1 Assignment: Japan
第一章 研究课题——日本
THE JAPANESE were the most alien enemy the United States had ever fought in an all-out struggle. In no other war with a major foe had it been necessary to take into account such exceedingly different habits of acting and thinking. Like Czarist Russia before us in 1905, we were fighting a nation fully armed and trained which did not belong to the Western cultural tradition. Conventions of war which Western nations had come to accept as facts of human nature obviously did not exist for the Japanese. It made the war in the Pacific more than a series of landings on island beaches, more than an unsurpassed problem of logistics. It made it a major problem in the nature of the enemy. We had to understand their behavior in order to cope with it.
迄今为止，美国以往历史上历次举国而战所遇到的对手中，日本人是最难以琢磨的敌人。这是因为过去与大国对手作战时，还从来没有迫使我们考虑到对方在行动上和思想上有那么多令人费解、极其矛盾的习惯。在我们之前，沙俄曾于一九○五年同日本进行过战争。我们与日本的战争，纯粹可以看做是和一个不属于西洋传统文化，而彻底武装起来加以训练的国家所进行的一场战争。被西方国家公认属于人类天性而普遍接受的战争惯例，显然不被日本人所接受。为此，在太平洋战争中，我们不仅要进行一系列海岸登陆作战，解决军队的输送、设营、补给等棘手的问题，更重要的是要搞清敌人的性情。为了对付敌人的行动，我们必须要理解敌人的行为。
The difficulties were great. During the past seventy-five years since Japan's closed doors were opened, the Japanese have been described in the most fantastic series of ‘but also's' ever used for any nation of the world. When a serious observer is writing about peoples other than the Japanese and says they are unprecedentedly polite, he is not likely to add, ‘But also insolent and overbearing.' When he says people of some nation are incomparably rigid in their behavior, he does not add, ‘But also they adapt themselves readily to extreme innovations.' When he says a people are submissive, he does not explain too that they are not easily amenable to control from above. When he says they are loyal and generous, he does not declare, ‘But also treacherous and spiteful.' When he says they are genuinely brave, he does not expatiate on their timidity. When he says they act out of concern for others' opinions, he does not then go on to tell that they have a truly terrifying conscience. When he describes robot-like discipline in their Army, he does not continue by describing the way the soldiers in that Army take the bit in their own teeth even to the point of insubordination. When he describes a people who devote themselves with passion to Western learning, he does not also enlarge on their fervid conservatism. When he writes a book on a nation with a popular cult of aestheticism which gives high honor to actors and to artists and lavishes art upon the cultivation of chrysanthemums, that book does not ordinarily have to be supplemented by another which is devoted to the cult of the sword and the top prestige of the warrior.
当然，要理解对手困难很大。日本打破闭关锁国政策后的75年间，在有关描述日本人的论述中，“然而同时他又是……”这样奇怪至极的提法屡见不鲜。这样的词语，无论对世界上任何一个民族进行论述时，都几乎未曾使用过。一个一丝不茍的观察家，在记述非日本民族时，说其是一个彬彬有礼而出色的民族的同时，很少要补充说，“然而他们又是傲慢自大的”。在记述某个国家的人民时，从来不会说他们是顽固守旧的，“然而他们又极易接受新奇的事物”；不会说某个国家的人民是顺从的，“同时他们又是极不服从上边统治的”；不会说他们是忠实宽容的，同时又说，“然而他们又是不忠实而又心术不正的”；不会说他们是非常勇敢的，“同时又是极其胆小怯懦的”；不会说他们一方面因为顾及别人的评价而谨慎从事，同时“又有令人吃惊的自我意识”。当描述一个国家的军队时，不会一面说他们的士兵个个训练有素，一面又说他们不易服从命令，甚至有时公开进行反抗；不会在论述一国的国民是如何热衷于西方学问的同时，又详细地记述他们狂热的保守主义。于是，当你打算写一本日本民族是如何欣赏美好事物，崇敬演员和艺术家，竭尽技能种植菊花的书时；你还得同时写一本书，补充叙述他们又是如何崇尚战刀，把最高荣誉归于武士这一事实。一般来说，这种情况是罕见的。
All these contradictions, however, are the warp and woof of books on Japan. They are true. Both the sword and the chrysanthemum are a part of the picture. The Japanese are, to the highest degree, 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. They are terribly concerned about what other people will think of their behavior, and they are also overcome by guilt when other people know nothing of their misstep. Their soldiers are disciplined to the hilt but are also insubordinate.
然而这一切矛盾交织成了关于论述日本问题的经纬，这一对对矛盾却又都是真实的。无论战刀还是菊花，都是这幅图画的组成部分。日本人极其爱争斗的同时，又非常温顺；他们具有极端军国主义性的同时，又异常沉静文雅；他们在傲慢自大的同时，又彬彬有礼；他们极端固执的同时，又非常富有顺应性；他们是极其顺从的，又非常忌讳任人摆布；他们是忠实的，又不那么守信；他们极其勇敢，又非常胆小怯懦；他们极端保守，又极喜欢新鲜的东西；他们对别人如何看待自己的行动非常在意，同时当别人还未明白他们的行为不端时，又常败倒在罪恶的诱惑之下；他们的士兵是彻底服从的，然而又具有反抗性。
When it became so important for America to understand Japan, these contradictions and many others equally blatant could not be waved aside. Crises were facing us in quick succession. What would the Japanese do? Was capitulation possible without invasion? Should we bomb the Emperor's palace? What could we expect of Japanese prisoners of war? What should we say in our propaganda to Japanese troops and to the Japanese homeland which could save the lives of Americans and lessen Japanese determination to fight to the last man? There were violent disagreements among those who knew the Japanese best. When peace came, were the Japanese a people who would require perpetual martial law to keep them in order? Would our army have to prepare to fight desperate bitter-enders in every mountain fastness of Japan? Would there have to be a revolution in Japan after the order of the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution before international peace was possible? Who would lead it? Was the alternative the eradication of the Japanese? It made a great deal of difference what our judgments were.
日本当我们认识到，弄清楚日本对于美国来说是至关重要的事情时，我们对这些矛盾，以及除此之外，同样也是极其重要的许多矛盾就不能熟视无睹了。严峻的局面接踵而来，一个接一个地出现在我们的面前。日本人会做什么呢？不进攻日本本土能否使他们降服呢？我们是否应该对皇宫进行轰炸？我们从日本战俘那里能有什么收获？对日本军队以及日本本土进行宣传时，说些什么才能拯救美国人的性命，而削弱日本人的即使剩下最后一个人也要抵抗到底的决心呢？对此，即便是在熟知日本人的人们之间，也存在相当大的意见分歧。停战以后，在日本要把秩序维持下去是否需要永久地实施戒严法？是否需要动员我军同在山中各要塞拼死抵抗到底的日本人进行战斗？在国际和平可能实现之前，是否需要在日本掀起一场类似法国革命或俄国革命那样的一种革命？让谁做那次革命的领导者为好？或者就让日本国民这样灭绝？如何判断这些问题，在我们中间也是众说纷纭，莫衷一是。
In June, 1944, I was assigned to the study of Japan. I was asked to use all the techniques I could as a cultural anthropologist to spell out what the Japanese were like. During that early summer our great offensive against Japan had just begun to show itself in its true magnitude. People in the United States were still saying that the war with Japan would last three years, perhaps ten years, more. In Japan?they talked of its lasting one hundred years. Americans, they said, had had local victories, but New Guinea and the Solomons were thousands of miles away from their home islands. Their official communiqués had hardly admitted naval defeats and the Japanese people still regarded themselves as victors.
一九四四年六月，我接受委托，开始研究日本。为了搞清楚日本人究竟是怎样的国民，我被容许充分利用作为一个人类文化学者所能使用的一切研究手段。当时正值初夏，我国终于开始了对日本大规模的攻势。在美国，人们一直说对日战争恐怕要持续三年、十年，也许更长。而日本人却说，这是百年战争。美军的确取得了局部性胜利，但是，新几内亚和所罗门群岛距离日本本土还有几千英里。日本的公报从不承认海战的失败，日本国民依然深信自己一方占有优势。
In June, however, the situation began to change. The second front was opened in Europe and the military priority which the High Command had for two years and a half given to the European theater paid off. The end of the war against Germany was in sight. And in the Pacific our forces landed on Saipan, a great operation forecasting eventual Japanese defeat. From then on our soldiers were to face the Japanese army at constantly closer quarters. And we knew well, from the fighting in New Guinea, on Guadalcanal, in Burma, on Attu and Tarawa and Biak, that we were pitted against a formidable foe.
到了六月，形势开始发生变化。欧洲开辟了第二战场，最高司令部对于欧洲战区授予历时两年半的军事优先权，此时已没有必要。对德战争的胜利指日可待。在太平洋，美军已在塞班岛登陆，这是预示日本最终失败的一次大战役。自此，美军士兵一步步地逼近，和日军短兵相接。以我们在新几内亚，在瓜达卡纳尔、缅甸，还有在阿图、塔拉瓦和比阿克岛等地的作战经验，使我们完全清楚我们是在同一个多么可怕的敌人作战。
In June, 1944, therefore, it was important to answer a multitude of questions about our enemy, Japan. Whether the issue was military or diplomatic, whether it was raised by questions of high policy or of leaflets to be dropped behind the Japanese front lines, every insight was important. In the all-out war Japan was fighting we had to know, not just the aims and motives of those in power in Tokyo, not just the long history of Japan, not just economic and military statistics; we had to know what their government could count on from the people. We had to try to understand Japanese habits of thought and emotion and the patterns into which these habits fell. We had to know the sanctions behind these actions and opinions. We had to put aside for the moment the premises on which we act as Americans and to keep ourselves as far as possible from leaping to the easy conclusion that what we would do in a given situation was what they would do.
因此，在一九四四年六月这段时间里，迅速搞清我们的敌人——日本的许多疑问，至关重要、迫在眉睫。我们必须洞察一切问题，无论是军事上的问题、外交方面的问题，还是施行最高政策所带来的各种问题，乃至向日军前线投掷宣传手册将带来的问题等。对于参战日军总体战斗力方面，我们必须知道的不仅仅是东京决策者的目的和动机，日本漫长的历史、经济和军事方面的统计数据，还必须清楚他们的政府指望从国民那里得到什么。我们必须努力弄清日本人思想、感情的脉络，以及纵贯这些脉络之中的特点和规律，了解他们在思维和行动的背后所隐藏的强制力。在迫于作出某种判断的情况下，我们必须权且把美国人采取行动前的思维习惯搁置一旁；而不是轻率地下结论说，日本人打算采取的行动，与我们处在同一情况下所要采取的行动大同小异。
My assignment was difficult. America and Japan were at war and it is easy in wartime to condemn wholesale, but far harder to try to see how your enemy looks at life through his own eyes. Yet it had to be done. The question was how the Japanese would behave, not how we would behave if we were in their place. I had to try to use Japanese behavior in war as an asset in understanding them, not as a liability. I had to look at the way they conducted the war itself and see it not for the moment as a military problem but as a cultural problem. In warfare as well as in peace, the Japanese acted in character. What special indications of their way of life and thinking did they give in the way they handled warfare? Their leaders' ways of whipping up war spirit, of reassuring the bewildered, of utilizing their soldiers in the field—all these things showed what they themselves regarded as the strengths on which they could capitalize. I had to follow the details of the war to see how the Japanese revealed themselves in it step by step.
我的课题研究是艰巨的。美日正在交战，战争中彻头彻尾地贬低敌人是容易的，然而，要通过敌人的眼睛来弄清敌人的世界观，却并非易事，况且我们必须通过这种方式了解敌人。我们判断日本人将要采取什么行动，并不是说如果我们和他们处于同样境地时，我们会怎样行动。我们必须理解日本人，理解日本人在战争中的行动，不是作为消极因素，而是作为积极因素来加以利用。通观日本人在战争中的做法时，与其把它当做军事问题，不如把它作为文化问题来加以研究。日本人战时也和平时一样，以其固有的习惯指导行动。那么，在应对战争时，他们显示出怎样的生活方式和思维方法的特殊之处呢？他们的指导者是怎样鼓动战争情绪，怎样安抚惊慌失措的国民，又是怎样在战场上使用士兵……这一切做法意味着他们把什么看做是自己可以利用的长处？为了弄清日本人在战争中是怎样一步一步地显露出他们的本来面目，我必须仔细调查战争各个阶段的详细情况。
The fact that our two nations were at war inevitably meant, however, a serious disadvantage. It meant that I had to forego the most important technique of the cultural anthropologist: a field trip. I could not go to Japan and live in their homes and watch the strains and stresses of daily life, see with my own eyes which were crucial and which were not. I could not watch them in the complicated business of arriving at a decision. I could not see their children being brought up. The one anthropologist's field study of a Japanese village, John Embree's Suye Mura, was invaluable, but many of the questions about Japan with which we were faced in 1944 were not raised when that study was written.
但是，我们两国正处于交战中这样一个事实本身，意味着条件是非常不利的。作为人类文化学者最重要的研究手段之一——实地调查，无疑在两国交战条件下是无法实现的。我不可能去日本，在日本家庭中生活，亲眼观察他们的各种日常活动，从而分清哪些是重要的，哪些是不重要的；我也不可能观察到，当他们作出某一项决定之前，自始至终作了哪些复杂的准备；更不可能观察他们培养孩子的过程。约翰·恩布理著的《须惠村》一书是一本非常重要的文献，它是人类学者关于日本村庄的实地研究成果。可是一九四四年我们所面临的诸多问题，这部著作并没有提到。
As a cultural anthropologist, in spite of these major difficulties, I had confidence in certain techniques and postulates which could be used. At least I did not have to forego the anthropologist's great reliance upon face-to-face contact with the people he is studying. There were plenty of Japanese in this country who had been reared in Japan and I could ask them about the concrete facts of their own experiences, find out how they judged them, fill in from their descriptions many gaps in our knowledge which as an anthropologist I believed were essential in understanding any culture. Other social scientists who were studying Japan were using libraries, analyzing past events or statistics, following developments in the written or spoken word of Japanese propaganda. I had confidence that many of these answers they sought were embedded in the rules and values of Japanese culture and could be found more satisfactorily by exploring that culture with people who had really lived it.
尽管列举了以上种种困难，但作为一个人类文化学者，我自信是具备利用某种研究方法和必要条件来研究对手的；至少我还没有完全失去同研究对象国人民直接面对面接触的机会，这也是人类学者研究问题主要借助的方法之一。我们这个国家有许多在日本长大的日本人，我可以了解他们亲身经历过的具体事情，以探求他们判断事情的方法；根据他们的介绍，弥补我们知识的缺欠之处，而这些东西对于一个人类学者研究任何文化都将大有裨益。当时研究日本的其他社会科学工作者多利用图书馆来解剖过去发生的事件，分析统计数字，追踪文字和广播，对日本方面宣传词句中出现的变化加以研究。他们所寻求的答案，大都寓于日本文化的规则和价值之中。我确信，向实际生活中的人们探求其文化，将会得到更为满意的发现。
This did not mean that I did not read and that I was not constantly indebted to Westerners who had lived in Japan. The vast literature on the Japanese and the great number of good Occidental observers who have lived in Japan gave me an advantage which no anthropologist has when he goes to the Amazon headwaters or the New Guinea highlands to study a non-literate tribe. Having no written language such tribes have committed no self-revelations to paper. Comments by Westerners are few and superficial. Nobody knows their past history. The field worker must discover without any help from previous students the way their economic life works, how stratified their society is, what is uppermost in their religious life. In studying Japan, I was the heir of many students. Descriptions of small details of life were tucked away in antiquarian papers. Men and women from Europe and America had set down their vivid experiences, and the Japanese themselves had written really extraordinary self-revelations. Unlike many Oriental people they have a great impulse to write themselves out. They wrote about the trivia of their lives as well as about their programs of world expansion. They were amazingly frank. Of course they did not present the whole picture. No people does. A Japanese who writes about Japan passes over really crucial things which are as familiar to him and as invisible as the air he breathes. So do Americans when they write about America. But just the same the Japanese loved self-revelation.
但这并不是说我不读书，不向曾在日本生活过的西方人寻求帮助。有关日本人的很多文献和在日本居住过的许多有远见卓识的观察家们，给予我很多便利。这些是过去在亚马孙河源地和新几内亚高地研究没有文字的部族的人类学者完全得不到的。那些部族没有文字，他们无法记述下自己的面貌。西方人对这些部族文化的解释，寥寥无几，并且大多很肤浅，任何人对于这些部落过去的历史都很茫然。实地调查者们在无从借助先前研究人员任何帮助的情况下，必须搞清这些部族的经济生活方式、社会阶层的划分，以及宗教生活中以什么作为至高无上的东西加以信奉等诸如此类的问题。在研究日本的时候，我可以继承许多学者的遗产：一些嗜好新奇的人，记录描绘了日本人的生活细节；一些欧洲人和美国人写下了他们在日本的生动经历；日本人本身也有很多耸人听闻的自我揭露。日本人与众多东方人不同，他们有对于自己的情况毫不掩饰地大书特书的冲动，不仅写向世界扩张的计划，也写他们生活的琐事，他们的坦率常达到令人瞠目的地步。当然，像世界其他民族一样，他们也并不是把自己生活的全部，毫无遗漏地全盘托出。日本人往往在写有关日本的情况时，常将一些确实很重要的事情忽略过去，因为他们把这些事情看得有如天天接触的空气一样习以为常，毫不在意；这在美国人写美国情况时也是如此。但相比较而言，日本人是喜欢自我暴露的。
I read this literature as Darwin says he read when he was working out his theories on the origin of species, noting what I had not the means to understand. What would I need to know to understand the juxtaposition of ideas in a speech in the Diet? What could lie back of their violent condemnation of some act that seemed venial and their easy acceptance of one that seemed outrageous? I read, asking the everpresent question: What is ‘wrong with this picture'? What would I need to know to understand it?
我在读这些文献时，与达尔文在完成有关物种起源理论时所采取的做法一样，特别注重那些无法理解的问题。我一边读书，一边反复自问：从他们在议会演说的观点罗列中，我必须了解哪些事情？他们对一些本来无关紧要的行为给予猛烈的抨击，对一些目无法纪的行为反而满不在乎地认可，这种态度的背后究竟隐藏着什么？“这幅图画怪在何处呢？”为了搞清楚它，我又必须了解哪些东西呢？
I went to movies, too, which had been written and produced in Japan—propaganda movies, historical movies, movies of contemporary life in Tokyo and in the farm villages. I went over them afterward with Japanese who had seen some of these same movies in Japan and who in any case saw the hero and the heroine and the villain as Japanese see them, not as I saw them. When I was at sea, it was clear that they were not. The plots, the motivations were not as I saw them, but they made sense in terms of the way the movie was constructed. As with the novels, there was much more difference than met the eye between what they meant to me and what they meant to the Japanese-reared. Some of these Japanese were quick to come to the defense of Japanese conventions and some hated everything Japanese. It is hard to say from which group I learned most. In the intimate picture they gave of how one regulates one's life in Japan they agreed, whether they accepted it gladly or rejected it with bitterness.
另外，我还去看日本的电影、例如，宣传性的电影、历史方面的电影、描写东京以及日本现代农村生活的电影等。看过这些电影之后，我还要详细地对电影中的男主人公、女主人公以及反面人物加以分析。不是用自己的眼光分析，而是用日本人的眼光，同长期生活在日本、亲身体验过电影中那些场面的日本人一起进行分析。当我对一些问题搞不懂而束手无策时，他们则给予我帮助。无论是电影的情节还是动机，常常并不像我所理解的那样，只有通过对电影整个结构的构成方式进行分析，才能确实搞通它的意思。看小说也是一样，我所领会的意思和从小在日本长大的人所领会的意思，有着相当大的差别。在这些日本人当中，一部分人会立即为日本人的习性辩解，而另一部分人则只要涉及日本的事情，即表示憎恨。要问我从哪部分人中收益最大，是很难断定的。但是他们对于自己所熟悉的日本生活规范的诠释倒是一致的，无论是欣然承认或厌恶否定。
In so far as the anthropologist goes for his material and his insights directly to the people of the culture he is studying, he is doing what all the ablest Western observers have done who have lived in Japan. If this were all an anthropologist had to offer, he could not hope to add to the valuable studies which foreign residents have made of the Japanese. The cultural anthropologist, however, has certain qualifications as a result of his training which appeared to make it worth his while to try to add his own contribution in a field rich in students and observers.
如果只是从你所研究的文化继承者那里直接选择材料，对其加以解释；那么作为一个人类学者来说，他所从事的研究，就同曾经居住在日本的所有西方最有才能的观察家们所从事的工作毫无两样了。如果人类学者所提供的研究成果只停留在这一水平上，那么就意味着他不能给以往在国外居住的人们所完成的许多有关日本的研究，增添任何新的东西。然而，一个人类文化学者经过长期的磨炼，往往具有别人所不具备的几种特殊的才能。他在研究者和观察家的广阔领域里，为了作出自己独特的贡献而进行尝试，这未必是无益的。
The anthropologist knows many cultures of Asia and the Pacific. There are many social arrangements and habits of life in Japan which have close parallels even in the primitive tribes of the Pacific islands. Some of these parallels are in Malaysia, some in New Guinea, some in Polynesia. It is interesting, of course, to speculate on whether these show some ancient migrations or contacts, but this problem of possible historical relationship was not the reason why knowledge of these cultural similarities was valuable to me. It was rather that I knew in these simpler cultures how these institutions worked and could get clues to Japanese life from the likeness or the difference I found. I knew, too, something about Siam and Burma and China on the mainland of Asia, and I could therefore compare Japan with other nations which are a part of its great cultural heritage. Anthropologists had shown over and over in their studies of primitive people how valuable such cultural comparisons can be. A tribe may share ninety per cent of its formal observances with its neighbors and yet it may have revamped them to fit a way of life and a set of values which it does not share with any surrounding peoples. In the process it may have had to reject some fundamental arrangements which, however small in proportion to the whole, turn its future course of development in a unique direction. Nothing is more helpful to an anthropologist than to study contrasts he finds between peoples who on the whole share many traits.
人类学者了解到，在亚洲及太平洋地区存在着多种文化。日本的社会制度和生活习惯与太平洋诸岛的原始氏族之间有许多类似或近似点；有的地方与马来西亚类似，有的地方则与新几内亚或波利尼西亚类似。考察这些近似现象是否意味着某种古代的迁徙或者接触，虽然是饶有兴味的，然而，我了解这些近似性的用意却不在于揭示历史上的联系；确切地说，我在寻找这些相同与不同之处的时候，是要从这些文化中逐一地了解其习俗是如何起作用的，并且从这一过程中理解日本人生活的线索。我还掌握了一些中国、缅甸和暹罗（现在的泰国）等亚洲大陆国家的情况，因此还可以将日本同这些同源于亚洲伟大文化的国家作出比较。人类学者通过对原始民族的研究曾经多次证明，这种文化比较是多么有价值。一个部落民族的传统习惯有时与其周围民族基本上一致，有时则经过自己独特的改造，以适应一定的生活方式或者价值观念，从而显得与周围的民族截然不同。在这一过程中，有时必须改变某些根本性的制度，这种变动虽然从总体上看来数量不大，但是却改变了这一部落民族的未来发展方向。对人类学者来说，从具有许多共同特性的民族之中找出他们所存在的差异是最有意义的。
Anthropologists also have had to accustom themselves to maximum differences between their own culture and another and their techniques have to be sharpened for this particular problem. They know from experience that there are great differences in the situations which men in different cultures have to meet and in the way in which different tribes and nations define the meanings of these situations. In some Arctic village or tropical desert they were faced with tribal arrangements of kinship responsibility or financial exchange which in their moments of most unleashed imagination they could not have invented. They have had to investigate, not only the details of kinship or exchange, but what the consequences of these arrangements were in the tribe's behavior and how each generation was conditioned from childhood to carry on as their ancestors had done before them.
人类学者还必须使自己尽可能地习惯于自身的文化背景与研究对象之间存在的差别。为了这种特别的需要，他们的研究技巧也必须格外锐利。他们从经验中得知，由于处于不同的文化背景，人们所面临的情况极不相同，因此不同的部落或民族会采用彼此不同的方式限定这些情况的内涵。他们在北极地带的村落里和热带沙漠中面临着前所未遇、远远超出他们想象力之外的家族责任及民族式经济交换制度。这不仅需要他们调查研究家族关系及交换过程的详细情况，而且需要他们注意到，这些制度对氏族行为所产生的结果以及每一代人在什么条件下自幼开始继承祖业。
This professional concern with differences and their conditioning and their consequences could well be used in the study of Japan. No one is unaware of the deep-rooted cultural differences between the United States and Japan. We have even a folklore about the Japanese which says that whatever we do they do the opposite. Such a conviction of difference is dangerous only if a student rests content with saying simply that these differences are so fantastic that it is impossible to understand such people. The anthropologist has good proof in his experience that even bizarre behavior does not prevent one's understanding it. More than any other social scientist he has professionally used differences as an asset rather than a liability. There is nothing that has made him pay such sharp attention to institutions and peoples as the fact that they were phenomenally strange.
日本这种对不同的条件和结果的专业上的关注，能够在研究日本时得到充分的发挥。任何人都不会忽略日本与美国这两种文化之间所存在的根深蒂固的区别， 正如我们那句关于日本人的俗话所说的那样：无论我们干什么，日本人总是反着干！然而这种把区别绝对化的看法是十分有害的。其原因在于，如果研究者仅仅满足于区别大得无法理解这一简单看法，那么结果自然无法认识这个民族。人类学者的经验足够证明，即便是怪僻的行为也有其可理解之处。人类学者与其他社会科学家的不同之处就在于他们更善于把差别作为专业上的财富而不是负担加以利用。没有任何其他事情比非常特殊的对象更能吸引他们全神贯注地投入其制度和民族的研究了，也没有任何其他事情比氏族式生活方式更能得到他们本能的注意；正因为这样，他们不是只选择个别的事实，而是必须把握事情的全体。
There was nothing he could take for granted in his tribe's way of living and it made him look not just at a few selected facts, but at everything. In studies of Western nations one who is untrained in studies of comparative cultures overlooks whole areas of behavior. He takes so much for granted that he does not explore the range of trivial habits in daily living and all those accepted verdicts on homely matters, which, thrown large on the national screen, have more to do with that nation's future than treaties signed by diplomats.
缺乏比较文化学研究素养的人在考察西方各国的时候，往往放过很多的行动领域，把大量的事情都视为当然。因此，他对人们根据日常生活习惯和司空见惯的事情所作出的一切判断，都不做深入的考察。然而正是这些判断，当它以特写镜头在全体国民的银幕上映现出来时，比起外交上的条约更能主宰该民族未来的发展方向。
The anthropologist has had to develop techniques for studying the commonplace because those things that are commonplaces in the tribe he was studying were so different from their counterparts in his own home country. When he tried to understand the extreme maliciousness of some tribe or the extreme timidity of another, when he tried to plot out the way they would act and feel in a given situation, he found he had to draw heavily on observations and details that are not often noted about civilized nations. He had good reason to believe they were essential and he knew the kind of research that would unearth them.
人类学者必须加强对普通日常事务研究的技巧，因为他所面临的民族的日常生活与他自己本国的实际极不相同。他在着手考察某个怀着极端敌意的原始氏族或者某个极端怯弱的部落民族时，当需要想象一下该民族的行动步骤或感受一下他们面临的某种特殊环境的时候，他才会明白他必须对某些研究开化民族时不予重视的细节格外留心；他会有充分的理由说明这些细节是切中要害的，他知道如此研究才能带他走出迷宫。
It was worth trying in the case of Japan. For it is only when one has noted the intensely human commonplaces of any people's existence that one appreciates at its full importance the anthropologist's premise that human behavior in any primitive tribe or in any nation in the forefront of civilization is learned in daily living. No matter how bizarre his act or his opinion, the way a man feels and thinks has some relation to his experience. The more baffled I was at some bit of behavior, the more I therefore assumed that there existed somewhere in Japanese life some ordinary conditioning of such strangeness. If the search took me into trivial details of daily intercourse, so much the better. That was where people learned.
在这方面，日本的实际值得尝试。只有认真观察国民的衣食住行等日常生活，才能充分地理解人类学家的这一论证前提的重要意义，即任何原始部落民族或者处于文明前列的民族都是从日常生活中学会人类的行为的。人们的行为或观点无论多么怪异离奇，但是他们感受或思考的方法不可避免地与其存在具有一定的联系。因此，我自己越是对某种做法感到迷惑不解，越是确信能在日本人的生活中找到这种奇怪现象所产生的共同基础。如果研究导致我的关注点深入到日常琐事中，那就更好了，那里正是人们学习的场所。
As a cultural anthropologist also I started from the premise that the most isolated bits of behavior have some systematic relation to each other. I took seriously the way hundreds of details fall into over-all patterns. A human society must make for itself some design for living. It approves certain ways of meeting situations, certain ways of sizing them up. People in that society regard these solutions as foundations of the universe. They integrate them, no matter what the difficulties. Men who have accepted a system of values by which to live cannot without courting inefficiency and chaos keep for long a fenced-off portion of their lives where they think and behave according to a contrary set of values. They try to bring about more conformity. They provide themselves with some common rationale and some common motivations. Some degree of consistency is necessary or the whole scheme falls to pieces.
此外，作为一个人类学者，我还从这样一个前提出发，即最孤立的行为都与周围环境存在着某种系统联系。我很重视如何把成百种具体现象纳入一个包罗万象的总形态而加以分类。每一种人类社会都必然为它自己创造出某种生活，这种生活在它所面对的环境中选择出一些道路以及估量周围环境的方法，生活在这一社会中的人把这些道路视为他们世界的支柱；他们不顾任何艰难险阻地遵循这条道路。已经选择了一种价值观念作为自己生活准则的人不会容忍他们自己生活中那部分按照相反或者其他价值观念行事所引起的无能与混乱长期存在；他们更情愿顺应现实，他们为自己的行动寻找共同的根据和动机。为了不使整个体系土崩瓦解，一定程度的一贯性是必要的。
Economic behavior, family arrangements, religious rites and political objectives therefore become geared into one another. Changes in one area may occur more rapidly than in others and subject these other areas to great stress, but the stress itself arises from the need for consistency. In preliterate societies committed to the pursuit of power over others, the will to power is expressed in their religious practices no less than in their economic transactions and in their relations with other tribes. In civilized nations which have old written scriptures, the Church necessarily retains the phrases of past centuries, as tribes without written language do not, but it abdicates authority in those fields which would interfere with increasing public approval of economic and political power. The words remain but the meaning is altered. Religious dogmas, economic practices and politics do not stay dammed up in neat separate little ponds but they overflow their supposed boundaries and their waters mingle inextricably one with the other. Because this is always true, the more a student has seemingly scattered his investigation among facts of economics and sex and religion and the care of the baby, the better he can follow what is happening in the society he studies. He can draw up his hypotheses and get his data in any area of life with profit. He can learn to see the demands any nation makes, whether they are phrased in political, economic, or moral terms, as expressions of habits and ways of thinking which are learned in their social experience. This volume therefore is not a book specifically about Japanese religion or economic life or politics or the family. It examines Japanese assumptions about the conduct of life. It describes these assumptions as they have manifested themselves whatever the activity in hand. It is about what makes Japan a nation of Japanese.
因此，不论经济交易、家庭组织、宗教仪式还是政治目标，都像齿轮传动装置那样互相连接着。在某一个领域的变动速度超过其他领域时，就会对毗邻的领域形成强大的压力，当然，形成压力的另一个因素还由于对惯性的需要。在文字产生之前的原始氏族社会存在着为了支配他人而追逐权力的现象。这种权力意志，不仅体现在其经济交往以及与周围氏族部落的关系中，也体现在氏族的宗教实践中。在文明国家里，由于有了氏族社会所没有的文字记载，古代的手稿被传抄记述下来，自然还有教会保存下来经历了许多世纪的经典。但是，教会在经济和政治领域日益放弃权威。古代的词句虽然被保存下来，意义却改变了。宗教教条、经济及政治习惯没有被禁锢在一个个封闭的池塘里成为一潭死水，而是冲出一个个无形的羁绊汇积起来。正是由于这个道理，研究者越是把注意力放在经济关系、性生活、宗教活动和生育这些现象上，就越能把握住他所研究的社会的实际；就能够作出推测，并从生活的各个方面得到他所需要的数据；就能够从人们在政治经济活动、道德说教或者其他场合表达出来的思想中，了解人们从其社会存在中学到的思维习惯或道路。从这一意义上说，本书不是一本关于日本的宗教、日本的经济生活、日本的政治或者日本家庭的专著，而是探讨日本人及其生活方式的设想的书。本书是一本关于日本人迄今自我意识到的全部活动的观念的叙述，它所要讲述的问题是，什么使日本民族成其为日本民族。
One of the handicaps of the twentieth century is that we still have the vaguest and most biased notions, not only of what makes Japan a nation of Japanese, but of what makes the United States a nation of Americans, France a nation of Frenchmen, and Russia a nation of Russians. Lacking this knowledge, each country misunderstands the other. We fear irreconcilable differences when the trouble is only between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and we talk about common purposes when one nation by virtue of its whole experience and system of values has in mind a quite different course of action from the one we meant. We do not give ourselves a chance to find out what their habits and values are. If we did, we might discover that a course of action is not necessarily vicious because it is not the one we know.
直至二十世纪依然存在着的一个不利因素是，我们不但对于什么使日本民族成其为日本一无所知，怀着根深蒂固的偏见，而且对于什么使美利坚民族成为美利坚、什么使法兰西民族成为法兰西以及什么使俄罗斯民族成为俄罗斯，亦是如此。正是由于缺乏这些了解才造成国与国之间的误解，一旦出现鸡毛蒜皮的冲突，我们就全副武装。而在对待某个具有一整套与我们截然不同的固有价值观念、体验以及行为习惯的民族时，我们却侈谈所谓的共同目的；我们未曾给自己一个机会，去发现和了解他们的习惯和价值观。可能如果我们这样做了，也许就会发现，某一行动并不一定是恶意的，因为它并不是我们所认识的那样。
It is not possible to depend entirely upon what each nation says of its own habits of thought and action. Writers in every nation have tried to give an account of themselves. But it is not easy. The lenses through which any nation looks at life are not the ones another nation uses. It is hard to be conscious of the eyes through which one looks. Any country takes them for granted, and the tricks of focusing and of perspective which give to any people its national view of life seem to that people the god-given arrangement of the landscape. In any matter of spectacles, we do not expect the man who wears them to know the formula for the lenses, and neither can we expect nations to analyze their own outlook upon the world. When we want to know about spectacles, we train an oculist and expect him to be able to write out the formula for any lenses we bring him. Some day no doubt we shall recognize that it is the job of the social scientist to do this for the nations of the contemporary world.
我们也不能完全依据每个民族自我阐明的思维和行为的习惯行事。各个国家都有一大批学者文人在竭力说明自己的国家，但是事情本身并不那么简单。每一个民族用来观察生活的透镜都与其他民族的不同，人们在观察时也很难永远保持清澈的目光。每个国家都认为自己的观点是最有把握的。任何一个民族对本民族的生活观都受到焦点与距离等技术问题的影响，其效果是使人看起来好像该民族生活在上帝特殊赠赋的景致当中。谈到眼镜，我们不期望所有戴眼镜的人都知道镜片的构成，所以我们也不指望各个民族都能准确分析自己在世界上的形象。如果我们想了解眼镜方面的事，我们最好先训练出一个眼科医生，让他为我们要了解的眼镜写出专门的说明书。我们在今后的某一天也必然发现，这才是社会科学家对当代世界各民族应尽的义务。
The job requires both a certain tough-mindedness and a certain generosity. It requires a tough-mindedness which people of good will have sometimes condemned. These protagonists of One World have staked their hopes on convincing people of every comer of the earth that all the differences between East and West, black and white, Christian and Mohammedan, are superficial and that all mankind is really like-minded. This view is sometimes called the brotherhood of man. I do not know why believing in the brotherhood of man should mean that one cannot say that the Japanese have their own version of the conduct of life and that Americans have theirs. It sometimes seems as if the tender-minded could not base a doctrine of good will upon anything less than a world of peoples each of which is a print from the same negative. But to demand such uniformity as a condition of respecting another nation is as neurotic as to demand it of one's wife or one's children. The tough-minded are content that differences should exist. They respect differences. Their goal is a world made safe for differences, where the United States may be American to the hilt without threatening the peace of the world, and France may be France, and Japan may be Japan on the same conditions. To forbid the ripening of any of these attitudes toward life by outside interference seems wanton to any student who is not himself convinced that differences need be a Damocles' sword hanging over the world. Nor need he fear that by taking such a position he is helping to freeze the world into the status quo. Encouraging cultural differences would not mean a static world. England did not lose her Englishness because an Age of Elizabeth was followed by an Age of Queen Anne and a Victorian Era. It was just because the English were so much themselves that different standards and different national moods could assert themselves in different generations.
这项工作需要某种必要的坚韧精神与宽容性。它要求坚韧的精神是由于有时怀着良好意愿也会受到责难。“一个世界”的倡导者们正在寄希望于使地球上各个角落的人们相信，所有东西方之间、黑人与白人之间以及基督教徒与伊斯兰教徒之间的区别都是表面的，所有人类的智力与感情本质上是类似的。这一观点有时也被说成“四海之内皆兄弟”。我不太理解“四海之内皆兄弟”是否意味着否认日本人与美国人对生活方式有各自不同的理解。有时候人们感到，这些心地善良的人似乎认为世界上的民族都应该像同一个底片洗出的照片一样，似乎非如此国际亲善的教义就不能成立。但是，以这种一致性作为衡量另一个民族是否值得尊重的条件是荒唐可笑的，正像某人以此要求自己的妻子或孩子一样神经过敏。坚韧的人承认差别，尊重差别；他们的理想是即使存在差别也能够确保安全，确保世界和平不受威胁。在这个世界上，美国可以是完全美国化的国家，法国也可以是法国化的国家，日本的存在也同样是这样。对于任何不相信差异性是悬在全世界之上的达摩克里斯之剑（临头的危险）的研究者来说，通过外部干涉来阻止任何人生态度的形成与发展似乎都是徒劳无益的；同样，他们也不用担心由于怀有这种观点，就会使世界在维持现状中僵化。承认文化差异并不等于要求世界静止不动，英国并没有因为伊丽莎白时代为安妮女王年代所取代以及后来维多利亚时代的出现而丧失英国性；相反，正因为英国人在不同的时代具有不同的国民标准和不同的国民精神，才使他们成为英国人。
Systematic study of national differences requires a certain generosity as well as tough-mindedness. The study of comparative religions has flourished only when men were secure enough in their own convictions to be unusually generous. They might be Jesuits or Arabic savants or unbelievers, but they could not be zealots. The study of comparative cultures too cannot flourish when men are so defensive about their own way of life that it appears to them to be by definition the sole solution in the world. Such men will never know the added love of their own culture which comes from a knowledge of other ways of life. They cut themselves off from a pleasant and enriching experience. Being so defensive, they have no alternative but to demand that other nations adopt their own particular solutions. As Americans they urge our favorite tenets on all nations. And other nations can no more adopt our ways of life on demand than we could learn to do our calculations in units of 12's instead of 10's, or stand on one foot in repose like certain East African natives.
系统研究民族差异在具备坚韧精神的同时还有一定程度的宽容性。只有当人们确信自己完全具备了超脱凡俗的宽容信念的时候，他们的宗教比较研究才能取得丰硕的成果。研究者可以是犹太教徒、阿拉伯学者或无信仰者，但不能是宗教狂。人们在非常偏执于自己的生活方式时会把他们自己的生活方式看成为世界上最好的和惟一的方式，因此不能很好地进行比较文化研究。这种人决不可能懂得，只有在了解了其他生活方式之后，才能对自己的生活方式更加热爱。他们使自己与充实体验的享受隔绝开来，他们十分固守己见，对其他的国民除了要求要用他们自身的特殊解决法之外，提不出任何方策。如果他们是美国人，就用美国人自己欣赏的信条去要求所有其他民族。然而，其他民族不可能采用我们美国的生活方式，这是很显然的；这就像我们不能用十二进位计算方法代替十进位法，不能像东非某些土著居民用独脚站立的姿势休息一样。
This book, then, is about habits that are expected and taken for granted in Japan. It is about those situations when any Japanese can count on courtesy and those situations when he cannot, about when he feels shame, when he feels embarrassment, what he requires of himself. The ideal authority for any statement in this book would be the proverbial man in the street. It would be anybody. That does not mean that this anybody would in his own person have been placed in each particular circumstance. It does mean that anybody would recognize that that was how it was under those conditions. The goal of such a study as this is to describe deeply entrenched attitudes of thought and behavior. Even when it falls short, this was nevertheless the ideal.
本书还论及日本理想中追求的以及日常遵守的习惯。它谈到在什么情况下日本将以礼相待，在什么情况下会剑拔弩张；它论及日本人在什么情况下会感到羞耻，在什么情况下会感到迷惑，他们对自己有什么要求。本书中所有观点的理所当然的发言人可能是市井庶民，可能是任何人。所谓任何人是指没有被放置在特殊条件下的人，这里所说的条件是指任何人都能够理解的普通场合。诸如此类的逐一研究的目的在于揭示深深植根于人们思想与行动中的心理状态。即使本书没能如愿以偿，但这些的确是作者所抱的理想。
In such a study one quickly reaches the point where the testimony of great numbers of additional informants provides no further validation. Who bows to whom and when, for instance, needs no statistical study of all Japan; the approved and customary circumstances can be reported by almost any one and after a few confirmations it is not necessary to get the same information from a million Japanese.
在这种研究中，人们可以很快得到某种无须提供大量的证据给予附加证明的确切性。比如，要想知道某人是否在某时对另一个人鞠了一躬，不必对整个日本做一次统计。日本人讲求仪礼的一般情况，几乎可以由他们中的任何一个人讲述，再略经数次核实后就无须由上百万日本人再去赘述了。
The student who is trying to uncover the assumptions upon which Japan builds its way of life has a far harder task than statistical validation. The great demand upon him is to report how these accepted practices and judgments become the lenses through which the Japanese see existence. He has to state the way in which their assumptions affect the focus and perspective in which they view life. He has to try to make this intelligible to Americans who see existence in very different focus. In this task of analysis the court of authority is not necessarily Tanaka San, the Japanese ‘anybody.' For Tanaka San does not make his assumptions explicit, and interpretations written for Americans will undoubtedly seem to him unduly labored.
对研究者来说，试图发现日本建立其生活方式的假定基础观念本身比用统计数字给予证实艰巨得多；对他最大的要求就是指出日本人如何通过他们公认的习惯和判断，用这一眼镜观察现实。研究者必须指出日本人怎样用这个假定观念去调节他们观察生活的焦点与距离，他还必须使那些透过与此截然不同的另一种焦点与距离观察世界的美国人理解这些。在如此分析过程中，最权威的法官不再是“田中君”这位普通日本人的化身；因为“田中君”并不能使自己的观点被大家理解，而对美国人来说必要的解释对他来说无疑又过于详繁。
American studies of societies have not often been planned to study the premises on which civilized cultures are built. Most studies assume that these premises are self-evident. Sociologists and psychologists are preoccupied with the ‘scatter' of opinion and behavior, and the stock technique is statistical. They subject to statistical analysis masses of census material, great numbers of answers to questionnaires or to interviewers' questions, psychological measurements and the like, and attempt to derive the independence or interdependence of certain factors. In the field of public opinion, the valuable technique of polling the country by using a scientifically selected sample of the population has been highly perfected in the United States. It is possible to discover how many people support or oppose a certain, candidate for public office or a certain policy. Supporters and opponents can be classified as rural or urban, low income or high income, Republicans or Democrats. In a country with universal suffrage, where laws are actually drafted and enacted by the people's representatives, such findings have practical importance.
美国人在研究社会时，通常不以开化民族文化的基础作为自己研究的起点，因为大多数学者都以为自己早已掌握了这些前提。社会学家和心理学家们都预先用观念和行为的“分布”以及统计学研究的技巧等俗套将自己填满；目的是用统计学方法分析堆积如山的民意调查表、无数的问卷或被走访者的答卷加上心理测定等，试图推测出一些孤立的或者相互联系着的因素。在代表公众舆论方面，这种采用科学方法选出全部人口代表的全国性民意测验在美国已相当完善，它有助于发现多少人支持或者反对某一位政府官员或者总统的候选人，它可以对农村与城市、低收入与高收入、共和党或民主党的支持者与反对者进行分类。在一个实行了普选制、宪法的起草与实践都确实由人民选出的代表履行的国家里，这种调查结果具有实际的意义。
Americans can poll Americans and understand the findings, but they can do this because of a prior step which is so obvious that no one mentions it: they know and take for granted the conduct of life in the United States. The results of polling tell more about what we already know. In trying to understand another country, systematic qualitative study of the habits and assumptions of its people is essential before a poll can serve to good advantage. By careful sampling, a poll can discover how many people are for or against government. But what does that tell us about them unless we know what their notions are about the State? Only so can we know what the factions are disputing about, in the streets or in the Diet. A nation's assumptions about government are of much more general and permanent importance than figures of party strength. In the United States, the Government, to both Republicans and Democrats, is almost a necessary evil and it limits individual freedom; Government employment, too, except perhaps in wartime, does not give a man the standing he gets from an equivalent job in private enterprise. This version of the State is a far cry from the Japanese version, and even from that of many European nations. What we need to know first of all is just what their version is. Their view is embodied in their folkways, in their comments on successful men, in their myth of their national history, in their speeches on national holidays; and it can be studied in these indirect manifestations. But it requires systematic study.
美国人能够对美国人进行民意测验，能够理解调查的结果，但是必须明确在做这些时存在着一个先决条件；这个条件如此被人们熟视无睹以至于没有人提及，这就是他们所习以为常的美国式生活方式。实际上，民意测验的结果只不过是对我们知道的事情给予更多的知识。在努力了解另一个国家的时候，就必须系统和本质地研究当地人民的习惯和基本观念，才能使他们的数量调查发挥作用。经过仔细挑选对象的民意测验能使人得知支持及反对政府的人数；然而要理解这些结果意味着什么，这首先要弄清他们对政府抱着什么观念。只有如此，我们才能够明白那些政党在国会中或者街头上争论的是什么。一个民族对待它的政府所怀的观念比标志党派力量的数字具有更普遍与持久的作用。在美国，无论民主党还是共和党，都认为政府是一种必要的魔鬼；政府总是限制个人自由的，政府部门的职务也比私人企业中同等职务的社会地位低，恐怕唯独战时才是例外。对政府的这种见解与日本人的相比简直有天壤之别，甚至与许多欧洲国家的也相去甚远。我们当务之急需要了解的就是他们对此的看法。他们的看法贯穿在他们的民俗、他们对成功人士的评价、他们对自己国家的神话、他们在民族节日发表的演说中诸如此类的方面。这的确可以从这些间接场合研究出来，但研究本身必须是系统的。
The basic assumptions which any nation makes about living, the solutions it has sanctioned, can be studied with as much attention and as much detail as we give to finding out what proportion of a population will vote yes and no in an election. Japan was a country whose fundamental assumptions were well worth exploring. Certainly I found that once I had seen where my Occidental assumptions did not fit into their view of life and had got some idea of the categories and symbols they used, many contradictions Westerners are accustomed to see in Japanese behavior were no longer contradictions. I began to see how it was that the Japanese themselves saw certain violent swings of behavior as integral parts of a system consistent within itself. I can try to show why. As I worked with them, they began to use strange phrases and ideas which turned out to have great implications and to be full of age-long emotion. Virtue and vice as the Occident understands them had undergone a sea-change. The system was singular, it was not Buddhism and it was not Confucianism. It was Japanese—the strength and the weakness of Japan.
某个民族对生活具有的基本的假设或认可的结论，我们可以通过深入细致地研究而搞明白，正如我们在选举中可以得知支持者与反对者的比例那样。日本作为一个民族，其基本假设非常值得去揭示。我的确发现，一旦明白了西方人的假定和日本人的人生观的不一致之处，多少了解了他们所使用的范畴和象征，经常在西方人眼里出现的日本人行为中的许多矛盾就都不再显得矛盾了。我开始理解，为什么日本人自己把某种过激行为的转换看成一种首尾一贯的体系的不可分割的组成部分，我还能给出原因。在我与他们共事的时候，他们便会转入使用常有重要暗示意味以及年深日久、富有感情色彩的一些语句和概念，那里面根本不包含西方人所能理解的善恶观。这种体系是独特的，它既非佛教，又非儒教，它就是日本自己的，包含着日本的长处，也包含着日本的弱点。