Ronald Dore

0:00:05 Introduction; parents; father worked for Southern Railways first as a cleaner then finally as a train driver; bright child, went to Poole Grammar School; mother was particularly keen on having a good education; while in the sixth form Japanese war began and board of education recruiting students for languages: Turkish, Persian, Chinese and Japanese; encouraged to apply; accepted and chose Turkish with second choice Chinese; on arrival at School of Oriental and African Studies, found I was on the Japanese course with thirty others; billeted with Dulwich College who arranged a few extra lessons, otherwise dedicated to learning Japanese

0:08:28 Were not taught anything formally about Japanese culture; learning to write characters was fun but acquiring fluency in grammatical structure not easy; this course did not lead to a degree; when we finished and went to the army I tripped and got a swollen knee and taken to hospital; got behind and others sent off to India in 1944; while waiting to be sent abroad brought back to S.O.A.S. to teach Japanese until demobilized in 1947; during that time took an external degree in Japanese; first student to take degree in modern Japanese studies; teachers included a newspaper correspondent married to an English woman, Frank Daniels who had taught English in Japan was Professor, and his Japanese wife; Otto van der Sprenkel marked my essays

0:13:11 Got a travelling scholarship on basis of final exam and applied for a Japanese visa; in summer 1947 went to Cambridge to catalogue libraries of Sir Ernest Mason Satow and W.G. Aston, two pioneers of Japanese studies; decided to study schools and education in Tokugawa Japan

0:15:00 Finally got to Japan beginning of 1950; from diary note first impression of Kobe harbour; went ashore 21st March, day of Spring Festival; streets decorated with Japanese flags, symptom that Japanese recovering self-confidence; to those on left the flag was a symbol of militancy; became a subject of much debate until very recently

0:18:20 Had gone to work on Tokugawa education, a thesis already started in England; also wanted to become a lecturer in Japanese institutions; Frank Daniels had designed the course which he had thought of in terms of Japanese folk-lore; 1949 took course at L.S.E from Tom Marshall in social institutions and from Norman Hotov?? in social psychology, so had some notion of sociology; in Japan registered in sociology department as a graduate student; there conceived of doing a social survey of the ward in which living; had been smuggled into Japan as cultural advisor to British Embassy, a job which later became head of British Council; lived there for six months before a student visa available; George Fraser head of mission had asked what I intended to do, can’t do a “Middletown” alone, but why not? This first put idea in mind; went to see a couple of American sociologists, Herb Passon and John Bennett; asked for hypothesis

0:23:45 Memories of Masao Maruyama; Maruyama “industry” since his death; he had tuberculosis after the war and had operation which deflated one lung; was in the army and in Hiroshima when the atom bomb dropped; destined to become professor of political science at Tokyo

0:29:40 Kawashima Takioshi, on sociology of law, very influential at that time, and Kato Shuichi, a good friend; 1960 at an American inspired conference on modernisation just after riots in Tokyo over extension of security treaty; Kawashima, Maruyama and Kato there and I argued that security treaty was a good thing as it prevented Japan from rearming; Maruyama had long term perspective and was the great left-wing leader at the time

0:34:00 Japanese behaviour during war in China; barbarous period; individual cruelty but perhaps less than China suggests; Nanking account by German head of Siemans; picture of war primarily from Tokyo war crimes trials and Chinese version exaggerated awfulness of Japanese behaviour; Russo-Japanese war less awful behaviour but in Great East Asian war wanted to destroy the Western world that had rejected them; contrast between colonial regime in Taiwan and Korea striking; Taiwanese more or less accepted Japanese dominance but resistance in Korea

0:39:35 Don’t know what people mean when they say it is impossible to understand Japanese; don’t find it more difficult to intuit what Japanese are really thinking than do in Britain, having learnt the language well and talking with Japanese over time; great diversity of people as in Britain

0:42:11 Keys to the culture impossible to give; can only advise that you soak yourself in Japan; enormous difference between Japanese as pictured by Soseki Natsume and now, much greater than in English fiction; transformations since 1950’s was one of gradual entrenchment of patterns of institutions – government, education, corporate institutions; the Thatcherite-Reagonite changes only started in the 1990’s and hasn’t got very far

0:48:08 Convergence between Western capitalism and Japan may happen but depends on American economy; if the dollar plunges then people who are trying to change the pattern of Japanese economics along American lines will lose credibility; fewer and fewer economic transactions conducted face to face diminishes the role of trust and legal enforcement of contract; internal evolution but the dominant force is imitation, following the admired American model; inspiration of modernizers was dynamism of Silicone Valley and the enormous profits of American corporations; admired the perceived transparency of American corporations; collapse of Silicone Valley and Enron and Worldcom have undermined this belief

0:53:00 Mixed model in China in which American model is dominating but there is a common underlying ethical culture; also life-time employment model in ex-State organizations in China and heavy public ownership of industry; much will depend on strategic relationship between China and U.S.A.; plausible scenario which puts China and U.S.A. in conflict in the same way as U.S.A. and Russia were; China has enormous intellectual resources; is expanding its science and technology universities; Chinese resentment that U.S.A. can fly spy planes outside Chinese territorial waters but Chinese can’t get near the U.S. coast, this imbalance produces a similar feeling to that felt in Japan by Washington and London naval treaties before the war; current aim of American policy to prevent any other rival power makes it more likely that electronic warfare will escalate; China does have the possibility with its intellectual resources of making the Pentagon think it is a serious rival; tension between U.S.A. and China will put Japan in a very difficult position; in Japan a majority of top businessmen would have no hesitation in throwing in their lot with the U.S. and continuing the present security arrangement, but there is resentment too; among the minority there is still a feeling of kinship with China

1:01:05 Of own books think the most original was ‘Diploma Disease’; theme of book is the bureaucratisation of society and mechanisms for social selection become entirely focused on educational institutions; started through going to Sri Lanka and observing that only half of the annual crop of graduates could ever get a job. They were taking the jobs previously done by A level students etc.; more scholarly work was ‘British Factory – Japanese Factory’; most readable was ‘Shinohata’

1:08:38 Memories of Ernest Gellner; had just joined L.S.E. in 1949 and went to his lectures on political philosophy; became colleagues in 1960 at the L.S.E.; enlightenment thinker is a good description of him; wrote in haste but inspirationally; best book was the one on nationalism

1:15:45 Work of David Glass influenced me at the beginning and got me interested in population studies; thought most highly of Max Weber’s work; David Reisman also very interesting, particularly ‘Lonely Crowd’ which influenced my thinking on Japanese society; Homans also insightful, and have great respect for Gary Runciman.