ABSTRACT
The idea that the Japanese have a national character, as proposed in Western academia, which I characterized as the “introverted samurai”, has been shown to be just as much as Western construction as the range of different representations of the Japanese identified in this book. During the nearly 500-year relationship between Westerners and the Japanese, these representations have shown little consistency and are often contradictory. In rejecting alternative theoretical approaches, I have accounted for these results in terms of culture-in-mind and intercultural relations. When the cultural other violates our normative expectations, it is surprising or shocking – as it literally makes no sense – a response that has occurred on many occasions, from the Jesuit shock at the Japanese banning of Christianity, through to the loss of Western industries in the face of Japanese competition in the late 20th century. How the unexpected has been explained depends on the current state of the relationship between the West and Japan, from the Western perspective. As a result, Westerners have sought to explain what has happened by telling stories about the Japanese, to make their actions explicable to the Western mind.
