In 1955, the eminent mythologist Joseph Campbell came to Japan and stayed for five months. Author of "The Hero With a Thousand Faces," he would bring the study of comparative religions to a new level of sophistication and earn even wider fame with the 1988 series of television interviews, "The Power of Myth."
Fifty years old and, in a way, just beginning his career, he arrived in Tokyo alone and enthusiastic. He had come from India, and Japan always appears more Asian when approached from what the country itself would perhaps call its "back door." Campbell thus compared Japan's Asian aspect (much more apparent in 1955) with that of India.
Japan "has understood better than modern India the final import of the Indian doctrine of nonduality. The Indian psyche is locked in duality. . . . The Japanese, on the other hand, understand how to rock with the waves. [sic]. The relative world is relative and the transcendent, transcendent."