Understanding the Japanese Mind

discussions following each group of papers in which analogies and dissimi-larities in the basic nature of the three classes of viruses are at times brought forth. The discussions are printed in their entirety. The authors are all well known, if not famous, men in their fields, and the international flavor of the meeting was supplied by travellers from Australia, England, Malaya, and Denmark taking part in the readings. Some of the discussants came from other lands as well. The editors deserve warm praise for a forthright and beautiful compilation of this symposium-a worthy addition to viral and rickettsial literature. This book is an interesting admixture of psychoanalytic theory, cultural anthropology, historical reconstruction, and prophetic philosophy. Dr. Moloney subscribes to the plausible assumption that the psychodynamics of Japanese national character can be understood by integrating the facts known of Japanese culture, historical tradition, patterns of child-rearing, and Japanese distortions of imported ideologies, particularly psychoanalytic theory and practice. He proposes that these distortions are a function of cultural pressures that are also exerted on each Japanese individual throughout his life. These pressures originate in the Japanese authoritarian, oligarchical tradition and have as their goal the total conformity of the individual to the dictates of a highly crystallized hierarchical militaristic class tradition. In short, the Japanese are accused of having a "dis-individualizing" culture. Dr. Moloney focuses on the effects of Japanese disindividualization on the anger-rage-aggression manifestations of the Japanese individual and nation. He submits the hypothesis that the Japanese as a nation suffer from inordinate internalized hate and repressed rage. His evidence is an inter-pretative analysis of the crime rate (low, indicating repression of aggression against Japanese society), insanity rate (low, indicating "the Japanese emotional disease of neurotic conformism is an almost universal character neurosis which protects the Japanese from developing psychoses"), psychosomatic disease rate (high, indicating "bodily changes due to repressed rage"). The author maintains that only one outlet for aggression is permissible under the Japanese cultural-traditional system, namely, the explosive and periodic venting of accumulated pent-up hatred on targets external to territorial Japan. The "principle of coevality" dominates Japanese historical tradition and provides the moral justification and support for the extra-national dispersal of Japanese hate. This principle of coevality is the mystical concept that Japan, consisting of a homogeneity of disindividualized persons, is without boundaries and is timeless, having no beginning nor end, and is coeval with heaven, earth, and the …