In her Oct. 7 book review of Alan Macfarlane's "Japan Through the Looking Glass," Mariko Kato writes "It is fully known that Japan -- despite being the world's second-largest economy and a hyperproductive civilization -- is utterly different from the West."
"Fully known" by whom? Perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that "It is believed by an increasingly small number of people, most of them Japanese, that Japan is utterly different from the West."
Kato also writes: "He (the author) admits that, at times, the Japanese can be barbaric and dishonest, and therefore considered incomprehensible to the West."
Why would "barbaric, dishonest" behavior make Japanese incomprehensible to anyone? People of every country of the world are, at times, barbaric and dishonest: It is one of the many things we all have in common as human beings.
Why does The Japan Times still encourage the view that Japan and the Japanese are somehow unique -- "utterly different" from everyone else? I thought the revival of that myth died stillborn with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's resignation.
No more Nihonjinron (theories of Japaneseness), please!
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