Erick Mead

You did, perhaps the humor was misplaced. Bergamini is the closest I have to primary sources, in Kido's diaries, on matters involving Hirohito's contemporaneous statements or activities.

Actually it was not intended to be personal, but to show something cultural, and, it seems to me, very much in Hofstede's way of thinking -- that certain cultural traits (vice personal effects) engendered by a war of this nature lost by a very romantic, and yet very violent-minded people are understandable and indeed in many respects comparable to a certain circumstance in American cultural history, (some would say the pivotal circumstance) giving Americans, especiually Southerners more of an affinity for how the Japanese felt and dealt with their feelings post-war than many would recognize, and how their descendants have dealt with it since.

A misfortune and a personal loss for which I am gravely sorry to have caused any unneeded reminder.

But the point of the discussion, if I have your purpose right, is the Japanese ura sensibility as it relates to aikido which you (quite rightly) see as entangled with their own mythology, the war and the proceeding war mythology following its loss. Understanding the ura sensibility before and after means that you need insight into what is not often openly addressed. your position makes you uniquely qualified to find things addressed in other ways or in certain settings perhaps more openly. But if a parallel exists that was played out more openly it may disclose things that operate in that other cultural setting -- even if hidden in another setting.

That same process and those same elements played out here, While circumstantially different and the causes for simultaneous honor, courage and deep moral shame in the fight are very different, in each case the mixture of those elements are present, and the sociological parallels are close, and the cultural memory remains very strong in a particular segment of society that nurtures its memory.

Hofstede takes an organic developmental and taxonomic approach to organization and cultures and so it should not be a matter of surprise that I might offer the parallels in our historical development as being of use in understanding a culture that is not as close as that of our two English-speaking peoples, in Sir Winston's phrase. As a historical matter that part of our history underlies an important part of the reasons and instincts we have shown in dealing more charitably perhaps than the conflict would have justified with those nations the United States has defeated in war.