What is culture? Does culture ever stop evolving? And who gets to define a country’s culture? A recent anti-Islamic comment on a story about Muslim burials in Japan’s Ooita Prefecture sparked an intense discussion on the evolution of culture.
In this episode, co-host Sachiko Ishikawa and I talk about how the need some in the West seem to have of defining a “static” conception of Japan that never changes or evolves. We discuss how modern Japan is itself a product of cultural evolution, and how some things the world considers “Japanese” – e.g., Zen Buddhism – were once considered “foreign” and “barbarian”.
Japan Is Not a Painting in a Museum
What is culture? Does culture ever stop evolving? And who gets to define a country’s culture? A recent anti-Islamic comment on a story about Muslim burials in Japan’s Ooita Prefecture sparked an intense discussion on the evolution of culture.
Hosts
Jay Allen – Publisher, Unseen Japan. Japan nerd. White. Bald. Old-ish. Resides in Seattle and (occasionally) Tokyo.
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Sachiko Ishikawa – Japanese Feminist and activist. Co-host of the Unseen Japan Crowdcast. Resides in Tokyo. (Read Sachiko’s piece on Japan’s Flower Demos)
Quotable Quotes
“They’re essentially treating Japanese culture like a painting in a museum. ‘It’s done, it’s finished, it’s on the wall, don’t f*cking touch it! Don’t put your grubby hands on it, don’t change it!” – Jay
“Who decides ‘What is Japan’? No single Japanese person – not even Suga – decides what Japan is.” – Sachiko
“What gets to me is that people could Google – but they just write something that’ll cause a reaction. Why don’t you take like two minutes of your life and educate yourself before you throw a whole community under the bus?” – Sachiko
Show Notes
- Thread: https://twitter.com/UnseenJapanSite/status/1322176286387707904
- I KNEW someone was going to say something anti-Islamic after I posted this
- Sat on the article for a week or so before I posted it (mostly for accuracy’s sake)
- Was a little surprised at the speed though…
- So many levels you can hit this on
- Rin on history of Muslims in Japan – https://twitter.com/MissRinAelia/status/1322301215330295808
- According to JP wikipedia, exposure goes back to the Nara era (connection to China through the Silk Road) and via Kublai Khan
- https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E3%81%AE%E3%82%A4%E3%82%B9%E3%83%A9%E3%83%A0%E7%A4%BE%E4%BC%9A
- Awareness through the Edo era
- First mass group of Muslims were Tartars coming in 1917 to escape the Soviet regime
- So long as Japan has immigration and naturalization processes, it’ll have Muslims!
- What IS “Japanese culture”, anyway?
- Jason’s tweet: https://twitter.com/JasnTru/status/1322190368541044736
- So much of Japanese culture comes from…not Japan
- Is Buddhism “Japanese”?
- Buddhism: 神仏習合 (Shinto/Buddhist syncretism)
- But Meiji considered it foreign and introduced the 神仏分離令 to break them apart
- Other efforts to do this also happened throughout Japanese history
- It was an utter failure – government gave up in 1872
- As we’ve discussed before, “Japan” not even a national entity until the mythmaking of the Meiji era
- Sengoku Jidai – 127 years of war!!
- Even under the Shogun, the daimyo were independent nation states – Shogun worried about them becoming too powerful and overthrowing the central government
- Sayeed’s rights as a citizen
- Japanese constitution guarantees freedom of religion – and the subject of that story is a naturalized citizen
- Pretty sure if this is permanently blocked, it could go to court on constitutional grounds
- Again, if Japan doesn’t want that, it wouldn’t have allowed it in the first place
- No great movement in Japan to eliminate freedom of religion from the Constitution
- That freedom, btw, goes all the way back to the Meiji constitution – not just an invention of the Allies during post-WWII era