J a p a n e s e    C u l t u r e

The Japanese have a fascination with and aesthetic appreciation - wabi - of the passing of time. They enjoy going to see cherry blossom, which marks the beginning of spring, and enjoy cherry blossom most when it is falling in clouds of pink snow; when it is at its most ephemeral. Thus it would seem that the Japanese enjoy an awareness of temporal flow and impermanence. SInce it is true that things are always changing, whereas there is a tendency to think that they are remaining the same, this makes the Japanese sound very Buddhist, very enlightened.

On other hand it might be argued that Britons who like to surround themselves with antiques, old cutlery and china, old houses, and relics of the past, are demonstrating a desire to stop time, and ignore impermanence and temporal flow.

But then it also occurred to me that, according to the central theory of this blog, Westerners are inclined to identify with their self narrative, which as Bruner (1987) emphasises usually has a temporal unfolding, a plot, a history, and are therefore quite happy to be aware of the the movement of time, and the awareness of their development and difference over time. The Japanese on the other hand might be happier to be aware of their changing "kyara" or visually cognised character, in each of several social spaces (Fujimura, 2015), but attempt to maintain temporal intransigence, very successfully often. The Japanese age really well.

And then it occurred to me that even when Japanese are being at their most impermanent, such as when they are enjoying the passing of the seasons and, quintessentially, cherry blossom, they do so situating these seasonal events within a yearly calendar that transforms the natural phenomena into a place within a series of symbols or icons. Cherry blossom are thus yanked out of the immediacy of temporal flow, and tamed to becomes the symbol of March and that spring has arrived again.

This transformation reminded me of the theory of Clifford Geertz (1973) on persons and time and Bali (I say the Trobriand Islands in the video). He argues that since the Balinese emphasise socio-temporal role names (infant, teenage, dad, granddad) as do the Japanese rather than individual names over the course of the lifespan, this de-emphasises the passing of time - except on the days when roles change - and gives the impression of a motionless present. One can gain this impression in Japan. For many years one remains the same until suddenly one because a "granddad," like the end of the Japanese myth "Urashima Taro." There is also something motionless about time in Japan.

Similarly by situating the flow of the seasons within a series of socio-temporal nature-roles, the flow of natural time is at once exposed and hidden. Cherry blossom become permanently flowing and yet not flowing at all, trapped within the expression of March-ness. This reminded me of cine-graph images like that below.


Into the same rivers we step and do not step, we are and are not? I am confused. The Japanese have a different appreciation of time.

Bruner, J. (1987). Life as narrative. Social research, 11-32.
Clifford, G. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic, 412-453.
Fujimura, M. (2015). キャラと視点 (Kyara and Perspective). Unpublished graduation thesis. Yamaguchi University, Department of Economics.

Labels: cultural psychology, culture, japanese culture, nature, nihonbunka, 日本文化, 自然

So great is the Japanese aversion towards nature, that the areas around even urban rivers are generally deserted wastelands. Despite the fact that the Japanese detest nature, all the Japanese, and most but not all (Knight, 2004) of the the books about Japan will tell you that the Japanese love nature. I do not tire of attempting to correct this misconception.

The Japanese love symbols taken from nature. Japanese surnames are mainly taken from nature (Tanaka middle-field, Honda original-field, Fuji wisteria, Yamamoto foot-of-the-mountain) as are their family crests, pictorial art, letter greetings, fabric designs, religious events, poetic theme, sociological theories, and, of course, arts that deal directly with nature such as bonsai, flower arrangement and garden design.

However when it comes to nature itself, that is to say tauto-pleonastically, natural nature, the muddy stuff with wasps, weeds and waste matter, the Japanese can't stand it. They'd far rather be in a shopping mall or pachinko parlour or the comfort of their hermetically sealed homes. They hate natural nature so much they don't want to look at it, and nature being so abject and horrific to their minds, they are even utterly unaware that they abhor it, believing, to a woman, that nature is absolutely wonderful stuff.

I can see why Japanese might detest nature so much that they think that they love it. Freud calls this reaction formation. Sometimes those that appear the most chaste and demure do so to conceal their lasciviousness. Sadists may hate their cruelty so much that they present themselves as pacifists. But that external commentators should buy into this reaction formation when Japanese mountains, rivers and seas are deserted, or covered with concrete, surprises me.

Perhaps the real surprise is rather that Westerners should want to get down and dirty with nature. As Saito (Saito, 1985) and I have argued, the Japanese the Japanese interest in a "tamed" or "miniaturised" nature is related to their identification with nature. They do not see any separation between themselves and nature. They are natural. Nature is alive. They don't want to live on the edge of a muddy river estuary, much less swim in it (as I do) any more than they want to smell their own sweat. They dislike bugs as much as bodily fluids.

That Westerners, on the other hand, should enjoy swimming in murky water (as I do often), or using a machete to cut a path through a mountain forest to reach its summit (as I did with a visiting Scottish friend), relates conversely to Western alienation from nature. We think, we feel we are not natural, so we immerse ourselves in the wildest most inconvenient aspects of nature both as as a sort of "exposure extinction" behavioural therapy, to conquer nature and our antipathy towards it, and also, conversely, as a sort of aversion therapy, so that we may continue to persuade ourselves that wild, wet, and nasty nature is out there whereas we ourselves are narratives. As I swim through the murky water in Fushino River estuary, blissfully unaware that I am swimming through myself, and my own waste, I indulge in that most Western of pleasures: I listen to myself speak.

Further it is not true to say that the Japanese avoid natural nature, but rather when they brave they are even more extreme. The Japanese practice of "misogi" (禊ぎ） involving swimming in coldest mid-winter or sitting directly under waterfalls with the water pummelling their head, and other spiritual exercises in the most extreme natural environments, are aimed at purification. What is it that they are trying to expunge? At least one of the poems (626, see below) in the 7th century book of ten thousand leaves (Manyoushu) shows that Japanese leaped into rivers in order to purify themselves of linguistic thought, and become one with the water**, "their absolutely contradictory self" (Nishida, see Kozyra, 2013).

君により、言の繁(しげ)きを、故郷(ふるさと)の、明日香(あすか)の川に、みそぎしに行く 八代女王 626
With all those bloomin' words about you my lord, I went to purify myself in my home town's Asuka River. Yashiro no Ookimi Poem number 626 (recent commentators suggest that the blooming words were rumours about the writers relationship with her lord the emperor).

Another early, this time Heian poem, presumably also about purification in water (misogi禊)
「身につもる言葉の罪も洗はれて心澄むみぬる三重(みかさね)の滝」（西行、山家集）
The sinful words that piled on my body were washed away and my heart cleared in gentle Mikasane waterfall. (Saigyou, Sangashuu)


In any event, the good news is that nature loving gaijin (foreigners) can come to Japan and enjoy the unspoilt nature shunned by the Japanese, or even purchase property on the side of rivers, mountains or the sea for a song, which will probably be about nature in Japan. And I will now go and swim in that estuary, and try and let my I become me (mi 身･水) won-with-the-water, wwww.

Bib
Knight, C. (2004). Veneration or Destruction. Japanese Ambivalence Towards Nature, with Special Reference to Nature Conservation, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, NZ.
Kozyra, A. (2013). The Logic of Absolutely Contradictory Self-identity and Aesthetic Values in Zen Art. Retrieved 2014/9/12 from dspace.uni.lodz.pl:8080/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11089/3415...
Saito, Y. (1985). The Japanese appreciation of nature. The British Journal of Aesthetics, 25(3), 239-251. Retrieved 2014/9/12 from bjaesthetics.oxfordjournals.org/content/25/3/239.short

Notes
*All the ancient poems about purification (harai and misogi)
www2u.biglobe.ne.jp/gln/77/7718/771811.htm
**The Kokugakuin University entry on misgo explains that while it is clear that the "sogi" means steep or rinse, the "mi" of misogi has been interpretted to mean both body and water. Too right.
k-amc.kokugakuin.ac.jp/DM/detail.do?class_name=col_dsg&am...

Labels: japan, japanese culture, nature, nihonbunka, 日本文化, 自然

I like some aspects of Japanese toilet culture.

Japanese toilets are free, clean and plentiful. As well as being a relief in times of need, these restroom-facts tell us some thing about Japanese culture. While the Japanese lavatory has changed dramatically, there is still something fundamentally more practical about it. Take, for example, the mixed sex toilets that one still finds in small bars and restaurants. The use of one toilet for both sexes seems so mature, space saving and liberal, but often rather disconcerting. Again, the absence of a seat may be very hygienic but I find it difficult to keep my balance when made to squat. And while, for instance, the French too used to squat, the Japanese do not insert their stool into a small round hole but leave it to lie in a trench between their knees for some kind of inspection. "Very sensible", the colour is very indicative of the state of ones health, apparently. Which brings us to ask: why are "amenities" so rude in the West? Is it not perhaps to do with their connection with sex? Perhaps for the French, the briefly dangling stool was a phallus: deft but dark and fleeting. By contrast, the Japanese have a more tolerant, maternal toilet culture. The stool, resplendent in its narrow china cot - thoughtfully padded with toilet paper - represents a pseudo-baby? In a traditional Japanese toilet, the flush must follow breathless awe in the face of mother nature's proud creation and even the direction of the squat is reversed: Westerners, face the door, as if ready to fight back other would be occupants; the more community spirited, trusting Japanese face the interior toilet wall, their buttocks bare, absorbed in meditation.

In the past ten years however, the Japanese toilet has been "advancing". Corrupted and alienated by the impact of the West, they have developed scatophobia. They too do it sitting down but with even greater hygiene and self abstention. The toilet seat, itself sometimes decadently pre-heated, can be covered with a specially provided, toroidal paper napkin. And, to the horror of unsuspecting observers, the toilets in more wealthy homes may be fitted with an electronically controlled, contractible antennae. "Foul torture! Fearsome syringe!" I thought as I wiped warm water from my eye, but, yes, it was merely a form of space saving bidet. At the touch of a button, the antenna extends and, automatically adjusted to the size of the user, fires a jet upwards into the orifice. Fiendishly clean. "Washlettes" (sic) may not have caused actual bodily harm but they might just represent a neurotic obsession with technology. (Mark my words; in years to come someone will produce a "Wipeman".)

If there is one thing that I regret, it is the complete absence of graffiti. It would be in the interests of free speech if bar owners provided a pen, attached to a string, inside the cubicles. But one might find that the customers did not know what to do with it.

I wrote the above back in 1996
A "wipeman" or portable version of the washlett has in fact been invented (and may have been back in 1996)

Labels: japan, japanese culture, nature, 日本文化, 自然

The Japanese word mottainai meaning "it's a shame when you waste something," (Mollman, 2001) was made famous by the late Kenyan Environmentalist, Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize winner. At first I was sceptical since the meaning of mottainai seemed almost identical to that of the common English word, "wasteful." But upon reflection, it seems to me that Japanese do have a greater sense of waste, or a greater, perhaps animistic sense of involvement with the things that they might otherwise waste. Mollman (2001) argues that mottainai fuels the Japanese obsession with converged electrical gimmicks e.g. where a radio is merged with a dynamo, solar panel and torch, or a television with a radio cassette player, since to do otherwise would be a waste of space.

I think that Japanese people feel a sort of sympathy for things themselves, and reuse paper since to do otherwise would be a very mild form of homicide. This animistic origin to the heightened sense of wastefulness, may explain the emphasis upon recycling rather than reusing in Japan. The Japanese do not believe in reincarnation or heaven but that the soul merges with the gods and is born again as other people. Pieces of paper merge with the pulp and are repressed into other pages.

As previously mentioned the grief of mottainai may also explain the relative absence of BOGOF (Buy One Get One Free) marketing in Japanese stores. It may also be a factor in the pricing in of the batteries in the above photo. This one hundred yen store's products are all 100 yen, and include packs of both 4 AA batteries, and 2 AA batteries at the same price. Admittedly, the 2 pack of batteries carry the name of a Japanese manufacturer (Hitachi), whereas the 4 pack batteries are generic "Premium Cell", but it seems to me unlikely that consumers believe that the Japanese branded batteries last twice as long as their OEM counterparts. I suggest rather than Japanese consumers purchase two batteries when they need to batteries, since to purchase four would feel mottainai. They might not use the other two. They would go to waste.

Bearing this in mind it is surprising that Westerners, even as they roll through their malls on buggies since they can no longer support their own weight, do not feel mottainai when offered a BOGOF deal. Where did our sense of "shame when you waste something" disappear? What is it about the corporeal - things, the body - that does not deserve our respect?

The 'Nacalian' theory provided by this blog provides only part of the answer. It is here argued that while verbal and visual self-representations are essential for the genesis of self, Westerners identify with the former, and Japanese with the latter. Identifying as they do with the visual, they are more sensitive to the destruction of little pieces of 'extensia' - things. But I don't think that this theory goes far enough.

It seems to me that the BOGOF buyer almost has it in for the extras pieces of corporealism that he purchases. There is a potlach of free pizza, puddings and pints of milk, and at time an almost gratuitous disrespect of the body. Take that, pizza, into the bin you go! Take that, body, another pizza for you!

This disrespect is alas I fear mirrored in the Japanese feeling towards narratives, theories and reason. They rise and fall in oblivion's host, items of fashion, soon forgotten, unlike a synthetic face. Hello Kitty is forty years old. Abenomics will be lucky if it is remembered in four years time. No-one reads Shinto mythology and comparatively very Japanese people read (non-comic) books.

There is even a word to decry reason "rikutsu." The closest English translation is perhaps humbug. Rikustu, or the phrase "Rikutsu iu na" (don't say any more humbug) is use to silence those that attempt to be too rational, or wordy than is felt necessary. Words are extraneous, faddish, and abbreviated everywhere from haiku to pasokon and sefure. Indeed, English words are often used on T-shirts, in mottos and names for products, even though or because most Japanese can not understand English. English, and still more so English, allows the Japanese to reduce words to their beloved phenomenon: sounds and above all images.

But this still isn't answering the question. What is it that we logocentrist word-lovers have against corporeality, and what is that corpo-animistic thing-loving Japanese, have against the opposite side?

What is in that word-lovers have against "narcissism" which originates and rotates about a loving self-phenomena? What is it that the Japanese hate about verbal arrogance, or even self-expression, even as they prune themselves so perfectly? I have plausible answer to this, related to my recent post on Pokemon, but I have written too much, to myself. Queasy.

You know you are crazy when you think you are trying to prevent Armageddon with your blog:-)

Mollman, S. (2001). Japanese Design Sense becomes more evident in hight tech products. J@pan Inc Magazine - The J@pan Inc Newsletter, 134. Retrieved from www.japaninc.com/jin134

Labels: japan, japanese culture, Nacalian, アニミズム, 日本文化, 自然

While agreeing with the layering "vortex" of images in Ezra Pound's interpretation of haiku, I go further to propose a deliberate subversion of interpretation by the use of layered optical or aural images to produce an "interpretive illusion" from which the reader is freed. In haiku poetry, the reader is fed three images, one of which is shown to have been a product of interpretation - the dreaded sign - and thus the reader is returned to the veracity of the image and the purity of the experience. Haiku, in their own small way, encourage us to experience this purity - a minuscule satori, enlightenment - by suddenly divesting us of the misinterpretation that they encouraged in the first place.

Here are some specific examples from the first few in this net selection of 100 famous Haiku (in Japanese).

As already discussed possibly the most famous Haiku is
古池や蛙飛び込む水の音
Furuikeya, Kawazu tobikomu, Mizu no oto
An old pond, frogs jump in, the sound of the water.
We are presented with a view of an old, and presumably over-grown, murky pond. The poet then assumes that a frog, or many frogs, have (probably) jumped into the water. This second phrase - frogs jump in - is pure interpretation. In the third phrase we are reminded, in quite shocking fashion, the grounds for second assumption: the sound of the water. The poet had provided an interpretation - that frogs had jumped in - and then shown it for what it was. All that has occurred in truth, in the immediate purity of the experience, was a view of a pond, and the sound of the water. From the image, the frogs -- dread signs that they were -- completely disappear, for they were never there in the first place. Plop!

In the poem
さみだれを集めて早し最上川,
May rain, Collected quick Mogami River,
is quite straightforward in telling us that there may not be any rain at all, only the river which has collected the rain and is running rapidly. The way in which the "quick" falls between the second and third phrase, at first appearing adverbial (to mean fast collection) but finally we realise is probably adjectival referring to the fast river, adds to the switchback, satorific, "vortex" of the poem. Bashou was looking at the river all along, but took us to an interpretation, which while in part true, was not the reality of his experience: a view of a river. As a Buddhist Bashou would not have needed Heraclitus to remind him that a river is all we are ever looking it, though we see so many things collected in it.

閑さや岩にしみ入る蝉の声
Shizukesaya, Iwa ni shimi-iru, Semi no koe
Silence Soaks into the Rocks Sound (or, rather, voice) of Cicadas,
Here it is all too clear that the initial "silence" is not silence at all. It is an interpretation of the monotonous summer sound-scape, the deafening (you need to listen to this if you have not lived in Japan) truth of which we are returned to in the last phrase.

Looking at a field of summer grass, at the site of a once great military castle in Hiraizumi, Bashou writes
夏草や　兵共が　夢の跡
Natsukusaya, Tsuwamono-domo ga, Yume no ato
Summer Grass 　Soldiers(') Remains of dreams
The usual interpretation is that the summer grass is all that is left of the the once lofty aspirations of the soldiers. I think that this interpretation is correct, but there is also another. The "ga" (が) or apostrophe (') in my translation can be read as linking word meaning that the dreams are of or possessed by the soldiers. But it also can be read as a subject marker, which is not used in English, hence the apostrophe is in brackets. Taking the "ga" to be a subject marker the final clause comes as a shock because instead of the soldiers being active subjects, or there present, we see that only their field of dreams remain. Further, almost as if the solders have been killed in the middle of the poem, it seems to me, gazing at the field, Bashou himself let his imagination run free, so the "dreams" are not only those of the soldiers but also the dreams Bashou himself who imagined (dreamt) the soldiers. Indeed the summer grass itself may have looked like legions of soldiers. In strong support of this hypothesis is the fact that Bashou wrote the word "kusa" or grass with the non-standard (even for Bashou, even in the same book) ideogram "艸" (Matuso, 1997, pX) which looks a little like soldiers standing in a line. I.e. Bashou realises, and makes us realise, that he has dreamed up solders from his image of the grass, to the truth of which he returns us. Like all the best haiku however, the poem has no incontrovertible interpretation. Basho could be talking about the dreams of the soldiers, or his own dream of soldiers, but we do know, all he sees is a field of grass. Bearing in mind the fact that Basho deliberately edits his poems for poetic effect, I would not be surprised if he thought this one up well before arriving in "the deep north." In any event, it was well worth the journey.

The usual interpretation of
荒海や佐渡に横たふ天の川
Araumiya, Sado ni Yokotau, Amanogawa
Routh Sea, Lies down in Sado, The milky way.
is that Basho is seeing the milky way above the rough waters around the island of Sado but to me the first phrase "荒海" is an optical illusion. First of all, from the historic record, and the fact that Bashou uses the word "milky way" this poem was written on the night of the festival of the Weaver stars who are said to cross the milky way to meat each other on 7th of July. This is the first hint to me that something is amiss. Despite adding this "season word," it would be a a little unseasonal for the sea to be rough on a summer night (though an early typhoon is not an impossibility). Secondly, while there are various interpretations of "lies down," taking a straight forward one, it suggests that rather being over the sea, the milky way is on the surface of the water. The natural explanation for this would be that the mily way is being reflected in the sea, a beautiful image appropriate for the romantic festival night. This would further suggest that the sea was flat, for the starts to be reflected, and therefore that the "rough sea" was an optical illusion created by the white light of the stars brilliantly reflected in the water's surface. What initially Bashou saw as white waves, turned out to be the light of stars lying on the water. Again we are fed a plausible misinterpretation to be returned to the truth of the image.

明けぼのやしら魚しろきこと一寸　
Akebonoya, Shiraushirokikotoisun
Dawn! white fish, its whiteness one inch (or very briefly)
This poem was originally "雪薄し”or thin snow which Bashou changed to dawn, in my view because the optical illusion of seeing thin snow as a white fish was a bit too obvious. In other words the poem started out as an optical illusion where the poet claimed/thought he saw snow before realising it was the flash of a white fish in the water, to the optical illusion of thinking one has seen the first rays of sun on the sea, which turned out to be the flash of white fish. In either case the reader is taken from a misinterpretation to the purity of the image. The substitution of "dawn" for "thin snow" - which both might produce flashes of light - shows the deliberate way in which Bashou sets the reader up. What a trickster.

The excellent poem (which I read now for the first time)
この道や行く人なしに秋の暮
Konomichi Ikuhitonashini Akinokure
This road, no one goes along it, late autumn,
was written shortly before Bashou's death at an inn, when he had already fallen terminally ill. The road in question is thought to refer to the poetic path that Bashou had walked throughout his life. The lack of a road goer or goers is usually interpreted to refer to the solitude of the poetic path, but it may also refer to the breakdown of the ultimate illusion: the poets own absence as realised near death, "late autumn." If so then it is more upbeat than usually interpreted, as it implies a lack of fear of death, since Bashou feels himself absent from his own "road" already. Bashou is so cool.

Skipping the two poems related to death, and moving on to Buson
菜の花や月は東に日は西に
Nanoyanaya Tsukihahigashini, Hiha nishi ni
Field mustard (flowers), The moon is in the East, The sun in the West
This poem at first confused me since it could so easily have created an obvious interpretive illusion and return to the truth of the image (the pure experience), by reversing the order of the last two lines. Let me explain. Since the moon is unlikely to produce an affect on Buson's field of vision when behind him, I presume Buson is looking East at the moon over a field of mustard flowers, that are illuminated by the setting sun behind him in the West. In other words it would seem that the poem proceed towards interpretation rather than towards the pure image; The poet sees flowers, sees the moon, and interprets that the sun must be behind him.

Had Buson written instead
菜の花や日は西に月は東に
Field mustard (flowers), Sun in the West, Moon in the East
Then the second line would have created in the reader the impression that the poet was watching the setting sun, but with the final line the reader would be returned to the pure experience, with the realisation that the poet is in fact looking at the moon, and the second line regarding the sun was an interpretation of the setting sunlight falling on the flowers.

However, upon reflection and thinking more deeply regarding the direction that Buson was looking, it is important to ask whether he was looking at the son or the moon. Googling images related to this poem shows views facing both the moon and the setting sun. We are told that this poem was written on Mount Maya in the Rokkou range of mountains overlooking the Koube bay. The field mustard flowers were presumably on the bay (rather than mountainous) side. Since the Koube bay lies to the West of Mount Maya, this suggests that Buson was looking West at the setting sun. In other words, the second line regarding the moon, was an interpretation, based upon the time of day: sunset. The poem does indeed proceeds from image (the flowers) to interpretation, 'the moon (must be) in the East' to the return to purity of the experience, the setting sun in the West.

Reconsidering once again, however, since there is a plain to the East of [the very appropriately named, and conceivably deliberately chosen] Mt Maya, this poem is, like many of those above, left in interpretive abeyance. We know that Buson was looking at a something big and bright above a field of flowers. We know that he can not have been looking at towards both the East and the West, but we do not know in which direction he is looking. No definitive, incontrovertible interpretation is possible. We are left only with the visual experience: the sphere of light above a yellow field. Wow. Buson is very cool too.

Bibliography
Matsuo, B 松尾芭蕉. (1997). 芭蕉自筆奥の細道. (上野洋三 & 桜井武次郎, Eds.). 岩波書店.

Labels: buddhism, japan, japanese culture, Nacalian, nature, nihonbunka, occularcentrism, specular, 日本文化, 自然

This video shows a beautiful Zen Buddhism influenced gravel or karesansui garden. I made a mistake in the video. This garden was not created by the famous artist adopted by this household but an earlier occupant some 300 years ago. Thus the design is as traditional as it gets and not in any way "arty" as I suggested. I have never seen a garden like this that has a rock resembling the crescent moon before, but I can appreciate how the feature could be very attractive especially when the cresent moon rises above the garden.

I argue -- and I don't think that I am being controversial or original -- that the heavily Sen influenced gravel gardens, by resembling landscapes (or even celestial bodies) far large than themselves, cause in the mind of the viewer a sort of optical illusion that encourages the viewer to see the scene neither as a garden, nor as the moon or inland see dotted with islands, but as it is in and of itself, as the visual field (Nishida), or the mirror of the sungoddess, the purity of experience (Nishida), completely bracketed (epoche', Husserl) from all interpretation. These gravel gardens therefore encourage a form of enlightenment.

Or perhaps watching a Japanese Gravel Garden is a bit like attending a Diwali festival. The following is from the wikipedia article on Diwali. "While Diwali is popularly known as the "festival of lights", the most significant spiritual meaning is "the awareness of the inner light". Central to Hindu philosophy is the assertion that there is something beyond the physical body and mind which is pure, infinite, and eternal, called the Atman.

Labels: japan, japanese culture, nature, nihonbunka, 日本文化, 自然

But is it a gaijin (foreigner) influence? Kyoto is the only place in Japan were there are many restaurants along the banks of a river. In my city, despite the fact that there is a river running through its centre there is only one café and no restaurants on its banks and the one café does not afford a river view.

Kyoto is the exception but then Kyoto is also the second biggest tourist attraction in Japan (after Tokyo) which has presumably been influenced by Western culture. Western tourists may have promoted the construction of restaurants along side this river. I think that other cities may achieve increased inbound tourism if they followed suit.

I found that Kyoto citizens had a habit of ignoring red pedestrian traffic signals when there are no cars coming. In my experience, Japanese pedestrians wait, as is the law, even if there are no cars in other parts of Japan. I wonder if this Kyoto dwellers' behaviour is influenced by gaijin too.

Labels: japan, japanese culture, nature, nihonbunka, 日本文化, 自然

Sur-naturalism is the Japanese tendency to attempt to make nature even more natural than nature itself. Here the branches of trees in our garden have been pruned in such a way as to make them more wiggly, by cutting off the main branch and allowing the branch to continue to grow along alternating sub-branches.

The same tendency to reduce the "human" "geometrical" and increase the persceived, natural majesty of plants may be present in the art of Bonsai and the way that garden conifers are cut into bobbly pagodas. In each case a smaller plant is made to emulate a larger one. Garden layouts also deliberate eschew lines and pursue "sur-random" pairings of plants and rocks.

Ruth Benedict pointed out this tendency to attempt to arrange nature to conform with human notions of what nature should be. Quoting from a "A Duahgter of the Samurai" Benedict writes, “every morning Jiya wiped off the stepping stones, and after sweeping beneath the pine trees, carefully scattered fresh pine needles gathered from the forest." (Benedict, 1946) Lummis (2007) points out that it was sur-naturalism that Benedict assumed the Japanese would be glad to be free of. Benedict could not have known how beautiful the Japanese thought it.

Labels: nature, nihobunka, nihonbunka, 日本文化, 自然