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Hayao Kawai is a Japanese scholar, trained in the United States as a psychologist and in Zurich as an analyst. His Dreams, Myths and Fairy Tales in Japan comprises five lectures delivered in 1983-88 at Eranos Conferences in Switzerland. His stated intention in delivering the lectures and in presenting them in a collection is to help the West achieve a better understanding of itself through understanding the East. However, the current that runs through the book is a plea to modern Japan to realize its Self with the help of the concept of the Western Ego-Self axis. He stresses the need to view Self-realization ‘as a process and not a goal’.
The lectures are presented chronologically as they were delivered, but chapters I, 2 and 5 are on dreams and borders — between reality and non-reality, mind and body, conscious and unconscious, life and death, mine and not-mine, the individual and the collective, male and female — stand together. Chapters 3 and 4 are concerned to link inner process with outer political and cultural issues in contemporary Japan.
The slimness of the volume is deceptive for it is not commensurate with the content. The amount and detail of some of the dreams, myths and fairy tales as well as the manner of presentation are challenging. As to the quantity and detail of the illustrating material, it was necessary to read the stories several times, partly to appreciate the detail, but also to let the stories wash over the conscious mind, admitting the Zen preference for understanding over knowledge. As to the manner of presentation, this is not straightforward; it does not proceed from A to B, let alone from A to Z, despite subdivisions in the text; it slips from the subject, then returns, leaving the reader initially puzzled by the illogicality which, I suspect, is both intentional and unintentional, a reflection of Kawai's Japanese background.
Kawai's treatment of the hero in mythology and fairy tales is an example of his exploration of opposites. In chapte