Chie Nakane (中根 千枝, Nakane Chie, November 30, 1926 – October 12, 2021)[citation needed] was a Japanese anthropologist and Professor Emerita of Social Anthropology at the
University of Tokyo.[1]
Education and career
Nakane was born in Tokyo and spent her teenage years in Beijing.[2] She graduated from
Tsuda College in 1947 and then completed her graduate work specializing in
China and
Tibet at the University of Tokyo in 1952. In 1953–1957, she did fieldwork in India and studied in the
London School of Economics. Nakane served as Visiting Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the
University of Chicago at the invitation of
Sol Tax from 1959 to 1960 and as Visiting Lecturer in the School of Oriental and African Studies at the
University of London at the invitation of
Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf in 1960–1961.[3]
Nakane's work focuses on cross-cultural comparisons of social structures in Asia, notably Japan, India, and China. She is internationally known for her bestselling book,
Japanese Society, which has been translated into 13 languages. In this book, Nakane characterizes Japan as "a vertical society" where human relations are based on "place" (shared space) instead of "attribute" (qualification).
Publications
Books
Nakane, C. (1967). Kinship and economic organization in rural Japan.London:
Athlone Press.
Nakane, C. (1972). Human relations in Japan: Summary translation of “Tateshakai no Ningen Kankei.”Tokyo:
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan.
Nakane, C., & Chiao, C. (Eds.). (1992). Home bound: Studies in East Asian society—Papers presented at the symposium in honor of the 80th birthday of Professor Fei Xiaotong. Tokyo: Center for East Asian Cultural Studies and Toyo Bunko.
Nakane, C., & Oishi, S. (Eds.). (1990). Tokugawa Japan: The social and economic antecedents of modern Japan. Tokyo:
University of Tokyo Press.
Articles
Nakane, C. (1964). Logic and the smile: When Japanese meet Indians. Japan Quarterly, 11(4), 434–438.
Nakane, C. (1965). Towards a theory of Japanese social structure: A unilateral society. The Economic Weekly, 17(5–7), 197–216.
Nakane, C. (1972). Social background of Japanese in Southeast Asia. The Developing Economics, 10(2), 115–125.
Nakane, C. (1975). A cross-cultural look at organizational behavior with particular attention to the difference between Japan and the United States. Linguistic Communications, 15, 95–106.
Nakane, C. (1975). Fieldwork in India: A Japanese experience. In A. Beteille & T. N. Madan (Eds.), Encounter and experience: Personal accounts of fieldwork (pp. 13–26).
Honolulu, HI:
University of Hawaii Press.
Nakane, C. (1982). The effect of cultural tradition on anthropologists. In H. M. Fahim (Ed.), Indigenous anthropology in non-Western countries: Proceedings of a Burg Wartenstein symposium (pp. 52–60).
Durham, NC:
Carolina Academic Press.