| NOTA |
(★)(Why was Japan able to industrialize far sooner than any other non-Western country? Why was Japan almost unique in being able to accomplish this without a major internal social crisis? Why has Japan been, until very recently, the only non-Western country to shift from a traditional to a modern economy on its own initiative? The answers to these questions are to be found in the immediate background of the emergence of industrial Japan. Dr. Bellah has produced a remarkable study in the sociology of religion which parallels ´The Protestant Ethic´ and ´Religion and the Rise of Capitalism´, but with important differences. The author shows the place of religion in the total social system of Japan, and provides a survey of Japanese religion with special emphasis on what was shared by Confucian, Shinto, and Buddhist groups. He describes two types of religious action, each of which can --under certain conditions-- have an effect on worldly economic activities comparable to that of Protestantism in the West. However, in Japan the political realm has held primacy over the economic realm in both traditional and modern times, so that the influence of religiously derived economic values was mediated by political values. A separate chapter describes how religious motivation reinforced activity in the specifically economic sphere. Chapter Six provides a case study of the Shingaku movement, which had an important influence on the city classes. This chapter is based on Japanese sources and is the first extended treatment of the subject in any Western language. The final chapter includes a comparison of the development of Western and Japanese value systems, a comparison of China and Japan with respect to the problem of economic modernization, and some general remarks on the importance of the polity in the modernization of ´backward´ nations. ◆Robert N. Bellah was graduated Summa cum Laude from Harvard University in 1950. His Honors thesis was chosen as the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa Prize Essay for 1950 and published as ´Apache Kinship Systems (1952)´. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard in the Departments of Sociology and Far Eastern Languages --the first such combined degree to be conferred-- in 1955. At present Dr. Bellah is a member of the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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