The Nature of the Japanese State: Rationality and Rituality

by Brian J. McVeigh

Brian J. McVeigh uses a unique anthropological approach to step outside flawed stereotypes of Japanese society and really engage in the current debate over the role of bureaucracy in Japanese politics.
To many in the West, Japan appears as a a rational, high-tech economic superpower and yet at the same time a deeply ritualistic and ceremonial society. This adventurous new study demonstrates how these nominally conflicting impressions of Japan can be reconciled and a greater understanding of the state achieved.

285 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 10, 1998

About the author

Brian J. McVeigh received his PhD in anthropology from Princeton University and his MA and MS from the University at Albany, State University of New York. A specialist in Japan and China, he lived in Asia for 17 years. The author of 16 books on topics ranging from psychology, history, nationalism, education, pop culture, anthropology, Asian studies, ancient mentalities, and psychotherapy, he is currently researching the intellectual impact of Julian Jaynes. He now works as a licensed mental health counselor.

Reviews

[Meghan Fidler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brian McVeigh has provided a fresh examination of Japanese ideologies just when I needed them! He traces the Uchi/Soto and Ura/Omote idioms as the ritual system demarcating public and private in Japan. McVeigh argues that ritualized social interactions in Japan are highly rationalized, emerging from a bureaucratic ethos which functions as a social classificatory and hierarchic mechanism. Through careful case studies, McVeigh demonstrates that Politicians construct indeterminate public and private spaces and use the indeterminacy for their own benefits.
As in other of his publications, McVeigh rails against orientalist discourse in academic analyses of Japan. And, as in his other publications, he is never quite able to avoid using elements of this discourse himself: he is forced to address 'nihonjinron,' or discussions of a unique 'Japaneseness' as part of a national and political identity in chapter five and in national education practices in chapter 6. Especially in light of discussing ritual interactions based upon the 'inside/outside' epistemology, it is nearly impossible not to discuss Japan without denoting how the Japanese civil society is 'not like us.' There are, of course, no mythical properties and no unflexible and unchanging practices in Japan, no chimerical undying samurai spirit, but there are a number of critically important principles that shape interaction. To understand Japanese social interaction is to understand social interaction that is locally unique... like all places in the world. There is no orientalism in this fact.