2713370

A World Made Safe for Differences: Ruth Benedict's "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword" Author(s): Christopher Shannon
Reviewed work(s): Source: American Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 4 (Dec., 1995), pp. 659-680 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2713370 . Accessed: 21/12/2012 15:39
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Made Safe forDifferences: A World RuthBenedict's and theSword The Chrysanthemum

CHRISTOPHER SHANNON ofRochester University
We are willing to help people who believe the way we do, to continueto live the way theywant to live. -Dean Acheson
LIBERALISM HAS ALWAYSPRIDED ITSELF ON ITS ACCEPTANCEOF DIVER-
to Americanliberalismthan sity.At no timewas thisvalue morecentral ideologies that during the cold war era.1 The racial and totalitarian World War II broughtforth a postwarvision of seemed to precipitate Ruth Benedict called "a world made safe for what the anthropologist cultural in which freedomwould serve as the basis for differences," the cold war era, liberal policy makers,no world peace.2 Throughout less than their critics, decried the gap between the theoryand the practice of tolerance,but few criticallyanalyzed the idea of cultural from of tolerancehave suffered tolerance itself;historicaltreatments In this essay, I would like to shiftthe historical the same deficiency. a level through debate over tolerancefromthe social to the intellectual of thepostwardoctrine close readingof one of theearliestarticulations and the Sword. A of tolerance,Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum to bringintercultural understanding studyof Japanesecultureintended of Japan, The Chrysanthemum and the to bear on the reconstruction
ChristopherShannon has taughtat the Universityof Iowa and Yale University.He is the author of Conspicuous Criticism: Tradition, the Individual, and Culture in American Social Thought, from Veblen to Mills, to be published in 1996 by The Johns Hopkins University Press. He is currentlya visiting scholar at the University of Rochester,workingon a studyof the cold war originsof multiculturalism. Studies Association Vol.47, No. 4 (December1995) ? 1995American American Quarterly, 659
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thatfosters culturalimperialism Sword offers an attackon conventional a subtler imperialism of "culture" as a social-scientificmode of perceiving all particularcultures.Benedict's book demands that the Japanese become not Americans but, in effect,anthropologists;it demands that the Japanese learn to view theirculturewith a certain detachment and to see theirreceived values as relativeand scientific therefore open to revisionin the service of consciously chosen ends. Ultimately,the imperial vision of Benedict's "world made safe for ofAmericanvalues on the lies notin anycovertimposition differences" call forthe subordinaJapanese but in the overtand uncompromising tion of all culturesto the demands of individualchoice. of Benedict's conceptionof culturaltolerA criticalre-examination pressing in light of the currentvogue of ance appears particularly multiculturalismin left/liberalscholarly discourse. The rise of a renewedinterest in Benedict's work,as multiculturalism has brought of the broadercold war rhetoric of "pluralism" well as a rehabilitation and "tolerance" so deeply indebtedto thatwork.3The dominance of back to the social thought multiculturalism has forced contemporary stale liberal dichotomyof tolerance/intolerance-adichotomyestablished as centralto Americandemocracyin Benedict's work,yet one thathas provenitselfincapable of allowing forrelationsamong people thattranscendindividualchoice. The persistent equation of tolerance neutralconception of "freedom"has served with some self-evidently Westernindividualmerelyto naturalizethe social relationsof modern, social ism. At the end of this essay, I will argue thatthis fundamental linkscold war intellectuals, such as RuthBenedict, value commitment multiculturalists. to contemporary bias in favor of tolerance has preventedrecent The unreflective scholarship on Benedict from criticallyexamining the meaning of timeswriteas ifthe tolerancein herwork.Scholars in our multicultural eventsof the last forty yearshad notcast some suspicionon the virtues of the tolerant or "open" society. One need not accept Herbert to concede thepossible Marcuse's "repressive tolerance"thesisentirely new and tolerance;the leftrevoltagainstthe coexistenceof domination statedirecteditself to notonlytheovertmilitary liberalwelfare/warfare dominationthatculminatedin the VietnamWar but also to a subtler in Marcuse's words,"encouragesnon-conforculturaldomination that, in and mity letting-go ways which leave the real engines of repression in the society entirely intact....." Marcuse and othernew leftcritics
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placed much of the responsibilityfor the "tolerant" side of this via who preachedself-fulfillment regimeon social therapists repressive "adjustment" of the individual to dominant cultural norms. This mode of critique presented social engineeringas the representative thatpacifiespolitical dominationin "a societyof totaladministration" regime of bureaucraticsocial control.4 dissent througha therapeutic New leftpolitics shaped a substantialbody of historicalwritingthat institutions not the saw in the developmentof large-scalebureaucratic of liberal reason over laissez-fairecapitalismbut the rise of a triumph sinister"corporateliberalism,"which extended capitalist domination fromeconomic life to culturallife in general.5 The recentworkof RichardHandler and VirginiaYans-McLoughlin in the contextof the rise of social engineering places Benedict firmly butfails to deal adequatelywiththe issues of power raised by new left scholarship.Handler creditsBenedict's colleague MargaretMead with realizing that "social engineeringwas but a step from . . . fascistic betweena "beneficialsocial social control"and praises her distinction and manipulative one"; he thenjudges science" and "an antidemocratic as "beneficial" social engineering Benedictand Mead's anthropological to a "society that would make use of by virtue of its commitment diverse human abilities without branding any as deviant." YansMcLoughlin addresses this problem as well and likewise places Benedict in the "beneficial" camp by virtueof her insistenceon the of the individual. Handler "supremeworthand moral responsibility raises certain and Yans-McLoughlin recognize thatsocial engineering yettheytendto see power in terms questionsof powerand domination, of simple coercion or simple intolerance.This failureto address the problem of power at a more complex level stems in part from the biographical orientation of their work; both Handler and YansMcLoughlin seek primarilyto understandBenedict's place in the contextof social engineeringratherthan to unpack such phrases as "socially engineeredtolerance."Handler ultimatelysees social engifor Benedict to discover neering as having provided an opportunity "herconvincingsense of selfhood... in therole of thetechnicalexpert, who putsherindividualtalentsat theserviceof the creator thescientific collectivity."Similarly,Yans-McLoughlin sees in Benedict's propaa "pragmaticchoice" of ganda workforthe Officeof War Information to maintaindemocracy a "passionate effort over passivity," "patriotism as the only way of life that made scientificinquirypossible."7 This
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account of Benedict as an intellecscholarshipprovidesa sympathetic tual strugglingwith the great issues of her time but fails to deal of social engineering. adequately withthe culturalsignificance The weakness in Handler's and Yans-McLoughlin's worklies not in the failureto recognize the possible political abuses of anthropology of as a structure to addressthepoliticsof anthropology butin thefailure of power.In playing apartfromits use or abuse by institutions thought Handler and Yans-McLoughlin off of Marcuse, I do not mean to that tolerance.In retrospect, to a critiqueof repressive suggesta return toleranceit directeditselfagainst; critiqueseems as naive as theofficial readingof "RepressiveTolerance"revealsMarcuse to be even a cursory deeply indebted to the classical liberal definitionof freedom as autonomy and finds him making embarrassingassertions about the true fromfalse tolerance thatnow seem possibilityof distinguishing between about as convincingas Mead's insistenceon the distinction social engineering.8 Repression/liberation, beneficialand manipulative assumes a single, universal standard of like intolerance/tolerance, and autonomy from nonconsensual freedom as self-determination social relations.I do not doubt thatBenedict valued this freedomand sought to extend it to as many people as possible; however,as an she worked primarilyon non-Westerncultures not anthropologist, For all of its "tolerance" organizedaroundthisconceptionof freedom. set theacceptance of freedom-asBenedict's anthropology of diversity, autonomyas thepriceof inclusionin a worldmade safe fordifferences to thissinglestandard. Through and excluded all who would not submit I and the The hope to Sword, Chrysanthemum a close reading of in such a way examine the social relationsof Benedict's anthropology and to as to repoliticize such words as "tolerance" and "difference" of themas not "repressive"in a psychological understanding refigure in of a structural formulation coercive but as more broadly power power. The Chrysanthemum and the The ideology of tolerancethatinforms thatrose to of culturalrelativism Sword grew out of the understanding prominence in anthropologicalcircles during the firsthalf of the As formulated by Franz Boas, Benedict's teacherat twentieth century. of theearlytwentieth century, Columbia and theleading anthropologist set itselfagainst the reigningorthodoxiesof evoluculturalrelativism and scientific racism.Boas rejectedtheevolutionanthropology tionary of Victoriananthropology-which viewed the whole ary framework
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"way of life" of human cultureas a single, developing entityto be divided intovarious stages rangingfromthe savage to thecivilized; he wholes, argued thatculturemust be seen as a pluralityof integrated each organized according to a distinctand unique patternof values. of culturesin relationto one anotherbut Boas arguedforthe relativity nonetheless insisted on the absolutism of "culture" as a way of In this,he explicitlyrejectedracial social organization. understanding explanations for the differencesamong peoples. Culture, not race, determined behavior,and culturewas notinnateor biological butwas a patternof values learned in daily life. The learned quality of culture gave it a malleabilitythatnotions of race seemed to lack, and Boas and malleabilityof cultures hoped thatan awareness of the diversity would inspirea generaltoleranceforculturaldifferences.9 of Boas, RuthBenedict imbibednot only his anthropoAs a student No single to liberal reform. logical theoriesbut also his commitment work did more to popularize Boas's humanistagenda than Benedict's Patternsof Culture,published in 1934. Benedict's book presentedan on culturesas a way of reflecting account of threedifferent "primitive" American culture.Benedict of all cultures,particularly the relativity insisted that values differnot only among cultures but also within culturesover time. In lightof the Great Depression, Benedict urged the permanenceof some of theirown cultural Americansto reconsider values, such as the association of economic competitionand limited American with moral virtue.She argued that traditional government values of libertyand equality could be preservedonly if Americans to cooperativeplanningand hostility gave up theirequally traditional regulationof the economy.10 government fromdepressionto war. In the late 1930s, the nationalfocus shifted Benedict inWorldWar II appearedinevitable, As Americaninvolvement into culture her of translate to practical understanding attempted with The New Deal flirtation programsthatwould aid the war effort. "planning" had created a hospitable environmentfor experts and and Benedict was one of the hundredsof academics in government, social scientists who offeredtheir services to Washington for the coming war. Along with her fellow Boas studentMargaret Mead, Benedict formed the Committee for National Morale in 1939 to to the examine ways in which to apply psychologyand anthropology problemof buildingmoraleduringthewar. In 1941, she joined the war in a more officialcapacity as a memberof the Committeeon effort
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and the of Agriculture of the Department Food Habits, a joint venture National Research Council designed to improvethe food habits and ' War,like nutrition of an Americanpopulationmobilizingfortotalwar. culture,came to be seen as a whole way of life. For all of her attentionto American culture, Benedict's most anthropologiworkwould come in the moreconventionally significant In June culturesforWesterners. non-Western cal role of interpreting Gorer 1943, Benedict replaced her friend(and Japanexpert)Geoffrey as head analyst at the Overseas Intelligencedivision of the Office of War Information (OWI). Benedict'sjob was to prepareculturalprofiles of various countriesas requestedby eitheran operationaldivision of the OWI or the Bureau of Overseas Intelligence. Restrictedfrom by the war, Benedict preparedher reportsby conventionalfieldwork firstand and interviewing examiningavailable studiesof the country living in America. Through 1943 and immigrants second-generation on Thailand, Rumania, and early 1944, Benedict preparedbriefreports containedsuggestionsfor"psychological the Netherlands;each report to each country. In of cultureparticular warfare"based on the pattern friend of Benedict's AlexanderLeighton,a June1944, thepsychologist fromNew York and head of the ForeignMorale Division of the OWI, assigned Benedict to conducta studyof Japandespite her lack of any expertisein Japanese language or culture.Benedict revised particular after the war and publishedit in 1946 as and expanded her OWI report and theSword.12A kind of culturalguidebookfor The Chrysanthemum of Japan,Benedict's American officialsoverseeingthe reconstruction and toleranceof all culturesas understanding book arguesfora greater world peace. the key to preserving Withoutcasting suspicion on the sincerityof Benedict's plea for of The Chrysanthemum and of thewriting tolerance,thecircumstances theSword do bringintospecial reliefissues of powerthathave plagued intellectual as a distinct sinceitsbirth discipline.Benedict's anthropology of the OWI recalls to the psychological warfareefforts contribution in helping European colonial nothingif not the role of anthropology censubdue indigenous peoples duringthe nineteenth administrators tury.Proponents of a "humanistic science," such as Benedict and imperialpast but MargaretMead, were well aware of anthropology's directed toward the true believed that a self-criticalanthropology, of democraticform of man,"could serveas thebasis fora truly "dignity social engineeringthat would fostermutual respect among all the
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thus This ideal of a self-critical anthropology nations of the world."3 decenteredtheWest in relationto the East only to centerthe detached itselfin relationto both West and East. perspectiveof anthropology the old of culturalrelativism, WithinBenedict's Boasnian framework anthropologicalopposition of civilizationto savagery gives way to a more abstractdichotomyof the anthropologicaland the nonanthrodistinct a placeless principleof rationality pological, withanthropology fromtheWest as a whole. like "civilization" detachment, In Benedict's work,anthropological before it, serves as a universal standardby which to judge all the peoples of the world. Consequently, Benedict locates her savage attitudestowardculture.In The Chry"other" in nonanthropological santhemumand the Sword, Benedict identifiesmany of the traits associated withthe savage-lack of self-consciousness, conventionally with neurosis, immaturity-withthe modem West itself,particularly of the anthropological America."4Lacking a proper understanding notion of culture,Americans "still have the vaguest and most biased notions,notonlyof whatmakes Japana nationof Japanese,butof what makes the United States a nation of Americans . . ." (13). Such Americansbecome "so defensive fearand insecurity. ignorancefosters about theirown way of life thatit appears to themto be by definition the sole solution in the world,"and they "demand thatothernations solutions"(15, 16). This "neurotic"attempt adopt theirown particular to repress others leads Americans to repress themselves (15). By Americans"cut themselvesofffroma demandingculturaluniformity, pleasant and enrichingexperience" and deny themselves "the added love of theirown culturewhichcomes froma knowledgeof otherways threatensto of life" (16). This childish, neuroticfear of differences to as America's inability isolatedand stagnant, leave Americaculturally issues in a self-destructive inability ultimately appreciateothercultures to appreciateits own. she ofAmericanculture, Even as Benedictrejectsthesingle standard towardall cultures: a single standardof a certainattitude constructs
of could notbase a doctrine seems as if thetender-minded It sometimes is a print less than a world ofpeopleseach ofwhich uponanything goodwill of as a condition But to demandsuchuniformity thesame negative. from itofone's wifeorone's is as neurotic as todemand another nation respecting shouldexist.They differences are content that The tough-minded children. where Theirgoal is a worldmade safefordifferences, differences. respect
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Benedict's concept of "ripening"implies not only a temporalnarrative The peace of of detachment. but also a spatial narrative of maturation the world depends on replacingthe neurotic,"insider" perspectiveof nationalismwith the rational,"outsider"perspectiveof anthropology. According to Benedict, all nations, includingAmerica, exist within particularcultures;they take theirculturalvalues "for granted"as if of the landscape," thus those values were "the god-givenarrangement they cannot properly evaluate either their own culture or another nation's culture (14). In contrast,the discipline of anthropology culturesand thus may examine them operates outside of all particular objectively. In conceptualizing this neutral, scientific detachment, Benedict turnsto metaphorsof vision. Culture is the "lenses through which any nation looks at life" (14). As the "oculist" of culture,the forany lenses we bring is "able to writeout theformula anthropologist him." Benedict even predicts that "someday, no doubt we shall recognize that it is the job of the social scientistto do this for the world" (14). Benedict clearly offersThe nations of the contemporary and the Sword as a model forthis kind of anthropoChrysanthemum logical mediation. Benedict's choice of metaphoris more appropriatethan she may have intended. Oculists not only describe formulas,but they also theyanalyze the deviationsof prescriptions, prescribethem.In writing Oculists' understanding of to correct that vision. vision so as individual of deviationsin vision in no way prevents forthe variety and sympathy Benedict folvision with properprescriptions. them fromcorrecting and the of the same procedurein The Chrysanthemum lows something of difference serves as preludeto the prescripSword. The description tion of uniformity. In all fairness, mostof thebook remainstrueto the ideal of detached descriptionthat Benedict wishes to evoke with her metaphorof the oculist. Roughly half of the chapters devote themselves simply to
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mapping out some particularaspect of "the great networkof mutual of Japaneseculture indebtedness"thatBenedict presentsas the pattern (98). Separate chapters deal with such topics as the debt owed to parents, the debt owed to one's own reputation,and the conflicts between equally valid obligations. The intricacy of the networks stereotypes Benedict describes threatensto play into contemporary yetBenedictinsiststhroughconcerning therigidity of Japaneseculture, theculturalvalue of out thatsubmissionto theseobligationsstemsfrom notarbitrary authority. Benedict sees in theobligation common loyalty, network of Japanese culture a flexibilityabsent from both the of America's othermajor wartimeenemy,Nazi Gerauthoritarianism of othernon-Western societies, such as many,and the caste hierarchy that of India. To counterthe image of the Japanese as machinelike entitled "The Circle of Human Benedictincludesa chapter automatons, her readersthat"the Japanese Feelings." (In this chapter,she informs do not condemn self-gratification. They are not Puritans.")She concludes her study with an account of the intimaterelations between Japanese child-rearing practices parentsand childrenas seen through (177). does not lead Benedict to stereotypes Still, thisconcernforrefuting between Japan and America. gloss over the substantivedifferences Benedict begins her account of Japanesecultureproperwitha chapter entitled"The Japanese in the War," and her initial analysis reveals a Americanvalues.Accordingto Benedict, culture completely at odds with the "very premises which Japan used to justify her war were the because it saw "anarchyin opposite of America's," (20). Japanfought and felt"it nation had absolute theworld as long as every sovereignty" to establisha hierarchy-underJapan,of was necessaryforherto fight course"; however,America foughtbecause Japan "had sinned against an international code of 'live and let live' or at least of 'open doors' for free enterprise"(21). From this initial opposition of hierarchyto The Japaneserelyon "a way of equalityflowa seriesof sharpcontrasts. whileAmericansexpect "a lifethatis plannedand charted beforehand," constantlychallengingworld" (28). Unlike Americans,the Japanese the spiritualover the value fixed social stationsover social mobility, honoroverprofit, and theexternalsanctionsof shame overthe material, internalsanctions of guilt (23, 146-47, 223). Throughthese oppositions, Benedict creates a pictureof the Japanese as a people bound personal togetherby a complicated networkof ordered,hierarchical,
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obligationsthatcontrasts sharplywiththe easy-goingindividualism of Americanculture. This contrastbetweenAmerica-andJapan is as predictableas it is extreme. Oppositions such as hierarchyversus equality and shame versusguilthave structured America's conceptionof itselfin relationto culturesbut Europe as well.15The differences not only non-Western that Benedict observes are variationson the differences between the World and the at as Old New offered by commentators least farback as Crevecoeur. Before these oppositions served as a cultural narrative contrasting East and West, theyserved as a historicalnarrative of the passage fromthe medieval to the modem; indeed, much of the hostile criticismof Japanon the partof Westernobserverscan be seen as an thatdrove the modernWest to throwoff extensionof the self-critique itsown primitive, childish,neurotic feudalpast. Commentators ranging from the filmmakerFrankCapra to General Douglas MacArthur spoke of the negativeaspects of Japanesecultureas residues of "feudalistic Gorer specifically formsof oppression"; the anthropologist Geoffrey to the emperorwiththe attachment of compared Japanese attachment medieval Catholics to the pope.'6 In general,the hostility expressed in any wartimeaccount of Japantendedto depend on the relativeweight givento the premodern aspects of Japanesecultureas againstthe more of Westernscience and palatable modem aspects, such as its mastery oftenslid intoracismwhen thesetraits This hostility came technology. to be seen as rootedin the biological makeup of the Japanesepeople, but the traitsthemselvespre-exist and transcend racial categories. Americancommentators Benedict avoids theracistexcesses of other by taking a historical approach to the seeming inconsistencies of Benedict replaces the Japanese culture.Through her use of history, demonized "other" with a relativelydomesticated "self." That is, Benedict presentsthe Japanese as essentially historicalbeings who human charactertrait:the share withAmericans a basic, fundamental account of Japanese ability to adapt to change. In her sympathetic under the the modernization late nineteenth Meiji Reformof century, Benedict interprets Japan's acceptance of modernscience and technology not as a capitulationto Westernvalues but as an adaptation of to changing circumstances. Benedict enduring Japanesecultural patterns praises the "energeticand resourcefulstatesmenwho ran the Meiji government"for rejecting"all ideas of ending hierarchyin Japan"; "did not unseat hierarchicalhabits" but simply "gave Meiji reformers
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thema new locus" in economic, scientific, and technologicaldevelopment(79, 80). Benedict's accountultimately endorsesneither hierarchy nor technologyso much as the generalculturalprocess of hybridizing oftencontradictory values. Japan's participation in thisprocess serves as evidence of its basic humanity againstits racistdetractors. In Benedict's account,even Japan's flawsappear as common human flaws. Despite the admirablecultural"ripening"of the Meiji period, "Japan's nemesis came when she triedto exporther formula....." In launchinga campaign of aggressiveforeign expansion,Japan"did not recognizethatthe system of Japanesemorality whichhad fitted themto 'accept theirproper station' was somethingtheycould not count on elsewhere"(96). Thus, theJapanesesharenotonlythecommonhuman trait of being culturalbeings who adapt to change but also thecommon human ignoranceof theirstatusas such culturalbeings. The Japanese made the mistake of committing themselvesto specific values rather thanto the generalprocess of organizingvalues into specificpatterns, and thisis the verymistakethatAmericansare in dangerof makingas they assume a leadershiprole in world affairs. Thus, in virtueand in forAmerica: a model of whatAmericans vice, Japanserves as a mirror are as cultural become beings and an example of whatAmericansmight if theyrefuseto accept theirstatusas culturalbeings. Held to the same standard of cultural consciousness, Japan and America nonetheless stand in different proximityto this standard. scene contrasts America's potential intoleranceon the international with the easygoing, live-and-let-live attitudewithinAmerica itself. America's culturalripeningsimplyrequiresAmericansto extendtheir withinAmerica to the individual tolerance of individual differences nationsof the world. Japan's provenintolerance, however,stemsfrom its cultural values and its inabilityto accept individual differences within its own culture. According to Benedict, the reverence for thetransforsocial ties thatsustainedtheJapanesethrough hierarchical mationsof the Meiji period carriedwithinitselfthe seeds of imperial
aggression: ask too in Japan, no matter how voluntarily ... Social pressures embraced, togiveup oftheindividual. himto concealhisemotions, much Theyrequire of a family, an his desires,and to standas the exposed representative ora nation. The Japanese that can takeall the haveshown organization, they is extremely sucha course Buttheweight self-discipline requires. uponthem to venture owngood.Fearing toomuch for their heavy. Theyhavetorepress
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upon a life which is less costly to their psyches, they have been led by Having paid upon a course where the costs pile up interminably. militarists and have been contemptuousof so high a price theybecome self-righteous people with a less demandingethic. (315)
parallels thepsychological Benedict's analysis of Japaneseintolerance profileof American intolerancewith which she opens her study.For rootedin stemsfroma repression bothJapanand America,intolerance group allegiances and the fear of new experiences; however,while cultural to a kindof free-floating Benedict tracesAmerica's intolerance chauvinism,she traces Japan's to a concrete culturalpatterngeared anthropologitowardrepressingthe individual.In adoptinga tolerant, towardculture,Japanese and Americans will have to give cal attitude up theirchauvinisticties to theirrespectivenations,but the Japanese ties to "family"and "organizawill also have to give up the irrational tion" thathave provenincompatiblewithworld peace. The achievement of an anthropological detachmentfrom one's of the very American value of culture thus issues in an affirmation in WorldWar II For Benedict,theAmericanvictory individualfreedom. will be complete only if America can ensurethis individualliberation forthepeople of Japan.As CommodorePerry'sgunboatsopened Japan of America's so the administrators to modernscience and technology, to themodern, Western postwaroccupationmustopen Japaneseculture value of individualfreedom.The "new goals" thatBenedict suggests include forthis culturalreorientation
of elected persons and ignoring"proper station" ... accepting the authority as it is set up in theirhierarchicalsystem . . . adopting the free and easy human contacts to which we are accustomed in the United States, the imperative demand to be independent,the passion each individual has to choose his own mate, his own job, the house he will live in and the obligations he will assume. (314)
takes these goals forgranted That a middle-classAmericanintellectual should come as no surprise,but it is not clear what would be left of these "new goals." theachievement to Japanesecultureafter distinct The liberationof the individual-and thus the peace of the worldwould seem to requirethe full-scale acceptance of modernAmerican social relationson the partof the Japanese. of Benedict's With this vision of culturalripening,the trajectory becomes clear. For Benedict,Japan's values encounterwithdifference
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are incommensurablewith America's, yet the Japanese share in the common human practice of organizingvalues into coherentpatterns; respectforthe Japanese mustbe rootednot in respectfortheirvalues per se but in respectfortheirabilityto organize and reorganizevalues into coherentpatterns.Having abstracteda general cultural process culturalfreedomnot so much fromparticular values, Benedict figures values to flourishbut as the freedomof as the freedomof different different peoples to exerciseactiveand creativeroles in theshapingand culture. Thus, Benedictinsiststhat"theUnitedStates reshapingof their cannot. . . createby fiata free,democratic Japan";America may set the buttheJapanese"cannotbe legislatedinto goal of democraticfreedom, accepting" that goal (314). Against those who think the Japanese incapable of becoming democratic,Benedict points to encouraging ''changes in this direction"that the Japanese themselveshave made since the war:
Their public men have said since VJ-Day thatJapan mustencourage its men theirown consciences. They and women to live theirown lives and to trust do not say so, of course, but any Japanese understands that they are questioningthe role of "shame" (haiji) in Japan,and thattheyhope fora new .... (315) growthof freedomamong theircountrymen
For Benedict, the Japanese have proventhemselvescapable of taking themselvesto the theircultureinto theirown hands and of uplifting of conscience requiredof a responsibledemocratic internalauthority The Japanesehave earned a certainautonomyfromAmerica citizenry. by exercisinga certainautonomyfromthemselves-that is, fromtheir the growth culture.Outside interference by America would only inhibit of this democraticautonomy. of Benedict's demand forJapanese self-determiThe verysincerity of the power nation suggests the need for a fundamental rethinking mediation.The as a mode of intercultural relations of anthropology and the Sword lies not in imperial vision of The Chrysanthemum makingJapan a culturalcolony but in makingJapan a culturalequal. Benedict asks of Japan simplywhat she asks of America: thatit open itselfto the "pleasant and enriching experience"of anotherculture(in this case, America itself)and thatit come to "know the added love of [its] own culturewhichcomes froma knowledgeof otherways of life" (16). For Benedict, cultural autonomy requires a certain autonomy from culture. Japan and America must learn to detach themselves
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culturesyet enough each fromits own cultureto appreciatedifferent somehow still remain engaged enough with their own cultures to appreciatethemas well. Benedict herself serves as a model of this detached-yet-engaged to self-determinaautonomyforAmericans.True to her commitment JapanindigenousJapanesemodels forsuch autonomy. tion,she offers account of Japanfindsits JapaneseequivaBenedict's anthropological accountsof two Japanesewomen confrontlentin theautobiographical these autobiograing Americanculture.Like Benedict's anthropology, phies figurethe contrastbetween Japan and American as a conflict In My Narrow Isle, Sumie Seo between traditionand modernity. betweenher desire to studyin American Mishima tells of the conflict and what Benedict describes as "her conservativefamily'sunwillingness to accept the on [the incurred obligation] of an American fellowship"(225-26). Mishima ends up going to Wellesley despite her parents' objections,yet she feels out of place:
shesays,werewonderfully butthat madeit, kind, The teachers andthegirls, a manneredness, "My pridein perfect so she felt,all the moredifficult. I was angry wounded. at was bitterly oftheJapanese, universal characteristic here and also at the myselffor not knowinghow to behave properly thisvague Exceptfor which seemedto mockmypasttraining. surroundings in me." She felt left there was no emotion of anger butdeep-rooted feeling with that sensesandfeelings from someother planet "a beingfallen herself whereI was completely blind,socially have no use in thisenvironment
speaking." It was two or threeyears before she relaxed and began to accept the kindness offeredher. Americans, she decided, lived with what she calls But "familiarity had been killed in me as sauciness "refinedfamiliarity." when I was three." (226)
A microcosm of Benedict's argumentas a whole, Mishima's story and modernity betweentradition only to end begins withthe contrast the to On from tradition personalas well as modernity. withthepassage the geopolitical level, peace depends upon the acceptance of the easygoing social relationsof Americanindividualism. Benedict intendsMishima to stand as a type forJapan as a whole. She places Mishima's storyat the end of a chapteron Japanese social obligations entitled "The Dilemma of Virtue" and insists that it embodies "in its most acute form the Japanese dilemma of virtue" (227). Such a reading of Mishima's story,however, works against of Japanese culture. Throughoutthe Benedict's own interpretation
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chapter, Benedict describestheJapanesedilemma of virtuein termsof the conflictbetween competingand equally valid obligationswithina a qualitatively Mishima experiencing while she presents single culture, different conflict between a way of life in which formalitiesand and one in which they are not. In making obligations are important figure,Benedict translatesthis conflictbeMishima a representative Japanese within progression tweenculturesintoan inevitablehistorical culture:"Once Japanesehave accepted,to howeversmall a degree,the less codifiedrules thatgovernbehaviorin theUnitedStates theyfindit to imaginetheirbeing able to experienceagain the restrictions difficult of theirold life in Japan"(227). Benedict concedes thatsome Japanese experience this change as loss, but, as gain or loss, this experience precious little"added love" forJapanese culture would seem to offer itself.A culturewould already have to place a premiumon new and enriching experiences in order to benefitfrom an encounter with Americanculture,and clearlyJapaneseculturedoes not. By the single Japaneseculture of individualautonomy, (and veryAmerican)standard second rate. comes offas something in any empiriObviously Mishima's experienceis notrepresentative cal sense. Most Japanese simply do not go to Wellesley and do not is the experience What Mishima does represent writeautobiographies. withrespectto one's own culturethatBenedict deems of marginality In such a necessary to living in a world made safe for differences. world, marginalitymust be central; it must be the representative experience of individualswithincultures.These individuals may not or writeautobiographies, but,ideally, actuallybecome anthropologists they would achieve a certain kind of anthropologicaland autobiographicalconsciousness, an abilityto detach themselvesenough from theirown cultureso as to examinetheirrelationto thatculturein some kind of objective manner.Withinthis universal formof marginality, of loci the variety lies in the specificcontentof marginality, difference The individualsof theworldmustall become marginal formarginality. cultures in figures,but they will always be marginal to different times. different places at different Benedict closes her account of Japanese culture by offeringan of might persist despite the uniformity example of how difference woman a of to the turns she Once Japanese story again, marginality. freedom-Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto's account of her Western confronting experiencesin a mission school in Tokyo,A Daughter of theSamurai.
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Sugimoto's epiphanticencounterwithWesternfreedomcomes when her teachersgive each girl at the school a plot of groundon which to theywant. Benedict quotes Sugimoto: plant anything
This plant-as-you-pleasegarden gave me a wholly new feeling of personal right... .The veryfactthatsuch happiness could exist in thehumanheartwas no stain on the family a surpriseto me. . I, withno violation of tradition, in the teacheror townspeople,no harmto anything name, no shock to parent, world was freeto act. (294)
Afterthis experience,Sugimoto cannot look at her own culturein the same way again. She now realizes thatalthoughat her"home therewas one partof the gardenthatwas supposed to be wild . .. someone was thepines or cutting the hedge" (294). According always busytrimming to Benedict, Sugimoto's realization of the "simulated wildness" and ''simulatedfreedomof will" of Japanesecultureinitiateda "transition which she discoveredthe "pure to a greater psychic freedom"through Like Mishima's in natural" experiencesat Wellesley, (295). joy being Sugimoto's detachmentfrom tradition,family,teacher, and townspeople serves as a model of "natural" social relations for postwar Japan" will be a Japanthatrespectsthe self, Japan.A "self-respecting the individual(150). To be a responsiblememberof or moreprecisely, the familyof nations,Japanmust"set up a way of life which does not and move toward of individualrestraint" demand the old requirements "a dispensationwhich honorsindividualfreedom"(295-96). Justwhen Benedict seems to have completelydismissed Japanese culture,she pulls back. Insistingon respectfor the individual within of Japanese Benedict also insistson the individuality Japaneseculture, of nations.Adoptinga universalformal theglobal family culturewithin relation between the individual and culture,Japan must nonetheless cultivatea particularculturalcontentconsistentwith its own cultural traditions.Benedict insists not only that Japan must work toward and greaterpsychic freedombut also that Japan greaterself-respect on her own basis, not ours," and "will have to rebuildher self-respect Benedict even suggeststhat"certain it in her own (150). way" "purify virtues. . . can help to keep [Japan]on an even keel" as old traditional culturemay it purifiesits culture(295-96). Condemned as constraint, be recoveredas resource. on the Benedict takes Sugimoto's storyas an occasion forreflecting two centralsymbols of Japanese culture:the possibilityof purifying
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THESWORD
675
chrysanthemum and the sword. Both symbols embody the contradicand these contradictions need to be resolved tions of Japaneseculture, forall of their in orderforJapanesecultureto ripen.Chrysanthemums, beauty,"are grown in pots and arranged. . . with each perfectpetal separatelydisposed by the grower'shand and oftenheld in place in a tinyinvisiblewirerack inserted in thelivingflower"(295). Purification demands thatthe Japanese "put aside the wire rack" and accept that can be beautiful wire racks and such drastic ''chrysanthemums without the cult of the sword,which fostered pruning"(295, 296). Conversely, international aggression,containswithinit "a simile of ideal and selfresponsible man" (296). The sword stands not only for the warrior code, but also for a more general code of personal conduct, and the in theirconcern with keeping an Japanese "have an abiding strength therustwhichalways threatens it" (296). Viewed innerswordfreefrom in thisnonaggressivesense, the sword "is a symbol [theJapanese]can keep in a freer and more peaceful world" (296). Purifiedof their repressive connotations,these symbols can serve as the particular language throughwhich the Japanese may participatein a single, universal conception of freedomto be shared by the nations of the world. The fate of the chrysanthemum and the sword reveals the necessity thatserves as the basis forBenedict's vision of culturalfreedomin the allows for postwarworld.The idea of a worldmade safe fordifferences the retentionof indigenous cultural symbols provided they be abnormativecontextsthatoriginally stractedfromthe oftenrestrictive, in the service of the gave them meaning and then instrumentalized greaterpsychic freedomof the individual. Naturalized as a neutral, for culturalfreeuniversalprincipleof order,Benedict's prescription dom nonethelessdemands thatthe Japanese learn to internalizeboth in a mannersuspiciouslylike thatof the aestheticand ascetic authority cold war liberal elite emergingin postwarAmerica. The chrysanthemum and the sword stand for the "soft" and the "hard" side of the liberal intellecpersonal ethicthatwould come to defineestablishment of cultural an aesthetic tuals duringthe cold war: on the one hand, cosmopolitanismopen to the beautyof all cultureswhile being bound the able to transcend an ascetic of "responsibility" to none; on theother, easy answers of both the left and the rightand adopt a "realistic" and the Sword argues to democratizethis ethic, The Chrysanthemum
attitude toward questions of foreign and domestic
policy.'7
An attempt
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thatthe peace of the world depends not on a liberal intellectualelite controllingworld events but on the peoples of the world controlling themselvesin accord withthe values of thatelite. The achievementof depends upon the peoples of the world being able to this self-control fromtheirown culture achieve a certainanthropologicaldetachment and to see theircultureas a means to the end of individual growth. ultimately Benedict's conceptionof a world made safe fordifferences reduces to a vision of a world made safe forthe personal ethic of the cosmopolitan,responsible,liberal intellectual. If the "hard" side of this ethic has since been discreditedby the VietnamWar and thecollapse of theGreatSociety,the"soft"side rages The intellectual descendants on in recentdebates overmulticulturalism. ofWestern attacktheimperialism of Benedict,today's multiculturalists a universal actually very (but to essentialize supposedly cultureonly fromculture;notonlydo forautonomy American) storyof thestruggle subalterngroups strugglefor autonomyfromdominantcultures,but individuals withinsubalterngroups also strugglefor autonomyfrom the oppressive values of theirown cultures.On both levels, "culture" context foractionbutas raw material servesas notso mucha normative in the creationof and instrumentalized to be manipulated, negotiated, demands meaning. In the words of one scholar, multiculturalism sensitivityto the ways in which people "navigate across cultural boundaries as well as make conscious decisions in the productionof culture." Culture serves as a resource in the struggle to achieve but people "have not had unlimitedchoice" in theiruse of autonomy, and social, political, persecution, culture:"racism,sexism,imperialism, have constrained aspirations, expectations, and economic segmentation reduce and decision making."' Like Benedict,today's multiculturalists culture to the issue of human agency (individual or collective) and reduce power to the question of the numberof choices and options theirlives. people have in controlling This "consensus" among cold war liberals and multiculturalists appears nowhere clearer than in a recentforumon multiculturalism published in this very journal. The grantingof the lead essay to consensus-era historianJohn Higham seems calculated to set up a generational debate between old-guard liberal history and new, multiculturalhistories, yet Higham's essay "Multiculturalismand Universalism: A History and Critique" argues persuasively against of diversity. Higham multiculturalism's monopolizationof the rhetoric
RUTH BENEDICT'S
677
tracestheconcernfordiversity back to theProgressiveEra and sees the middle decades of the twentiethcenturyas a time of increasing accommodation and inclusion of previouslyexcluded minorities into the mainstreamof American social and intellectuallife. This general trend toward inclusion contained two distinct orientations:first,a universalismthat stressedthe abandonmentof immigrant culturesas partof theprocess of assimilationand second, a culturalpluralismthat a "philosophyof minority thatembracedAmerica yet put forth rights" rejectedAnglo-Saxon culturaldominance.Accordingto Higham, these maintaineda peaceful coexistence seeminglyantithetical orientations through a shared commitmentto the "American Idea" of liberal This sharedcommitment democracy.'9 collapsed in the 1960s, but real accommodation and inclusion persistedthroughthe 1970s and early of inclusion 1980s. For Higham,thedecisive breakwithearlierpatterns came in themid-1980s,whena seriesof violentinterracial street crimes leaders to incite a kind of led certain demagogic African-American rhetorical race riot.These hostilities quickly workedtheirway intothe academy and led to the chauvinistic demands for various ethnic the organizationsand academic programsthatnow seem to threaten prospectsforany common groundamong groups. Predictably,the multiculturalist respondentsparticipatingin the modest plea forcommon groundas an forumattackHigham's rather This fails to do justice to Higham; assimilationist assault on diversity. it forcesthe whole issue of multiculturalism back into more seriously, of pluralismand assimilation.The problem the stale liberaldichotomy of with Higham's argumentlies not in his insistenceon the priority that assimilationto pluralismbut in his belief the two orientations did and peacefullycoexist in the middle decades of the twentieth century times.Benedict's The Chrysanthemay do so again in our multicultural mumand theSword standsas a model of thecold war liberalinsistence on bothassimilationand pluralismyetreveals the relationbetweenthe two to be one of neitherpeace nor coexistence but one of dynamic of both assimilationand pluinstrumentalization instrumentality-the ralism in the service of individualliberation. The aesthetic of this instrumentalization appears nowhere clearer to multiculturalists: than in the vision of diversity thatHigham offers can find a center of "Conceivably, the concept of multiculturalism in a centerlessspace whereoutsidersresistand simultaneously gravity Were one to substitute enrichan overallnationalculture."20 "global" for
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''national," this formulationcould stand for the vision of cultural and theSword.Like in The Chrysanthemum Benedict offers interaction neitherassimilationnor pluralism so Benedict, Higham here affirms much as the constant shuttlingback and forthbetween the two. of a read sinistermotivesinto Higham's affirmation Multiculturalists of to see in his formulation 'national culture,'buttheywould do better "resist and simultaneouslyenrich" somethinglike the narrativeof muchof multicultural thathas structured accommodationand resistance writing in general, itselfand, indeed,Americanhistory writing history at least since Eugene Genovese's Roll, Jordan,Roll. Higham's liberal dialectic investsthe claims of a national or dominantculturewith a histories,but it shares legitimacyabsent from most multiculturalist a privilegingof cultureas struggleand with its radical counterparts process over cultureas a whole way of life. For liberals and radicals, the repressivecenteringof particularvalues fosteredby the idea of cultureas a whole way of life gives way to the "centerlessspace" of where the contest itself culture as process and as contestedterrain, contested.In contestlies agency, thing morethananyparticular matters figuredby liberals and radicals alike as the achievementof at least some measure of controlover culture. overstatethe assimilationistagenda in Higham's Multiculturalists in vision, yet Higham overstatesthe separatism and ethnocentrism the within multiculturalists place themselvesfirmly theirs.Ultimately, perspective" Americangrain.Nancy HewittattacksHigham's "unitary assertionthat"we Americanshave neverheld withthe almostpatriotic to become." In language a single vision of what we want the country thatsuggestsHigham's own ideal of Americancultureas a "centerless has no alternative space," Gerald Early declares that"multiculturalism an America of endless a metanarrative, vision because America without obsestraces multiculturalism's is its goal." Early rightly multiplicity, of the Puritan tradition back to sion with issues of personal identity but he would have done betterhad he also traced the self-scrutiny, so much of multicultural of boundlessnessthatrunthrough metaphors of ninetranscendentalism rhetoricto theirroots in the post-Puritan "strucattack on multicultural The Americanliterature. teenth-century tural barriers rooted in race, class, gender,sexuality,and citizenship" of the classic American manifestation mustbe seen as a contemporary antinomianrejection of all restrictive-or even defining-structures may external to the self.21Cold war liberals and multiculturalists
RUTH BENEDICT'S
THESWORD
679
at a of dominationare most significant disagree over which structures particularplace and time,but theyagree on the equation of structure to structures all normative and theneed to subordinate withdomination thedistinctly have yetto confront Multiculturalists individualfreedom. of this narrative character American,at broadestmodernand Western, of individualliberation. "culture"has servedmiddle-class century, For most of the twentieth as a structural locus fortheirverymiddle-class Americanintellectuals forautonomyand identity. When intellectuals have Americanstruggle seen culture as beneficial to this struggle,they have granted it a theprice of this life; however, privilegedplace in Americanintellectual of culture from a substantive privilege has been the transformation to be directedtoward potentiality whole way of life to an instrumental thistransformation desired ends. From the cold war era to the present, in the meaning of culture has served Western intellectuals as the culturesinto theirglobal dominantmode of inclusion of non-Western and the Sword, agenda of modernization.In The Chrysanthemum of cultureas an Benedict at least conceded thatthe veryestablishment like a military and control choice something arena for mightrequire have yetto be explicitabout their occupation.Today's multiculturalists own military allegiances.
NOTES
I would like to thank Glenn Wallach, who read a draft of this essay; Daniel Wickberg,who alertedme to the quotationfromDean Acheson; and Mark Weiner,for his patience duringrevisions. 1. I have in mind here the liberal anticommunismof such organizations as the Congress for Cultural Freedom. See ChristopherLasch, "The Cultural Cold War: A Lasch, Agony of Short Historyof the Congress forCulturalFreedom," in Christopher Peter Coleman, The Liberal theAmerican Left(New York, 1969); and, more recently, Conspiracy: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Strugglefor the Mind of Postwar Europe (New York, 1989). and theSword: Patternsof Japanese Culture 2. RuthBenedict, The Chrysanthemum (1946; Boston, 1989), 15. All futurereferencesto this work will be cited parenthetically in the text. in 3. See, for example, Mary CatherineBateson's obvious nod to multiculturalism to thenew editionof Patternsof Culture:"Today Benedict's questions herintroduction between human groups and the need for mutual respect,present about the differences themselves as questions about the differenceswithinhuman groups and the creative
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to Patterns to humansocieties" (Mary CatherineBateson, forward potentialthese offer of Culture by Ruth Benedict [1934; Boston, 1989], viii). 4. Herbert Marcuse, "Repressive Tolerance," in Herbert Marcuse, Barrington Moore, Jr.,and Robert Wolff,A Critique of Pure Tolerance (Boston, 1969), 115, 84. Lustig, Corporate see R. Jeffrey 5. For an overview of this school of interpretation, Liberalism: The Origins of Modern American Political Theory,1890-1920 (Berkeley, 1982). and the Critique of American Culture," 6. Richard Handler, "Boasian Anthropology American Quarterly 42 (June, 1990): 266, 267, 268; Virginia Yans-McLoughlin, "Science, Democracy, and Ethics: Mobilizing Culture and PersonalityforWorld War 4 (1986): 210. II," History ofAnthropology 7. Richard Handler, "Vigorous Male and AspiringFemale: Poetry,Personalityand 4 (1986): 152; Culture in Edward Sapir and Ruth Benedict," Historyof Anthropology Yans-McLoughlin, "Science, Democracy, and Ethics," 204, 207, 212. 8. Marcuse, "Repressive Tolerance," 86, 105. 9. On Boas, see George W. Stocking,Jr.,"Franz Boas and the Culture Concept in Historical Perspective," in George W. Stocking, Jr.,Race, Culture, and Evolution (New York, 1968). 10. See, in general, Benedict, Patterns of Culture. 11. Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict (New York, 1974), 57. Margaret M. Caffrey, RuthBenedict: Stranger in This Land (Austin,Tex., 1989), 315-16. SchachterModell, RuthBenedict: Patternsof a Life (Philadelphia, 1983), 12. Judith RuthBenedict, 321. 268-70. Caffrey, 13. Mead addresses the colonial context of anthropologyand its futurerole in the "dignityof man" in herAnd Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist preserving Looks at America (New York, 1942), 8-9, 241, 247. John Dower characterizes the approach of Mead and Benedict as an example of "humanistic culture-and-personality Mercy: Race and Power in thePacific War (New York, 1986), science" in War without 119. 14. On these stereotypesof the "other," see Dower, War withoutMercy, chap. 5, "Primitives,Children,Madmen." 15. Mead contrastsAmerica and Europe in this fashion in And Keep Your Powder Dry. 16. Dower, War withoutMercy, 19, 128, 304. 17. On cosmopolitanism,see David Hollinger,"Ethnic Diversity,Cosmopolitanism, in The American Province: and the Emergence of the American Liberal Intelligentsia," Studies in the Historyand Historiographyof Ideas (Bloomington,Ind., 1985), 56-73. Christopher Though he does not explicitlyexamine the language of "responsibility," Lasch has providedthebest account of the political ethic of liberal intellectualsin True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (New York, 1991), esp. chap. 10, "The Politics of the Civilized Minority." 18. These quotationsare fromVicki L. Ruiz, "'It's thePeople Who Drive theBook': A View fromthe West," American Quarterly45 (June 1993): 246. and Universalism: A Historyand a Critique," 19. JohnHigham, "Multiculturalism American Quarterly45 (June 1993): 204, 205. 20. Ibid., 208-9. 21. Nancy C. Hewitt,"A Response to JohnHigham," American Quarterly45 (June Impulse," 1993): 239, 241; Gerald Early, "American Education and the Postmodernist American Quarterly45 (June 1993): 221; Ruiz, "People Who Drive the Book," 246.

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A World Made Safe for Differences: Ruth Benedict's "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword" Author(s): Christopher Shannon

Made Safe forDifferences: A World RuthBenedict's and theSword The Chrysanthemum

LIBERALISM HAS ALWAYSPRIDED ITSELF ON ITS ACCEPTANCEOF DIVER-

THE CHRYSANTHEMUM AND THE SWORD

THE CHRYSANTHEMUM AND THE SWORD

THE CHRYSANTHEMUM AND THE SWORD

THE CHRYSANTHEMUM AND THE SWORD

THE CHRYSANTHEMUM AND THESWORD

THE CHRYSANTHEMUM AND THE SWORD

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