The Chrysanthemum and the Sword by Ruth Benedict
Published 1946 · 324 pages · 85,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Anthropology & Folklore, History, Nonfiction, Politics & Society
How hard is The Chrysanthemum and the Sword to read?
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword scores 34 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 35 out of 100
- Anthropological and Japanese cultural terminology.
- Sentence structure: 35 out of 100
- Abstraction: 45 out of 100
- Abstract cultural patterns derived from specific observations.
- Information density: 50 out of 100
- Dense with cultural analysis and examples.
- Narrative indirection: 12 out of 100
- Thematic analysis with illustrative examples.
- Symbolic density: 22 out of 100
- The chrysanthemum and the sword as organizing symbols.
- Ironic distance: 12 out of 100
- Analytical, detached anthropological perspective.
- Resolution withholding: 100 out of 100
- Proposes a coherent cultural analysis.
- Structural complexity: 28 out of 100
- Thematic chapters analyzing different aspects of Japanese culture.
How The Chrysanthemum and the Sword is regarded
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword holds a literary regard score of 55 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.