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Japan is probably the only country that keeps suprising me and is often (in my eyes) absolutely contradictory - I love many of their animes, some of their movie

Japan is probably the only country that keeps suprising me and is often (in my eyes) absolutely contradictory - I love many of their animes, some of their movies (e.g. the old samurai classics, "I am a hero", etc) some of their music (I listen from time to time to "J1 radio"), but at the same time e.g. some other animes really go over my thresholds, they have the problem with child prostitution, keep fishing anything that moves, are ultra-protectionist, etc... . Incredible. How did it happen that they're sometimes absolutely great/avantgarde/etc... and then sometimes they fall back to the exact opposite? I often think that on the day when I'll be able to understand japan culture, I'll have no challenges left on this planet => I'll need some kind of extraterrestrial-invasion or faster-then-light-travel to find new interesting stuff to understand :)

Taylor_OD 8y ago
I think the best way for you to be able to understand them better is to remember while they are a country with a population of 120 million. There is going to be contradictions in their culture.
lhorie 8y ago
I mean, in the US, you have creationists and you have Silicon Valley. People are different everywhere. You just don't hear about strange curiosities from Brazil or Tasmania because journalism about Japan is more mainstream.
drak0n1c 8y ago
Those are not necessarily opposites. The centuries of various forces, traditions, and habits are what insulates them from western homogeneity. That is what enables them to produce artifacts that seem to be out of the norm to a western observer.
subjectsigma 8y ago
*anime
crocodiletears 8y ago
I think a lot of the confusion around Japan's culture often stems from the fact that from the outside, to casual observers, they seem so culturally integrated with the rest of the world; yet don't seem to have assimilated many (if any) of its social norms. The reality is, Japan is a net cultural exporter, and seems to have gone out of its way to prevent contaminating its social identity with foreign imports. Needless to say, the country has been heavily influenced by the brands it's imported, and the processes of technological/financial exchange abroad. But the nation itself has broadly kept its interactions with the outside world professional, or one-sided. Attempting to measure the nation (honestly most east-asian nations) with the metrics of progress we would we would use for more culturally integrated countries will always be confounding. They represent a parallel civilization that refuses to be subsumed by western thought in the way many less geographically defensible/isolated and technologically developed societies inevitably have been. As a result, their social development will never quite adhere to the broad trends that more westernized societies seem destined to follow.
- AareyBaba 8y ago
  That a convoluted way of saying: "The Japanese have a unique culture and have adapted western ideas without giving up their Japanese identity". The same could be said about Indians, Thai or Nigerians.
  - crocodiletears 8y ago
    True, but I like to qualify my assertions when making statements like that. People often unpack complex claims in such a way that they make the wrong assumptions about the reasoning behind them. I believe that the assertion is Moreso true for Japan than it is for just about any other culture on earth, given their heavy cultural influence and integration into the global economy. I also believe their practices are far more hygenic than those in other non-western States. It's much harder to pick out the western footprint in Japanese culture because western influences are so heavilly mutated during their transition to Japanese society, and more of them just don't map onto it. The same is harder to say for many other countries that more often emulate than dissect and adapt. Western elements in other societies tend to stick out like sore thumbs, and remain relatively unchanged from their sources. India is also a good example.

Taylor_OD 8y ago

I think the best way for you to be able to understand them better is to remember while they are a country with a population of 120 million. There is going to be contradictions in their culture.

lhorie 8y ago

I mean, in the US, you have creationists and you have Silicon Valley. People are different everywhere. You just don't hear about strange curiosities from Brazil or Tasmania because journalism about Japan is more mainstream.

drak0n1c 8y ago

Those are not necessarily opposites. The centuries of various forces, traditions, and habits are what insulates them from western homogeneity. That is what enables them to produce artifacts that seem to be out of the norm to a western observer.

subjectsigma 8y ago

*anime

crocodiletears 8y ago

I think a lot of the confusion around Japan's culture often stems from the fact that from the outside, to casual observers, they seem so culturally integrated with the rest of the world; yet don't seem to have assimilated many (if any) of its social norms. The reality is, Japan is a net cultural exporter, and seems to have gone out of its way to prevent contaminating its social identity with foreign imports. Needless to say, the country has been heavily influenced by the brands it's imported, and the processes of technological/financial exchange abroad. But the nation itself has broadly kept its interactions with the outside world professional, or one-sided. Attempting to measure the nation (honestly most east-asian nations) with the metrics of progress we would we would use for more culturally integrated countries will always be confounding. They represent a parallel civilization that refuses to be subsumed by western thought in the way many less geographically defensible/isolated and technologically developed societies inevitably have been. As a result, their social development will never quite adhere to the broad trends that more westernized societies seem destined to follow.

AareyBaba 8y ago
That a convoluted way of saying: "The Japanese have a unique culture and have adapted western ideas without giving up their Japanese identity". The same could be said about Indians, Thai or Nigerians.
- crocodiletears 8y ago
  True, but I like to qualify my assertions when making statements like that. People often unpack complex claims in such a way that they make the wrong assumptions about the reasoning behind them. I believe that the assertion is Moreso true for Japan than it is for just about any other culture on earth, given their heavy cultural influence and integration into the global economy. I also believe their practices are far more hygenic than those in other non-western States. It's much harder to pick out the western footprint in Japanese culture because western influences are so heavilly mutated during their transition to Japanese society, and more of them just don't map onto it. The same is harder to say for many other countries that more often emulate than dissect and adapt. Western elements in other societies tend to stick out like sore thumbs, and remain relatively unchanged from their sources. India is also a good example.