日本人の恩意識の構造I

抄録

Purpose. “On” is a very difficult concept to translate into foreign languages. Japanese English dictionaries assign kindness, favor, love, obligation, or indebtedness to this word, but they are not broad enough to cover all the forms of “on”. Before the termination of Pacific war, loyalty towards emperor and filial piety supported the every structure of Japanese community, and authoritarian attitude among the Japanese. But since the new Constitution become effective, these concepts have changed drastically, and the contents of “on” also is expected to change, because it has very close connection with them. With these considerations, two surveys were planned.
(I) Method. Free associations and semantic differential ratings concerning “on”, were obtained from 215 adults (male and female, their ages ranging 17-50) in Tokyo. Results. Clearly “on” has two aspects, the one is based on old-fashioned, feudalistic, one-way devotion, etc., and the other is based on universality of human nature. Older people recognize the former aspect, but regard it as more “beautiful” because of the latter aspect, and highly esteem it as a moral standard, In contrast with this, younger people show fairly negative attitude towards the former aspect.
(II) Method. Costant sum method. 100 points were assigned to 22 attributes of “on” for 19 human relations listed below. Enquetes were presented to three groups of Ss, (i) younger male, (ii) younger female, and (iii) older people. Number of Ss in each group was about 50, all living in Tokyo. Attributes were (1) true love, (2) gratitude, (3) tradition, (4) “taimen” or appearances, (5) human obligation, (6) “girl”, (7) fictitious love, (8) voluntariness, (9) social coercion, (10) friendship, (11) comradeship, (12) expectation of future guarantee, (13) benefit of others, (14) dependence on authority, (15) conscience, (16) indebtedness, (17) reverence, (18) pursuit of own benefit, (19) mutual dependence, (20) social courtesy, (21) contract, and (22) feudally. Human relations used were (1) parent-child, (2) main family-branch family, (3) parent and child in law, (4) ancestordescendant, (5) boss-henchman, (6) landlordtenant, (7) emperor-subjects, (8) masterservants, (9) guild master-apprentice, (10) trader-consumer, (11) employer-employee, (12) senior-subordinate, (13) capitalist-laborer, (14) parent company-subsidary company, (15) neighbourhood, (16) individual-society, (17) friendship, (18) teacher-pupil, and (19) godhuman beings.
Results. Data for only younger males are shown in Table 2. They are the most radical of the three groups, older people being the most conservative, and younger female lying between the two Items which were accepted positively were based on true love, gratitude, friendship, obligation, conscience, voluntariness, mutual dependence, and items which were accepted negatively were based on authority, feudality, tradition, “girl”, etc. These results are in marked contrast with the pre-war concept of “on”.