Ruth Benedict Pdf

The Chrysanthemum and the Sword
Author	Ruth Benedict
Original title	The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject	National Characteristics, Japanese
Genre	History/Anthropology
Publisher	Houghton Mifflin
Publication date	1946
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
Pages	324 pp (first edition)
ISBN	978-0-395-50075-0
OCLC	412839
952 19
LC Class	DS821 .B46 1989

The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture is a 1946 study of Japan by American anthropologistRuth Benedict. It was written at the invitation of the U.S. Office of War Information, in order to understand and predict the behavior of the Japanese in World War II by reference to a series of contradictions in traditional culture. The book was influential in shaping American ideas about Japanese culture during the occupation of Japan, and popularized the distinction between guilt cultures and shame cultures.^[1]

Ruth Benedict's Life and Work Knowledge of Ruth Benedict's Thought Ruth Benedict is a central figure in cultural anthropology, yet her thought is generally known only by one book, Patterns of Culture, published in 1934, fourteen years before her sudden death. Her later books, Race: Science. Updates & Resources on Benedict’s Concept of Culture. For an October 2017 revisit, see On My Shelf: Patterns of Culture by Krystal D’Costa on Anthropology in Practice. I’ve taught Ruth Benedict in my Cultural Anthropology 2016 course which concentrates on the concept of culture. The site tag for Ruth Benedict contains related blog-posts. The Chrysanthemum And The Sword. The Chrysanthemum And The Sword by Ruth Benedict. Publication date 1947. PDF WITH TEXT download. Ruth Benedict (1887-1948) was one of the most eminent anthropologists of the twentieth century. Her profoundly influential books Patterns of Culture and The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture were bestsellers when they were first published, and they have remained indispensable works for the study of culture in the many. Childhood Years Edit. Ruth Benedict was was born as Ruth Fulton on June 5th, 1887, in Northern New York State. Her mother had studied at Vassar College and her father was a surgeon who had a promising career in research in New York (Mead 1974). RUTH BENEDICT: CONFIGURATIONALISM AND THE PATTERNS OF CULTURE Sapir's idea of configurations of culture was picked up and developed by his friend Ruth Benedict (1887—1948), also a student of Boas (for an overview, see Barnouw 1985: 59—75). Was 'a latter-day Boasian paradigm,' the leading expositors of which were. RUTH BENEDICT: CONFIGURATIONALISM AND THE PATTERNS OF CULTURE Sapir's idea of configurations of culture was picked up and developed by his friend Ruth Benedict (1887—1948), also a student of Boas (for an overview, see Barnouw 1985: 59—75). Was 'a latter-day Boasian paradigm,' the leading expositors of which were.

Although it has received harsh criticism, the book has continued to be influential. Two anthropologists wrote in 1992 that there is 'a sense in which all of us have been writing footnotes to [Chrysanthemum] since it appeared in 1946'.^[2] The Japanese, Benedict wrote, are

both aggressive and unaggressive, both militaristic and aesthetic, both insolent and polite, rigid and adaptable, submissive and resentful of being pushed around, loyal and treacherous, brave and timid, conservative and hospitable to new ways...^[3]

The book also affected Japanese conceptions of themselves.^[4] The book was translated into Japanese in 1948 and became a bestseller in the People's Republic of China when relations with Japan soured.^[5]

Research circumstances[edit]

This book which resulted from Benedict's wartime research, like several other OWI wartime studies of Japan and Germany,^[6] is an instance of 'culture at a distance,' the study of a culture through its literature, newspaper clippings, films, and recordings, as well as extensive interviews with German-Americans or Japanese-Americans. The techniques were necessitated by anthropologists' inability to visit Nazi Germany or wartime Japan. One later ethnographer pointed out, however, that 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.'^[7] Anthropologists were attempting to understand the cultural patterns that might be driving the aggression of once-friendly nations, and they 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 that American prisoners of war would want their families to know that they were alive and that they would keep quiet when they were asked for information about troop movements, etc. However, Japanese prisoners of war apparently gave information freely and did not try to contact their families.

Reception in the United States[edit]

Between 1946 and 1971, the book sold only 28,000 hardback copies, and a paperback edition was not issued until 1967.^[8] Benedict played a major role in grasping the place of the Emperor of Japan in Japanese popular culture, and formulating the recommendation to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that permitting continuation of the Emperor's reign had to be part of the eventual surrender offer.^{[citation needed]}

Later reception and criticism[edit]

More than two million copies of the book have been sold in Japan since it first appeared in translation there.^[9]

John W. Bennett and Michio Nagai, two scholars on Japan, pointed out in 1953 that the translated book 'has appeared in Japan during a period of intense national self-examination — a period during which Japanese intellectuals and writers have been studying the sources and meaning of Japanese history and character, in one of their perennial attempts to determine the most desirable course of Japanese development.'^[10]

Japanese social critic and philosopher Tamotsu Aoki said that the translated book 'helped invent a new tradition for postwar Japan.' It helped to create a growing interest in 'ethnic nationalism' in the country, shown in the publication of hundreds of ethnocentric nihonjinron (treatises on 'Japaneseness') published over the next four decades. Although Benedict was criticized for not discriminating among historical developments in the country in her study, 'Japanese cultural critics were especially interested in her attempts to portray the whole or total structure ('zentai kōzō') of Japanese Culture,' as Helen Hardacre put it.^[10] C. Douglas Lummis has said the entire 'nihonjinron' genre stems ultimately from Benedict's book.^[9]

The book began a discussion among Japanese scholars about 'shame culture' vs. 'guilt culture,' which spread beyond academia, and the two terms are now established as ordinary expressions in the country.^[9]

Soon after the translation was published, Japanese scholars, including Kazuko Tsurumi, Tetsuro Watsuji, and Kunio Yanagita criticized the book as inaccurate and having methodological errors. American scholar C. Douglas Lummis has written that criticisms of Benedict's book that are 'now very well known in Japanese scholarly circles' include that it represented the ideology of a class for that of the entire culture, 'a state of acute social dislocation for a normal condition, and an extraordinary moment in a nation's history as an unvarying norm of social behavior.'^[9]

Japanese ambassador to PakistanSadaaki Numata said the book was a 'must reading for many students of Japanese studies.'^[11]

According to Margaret Mead, the author's former student and a fellow anthropologist, other Japanese who have read it found it on the whole accurate but somewhat 'moralistic.' Sections of the book were mentioned in Takeo Doi's book, The Anatomy of Dependence, but he is highly critical of her analysis of Japan and the West as respectively shame and guilt cultures.

In a 2002 symposium at The Library of Congress in the United States, Shinji Yamashita, of the department of anthropology at the University of Tokyo, added that there has been so much change since World War II in Japan that Benedict would not recognize the nation she described in 1946.^[12]

Lummis wrote, 'After some time I realized that I would never be able to live in a decent relationship with the people of that country unless I could drive this book, and its politely arrogant world view, out of my head.'^[9] Lummis, who went to the Vassar College archives to review Benedict’s notes, wrote that he found some of her more important points were developed from interviews with Robert Hashima, a Japanese-American native of the United States who was taken to Japan as a child, educated there, then returned to the US before World War II began. According to Lummis, who interviewed Hashima, the circumstances helped introduce a certain bias into Benedict's research: 'For him, coming to Japan for the first time as a teenager smack in the middle of the militaristic period and having no memory of the country before then, what he was taught in school was not 'an ideology', it was Japan itself.' Lummis thinks Benedict relied too much on Hashima and says that he was deeply alienated by his experiences in Japan and that 'it seems that he became a kind of touchstone, the authority against which she would test information from other sources.'^[9]

Reception in China[edit]

The first Chinese translation was made by TaiwaneseanthropologistHuang Dao-Ling, and published in Taiwan in April 1974 by Taiwan Kui-Kuang Press. The book became a bestseller in China in 2005, when relations with the Japanese government were strained. In that year alone, 70,000 copies of the book were sold in China.^[5]

Notes[edit]

^Ezra F. Vogel, Foreword, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1989)
^[1]Archived 2014-06-30 at the Wayback Machine Plath, David W., and Robert J. Smith, 'How 'American' Are Studies of Modern Japan Done in the United States', in Harumi Befu and Joseph Kreiner, eds., Otherness of Japan: Historical and Cultural Influences on Japanese Studies in Ten Countries, Munchen: The German Institute of Japanese Studies, as quoted in Ryang, Sonia, 'Chrysanthemum's Strange Life: Ruth Benedict in Postwar Japan', accessed January 13, 2007
^Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, page 2, 1946
^Kent, Pauline, 'Japanese Perceptions of the Chrysanthemum and the Sword,' Dialectical Anthropology 24.2 (1999): 181.
^ ^a^bFujino, Akira, Tribune News Service, 'Book on Japanese culture proves a bestseller in China', The Advocate of Stamford, Connecticut, January 8, 2006
^Robert Harry Lowie, The German People: A Social Portrait to 1914 (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1945); John F. Embree, The Japanese Nation: A Social Survey (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1945
^Vogel, Foreword, p. x.
^Johnson, Sheila (2014). 'Letters: Unfair to Anthropologists'. London Review of Books. 36 (7). Retrieved 6 April 2014.
^ ^a^b^c^d^e^f[2] Lummis, C. Douglas, 'Ruth Benedict's Obituary for Japanese Culture', article in Japan Focus an online academic, peer-reviewed journal of Japanese studies, accessed October 11, 2013
^ ^a^b[3]Hardacre, Helen, 'The Postwar Development of Japanese Studies in the United States', (Brill: 1998), ISBN90-04-08628-5 via Google Books; the Bennett-Nagai quote may be from John W. Bennett and Nagai Michio, 'The Japanese critique of Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword,' American Anthropologist 55 :401-411 [1953], mentioned at 'Archived copy'. Archived from the original on 2008-04-05. Retrieved 2008-01-14.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) Web page titled 'Reading notes for Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946)' at the Web site of William W. Kelly, Professor of Anthropology & Sumitomo Professor of Japanese Studies, Yale University; both Web sites accessed January 13, 2007
^'Ambassador Numata's Speech at Flower Show 25 Nov 2000'. 2006-01-11. Archived from the original on 2006-01-11. Retrieved 2011-11-24.
^[4] Wolfskill, Mary, 'Human Nature and the Power of Culture: Library Hosts Margaret Mead Symposium', article in Library of Congress Information Bulletin, January 2002, as accessed at the U.S. Library of Congress Web site, January 13, 2008

External links[edit]

'Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword,' (Allison Alexy Yale University site) (dead link)

Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Chrysanthemum_and_the_Sword&oldid=918717177'

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'Unique and important . . . Patterns of Culture is a signpost on the road to a freer and more tolerant life.' -- New York Times
A remarkable introduction to cultural studies, Patterns of Culture is an eloquent declaration of the role of culture in shaping human life. In this fascinating work, the renowned anthropologist Ruth Benedict compares three societies -- the Zuni of...more

Published January 25th 2006 by Mariner Books (first published 1934)

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Aug 25, 2019Peter Mcloughlin rated it really liked it

Shelves: 00000good-things, european-history, intellectual-history, 1890-1959, philosophy, psychology, world-history, african-history, latin-american-history, middle-east

Along with Franz Boaz and Margaret Meade, Ruth Benedict help overturns the idea of unidirectional cultural development or hierarchy of development and ushered in modern anthropology by looking at cultures on their own terms, not on a measuring stick of how closely they ape the west. Fairly groundbreaking in the 1930s but is probably closer to conventional wisdom today. It was definitely a step forward.

Culture and Personality Paradigm:
Ruth Benedict’s Patterns of Culture
In her book Patterns of Culture Ruth Benedict presents ethnographic accounts of three unique cultures, the Pueblo (Zuni) Indians of the Southwest, the Dobu of eastern New Guinea and the Kwakiutl of the Pacific Northwest coast between Washington and British Columbia. Benedict employs use of these cultures to demonstrate her theory of culture as “personality-writ-large.” The book starts out with two sections, largely theoretical;...more

May 29, 2016Anna Harrison rated it it was amazing

For any lovers of anthropology, this is one of the classic texts which fundamentally shaped the study of culture.
Though of course we have moved beyond some of the basic theoretical issues inherent in the 'culture concept' (i.e. Critics like Abu-Lughod move towards a definition of culture as unbounded and dynamic, and of course the shift away from 'traditional/modern' cultures dichotomy) so much of this text is still applicable in a globalising world. I was surprised actually by how relevant the...more

Jul 26, 2007Will Kaufman rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction

Probably the most interesting and compelling introduction to anthropology you could ever hope for. Ruth Benedict lays out some basic principles - that anyone who's ever wondered about the society they live in should read - backed up with explorations of three incredibly fascinating cultures. This is a very profluent book, so I feel I can safely recommend it to people who have never read non-fiction before.
Patterns of Culture is a book that will change the way you see the world.

Successful societies reproduce excessively as a hedge against the death (accidental or purposeful) of those intended to fill necessary positions in the coming generation. An upper-class redundant (the unneeded lesser son of a noble family) can move down a notch (fill some ranked position in the church, government, or military). A merchant’s second son might start a new business, become a craft apprentice, or descend to the less-protected ranks of labor (depending on the good graces of the inheri...more

Nov 01, 2012Chrisl rated it really liked it · review of another edition

First read in 1960s for an anthropology class. Remembered since.
A foundation building block book for my world view.
***
One leg of Benedict tripod rests on the northwest coast of North America.
***
For a novel look at Salmon Culture social life, I recommend Houston's Eagle Song.
Eagle Song: An Indian Saga Based on True Events

A study of different cultures from a systemic perspective.
Benedict states that every culture has “certain goals toward which their behavior is directed and which their institutions further.” Her most important discovery is, those goals of different cultures “are incommensurable.” This means that they cannot be compared, which is described as cultural relativism. If we want to understand any culture we have to understand it holistically. We cannot simply judge a certain behavior, but we have to...more

Jan 22, 2017Fernando Kaiowá rated it it was amazing

In this timeless book, Ruth Benedict brilliantly exposes her theory of cultural relativity, stating that no cultural trait in any culture is more or less valid than any other one from the great variety of possible human behaviors. Her vision couldn't be more actual, since it argues that each culture has a history and temperament of its own, rendering it unique, but not superior nor inferior to other cultures. Her description of three contrasting cultures illustrates very clearly that there are n...more

Jul 06, 2011Kmorgenstern rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This book was a very interesting read. It helped me put into perspective cultural values that we take for granted as 'universal'. There are no universal values or ethics - every culture shapes reality according to their own value priorities. Thus it put a large question mark on my mind as to how to solve certain problems that we face as a species - how are we ever going to find a common ground from which to tackle these? I found the perspective of analysis interesting - Apollonian versus Dionysi...more

Oct 11, 2014Sunny rated it really liked it

I liked this book overall. It talks about different cultures in three different parts of the world – the pueblos of new Mexico, the Dobu of Papua New Guinea and the Kwakuitl of Northwest America. the book contrasts some of the norms we take for granted around what constitutes a moral action. Ruth looks at the science of custom, the diversity of cultures, its integration, the nature of society and the individual and patterns of society. To be honest there were some very interesting bits in the mi...more

I think Benedict makes some interesting points. She has written a book that covers almost exactly the reasons I want to study anthropology. She wants people to understand the idea of cultural relativity, which I think is an important idea. We have to remember that every culture is different and people fit into their cultures and worlds differently. Just because I am a white woman in the US doesn't mean I understand the experience of every white woman in the US. We are all different and we fit in...more

I think all my texts from degree #1 were intriguing. But this is a straight text book and I suppose even I don't often pleasure read anthropology essays. However, I think this is the one that has the references to some of my favorite 'Did you know somewhere in the world there are people who...' references from the BA days.

I remember this for the basic dichotomy of 'Apollonian' and 'Dionysian' cultures. I suspect Benedict chose the case studies she did because she felt they best represented polar forms of this dichotomy. Real societies, of course, aren't neatly cut in two--so she tended to exaggerate a bit betimes, probably.

Mar 03, 2018Pradipa P. Rasidi rated it

Ruth Benedict Margaret Mead

really liked it

Recommends it for: anthropology students, general public interested in the studies of culture

Revisiting classics almost always provides a worthy read, and such is the case with reading Benedict's Patterns of Culture. More well-known for developing culture and personality school of thought, in this book we could actually see Benedict's wider influences on anthropology.
Benedict begins the book with three solid chapters on theoretical discussion of the way we should see and understand culture. Being a student of Franz Boas, Benedict takes a particularistic view on culture, seeing it is de...more

Aug 19, 2019Penny P Hammack rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Reading this I was reminded of a meeting I once attended. The physician speaker was describing a medical procedure and kept using a long obscure word. Most of her audience were lay people and probably couldn't process the word or what she was attempting to describe. This was an interesting read but I found myself having to decipher every sentence. Definitely not for the casual reader. I wish my patience and tolerance were better but I ended up skipping large portions of the book, not because it...more

Jan 30, 2018Annah rated it liked it

Ruth Benedict's classic work on culture through individuals and the arc of human potentialities. 'Social thinking at the present time [1934] has no more important task before it than that of taking adequate account of cultural relativity,' she writes. The first chapters, re-reads from years ago, were a welcome reminder; the last one was a welcome surprise, as it touches on the arbitrariness of cultural 'deviance' and resultant suffering. Skimmed the middle.

Aug 30, 2017Joseph Carrabis rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

A friend gave me Patterns of Culture because 'you study anthropology, don't you?' I'm glad he didn't want it back. Patterns of Culture is an amazing read for anyone interested in ethnography, cultural anthropology/psychology/morality, language and a few other fields. Find a copy and give yourself a joyful afternoon's adventure.

This book is unforgettable. I read it nearly 40 years ago and I still remember how she compared the two cultures, the one peaceful and quiet and the other aggressive and loud. I haven't read a lot of cultural anthropology but if most of the field was half as interesting as this book makes it, I would have been an expert by now.

It’s a brilliant book! I bought it thinking it was a novel, it turned out to be an academic book on anthropology. I wasn’t disappointed, it’s beautifully written with some amazing information but at the moment, I needed an escape from my dull academic studies and final exams and this book didn’t help.

Apr 16, 2018Marilyn Michel rated it really liked it

Instructive on the arbitrariness of cultural norms - most of them don't even contribute to longevity or protection of the tribe, and nonconformers may be in great peril, for no important reason. Slow at first but it picks up with the description of Dobu and Kwaikiutl tribal practices.

May 07, 2018Kenneth rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I read this one as assigned reading for a history of social thought class my senior year in college. In it, the author, a noted anthropologist of the first half of the 20th century, compares and contrasts three very different cultures and how they impact the individuals living in each one.

Sep 17, 2017Sophie rated it really liked it

Read for school. Had some good discussions about how in a modern perspective Benedict's narrative can be problematic, but this was a very enjoyable read. I'll be looking for her that book.

I found this book to be incredibly insightful. Through my time I haven't been able to help questioning the foundations that society and culture is built upon, and I believe this is because simply I just don't agree with many of the firm views of life, but also because the ideas of truth, fact, and certainty seem to be more fluid, in my experience, than the rock hard foundations they have been described as. It seems to me that many, if not every single aspect of existence, is a choice, and if fre...more

Nov 04, 2013Walter rated it really liked it

Patterns of Culture is a seminal work in the field of Anthropology, written in 1936 by Ruth Benedict, the Columbia University Professor of Anthropology, student of Franz Boas and mentor of the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead. In fact, Margaret Mead wrote the preface to Patterns of Culture.
This book is a study of three diverse cultures - the Zuni indians of the American Southwest, another tribe of the Pacific Northwest and a people of the Pacific Islands of Micronesia. In this work, Benedict...more

Aug 30, 2009Michele added it · review of another edition

In her book Patterns of Culture, Ruth Benedict examines the concept of cultural relativity by examining three indigenous groups in different areas around the world. These groups are: the Zuni, the Dobu and the Kwakiutl of the pacific northwest of North America. Written in 1934, the book reveals is age by the seemly derogatory terms by today’s standards. However, within the confines of the book, it appears as though Benedict is looking at the margins of the culture area for patterns which are bey...more

Aug 24, 2012Roberta McDonnell rated it it was amazing

In Patterns of Culture, renowned anthropologist Ruth Benedict reveals many wonderful ideas and examples of how humans as individuals and groups carve out the meanings and practices of their lives. As well as demonstrating a robust method for understanding cultural phenomena within historical and social contexts, Benedict shows how the self and the social world are like two sides of the one coin, each shaping the other in an ongoing dynamic (as I argued in my thesis (2006), quoting Benedict liber...more

Read for a Cultural Theory class, but as engrossing as if I had picked it up on my own. Benedict, an obvious student of Franz Boas, argues that all cultures could be traced back to a basic core principal, she calls them 'intellectual mainsprings,' which one can find embodied in a culture's many manifestations, like marriage customs, religion, trading partners-- a pattern if you will. She includes three short ethnographies which highlight some of her points, so there is a bit more application tha...more

I've read bits and pieces of this before, but I finally had to read the entire thing for school. Benedict's writing style is very fluid and digestible and I found the book to be an easy read. Cultural relativism was crucial to the formation of anthropology as we know it and, therefore, this is an important piece for students to read; I find, however, that I'm way more interested in the much juicer theory that pops up much later down the road.

this book does ethnography of 3 distinct groups of people, but it is very superficial and ethnographic data seems distorted by benedict's attempts to make each culture fit the pattern she picks for them. it is valuable as a historical account of american cultural relativism and benedict's method.

Dec 07, 2014Dragos rated it liked it

A timeless, well written classic and Benedict's quintessential opus Patterns of Culture is quite dated nowadays but still a great insight into the minds of one of the great anthropologists of the 20th century and her theory of cultures.

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Ruth Fulton Benedict (June 5, 1887 – September 17, 1948) was an American anthropologist and folklorist.
She was born in New York City, attended Vassar College and graduated in 1909. She entered graduate studies at Columbia University in 1919, where she studied under Franz Boas. She received her Ph.D and joined the faculty in 1923. Margaret Mead, with whom she may have shared a romantic relationship...more

“The life history of the individual is first and foremost an accomodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed in his community. From the moment of his birth the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behavior.” — 1 likes

Ruth Benedict Biography

“A culture, like an individual, is a more or less consistent pattern of thought and action. [...] Each people further and further consolidates its experience, and in proportion to the urgency of these drives the heterogenous items of behaviour take more and more congruous shape. [...]
Such patterning of culture cannot be ignored as if it were an unimportant detail. The whole, as modern science is insisting in many fields, is not merely the sum of all its parts, but the result of a unique arrangement and interrelation of the parts that has brought about a new entity. Gunpowder is not merely the sum of sulphur and charcoal and saltpeter, and no amount of knowledge even of all three of tis elements in all the forms they take in the natural world will demonstrate the nature of gunpowder.” — 1 likes

Cultura E Personalidade Ruth Benedict Pdf

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