Personal Power and Ambition In Japan Ethnographies

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was always, in these early ethnographies, a certain substantial distance between the researcher and the object of his or her study. For the first Western anthropologists, their subjects were as foreign as a different species might have been or as if they were travelers from distant stars. This is no longer the case: We have learned that They are not exactly like Us, but they are no longer lesser than Us.
This sea change in anthropology has produced entirely new ways of writing ethnographies. We can see how these differences in anthropological perspective have affected the ur-anthropological text by examining an ethnography written about Japan and by taking into account the theoretical stances outlined by Bourdieu (1994) and Anderson (1983). This ethnography focused on the role of personal power and ambition in Japan, looking at the ways in which these gender, ambition and masculinity came together in Tokugawa Japan.
Timon Screech's 1999 Sex and the Floating World: ...

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group status that Anderson emphasizes.
Benedict's national character study of Japan before and during World War II is a very perceptive one (if one lays aside the constraints of this form of ethnography, and perhaps even if one doesn't) of Japanese culture. One of the most important points that she makes in her book in connection with the topic of this paper is the differences between American and Japanese conceptions of obligation. One of the most illuminative passages in the book is the scene in which she describes how and why the Japanese surrendered graciously after World War Two. Surprised American occupational soldiers found the Japanese to be friendly. Benedict explains the ...

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