The Chrysanthemum and The Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture by Ruth Benedict

Author:Ruth Benedict [Benedict, Ruth]
Format: epub
Tags: History - General History, Anthropology, Anthropology - Cultural, Anthropology - General, Customs & Traditions, History, National characteristics; Japanese, Asia, Asia - Japan, Japan - Civilization, Cultural, Civilization, Ethnic Studies, Japan, Cultural And Social Anthropology, General, Sociology, Social Science
ISBN: 9780618619597
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2005-12-28T05:00:00+00:00

In any language the contexts in which people speak of losing or gaining self-respect throw a flood of light on their view of life. In Japan 'respecting yourself' is always to show yourself the careful player. It does not mean, as it does in English usage, consciously conforming to a worthy standard of conductnot truckling to another, not lying, not giving false testimony. In Japan self-respect (jicho) is literally 'a self that is weighty,' and its opposite is 'a self that is light and floating.' When a man says 'You must respect yourself,' it means, 'You must be shrewd in estimating all the factors involved in the situation and do nothing that will arouse

criticism or lessen your chances of success.' 'Respecting yourself' often implies exactly the opposite behavior from that which it means in the United States. An employee says, 'I must respect myself (jicho),' and it means, not that he must stand on his rights, but that he must say nothing to his employers that will get him into trouble. 'You must respect yourself' had this same meaning, too, in political usage. It meant that a 'person of weight' could not respect himself if he indulged in anything so rash as 'dangerous thoughts.' It had no implication, as it would in the United States, that even if thoughts are dangerous a man's self-respect requires that he think according to his own lights and his own conscience.

'You must respect yourself' is constantly on parents' lips in admonishing their adolescent children, and it refers to observing proprieties and living up to other people's expectation. A girl is thus admonished to sit without moving, her legs properly placed, and a boy to train himself and learn to watch for cues from others 'because now is the time that will decide your future.' When a parent says to them, 'You did not behave as a self-respecting person should,' it means that they are accused of an impropriety rather than of lack of courage to stand up for the right as they saw it.

A farmer who cannot meet his debt to the moneylender says of himself 'I should have had self-respect,' but that does not mean that he accuses himself of laziness or of fawning upon his creditor. It means that he should have foreseen the emergency and been more circumspect. A man of standing in the community says, 'My self-respect requires this,' and he does not mean that he must live up to certain principles of truthfulness and probity but that he must manipu-

late the affair with full consideration for the position of his family; he must throw the whole weight of his status into the matter.

A business executive who says of his firm 'We must show self-respect' means that prudence and watchfulness must be redoubled. A man discussing a necessity to avenge himself speaks of 'revenging with self-respect,' and this has no reference to heaping coals of fire upon the head of his enemy or to any moral rules he intends to follow; it is equivalent to saying 'I shall exact a perfect revenge,' i.

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