Home > Work > The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture
1 " Japan likewise put her hopes of victory on a different basis from that prevalent in the United States. (...) Even when she was winning, her civilian statesmen, her High Command, and her soldiers repeated that this was no contest between armaments; it was pitting of our faith in things against their faith in spirit. "
― Ruth Benedict , The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture
2 " There are two kinds of opportunities: one which we chance upon, the other which we create. "
3 " the Japanese love the theme. They play up suicide as Americans play up crime and they have the same vicarious enjoyment of it. They choose to dwell on events of self-destruction instead of on destruction of others. "
4 " Such men will never know the added love of their culture which comes from a knowledge of other ways of life. "
5 " The Japanese have always been extremely explicit in denying that virtue consists in fighting evil. "
6 " A moral code was good for the Chinese whose inferior natures required such artificial means of restraint. "
7 " Their suffering is no judgment of God upon them. It shows that they fulfilled their duty at all costs and allowed nothing—not abandonment or sickness or death—to divert them from the true path. "
8 " It would be truer to say that the citizens’ self-respect, in the two countries, is tied up with different attitudes; in our country it depends on his management of his own affairs and in Japan it depends on repaying what he owes to accredited benefactors. "
9 " One can hardly find elsewhere than in Japan techniques of mysticism pursued without the reward of the consummating mystic experience and appropriated by warriors to train them for hand-to-hand combat. "
10 " The Japanese, she argues, are unusually sensitive to the opinion of others. Shame comes from not living up to social obligations. You can feel guilty about a crime that goes unnoticed. Shame depends on the observation of others. "
11 " You owed him absolute obedience because you were Japanese. "
12 " The typical Japanese swing of mood is from intense dedication to intense boredom, "
13 " For in Japan the constant goal is honor. It is necessary to command respect. The means one uses to that end are tools one takes up and then lays aside as circumstances dictate. "
14 " Shame cultures therefore do not provide for confessions, even to the gods. They have ceremonies for good luck rather than for expiation. "
15 " The heavier our bodies, the higher our will, our spirit, rises above them.' 'The wearier we are, the more splendid the training. "
16 " The hero we sympathize with because he is in love or cherishes some personal ambition, they condemn as weak because he has allowed these feelings to come between him and his gimu or his giri. "
17 " 那么，到底是什么人在支持新政府这些如此激烈又得不到人心响应的改革呢？就是那些在封建时代就已经形成“特殊联盟”的商人阶级和下层武士组成的集团。这 "
