Five Gentlemen of Japan: The Portrait of a Nation's Character (D'asia Vu Reprint Library (Series).) [ペーパーバック]

Ruth Benedict tried to describe and explain Japanese culture in her famous book "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword" (1946). Gibney tries to do the same, but seems to get sidetracked, perhaps because he wasn't an anthropologist but a Japanese-speaking journalist with an inquiring mind. He hit upon a very interesting method of discussing his topic. He starts out by listing some national stereotypes in a discussion of "national character", which I think is a useless topic. So, I was pleased when Gibney immediately acknowledged the same, saying that none of the five Japanese men he would describe fit the picture of Japanese as often seen by the outside world. Instead, he turned to a long and interestingly written review of Japanese history and then endeavored to portray the differences and similarities of the lives of his chosen five "gentlemen of Japan". One of these is Emperor Hirohito, the other four a journalist, a farmer, a steel mill foreman, and an ex-Vice Admiral in the Japanese Navy who oversaw an arms foundry.

I feel that Gibney's account of Japanese history bogs down at the end because while the best histories have a timeless quality, others reflect too much the concerns of the day which are not necessarily the concerns of our day. American occupation policy and the Communist threat were hot topics of the time, but are passé today. The author wished to be timely and to be read---certainly valid concerns, but at 58 years remove, timeliness is impossible. The author's personal belief was that Japan needed Christianity. This is also a conceit from an earlier time.

Gibney examines the American introduction of democracy, the agrarian and economic reforms, and overall, the difficulty of transposing institutions and their accompanying ideas and behaviors from one culture to another. He does so in part by tracing the reactions of the five men to these changes. His view of Japan's future, as well as the general course of world history is not far-fetched--seen from 58 years on--but fails, as anyone would have, to predict well. Japan's rise to be the world's number two economic power until 2010, the upgrading of its exports, the coming of electronics and computers, the outsourcing of so much to China and Southeast Asia, the decline of the US and the collapse of the USSR could not have been foreseen by anyone in an accurate way.

You can read this book for the earlier history and for the lives of the five men; very interesting still, especially their experiences during the war. Despite the fact that seven years previously, Americans and Japanese had been engaged in bitter and bloody fighting, Gibney's view of Japan and Japanese culture is far more sympathetic than you might expect. Many passages stayed with me for several days as I went about my business.