Cross-cultural and diversity-focused approaches in psychotherapy have become increasingly important in recent decades, and many clinicians allude to these issues when they apply psychotherapies in an actual setting. Within Asia, Japan has one of the largest psychotherapeutic cultures. Despite the fact that the Japanese life style resembles that of America, it is still regarded as significantly different in many respects and is seen as one of the representative cultures of the East.
The purpose of this paper is to cultivate understanding of the similarities and differences while discussing applicability of the Western-based family therapy to the non-Western, specifically the Japanese family. In particular, this thesis examines the applicability of Bowen family systems theory to the non-Western model of the family found in the Japanese Buddhist narrative of the Tragedy at Rajagrha.
