The Anatomy of Dependence

The Anatomy of Dependence was first published in 1971 under the title 'Amae no Kozo' and almost immediately gained national and international recognition. The author, Dr. Takeo Doi, is one of Japan's leading psychiatrists. His experience in the US, where he made several extended research stays, allowed him to reflect on the nature of the Japanese mindset. He begins his book by recording common experiences of minor alienation that every Japanese living abroad has undergone, such as being given the choice between several options of food or drink that Americans propose "as if to reassure themselves of their own freedom." A peculiar trait of Japanese medical studies is its heavy use of terms borrowed from the German, which entered the Japanese language at the turn of the twentieth century and which are pronounced in a way that makes them understandable only by Japanese trained in the medical sciences. Doi's main breakthrough is to record the feelings and emotions held by his patients in Japanese terms, and to show that these terms form a constellation of meaning structured around the notion of `amae'. Part of the interest of this book comes from the fact that amae is very difficult to translate but very easy to grasp--it is the emotion felt by the baby at the breast towards his mother, the need for a passive, unconditional love, the unwillingness to be separated from the warm mother-child circle and cast into a world of objective `reality'. Such a relationship implies a considerable blurring of the distinction between subject and object; it is not necessarily governed by what might be considered strict rational or moral standards, and may often seem selfish to the outsider. Doi contends that it provides an invaluable key to Japanese behavior. In a way, the Anatomy of Dependence belongs to the field of Nihonjin-ron, or commentary about Japanese-ness, a genre much reviled by social scientists but that still enjoys a high degree of popularity among the Japanese public. Its quest for `the soul of a nation' or `the structure of the Japanese personality' will appear as naive and uncouth to sophisticated readers, who might nonetheless remember that Freud also made sweeping generalizations about the future of Western civilization. To those who might object that Dr. Doi's analysis lacks intellectual rigor and smacks of culturalism, one may object that, first, the description of Japanese behavioral traits is grounded in language structures and that, second, these structures are enacted through speech acts and clinical situations. Takeo Doi spends some time discussing the New Left and the students movement of the 1970s, which he interestingly compares with Momotaro, the monster-slaying character born out of a giant peach. Interestingly, he doesn't apply his frame of analysis to the most evident of all dependency relationships: that of Japan towards the US, all at once the indulgent motherly figure and the domineering hegemon that blocks Japan from becomin

In The Anatomy of Dependence, Takeo Doi presents a psychological study of Japanese society through the concept of amae. Amae is a Japanese word that means to act in a self-indulgent, or childish, manner toward people with whom one is very close. It is this idea that Doi believes is "the essence of the Japanese psychology" (65). However, he makes it clear that amae is universal to everyone and that even animals show signs of it. What makes the Japanese unique is that they have the only language with a word for amae. This difference in vocabulary, Doi believes, is one of the reasons why the Japanese and the West have developed such different psychologies. Doi does a really great job explaining how having a word for amae can shape the way Japanese people think. Doi argues that "it should be possible to discuss the psychological characteristics of a people in terms of the language it speaks" (66). This is because one must use language to express oneself. If there is no word for a certain emotion in a language, it is difficult for the native speaker to logically think about or express that emotion. In this way, the Japanese are able to speak of and deal with amae; whereas Westerners have trouble with it. Since Western languages do not have any words equal to amae, the concept of amae has not taken hold. This is part of the reason why, Doi asserts, the West considers feelings of dependence on or "passive love" (21) from a group to be inferior to individualism - we do not fully understand it. Doi shows us that this concept of "amae lurking in the heart of each individual Japanese" (61) is the underlying cause of many social norms. For example, the honorific language system in Japan is an attempt to amaeru (the verb form of amae). By using language that exalts the listener, the speaker is allowing the listener to indulge in their own selfish desires. In other words, it is used to baby one's superiors. Another example comes from the fact that Japanese tend to prefer doing things with a group. Doi shows that amae's origin is the need to cope with separation from the mother during early childhood. Due to this fact, the group is most important because it takes the place of the mother by allowing individual members to amaeru without fear of rejection. Compared with Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, Doi's work is much more credible. Whereas Benedict was not able to do any field work in Japan, Doi is able to give us specific examples of where he gets his ideas. For instance, Doi tells us of his experience of traveling to America for the first time and how the phrase "help yourself" struck him as terribly rude. He took it to mean "nobody else will help you" (13), when it simply means to "do as you please." He also refers to an English patient of his who switched into speaking Japanese solely to be able to use the word amae during a session. Examples like these really help give this book credibility. They help show us that the a

The Anatomy of Dependence by Takeo Doi is a look at one facet of Japanese society. Unlike other authors who study Japan as an entire society, Doi focuses on the aspect of unconditional love between parent and child and how it relates to the overarching characteristics of Japanese social structure. Doi relates many theories from many fields of study, notably psychology, anthropology, and sociology. Doi relates his theory of amae with Western schools of thought and how these schools relate to Japan. He is remarkably capable of writing without expressing culture bias, and much credit needs to be given to John Bester for translating the book so well. With Anatomy of Dependence, Doi is able to explain many traditional Japanese behaviors to a Western audience by relating them all to the concept of amaeru, a verb expressing a concept that has no equivalent word in English. Amaeru is `to act in a self-indulgent, or childish, manner toward people with whom one is very close' and Doi's main argument is that amae is the crux of Japanese psychology. It is the attempt to explain the full nature of amae that allows Doi to explain the connections as a psychologist. The concept of amae is a characteristic of humanity and many other mammalians such as dogs and apes. The term itself and its implications are mostly ignored or misunderstood by people in Western cultures. A basic definition of amae is `to depend and presume upon another's benevolence.' This definition may be applied to common everyday relationships such as mother-child, master-apprentice, sempai-kohai, and between friends. Amaeru, described above, is best stated as the need to be loved, to depend and to be dependent on others. The way that every native Japanese citizen handles amae is the core of the mental psyche. He is able to write confidently about Japanese social nuances and psychology after being a psychologist himself for over twenty years. Amae is the root of the Japanese psyche because everything relates back to it, from apologies to the development of the self-awareness. The instinctual awareness of amae is in every human being, but Japanese society is more in touch with it. This is the crux of Doi's thesis and argument, an argument that has valid arguments and falters only every so often. Doi does a very good job of explaining things in this account. Anatomy of Dependence is not a book for someone who does not understand psychology. Psychology and its many ways of analysis are the bases of Doi's perspectives. Oftentimes in the book he will recall a patient of his whom suffers from a lack of amae or one who fails to amae properly. He does this with care and ease to the subject, explaining social concepts like enryo, tanin, giri, and sumanai. These four words relate to the Japanese sense of companionship, its inner and outer circles, its duty or loyalty, and its way of apologizing. There are many concepts explored in the book and they are explained with appropriate d

Takeo Doi's "The Anatomy of Dependence" is in truth a psychological analysis of Japanese society through his linguistic interpretation of the Japanese concept of amae. Though the title of the book translates amae as "dependence", the semantic meaning of the word has a much deeper importance in Japanese culture and has a more positive connotation. The originality of Doi's hypothesis of Japanese psychology stems from his refusal to accept that the peoples of Japan and the rest of Asia cannot be understood through psychological analysis. Here, Doi explains his basic argument against using Western terminology to describe Japanese emotions, "...the forms of a person's thoughts are controlled by an inexorable laws of patterns of which he is unconscious. These patterns are the unperceived intricate systematizations of his own language-shown readily enough by a candid comparison and contrast with other languages, especially those of a different linguistic family, " (67). What Doi proposes is that Western psychology has yet to understand Japanese culture because it lacks a Japanese vocabulary. Doi's text ventures to create a Japanese psychological vocabulary branching off from his concept of amae and built on the structure of Western principles of psychoanalysis. Amae, as Doi interprets it, is the interdependence of indulgences afforded between Japanese people of close relations. In Japanese society, Amae is expected to be given by parents to their children throughout their lives. Amae is also afforded to the elderly, leading some outsiders to wrongly assume that the elderly in Japan are in some way slighted, being treated like babies or small children. Within romantic or marital relationships, amae is expected to be exchanged freely as a way of expressing love and affection. The idea of dependence in Western psychology has connotations of weakness or inability to cope with reality. This is mostly due to the individualistic structure of modern Western culture, in particular, America. Some of the most satisfying and convincing analysis in Doi's text are the parts of his argument where he openly attacks the Western interpretation of Japanese society. Doi daringly takes apart almost 20 years of Western analysis when he confronts Benedict's conclusion on Japan's total lack of guilt in her pivotal book, The Chrysanthemum and The Sword, "...[Benedict] seems to postulate guilt and shame as entirely unrelated to each other, which is obviously contrary to the facts, " (48). Benedict tried to say that Japanese people feel shame towards the group to which they belong but have no sense of guilt on an individual level. What Benedict is really talking about is the concept of betrayal. Guilt in Western thought, as Benedict uses it in her text, is defined as a betrayal to oneself. This inner conflict is an individual experienced when there is a conflict between the id, ego and super-ego as Freud used them. Though Japanese people may not feel guilt towards themselve

If you've tried to understand Japanese people, read Benedict's "Chrysanthemum and the Sword" and still felt confused, try this one by Doi. While practicing counseling, he realized the importance of language in understanding the psyche. Until that point, Japanese psychologists had used German in their practice. But, Doi realized that there were some Japanese words that didn't translate well, but were very useful in expressing the experiences and feelings of his patients. He further pursued his discovery, and found a key to helping understanding what makes Japanese people tick (or not). After reading this book, I had so many better categories to understand what seemed like nonsense in Japanese people.