I read a book by one of the first missionaries to reach Japan in perhaps the 1600s, I believe the author was Joao Rodrigues, and the book was titled "This Island of Japon". It was interesting to me.
I looked into Japanese history some years ago, and I believe they have a much different mode of thought than westerners and even from neighboring Asian peoples.
I'm not going to toss out a long winded spiel on what I remember, but my conclusion is that they are a product of their relative isolation as an island people; a harshly rigid master and subject social system which enforced unquestioning loyalty and obedience even to willing self inflicted death, and the means native and imported to make bearable and even beautiful a life in which one couldn't share his true thoughts with closest friends while coping with a pitiless medieval police state, as well as a virtual death cult spanning over many centuries accompanying powerful clans seeking supremacy.
It was a distorted form of Bushido, way of the warrior, which made the Japanese such a formidable foe in the Pacific.
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