An anthropologist who has never been in Japan has offered Allied leaders a new study of Japanese psychology. He is British-born Geoffrey Gorer, 39, anthropological researcher of Yale's Institute of Human Relations, now doing secret research in Washington for the British Government. He places great importance on the severe toilet training of Japanese infants.
The Twig Is Bent. A Japanese baby's toilet training begins at four months, and is likely to be the most painful experience of his life. He is held out over the balcony or road at frequent intervals. For every lapse, he is ferociously punished—by his mother's scoldings (in a tone of horror and disgust), by shaking, sometimes by beating. Training is made more difficult by the fact that Japanese babies are habitually overfed (which Gorer thinks may account for Japanese grownups' lack of interest in food and ability to get along on small rations). Nonetheless, a baby is almost invariably perfectly housebroken by the time he can toddle.
His infancy is marked by many other restrictions and frustrations. At six months, he is forcibly taught to bow respectfully. From birth to the age of two, he spends most of his waking hours slung on his mother's back, where he is cramped and jounced by her movements. In cold weather he is almost smothered under several layers of clothing. Before the end of his first year he is forced to learn to sit stiffly on his haunches. Other restraints result from the flimsy construction of Japanese houses: when a baby begins to crawl, he is held back lest he butt through the paper walls or burn himself in the charcoal fire.
To Japanese girls, growing up brings no freedom. But a Japanese boy is allowed some practice in aggression. "The male world gives orders. . . . The female world is loved, ill-treated and despised." At four, a boy attains the privilege of dominating all women, including his mother; he may insult or bite her with impunity; her only defenses are cajolery and bribery.
The Tree Inclined. Gorer thinks that this infant training, and the repressed rebellion against it, are at the root of Japanese character—devotion to ritual, neatness and order; horror of dirt (except away from home, where dirt is a gesture of contempt for foreigners); unrestrained savagery against helpless peoples; preoccupation with "face" (which Gorer traces to Japanese parents' sensitiveness to ridicule of an ill-behaved child by outsiders). The Japanese, says Gorer, do not stick together well under attack; they readily turn against a fellow countryman placed in a ridiculous position by outsiders—a fact which, he thinks, accounts for hara-kiri and the frequent changes in Japanese military leadership.
The Japanese attitude toward other nations, adds Gorer, strongly reflects certain family attitudes—they divide all societies into male and female and act accordingly. In the 19th Century, when they were busy copying Western manners, they considered the U.S. and Britain male. Then, thanks to Anglo-Saxon nonresistance to Japanese aggression, the Japanese reversed their opinion of the Western powers' sex. Pearl Harbor and the later U.S. "weakness" in declaring Manila an open city reinforced the Japs' notion. What Japan needs to become a cooperative member of world society, according to Gorer, is less domestic discipline, more virile discipline from outside.