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Japanese Childrearing: Two Generations of Scholarship. David W. Shwalb & Barbara J. Shwalb (Eds.). New York: The Guilford Press. 1996. 323 pp. ISBN 1-57230-081-7. $45.00 cloth.
The title, Japanese Childrearing, drew me in. Here at last, I thought, is the book I have been looking for, a storehouse of information about how Japanese view their children. I hoped that the puzzling and sometimes troubling situations I had observed involving Japanese children and their parents over the past 45 years would be elucidated.
I would gain insight into why, for example, the hospitable young Japanese mother I tutored would allow her 3-year-old son to bash into me repeatedly with his tricycle as his mother and I sat on the floor of their living room trying to have an English lesson.
I now realize I should have paid more attention to the second part of the title,...