Takeo Doi



Takeo Doi (土居 健郎) was a Japanese academic, psychoanalyst and author.

Early life
Doi was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1920. He was a graduate of the University of Tokyo.

Career
Doi taught there from 1971 to 1980 and then at the International Christian University in Tokyo from 1980 to 1982.

Doi was known for his influential explanation of contemporary Japanese society in the work The Anatomy of Dependence, published in 1971, which focused extensively on the cause and effects of the Japanese cultural behavior, amae. The Anatomy of Dependence was described by Harvard professor emeritus Ezra Vogel as "the first book by a Japanese trained in psychiatry to have an impact on Western psychiatric thinking." Others critiqued Doi's theories as merely a variety of nihonjinron.

In 1986, Doi published a further book, The Anatomy of Self, that expanded on his previous analysis of the concept of amae by a deeper examination of the distinctions between honne and tatemae (inner feelings and public display); uchi (home) and soto (outside); and omote (front) and ura (rear) and suggests that these constructs are important for understanding the Japanese psyche as well as Japanese society.

Doi died aged 89 in 2009.

Selected works

 * The Anatomy of Dependence, 1971.
 * The Psychological World of Natsume Sōseki, Harvard University Press, 1976, ISBN 978-0-674-72116-6
 * The Anatomy of Self, 1986.