docile industrial workers and driven white-collar "salaryrnen," bound together their unstinting loyalty to Japan, Inc.
What this picture ignores is the variety within Japa- nese society, a society that both sustains and is sus- tained by ancient cultural traditions. Anthropologist David Plath here discusses the difficulty Westerners have long had in separating images from a more com- plicated reality. His colleagues look at the various worlds that constitute contemporary Japan. Theodore...