It is interesting to reflect for a moment upon the differences in the areas of moral feeling and standards in the peoples of Japan and the United States. Americans divide these areas somewhat rigidly into spirit and flesh, the two being in opposition in the life of a human being. Ideally spirit should prevail but all too often it is the flesh that does prevail. The Japanese make no such division, at least between one as good and the other as evil. They believe that a person has two souls, each necessary. One is the "gentle" soul, the other is the "rough" soul. Sometimes the person uses his gentle soul. Sometimes he must use his rough soul. He does not favor his gentle soul, neither does he fight his rough soul. Human nature in itself is good, Japanese philosophers insist, and a human being does not need to fight any part of himself. He has only to learn how to use each soul properly at the appropriate times. Virtue for the Japanese consists in fulfilling one’s obligations to others. Happy endings, either in life or in fiction, are neither necessary nor expected, since the fulfillment of duty provides the satisfying end, whatever the tragedy it inflicts. And duty includes a person’s obligations to those who have conferred benefits upon him and to himself as an individual of honor. He develops through this double sense of duty a self discipline which is at once permissive and rigid, depending upon the area in which it is functioning.
The process of acquiring this self-discipline begins in childhood. Indeed, one may say it begins at birth. Early is the Japanese child given his own identity! If I were to define in a word the attitude of the Japanese toward their children I would put it in one succinct word- "respect". Love Yes, abundance of love, warmly expressed from the moment he is put to his mother’s breast. For mother and child this nursing of her child is important psychologically.
Rewards are frequent, a bit of candy bestowed at the right moment, an inexpensive toy. As the time comes to enter school, however, discipline becomes firmer. To bring shame to the family is the greatest shame for the child.
What is the secret of the Japanese teaching of self-discipline It lies, I think, in the fact that the aim or all teaching is the establishment of habit. Rules are repeated over, and continually practiced until obedience becomes instinctive. This repetition is enhanced by the expectation of the elders. They expect a child to obey and to learn through obedience. The demand is gentle at first and tempered to the child’s tender age. It is no less gentle as time goes on. but certainly it is increasingly inexorable.
Now, far away from that warm Japanese home, I reflect upon what 1 learned there. What, I wonder, will take the place of the web of love and discipline which for so many centuries has surrounded the life and thinking of the people of Japan The author’s purpose in the passage is to ______.