What is the main story of Tadao Matsui's Chrysanthemum and the Knife? What impressed you most about this book?

Chrysanthemum and Knife is an academic work about Japanese spiritual culture, which is mainly about Chrysanthemum and Knife. What this book gives you is a deeper understanding of the Japanese people and Japanese culture.

Chrysanthemum and Knife is a survey of Japanese during World War II. In Japan, chrysanthemums represent the Japanese emperor, and knives embody the spirit of Japanese samurai. The Japanese world outlook is very hierarchical, and the emperor has a supreme position in their hearts. From birth, the Japanese people felt as if they owed infinite kindness to the Emperor, who was the object of their gratitude, and the most prominent thing was the so-called shame culture. Therefore, the United States should use the Japanese emperor to manage the Japanese people at that time, so as not to cause strong retaliation.

The author describes the Japanese with the images of chrysanthemum and knife, and the contradictory character is also the duality of Japanese culture. Japanese sense of shame comes not from morality, but from external constraints. Shame needs external supervision. Without social supervision, a person will not feel ashamed, so the Japanese pay special attention to etiquette. On the one hand, it is the rigidity of order, on the other hand, it is the expansion of desire, and the Japanese have been restraining desire. The Japanese have been restraining their desires, and if they fail to meet the corresponding requirements, they can even commit suicide by caesarean section.

Living in such a social environment, Japanese people have formed their own unique cultural values, and their values have been constantly improved with the changes of society. To understand a country and a nation, it is not a book that can solve it. So we should also have our own judgment. Japanese shame culture is the moral constraint of interpersonal communication and inner conscience. If you can't pass others' customs, that's shame. If you can't pass yourself, that's sin. Every culture has a unique character, which is the shame culture of the Japanese nation. After the publication of Chrysanthemum and Knife, it was very popular in Japan, which directly affected the American takeover policy towards Japan after World War II, and set off a wave of western research on Japanese culture for the first time.