Cultural Values — страница 7

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These will be discussed in order. articulate codification of rules During the long Tokugawa period of centralized feudalism, Japanese patterns of interpersonal behavior underwent an elaborate institutionalization. The Shogunate attempted to fix the position of each class with respect to the others and established written rules of behavior for its members. The family system had devel­oped historically along patrilineal lines, and during Tokugawa times such patterns of relations between kin were proclaimed as an official social code. After the Meiji Restoration, the samurai class in control of the nation maintained these formalized rules and even elevated them to the status of an idealized spiritual expression of the Japanese ethos. The reason for this enhancement of the Tokugawa

code after the Restoration lay in the need to preserve and strengthen national discipline and unity as a practical policy in industrialization and other aspects of moderniza­tion. Thus, Japan moved into her modern era in possession of a system of rules of social behavior based on feudal and familial principles. It is necessary to note that this system of codified rules was consistently adhered to in actual behavior by only a minority of the population: the samurai and nobility. The remainder of the population followed the rules in part, or only in "public" situations where the pressure for conformity was strong. In the decades subsequent to the Restoration a generalized version of the code was adopted by the developing business and official classes, and this is the

situation which continues to prevail in Japan today (although since the Occupation a considerable liberalization of social be­havior can be found in all classes and groups). Since the student subjects of-the research project were persons from upper- and middle-class groups socialized in prewar and wartime Japan, we can use the gross aspects of this social code as a backdrop for the interpretation of their behavior. The strength and the influence of this code were enhanced further by the fact that up to the period of the Occupation, no large migration to Japan of Westerners had occurred. In this situation relatively few Japanese were presented with the need to learn the modes of interaction of other societies—particularly the more "open" type of the Western na­tions.

This isolation was intensified during the militarist-nationalist epoch of the 1930s and 1940s, in which the social code was given renewed em­phasis as a counter-measure against liberal trends. The codified norms— on or ascribed obligation; giri or contractual obligation; chu or loyalty to one's superior; ninjo or humane sensibility; and enryo or modesty and reserve in the presence of the superior—were incorporated in the school curriculum as ethical doctrine, and exemplified in a multitude of cultural expressions. primary associative qualities An important aspect of Japanese social norms may be described in Western sociological terms as that of "primary association." Emphasis upon personal qualities, obligations between subordinate and superior, and distinctions

based on age or sibling birth-order are features suited to the atmosphere of a small, highly interactive social group, like the family or a feudal manor. It goes without saying that in the modern mass society of Japan these rules have not always been observed, but the fact is that to an extraordinary degree the Japanese have succeeded in organizing present-day society into small, cell-like groupings, in which highly personalized relationships are governed by an explicit code of behavior. Even in impersonal situations, as in labor organizations, rules of primary associative type have been used at least symbolically as models for interaction and responsibility. hierarchy If Japanese social norms present an image of society in the character of a primary group, it is at least a

hierarchically organized pri­mary group—one in which there are explicit gradations of status from superior to inferior. The family is ideally organized on patrilineal-patriarchal principles, with the father as dominant, the eldest son superordinate to the younger, and so on. Primogeniture was the law of the land until the Occupation period, and, even though no longer so, it is still followed in a great many cases. Japanese business firms, government bureaus, and many universities and schools are organized in ways reminiscent of this familial model; or their organization may be more closely related historically to feudal or lord-vassal principles. In such cases the employee and the employer, chief and underling, or teacher and pupil occupy positions which carry with them