Wrapping Culture: Politeness, Presentation, and Power in Japan and Other Societies (Oxford Studies in the Anthropology of Cultural Forms) [Paperback]

Joy Hendry (Author)

Book Description

Series: Oxford Studies in the Anthropology of Cultural Forms | Publication Date: June 22, 1995

Wrapping Culture examines problems of intercultural communication and the possibilities for misinterpretation of the familiar in an unfamiliar context. Starting with an examination of Japanese gift-wrapping, Joy Hendry demonstrates how our expectations are often influenced by cultural factors which may blind us to an appreciation of underlying intent. She extends this approach to the study of polite language as the wrapping of thoughts and intentions, garments as body wrappings, constructions and gardens as wrapping of space. Hendry shows how this extends even to the ways in which people may be wrapped in seating arrangements, or meetings and drinking customs may be constrained by temporal versions of wrapping. Throughout the book, Hendry considers ways in which groups of people use such symbolic forms to impress and manipulate one another, and points out a Western tendency to underestimate such nonverbal communication, or reject it as mere decoration. She presents ideas that should be valid in any intercultural encounter and demonstrates that Japanese culture, so often thought of as a special case, can supply a model through which we can formulate general theories about human behavior.

Editorial Reviews

Review

`Quite remarkable ... she writes with wit and style and expounds her thesis with plenty of illuminating evidence and anecdote ... Hendry in this book makes another enormous contribution to a social analysis of Japan. This is enriching reading for anyone, especially those who have a commitment to being involved in Japan either for business or leisure. And for the time being it has generated an evangelical zeal in this reader. Wrapped or unwrapped, it is going to be this year's present.' Insight Japan

`Hendry's reading is persuasive.' The Guardian

`an original and stimulating account of contemporary Japanese culture ... Hendry writes prose which is lucid and refreshingly jargon-free' John Adamson, Sunday Telegraph

`Joy Hendry ... takes a close, careful and reflective look at formal behaviour in contemporary Japan. The book is useful at the very least for its clear description of the role and function of gift-giving and in particular of the packaging of presents ... a good clear description of the role and importance of gift-giving and other formal behaviour in a highly complex society.' Times Higher Education Supplement

`What Hendry does in this book is quite remarkable: she presents a much wider tableau of the main features of Japanese society and its customs ... The scrutiny is neither dry nor dull; she writes with wit and style and expounds her thesis with plenty of illuminating evidence and anecdote ... Hendry in this book makes another enormous contribution to a social analysis of Japan. This is enriching reading for anyone.' Insight Japan

'in this intriguing volume, the detail of Japanese material life is set within a theoretical framework shedding new light on a society for which outward appearances are of the utmost importance' Marie Conte-Helm, University of Sunderland, RSA Journal, April 1994

`Joy Hendry has made an important contribution to the field that unwraps much exoticized Japanalia.' Journal of Asian Studies

`This well-illustrated book is an enjoyable read, which though ostensibly about Japan should lead any reader on to a reconsideration of his or her own culture.' The Brown Book, Lady Margaret Hall Association

`a work that is enormously suggestive and necessarily broad-ranging ... Hendry's impressive range of examples is provocative and the context she seeks to establish with cross-cultural parallels is unusual ... for a book on wrapping. Hendry's is intentionally unadorned with jargon. This is an admirable stance - plain speaking should not be incompatible with clear thinking and subtle analysis ... we are ... in Hendry's debt for her imaginative and insightful sketch of a pervasive, implicit patterning of practices that demand our further attention. Future work should build on the start she has made' Journal of Japanese Studies

`it is a rare delight to discover a book that ... relates Japan to the rest of the world instead of isolating it in its incomparable characteristics ... The solid anthropological roots of this work are evident throughout ... this book puts the previous knowledge about Japan in a new and stimulating perspective and suggests a different approach in the study of other cultures. For the non-specialist, it is a good read, containing a few amusing anecdotes. Above all, it is, to use the author's own words, beautifully `presented', with numerous illustrations and colour plates' Cambridge Anthropology

About the Author

Joy Hendry is both Principal Lecturer and Oxford Brookes University and Reader in Social Anthropology at the Scottish Centre for Japanese Studies at Stirling University. Her previous books include: Marriage in Changing Japan; Becoming Japanese, and Understanding Japanese Society

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (June 22, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0198280289
• ISBN-13: 978-0198280286
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,660,866 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Japanology Classic, April 11, 2010

By 

Timothy Takemoto (Yamaguchi-shi, Japan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wrapping Culture: Politeness, Presentation, and Power in Japan and Other Societies (Oxford Studies in the Anthropology of Cultural Forms) (Paperback)

This is an excellent book about Japan - one of the best books of Japanology, up their with Benedict's Chrysanthemum, Doi's Amae/Dependence, and Nakane's Verticle Soceity and other sleeper, Nakashima Yoshimichi's "Urusai Nihonjin no Watash".

This book reads a little like a series of lectures, upon which I guess it was based going for breadth, and a considerable degree of repetition. I would have liked to read more about "why" (but then see below). And the style is couched in antrhopologist speak (e.g. calling her friends and aquaintances in Japan "informants," ho ho) but then scholars have to tow the jargon if they are to be accepted as scholars.

I would recommend this book to anyone as a fun and informative back door to understanding Japanese society, and as food for further thought.

If I might be allowed to highlight one point, that I wish Hendry had addressed further... She cricises Barthes' (and Maruyama Masao's?) "empty center" theory with reference to the imperial palace, saying (in a moment of enlightenment, about herself too on p109) "In fact, contrary to Barthe's expectation, I think that the place does irradiate power of a certain sort, and the problem may lie in our Western propensity to want always to be unwrapping, deconstructing, seeing the objects at the center of things." Here I think that Hendry really hits the nail on the head, but in so doing she challenges the notion of Japan being a "Wrapping" culture. Japan is a "wrapping culture" so long as you are a Westerner that expects there to be something inside. To the Japanese wrapping is not wrapping, but the real deal. The problem is that we attempt to find something inside. Perhaps the same criticism could be leveled at this review.