Japan Isn’t a Painting in a Museum

Japan Isn’t a Painting in a Museum

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Japan as a painting in the museum
Why Westerners who treat Japanese culture as a finished, unchanging product need to learn more about Japanese history - and about life in modern Japan.

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 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 i…

Hosts

Jay Allen – Publisher, Unseen Japan. Japan nerd. White. Bald. Old-ish. Resides in Seattle and (occasionally) Tokyo.

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

"The whole notion of a united Japan goes back to the Meiji era. It goes back to the late 1800s – and that's as far as it goes." – Jay Click To Tweet

“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

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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
  • 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

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