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The cliché goes that Japan is a country of
contradictions, a melting pot of East and West where traditions collide in
Zenlike harmony. Native and foreign elements are perceived as complementary,
and adjectives for the resulting combination may hover around anything from
fascinating to anachronistic. Many will be ready to point out the dissonance of
old and new, the cunning alloy of Western wit and Eastern wile. Japan, they
say, still retains its Asian soul amidst cold industrial technology. Yet, despite
its cultural schizophrenia—or perhaps because of it—Japan is not so much an
incongruous country as it is a place ruled by binary opposition.
Japan
does retain many traditions and faux pieces of culture, if not for the sake of
authenticity, at least to cling to a romantic image of a "pure" Japan
that never was. Many famous Japanese cultural symbols are political creations
of the late Edo (Tokugawa) and early Meiji periods, roughly between 1850-1900
and analogous to the height of Western imperialism. They are based less on real
tradition than a bid to establish a national identity to secure national unity.
It
was during this period that Kabuki theatre, once a persecuted and vulgar form
of art, was raised to highbrow status as delineative of the ‘Japanese spirit’ -
this despite the rebelliousness and social critique underlying many Kabuki
themes. The newly acquired state religion, State Shinto, managed to take local
animistic rites and put them in a national scope, all the while creating new
rituals to exacerbate the myth of Japan as a monolithic entity. Ancient books,
such as the Kojiki (a collection of mythology from circa 1200 AD and roughly a
Japanese equivalent to Homer’s Illyad), were used as a base for the newfangled
national faith. Even though the
country as a unified whole is a relatively recent idea, the Meiji oligarchs
endeavoured to give Japan millenary legitimacy through a mishmash of cultural
and religious forms, and they exist until these days as national symbols.
The
above is not always easy to reconcile with the modern highways, mobile phones
and capitalist consumerism that describe Japan in the present. In turn, nationalist
sentiments and institutionalised xenophobia have further helped to forge a
widespread concept of cultural absolutes, where things are either Japanese or
foreign in nature.
Nativism
is not a new phenomenon in Japan, and its society reveals a deep nationwide
concern with cultural purity. It comes as no surprise that one of the most
favoured adjectives by many Japanese–especially those who speak English—is
“Japanese,” as though the word itself carried a significant descriptive weight.
It can be seen, read and heard everywhere, from tourist pamphlets evoking that
elusive ‘spirit of Japaneseness’, Yamato
damashii, to pop music lyrics (such as a recent hit titled “Japanese girl”)
or endless conversations about ‘Japanese’ tea and ‘Japanese’ cherry blossoms.
Since
trying to define what exactly constitutes being Japanese is tricky, it is easier
to establish what is not Japanese instead. Thus cherry blossoms and green tea belong
to Japan, because highways, mobile phones and capitalism do not. If the latter
are of higher quality than in the West, it is only because they are imbued with
abstractions, such as the Yamato
damashii.
Yet
all these arguments start sounding dubious if we consider that most cultural
legacies are almost never engendered through singularities, but a buildup of
numerous traditions, generally from different places. They borrow from one
another, in turn giving form to separate expressions of folklore. Just as Zen
Buddhism –a defining theme in many traditional Japanese art forms- is founded
in traditions from China and India, modern-day Japanese capitalism borrows
heavily from North American and European models. Even cherry blossoms are
native to several countries. The concept of cultural absolutes, then, vanishes
in between the grayscale shades of critical debate.
Due
to reasons both historical as they are political, however, and an educational
system lacking in discussion, focused instead on correct/incorrect answers, a
large number of Japanese end up perceiving their country not as a mere
state-governed physical location, but rather a state of mind. Japan is as much
a name as it is a feeling, pride conjoined with deep nostalgia for the old furusato (village), that mythical
commonplace of virginal kimono clad maidens performing tea ceremonies for stern
samurais. Binary logic has, in short, made Japan a stereotype of itself. And
while the preservation of cultural legacy is a legitimate endeavour, history
has shown how dangerous equating concepts of nation, race and culture can be.
Japan
is indeed a melting pot of contradictions, but only because of the antipodean struggle
to separate the native from the foreign, even when these boundaries are
oftentimes imaginary. It might not provide seamless harmony, but certainly
paves the way for more similar clichés.