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A description is given of the social pressures to which every home-bred Japanese is subjected during his development. The author attributes the low incidence of schizophrenia among Japanese to the secure and satisfying breast-feeding, mother-child relationship which is the lot of nearly all Japanese. Also, the vantage point of a child, slung securely on the mother's back, looking over her left shoulder, gives intimacy of bodily contact, and a moving panoramic world full of variation and interest. From then on the period of training in cleanliness is quite different, being both harsh and rigorous. Thereafter social pressures upon the child are relentless, and all the rewards are for conformity, social sanctions being brought to bear against deviants from the prescribed pattern of behaviour. Because the social disciplines are so formalized and rigid, so authoritarian and so all-embracing, individuality is restricted. The price of this conformity at the expense of individuality is paid by the Japanese in their tendency to develop psychosomatic illnesses and to some extent in the peculiar socially sanctioned ritual cruelties to the self or to others.
With the Emperor at the apex, the hierarchical stratified structure of Japanese society is tightly knit and definite. The author states that the lack of aggressive behaviour, in other words the tendency to conformity even in Japanese psychotics, is remarkable. Not unexpectedly in view of this type of society, the Japanese tend to identify themselves with the enemy (the aggressor). The Japanese look for a precedent for any of their actions and the author suggests, rather gloomily, that the precedent of dropping atomic bombs on Japan may well have an unpleasant sequel in the future.
Regarding psycho-analysis and the Japanese, the author brings evidence to show that Japanese do not accept or practise psycho-analysis in the Western sense of the term. He considers the dilemma which confronts Japanese psycho-analysts, nam