Transcript No Slide Title

Priests and
Warriors
Lecture 4: October 1, 2003
Understanding Culture
• A whole way of life vs.
partial representations
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Language
Day-to-day life
Historical currents
Aesthetic concerns
Unspoken hegemonies
Competing ideologies
Body cultures
Example: The Tea Ceremony
“The Japanese
National Character”
• seven deadly cliches
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economic animals
selfless groupies
deferential subordinates
homogenous society
Zen aesthetes
inscrutable character
imitators not innovators
loyal samurai . . .?
Fallacies of Culture as
National Character
• essentializing
– “inherently Japanese”
• ethnocentric
– they are what we are not
QuickTi me™ a nd a
GIF d eco mpres sor
are need ed to se e th is p icture.
• homogenizes variety in
everyday life
Garo, avant garde manga
What is
culture?
• national character
• refined accomplishment
• culture as tradition
compared to
• an anthropological view
of culture
– conventional
– contingent
– contested
Forest scenes in Princess Mononoke
How understand a foreign culture?
• fieldwork
– participant-observation
– interviewing
– everyday life
• hanami (cherry blossom viewing)
– reverence for nature, or
– drunken karaoke w/ friends
ethnography = “a commitment to the actual”
Anthropological View of Culture
• conventional
– language
– system of ideologies
– everyday practices
• contingent
– historical changes
– institutional forces Rhymester:
• contested
– power / resistance
– social categories
samurai
B-Boys
Classical age of
Japan (6th-12th c.)
• 710 - 794 Nara
• Heian court in Kyoto
794 -1185 - political
stability & Buddhism
• literacy (kanji from
China, kana by
women)
• dueling aesthetics as
political power
see also Totman (1981)
Japan Before Perry
Warring states period (1192 - 1600)
• local warlords (daimyô)
• samurai (historical change)
– small #, stable, elite (early)
– large #, complex,commoners (late)
• shifting centers of power
– Kamakura 1192 - 1333
– late 1200s Mongols invade (fail)
– Muromachi 1334 - 1573 etc.
• Religion moves to the masses
– Zen as contrast to worldly temples
Yukio MISHIMA,
20th c. novelist,
posing as a samurai
Tokugawa Period (1600 - 1868)
• Shogun rule Edo (Tokyo)
– TOKUGAWA Ieyasu
• samurai bureaucrats
• rigid class structure
– samurai, farmers, artisans,
merchants
• but power shifts to
merchants and rise of
mercantile culture
Himeji Castle near Osaka
Meiji Restoration 1868
• 1853 Commodore Perry
“Black Ships”
• Reformers “restore”
Meiji Emperor
• Rapid moves to
modernize selected from
Western models
• Imperial aggression
begins in 20th century
Izumo Shrine, the Emperor as
living god of Shintô religion
Samurai discussion
Religion in Japan
• This-worldly benefits
(genze riyaku)
• "Born Shinto, die
Buddhist"
• Complex relationship
between practice and
belief
Buddhist priests at prayer
Ethnicity and Religion
• Links between kami
and the people
• Imperial line
• People can become
kami
Amaterasu, Sun Goddess and
progenitor of Imperial line