ABSTRACT
In Part One two rather different ways of looking at Japanese society were introduced. Each of the chapters in Part Two dealt with a particular skepticism regarding the group model. Although the conflict model was not similarly scrutinized, and attention was focused on the more dominant and influential set of images in the popular stereotype of Japanese society, the conflict model also deserves close examination. It too must certainly have an ideological element. Its proponents may have presented a better documented description of historical facts (as suggested in Chapters 3 and 5), and would be in agreement with many of the points made in Part Three (especially with regard to social control), and must therefore be seen as having tabled a formidable criticism of the consensus model. Yet the conflict theorists do not link their particular facts rigorously with the broader generalizations often associated with conOict theory. A major problem in collecting historical facts is that of selection. The anecdotes used by the consensus theorists were questioned not as to their accuracy but as to their representativeness and the failure to make explicit the criteria used in their selection.
