2. It is said that the Japanese are a homogeneous people, often likened to one large tribe. Discuss this point of view from the perspective of your reading on the origins of the Japanese.
3. Why is it so difficult to obtain reliable information about the origins of the Japanese?
4. In what ways are modern Japanese similar to, or different from, the descriptions provided by Han Chinese records of the 3rd century AD?
5. Discuss the influence of China and Korea on the development of Japanese culture from its origins to the present day.
6. In 2001, a 65 million yen research project entitled “An Interdisciplinary Study of the Origins of the Japanese Peoples and Cultures,” was carried out with government cooperation, culminating in an NHK documentary and book series called, “The Japanese: The Long Journey” (see Appendix A). In this investigation, researchers conducted a study of the facial features of 1,047 randomly selected Japanese. Of them, 35.1% were found to fit the northern Asian type, commonly found in the people of northern China; 22% were categorized as Korean Peninsula; 28.3%, southern China; 13.3% Indochina; and 5.1% fitted the facial features typical of the southern Pacific region. Genetic and archaeological analysis indicates that Japan has been a grand melting pot of peoples who came here from Siberia via the Ice Age landbridge through Sakhalin; from northern and southern Asia via the Korean Peninsula; and by boat from Indochina and Polynesia via the Ryukyu archipelago. The high percentage of “northern Asian” faces is mostly a legacy of the large-scale immigration from the mainland through Korea, and the subsequent population explosion that began some 2,300 years ago in the early Yayoi Period. Discuss the multi-ethnic origins of the Japanese from the perspective of this NHK study.
Approaches to Japanese Cultural History
INTRODUCTION
A number of conceptual models1 have been developed by scholars in order to explain the evolution of world civilizations. Perhaps the best known was put forward by the twentieth century historian, Arnold Toynbee, who applied the analogy of the living organism to the study of culture, suggesting that all civilizations go through a cycle of birth, life, and decay:
At the time of its birth each civilization . . . is faced with its own particular challenges. If the challenges are met and overcome, the civilization grows; if the responses are inadequate, the civilization dies. Response is determined by the inner energy and spirit of the civilization. Once established, a civilization appears to pass through certain stages of development: a time of growth . . .; a time of troubles; and then an attempted resurgence. . . . Thereafter the civilization declines. But it has been possible for old civilizations to give birth to new ones through the revitalizing spiritual force of new and more universal spiritual beliefs. (Hall & Beardsley, 1965, p. 125)
In East Asia, Toynbee concludes that there have been two major civilizations, both of which were centered in China. The first spanned almost two millennia, beginning in the Shang dynasty (c. 1500 BC) and reaching its height during the Han dynasty (202 BC–220 AD); the second occurred during the Sui and T’ang dynasties (589–907 AD) due to the spiritual force of Buddhism. He treats Japan as an offshoot of these civilizations, but with a semi-autonomous character because of the great challenge presented by the sea gap between Japan and the Asian continent. Toynbee’s ideas have never been applied to a full-scale history of Japan, but his model continues to have advocates among contemporary historians.
Karl Jaspers, the German philosopher and historian, provided another approach to the development of world civilization in which history itself is seen as a process of continuous growth encompassing clearly defined stages (ibid., p. 126):
(1) the primitive state: man existed in isolated social pockets
(2) the early regional civilizations, such as Greece, Egypt, and China
(3) the great cultures that developed through the unifying ideas of universal religions
(4) “one world” (yet to be achieved) through the spread of science
Jaspers was particularly fascinated by one period of human history, from the seventh to the fourth centuries BC, known as the Axial Age, when a number of great historical figures arose at approximately the same time in different cultures: Confucius and Lao-tzu in China, Gautama Buddha in India, Zarathustra in Persia, the prophets in Israel, and the philosophers in Greece (see Appendix B). At this time in world history, “man first became conscious of himself and his cosmic limitations [and] he experimented with and developed the categories of thought and reasoning that are still used today” (ibid.). For Jaspers, Japan remained in an undeveloped, prehistorical condition until it was brought under Chinese influence, at which time it entered the stream of world events.
The views of historians such as Toynbee and Jaspers have in common a belief that human society, whether East or West, can be explained by a uniform theory of development, regardless of the widely differing conceptions of what the essential moving forces of history might be. However, many writers have also insisted on the existence of certain fundamental differences between Eastern and Western ways of thinking. Typical of this approach is F.S.C. Northrop, who sees East and West as deeply divided by contrasting philosophical and religious approaches to life: “The West uses logic, analysis, categories . . .; the East uses intuition and direct apperception . . .” (ibid., pp. 127–128). Northrop places Japan among the nations of the East with its common heritage in Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, but draws a distinction between Japan and other Eastern nations because of the speed with which the country was able to industrialize after 1868, suggesting that modern Japan is a meeting place, or bridge, between East and West.
For those who wish to understand the complexities and contradictions of modern Japan, history is of primary importance. The present is mirrored in the past, and the past exists in the present in the unconscious cultural heritage of a people, in the structure of their social and political institutions, and in the value systems they have created. During the course of its long history, Japanese culture has appeared in a number of different manifestations, each characterized by certain distinct behavioral patterns and sets of belief. Each of these phases of historical development has contributed to the cumulative growth of Japanese culture and has given rise to traditions which continue to play an important role in contemporary Japanese life. However, “history as remembered or recorded is inevitably a selection out of the infinitude of the past” (ibid., p. 122), and history as it happened and history as it is written are not always the same. The cultural history of Japan, in particular, has been “set down in many different styles and from many different points of view,” and the wide variety of interpretations stem from underlying assumptions that need to be carefully examined. Such assumptions may be crude or sophisticated, they may be honest and objective or they may arise from certain ideologies or conscious biases. “They are not equally valid” (ibid., p. 123).
GEOGRAPHICAL DETERMINISM
One conceptual model for understanding Japanese cultural history is known as geographical (or environmental) determinism. In this way of thinking, there is said to be a direct relationship between a people’s natural and social environment and their patterns of life. In fact, a great many observers have seized on some feature or other of Japan’s natural environment as the key to understanding Japanese culture or the temperament of its people:
The ever-present threat of earthquakes, tidal waves, typhoons, and other natural dangers is supposed to make the Japanese fatalistic, violent, or poignantly aware of nature and its precarious beauty. The ever-visible mountains or fields are said to induce serenity; or else, depending on the theorizer, the small-scale . . . villages create . . . a sensitivity to social nuances. (ibid., pp. 3–4)
Traditional Rice Fields
Whether there is any truth to popular myths about the relationship between the geography of Japan and Japanese culture is open to debate, since the heterogeneity of the natural environment of the Japanese archipelago gives rise to a wide range of contradictory generalizations.