I think that, if I were Japanese, I would dislike most of the things that non-Japanese people write aboutJapan. At the time, twenty years ago, when I was writing The Inheritors and feeling annoyed with American ethnologies of France, I recognized a similar annoyance in the criticism that sociologists, notably, Hiroshi Miami and Tetsuro Watsuji, had mounted against Ruth Benedict's famous book The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. Thus, I shall not talk to you about the Japanese sensibility, nor about the mystery or miracle. I shall talk about a country I know fairly well, not because I was born there and speak its language, but because I have studied it a great deal, namely, France. Does this mean that, in doing so, I shall confine myself to the particularity of a single society and shall not talk in any way about Japan? I do not think so. I think, on the contrary, that by presenting the model of social space and symbolic space that I have built up for the particular case of France, I shall still be speaking to you about Japan (just as, speaking elsewhere, I would still be speaking about Germany or the United States). And in order that you fully understand this discourse which concerns you and which may perhaps even seem to you, when I speak about the French homo academicus, full of personal allusions, I would like to urge you to go beyond a particularizing reading that, besides being an excellent defense mechanism