Book Review: Far East: Twelve Doors to Japan
| Author | Thomas R. H. Havens |
| Published date | 01 September 1966 |
| Date | 01 September 1966 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/002070206602100329 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
392
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
tion
could
be
known,
the
British government
might
have
become
in-
volved
in
the French
approach
to
Mussolini
which
Churchill
rightly
regarded
as
futile
in
itself
and
most
dangerous
to
national
unity
and
the
distant
hope
of
ultimate
victory.
Halifax
was
again
fortunate
in
living
down
the
initial
mistakes
of
his
years
as
Ambassador
in
Wash-
ington.
Lord
Birkenhead's
account
of
these
years
is
good,
but
he
shows
that
Halifax's
position
was
never
altogether
comfortable.
His
relations
with
Roosevelt
(and
Hopkins)
were
excellent,
but
when
Churchill
came
to
the
United
States,
he
and
the President
tended to
ignore
the
existence
of
the
Ambassador,
In
his
last
years
Halifax
retired
to
the
country
life
which
he
had
always
left
with
reluctance
for
public
affairs.
In spite
of his
very
great
personal
attractiveness
and
sense of
duty
one
may
doubt
whether,
except
in
his
Indian
viceroyalty
future
historians
will
regard
him
as
intellectually
fitted
for
the
high
offices
which
he
held.
Oxford
SIR
LLEWELYN
WOODWARD
Far
East
TWELVE
DOORS
TO
JAPAN.
By
John
Whitney
Hall
and
Richard
K.
Beards-
ley
1965.
(New
York:
Toronto:
McGraw-Hill.
xxi,
649pp.
$14.40)
One
of
the
lingering
anomalies
of
"non-Western"
studies
is
the
notion
that
the
specialist
should
know
everything
about
his geographical
area
of
concentration. The
public expects
it;
only
the
largest
academic
institutions,
corporations, and
foundations
can
afford
not
to
demand
it.
Accordingly
the
University
of
Michigan
has
for
years
induced
its
fledgling
Japan
specialists via
the
"Central Integrated
Course,
a
year
long polyglot
derived
from
various scholarly
disciplines
which deal
with
Japan.
Twelve
Doors
to
Japan
is
an
outgrowth
of
this
approach.
This
book
seeks
to
provide
introductory
information
about
Japan
to
the
uninitiated
and
to
familiarize
students
with
the
several
disciplines
which
relate
to
Japan:
the
"twelve
doors"
of
geography
cultural
anthro-
pology
history language,
literature,
the
visual
arts,
religion
and
philosophy,
personality
psychology
education,
politics,
law,
and
economics.
First,
it
is
well
to
note
that
the
authors are
eminent
scholars
both
of
Japan
and
of
their
respective
disciplines. They
have
created
a
student's
book,
not
a
scholar's,
that
is
a
treasure
trove
of
useful
reference
information
for
the
reader
who
uses
the
unusually
complete
index.
An
excellent
selected
bibliography
accompanying
each
chapter
adds
to the
book's
usefulness.
Perhaps
the
best
chapters
are
those
treating
relatively
unfamiliar
aspects
of
Japan, for
example, geography
cultural
anthropology
personality
psychology and
law
Too
frequently
however,
the
chapters
provide
mere gross
sketches
of
our
knowledge
about
Japanese history
literature, or
economics
(as
the
authors readily
admit)
and
at
the
same time
they
fail
to
pinpoint
the
contributions
of
the
scholarly
disciplines
to
our
understanding
of
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