Views of/apanese Selfhood: Japanese and \X/estem Perspectives 147

pelling some of the myths by which we Americans commonly approach

Japanese selfhood and preparing the ground by guaranteeing some recogni-
tion of the complexities of the Japanese sclf. I t i s in hope of accomplishing
these goals tliat I have written the present chapter, in which I consider some
of the theoretical problems, solutions, and critiques regarding the study of
Japanese setfl~oodby social scientists and then examine some of the waps in
which autonomy and creativity are in evidence within traditional Japanese
religion and language-despite being often hidden from view either by our
methodologies or by theoretical assumpfions and prcfercnccs.

Social Science Views and Critiques

The history of American views of Japanese selfliood is ably summarized--
and criticized-by Nancy R. Rosenberger in Japanese Sense o f s e l f , and we
need not recapimlate it here, The chief difficulty is that the sclf in Japan is
rarely seen as autonomous-either ideally or actually either by outsiders or
by the Japanese themselves, either by observers such as social scientists or by
parficipants. O n the one hand, this ayparent lack of autonomy--which X
would argue is less an absence than a refusal to value autonomy greatly---has
led many observers to the conclusion that the Japanese lack a "self" in any
Western scnse at ail. And in so doing, they overlook the distinctively Japan-
ese forms of expression of individuality, such as those that are foreign to
Indo-European languages (as discussed below).
Anthropologist: Takie Lebnt, on the ochcr hand, sees this socially defined
self as osity osie of three "lwels" of self:

[?"]he social or "interactionat" sell: is at the basic tevet, where Japanese find
themselves most of clic eirne; above eliis Ievel is cbc "inner" or reflcxivc selft
wfiich eenters around the kokoru (heartlmind) and engages in monoiogue, with
a leave o l al-lscncc from dialogic involvement; at elic liighest Icvcl, there is the
"boundless" or chaotic self, where the boundary disappears bemeen subject
and object, self and other, or the inner and outer self, so that both the social and
inner self are upgraded into an empty self.7

Thomas Kasulis has characterized the difference as being+. a matter of what

is foregrounded and what is backgrounded in Japanese versus the various
Western cultures.S~uchan approach has the advantage of allowing us to rec-
ognize tliat many of the same characteristics of and attitudes toward the self
exist (however inconsistently) within both cultures but are given different
dcgrees of attention or "privilege," reveaIing whac X have called in anotcher
context the culture's philosophical "preferences" for certain kinds of things
and explanations over others.' This approach is particularly useful for recog-
nition of types of sdfhood that may cxist within a culture yet don't fit: into
its prevailing theoretical paradigms, such as certain female kinds of selfhood