The Japanese psychology of resignation, akirame, and the writings of Kawabata

Abstract

The concept of resignation carries widely divergent meanings in the cultural contexts of Western and Eastern experiences. Whereas the Western perspective of resignation implies a negative, impoverished state of self-assertion, the Eastern perspective contains wider and more complex meanings, among which is that resignation is a virtue to be cultivated. Using the writings of the Nobel Prize winner in Literature Yasunari Kawabata, akirame, the Eastern, specifically Japanese, concept of resignation, will be examined for its multilayered psychological and cultural meanings. In addition, from Kawabata’s writing and biographical information, I demonstrate how the Western psychoanalytic concept of Oedipal conflict relates to and manifests in the Eastern psychology of resignation, bridging both Eastern and Western cultures to elucidate underlying, universal human conflicts.

Key words:

• resignation
• acceptance
• Oedipal conflict

Notes

1 All translations of extracts from Kawabata, 1968 are this author's own.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nobuko Y. Meaders

Author

Nobuko Y. Meaders, LCSW, is a psychoanalyst, faculty member, training analyst, and president of the Postgraduate Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, New York. Born and educated in Kobe, Japan, she has studied and lived in the United States of America since 1965. In addition to conference papers and articles on immigration, trans-cultural identity, and cross cultural therapy issues, her publications include a chapter in Immigrant experiences: Personal narrative and psychological analysis, edited by Paul Elovitz and Charlotte Kahn (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1977), and a chapter in Watashiwa Naze Counselor ni nattanoka [Why did I become a counselor?], edited by Totaro Ichimaru (Sogensha, Osaka, 2003).