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Chie Nakane is a respected scholar who has spent a lifetime studying human societies and chronicling her theories.
One of the first women to graduate from the University of Tokyo, Nakane was the University’s first woman professor and, to date, the first and only woman member of the Japan Academy. Now a professor emeritus, Nakane traces her profound interest in social anthropology to her teenage years when she returned to Japan after living in China and was struck by the cultural and social differences between the two countries.
She embarked on a career investigating Asian societies, including those of Japan, India, China and her specialist area, Tibet. In 1987, Nakane won a Japan Foundation Award for this comparative research.
Nakane’s incisive study of Japan is presented in her seminal book, "Japanese Society", which offers insight into what distinguishes Japanese society from other complex societies. Published in 1970, the book characterises Japan as being built on a vertical organisational principle where a hierarchical order based on rank prevails. "The current social and economic upheaval is beginning to pry open our closed society," says Nakane. "But this situation will not entirely transform the character of the Japanese group system."
Influenced by years of studying and teaching abroad, Nakane is an independent thinker who today continues her fieldwork and is actively involved in improving the environment and in cooperating in aid programmes for developing countries. |
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