European Behavior

"European Behavior," from 1955, presents Western social customs and manners as an anthropological subject — the rituals of European civilization observed with the same combination of fascination and slight puzzlement that Japanese artists since the Meiji period had brought to their Western subjects. Whether depicting dining etiquette, social greeting customs, or the formalities of European domestic life, Kawakami renders these behaviors with the sympathetic humor of an artist who had studied Western culture deeply enough to appreciate both its qualities and its strangeness from a Japanese perspective.