Customer Reviews

The Hollow Doll (A Little Box of Japanese Shocks)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

/The Hollow Doll/ is a useless adventure in xenophobia. It has absolutely nothing going for it-- it is terribly overwritten, so much that the last page of the last chapter is exactly page 250, and you can *tell* that's what the author was aiming for. He embellishes every tiny aspect of Japan that is not the same as the United States into a three-hundred-word essay, and some aspects that are. For example, we learn that the author wants to kill dogs that bark at night, as well as people walking their dogs during the day, and furthermore he positively hates women who go shopping. Then, to make it relevant to his book, he adds the xenophobic part by describing all three occurrences as if they only ever happened in Japan.

He goes on at length about something that, if he really cared about the quality of his writing, he would know was an American myth-- the suicide rate of Japan. In reality, the United States has a higher suicide rate than Japan in all categories, and both pale in comparison to some Eastern European countries. But in the twisted world of /The Hollow Doll/, ritual seppuku is a Japanese pastime, like rice planting or gazing at Fuji-san. Oh, those crazy Japanese! When will they ever learn?

The worst thing about this book is that I can't even throw it out, because I am worried that someone else will pick it up and be misguided by all this silliness. So, I keep it safe on my bookshelf. The best thing about this book is that it is good for a laugh. A nervous laugh.

If you are looking for something actually educational about Japan and it's secrets... keep looking.

This volume is an extended rant by an obviously disatisfied outsider who managed to learn that Japan is a society where rule dictates action (SHOCK!) and not reason or free thought. Oddly enough, the author was astute enough to descern even some of the more obsure dictates of Japanese society, yet seems to have been completely dumbstruck by the concept that his time in Japan would be better served attempting to fit into the rules instead of acting like a dumbstruck tourist. This book comes off as little more then a baby "waaaa" rant that Japan isn't a western nation, foreigners are not equal to Japanese, and no.. you're opinion really isn't wanted. I suspect half or more of the authors semi-fictional difficulties with the Japanese could have been easily avoided had he merely followed the rules he clearly knew enough about to write in the book.

The Japanese aren't like you think they are. As Bohnaker so thoroughly demonstrates, they aren't even like *they* think they are. The essential European (and therefore American) mind-set is rational, based on ancient Greece, Rome, the Medieval Church, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution. Westerners ask "why?" The Japanese share none of that history and depend instead on pattern, and especially formula. They ask "what?" For society to work, everyone simply has to behave the same way, every time, in the expected fashion. The famous Japanese consensus is not a rational principal, "wisely deduced from the need to produce cooperative action" -- that?s a Western extrapolation. Where society in the West is supported by an internal structure of reason and principal, what he calls the Japanese social psyche is held together by a "bubble of agreement supported by nothing but itself." And who decides what people should agree to? Tradition and authority, more often than not. American soldiers were baffled at the end of World War II when the "maniacal" Japanese simply ceased fighting, virtually overnight, and became polite and friendly. But they quit because the Emperor told them to, just as they had previously fought tooth and nail because the generals told them to. Of course, those in authority -- political leaders, the corporate boss -- frequently take advantage of this mind-set for their own ends. The author examines the Japanese educational system, the attitude toward public drunkenness, the real reason behind anarchic driving behavior (inability to identify authority), and the casual racism endemic in Japan, and a great deal more. However, when this book was published in 1990, as a result of years of a strong yen and much wider exposure to Western ways of doing things, the Japanese, especially the younger generation and the women, were beginning to resist their own traditions. It would be very interesting if Bohnaker were to write a follow-up volume a decade later, now that Japan has suffered serious economic setbacks.