The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture is a 1946 study of Japan by American anthropologist Ruth Benedict compiled from her analyses of Japanese culture during World War II for the U.S. Office of War Information.  Her analyses were requested in order to understand and predict the behavior of the Japanese during the war 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.

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". 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...

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

Research circumstances

This book which resulted from Benedict's wartime research, like several other United States Office of War Information wartime studies of Japan and Germany, 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." 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
Between 1946 and 1971, the book sold only 28,000 hardback copies, and a paperback edition was not issued until 1967. 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.

As of 1999, 350,000 copies were sold in the US.

Reception in Japan
More than 2.3 million copies of the book have been sold in Japan since it first appeared in translation there.

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."

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. C. Douglas Lummis has said the entire "nihonjinron" genre stems ultimately from Benedict's book.

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.

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."

Japanese ambassador to Pakistan Sadaaki Numata said the book "has been a must reading for many students of Japanese studies."

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.

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."  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."

Reception in China
The first Chinese translation was made by Taiwanese anthropologist Huang 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.

See also
 Bushidō
 Honne and tatemae

Citations

Further reading
 Kent, Pauline, "Misconceived Configurations of Ruth Benedict", Japan Review 7 (1996): 33-60. . 
 Ryang, Sonya, "Chrysanthemum's Strange Life: Ruth Benedict in Postwar Japan", Asian Anthropology 1: 87-116. . .
 Shannon, Christopher. "A World Made Safe for Differences: Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword", American Quarterly 47 (1995): 659-680.  . .

External links
 
  "Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword"  (Allison Alexy Yale University, archived July 22, 2015)

1946 non-fiction books
Anthropology books
Books about Japan
Houghton Mifflin books
국화와 칼(The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture)은 미국의 문화인류학자 루스 베네딕트가 일본문화에 대해 연구, 분석하여 쓴 책이다. 제2차 세계대전이 막바지에 달한 1944년 6월에 미국 정부의 의뢰를 받은 루스 베네딕트는 일본문화에 대해 연구한후 「일본인의 행동 패턴(Japanese Behavior Patterns)」이라는 보고서를 작성하였는데, 이 보고서의 내용을 다시 정리하여 일반 대중을 위하여 1946년에 책으로 출판하였다. 일관성이 없는 것처럼 보여 미국인들이 이해하기 힘든 일본인의 행동 및 성격을 문화인류학적인 관점에서 접근하여, 일본인이 가지고 있는 극단적인 이중성을 날카롭게 해부했다.

전후 일본과 일본인에 대해 가장 잘 설명한 대표적인 책으로 널리 알려져 있으며 일본문화나 일본에 대해 알고자 하는 서양인들이 반드시 읽어야 하는 고전으로 분류되기도 한다. 2차대전(태평양전쟁)의 전세가 미국에게 유리하게 기울자 미국은 일본의 항복을 이끌어내기 위한 향후 전쟁수행 전략과 종전후 일본 관리 정책을 수립하기 위해 일본에 대해 연구를 의뢰했다. 내용에 대한 비판이 있기는 하지만 미국의 대일본 전략과 정책 수립에 큰 영향력을 발휘했던 것만은 사실이다.

루스 베네딕트는 일본문화를 대표할 수 있는 상징물로 '국화' 와 '칼'을 꼽았다. 국화는 평화를 상징하고 칼은 전쟁을 상징한다. 차 한 잔을 마시는 데도 도(道)를 운운하는 일본인들은 섬세한 미학적 세계를 추구하고 평화를 좋아하지만 때로는 잔인하게 상대를 살상하는 야만성, 즉 전쟁과 폭력을 선호하기도 한다. 그녀는 이를 설명하고자 했으며, 평화와 전쟁 만큼 극단적 수준의 양면성과 모순을 동시에 가지고 있는 민족성과 일본 문화를 다각도로 탐색하였고, 집단지향적이면서 일본 특유의 수직적 문화인 '계층제도' 그리고 온(恩), 기무(義務), 기리(義理) 등을 설명함에 있어서 문화인류학적인 접근을 통하여 깊이 있게 탐구, 분석하였다.

저술 배경 

태평양 전쟁이 한창이던 1944년 6월 당시 전세는 미국에게 유리하게 기울었으나 미국 정부는 일본인, 일본 문화에 대한 지식이 부족한 상태였다. 일본은 과거에 미국이 싸웠던 나라들 가운데 가장 낯선 적으로 전쟁중에 보인 일본인들의 전쟁에 임하는 자세나 행동양식은 매우 이질적이었기에 미국을 상당히 당황스럽게 만들었다. 미국 국무부는 일본이 항복 후 어떻게 반응할 것인지를 예측하기 위해 일본인과 일본 문화에 대해 연구해줄 것을 인류학자 루스 베네딕트(Ruth Benedict)에게 위촉했다. 

전쟁 중이었기에 루스 베네딕트는 일본에 직접 갈 수 없었다. 그래서 미국에 거주 중이던 일본인 이민자와의 인터뷰, 미국 내의 일본학 연구자들과의 협조, 영화, 도서 등을 통해 일본과 일본인에 대해 연구했다. 국화는 일본인의 예술성, 예의, 충, 효 등 아름다움을 의미하며 그와 대조되는 이미지의 칼은 일본인의 무(武)에 대한 숭상, 전쟁, 폭력을 나타낸다.

의도 
일본에 관해 잘 아는 미국인 등을 통하여 일본과 일본인에 대한 학술연구를 하였다. 동시에 일본의 역사와 문화, 사회풍습과 그들의 생활상 등을 면밀히 연구하면서 미국인의 시선에서 일본이라는 동양의 나라와 일본인들의 인품과 심리 등을 학술적으로 연구하여서 미국인들에게 일본과 일본인의 본심과 의의 등을 학술연구상으로 저술하게 되었다. 

여기에서 저자는 미국인들의 생활상과 다르게 보이는 일본인들의 생활상을 통해서 겉으로는 친절하고 미소를 짓는 모습과는 달리 속으로는 칼이라는 무기를 통해서 침략을 일삼아왔던 일본인의 야심과 야욕 그리고 그들의 의도를 인류학적으로 연구하면서 태평양 전쟁을 통해 적대관계가 된 일본과 일본인의 실체를 책 내용을 통해서 소개하고 있다.

주요 내용 
 계층 제도(hierarchy)
 대동아

평가 
이 책은 단순한 일본 기행문이나 견문기가 아니라 엄밀한 학문적 연구서로서, 문화 인류학이라는 학문적 방법론에 의거하여 일본 문화를 전문적으로 연구, 분석하고 있다. 평균적인 일본인의 행동과 사고의 형태를 분석함에 있어서 '국화'와 '칼'이라는 두가지 상징의 극단적 형태를 취했다. 

저자는 일본을 단 한번도 직접 방문한 적이 없다는 점에서 매우 큰 흥미를 유발시키기도 한다. 이는 부분적인 작은 체험으로 인해 주관적 판단에 함몰된채 객관성을 상실하고 편협성을 띄게 함으로 전체적인 방법론을 망쳐 놓을 수도 있으며, 따라서 학문연구에 있어서 그 대상을 직접 목격하지 않는 쪽이 보다 엄밀할 수도 있다는 가능성을 이 저서가 입중하고 있다 하겠다.

각주

외부 링크 

 루스 베네딕트 국화와 칼 1부: 전쟁이 만든 고전...도대체 우리에게 일본은 무엇인가

인류학
미국의 책
1946년 책