Review

Author(s): George Devereux

Review by: George Devereux
Source: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 60, No. 2 (Apr., 1958), pp. 400-401
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/665189
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 400 American Anthropologist [60, 1958]
developmental frame. His thesis that Confucianism, being government-minded, im-
peded the study of the natural sciences overlooks the fact that government-sponsored
astronomy and mathematics belong to the most brilliant achievements of Chinese
science. His preconceptions make him misunderstand the role that a multifaceted con-
cept of the tao played in Confucian thought and long before it. They make him ascribe
such a scientifically ambivalent attitude to Confucianism that we are greatly surprised
to find him later praising Neo-Confucianism as "essentially scientific in quality" (II,
p. 495). His attempt to present Taoism as the ideology of a political revolution, social-
ism, and primitive collectivism is irreconcilable with the great Taoist classic, the Tao-
te Ching, which instructs absolute rulers of big and small states. Needham himself ad-
mits that, by relying upon modern translations of two famous Taoist passages into
which the issue of private property was arbitrarily injected, he may be said to be util-
izing rather "forced" versions. "But I consider it worth while to run the risk of over-
stating the case, in order to redress a balance till now too heavily the other way" (II,
p. 109).
This statement symbolizes Needham's overall position. By omissions and forced
interpretations he boldly overstates a case that may be acceptable to his "guide,"
Kuo Mo-jo, but that before the forum of free inquiry is indefensible.

Nous Avons Mangg La Forit: Chronique D'Un Village Mnong Gar Hauts Plateaux du
Viet-Nam. GEORGES CONDOMINAS. Paris: Mercure de France, 1957. 493 pp., 2
maps, drawings, 40 photographs, tables. n.p.

Reviewed by GEORGE DEVEREUX, New York

During the agricultural year which began in November 1948 and ended in Decem-
ber 1949, the village of Sar Luk "ate"-cleared and cultivated-the forest near the
spirit stone G6o, an event which gave that year its name. The author chronicles the
events of the year, ranging from major regular rituals to such fortuitous events as a
case of incest culminating in a suicide. Each event is described and discussed both as
culture and as a fortuitous, unique, and irreproducible event.
Condominas wished to present the raw material from which he hopes ultimately to
derive an ethnographic account of Sar Luk's culture. The book therefore opens with a
brief outline of Mnong Gar ethnography and closes with an analytic index which en-
ables one to locate all references to some cultural item, clan, or personage. Seen in terms
of this objective, the present work is a real contribution to our still scanty knowledge of
the Moi of Viet-Nam.

Even more valuable, however, is the fact that this chronicle shows Mnong Gar
culture in action by describing the interplay between formal custom and fortuitous
event. A tiger attacks messengers sent to invite people to a feast; complex ritual prep-
arations must be interrupted to perform a tiger cursing ritual. A group is leading some
buffaloes to a neighboring village for a great sacrificial exchange when a muntjac deer
barks to their left. In principle they should immediately have returned to their village
and started out afresh. Actually, being pressed for time, they simply stopped until the
deer ceased barking and then proceeded to their destination.
Like all men, the Mnong Gar-whose culture is quite rigidly ritualistic and legal-
istic-are confronted day after day with the necessity of applying rigid general rules
to the capricious realities of life.
Had the author grasped this important implication of his data, he could have made
a major contribution to the theory of cultural functioning in real situations. Moreover,

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 Book Reviews 401

by holding on to this theoretical guide line, he would not have occasionally put the
reader in a position where he can barely see the forest for the trees.
This reservation notwithstanding, Condominas' book greatly increases our knowl-
edge of the Moi tribes and will prove to be a priceless source-book both for students of
culture in action and of the personality-in-culture. Despite its unnecessarily ponder-
ous style, the book contains many vignettes and episodes which are lively, exciting,
and exceedingly well documented.

Tokugawa Religion: The Values of Pre-Industrial Japan. ROBERT N. BELLAH. Illinois:

The Free Press, 1957, viii, 249 pp., appendices. $5.00.

Reviewed by GEORGE A. DE Vos, University of California, Berkeley

Many explanations have been sought for Japan's prodigious development from an
isolated, unknown island empire into the industrial giant of Asia in half a century.
Most observers agree in crediting the Japanese nation with a sense of energy and vital-
ity in economic and industrial development found nowhere else in Asia. The question
remains, however, what specifit blend of historical and cultural causality is necessary
to explain this unusual development.
This volume by Robert Bellah is a serious attempt to apply Max Weber's socio-
logical frame of reference as most recently developed by Talcott Parsons and others, to
an understanding of the matrix of cultural values found in the Tokugawa feudal period
immediately preceding Japan's emergence as a modern industrial power. The author
seeks to demonstrate the influence of certain religious and political value orientations
found in pre-industrial Japan on later economic development.
He cogently demonstrates how various specific Buddhist and Confucionist concepts
as modified by the Japanese culture, in addition to indigenous Shinto concepts, contain
emphases on self-restraint, productive work, and endurance in pursuit of long range
goals which are analogous to similar value orientations found embedded in what Weber
termed the Protestant ethic. Certain of these values developed by the dominant Samu-
rai warrior class came to be assimilated by the burgeoning merchant class as well as
the farmers. Under the guidance of such Tokugawa period religious movements as
Shingaku (which the author describes in some detail), the merchant as well as the
Samurai classes were psychologically "ready" for active leadership in industrializing
Japan.
Bellah also touches on, but does not examine in detail, the value orientations of the
Japanese as they helped produce a compliant but energetic and productive working
class.

Many of the internalized ethical values of the warrior Samurai emphasizing per-
sonal dedication to a cause were ideally suited to an expanding industrial nation.
Historians have described how with the abolition of the Samurai as a recognized class,
their values were spread more broadly throughout the other classes. These values were,
after the Restoration, self-consciously formulated as a code for the nation as a whole in
the interests of expanding Japanese nationalism under the term "Bushido" ("the way
of the warrior"). It is Bellah's contention, contrary to some historians, that the religious
system espoused by other classes in addition to the Samurai already expressed and re-
inforced such virtues, and that the nationalistic interpretations of "Bushido" were
actually nothing new but were a prior cause of the overthrow of the feudal Shogunate
and the restoration of the Emperor to his central position.
Bellah's discussion of the relations of the family as an institution to the religious

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