priests and warriors lecture 4: october 1, 2003. understanding culture a whole way of life vs....
TRANSCRIPT
Priests and Warriors
Lecture 4: October 1, 2003
Understanding Culture• A whole way of life vs.
partial representations– 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– 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
• homogenizes variety in everyday life
QuickTime™ and aGIF decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
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
• contested– power / resistance– social categories
Rhymester: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