General Japanese Culture Thread

watakushi is not a female pronoun, it's an overly formal and old-fashioned pronoun that is almost never used any more. The use of it in daily Japanese (in my experience) is mostly in a joking manner, I.E. when playacting as a snobbish upper-class person etc. This is often done by women though. In media it can however also be used to show that someone is a little eccentric, which along with the connotation of snobbishness may be what is going on as some kind of stereotype in the case of gay characters. I can't say I've ever noticed it. But Japanese society in general (obviously opinions vary wildly depending on the individual, I'm talking about the attitude which is displayed by media etc.) clearly has a somewhat weird relationship with homosexuality, where gay men are often viewed as funny, even if they are not outright disliked.

As for child abuse it is unfortunately not uncommon in Japan. Indeed I would say that it is one of the worst things about the country, unlike a lot of the hyperbolic things people often bring up as bad. Basically if you're born in a good family you're going to be fine, but if you happen to have shitty parents there is not much help to be had from society. It is one of the drawbacks of a society which leaves too much to the family and does too little to counteract asymmetries of wealth and opportunity in it's population. In fact many of Japan's biggest problems has little to do with culture and more to do with it's capitalist structure of society (homelessness, bad working conditions for some workers etc.). In this case there is however also a cultural attitude towards children which seems to be different in a negative way, compared to more recent attitudes in the West (though to be fair, a couple of hundred years ago attitudes towards children were pretty shitty in all parts of the world including Japan and Europe). For example they also have problems with bullying, where the general attitude is that children should just suck it up and figure it out amongst themselves, though these attitudes seem to be slowly changing with some recent horrific cases of bullying, leading to the death of some of the bullied children.

I often end up defending Japan on the internet, because I lived there for about a year and enjoyed my stay, making friends with some Japanese people. Which is why I often find the over-generalizing attitudes and condescending explanations of how the Japanese view the world by westerners a little annoying. It is my experience that there is an overwhelming focus on the negative in Japanese society on the internet, to the point that a rather dystopian picture of Japan and the Japanese is promulgated. In geek-circles it may be as a reaction to annoying animefans who are perceived to view Japan through rose-colored glasses. Indeed many of the people who are most loudly critical of japan are animefans who don't want to be lumped in with those kind of people. It should be noted that in my experience most people grow out of that kind of idolizing pretty quickly though. Anyways, the way to respond to this is not by doing the exact opposite.

The whole point of that is just that if it may seem like I am being overly defensive, it's not that I don't acknowledge that there are a lot of bad things about Japan. Indeed one of them was just brought up. Indeed I dislike parts of Japan that are almost never brought up, such as it's excessively capitalistic economic structure (admittedly different in some ways from western forms of capitalism). It's just that due to the excessive focus on the negative, and especially with what I sometimes perceive as a generalization of Japanese people (whom despite what you may have heard are actually individuals), some of whom I count among my friends, I can get a little annoyed.

edited 22nd Jun '14 1:35:37 AM by mathias

'We are all individuals!'

I still remember Naru Taru, the glass vial, and the worms.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

I was debating whether or not to write "they are all individuals" :p One of my favorite movies.

Actually, I just thought about something else. Japan has a lot of problems with democracy and the institutions of power. This tends to manifest itself by a vast majority of Japanese people feeling powerless when it comes to having an influence on politics, which in turn means that they don't actively participate in politics. This of course creates a bad circle and it is not entirely wrong to say that political decisions in japan are almost exclusively made by a small elite, even more so than the rest of the world (though we're catching up to them in terms of leaving political power in the hands of the elite, ganbare waarudoo! :p ).

It doesn't help that most of the families in power before world war 2 stayed in power after world war 2, meaning that there was never much of a break between earlier forms of government and the post-war democracy. When I was I in japan, I visited Tokyo in the summer of 2012, where they were having some of the largest demonstrations since the student demonstrations in the 60'ies, in this case against the reopening of the nuclear power plants. Now I don't necessarily agree with the demonstrators, since the chances are that if they didn't reopen, their output would just be replaced with coal-generated power which is worse. But the government certainly was not very responsive at all to the population, justifying the sense of powerlessness a lot of people probably feel when it comes to government policy.

This also means that Japanese government policy is not necessarily particularly indicative of what the Japanese citizen thinks, which one should keep in mind when discussing Japanese culture and society.

edited 21st Jun '14 5:30:02 AM by mathias

I'm not.

Schild und Schwert der Partei

@Mathias: That idea of powerlesness sounds eerily familiar to me. -Points to location-

"Please crush me with your heels Esdeath-sama!

Same thing here in my location.

^^I would assume that Brazil is worse than Japan in that the sense of powerlessness is more immediate, since you have more pressing issues of poverty, but I have no first-hand experience. Regardless, you have my sympathies.

^Hell, even I feel powerless currently and Denmark is often brought up as some kind of model country (justified or not) when it comes to democracy and in particular social democracy. As I said, even the so-called first world is catching up to Japan in terms of leaving political power in the hands of the elite.

edited 21st Jun '14 6:30:54 AM by mathias

I'm in despair! The entrenched and nigh-untouchable power of the elites has brought me to despair!

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

I think you'll find a similar gap in western societies too. How many american teenagers do you think accept homosexuality, as compared to their grandparents? I suspect this development is more of a general thing in advanced cultures, not just Japan.

Join my forum game!

The difference is that Japan is a Confucian society with strict veneration of the elderly and ones ancestors.

Also, the child abuse thing reminds me of Hunter × Hunter. Gon's father is one of the worst anime fathers I've ever seen, but his actions are largely justified because they succeed in the intended purpose or making Gon stronger.

edited 21st Jun '14 12:30:40 PM by KingZeal

Veneration for ancestors is mostly something the elderly care about at this point, just saying. While elements of neo-confusianism are retained in modern Japanese culture they are not as dominating as some people seem to believe.

Of course as I touched upon before, the power tends to be concentrated in a small elite, which mostly consists of middle-aged to old men　(which I guess you could term a carryover from a neo-confucian societal structure, though I see it mostly as an entrenched power elite), which means that their attitude towards homosexuality, gender relations etc. will probably hold structural sway longer than in most Western European countries, where the, somewhat younger and in some sense more pragmatic, power elite doesn't care much about homosexuality as an issue, for example. But I feel like I am repeatedly getting off-topic.

Also, Gon's dad is a dick. :p

^^^ 絶望した！この世の権威者や政治家の腐敗に絶望した！

edited 21st Jun '14 1:05:12 PM by mathias

According to the survey I was using, it's not so large as you might think in quite a few countries. Probably ties into to what Mathias is saying about Japan's political elite.

No, Neo-Confucian values are still a huge part of Japanese culture. Japan still largely believes in a hierarchical society where some conditions automatically place you above or beyond someone else. For example, part of the reason child abuse is such a problem is that children are supposed to be subordinate to their parents no matter what. Having shitty parents makes you no less subordinate to them. The same is true of a teacher/student, elder/younger sibling, upper/lower classmen boss/subordinate structure. You're supposed to alway show the proper respect to each of these people and make sure not to make them "lose Face". ("Face" being another aspect of Japanese culture that leads to problems). Even the language (both verbal and non) is set up so that the "proper" way of doing things is with the "lesser" person paying proper respect to the other. It's even prevalent in business; American companies have to take much care to only have someone of equal rank do business with Japanese employees. Sending someone of lower rank is considered disrespectful and sending someone higher makes them feel worried and awkward.

... That must mean stories like, say, Great Teacher Onizuka, must be pretty fucking radical. Wait, come to think of it, I don't think I've read a story where a teacher-figure wasn't somehow ridiculous since... Maison Ikkoku? And he was dead. And he married his student.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Onizuka is possibly described as a "tokubetsu achiever". That literally translates to "special", but in terms of Japanese social studies, the best way I can describe it is a person who does not conform to the Japanese structure. A tokubetsu achiever manages to succeed despite this, such as someone who doesn't need lessons to master an art, or a person with another special quality that lets them achieve in a way no one else could.

Like most things, Japan has a proper methodology to dealing with tokubetsu achievers: basically, absorb them into the formal structure and use their abilities to strengthen the whole.

Is that the same thing as a tensai?

edited 21st Jun '14 4:02:05 PM by TheHandle

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

I probably didn't formulate myself well, you are of course right that some neo-Confusian values are woven into the structural framework of society, what I meant was that I don't think people's daily interactions with each other are neccesarily governed all that much by Confucian values. Kids don't actually always respect their parents, the kouhai/sempai thing isn't always taken that seriously, most people actually speak to each other in futsuukei unless they happen to be in a formal situation. I guess my point is that whenever people look at Japan there is an excessive focus on the formal structures, not enough focus on how people actually act within them. Also I guess that even if you are in a superior-inferior relationship it doesn't mean that you have to act formally all the time, indeed unlike what a lot of people say, in my experience Japanese people tend to like joking around a bit.

Companies are certainly very hierarchical though as is the government bureaucracy (and probably devoid of joking around, especially in a formal situation like a business meeting with foreign businessmen). Also it's not like hierarchical structures aren't important in Western society, they just tend to be somewhat more hidden and with less focus on formality. Anyways, veneration of ancestors as a specific tenet is not something most young Japanese people care all that much about, a bit like how very few Japanese care much about religion.

I am talking mostly from personal experience though, I would have to do much more comprehensive historical research in order to be able to debate in any meaningful way about neo-Confucianism in Japan today (though I admit that the way I formulated myself was probably wrong, hierarchical structures are indeed pretty ubiquitous). I assume that you are basing your opinion upon modern sociological reviews of Japan, which I would also need to read. Though with the caveat in mind, that formal structures don't always tell you the whole picture as I alluded to earlier. I guess it comes back to my earliest point. We are all individuals (including the Japanese)! ;)

And since I was sort of talking badly about the older generation in Japan, let's talk about someone who was awesome. One of my Japanese teachers was a somewhat older lady (probably in her 60'ies), who was ridiculously energetic and very funny. She would always illustrate grammar points and vocab with dramatic one-woman dialogues, say words in weird accents, teach strange onomatopoeia which she would try to pronounce in a way which would evoke the meaning. Needless to say, her classes tended to be fun and taught me a lot to boot. A nearby udon restaurant owner, also an older lady, was very nice and tended to feed me for free, which was awesome. She was also a lot of fun to talk with, being very interested in different cultures and I ended up spending a lot of time at her restaurant (which tended to be busy only during lunch hour, where people would come from work to eat there).

edited 22nd Jun '14 2:21:24 AM by mathias

Rakugo is awesome.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Much of the Neo-Confucian aspects of the society are so ingrained into the culture that a majority of people don't recognize it. Japan is technically the most Confucian country in the modern world, with Korea being a decent runner up. It's kind of like euro-centricism in America. Most Americans don't consciously think of themselves as acting Eurocentric, but it appears everyday in something as small as a "God bless you" after a sneeze. It feels weird and improper not to say anything at all if someone sneezes, even though there's a good chance they aren't even religious. Similarly, much Japanese etiquette is subtly Confucian.

I notice in a lot of japanese media (Particularly in Action games, for instance) they emphasize Flash Step style movements a lot in action scenes.

Is this a subtle reference to any earlier japanese media before modern japanese media came to be?

Or am I just making stuff up?

edited 22nd Jun '14 6:44:18 PM by Demongodofchaos2

Watch Symphogear

I think that the Real Life examples of the aforementioned Flash Step kind of answer your question for you, although Noh does entail rapid movements accentuate with slow, overexaggerated movements to give the impression of speed, drama, intensity, etc. So yes, that's probably involved to an extent. There is also an aspect of Rule of Cool. Also see Aikido and Kendo's speed levels as seen by masters of the art, the distance they can clear near effortlessly, etc. Hopefully that helps answer your question.

"I'd like to be a tree." - Fluttershy

Re: Eurocentrism in the US, this ties in with a general thing I think folks sometimes forget: The US and its culture didn't just manifest wholesale in 1776, it was descended from and evolved from other cultures that folks brought with them from their various prior places. This is true of pretty much every culture, even the older ones.

Also, we don't all say "God Bless You" after someone sneezes. A lot of us say "Gesundheit", which is German for "Health". I'm not entirely sure that any actual Germans do this or if it's just one of those Americanisms, but it was a weird thing to try to explain to an office full of Japanese co-workers.

Indeed Japan itself has taken in a lot of outside influences — from China, Britain, the USA and others.

Keep Rolling On

Yes, they do say it.

I was always under the impression that that existed for more practical then cultural reasons.

A lot of Japanese media (particularly anime) have smaller budgets and shorter production times then their western counterparts, so animating that kind of rapid movement in detail is not something they can do regularly. So instead you have the Flash Step, which is easier and cheaper to animate, and has the additional "spectacle" aspect of "oh my god, that guy moves so fast he practically teleports", that makes it enjoyable to the audience.

Eventually it probably just became the norm, even when budgets and production times weren't an issue.