Reviews for Japan Unmasked: The Character and Culture of the Japanese

The average rating for Japan Unmasked: The Character and Culture of the Japanese based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-10-01 00:00:00 Tom Hill I had high hopes, as I always do for books about Japan, but this one failed to live up to them for two serious reasons: 1, there was sore need of an editor, if for nothing else than to arrange the random chapters into some kind of order; a better editor would've had de Mente stick to his focus on navigating the cross-cultural waters of international business instead of allowing so many random other topics to wander in or the condescending "Japan must change" exhortations. (Are you a guide for Westerners or a consultant to the Japanese? Pick a role.) 2, and by far the bigger of the two, is that de Mente had almost no references or sources for any of his claims, not even a bibliography or suggested reading list. Occasionally he would quote a Japanese scholar, but even then, the book or lecture in question wasn't properly cited. This is a fairly serious problem, especially as it involves an author of one culture trying to explain the behaviors of another. Now, while I like to wax philosophical myself on the subject of Japan in conversations, based on my own experience and extensive research, I would never dare to do so in print without a plethora of sources to back myself up. It's lazy at best and beggars credulity at worst. That's not to say there weren't any insights; more than a few were new to me (like the origins of haragei in the Heian court or the history of koban). But still, I felt a little duped--I didn't realize this was a poorly edited, completely unsourced business guide. I thought I was getting something more along the lines of The Japanese Mind: Understanding Contemporary Culture.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-09-14 00:00:00 Caroline Reisz Fun to read, informative, but the topics were kind of random. I didn't feel they encompassed the theme (which is pretty vague, too start with) entirely, but rather that they were a collection of before written articles issued as a book (there were instances of entire sentences, as well as opinions, repeated throughout the text).