The Hollow Doll (A Little Box of Japanese Shocks)

By William A. Bohnaker

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345364406
• ISBN13: 9780345364401
• Release Date: March 1990
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Length: 266 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

An intriguing examination of what makes them tick

The Japanese aren't like you think they are. As Bohnaker so thoroughly demonstrates, they aren't even like *they* think they are. The essential European (and therefore American) mind-set is rational, based on ancient Greece, Rome, the Medieval Church, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution. Westerners ask "why?" The Japanese share none of that history and depend instead on pattern, and especially formula. They ask "what?" For society to work, everyone simply has to behave the same way, every time, in the expected fashion. The famous Japanese consensus is not a rational principal, "wisely deduced from the need to produce cooperative action" -- that?s a Western extrapolation. Where society in the West is supported by an internal structure of reason and principal, what he calls the Japanese social psyche is held together by a "bubble of agreement supported by nothing but itself." And who decides what people should agree to? Tradition and authority, more often than not. American soldiers were baffled at the end of World War II when the "maniacal" Japanese simply ceased fighting, virtually overnight, and became polite and friendly. But they quit because the Emperor told them to, just as they had previously fought tooth and nail because the generals told them to. Of course, those in authority -- political leaders, the corporate boss -- frequently take advantage of this mind-set for their own ends. The author examines the Japanese educational system, the attitude toward public drunkenness, the real reason behind anarchic driving behavior (inability to identify authority), and the casual racism endemic in Japan, and a great deal more. However, when this book was published in 1990, as a result of years of a strong yen and much wider exposure to Western ways of doing things, the Japanese, especially the younger generation and the women, were beginning to resist their own traditions. It would be very interesting if Bohnaker were to write a follow-up volume a decade later, now that Japan has suffered serious economic setbacks.