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You know if you go to Japan, beneath the mystique is a fairly normal country with fairly normal people going about fairly normal day to day lives.
by smegel 11y ago
You know if you go to Japan, beneath the mystique is a fairly normal country with fairly normal people going about fairly normal day to day lives.
- onetwotree 11y agoI'm a big fan of Zen and it's ilk, but the Japan fetish in this article is way too strong. I bet the author thinks that samurai swords were way better than their contemporaries in Europe
- mhurron 11y agoThey could cut through a tank. I saw it on the internet.
- JetSpiegel 11y agoThey can cut through an SUV (Audi, if I'm not mistaken) engine block, though. I saw it on Matrix Revolutions.
- Retric 11y agoThe odd part of this is they had far worse armor. Western knights where shockingly fast and well protected in full plate armor. 1 on 1 a knight would have been far more effective vs. a samurai. The problem is Knights where far more expensive to equip and ended up as far less than 1% of the population. This is the huge advantage the Mongols had. They could field 'huge' (relative to population size) and devastatingly effective army's on the cheap. Often Mongols still ended up outnumbered by as much as 10-1, but mobility allowed them to avoid highly defended areas. PS: I wonder how much the cost of medieval armor contributed to long term economic growth. Sort of the medieval equivalent of modern military innovations (computers, internet, radar, etc.) being useful in peace time.
- digitalengineer 11y agoOne armored knight on a trained (and also armored) fighting hore equaled a tank. See the so-called "squadron charge": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Knights_Templar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Knights_Templar
- bpodgursky 11y agoYeah, this annoys me. Japanese swords were folded over hundreds of times not because it was a superior crafting technique, but because they were using inferior steel with more impurities.
- dragontamer 11y agoDamascus Steel is probably the coolest kind of sword from the past. Carbon nanotubes have been found in ancient Damascus steel swords, proving that the advanced metallurgy strengthened Damascus Steel above and beyond all other steel of that era. And while Japanese metallurgy exists today... the secret of Damascus steel has been lost in time. No one knows how to make it anymore. --------------- With regards to Katanas vs Longswords... Katanas are almost equivalent to Long Swords. The martial arts between the two styles are relatively similar. Sometimes Katanas were dual-wielded with wakizashi, while Long Swords would sometimes be dual-wielded with a dagger. Sometimes Katanas are wielded with two hands, but sometimes you switch to one-hand for extra reach. Ditto with Long Swords (being used with "Bastard Sword" style) ------------ In all cases, the fetish with swords is universal across cultures. Polearms were the king of the battlefield in both the West and in the East... and the favored weapons of soldiers, and yet the stories all glorify sword-wielders. Swords were expensive in all cultures, and are therefore associated with the respective nobility class.
- Balgair 11y agoMeh, you can get carbon nanotubes out of soot too [0], they occur in any high carbon and high temp environment. Their existence in something is not proof that metallurgy is advanced in any sense, just luck. European and Japanese fighting styles are also very different, as the katana is made with much more brittle steels [1]. In Japan, the block is not hard and the other blade has to slide along your's to not break the sword. You use Damascus steel if your steel is of poor quality or you don't have the chemical know how to make good steel. You do what you can with what you have. Still, swords cost a lot to make and end up as a status symbol. Look at the Japanese officers in WW2 [2]. [0]http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1044580305001051 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1044580305... [1]https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/5729/how-do-tamahagane-damascus-and-toledo-steel-compare https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/5729/how-do-tama... [2]https://41.media.tumblr.com/ab40ee35c57c64a56570035045f61c4e/tumblr_nwhsjgxrz01tjjchto1_500.jpg https://41.media.tumblr.com/ab40ee35c57c64a56570035045f61c4e...
- smegel 11y agoI was aiming my comment at HN as much as the article.
- Steko 11y ago> the Japan fetish in this article is way too strong Seems like a common thread from the author, see yesterday's submission re: Ikiru. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10839344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10839344 But his pseudo-nihonjinron* is nothing compared to the Traditional European Martial Arts (Which are Much Better Than Japan's Didntchaknow) circlejerk we have going on in sibling comments. If I'm ever at a ren faire I plan to walk around and every few minutes loudly say "dude you should have brought your katana, you'd own everyone so hard" just to watch peoples' heads explode. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihonjinron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihonjinron
- onetwotree 11y agoHa! Agreed.
- sageabilly 11y agoNo but you see, the Japanese sleep on the floor and they're all really really smart, so if my family sleeps on the floor instead of in a typical Western bed then we'll all be smarter like the Japanese. Plus their civilization is really ancient and they know so much about mindfulness and plants and stuff Actual words that have been spoken to me by an adult woman with two kids.
- sliverstorm 11y agoI feel compelled to mention- while staying in Japan I discovered buckwheat hull pillows, which have not made me smarter but are very comfortable and nice in the summer.
- tadfisher 11y agoFunny, I discovered those on the Home Shopping Network in the 90s.
- yongjik 11y agoI wouldn't argue against some Japanese people being really really smart, but they have a rather shortish history (in Old World standard): recorded history begins around ~250 AD. By that time Egypt had fallen and Rome was past its prime.
- nmnmnmnmnm001 11y agoRoman culture is gone. Ancient Egyptian culture is gone.
- mc32 11y agoSo is ancient Japanese culture.
- digitalengineer 11y agoOf course not. New cultures were build up on their remains. Such is Europe.
- brazzledazzle 11y agoThere is a point in there about how we view ourselves in the context of others in "the west" vs. how someone in Japan views themselves in the context of others. The whole thing could be readily replaced by the bit about the shop keeper and a couple of paragraphs though.
- draw_down 11y agoI don't mean to endorse the content of the article, but what you wrote is true for every country. And we know that every country isn't the same, so I question the relevance of pointing out that most Japanese people are normal and live mostly normal lives.
- gozur88 11y agoThe relevance would be there are a lot of people out there who don't actually realize it's true. News from Japan generally comes in two flavors: "Look how weird these people are." and "Japanese people aren't having kids, so Japan is doomed. DOOMED, I tell ya."
- coldtea 11y agoWell, both of those statements can be true. First, sure, Japanese people, as we all still shit from their behinds, work everyday for money and snore when they sleep -- that's not the real point of comparison. But for the average US person for example, the culture, historical legacy and customs of Japan can seem totally foreign [1]. Second, yes, if Japanese people aren't having kids, Japan can be doomed, in the sense of population decline, economic and job issues, etc. They're not that much if favor of integrating immigrants either. It's not like it's unprecedented. Populations have dwindled to the point of it being a major issue for lots of ethnicities/communities worldwide in the past. [1] and vise versa, although US culture is already familiar to minute detail everywhere to ordinary citizens -- from exposure to tons of US movies, tv series, songs, news programs, websites and books -- Japanese culture outside of Japan not so much, except to Nippofiles and Anime fans, which are far from the majority.
- gozur88 11y ago>But for the average US person for example, the culture, historical legacy and customs of Japan can seem totally foreign. It's no more true for Japan than it is for anywhere. People who get all their information from the western press and then actually go to Japan come away shocked at how normal everything is. It would be like people in other countries forming their opinions on the US based on the Castro district in San Francisco during the '70s. >Second, yes, if Japanese people aren't having kids, Japan can be doomed, in the sense of population decline, economic and job issues, etc. There are 127 million people in Japan. If the population shrinks by 35 million or so they'll have about the same number of people they had at the start of WW II. And they'll be a lot better for it, too. Certainly any time you have a pay-go pension scheme there are difficulties with a shrinking population, but it's nothing they can't manage. As far as taking in immigrants, what Japan is doing makes a lot more sense that what the US or the Europeans are doing. I don't blame people who don't want to have to choose, at age 60, between immersion in a foreign culture and moving from the place they've lived for decades.
- Machia-velli 11y agoNo, Japan is far from being just another normal country, according to Dr 'Debito Arudou-有道 出人'[1][2] a naturalized Japanese and also a writer, blogger, and human rights activist, Japan is one of the most xenophobic, racist and bigoted countries in the world. [1]: http://www.debito.org/ http://www.debito.org/ [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debito_Arudou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debito_Arudou
- koko775 11y agoDebito Arudou is an angry knee-jerk reactionary, and anything he says should /definitely/ be taken with a grain of salt.
- Machia-velli 11y agoAnything he says is based on a 25 years of first hand experience and research of living and working in Japan. Resorting to name-calling and unfounded ad-hominem attacks only shows a lack of arguments from your side and nothing else.
- level3 11y agoDebito had some relevance in the 90s in raising awareness of issues regarding foreigners in Japan, but he is definitely not an authority on Japan, regardless of how many years he has been here. His experience (of apparently constantly experiencing outrageous racism) does not really align with many others' here, which suggests that part of it is over-reaction, intentionally or not.
- jpatokal 11y agoDavid, is that you? Anyway, here's some arguments: https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/2u8k66/why_is_debito_arudou_so_angry_all_the_time/ https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/2u8k66/why_is_debito... He's also amped up the bile level considerably after his (very bitter) divorce and leaving the country -- at last check he was in Hawaii.
- koko775 11y ago
- rasz_pl 11y agosure http://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/rkRVkB.gif http://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/rkRVk...
- ekianjo 11y agoAgree. Trying to see Zen in every cultural aspect is pushing it way too far. Especially since spirituality is a pretty shallow thing in Japan for the large majority of people.
- yarou 11y agoThere is no doubt that there is a large degree of influence from Taoist, Confucian, Buddhist, Shinto and even Hindu (people seem to forget this for some reason) philosophy in Japanese culture today. I agree that Zen is not expressed in every cultural aspect, but by and large it is there. Look, for example, at the collective reaction to the Fukushima disaster. If that Stoicism isn't an expression of Zen philosophy, I don't know what is.
- ekianjo 11y ago> Look, for example, at the collective reaction to the Fukushima disaster. If that Stoicism isn't an expression of Zen philosophy, I don't know what is. What are you talking about? Many people in Japan, even in the media, were revolted by the inaction of the government. Stoicism is maybe what you see from outside, but internally it's definitely not the case. And look at the recent demonstrations in Japan against the change of constitution regarding Japanese military scope. You call that Stoicism ?
- dfcowell 11y agoCurrently sitting in a cafe in Osaka. Can confirm. Life is pretty normal. People appear normal. Will report back if situation changes.
- smegel 11y agoI envy you. Out of interest, what do you do (if not a tourist)?
- dfcowell 11y agoI'm one of those digital nomad types. Currently operating a web dev agency in HK and Australia, but planning an expansion into Japan. Already got a small team of contractors here. Currently working through the paperwork to get my visa and company incorporation sorted here. P.S. Situation is still notable in its normalcy.
- labster 11y agoBe sure to keep us informed if there's anything out of the ordinary. We're relying on you!
- smegel 11y agoDo you have a blog? I am currently in Australia, and actually becoming a digital nomad is a kind of dream of mine. Not really sure how to make it a reality though...it seems that webdev/online contracting is such a saturated and race to the bottom pool.