Japanese and Iranian Culture

Clearly neither call for limits itself to the relatively narrow range that might be inferred from the titles. They blossom out into far more ecumenic pictures of the societies they study. But, as a result of their very antithetic subjects and approaches, the two studies produce different kinds of receiptledge. In Helfgott's case the impact of the industry on Persian culture and its role in the nation's relations with the western wait adequately explained--while raising, of course, many an(prenominal) other delighting questions active the inn that exceed the scope of the study. But there is little virtuoso that the reader has come in any way to know how Iranians felt or looking somewhat their work, how they perceive the West for whom they produce these objects, or what it is like to be a carpet-maker in Iran.

Nelson, however, tries to get at more of this type of personal bailiwick. The marrow of Shinto for his subjects is the actual on which he hoped to base his deductions close to its general meanings for society. But Nelson, while he has made an interesting, positive study of the Suwa Shrine's ritual year, does non succeed in explaining the result of Shinto for contemporary lacquerese culture. In terms of the enjoin description of the close in's rituals Nelson necessarily leaves significant gaps in the reader's knowledge because it is not his purpose to provide a thorough grounding in the history of Shinto and the origins of the practices he observed. Such training is describe

Neither of these studies pretends to strive for essential objectivity or neutrality and both authors draw from their conclusions recommendations somewhat what courses Iran, and its carpet industry, and Japan, and the institution of Shinto, should follow in the future. There is, however, a significant difference in the manner in which they go about this. Nelson, for example, reassures the reader that he was once naive and stupid about Shinto practice despite his knownity with Japanese culture. thus far he asks the reader to take his current deductions more or less on faith. This is ultimately somewhat disconcerting because the prescriptive conclusions that Nelson reaches are not based strictly on the material he presents.

He discusses the ritual year at the shrine in great, and often illuminating, detail and he relates the various episodes to general themes in Japanese life. But his conclusions are based on broad trends in postindustrial Japanese society about which he provides little information. Even a reader familiar with much of Japanese culture may think that many of Nelson's deductive leaps go too far beyond the content of his study.

Nelson states at the beginning of his study that "recent political and affectionate events" have made it clear that a revival of interest in Shinto has raised a "hoard" of questions about the importance of Shinto practice in contemporary Japan and he holds that, "rather than casting about in the oceans of information relevant to Japan as a whole [he] hope[s] to prevail on _or_ upon the reader that there is no better place to feeling than into the 'life' of a contemporary Shinto shrine for issues of 'tradition,' 'modernity,' and 'individual versus group agency'(5). Nelson began by marveling at the fact that so many Japanese "feel a need to take their brand new Honda or Toyota sedan to a shrine to have it blessed originally subjecting it to the vicissitudes of city and highway driving" and other similar, seemingly mistaken forms of behavior (3). Yet
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