问答题 It is interesting to reflect for a moment upon the differences in the areas of moral feeling and standards in the peoples of Japan and the United States. (81) Americans divide these areas somewhat rigidly into spirit and flesh, the two beings in opposition in the life of a human being. Ideally spirit should prevail but all too often it is the flesh that does prevail. (82) The Japanese make no such division, at least between one as good and the other as evil. They believe that a person has two souls: one is the "gentle" soul; the other is the "rough" soul. Sometimes the person uses his gentle soul; sometimes he must use his rough soul. He does not favor his gentle soul; neither does he fight his rough soul. (83) Human nature in itself is good, Japanese philosophers insist, and a human being does not need to fight any part of himself. He has only to learn how to use each soul properly at appropriate times. Virtue for the Japanese consists in fulfilling one's obligations to others. (84) Happy endings, either in life or in fiction, are neither necessary nor expected, since the fulfillment of duty provides the satisfying end, whatever the tragedy it inflicts. And duty includes a person's obligations to those who have conferred benefits upon him and to himself as an individual of honor. He develops through this double sense of duty a self-discipline which is at once permissive and rigid, depending upon the area in which it is functioning.
The process of acquiring this self-discipline begins in childhood. Indeed, one may say it begins at birth—how early is the Japanese child given his own identity! (85) If I were to define in a word the attitude of the Japanese toward their children I would put it in one succinct word "respect." Love? Yes, abundance of love warmly expressed from the moment he is put to his mother's breast. For mother and child this nursing of her child is important psychologically.