Japanese

's first and last urge is to lead a life unseen by others.

Kurt Singer found it so. Certainly, he wrote, ‘. . . no people could be less entitled to complain of being misunderstood, unknown, or neglected than the Japanese, whose first and last urge is to lead a life unseen by others.’ Japanese writings, he observed, suggest rather than express; traditional singing demands the repression of the voice; and ‘. . . in every gesture of daily life, in the style of conversation, in the proper form of giving a present, the rule, it seems, is how to wrap up things, ideas, and feelings.’ Wherever the Japanese people go, ‘. . . they make a network of walls and fences behind which to retire: unwritten rules, ceremonies, and taboos.’

Kurt SingerThinkers

Kurt Singer