To my regret, I don't have time to engage in this discussion as it deserves. But I would really like to plead for one or two points. First, there seem to be two discussions going on, one of which is confusing the other. The first discussion is about Kurokawa and his comments on 'culture'. The second is about whether ANY use of a/the concept of 'culture' for analysis or explanation of what happens in Japan is valid. With regard to the second, please can anyone using the term explain first what concept of culture they are defending or attacking? Without this, I for one find it very hard to find meaning in the discussion. In this respect, I applaud Jeffrey Broadbent for drawing our attention to different ways of thinking about the concept.

On the whole, I avoid the term culture because it seems to me insufficiently precise and results in this kind of 'more heat than light' discussion. And I would certainly be very cautious indeed about ideas of culture that posit it as nationally bounded or ahistorical - in fact I doubt many scholars can be found to defend such a notion these days (even though I think we have to recognise that there are often national forces that tend to shape common patterns of thinking or behaviour - such as education or media, for instance - and that habits of behaviour and thinking can be persistent over time). It seems to me much more fruitful, on the whole, to link habits of thought and behaviour to institutions of various scales and scope, rather than to nations or states. (As - I can't help saying - I tried to do in an article about education in SSJJ last year, along neo-institutionalist lines.)

Peter Cave
Lecturer in Japanese Studies
SLLC, University of Manchester
www.manchester.ac.uk/research/peter.cave/=