Grande Livro
Being in a country which culture is so different from our own, it's no wonder that sometimes foreigners discuss Japanese behavior (as society) and its reasons. Most of the time with a bit of humor; and nonsense. Besides, it's also a good way to look at ourselves and our own culture. Not wanting to jugde it better or worse than our own...
Among the "theories", maybe three are good enough to mention. One was mentioned briefly before, and, according to it, Japan is the Matrix. Yes, like the movie. Because "it's a simulate reality built to keep people docile (refering to honne and tatemae and some of its implications, probably). But if you step out of the behaviour you're supposed to follow (= become a "free human" in Matrix), "Agents" appear out of nowhere to crush you".
The second one says that Japan's aim is become like the world described in Brave New World (Aldous Huxley). From Wikipedia:
"(...) humanity is carefree, healthy and technologically advanced. Warfare and poverty have been eliminated and everyone is permanently happy due to government-provided stimulation. The irony is that all of these things have been achieved by eliminating many things that humans consider to be central to their identity (...). It is also a hedonistic society, deriving pleasure from promiscuous sex and drug use, especially the use of soma, a powerful drug taken to escape pain and bad memories through hallucinatory fantasies. Additionally, stability has been achieved and is maintained via deliberately engineered and rigidly enforced social stratification."
(Just in Japan's "defense", if it's becoming like Huxley's Brave New World, than maybe the US is becoming like George Orwell's 1984...)
The third one I'll have to give proper credits for Cris. His theory is that there's a book he calls "Grande Livro" (It has some wordplay here. "Grande" in Portuguese means "great" or "big"... And "livro" means "book"). In this book it'd be written all the situations a Japanese person may go through during his/her life, and how he/she should react to it. And all Japanese people would be aware of the contents of that book. It's mostly based on how most Japanese usually have similar behaviors (especially when in groups) and have problems "dealing with unpredicted situations" in the way we call in Portuguese "ter jogo de cintura". (In English, the best equivalents I found were "being flexible" or "dancing at the edge of chaos", although I've never heard the latter before...).
But Carol found something that suggests part of that theory may be true... From a presentation at the 9th Kyoto University International Symposium:
Civility in a Polytheistic World: A perspective from the Japanese experience
Toshio Yokoyama
"(...) Japanese society during that [spanning about 200 years from the late 17th century] period was sutained by numerous factors including the seclusion of its islands from the outer world, an intricate ruling system structured under the motto of quietude, and an overall balance between production and consumption which absorbed diverse local and temporal imbalances. The fact of that this stability was not won at the cost of gloomy stagnation seems to owe a great deal to common people's spontaneous in the social order, they cultivated what they thought to be elegant civility towards other humans as well as non-humans in their daily lives.
Two genres of popular household encyclopedias, setsuyoshu and ozatsusho played important roles in maintaining such orderly culture in Japanese society. The former provided instruction in self-depreciated forms of written communication, while the latter provided guidance on forms of un-offensive behavior which were recommended to be employed towards the numerous benevolent, but sometimes fearful, gods in heaven and on earth.
My studies of the nation-wide distribution and wear and tear of extent copies of these books reveal a society in which the Yin-Yang school of astrology and geomancy thrived. The page most universally consulted during the 18th and 19th centuries featured the rokuju-zu or chart of sixty , the key entry point to the instruction of the Yin-Yang school. This chart taught the reader his or her own cosmic attributes, in terms of, for example, the five elements of wood, fire, earth, metal and water. The chart would then offer guidance on, for example, the compability between his or her attitudes and those of a partner. The knowledge about such cosmic attributes was also indispensable when seeking instruction on any serious action scheduled on a certain day , as each day also carried, according to the Yin-Yang school, certain cosmic and divine attributes and the compability between one's intended act and the chosen days was often a grave matter.
Setsuyoshu and ozatsusho civilized their users in 3 ways. First, they afforded the user a grand world view, together with a sense of his or her humble but unique position in the all-embrancing cosmos ; second, they urged the user to put more value on harmonious relations between the humam and non-human constituents of a whole community than on any individual's merit; and third they infused each user with a sense of blessed security whenever one's mode of life was thought to be properly conducted and therefore encouraged by surrounding gods.
The 19th century witnessed the Japanese society's detachment, to a certain degree, from the Yin-yang school. The change of intellectual climate, however, was slow and never violent, a testimony, perhaps, the fact that the school had not assumed any character of rigorous orthodoxy, thereby avoinding harsh criticism from non-believers. The schhol's subtle civilizing influence survived in many parts of japanese society well into present times.
Those numerous gods with whom people used to share one world might be interpreted as equivalent to any of the poweful products of modern science and technology, the proper use of which would be beneficial, but any uncontrolled dependence on them could be disastrous. To achieve harmonious coexistence with those new non-humans, the traditional sensitive mode of perceiving the relations between oneself and the environment on a cosmic scale might be of some help, as it can lead us to recognize what is lacking in our minds as we try to civilize modern human activities within the complex human and ecological community on this planet."
Again, don't take this post too seriously or as an offense. But it's interesting, isn't it?
Among the "theories", maybe three are good enough to mention. One was mentioned briefly before, and, according to it, Japan is the Matrix. Yes, like the movie. Because "it's a simulate reality built to keep people docile (refering to honne and tatemae and some of its implications, probably). But if you step out of the behaviour you're supposed to follow (= become a "free human" in Matrix), "Agents" appear out of nowhere to crush you".
The second one says that Japan's aim is become like the world described in Brave New World (Aldous Huxley). From Wikipedia:
"(...) humanity is carefree, healthy and technologically advanced. Warfare and poverty have been eliminated and everyone is permanently happy due to government-provided stimulation. The irony is that all of these things have been achieved by eliminating many things that humans consider to be central to their identity (...). It is also a hedonistic society, deriving pleasure from promiscuous sex and drug use, especially the use of soma, a powerful drug taken to escape pain and bad memories through hallucinatory fantasies. Additionally, stability has been achieved and is maintained via deliberately engineered and rigidly enforced social stratification."
(Just in Japan's "defense", if it's becoming like Huxley's Brave New World, than maybe the US is becoming like George Orwell's 1984...)
The third one I'll have to give proper credits for Cris. His theory is that there's a book he calls "Grande Livro" (It has some wordplay here. "Grande" in Portuguese means "great" or "big"... And "livro" means "book"). In this book it'd be written all the situations a Japanese person may go through during his/her life, and how he/she should react to it. And all Japanese people would be aware of the contents of that book. It's mostly based on how most Japanese usually have similar behaviors (especially when in groups) and have problems "dealing with unpredicted situations" in the way we call in Portuguese "ter jogo de cintura". (In English, the best equivalents I found were "being flexible" or "dancing at the edge of chaos", although I've never heard the latter before...).
But Carol found something that suggests part of that theory may be true... From a presentation at the 9th Kyoto University International Symposium:
Civility in a Polytheistic World: A perspective from the Japanese experience
Toshio Yokoyama
"(...) Japanese society during that [spanning about 200 years from the late 17th century] period was sutained by numerous factors including the seclusion of its islands from the outer world, an intricate ruling system structured under the motto of quietude, and an overall balance between production and consumption which absorbed diverse local and temporal imbalances. The fact of that this stability was not won at the cost of gloomy stagnation seems to owe a great deal to common people's spontaneous in the social order, they cultivated what they thought to be elegant civility towards other humans as well as non-humans in their daily lives.
Two genres of popular household encyclopedias, setsuyoshu and ozatsusho played important roles in maintaining such orderly culture in Japanese society. The former provided instruction in self-depreciated forms of written communication, while the latter provided guidance on forms of un-offensive behavior which were recommended to be employed towards the numerous benevolent, but sometimes fearful, gods in heaven and on earth.
My studies of the nation-wide distribution and wear and tear of extent copies of these books reveal a society in which the Yin-Yang school of astrology and geomancy thrived. The page most universally consulted during the 18th and 19th centuries featured the rokuju-zu or chart of sixty , the key entry point to the instruction of the Yin-Yang school. This chart taught the reader his or her own cosmic attributes, in terms of, for example, the five elements of wood, fire, earth, metal and water. The chart would then offer guidance on, for example, the compability between his or her attitudes and those of a partner. The knowledge about such cosmic attributes was also indispensable when seeking instruction on any serious action scheduled on a certain day , as each day also carried, according to the Yin-Yang school, certain cosmic and divine attributes and the compability between one's intended act and the chosen days was often a grave matter.
Setsuyoshu and ozatsusho civilized their users in 3 ways. First, they afforded the user a grand world view, together with a sense of his or her humble but unique position in the all-embrancing cosmos ; second, they urged the user to put more value on harmonious relations between the humam and non-human constituents of a whole community than on any individual's merit; and third they infused each user with a sense of blessed security whenever one's mode of life was thought to be properly conducted and therefore encouraged by surrounding gods.
The 19th century witnessed the Japanese society's detachment, to a certain degree, from the Yin-yang school. The change of intellectual climate, however, was slow and never violent, a testimony, perhaps, the fact that the school had not assumed any character of rigorous orthodoxy, thereby avoinding harsh criticism from non-believers. The schhol's subtle civilizing influence survived in many parts of japanese society well into present times.
Those numerous gods with whom people used to share one world might be interpreted as equivalent to any of the poweful products of modern science and technology, the proper use of which would be beneficial, but any uncontrolled dependence on them could be disastrous. To achieve harmonious coexistence with those new non-humans, the traditional sensitive mode of perceiving the relations between oneself and the environment on a cosmic scale might be of some help, as it can lead us to recognize what is lacking in our minds as we try to civilize modern human activities within the complex human and ecological community on this planet."
Again, don't take this post too seriously or as an offense. But it's interesting, isn't it?
3 comments:
Oi Igor!
Hehe, cuidado para nao cair na desgraca do Nihonjinron. Se tem uma coisa que japones adora, mais do que purikuras e ler revistas pornos em trem, eh buscar motivos para dizer que o povo japones eh completamente diferente de todos os outros povos da terra (nihonjinron). Dai vem essas "teorias" e os varios livrinhos "desvendando" a cultura japonesa no oriente.
Eu prefiro ver o que esta terra tem de igual com outras partes do mundo :-)
Alias, eu acho que voce responde a sua propria pergunta quando, para defender o japao, voce acusa os estados unidos (se o japao eh "admiravel mundo novo", estados unidos eh "1984") - se voce soh compara duas culturas, eh facil dizer que uma delas eh "unica" :-)
Oi Claus
Nao dou razao ao Nihonjinron, mas existem diferencas entre povos, e mesmo entre pessoas. Eh com essa parte que a gente brinca. Claro, precisamos de bom senso pra saber quando dar o apelido de "bolota" pra alguem fica muito mal... Alem disso, as vezes quem chama o outro de bolota nao eh lah muito magro.
Os pontos em comum, tanto os positivos quanto os negativos, existem. Mesmo que passem despercebidos na maioria das vezes (eh mais facil reparar no que eh diferente). Enquanto as diferencas podem ser tema de um post, as semelhancas geralmente aparecem em segundo plano em outras postagens.
No caso da comparacao com os EUA, concordo que a comparacao com apenas dois referenciais nao eh ideal. Mas sao as culturas que posso dizer que tenho mais "contato" (com a excecao do Brasil, talvez). Nao poderia pensar de forma tao imediata uma associacao pra outras culturas.
o "grande livro"... hehehe!
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