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I love to see the cultural differences between korea/japan and the West on the matter of artificial stuff. Whereas in the West people would try to hide fakeness

by d--b 5y ago

I love to see the cultural differences between korea/japan and the West on the matter of artificial stuff. Whereas in the West people would try to hide fakeness as much as possible, people in the far East have a much more candid view of it. In the West we do understand and like artificiality, but we really want to contain it to the realm of fiction. When some artificiality spills out in the “real” world we raise red flags: “tssk, this temple is not authentic, it burned down 80 years ago and they rebuilt it from scratch” In the East, there is a deep philosophical difference that I would like to understand better - if anyone can point to any reference on that matter? It’s like people have understood that fiction and artificiality are part of our lives, cause people embellish things all the time, and we humans are happy when we believe in things. So instead of being suspicious, they let themselves invaded by artificiality, not unlike the way Western people create emotional connection with novel characters, but in real world situations. And I mean why not? In the West, we get cartoon character-based advertising, we get actor-based advertising. How is AI-based influencer (that doesn’t hide the fact that it’s artificial) is any different? If Tony the Kellogg’s tiger had an instagram account, we’d find it totally normal. Here is the same, except that we just jumped over the uncanny valley. There is a lot to talk about on the subject and doesn’t fit in a hn comment :-)

sanxiyn 5y ago
> this temple is not authentic, it burned down 80 years ago and they rebuilt it from scratch As a South Korean, I would like to understand the viewpoint of the "West" better. What is not authentic about rebuilt temple? No one is trying to mislead, restoration does not try to hide the fact it was restored. Buildings require maintenance, so even buildings that is continuing to stand is not the same building, in the style of ship of Theseus. Difference from "rebuilt from scratch" is not clear cut. Maybe wooden buildings make this clearer than stone buildings?
- pkulak 5y ago
  Oh, I'm sure you guys will have this one figured out soon. :D https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
- noisy_boy 5y ago
  I think "West" itself is a broad generalization. Something that is quite old in America is very new from a Roman point of view. So from that point of view, if an American sees a thousand year old temple, that is impressive/authentic. For, say, an Indian, it is impressive too but they have a bunch of those.
- maximus-decimus 5y ago
  I would say the West sees the Theseus' ship as the same ship but rebuilt some scratch as not the same ship and that's where we draw the line. The surprising part is nobody argues we should restore pyramids and repaint/reattach arms of roman statues. This makes me feel like there's the additional requirement that it needs to be a continuous process of restoration and you can't just restore it to what it was hundreds of years ago.
  - fogihujy 5y ago
    Restoration using traditional and well-documented techniques are perfectly "authentic". A modern replica pyramid built with steel and concrete, not so much. An actual replica pyramid built using traditional methods? Not sure, but I would love to see it. :D
    - dagw 5y ago
      Restoration using traditional and well-documented techniques are perfectly "authentic". Except people don't want "authentic", they want what they know. No one is suggestion restoring the pyramids to their original look because then they would look 'fake' to most people. You see it in more mundane situations as well. If a houses was red for 300 years and then white for 150 years, and someone wants to paint it red again a lot of people will complain because that building has 'always' been white and red will feel inauthentic, even if you can prove with historical documentation that red was the original 'authentic' color.
- yorwba 5y ago
  I don't think it's really a common viewpoint in the West. E.g. that temple in Paris that burned down, y'know, the Notre Dame, is being restored, and I doubt many people would see it as "not authentic" just because some parts had to be replaced.
  - bigfudge 5y ago
    I will! I don’t think they should leave it ruined, but something was definitely lost in the fire. Like a post above said, I do take please and feel connection by looking at a makers mark or accidental slip of the chisel in something built 1000 years ago. It’s the detail and closeness of past lives that we experience from original artefacts that gives their value, to me.
    - dagw 5y ago
      The building that stood there before the fire wasn't "authentic" either by that measure. The building that recently burnt down had been completely renovated and rebuilt several times and looked nothing like the building they first put up. The building that will stand there after this latest round of renovation will be a new building, but it won't be any less 'authentic' than any of the other renovations that came before.
- godelski 5y ago
  Honestly as a westerner I'm not quite sure what they are talking about either, because all your points seem valid to me. If I'm to wager a guess they had a bad example because buildings and art are often restored. Maybe they were talking about types of entertainment? But I'm not sure I buy that either because of the popularity of reality television. And also because what the article is about just seems like a natural extension of your typical Disney pop star.
- themacguffinman 5y ago
  > No one is trying to mislead, restoration does not try to hide the fact it was restored. The problem isn't the dishonesty, I'd just be disappointed that it's not the original thing because the original thing is infinitely more complex and layered and informative than a reconstruction. All the tiny flaws and subtle details you can find in the original can be lost in a reconstruction. Buildings & architecture aren't my passion so it's harder for me to feel this about stuff like restored temples, but I sometimes feel this about things that I am passionate about. It's like in the movie Inception (2010) [SPOILERS AHEAD]: Cobb: I can't stay with her anymore because she doesn't exist. Mal: I'm the only thing you do believe in anymore. Cobb: I wish. I wish more than anything. But I can't imagine you with all your complexity, all your perfection, all your imperfection. Look at you. You are just a shade of my real wife. You're the best I can do; but I'm sorry, you are just not good enough.
  - mordae 5y ago
    Yeah, but you will eventually run out of quirks of the material and slide back to the domain of human lives. You start to wonder why the technique changed slightly at a point to learn that the old mason died and his apprentice took over and so on. At some point, you will surely start to wonder "what does that mean for MY life?" and one thing that comes to mind is "how did the institutions that enabled something this complex to come to be and survive for so long worked, compared to what we have now?" and that is the moment the wooden castle rebuilt every couple of years is really the same as the stone chapel.
- flarg 5y ago
  There is history in the material. Touching something that has been touched for 100s of years is almost spiritual. Seeing the cracks and splits, the dings and cuts. In the West history is tactile.
  - andrewzah 5y ago
    And it’s somehow not in places other than the West…? The temples I visited in South Korea were pretty tactile to me.
    - bigfudge 5y ago
      I think where the maintenance is continuous that has a different quality. Places in Japan are often like this - yes everything has been replaced, but primary timbers etc have not … there is continuity. I think there is a strong analogy to personal identity here too. All the cells in our body are replaced, but we are still Ourselves! If too much were to be transplanted at once, or things we consider too fundamental, the suffer identity worries.
    - Dma54rhs 5y ago
      I don't think the parent implied it isn't but shared the common culture and sentiment in the west.
- petre 5y ago
  I have no problem with the original building being restored or rebuit from scratch rather than with copies of that building springing up where'd you least expect it, just like garden gnomes. https://www.wonders-of-the-world.net/Eiffel-Tower/Repliques/Replicas-of-the-Eiffel-tower-in-China.php https://www.wonders-of-the-world.net/Eiffel-Tower/Repliques/...
- iamnotwhoiam 5y ago
  I don't think East vs West is a fair generalization of this attitude. In Thailand someone is building an Angkor Wat replica and the Cambodian government is protesting because they see it as somehow cheapening the original. Angkor Wat has undergone very little reconstruction and where it has it's only sections which can be mostly rebuilt from original fragments. In Vietnam you can visit lots of temples that are complete rebuilds. In Cambodia there are hundreds or even thousands of ancient temples, none of which have any restoration done, and there is no movement to do any.
- progre 5y ago
  I don't know about "the west", but I can give my own (Swedish) perspective on authenticity and age: The church in my village is quite new, about 150 years old. But it's built on the site of a much older church. The new church has a large bowl of carved limestone that where preserved from the old church. It's about 900 years old and is used for babtisms. Touching that old bowl gives me a tremendous sense of perspective, a feeling of belonging to a continium of people that has loved this place. The item itself is the important thing. I don't care that they have performed babtisms here for 900 years. The ritual is not important to me and I don't belive in that stuff anyway. I suppose it comes down to a cultural sense of whats real. To me, rituals and traditions are flimsy constructs. The new church is just like any other new building. But the material thing, the limestone bowl, thats real.
  - sanxiyn 5y ago
    Maybe this is it. Rebuilt-from-scratch temples have name continuity. To me, traditions and names are no less real than material things. Edit: e.g. I lived in Suwon, where Samsung Electronics is headquartered. From historical records, we know it was also called Suwon in the 8th century, more than 1000 years ago. I think this sense of wonder is no less real than touching of 1000 years old artifacts.
    - wiz21c 5y ago
      cultural difference explained in two forum posts... Why do so many people have difficulties in doing it as simply as that ?
      - jkonline 5y ago
        Cultural differences don't need to be simple.
- poisonborz 5y ago
  Firstly, I don't think the West is that much against rebuilding, especially when the original was suddenly and tragically destroyed: just look at all the restored old city centers of Europe. This is more akin to healing a wound (of societal memory) to its original state. However the stance is rather different for reviving long lost buildings, mostly coming from the architecture/archeological scene, not the general public. Their (kinda valid) argument is that these developments can never ever be authentic, and restoring them is anachronistic, driven by nationalism, and the goal is often to restore not only the place but the views of that time. A modern work - that would play homage, or provide a different new meaning - is viewed as actual progression.
- bildung 5y ago
  I doubt this is an East-West thing at all. In Europe many famous buildings were destroyed in e.g. WW2 and have subsequently been rebuilt, same situation. The "West" here seems to equal the US, which mostly don't have such historical buildings in the first place.
- aspaviento 5y ago
  The issue is uniqueness. If you can replicate a building exactly as it was 100 years ago, then the original one has no particular value. To make sure to distinguish the original one from a copy, people add value to its uniqueness by saying it can't be replicated 100%. When I visited Pompeii, I would have loved to see the city rebuilt as how it was originally. They have pictures here and there displaying how the city could have been but I think that the immersiveness would have been much greater if it looked as it was previously.
- marcus_holmes 5y ago
  I live in Berlin, which was flattened at the end of WW2 by the Soviet army (and some allied bombers). Today you'd barely know that happened. My favourite example is Gendarmenmarkt [0] - a square with three church buildings on it. When I first took a walking tour around Berlin, the guide flatly said "these were built in the 17th century" with no mention of being almost completely rebuilt after the war. That lead to an interesting discussion along the same lines as this (Theseus' ship and all). I think the difference is the history. Preserving the memory of that destruction as part of the restoration is important. There should be visible scars. By all means restore the building to be functional, a useful part of the city again. But leave some scars. I love that there are still bullet holes in some of the old walls around the city centre. One of my favourite descriptions of Berlin is actually by Iain M Banks in The State of The Art [1], and it talks about this - that the history is what makes the place so special. Restoring everything so that the history is removed would also remove something unique and special about the city. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gendarmenmarkt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gendarmenmarkt [1] This is just an extract, there are several references to Berlin in the story, which obviously is well worth reading - https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/794671-there-is-something-about-the-very-idea-of-a-city https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/794671-there-is-something-a...
- bongoman37 5y ago
  Its just some standard applied to Eastern cultures where things are supposed to be unchanged from olden times. Large parts of the many monuments in Europe were reconstructed post second world war. Nobody says they are 'not authentic'.
- pjc50 5y ago
  > Maybe wooden buildings make this clearer than stone buildings? I think so: they don't normally require or get this kind of maintenance by replacement. The mortar might be repaired, but the stones tend to be original. The Roman forum, the pyramids, the Sphinx, Stonehenge: all original stones.
- dagw 5y ago
  Maybe wooden buildings make this clearer than stone buildings? I think that stone vs wood makes a significant difference in two major ways. One is simply time scale. Take Notre Dame as discussed in other places in this thread. While it has been rebuilt many times, it happens once every 150-250 years or so meaning that from the perspective of living memory what is there now has always been there. That is why many people consider the Notre Dame that burnt down the 'real' one and the one that will replace it as 'fake', despite neither on of them looking like the original. With wooden temples that get rebuilt every 50-80 years there is always someone around that remembers the last time it happened, making the framing of the event entirely different. The other is that stone is very hard to destroy. Meaning that even if stone church burns down and get rebuilt several times there will always been parts of the original church incorporated into the latest building. It is not uncommon for churches in Europe to have visible parts of their foundation the where built 800+ years ago despite most of the church being 'new'. This is what gives something continuity.
- d4nt 5y ago
  The awe and wonder I get from an old building comes from 3 things: 1. This building is beautiful. 2. How did they build this all that time ago? For example, the Great Pyramids, Stonehenge, or a large stone cathedral built 800 years ago. 3. The sense of unbroken continuous activity in this building from the time it was built until now. Which connects me to history and a sense that by being in this place I am a part of something bigger than myself. This is stronger if the type of activity in the building has stayed the same for all that time. E.g. Attending a service in an 800 year old Cathedral makes you feel awe. #1 Is still relevant if the building is restored, but #2 isn't. #3 is interesting. If a building was damaged but restored immediately then the sense of continuity might remain intact. But if a building was left unoccupied, or it's use has changed then this effect is lessened. For example, visiting a 500 year old pub is better than visiting a 500 year old building that was recently turned into a pub. Visiting a royal palace in England has some quality to it that visiting Versailles doesn't have because there is no longer a French monarchy. Stonehenge is very impressive (because of #2) and even though some groups have started using it for rituals, there is no real connection to the original builders so it lacks awe on the #3 dimension.
- slightwinder 5y ago
  > As a South Korean, I would like to understand the viewpoint of the "West" better. What is not authentic about rebuilt temple? It is not the same building, just because it's the same form at the same place. It lacks the same "Experience" that forged the previous building. There is some value in individuality, at least on the emotional level. For example, every one has parents, but your own parents usually are the one which you consider special. > Buildings require maintenance, so even buildings that is continuing to stand is not the same building, in the style of ship of Theseus. Western buildings are usually not getting replaced in its whole. Most parts of the building will remain over its whole life. Similar happening with other old objects. Books are still valued for their age, even if the text they contain can be found elsewhere. The value of old objects is their age and their history, not their content or function.
biryani_chicken 5y ago
You reminded me of a Shrine in Japan they demolish and rebuild every 20 years[0]. I guess they embrace the ephemerality of life. [0] https://knowledgestew.com/japanese-shrine-rebuilt-every-20-years/ https://knowledgestew.com/japanese-shrine-rebuilt-every-20-y...
- bigfudge 5y ago
  i guess that would also be interesting because the tradition connects us to the past. I wonder if it would be as tactile though… perhaps it’s a more cerebral type of connection, rather than the visceral appeal of something worn and weathered.
taurath 5y ago
Shinto belief ascribes a spirit to otherwise inanimate objects - and more broadly belief in spirits and unity with the external world are much more prevalent throughout the east.
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howaboutnope 5y ago
> If Tony the Kellogg’s tiger had an instagram account, we’d find it totally normal. This is way too broad a brush. I find these parasocial relations a sign of alienation and rootlessness, here or there, and I'm sure there's plenty of Asians who reject it as well. > Some people spend their lives interested only in themselves. Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people, you know. It’s produced by humans who can’t stand looking at other humans. -- Hayao Miyazaki, co-founder of Studio Ghibli I believe in plenty of things, they just happen to be real, too, which makes it so much better. I believe in justice, for example. I believe in honesty. I believe in a few individuals whom I have a deep connection with. I believe in the beauty I can find everywhere if I just look at just about anything that, as Sophia Scholl said, wasn't created by humans. I never wake up in the middle of the night wondering whether my belief in those and more things is misplaced and just a substitute for something I'm lacking, they're the real deal. That's priceless to me.
Akronymus 5y ago
> If Tony the Kellogg’s tiger had an instagram account,... There is a twitter one, and it is quite... lets just say nsfw.
mikk14 5y ago
An art historian friend of mine explained to me one thing that could be part of the explanation. He said that in the East, what is valuable in art is the perfection of the human movement and technique, not the actual output artifact. For instance, if you were to burn down the Monna Lisa, from a westerner perspective you have destroyed all that was valuable in the art. From an easterner perspective, you can reproduce the painting, as long as you prepare the materials in the same way and you use the exact same techniques that were used in composing the original. At that point, whatever you output, is exactly the same as the original and has exactly the same dignity. Same with rebuilding a temple. As long as you use the same materials and the same building technique, even if it was burned to the ground originally it's still the same building. The craft is fundamental, the artifact is incidental: it is just an embodiment of the craft. No idea whether it is true, but it's interesting.
- howaboutnope 5y ago
  > My life's work is not what I've made, it's who I am when I sit in front of a blank file. If I lost everything, I would have lost nothing. -- Kroc Camen
- rytis 5y ago
  > At that point, whatever you output, is exactly the same as the original and has exactly the same dignity. Except that it's not made by a specific person who lived 100's of years ago. That is impossible to restore, no matter what. I get the idea of art being human movement, but I'm wondering if what's valued in the west is the act of movement by specific individual rather than the output artefact?
  - croon 5y ago
    Could you tell the difference between the original and a well made replica of the Mona Lisa? I absolutely couldn't. I get what you're saying, and I understand why we (in the west at least) believe it matters, but should it, really?
    - WelcomeShorty 5y ago
renewiltord 5y ago
Example https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3g88m/viral-japanese-biker-transformation-woman-faceapp https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3g88m/viral-japanese-biker-...
cblconfederate 5y ago
They may still identify with the creators
rajangdavis 5y ago
I think that on the Western side, there is more "hope" for authenticity than actual authenticity itself. However, when there is actual authenticity, it tends to be something that pays off from a social media standpoint.
csomar 5y ago
Well, if it helps, the comments (in the article) are as negative as it can get.
shanzaibch 5y ago
Byung-Chul Han's "Shanzai" has commentary on the temple you mentioned and its removal from the UNESCO list. According to him, in the East copying was traditionally seen as respectful because to copy something took skill, you copied movement for movement.
KarlKemp 5y ago
Hiding "artificial" things isn't universal in the west. From the 1950s, plastic was very much in style. It's a backlash starting in the 90s against some excesses (pollution, traffic, Tschernobyl) that saw a rising appreciation for the "natural". That had benefits such as the environmental movement and liveable cities. But it can, again, be misunderstood. The naturalistic fallacy that is not trusting vaccines because "ingredients") is also one of way it manifests, although it's almost entirely on the political right because culture war forces are stronger. It's the third time in a row the right has frankensteined a putatively left-wing concept, after Christianity and Postmodernism. For architecture, the Bauhaus' form-follows-function ideas are still the starting point. They carry some economic policy ideas as well, from the times after WW2 when housing needed to be rebuild and any ornamental excess was seen as resources that were wasted while people were starving and homeless. Thus came the high-rises (in both east and west Europe). This idea of "wastefulness" endures. If you rebuild something old, you will be wasteful in that you recreate structures and use materials and maybe methods that have long been superseded. You might also find yourself defending rather outdated ideas of class difference trying to explain why ceiling heights go down as you go up the floors, with the 1st floor "bel êtage" having 15' ceilings and the top floor's servant quarters barely more than half that. The stucco decoration on a facade used to show that you were rich, because these were elaborately hand-crafted in-place at the time. Now, they are stamped in a factory and glued on. They are tacky because it is false signalling.
galfarragem 5y ago
I don't have a straight answer to you but I can simplify your question: why there are cultural differences regarding originality? The West despises copies. In the East copying is normal. The million dollars question: Who is right? Originality grants a better future, copies a better present.
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rocknor 5y ago
What is with this East/West bullshit oversimplification? Humans have a tendency to divide things into two distinct groups with an imaginary gap between them (this v/s that, us v/s them), this comment is just another example of that. There is so much more to it, but no, apparently it's just East/West. HN is going down the drain, it is the new reddit now.
- d--b 5y ago
  Well of course this is oversimplifying. But culture as a concept is an oversimplification. It is talking about broad traits of behaviors that can be find in a certain population. For instance, the thai people in general has less transophobia than most countries in the world. It’s just a fact. Now you can’t deny that it exists some places in Japan where people can rent friends hourly and that some people get really attached to robots or sex dolls. And it is also true that this feels utterly bizarre to the majority of people in europe or the US. And it is a totally legitimate question to wonder why.
CalRobert 5y ago
I've chatted about this idea with my wife, who worked in museums/curation for a time. Her view was that where we could make perfect or near-perfect replicas, there's no real reason we should risk having original artifacts on display. In my view, it would be kind of silly to go to a museum just to see a copy. I think, for me at least, when I see an object in a museum there's one element of "oh, that's interesting design", but also an element of "this is the _actual rifle_ that was used to charge a WWI trench", or similar - something about seeing a real, physical artifact from a history that feels more like stories at times is grounding.
- PoignardAzur 5y ago
  I think at least part of that is a status game. Conspicuous expense is important and sought after, because by making that expense you show an un-fakeable signal that you are important and can afford the expense. People place the same value in identical replicas because they don't carry that signal. I suspect that most of the "oh, it has the real weight of history behind it" sentiment is post-hoc rationalization for the status game.
  - CalRobert 5y ago
    TBH I suspect you're right. I visited Gyeonbokgung palace and loved it, blissfully unaware it's a fairly recent rebuild. Did I only care that it's not original because of implied reduced scarcity? I don't know.
wombatmobile 5y ago
> In the west … we raise red flags: “tssk, this temple is not authentic, it burned down 80 years ago and they rebuilt it from scratch” Warsaw was raised to the ground in WWII and they rebuilt the old city, which is a tourist Mecca today. They are proud of the scholarship and repro-craftspersonship and even have a museum just to showcase that.
powerapple 5y ago
I don't think it is true. The main difference is that different culture value the subject differently. If I see a temple, I see the religion it represents, not merely architecture; when you see the Asian temple, you are expecting to see a museum and architect. Authenticity is appreciated equally, but we don't appreciate the same thing equally in different culture.
bergerjac 5y ago
Humans will get used to it. (Technology) Adoption Life Cycle always has the more 'ready' groups leading the way. "the East" is more 'ready' for this type of technology.
Rd6n6 5y ago
By contrast, all my readings of zen and Confucianism emphasize sincerity very strongly. Some people attribute this cultural sincerity as causing the high work quality of some Japanese companies. But I’m basing this on books, not experience

by d--b 5y ago

sanxiyn 5y ago

> this temple is not authentic, it burned down 80 years ago and they rebuilt it from scratch As a South Korean, I would like to understand the viewpoint of the "West" better. What is not authentic about rebuilt temple? No one is trying to mislead, restoration does not try to hide the fact it was restored. Buildings require maintenance, so even buildings that is continuing to stand is not the same building, in the style of ship of Theseus. Difference from "rebuilt from scratch" is not clear cut. Maybe wooden buildings make this clearer than stone buildings?

pkulak 5y ago
Oh, I'm sure you guys will have this one figured out soon. :D https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
noisy_boy 5y ago
I think "West" itself is a broad generalization. Something that is quite old in America is very new from a Roman point of view. So from that point of view, if an American sees a thousand year old temple, that is impressive/authentic. For, say, an Indian, it is impressive too but they have a bunch of those.
maximus-decimus 5y ago
I would say the West sees the Theseus' ship as the same ship but rebuilt some scratch as not the same ship and that's where we draw the line. The surprising part is nobody argues we should restore pyramids and repaint/reattach arms of roman statues. This makes me feel like there's the additional requirement that it needs to be a continuous process of restoration and you can't just restore it to what it was hundreds of years ago.
- fogihujy 5y ago
  Restoration using traditional and well-documented techniques are perfectly "authentic". A modern replica pyramid built with steel and concrete, not so much. An actual replica pyramid built using traditional methods? Not sure, but I would love to see it. :D
  - dagw 5y ago
    Restoration using traditional and well-documented techniques are perfectly "authentic". Except people don't want "authentic", they want what they know. No one is suggestion restoring the pyramids to their original look because then they would look 'fake' to most people. You see it in more mundane situations as well. If a houses was red for 300 years and then white for 150 years, and someone wants to paint it red again a lot of people will complain because that building has 'always' been white and red will feel inauthentic, even if you can prove with historical documentation that red was the original 'authentic' color.
yorwba 5y ago
I don't think it's really a common viewpoint in the West. E.g. that temple in Paris that burned down, y'know, the Notre Dame, is being restored, and I doubt many people would see it as "not authentic" just because some parts had to be replaced.
- bigfudge 5y ago
  I will! I don’t think they should leave it ruined, but something was definitely lost in the fire. Like a post above said, I do take please and feel connection by looking at a makers mark or accidental slip of the chisel in something built 1000 years ago. It’s the detail and closeness of past lives that we experience from original artefacts that gives their value, to me.
  - dagw 5y ago
    The building that stood there before the fire wasn't "authentic" either by that measure. The building that recently burnt down had been completely renovated and rebuilt several times and looked nothing like the building they first put up. The building that will stand there after this latest round of renovation will be a new building, but it won't be any less 'authentic' than any of the other renovations that came before.
godelski 5y ago
Honestly as a westerner I'm not quite sure what they are talking about either, because all your points seem valid to me. If I'm to wager a guess they had a bad example because buildings and art are often restored. Maybe they were talking about types of entertainment? But I'm not sure I buy that either because of the popularity of reality television. And also because what the article is about just seems like a natural extension of your typical Disney pop star.
themacguffinman 5y ago
> No one is trying to mislead, restoration does not try to hide the fact it was restored. The problem isn't the dishonesty, I'd just be disappointed that it's not the original thing because the original thing is infinitely more complex and layered and informative than a reconstruction. All the tiny flaws and subtle details you can find in the original can be lost in a reconstruction. Buildings & architecture aren't my passion so it's harder for me to feel this about stuff like restored temples, but I sometimes feel this about things that I am passionate about. It's like in the movie Inception (2010) [SPOILERS AHEAD]: Cobb: I can't stay with her anymore because she doesn't exist. Mal: I'm the only thing you do believe in anymore. Cobb: I wish. I wish more than anything. But I can't imagine you with all your complexity, all your perfection, all your imperfection. Look at you. You are just a shade of my real wife. You're the best I can do; but I'm sorry, you are just not good enough.
- mordae 5y ago
  Yeah, but you will eventually run out of quirks of the material and slide back to the domain of human lives. You start to wonder why the technique changed slightly at a point to learn that the old mason died and his apprentice took over and so on. At some point, you will surely start to wonder "what does that mean for MY life?" and one thing that comes to mind is "how did the institutions that enabled something this complex to come to be and survive for so long worked, compared to what we have now?" and that is the moment the wooden castle rebuilt every couple of years is really the same as the stone chapel.
flarg 5y ago
There is history in the material. Touching something that has been touched for 100s of years is almost spiritual. Seeing the cracks and splits, the dings and cuts. In the West history is tactile.
- andrewzah 5y ago
  And it’s somehow not in places other than the West…? The temples I visited in South Korea were pretty tactile to me.
  - bigfudge 5y ago
    I think where the maintenance is continuous that has a different quality. Places in Japan are often like this - yes everything has been replaced, but primary timbers etc have not … there is continuity. I think there is a strong analogy to personal identity here too. All the cells in our body are replaced, but we are still Ourselves! If too much were to be transplanted at once, or things we consider too fundamental, the suffer identity worries.
  - Dma54rhs 5y ago
    I don't think the parent implied it isn't but shared the common culture and sentiment in the west.
petre 5y ago
I have no problem with the original building being restored or rebuit from scratch rather than with copies of that building springing up where'd you least expect it, just like garden gnomes. https://www.wonders-of-the-world.net/Eiffel-Tower/Repliques/Replicas-of-the-Eiffel-tower-in-China.php https://www.wonders-of-the-world.net/Eiffel-Tower/Repliques/...
iamnotwhoiam 5y ago
I don't think East vs West is a fair generalization of this attitude. In Thailand someone is building an Angkor Wat replica and the Cambodian government is protesting because they see it as somehow cheapening the original. Angkor Wat has undergone very little reconstruction and where it has it's only sections which can be mostly rebuilt from original fragments. In Vietnam you can visit lots of temples that are complete rebuilds. In Cambodia there are hundreds or even thousands of ancient temples, none of which have any restoration done, and there is no movement to do any.
progre 5y ago
I don't know about "the west", but I can give my own (Swedish) perspective on authenticity and age: The church in my village is quite new, about 150 years old. But it's built on the site of a much older church. The new church has a large bowl of carved limestone that where preserved from the old church. It's about 900 years old and is used for babtisms. Touching that old bowl gives me a tremendous sense of perspective, a feeling of belonging to a continium of people that has loved this place. The item itself is the important thing. I don't care that they have performed babtisms here for 900 years. The ritual is not important to me and I don't belive in that stuff anyway. I suppose it comes down to a cultural sense of whats real. To me, rituals and traditions are flimsy constructs. The new church is just like any other new building. But the material thing, the limestone bowl, thats real.
- sanxiyn 5y ago
  Maybe this is it. Rebuilt-from-scratch temples have name continuity. To me, traditions and names are no less real than material things. Edit: e.g. I lived in Suwon, where Samsung Electronics is headquartered. From historical records, we know it was also called Suwon in the 8th century, more than 1000 years ago. I think this sense of wonder is no less real than touching of 1000 years old artifacts.
  - wiz21c 5y ago
    cultural difference explained in two forum posts... Why do so many people have difficulties in doing it as simply as that ?
    - jkonline 5y ago
      Cultural differences don't need to be simple.
poisonborz 5y ago
Firstly, I don't think the West is that much against rebuilding, especially when the original was suddenly and tragically destroyed: just look at all the restored old city centers of Europe. This is more akin to healing a wound (of societal memory) to its original state. However the stance is rather different for reviving long lost buildings, mostly coming from the architecture/archeological scene, not the general public. Their (kinda valid) argument is that these developments can never ever be authentic, and restoring them is anachronistic, driven by nationalism, and the goal is often to restore not only the place but the views of that time. A modern work - that would play homage, or provide a different new meaning - is viewed as actual progression.
bildung 5y ago
I doubt this is an East-West thing at all. In Europe many famous buildings were destroyed in e.g. WW2 and have subsequently been rebuilt, same situation. The "West" here seems to equal the US, which mostly don't have such historical buildings in the first place.
aspaviento 5y ago
The issue is uniqueness. If you can replicate a building exactly as it was 100 years ago, then the original one has no particular value. To make sure to distinguish the original one from a copy, people add value to its uniqueness by saying it can't be replicated 100%. When I visited Pompeii, I would have loved to see the city rebuilt as how it was originally. They have pictures here and there displaying how the city could have been but I think that the immersiveness would have been much greater if it looked as it was previously.
marcus_holmes 5y ago
I live in Berlin, which was flattened at the end of WW2 by the Soviet army (and some allied bombers). Today you'd barely know that happened. My favourite example is Gendarmenmarkt [0] - a square with three church buildings on it. When I first took a walking tour around Berlin, the guide flatly said "these were built in the 17th century" with no mention of being almost completely rebuilt after the war. That lead to an interesting discussion along the same lines as this (Theseus' ship and all). I think the difference is the history. Preserving the memory of that destruction as part of the restoration is important. There should be visible scars. By all means restore the building to be functional, a useful part of the city again. But leave some scars. I love that there are still bullet holes in some of the old walls around the city centre. One of my favourite descriptions of Berlin is actually by Iain M Banks in The State of The Art [1], and it talks about this - that the history is what makes the place so special. Restoring everything so that the history is removed would also remove something unique and special about the city. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gendarmenmarkt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gendarmenmarkt [1] This is just an extract, there are several references to Berlin in the story, which obviously is well worth reading - https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/794671-there-is-something-about-the-very-idea-of-a-city https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/794671-there-is-something-a...
bongoman37 5y ago
Its just some standard applied to Eastern cultures where things are supposed to be unchanged from olden times. Large parts of the many monuments in Europe were reconstructed post second world war. Nobody says they are 'not authentic'.
pjc50 5y ago
> Maybe wooden buildings make this clearer than stone buildings? I think so: they don't normally require or get this kind of maintenance by replacement. The mortar might be repaired, but the stones tend to be original. The Roman forum, the pyramids, the Sphinx, Stonehenge: all original stones.
dagw 5y ago
Maybe wooden buildings make this clearer than stone buildings? I think that stone vs wood makes a significant difference in two major ways. One is simply time scale. Take Notre Dame as discussed in other places in this thread. While it has been rebuilt many times, it happens once every 150-250 years or so meaning that from the perspective of living memory what is there now has always been there. That is why many people consider the Notre Dame that burnt down the 'real' one and the one that will replace it as 'fake', despite neither on of them looking like the original. With wooden temples that get rebuilt every 50-80 years there is always someone around that remembers the last time it happened, making the framing of the event entirely different. The other is that stone is very hard to destroy. Meaning that even if stone church burns down and get rebuilt several times there will always been parts of the original church incorporated into the latest building. It is not uncommon for churches in Europe to have visible parts of their foundation the where built 800+ years ago despite most of the church being 'new'. This is what gives something continuity.
d4nt 5y ago
The awe and wonder I get from an old building comes from 3 things: 1. This building is beautiful. 2. How did they build this all that time ago? For example, the Great Pyramids, Stonehenge, or a large stone cathedral built 800 years ago. 3. The sense of unbroken continuous activity in this building from the time it was built until now. Which connects me to history and a sense that by being in this place I am a part of something bigger than myself. This is stronger if the type of activity in the building has stayed the same for all that time. E.g. Attending a service in an 800 year old Cathedral makes you feel awe. #1 Is still relevant if the building is restored, but #2 isn't. #3 is interesting. If a building was damaged but restored immediately then the sense of continuity might remain intact. But if a building was left unoccupied, or it's use has changed then this effect is lessened. For example, visiting a 500 year old pub is better than visiting a 500 year old building that was recently turned into a pub. Visiting a royal palace in England has some quality to it that visiting Versailles doesn't have because there is no longer a French monarchy. Stonehenge is very impressive (because of #2) and even though some groups have started using it for rituals, there is no real connection to the original builders so it lacks awe on the #3 dimension.
slightwinder 5y ago
> As a South Korean, I would like to understand the viewpoint of the "West" better. What is not authentic about rebuilt temple? It is not the same building, just because it's the same form at the same place. It lacks the same "Experience" that forged the previous building. There is some value in individuality, at least on the emotional level. For example, every one has parents, but your own parents usually are the one which you consider special. > Buildings require maintenance, so even buildings that is continuing to stand is not the same building, in the style of ship of Theseus. Western buildings are usually not getting replaced in its whole. Most parts of the building will remain over its whole life. Similar happening with other old objects. Books are still valued for their age, even if the text they contain can be found elsewhere. The value of old objects is their age and their history, not their content or function.

biryani_chicken 5y ago

You reminded me of a Shrine in Japan they demolish and rebuild every 20 years[0]. I guess they embrace the ephemerality of life. [0] https://knowledgestew.com/japanese-shrine-rebuilt-every-20-years/ https://knowledgestew.com/japanese-shrine-rebuilt-every-20-y...

bigfudge 5y ago
i guess that would also be interesting because the tradition connects us to the past. I wonder if it would be as tactile though… perhaps it’s a more cerebral type of connection, rather than the visceral appeal of something worn and weathered.

taurath 5y ago

Shinto belief ascribes a spirit to otherwise inanimate objects - and more broadly belief in spirits and unity with the external world are much more prevalent throughout the east.

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howaboutnope 5y ago

> If Tony the Kellogg’s tiger had an instagram account, we’d find it totally normal. This is way too broad a brush. I find these parasocial relations a sign of alienation and rootlessness, here or there, and I'm sure there's plenty of Asians who reject it as well. > Some people spend their lives interested only in themselves. Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people, you know. It’s produced by humans who can’t stand looking at other humans. -- Hayao Miyazaki, co-founder of Studio Ghibli I believe in plenty of things, they just happen to be real, too, which makes it so much better. I believe in justice, for example. I believe in honesty. I believe in a few individuals whom I have a deep connection with. I believe in the beauty I can find everywhere if I just look at just about anything that, as Sophia Scholl said, wasn't created by humans. I never wake up in the middle of the night wondering whether my belief in those and more things is misplaced and just a substitute for something I'm lacking, they're the real deal. That's priceless to me.

Akronymus 5y ago

> If Tony the Kellogg’s tiger had an instagram account,... There is a twitter one, and it is quite... lets just say nsfw.

mikk14 5y ago

An art historian friend of mine explained to me one thing that could be part of the explanation. He said that in the East, what is valuable in art is the perfection of the human movement and technique, not the actual output artifact. For instance, if you were to burn down the Monna Lisa, from a westerner perspective you have destroyed all that was valuable in the art. From an easterner perspective, you can reproduce the painting, as long as you prepare the materials in the same way and you use the exact same techniques that were used in composing the original. At that point, whatever you output, is exactly the same as the original and has exactly the same dignity. Same with rebuilding a temple. As long as you use the same materials and the same building technique, even if it was burned to the ground originally it's still the same building. The craft is fundamental, the artifact is incidental: it is just an embodiment of the craft. No idea whether it is true, but it's interesting.

howaboutnope 5y ago
> My life's work is not what I've made, it's who I am when I sit in front of a blank file. If I lost everything, I would have lost nothing. -- Kroc Camen
rytis 5y ago
> At that point, whatever you output, is exactly the same as the original and has exactly the same dignity. Except that it's not made by a specific person who lived 100's of years ago. That is impossible to restore, no matter what. I get the idea of art being human movement, but I'm wondering if what's valued in the west is the act of movement by specific individual rather than the output artefact?
- croon 5y ago
  Could you tell the difference between the original and a well made replica of the Mona Lisa? I absolutely couldn't. I get what you're saying, and I understand why we (in the west at least) believe it matters, but should it, really?
  - WelcomeShorty 5y ago

renewiltord 5y ago

Example https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3g88m/viral-japanese-biker-transformation-woman-faceapp https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3g88m/viral-japanese-biker-...

cblconfederate 5y ago

They may still identify with the creators

rajangdavis 5y ago

I think that on the Western side, there is more "hope" for authenticity than actual authenticity itself. However, when there is actual authenticity, it tends to be something that pays off from a social media standpoint.

csomar 5y ago

Well, if it helps, the comments (in the article) are as negative as it can get.

shanzaibch 5y ago

Byung-Chul Han's "Shanzai" has commentary on the temple you mentioned and its removal from the UNESCO list. According to him, in the East copying was traditionally seen as respectful because to copy something took skill, you copied movement for movement.

KarlKemp 5y ago

Hiding "artificial" things isn't universal in the west. From the 1950s, plastic was very much in style. It's a backlash starting in the 90s against some excesses (pollution, traffic, Tschernobyl) that saw a rising appreciation for the "natural". That had benefits such as the environmental movement and liveable cities. But it can, again, be misunderstood. The naturalistic fallacy that is not trusting vaccines because "ingredients") is also one of way it manifests, although it's almost entirely on the political right because culture war forces are stronger. It's the third time in a row the right has frankensteined a putatively left-wing concept, after Christianity and Postmodernism. For architecture, the Bauhaus' form-follows-function ideas are still the starting point. They carry some economic policy ideas as well, from the times after WW2 when housing needed to be rebuild and any ornamental excess was seen as resources that were wasted while people were starving and homeless. Thus came the high-rises (in both east and west Europe). This idea of "wastefulness" endures. If you rebuild something old, you will be wasteful in that you recreate structures and use materials and maybe methods that have long been superseded. You might also find yourself defending rather outdated ideas of class difference trying to explain why ceiling heights go down as you go up the floors, with the 1st floor "bel êtage" having 15' ceilings and the top floor's servant quarters barely more than half that. The stucco decoration on a facade used to show that you were rich, because these were elaborately hand-crafted in-place at the time. Now, they are stamped in a factory and glued on. They are tacky because it is false signalling.

galfarragem 5y ago

I don't have a straight answer to you but I can simplify your question: why there are cultural differences regarding originality? The West despises copies. In the East copying is normal. The million dollars question: Who is right? Originality grants a better future, copies a better present.

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rocknor 5y ago

What is with this East/West bullshit oversimplification? Humans have a tendency to divide things into two distinct groups with an imaginary gap between them (this v/s that, us v/s them), this comment is just another example of that. There is so much more to it, but no, apparently it's just East/West. HN is going down the drain, it is the new reddit now.

d--b 5y ago
Well of course this is oversimplifying. But culture as a concept is an oversimplification. It is talking about broad traits of behaviors that can be find in a certain population. For instance, the thai people in general has less transophobia than most countries in the world. It’s just a fact. Now you can’t deny that it exists some places in Japan where people can rent friends hourly and that some people get really attached to robots or sex dolls. And it is also true that this feels utterly bizarre to the majority of people in europe or the US. And it is a totally legitimate question to wonder why.

CalRobert 5y ago

I've chatted about this idea with my wife, who worked in museums/curation for a time. Her view was that where we could make perfect or near-perfect replicas, there's no real reason we should risk having original artifacts on display. In my view, it would be kind of silly to go to a museum just to see a copy. I think, for me at least, when I see an object in a museum there's one element of "oh, that's interesting design", but also an element of "this is the _actual rifle_ that was used to charge a WWI trench", or similar - something about seeing a real, physical artifact from a history that feels more like stories at times is grounding.

PoignardAzur 5y ago
I think at least part of that is a status game. Conspicuous expense is important and sought after, because by making that expense you show an un-fakeable signal that you are important and can afford the expense. People place the same value in identical replicas because they don't carry that signal. I suspect that most of the "oh, it has the real weight of history behind it" sentiment is post-hoc rationalization for the status game.
- CalRobert 5y ago
  TBH I suspect you're right. I visited Gyeonbokgung palace and loved it, blissfully unaware it's a fairly recent rebuild. Did I only care that it's not original because of implied reduced scarcity? I don't know.

wombatmobile 5y ago

> In the west … we raise red flags: “tssk, this temple is not authentic, it burned down 80 years ago and they rebuilt it from scratch” Warsaw was raised to the ground in WWII and they rebuilt the old city, which is a tourist Mecca today. They are proud of the scholarship and repro-craftspersonship and even have a museum just to showcase that.

powerapple 5y ago

I don't think it is true. The main difference is that different culture value the subject differently. If I see a temple, I see the religion it represents, not merely architecture; when you see the Asian temple, you are expecting to see a museum and architect. Authenticity is appreciated equally, but we don't appreciate the same thing equally in different culture.

bergerjac 5y ago

Humans will get used to it. (Technology) Adoption Life Cycle always has the more 'ready' groups leading the way. "the East" is more 'ready' for this type of technology.

Rd6n6 5y ago

By contrast, all my readings of zen and Confucianism emphasize sincerity very strongly. Some people attribute this cultural sincerity as causing the high work quality of some Japanese companies. But I’m basing this on books, not experience