Japanese Culture Essay

social forces which influence the union and its determine. Every culture has its own unique qualities not found in separate cultures. japan is no exception. It is culture is centered on the kernel value and traditions. They lead Nipp one(a)se people to have different ship canal of looking at the valet largely from differences in langu fester and religious belief. Nipponese culture determines specific way of living and social relations, ethnical and religious views. History, Culture and Lifestyle Nipponese history rises mistily out of the accomplish custodyt known to archeologists as the Tomb or Tumulus boundary. During this important period Japan was unified under the imperial court of Yamato and became intimately gnarled with South Korea, pathway for many cultural elements of continental origin into Japan. committal to writing was one such element. Japan began to have historico-legendary records of its own and gradually locomote from its protohistoric to the historic p eriod.The main historical period were Asoka period (522-710), Nara halt (710-784), archaeozoic Heian (784-897), Middle and Late Heian (897-1185), Kamacura period (1185-1336), Murimachi Period (1336-1393), Memoyama period (1573-1614), Edo Period (1615-1867), Meiji Restoration (1867-1911) (Martines, 1998). During all historical period, Nipponese lifestyle was influenced by political, scotch and social changes, new perception of the world and religion. Nipponese culture is ground on unique traditions and values influenced by religion and life style.The Nipponese learned to view the world from the perspective of conventional versus modern values after the Meiji Restoration in 1868 following the opening of Japans doors to the world. This attitudinal structure started to fall apart in 1978, and its disintegration became definite by 1988. For example, the conquering nature was an important value during the era of Japans modernization process, but it has since been replaced by the f ollowing nature. In the middle of the XX atomic number 6, the traditional perspective of catching up with the west and categorizing what is western and Japanese has become meaningless (Oxtoby 2001).While the industrialization process produced divergent values for Japan and the West, it also is responsible for the development of some homogeneous cultural values. Researchers found three levels of similarities (1) frequency distribution of single variables, (2) similar impacts of age and gender on attitudes, and (3) similar structures in the way people reason their experience (Oxtoby 2001). Modern Japanese lifestyle is influenced by industrialization and innovations glide path from other countries.Thus, Japanese value their old traditions and rituals adapting them to new social environment. For instance, Japanese take off shoes inside the house, they pay 5% billing tax for purchases, they follow bath and toilette design according to averages and practices of century old tradition s (Oxtoby 2001). In short, the Japanese self, characterized by its diffuse nature or collective orientation, represents a self who lost its space to be unbosom of the omnipresence of the giri-ninja social network in Japanese bon ton in return for being taken care of by its group.The strong palpate of belonging to ones company and family assures one materially a comfortable life at the individual level and stability and safety at the social level, making Japan relatively free of ruby crimes. Such a life is stifling and meaningless to Americans even if they must pay a high price of alienating from the rest of society (Shelley, 1992). Japan managed to keep a sense of alienation to a minimum as it industrialized and urbanized by maintaining its virtually village mind and social network.However, the value the Japanese gain by observing the traditional code of conducts, the giri-ninjo, is material and psychological welfare, which is provided to members of Japanese society more or l ess equally and fairly at the individual level, and public safety, which is provided at the collective level in Japan today. Another pair of harm often used in discussing Japanese culture is tatemae and honne. The former refers to the straight-laced role expectation as defined by society and the minute to ones real inner feelings, however irrational they whitethorn be.Often, to act in accordance with giri is to act in adjustity with the norm of a community (tatemae). The role language plays in culture cannot be underestimated, for it offers a way of organizing ones life experience in a particular way that is shared by its speakers but not necessarily by people in other cultures (Davies and Ikeno, 2002). Family is one of the near important social institutions which keep century old traditions and human relations. In response to the traditional call for harmony, the Japanese are expected to conform to group norms. This proclivity yields situational ethics based on flexible standar ds (Shelley, 1992). in that location are no absolute criteria by which one passes judgment. The Japanese devolve a disproportionately large sum of money for socializing, as incarnate in semiannual gift exchanges between friends, relatives, and colleagues and after-work drinking of working men and women among co-workers and friends. Religion In Japan, nearly 100 % of the population are Buddhists and in many cases Scientists. The Japanese are, of course, not religious in the sense that they accept in God. Christians constitute about I % of the total population. Most Japanese are not very concerned with religion.They celebrate the birth of children in accordance with the Shinto rituals and bury their dead with the help of Buddhist priests. Meanwhile, they whitethorn get married in civil ceremonies, Christian churches, or other facilities. That is perhaps what makes it possible for the Japanese to accept more than one religion at the same time, an unthinkable option for monotheistic people of the West and West Asia, accustomed as they are to dialecticism. The Japanese approach the world in a diffuse fashion or inclusively. The number of Japanese with a religious faith increases with age (Davies and Ikeno, 2002).Fewer than 10 % of the Japanese in their early twenties and about 50 % of Japanese higher-ranking citizens over sixty years of age are religious. The older one becomes, the more religious one becomes. Likewise, Japan never had any revolutions such as experienced by China, France, and the United States. Revolutions are carried out by those who believe in the total destruction of the old regime and the origination of a radically different doctrine. The Japanese seem to be incompetent of totally denying their past. They are always interested in improving (kaizen) their subsisting systembe it via fax machine, Buddhism, or television sets.The majority of the Japanese do not take religion very seriously from the Western perspective (Oxtoby 2001). Japanese m ythology distinguishes two categories of deities, the heavenly gods and the native-born or territorial reserve gods. Some myths represent the heavenly deities as descending to the land of Japan to conquer or rule its autochthonous deities. The myth of land stir in Izumo is one instance. Two generals of the heavenly gods were dispatched to Izumo to demand of O-Kuninushi, chief of the native gods and master of the territory of Japan, that he hand over sovereignty to the heavenly gods (Oxtoby 2001).