Working toward a theoretical framework for the study of Japanology as metascience

As globalization progresses, the Japan’s position in the world is changing, and it is becoming necessary for the Japanese to re-evaluate their own country from an international and objective point of view. When considering Japan’s global presence, the study of research on Japan undertaken by scholars from other countries is essential not only to understand Japanese culture and society in objective terms, but also to open them up to the rest of the world.As a first step toward constructing a theoretical framework and methodology for the study of Japanology at the meta level (that is, as metascience), the author has traced the historical course of research on Japan. This survey has made it clear that Japanology possesses two basic characteristics, namely that its ideology is fundamentally fictional in nature, and that criteria for appraising the issues that Japanology deals with are to be found neither in its own nor in other cultures.Next, with regard to Ruth Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (1946), the author adopts Clifford Geertz’s interpretation of Benedict’s work to show that its originality and appeal derive centrally from her cultural relativism and thoroughgoing use of comparison as a basic methodology. This has in turn led to the tentative identification of a theoretical stance likely to be of value in the construction of a methodology for the study of Japanology as metascience.That stance is precisely the switch in perspective that can be realized by cultural relativism and the thoroughgoing use of comparison. Just as Japanology of the highest quality, such as The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, provides evidence that exposes bias in perspective (ideology) in Western understandings of non-Western cultures, it can at the same time throw light on bias in perspective (ideology) in Japanese understandings of its own culture. Although non-Japanese readings of Japanese culture as a foreign culture and Japanese readings of its own culture as its own are both aimed at the same object―namely, Japan and Japanese culture―, they do not share a set of common or transcendent criteria. Premised on a different set of frameworks, the two approaches are essentially incommensurable. A thoroughgoing use of the comparative stance that is implicit in Japanology (as the reading of a foreign culture), however, should succeed in illuminating the frameworks upon which each approach is based, as each acts as a mirror for the other. For Japanese scholars, a switch in perspective should hence become possible― applying to their own culture the perspective of the foreign viewed as foreign―, and thus lead to a requestioning of the premises and grounds of their own culture. The conclusion drawn in this paper is that the recovery of this power of inquiry will expand the boundaries of both domestic and foreign cultures, thus enriching their cultural individuality, and at the same time promote crosscultural understanding