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"The Chrysanthemum and the Sword" is the fifth episode of the fourth season of the American television drama series Mad Men, and the forty fourth overall episode of the series. It was written by Erin Levy and directed by Lesli Linka Glatter. It originally aired on the AMC channel in the United States on August 22, 2010.

Plot

It's now March 1965. Pete Campbell reports to the partners of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce that the Honda Motorcycle Corporation is unhappy with their current agency, Grey, and has set up a meeting with them. Roger Sterling, a veteran of the Pacific theater of World War II, refuses to do business with the Japanese, but the other partners agree to pursue Honda while keeping Roger out of the loop. Meanwhile, creative director Ted Chaough of CGC, who sees himself as an upcoming rival to Don Draper, has already picked up two of SCDP's most recently lost clients and has his sights on Honda as well.

Honda's representatives visit SCDP's offices, but Roger discovers the carefully planned meeting and sabotages it, insulting the Japanese delegation to their face. Afterward, Don and Pete are furious with Roger, with Don agreeing with Pete that Roger is trying to preserve his indispensable status at SCDP through Lucky Strike's unchallenged client primacy. Bert Cooper and Joan Harris both independently advise Roger to bite the bullet so that SCDP can still have a chance to win the competition for Honda's business. Don conceives of a plan where SCDP will pretend to shoot a lavish Honda motorcycle commercial to win the account (against the rules set for the competition by Honda, which stipulated no finished work in the final presentation), allowing details of the shoot to leak to Ted at CGC so that he will try to outdo their ad. At the presentation, Don tells the Japanese that he is withdrawing SCDP from consideration, letting them know that he considered the contest dishonorable because Honda had entertained a bid from a rival agency (CGC) that broke the rules with a finished ad, and paying them back with $3,000 from his personal account. The Japanese are ashamed with themselves and impressed with Don, and ultimately Pete learns that they were never planning to leave Grey but that SCDP now will have first shot at marketing Honda's upcoming line of automobiles. Pryce is uneasy with Don's tactics, but ultimately praises his good work.

Meanwhile, on an evening when Don has custody of his two older children, Sally cuts her own hair "to look pretty" when the babysitter, Don's neighbor Phoebe, is not paying attention. Betty Francis is furious with Don and Sally, and becomes angry with Sally again when the 10-year-old girl is caught masturbating at a friend's house during a sleepover. Henry Francis and Betty decide to have Sally see a child psychologist, Dr. Edna Keener. Don shares a bottle of sake with Dr. Faye Miller and confides about his inner conflict on fatherhood, as she reveals that she is not actually married but pretends to be in order to ward off men's advances. When first meeting the psychologist, Betty discloses some of her own insecurities and Dr. Edna asks to meet with Betty in one session each month, ostensibly to report on Sally's progress.

Cultural references

The title of the episode is a direct reference to The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture, an influential 1946 study of Japan by American anthropologist Ruth Benedict written at the invitation of the U.S. Office of War Information in order to understand and predict the behavior of the Japanese in World War II by reference to a series of contradictions in traditional culture. The book was influential in shaping American ideas about Japanese culture during the occupation of Japan, and popularized the distinction between guilt cultures and shame cultures.

References

1. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-bradley/imad-meni-review-another_b_694092.html
2. Ezra F. Vogel, Foreword, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1989)

External links

• "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword" at AMC
• "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword" at IMDb
• Template:Tv.com episode
• Mad MEn 4.5 on Kritik

• Mad Men episodes
• 2010 television episodes