here will not convince you. And hence dialogue would be wasting your time and mine.

However, best wishes.

Someone might try to take the Italian site as a model. It is too succinct, but systematic and undisturbed by ideological takes, of the kind visible here and on the Japanese site, where throwing sand in the eyes of the browser to throw him off the scent seems to be the name of the game, all done in that style of impeccable 'neutrality' and cutely highschoolish compositional syntax which all clever dodgers avail themselves to skirt round an injudicious or difficult query and veil their own ignorance (Watsuji 1931! etc) or indifference. 151.24.209.175 21:44, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

On "nationalism"

From Wikipedia... --151.24.209.175 21:44, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

That definition on the current Wikipedia article seems to be a bare minimum conservative definition devised by Wikipedians from a host of traditional definitions and not one submitted by any particular scholars quite possibly because it's "a controversial term, as its most general definition is broad, and has been controversial throughout history" like the article says. What exactly is meant by the double-quoted "fundamental unit" anyway?

Ernest Gellner's definition is that "nationalism is primarily a political principle, which holds that the political unit and the national unit should be congruent.... Nationalist sentiment is the feeling of anger aroused by the violation of the principle, or the feeling of satisfaction aroused by its fulfilment" (Nation and Nationalism, p. 1). The premise is that because one's nation is "fundamental," or important, to oneself, one demands a sovereign state for it. Isaiah Berlin argues that nationalism is a "definite, ideologically important and dangerous" doctrine and that it should not to be equated with mere "national consciousness," which is a form of natural sentiments that one needs to belong to some easily identifiable group. One of the principal ideas of nationalism, according to Berlin, is the supremacy of nation:

The essential human unit in which man's nature is fully realized is not the individual, the family, the tribe, the clan, the province, or any voluntary association which can be dissolved or altered at will. It is but the nation. Hence, the goal of nation is supreme. In case of conflict with other values, the goal of nation should always prevail, and any goals of other groups, as far as they are incompatible with the goal of nation and become obstacles in its path, have to be compelled to yield by any means. It is to the creation and maintenance of the nation that the lives of subordinate units, not only the individual but also the family, the tribe &c., must be directed. For their nature and purpose, what is often called their "meaning," are derived from nation's nature and purpose. Units subordinate to the supreme nation are like "a leaf, a twig" of "tree which alone can give them life." Separated from nation by circumstance or their own will, they will become aimless, wither away, being left with nostalgic memories of what it once was to have been "truly alive and active" ("Nationalism" in The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays, pp. 590-594).

Gellner's definition, albeit shared by many scholars, is a little too limited in scope for not all forms of nationalism demand a sovereign state. Berlin's definition is a little too radical and inclined to the critical pov of nationalism. Brian Barry acutely points out in more general terms that what is common to nationalism is that it claims to represent members of the nationality in virtue of the material and cultural interests that they share," and that political autonomy (which Gellner considers central to nationalism) is but a means to the pursuit of the nationalist end of advancing the interests of those united by common nationality. The key concept here is "interest." Nationalism isn't much of a political ideology if it's only a way of identifying some people or recognizing that one is being identified in a certain manner. Because national identity is "fundamental" to nationalists, nationalists take the interest of nation that one belongs in seriously, and this recognition leads to various nationalist movements such as secession. A nationalist literature is a literature that positively promotes the interest of a particular nation. Most nihonjinron literatures do not make such advocacies openly. Hermeneus (user/talk)

On foreign authors of nihonjinron

Ruth Benedict was a nationalist, a civic nationalist, and wrote a book.... --151.24.209.175 21:44, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't remember anywhere you wrote nihonjinron as a form of American nationalism. Hermeneus (user/talk)

You evidently cannot teach me anything, and I dare say whatever I might argue here will not convince you. And hence dialogue would be wasting your time and mine. --151.24.209.175 21:44, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, have a nice day then. Hermeneus (user/talk)

Self-reference

I have comment out the following section as an unnecessary, and rather contentious, self-reference.

The Wikipedia article Japanese values, as it originates in a Library of Congress cultural study similarly presents Japan as a unique culture.

On the article overall, am I the only person who suspects that the vast majority of this article is original research? --Tony Sidaway|Talk 12:03, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Nihonjin literature, long intestines, etc.

• Izaya Ben-Dasan, (‘translated’ by Yamamoto Shichihei:山本七平) 1972 Nihonkyô ni tsuite (日本教について), Tokyo, Bungei Shunjû is listed as a Nihonjinron work. Is this the same as 日本人とユダヤ人?

• Another work that seems to be Nihonjinron is 'The Ugly Japanese' (I think it is called), by a former Japanese Ambassador to Argentina. This book makes a lot of points but I found it very hard to follow from a 'logical' point of view. I think it was みにくい日本人, published around 1970. Despite the notoriety that the book had at one time, it is strange that I can't find accurate information about it on the Internet!

• Gregory Clark's book entitled 'The Japanese Tribe' (in Japanese), changed to 'The Japanese: Origins of Uniqueness' in English is another piece of Nihonjinron literature. See [3] for background and a glimpse of the mentality.

• The 'long intestines' comment was apparently made by the chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party's agricultural policy research council, Hata Tsutomu, visiting Washington in December 1987 at the time of discussions over liberalising beef imports (see this site [4]). At the time it was pointed out by some that this belief in longer intestines actually dates to the pre-war era when it had some currency, possibly to account for (or justify) the Japanese diet.

• The theory that Japanese are inherently 'farmers' and Westerners are inherently 'hunters' had a certain currency at one time. It was associated with a particular Japanese author/hyoronka, but I don't remember his name. This is an example of populist Nihonjinron par excellence.

• The concept of Japan as 'shimaguni' and 'sakoku' seems to be missing from the article. These have also often been used as a basis for many Nihonjinron arguments (or reasons for the Nihonjinron mentality).

• I think that extreme or populist Nihonjinron tends to excite passions because some of the claims made on its behalf are so far removed from any observable facts or logic that foreign observers have difficulty understanding how intelligent people can seriously entertain them. Moreover, there is a sense of frustration by people who have encountered this particular mindset ('uniqueness of the Japanese race') that no matter how many individual facts are disproved, the mindset underlying it is totally unswayed. For Westerners, this can be a very unsettling mindset because it is exclusionist (you are the outsider and can never understand us) and inimical to individual identity (you are simply a typical representative of everything that we have decided you are, not an individual with your own unique identity).

• As for Nihonjinron being a 'theory', I don't totally agree with that assertion. The 'ron' in Nihonjinron can just as easily be interpeted as 'discussion', 'debate' or 'theorising' (without necessarily being coherent theories!) about the Japanese. Moreover, the word 'Nihonjinron' as normally used is not just applied to 'respectable theories'; it is used to describe the entire literature and debate (not confined to printed academic treatments but embracing the ephemeral utterances of all kinds of hyoronka) concerning the nature of the Japanese people, their culture, and their place in the world. In my understanding, it is not possible to exclude the 'crackpot' statements as lying on the fringe of Nihonjinron; they are part and parcel of the phenomenon. While I can understand why Japanese people may be unhappy at having Japanese intellectual life belittled on the strength of crackpot Nihonjonron theories, and it may be unfair to do so, the fact remains that the worst kind of Nihonjinron was at one stage very common in Japanese society (from politicians to media to businessmen) and there was very little in the way of respectable academic (or other) voices to rein in the excesses. Instead, most academics were similarly enamoured of the concept that the Japanese are somehow 'different'. (See this foreign musicologist's take on Nihonjinron: [5]. Those unhappy about critical Western responses to Nihonjinron certainly didn't make their presence felt back in the days when the theories were rampant!

• Nihonjinron seems to have peaked in the 70s and 80s (at least, that is my feeling), with something of a backlash in the 90s. I suspect that Karl Van Wolferen's book was a bit of a wake-up call for some Japanese at the dangerous impression unbridled Nihonjinron was making overseas. I also remember that a well-written book in Japanese came out in about 1993 (I actually have it somewhere) that quite calmly demolished some of the nonsense put out by unrestrained Nihonjinronja. E.g., the 'shimaguni' mentality was put in its place with the observation that sea transport is often more convenient than land transport, so Japan's being an island meant it was open to influences from the Continent, not closed as many who cite 'shimaguni' claim it to be. The concept that Japanese are a race of 'farmers' was countered by statistics showing that while 80% of the Japanese were traditionally engaged in agriculture, a significant portion were been fishermen or lived in the mountains and hunted for meat.

Bathrobe 03:25, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Just looked up Wikipedia's definition of Nihonjinron because I am rereading an article by Robert Sharf about D. T. Suzuki, and he uses the term to describe Suzuki and Kyoto School philosophers, which I am uncomfortable with because it seems anachronistic. It seems to me that the term refers specifically to postwar discourses on Japaneseness. Especially 70s-90s (which is not to say that there were not pre-1945 precedents for Nihonjinron; there certainly were). But, to add a bit more to the dicussion: most Japanese people I know have never heard of Nihonjinron. It seems largely to be something that elite academics DISCUSS. These are usually not the same elites who produce it. The elites who produce it wouldn't name it. It is simply the truth to them. It is like the fundamentalist Christians who claim to be just "Christians" instead of Baptists or something. That is their way of claiming the precedent and absolute ontological and epistemological certainty of their beliefs. And, as discourse (it being possible to translate 論 in various ways) what you can call Nihonjinron permeated Japan and what you can call Nihonjinron-type ideas were shared by many as simply the common sense of many if not most Japanese. The example that Japanese langugage is commonly thought to be "special" and in a "unique" relationship with the Japanese "race" and/or culture is sufficient. Why do you think that postwar Japanese have such a hard time learning English (when people like Okakura Tenshin learned it so well in the 19th century)? It is because people are taught that speaking Japanese is natural for them; ergo speakin English is not. Thus NOVA and other English conversation enterprises are everywhere in Japan and make huge ammounts of money. On the issue of the demise of Nihonjinron: I lived in Japan during the first half of the 1990s, and believe me it was alive and well then. I also lived there from 2001-2003. Nihonjinron ideas are still a kind of undercurrent of common sense. But it has become less aggressive. I don't attribute this to Van Wolferen's stupid little book (the guy can't even speak Japanese you know). Instead I link the change in attitudes about Japaneseness to the perpetuation of Japan's economic downturn that began with the bursting of the bubble economy, just before my first trip to Japan. The perpetuation probably has more to do with "globalization" and the outsourcing of labor to China than anything else. But that's another story.

On Jh.daniell's edit 09:34, May 23, 2006

Italicized parts are Jh.daniell's input:

• The essential premise of nihonjinron is that... although this is arguably, to a large extent, inaccurate or at the very least controversial.
• Racialist modes of thinking predominate in many unsophisticated types of nihonjinron writings... Examples include... The Japanese language is uniquely vague and imprecise... Many linguists, however, cite evidence that the Korean language, to large degree, shares many chracteristics thought as "unique" to Japanese.
• Nihonjinron as cultural nationalism... As Japan is often deemed to be "almost as unique as its people like to think"... However, many foreign scholars point out that the Japanese race, language, and culture shares many common features with other regions in East Asia. For example, the modern languages of Korean and Japanese share extraordinarily similar grammatical patterns, honorific terminology, and even vocabulary, while Japanese culture to a large extent is widely known to have borrowed heavily from the Chinese and Korean civilzations that were historically more advanced. Moreover, the claim that the Japanese race is homogeneous can be largely discredited by evidence of large-scale migration from Polynesia, Malaysia, and Korea in both prehistoric and historic times.

This article is to describe what nihonjinron is as it is and introduces some notable analysis and ciriticism on nihonjinron. This is not a place for you to publish your original criticism on miscellaneous issues in Japan-Korea relationship. How much ever Japanese language and Korean language are similar to each other in reality is irrelevant here. Go to Japanese language or some other related articles if you want to discuss such issues. There is no need to add "however this is not true...." to every part that describes what nihonjinron argues because it is not presented as a fact but only as an examle of nihonjinron argument. Hermeneus (user/talk) 03:07, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Contrary to your comment above, Hermeneus, I see no problem with my edit on "Nihonjinron." First off, with the exception of my edit to the introduction (in which I admit I should have simply said "controversial"), none of my statements are falsified or, as you claim, irrelevant. For example, the article before my edit and now even states that "the Japanese language is uniquely vague and imprecise, in contrast to languages such as English, which are held to be highly logical and precise." As long as we are on the topic of the Japanese language and its characteristics, I believe I have every right to add contradictory information, which is clearly related to the topic, since, as you said, "this article is to describe what nihonjinron is as it is and introduces some notable analysis and criticism on nihonjinron." Criticism on nihonjinron, in my opinion, seems to me quite relevant to criticizing its main arguments. Furthermore, there simply is nothing wrong with scrutinizing the Japanese claim of being a homogeneous nation and people, as the information I added was factual and relevant to the sentence concerning uniqueness before it. I understand you may take offense at such a statement, especially since it may break widely accepted cultural norms in Japan, but to simply label it "irrelevant" and telling me to go somewhere else seems quite impolite. I will not revert the article for the time being, but if you have no more qualms, I'll edit it to take in your objections as well. Further arguments against this statement are always welcome. --Jh.Daniell 00:38, 23 May 2006 (GMT+9:00-Tokyo)

(1) Nihonjinron like the one on Japanese language asserts Japan's "uniqueness" as compared to the U.S. and other European countries in the club of developed countries. Such nohonjinron generally does not compare Japan to Korea or China or other underdeveloped Asian countries. Insisting generic similarities between Japan and Korea is irrelevant because that is not what such nijonjinron is concerned about.

(2) There is no mention of nihonjinron that argues homogeneity in the origin of the Japanese nation and so your input on migration from Polynesia, Malaysia, and Korea is irrelevant. When nihonjinron authors and their critics mention "homogeneity" of the Japanese they primarily mean the ethnic constitution of Japan today, and not necessarily the origin thereof, which is a whole different issue. The Japanese is recognized as an independent ethnic group today as CIA World Fact Book states on the ethnic constitution of Japan as follows: Japanese 99%, others 1%. It doesn't matter where ever their ancestors came from originally.

(3) We are talking about nihonjinron here, not some generic comparison of nations. If you want to criticize nihonjinron, then pick up a particular nihonjinron and cite criticism of the nihonjinron (not the topic) that is penned by some authoritative scholar. Hermeneus (user/talk) 23:16, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't quite follow your point. Saying statements like "Nihonjinron like the one on Japanese language asserts Japan's 'uniqueness' as compared to the U.S. and other European countries in the club of developed countries. Such nohonjinron generally does not compare Japan to Korea or China or other underdeveloped Asian countries." is not only offensive to the Koreans, who are rather within the first world, but it totally undermines the introduction, where it reads "The essential premise of nihonjinron is that the Japanese people and their culture are unlike any other in the world -- unlike especially either Westerners (frequently typified by Americans) or Asians such as the Chinese and (and to a lesser degree) the Koreans." This means that nihonjinron considers Japan unique in comparison to the West AND Asia, not just the West, as according to your derogatory viewpoint of other nations in Asia. In fact, this entire article is explaining nihonjonron as a theory that considers Japan unique to the rest of the world. I don't remember the world as including just Japan, Europe, and America. Furthermore, I can criticize nihonjinron and whatever lame misconception the Japanese hold by comparison of examples; almost every debatable Wikipedia article does just that. If I want to scrutinize nihonjinron using a case concerning Korea or China, that's perfectly legitimate. If I want to attack Japanese homogenity using their prehistoric origins AND more recent historical migration (I'll include that next time after this spat), I'm perfectly entitled to do so. So just stop tackling me and telling me to get lost over issues that may seem offensive to you but are actually quite within Wikipedia guidelines. You might also want to take in the fact that I have been restraining myself from fixing the current article out of respect for your peververted inisistence on pro-Japanese bias. So I'd appreciate it if you got down to earth took on a more polite tone.--Jh.Daniell 21:41, 24 May 2006 (GMT+9:00-Tokyo)

(1) Nihonjinron has existed from long before Korea joined "the first world." It was already existent when the Koreans were fighting the Korean war. It's also a fact that Japan has neglected its Asian neighbors for quite some time since the end of WWII (although it seems to be changing lately).

(2) "The essential premise of nihonjinron" in the introduction is misleading. It should be rather that some form of assertion of uniqueness or difference is a common theme to nihonjinron. It's not the case that all the nihonjinron discourses assert strict uniqueness as being one and only, "unlike any other in the world." Many nihonjinron discourses don't go beyond comparison with the west indeed.

(3) WP:NOR, an official policy of Wikipedia, states that "articles may not contain any unpublished theories, data, statements, concepts, arguments, or idea." You cannot criticize anything directly on your own here. However, you could present criticism of it that is authored by notable scholars and published in authoritative media. Hermeneus (user/talk) 13:13, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

You're completely avoiding my point. From what's written in the article, nihonjinron is clearly asserting the uniqueness of Japan through comparison with the West, China, and Korea, while you're saying that it only compares Japan with the West. Take the "four seasons" point for example. That compares Japan with China. In addition, the reason why I haven't been adding source tags is becuase all of the information cited can be found here in Wikipedia. References to honorific terminology can be found in both the main articles of the Japanese and Korean language. The origins of the Japanese are cited in the "Japanese People" article. The transition of culture from China and Korea can be found in almost every East Asian article that concerns history. So could you please acknowledge that my edits earlier on were valid, instead of insisting on your pro-Japanese bias and insulting people in Korea by calling them newbies to the developed club of countries?--Jh.daniell 01:01, 25 May 2006 (GMT+9:00-Tokyo)

(1) What I'm saying is that most nihonjinron discourses don't attempt to compare Japan with every nation existing on the earth to establish the exclusive uniqueness of the Japanese. Most comparisons are with the West. Some compare with China, some with others. Each nihonjinron discourse argues the uniqueness of the Japanese differently, regarding a variety of aspects, in comparison to a variety of nations. Therefore, you cannot reject them all together with a couple of sentences suggesting some generic similarities between Japan and a given country.

(2) Establishing comprehensive uniqueness of the Japanese isn't the primary objective of most nihonjinron discourses. A nihonjinron discourse that asserts the uniqueness of the Japanese language in some aspects is just that. It does not necessarily holds that the Japanese people are unique in every other aspect as well. If it only claims the uniqueness in some aspects of language, then it cannot be rejected by pointing out similarities in other aspects because similarities in other aspects are irrelevant to this particular nihonjinron. Your criticism regarding honorific terminology is irrelevant and empty unless you could cite an actual nihonjinron discourse that asserts that the honorific terminology of the Japanese language is unique and exclusive to Japan, and is nothing like that of the Korean language.

(3) If you want to criticize a nihonjinron argument, refer to the original source and provide the citation of that particular nihonjinron. You don't criticize something based only on second-hand summary of it. If you have no knowledge of nihonjinron other than what's already written on this Wikipedia article, then you aren't really qualified to critique nihonjinron. Hermeneus (user/talk) 18:13, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to have to rebutt you point by point since I'm fed up with skimming your claims and shortening them, only to have them misunderstood and redirected by you.

"What I'm saying is that most nihonjinron discourses don't attempt to compare Japan with every nation existing on the earth to establish the exclusive uniqueness of the Japanese. Most comparisons are with the West. Some compare with China, some with others. Each nihonjinron discourse argues the uniqueness of the Japanese differently, regarding a variety of aspects, in comparison to a variety of nations." - So? You're practically admitting that nihonjinron makes comparisons to many nations, not just the West, as you claimed previously (in the process condescending China and Korea).

"Therefore, you cannot reject them all together with a couple of sentences suggesting some generic similarities between Japan and a given country." - I only attacked fields concerning homogenuity, language, culture. Furthermore, my arguments in those fields were quite specific, as I recall, since I made comparisons with specific nations and what aspects in which the Japanese were not unique.

"Your criticism regarding honorific terminology is irrelevant and empty unless you could cite an actual nihonjinron discourse that asserts that the honorific terminology of the Japanese language is unique and exclusive to Japan, and is nothing like that of the Korean language." - I'm sorry, but the article's point on the Japanese language was regarding the entire language, and then mentioned a specific comparison with English. As long as we're on the topic of the Japanese language, it's perfectly fine to add a point about its similiarities with Korean. Furthermore, there are indeed some Japanese-Americans who claim their language is the only tongue to make use of honorifics in the modern era; I thought it might be necessary to rebuff such claims.

"If you want to criticize a nihonjinron argument, refer to the original source and provide the citation of that particular nihonjinron. You don't criticize something based only on second-hand summary of it. If you have no knowledge of nihonjinron other than what's already written on this Wikipedia article, then you aren't really qualified to critique nihonjinron." - Where on earth did you get the idea that I only know nihonjinron from what's on Wikipedia? For your information, I am writing a book on Japan, and when it becomes published, I'll be sure to paste a link to its webste on this page so you can finally recognize my authority to speak on the subject. I wonder, where do you get YOUR authority? From nationalist and revisionist scholars in the Oyashima? Do not presume to tell what I should and should not do, Hermeneus, since all of your edits to the articles you've tampered with are so favorably POV twards the Japanese viewpoint that the bias practically drips off the monitor. Oh, and I'm so very, very, very sorry (if you had a half a brain you should know that this is sarcastic) that I criticized nihonjinron using summaries of its counterarguments. You see, I was afraid that including every specific detail when its aready in other Wikipedia articles might cause a long, drawn-out death to readers.

In short, Hermeneus, I'd appreciate it if you, instead of simply labelling my edits as "irrelevant" and launching into long-winded explanations why, told me in which aspects they were incorrect, and prove why. As long as my corrctions are factual, I see no problem in publishing such information on Wikipedia. I hope to see this concern addressed first on your next rebuttal. --Jh.daniell 13:46, 25 May 2006 (GMT+9:00-Tokyo)

You are attacking a straw man of nihonjinron made only from sketchy summary information available on this Wikipedia article. Take this edit of yours for example:

"The Japanese language is uniquely vague and imprecise, in contrast to languages such as English, which are held to be highly logical and precise..... Many linguists, however, cite evidence that the Korean language, to large degree, shares many characteristics thought as "unique" to Japanese." (Italicized parts are Jh.daniell's)

This is a part where it presents a summary of a nihonjinron discourse that asserts the uniqueness of the Japanese language in vagueness and impreciseness as compared to the English language. (1) It does not claim that the Japanese language as a whole is completely unique in all the other aspects as well. It only suggests uniqueness in vagueness and impreciseness. Nor does it compare the Japanese language to the Korean language. It only compares with English. Therefore, pointing out that the Japanese language and the Korean language share "many characteristics" does not contradict the claim of this nihonjinron and so is irrelevant to this part of the article. (2) Criticizing something by its summary description without refering to its original source is not a fair academic conduct. (3) This is a part where examples of nihonjinron discourses are being presented, not a place to examine overall similarities between Japan and Korea. It doesn't matter if your take on the similarities between Japan and Korea is correct or not as far as it is irrelevant.

"The essential premise of nihonjinron is that... although this is arguably, to a large extent, inaccurate or at the very least controversial." (Italicized parts are Jh.daniell's)

In order to make such a blanket criticism of nihonjinron at large as this one, you either (1) must have extensively researched nihonjinron on your own by examining every nihonjinron book available on the market; or (2) cite some authoritative scholars who have done extensive research on nihonjinron. You don't sound like you have done either because all of your knowledge on nihonjinron seems to come from the sketchy summary description on this Wikipedia article alone. You don't even sound like you have read a single book of nihonjinron. Please note that we are talking about nihonjinron here, not some generic books on Japan. Hermeneus (user/talk) 08:16, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Obviously you haven't read the arguments presented in the article close enough.

The Japanese language is uniquely vague and imprecise. - This is the exact argument presented by Nihonjinron, and is THEN followed by a comparison with English for proof. If a comparison with Korean is added, it makes the article neutral, which is the whole objective of Wikipedia's policy on POV - not providing a biased view of a topic. Since you seem to have qualms about (in your words) "generic" comparisons of Korean and Japanese, I'll simply add comparisons concerning their similiarities in vagueness.

The essential premise of nihonjinron is that... 'although this is arguably, to a large extent, inaccurate or at the very least controversial. - I don't understand why you have a problem with this sentence in the introduction. I said "arguably" and "at the very least controversial" as a reference to the existence of arguments that state claims counter to nihonjinron, not as a complete rebuttal to the validity of nihonjinron. Acknoweldging the existence of counter-arguments to a theory and outrightedly refuting that theory are quite different expressions of opinion.

Finally, I'd appreciate if you just STOPPED ACTING CONDESCEDINGLY TOWARDS MY INTELLIGENCE about nihonjinron. It is not up to you or anyone else to presume what I know and do not know about a field of knowledge, and I would also like to inform you that your continuous attacks on my expertise in nihonjinron is not only rude and uncouth but furthermore will get us no further in our dispute about nihonjinron. You should also take into consideration that I have not edited this article since you posted your objections and have taken the time to talk to you a readily civilized manner while you continue to practically call me an idiot. On your next post, I wiould like to see a formal apology regarding your insults so that we can continue this srgument without degrading each other. --Jh.daniell 12:50, 26 May 2006 (GMT+9:00-Tokyo)

There is nothing "exact" about "this." This sentence ("the Japanese language is uniquely vague...") is only a summary of a nihonjinron discourse.

• You don't know what particular nihonjinron this single short sentence is supposed to summarize. You have not read the original text. You cannot cite the title or the name of the author. All you know about this supposed nihonjinron is from the short sketchy summary sentence written by an anonymous Wikipedian here. You don't know exactly what the author (or the person who wrote this summary) meant by "other languages" or "uniquely."
• Yet, you arbitrarily interpret "other languages" as including the Korean language, and "uniquely" as meaning that the Japanese language is an exclusively unique language that is unlike any other languages in all aspects. Then, by pointing out that the Japanese language and the Korean language share "many characters," you allege that you have thoroughly discredited this nihonjinron.

This is a typical straw man argument. You made up an easy target of criticism by overinterpreting the second-hand summary information of a nihonjinron. You are practically confessing that you are criticizing something that you hardly know of.

1. Refer to the original source of the argument that you are to criticize. Don't criticize something based only on second-hand summary information. That's a blatant academic dishonesty.
2. Present the citation of the argument that you criticize, and back up your criticism with relevant scholarship that is written by reputable scholars and published in notable publications (no original research).

Unless you will provide citation of actual nihonjinron discourses that you are criticizing, your edits satisfy neither of the above two rules and so are not appropriate to be included in Wikipedia. See the official policy Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. Hermeneus (user/talk) 06:05, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Chung H. Park, The Historic Long, Deep Korean Roots In Japan

Your interpretation of my previous post has been so arbitrarily presented it totally distorts my original intent.

"The Japanese language is uniquely vague"- If you care to look at this sentence, it states clearly in which aspect Japanese is unique: vagueness. Vagueness generally means lacking details, being sketchy, and in the case of a language, it means that language often presents a meaning, but not clearly. If this aspect is found in other tongues, then it is perfectly fine to add language that shares this characteristic to contradict this particular nihonjinron discourse. I did not, as you charge, "overinterpret" the uniqueness of the Japanese language claimed by nihonjinron. I'll edit it back, but I'll be sure to add the required sources. In fact, I'll take the time to add source links to all of my revious sources.

In addition to concluding this spat by adding links to all of the edits I made, as you so desperately demand, I'll make alist of the insults you've made on me for the past few day:

"If you have no knowledge of nihonjinron other than what's already written on this Wikipedia article, then you aren't really qualified to critique nihonjinron." "You don't sound like you have done either because all of your knowledge on nihonjinron seems to come from the sketchy summary description on this Wikipedia article alone. You don't even sound like you have read a single book of nihonjinron." "You don't know what particular nihonjinron this single short sentence is supposed to summarize. You have not read the original text. You cannot cite the title or the name of the author. All you know about this supposed nihonjinron is from the short sketchy summary sentence written by an anonymous Wikipedian here." "This is a typical straw man argument. You made up an easy target of criticism by overinterpreting the second-hand summary information of a nihonjinron. You are practically confessing that you are criticizing something that you hardly know of."

I expect an apology for all of these baseless charges/insults onces I have finished editing "Nihonjinron" with the "authoritative" sources linked from this page. This is the very least concession I request (no, demand) from you and your biased assumption that I am not knowledgable about nihonjinron. I also would like you to put forth answers to all of my arguments above which you have left unanswered for your convenience. --Jh.daniell

Like I said, "The Japanese language is uniquely vague" is not a nihonjinron itself; it is just a summary of a supposed nihonjinron discourse written by an anonymous Wikipedian. It doesn't matter if "vagueness generally means lacking details" or whatever because it is only a summary sentence of a nihonjionron and is not itself a nihonjinron discourse. You don't criticize something by arbitrarily overinterpreting its second-hand summary without examining the original text. Doing so is a blatant academic dishonesty that is not an acceptable conduct on Wikipedia. If you want to criticize something, at the least have a courtesy to check the original text and present the citation of it, i.e., state the title of the nihonjinron book, the name of the author, and the page number where the particular argument that you criticize appears. Wikipedia:Citing sources is an official rule of Wikipedia.

However, vagueness is among the similiarities noted between Japanese and Korean according to the book "The Historic Long, Deep Korean Roots In Japan" by Chung H. Park, who quoted that the Japanese language "in addition to a similarly profound use of vocabulary of classical Chinese etymology and closely related grammatical systems, shares (with Korean) an overall tone lacking at times in direction, clear meaning, and logic."

I don't see any point in adding this info from Mr. Park's book. Was this added because there is a certain nihonjinron discourse that argues that vagueness is an exclusively unique feature of the Japanese language, so that showing the fact that the Korean language shares vagueness also constitutes a counter example of the claim of the nihonjinron? If so, please present the citation of the nihonjinron first. If not, then this quote is irrelevant. Also, The Historic Long, Deep Korean Roots In Japan is published from a famous vanity press and written by an armature historian (a Korean trade firm executive) who confessed that he wrote the book because some professors from the University of Helsinki made a degrading comment on the Korean history that "ancient Mongolians settled the Korean Peninsula" and so he wanted to "correctly deliver the ancient history of Korea and Japan around the world." [6][7] This joke of a book is no better than the worst kind of nihonjinron.

Besides, the sentence "The Japanese language is uniquely vague..." is already listed as an example of the pseudo-scientific argument of nihonjinron in the current version of this article. It's not like it is being presented as a true account of the Japanese language. Hermeneus (user/talk) 13:25, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Nishidani's comment

Hermeneus’s behavior here violates all the implicit rules of serious contributions to Wikipedia in so far as he refuses to write the article (apart from some mediocre contributions to the corresponding Japanese voice), asserts a knowledge of the material he never divulges, and seems intent only on impeding others from contributing to the article. In fact, if you go back over the discussion, it becomes quite clear that he has succeeded in driving away anyone who tries to write anything substantive on the subject. It is clear by now that he knows, with acute omniscient insight, what should not be written. The joke it he cannot write one word as to how it should be written. He always of course appeals to Wiki rules, but in such a laboriously dull-minded style, that, while he manages invariably to convince himself, he bores the rest of the potential readership to tears.

It is scandalous that Hermeneus and a few of his allies have managed to hoist a ‘disputed site’ banner when the person whose contributions they took exception to erased his material (some of it appears to have been adopted in the meantime). Since what was objected to was removed, the flagging of the article as ‘disputed’ should also have been dropped. No. It stands there as a warning to all and sundry not to meddle with Hermeneus’s fussypot dominance over the page, and its meagre contents. Nothing can, apparently, stand without his approval. Nothing can pass his scrutiny, which asserts an ideal of ‘neutrality’ in order to defend a perspective of bias. The bias being, nothing that injures what he, with thin-skinned punctiliousness, thinks is the proper international reputation of Japan. His scrupulous call for documentation can be read also as a fishing expedition, to elicit information he pretends to know, but actually lacks. Thus, while stopping the article from being written, he enriches his own personal knowledge by badgering potential contributors. A clever game, in so far as the pedestrian mind that plays it can be called ‘clever’. If no one in Wikipedia monitors Hermeneus’s spoiling tactics, the article will never be written. There is no device to stop sterile kibitzers of his kind from playing this malevolent game. Therefore, I propose that Hermeneus, ‘the interpreter’ translate the Japanese article he apparently approves of, and post the English version here. If he does not accept the challenge, his bad faith will be self-evident. Nishidani 18:02, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

(1) We are currently discussing the relevance of this particular excerpt from a book written by an armature historian and published from a vanity publisher. If you think that such an excerpt should be included in the article, then state the reason why and prove it's relevance. (2) ja:日本人論 on the Japanese Wikipedia has no more significant contents than this article and so there is no point in translating it into English. (3) The "Types of Nihonjinron" section, "History" section except the first paragraph, and the first half of the "Nihonjinron as cultural nationalism" section are my inputs, all of which are well-sourced with reputable works of scholarship by Dale, Yoshino, Sugimoto, and Mouer as required by the Wikipedia policies and guidelines. I'm only holding other edits to the same decently rigorous standard. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a personal website; you cannot publish any unfounded unsourced craps on here. See WP:NOR and WP:NOT. (4) You created a new account just to say this? Hermeneus (user/talk) 18:58, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I see there is simply no way, Hermeneus, to put an end to your incessant personal insults on my character. I am not unintelligent, I am not uninformed about nihonjinron, and I am most definitely not the person above whom you unilaterally concluded was me when it really wasn't. Coments such as "you sound like you haven't read a single book on nihonjinron," "you are practically concluding you have no knowledge about nihonjinron beyond Wikipedia" and "you created a new account just to say this" have been highly offensive not only to me but have basically infringed upon Wikipedia's policy of no personal attacks. In this case, I am sure that you thought I created a new account by simply looking at the fact that Nishidani and I both have no personal pages. If that is the situation, I am sorry that you have been so severely misled by another one of your runwaway presumptions. I see that we cannot make any headway in our argument and have finally realized that your intent in our dispute was simply to prevent me from making a contribution to Nihonshoki that may have put that philosophy in a more balanced light. I also know that there is no way to prove Nishidani and I have no relationship with each other so I will post a comment of his talk page and hope Nishdani will be able to explain this. Furthermore, your arguments against my last edit are baseless because the author of the book I cited may have been a businessman, but I have read his book and can infer from the content that he has done thorough researching that you cannot discard on the foundation that he is not a professional scholar. I will restore the last edit, which I cannot acknowledge as worthless as you claim, and will no longer engage in conversation with you on this discussion page. If you wish to further talk to me, you are welcome to my talk page, but I will no longer tolerate any insults concerning my knowledge. You should also be aware that I have always regarded you as an honest editor of Wikipedia and respected your edits on articles related to Japan and Korea but through this conversation have realized your lack of consideration and overall arrogance. It is you who have suffered most degradation from your disgustingly derogative comments.--Jh.daniell 01:15, 28 May 2006 (GMT+9:00-Tokyo)

(1) I didn't presume that Jh.daniell and Nishidani are the same person, although I suspect that Nishidani might be a new account of a particular someone else with whom I had a discussion earlier on this page. (2) I'm only judging what you are contributing to this article, and saying that your edits are not sufficiently sourced. If you believe that your edits are legitimate, provide citation of reliable scholarship and stop critiquing something by its second-hand summary. (3) This article already has two sections of criticisms ("cultural nationalism" and "pseudo-science") and hardly presents nihonjinron in a positive light. Hermeneus (user/talk) 20:02, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

So basically (1) you're avoiding having to say an apology and (2) lying that you didn't presume Nihidani and I to be the same person when you just said "You created a new account just to say this?" and "I suspect that Nishidani might be a new account of a particular someone else with whom I had a discussion earlier on this page." (Who are you referring to if not me?) How very typical of you, Hermeneus. No wonder the reputation of Japan has hit the bottom in East Asia. I thought the Koizumi administration is to blame for worsening relations with China and Korea; now I see how the Japanese people themselves have adopted some of the arrogance of their government.--Jh.daniell 15:58, 28 May 2006 (GMT+9:00-Tokyo)

P.S. I distinctly remember having told you to continue your comments concerning me on my talk page. It's rather embarassing to carry on personal offenses on a public article discussion page, you see. And why don't you take on Nishidani's challenge, or is it that you still consider his account a puppet created by me?

These are some of the things that you said to me on this page:

• "I understand you may take offense at such a statement, especially since it may break widely accepted cultural norms in Japan."
• "Insisting on your pro-Japanese bias and insulting people in Korea"
• "Where do you get YOUR authority? From nationalist and revisionist scholars in the Oyashima?"

And you demand an apology from me for insulting and "acting condescendingly" towards yourself, while claiming that you "have taken the time to talk to (me in) a readily civilized manner"?

I have been only criticizing the lack of reliable sources in your edits and asking you to present the citation of an actual nihonjinron discourse that you are criticizing (as per WP:CITE) because criticizing something by its second-hand summary alone without refering to the original text could constitute academic dishonesty. I told you that "you sound like you haven't read a single book on nihonjinron" because you don't cite any reliable sources, and so you did in fact sound like such was the case to me. Also that was a way to prompt you to provide reliable sources: By providing the citation of reliable sources you could have proven me wrong.

DannyWilde is the person I had in my mind. He seems like he got himself indef. banned earlier this year. Hermeneus (user/talk) 07:59, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I haven't even read your last comment (whether you choose to believe or not). I said if you want to talk to me, go to my talk page. Otherwise, I cannot help you. I'm rather sick, tired, embarassed of having to carry on about this on a public discussion page now that our argument is personal.--Jh.daniell 23:30, 28 May 2006 (GMT+9:00-Tokyo)

Pseudoscientific nihonjinron on the Japanese language being uniquely vague and imprecise

The Japanese language is uniquely vague and imprecise, in contrast to languages such as English, which are held to be highly logical and precise. This in turn is said to reflect on the Japanese unique way of thinking.

The above was listed as an example of pseudoscientific nihonjinron in the article. It doesn't cite any actual nihonjinron book that makes this particular claim or show exactly how it is pseudoscientific. Although I don't buy this theory personally, I'm not so sure if this is really a good example of pseudoscientific nihonjinron. Here is one book that makes a similar argument.

We propose a theory that Japanese language embodies the basic characteristics of Japanese culture. Galtung and Nishimura take the position that "a language takes structural and cultural stands... predisposing the members of one language community, to act, to think and to perceive the word in certain ways rather than in others... Language predisposes, ... it does not determine in any unambiguous way" (1983, p. 897). The data analysis of our cross-national language surveys affirmed the validity of cosmology Galtung and Nishimura (1983) proposed (Kuroda, Hayashi, and Suzuki, 1986; Kuroda and Suzuki, 1989a, 1989b, 1991a, 1991b, 1992.) How does the Japanese language condition our perception and cognition?

The Japanese language is characterized by ambiguity and diffuseness. In contrast but not exactly diametrically opposed to Japanese culture, American thought patterns are dominated by two key factors: dichotomy of their world view (propensity to respond to the world in binary terms, as in 'Yes' or 'No') and individualism, or the view that the individual is the primary or the most salient social unit in a society. The Japanese language espouses a view of the world in nonbinary terms. Likewise the Japanese language predisposes its speakers to pay attention to human relations or the entire social context rather than just to the self or the individual. One's own action is a result of what many other people did. American English, on the other hand, encourages its speakers to take responsibility for their actions... (Hayashi and Kuroda, Japanese Culture in Comparative Perspective, p. 17, ISBN 0275958612)

This book seems to be a serious work of scholarship as reviewed in the Journal of Asian Studies, a reputable academic journal of Asian Studies, as follows: "The authors are to be commended for selection and organizing their longitudinal data, presenting their complex findings logically, and relating them to other scholarship about Japanese culture" (See [8] for other reviews). Although this theory itself merits reference on this article, I don't think it's fair to present it as an example of pseudoscientific nihonjinron (unless there are other nihonjinron books that make a similar argument but in a pseudoscientific manner). Hermeneus (user/talk) 05:29, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Then erase it and I wouldn't have to post contrary claims to make it NPOV, only to have it made POV by you who discards every edit I've made just because my source is a book written by a businessman (infering from what you're saying, only books specifically regarding nihonjinron and written by professional scholars can be regarded as valid surces, making all other related books essentially crap)--Jh.daniell 16:04, 28 May 2006 (GMT+9:00-Tokyo)

That fact that an academic journal has a review of a book about the idea that Japanese is "characterized by ambiguity and diffuseness" doesn’t mean the claim that Japanese is "uniquely vague and imprecise" by non-academic witers is not a part of pseudoscientific nihonjinron. LDHan 16:07, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I am not a linguist, but I have taken classes in it and speak Japanese. IIRC, Japanese is more 'ambiguous' than English. From Japanese_language: Japanese is a pro-drop language, meaning that the subject or object of a sentence need not be stated if it is obvious from context. In addition, it is commonly felt that the shorter a Japanese sentence is, the better (a quality called "iki" in Japanese). As a result of this grammatical permissiveness and tendency towards brevity, Japanese speakers tend naturally to omit words from sentences, rather than refer to them with pronouns. However, it is far from being unique, with Mandarin, Turkic, and others having those features. It is certainly not a 'racial' difference.

The thing about not distinguishing L and R are also a feature of the language that has nothing to do with race. They are simply allophones in Japanese, like how the /p/ and /pʰ/ are not distinguished in English. Japanese people are perfectly capable of distinguishing l and r if taught correctly. Identity0 09:13, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Multicultural Japan? Discourse and the ‘Myth’ of Homogeneity

Here's a source that definately should be in the article, it's first chapter is called "Nihonjinron and ‘Multicultural Japan’". It gives some definitions of the word, etc. [[9]]. Mackan 13:02, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I just realised the essay is quoting this very article..! Isn't there some kind of tag, like the "this article was referenced in a mainstream media publication" but "essay" or something similar instead of "mainstream media"? Mackan 20:03, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Benedict. Exemplar of Nihonjinron or Critical?

Until now her book was placed in both categories, since the work in question has critical elements, but also betrays 'Orientalist' and 'Japanese' perceptions of cultural behaviour as uniform over a population. What is certain is that the 4 critical theses characteristic of the Nihonjinron, as established above, would not have been shared by Benedict, since they collide with the approach of Boasian anthropology. Her 'essentialism' must be interpreted in terms of the precise meaning of 'configuration' in that school, which refers to the dominating pattern, and does not deny the existence of internal variation in subgroups or individual behaviour. By writing holistically of Japan from a perspective external to the Japanese discursive tradition, she created a critical tension in the genre itself, which was productive, once assimilated, in the modification of the standard nihonjinron ideology of wartime manufacture. The question is far more complex, of course, but to conflate, as other sites do, Benedict's work with the nihonjinron is to triviliaze its disconcerting (for the time) novelty as a text that destabilizes, as much as it lends support to, the tradition of 'Japaneseness'. I dislike reverting, and apologize for doing so first. If you disagree, could you be so kind as to discuss it here, before we venture to alter the page on this point? Thank you.Nishidani 10:15, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Example of Nihonjinron?

"Japanese people have DNA more suitable for rice than bread. Japanese society must abandon the its postwar dream of eating a steak as big as a shoe." Yukio Hattori, a Japanese television personality best known to American audiences as a commentator on the Food Network cooking show "Iron Chef." He has joined a campaign to get Japanese to eat more rice. Per capita rice consumption among Japanese has fallen to half of what it was in the late 1960s. (Washington Post)Japantoday Yaki-gaijin 22:26, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it is an example, of 'nihonjinron'-style thinking. As a genre, one should use it of a thesis, article-length, or book length. Examples of the kind you kindly note are virtually infinite. I collect them, but do not think it appropriate to cram the page with them, since it would detract from the general overview of the theoretical, social and historical nature of the genre by excessive detail. RegardsNishidani 22:31, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Neutral point of view?

It seems to me that there are many instances in this article of Wikipedia's neutrality standard being defied with the use of rather charged language. Feisty.gibbon (talk) 11:38, 4 October 2008 (UTC)Feisty.gibbon

Feel welcome to edit the article, or note things you, as an extremely experienced wikipedian, consider violations of policy. It would be advisable to demonstrate some considerable familiarity with the topic, and the books cited in the bibliography.Nishidani (talk) 11:56, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

The art of counting

The article states thusly:

Books on nihonjinron typically contain the following four premises:

Cleverly the article proceeds to list five premises. Information is equalised by confusion, thus maintaining the balance of the universe. --22:19, 7 February 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.164.183.79 (talk)

Cleverly, the newbie proceeds to note the dyscrasia between numbers, and like the god of Joyce's imagination, pares his fingernails, while exhaling Epicurean apophthegms.Nishidani (talk) 09:36, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Oscar Wilde

'Oscar Wilde said: "The actual people who live in Japan are not unlike the general run of English people; that is to say, they are extremely commonplace, and have nothing curious or extraordinary about them." (Wilde, Oscar, "The Decay of Lying, An Observation", 1899 [27])'

I cannot emphasize enough just how badly the above quotation has been taken out of context. In reality, it says nothing at all about how much the Japanese are like everyone else. He's talking about how much the Japanese SEEM to English visitors like the commonplace human beings one meets in England, even though they evidently appear to the Japanese more in the exotic style in which they are depicted by native artists. It is a reflection on artistic sentiment across the ages and national boundaries, nothing more. Unless there is some valid objection, I will be removing it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.93.193.31 (talk) 15:40, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Done now. Snori (talk) 05:47, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

removal of section

I removed this section:

As Japan is often deemed to be "almost as unique as its people like to think" (Pearl Buck, qtd. In Dale 1986:26) so too the Japanese people are considered not just unique but, in the words of Sugimoto and Mouer, "more unique than other societies."

for the following reason:

Dale's quote is misused here. In "the myth of Japanese uniqueness" does it not seem unlikely that Dale would express the sentiment quoted above (Buck)? In fact, Dale ridicules the idea that Japan is more "unique" pointing out that this is a linguistic error. A country may be more different, but it certainly cannot be more "unique" if the proper meaning of the word unique is used.

References

Trim

I have trimmed a lot of material. Much of this was nicely written academic-style stuff, but this is not the place for personal essays. Snori (talk) 06:15, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

References