There may not be any royal road to the understanding of an alien or half-alien culture - contemporary Japan, or the Medieval West - but one path which appears to lead into the interior is the study of that culture's heroes. If we can only discover why, say, kamikaze pilots or Medieval saints have been singled out for honour, so the argument goes, the basic values of the culture which admires them will be revealed.

LRB 18 October 1984 | PDF Download