When asked why I chose Japanese, I have come up with a variety of mocking answers.
- “Spanish is too easy”
- “I hear Japanese people like Blondes”
- “I’ve always wanted to call someone sensei but have never wanted to take karate”
The truth is I wanted different. Everybody seemed to be taking Spanish or French. I was bored with the old American infatuation with Europe. I wanted something new and Japan seemed “new.” The irony is that many Asian civilizations are older, if not the same age as Europe, including Japan. Moreover, in some ways Japan is similar to Europe. Japan is and was part of the old regime of imperialistic powers,seeing mainland Asia the same way a dog sees an unattended pot roast. It was decimated in WW2 and then it had an economic “miracle”, not unlike Germany. Japan now suffers problems similar to post-colonializing nations, a rapidly aging population, racism, and unemployment. Japan, however, is an Asian county, not a European one. That makes its identity all the more complex, the only Asian imperialist country of the 20th century.
Writing about this conundrum is something I enjoy because it’s all about balancing contradictions and trying to reconcile the 本音 [honne], the deeper truth or “core sound” with the 立前, [tatemae], the surface appearance or what “stands behind”. I say this when the pictures I’m showing here are part of that “tatemae”, Japan as a high-tech metropolis, Japan as a sanctuary for nature.Writing about culture is difficult because it is writing about changes and multiple influences. You can make no absolute statements. You can’t do an experiment to prove your point. You have to separate how a people, defines themselves, what their culture “actually” is, and how a people’s self-definition reflects on them. It teaches you not to take anything for granted and ask questions. Writing about culture helps you expand your perspective, think critically, and be more observant of your own culture. This process has made me a more thoughtful writer.
On this site, you can find a paper where I attempted to tackle a topic in Asian Culture; I’m not sure how well someone who hadn’t taken the class will recieve it and it covers a pretty obscure topic (Early Taoism in China) but if you want to learn about demonic bureaucrats, take a look! In all seriousness, I chose to include it because it tackles complex stuff about a different world view, which happens a lot in Asian Studies and has helped me develop my writing skills.