1. Priests and Warriors Lecture 4: October 1, 2003

2. 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

3. Example: The Tea Ceremony

4. “The Japanese National Character” seven deadly cliches –economic animals –selfless groupies –deferential subordinates –homogenous society –Zen aesthetes –inscrutable character –imitators not innovators loyal samurai...?

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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”

8. 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

9. Classical age of Japan (6th-12th c.) 710 - 794 Nara Heian court in Kyoto 794 -1185 - political stability & Buddhism literacy (kanji from China, kana by women) dueling aesthetics as political power see also Totman (1981) Japan Before Perry

10. Warring states period (1192 - 1600) local warlords (daimyô) samurai (historical change) –small #, stable, elite (early) –large #, complex,commoners (late) shifting centers of power –Kamakura 1192 - 1333 –late 1200s Mongols invade (fail) –Muromachi 1334 - 1573 etc. Religion moves to the masses –Zen as contrast to worldly temples Yukio MISHIMA, 20th c. novelist, posing as a samurai

11. Tokugawa Period (1600 - 1868) 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

12. Meiji Restoration 1868 1853 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

13. Samurai discussion

14. Religion in Japan This-worldly benefits (genze riyaku) "Born Shinto, die Buddhist" Complex relationship between practice and belief Buddhist priests at prayer

15. Ethnicity and Religion Links between kami and the people Imperial line People can become kami Amaterasu, Sun Goddess and progenitor of Imperial line