The Chrysanthemum and The Sword - Research Circumstances

Research Circumstances

This book which resulted from Benedict's wartime research, like several other OWI wartime studies of Japan and Germany, is an instance of "anthropology at a distance," that is, study of a culture through its literature, newspaper clippings, films and recordings, and extensive interviews with German-Americans or Japanese-Americans. These techniques were necessitated by anthropologists' inability to visit Nazi Germany or wartime Japan. As one later ethnographer pointed out, however, although "culture at a distance" had the "elaborate aura of a good academic fad, the method was not so different from what any good historian does: to make the most creative use possible of written documents." These anthropologists were attempting to understand the cultural patterns that might be driving the aggression of once friendly nations, and hoped to find possible weaknesses or means of persuasion that had been missed.

Americans found themselves unable to comprehend matters in Japanese culture. For instance, Americans considered it quite natural for American prisoners of war to want their families to know they were alive, and to keep quiet when asked for information about troop movements, etc., while Japanese POWs, apparently, gave information freely and did not try to contact their families.