Princess Mononoke. Recycled IN THE CONGO VALLEY. WITH COLONISTS.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
And, cannibals.
Seriously: some of the scariest stories across Africa are about when everything goes to hell and the cannibalism starts. If you think the supernatural or mundane Cannibal Clan is an American invention, you don't know your African or Japanese myths.
Also: curses, grudges and witchcraft? With bad consequences lasting through generations that you can neither reason with nor evade... all due to one member's slip-up? Staples! Even better if you get the scare stories about how all the attempted barters, appeasements and evasions got nowhere and just how bad the Bad Things that happened get.
edited 31st Aug '14 7:29:30 AM by Euodiachloris
Nope. Butchers too, and several other occupations related to death.
edited 31st Aug '14 8:08:44 PM by KingZeal
Man, even tanners are considered unclean. I never quite understood that. Possibly one of the most useful materials available to a pre-industrial civilisation, and people shit on the people actually making it?
Then again, I never quite got how Confucius thought it was justified to divide people into castes like that. I especially never got how the Japanese took that idea and butchered it to the point where warriors are suddenly at the top of the chain. At least Confucius had the decency to put people that actually build those castles and kept them fed at the top.
Didn't this one Confucian philosopher once say "Just as one wouldn't make nails out of quality iron, one shouldn't make soldiers out of good men."
That's mostly because the tanners need that shit.
But nah, its probably an outgrowth of the fact that tanneries stink and working in one day in and day out probably makes you rather unpleasant to be around as well coupled with the fact that both the untanned leather and several of the ingredients tick Shinto's "ritually unclean" check boxes.
Japan already had a hierarchical system in place before it was introduced to Confucianism. Confucianism was easily adopted into its social mores because of this. But, the Chinese saw Confucianism as being a means of enforcing competency at the highest class. (While a son could not abandon their father, nor could a younger brother or wife abandon their elder brother or husband, respectively, no matter how incompetent they were, a soldier or lord could turn against their superior if they were incompetent or inhumane.) In Japanese Neo-Confucianism, however, no one was technically allowed to turn against anyone, ever. Technically.
As I've mentioned before, being less advanced than the Chinese, the Japanese saw themselves as a warrior race with Simple-Minded Wisdom by comparison. They saw Chinese academia as useful and important, but secondary to marital ability and hard work. Thus, their brand of Confucianism also placed warriorship as the highest level of social hierarchy, which was intentionally different from the Chinese. Even daimyo and other lords were usually praised for having fighting prowess, or for at least taking the time to understand the samurai spirit.
edited 1st Sep '14 9:14:30 AM by KingZeal

Can you name some ideas? I am interested.
"Please crush me with your heels Esdeath-sama!