Priests and Warriors Lecture 4: October 1, 2003
Understanding Culture A whole way of life vs. partial representations –Language –Day-to-day life –Historical currents –Aesthetic concerns –Unspoken hegemonies –Competing ideologies –Body cultures
Example: The Tea Ceremony
“The Japanese National Character” seven deadly cliches –economic animals –selfless groupies –deferential subordinates –homogenous society –Zen aesthetes –inscrutable character –imitators not innovators loyal samurai...?
Fallacies of Culture as National Character essentializing –“inherently Japanese” ethnocentric –they are what we are not homogenizes variety in everyday life Garo, avant garde manga
What is culture? national character refined accomplishment culture as tradition compared to an anthropological view of culture –conventional – contingent – contested Forest scenes in Princess Mononoke
How understand a foreign culture? fieldwork –participant-observation –interviewing –everyday life hanami (cherry blossom viewing) –reverence for nature, or –drunken karaoke w/ friends ethnography = “a commitment to the actual”
Anthropological View of Culture conventional –language –system of ideologies –everyday practices contingent –historical changes –institutional forces contested –power / resistance –social categories Rhymester: samurai B-Boys
Classical age of Japan (6th-12th c.) Nara Heian court in Kyoto political stability & Buddhism literacy (kanji from China, kana by women) dueling aesthetics as political power see also Totman (1981) Japan Before Perry
Warring states period ( ) local warlords (daimyô) samurai (historical change) –small #, stable, elite (early) –large #, complex,commoners (late) shifting centers of power –Kamakura –late 1200s Mongols invade (fail) –Muromachi etc. Religion moves to the masses –Zen as contrast to worldly temples Yukio MISHIMA, 20th c. novelist, posing as a samurai
Tokugawa Period ( ) Shogun rule Edo (Tokyo) –TOKUGAWA Ieyasu samurai bureaucrats rigid class structure –samurai, farmers, artisans, merchants but power shifts to merchants and rise of mercantile culture Himeji Castle near Osaka
Meiji Restoration Commodore Perry “Black Ships” Reformers “restore” Meiji Emperor Rapid moves to modernize selected from Western models Imperial aggression begins in 20th century Izumo Shrine, the Emperor as living god of Shintô religion
Samurai discussion
Religion in Japan This-worldly benefits (genze riyaku) "Born Shinto, die Buddhist" Complex relationship between practice and belief Buddhist priests at prayer
Ethnicity and Religion Links between kami and the people Imperial line People can become kami Amaterasu, Sun Goddess and progenitor of Imperial line