Rome vs Japan

[Narukami]

On a side note. I love medieval and feudal Japaneses culture, but after watching Japanese television...

What the heck happened to Japan!

Travis

You mean like MXC...Most Extreme Elimination Challenge?


That's quality...and it makes me LMAO!

HAHHAAHAHA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLvjd3K6 ... ed&search=

What the heck?!

I don't understand why Japan couldn't just be Japan without all the imperialism/war stuff after WWII. Why did it become this pop culture bizarro world?

No offense intended. I just don't get it.

Travis

Old Japan is there there, in fact even more so than "old" America or perhaps even "old Europe."

Tokyo is very much a SciFi City of pop culture gone wild, as Osaka is a bastion of chonin (that is to say merchant) practicality and pragmatism, but Kyoto is the cultural heart of Japan. (In fact, these cities have worn these mantles since the days of the Shoguns.) Visit Kyoto and you will find old Japan all around you.

Take the kabuki theatre for example. It is possible today, in Tokyo or Kyoto, to see a play performed in essentially the same manner it was over 200 years ago. The same text, movements, stage business, costumes and language. If Donjuro I were to sit through a performance of Shibaraku today staring his descendant Donjuro IX he would see some changes, but he would also see himself up there, the characters still being performed as he had performed them nearly 300 years before.

The same can not be said even of Shakespeare (work at the new Old Globe Theatre not withstanding). These are not special academic productions or museum theatres but going concerns enjoying a rise in popularity due to the new young stars who are performing in films and on television as well as the kabuki stage.

This apples to other arts as well: sword making (as has been discussed in this thread already) cloth dying, paper making, pottery, etc. etc. etc.

However...

What is still intact from old Japan, perhaps their most important trait, is the ability of the Japanese people to take an idea or concept from the outside and make it uniquely their own.

Zen is a classic example of this, but so too (as Goffredo so correctly points out) is their pop culture. Look at their TV game shows. They did not invent this sub genre, but looking at their game shows you would think they had. Certainly they have made it their own.

In one respect at least I think the Japanese and the Ancient Romans were very much alike. The Romans were practical and pragmatic to a fault, and so too are the Japanese. Yes, their 'samurai honor' can, and often did, get in the way of practicality, (a strong sense of honor has a way of doing that) but on the whole I think them in agreement on this point.

Others here have a deeper knowledge or better academic foundation in regards to both Japan and Ancient Rome, and they might better speak to this point. (Or disagree if they will.) I will defer to their knowledge, yet on this I do not think I am mistaken.

We have started to drift quite a distance from the original topic, but a lively conversation all the same.

:wink:

Narukami