Understanding Japanese Society

Joy Hendry

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351179898
• Edition: 5
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

In this welcome brand new fifth edition of the bestselling textbook Understanding Japanese Society, Joy Hendry takes the reader into the heart of Japanese life.

Providing a clear and accessible introduction to Japanese ways of thinking, which does not require any previous knowledge of the country, this book explores Japanese society through the worlds of home, work, play, religion and ritual, covering a full range of life experiences, from childhood to old age. It also examines the diversity of people living in Japan, the effects of a growing number of new immigrants, and role of the longest-standing Japanese prime-minister Shinzo Abe. Fully updated, revised and expanded, the fifth edition contains new material on:

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• the continued effects of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters of 2011

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• local examples of care for nature and the environment

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• new perspectives on the role of women

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• Japan's place in the context of globalisation.

Each chapter in this new edition also includes an exciting insert from scholars in the field, based on new and emerging research. This book will be invaluable to all students studying Japan. It will also enlighten those travellers and business people wishing to gain an understanding of Japanese people.

1Sources of Japanese identity

Historical and mythological foundations of Japan

Introduction

Japan is the nation of origin of some of the most exciting and successful individuals in the contemporary world. In the fields of art and architecture, film, fashion and music, even international politics and diplomacy, Japanese achievements take the world by storm and Japanese names abound. At the same time, stereotypes persist that Japan is a nation of well-organised groups, that Japanese people learn only by copying others, that they work too hard, play little and travel around the world on safely contained package tours. How can a people apparently so boring and conformist demonstrate such an extraordinary degree of innovation and creativity? Who are these people and what exactly do they share?

The string of islands that comprises the nation of Japan is situated at some distance from the Asian mainland, and this geographical feature provides a natural boundary for separating people who live in Japan from their neighbours. Archaeological findings proudly pronounce dates for the first evidence of human life on these islands, and early Chinese history reports the existence of a separate people over the sea. There have been many waves of influence into Japan from the outside, however, and the contemporary population shows considerable genetic and cultural diversity. Japan has recently played host to several immigrant groups, too, and regional and ethnic minorities form a still small but growing part of the population. Skill in adopting foreign ideas is one of the best-known features of Japan. Using them to innovate within an existing framework is a less well-known but equally characteristic one, as we shall see.

Nevertheless, like other countries, Japan seeks from time to time to consolidate its own special identity and to present that identity to others with whom it deals. This opening chapter will examine some of the sources and manifestations of that search. It will summarise some of the geographical and archaeological features that define the nation, historical events that have influenced it, and the mythological stories that have been drawn upon to imbue the people with a symbolic unity. Such a summary will necessarily be cursory, but it will offer sources of national and personal identity, as well as providing a useful background for the book’s main focus on modern Japanese society. It should also provide a frame of reference for understanding some of the chapters that follow. To pursue further some of the issues raised, readers may find useful two collections of articles, edited by Donald Denoon et al. (1996) and Stephen Vlastos (1998), a book by a Japanese scholar entitled A Genealogy of ‘Japanese’ Self-Images (Oguma 2002) and an anthropological study of the way postage stamps are used in the formation of identity (Frewer 2002).

Geographical and archaeological identity

There are four main islands that make up Japan, and more than 6000 smaller ones, stretching from the Soya strait separating the Kurile Islands claimed by both Russia and Japan in the north almost to Taiwan in the south, where the uninhabited Senkaku islands are also claimed by China. From tip to tip, the length of the Japanese archipelago is just under 1900 miles, and at its nearest point to the Asian mainland it is 120 miles from South Korea. There has been some fluctuation in the position of Japan’s boundaries, and the peoples of Okinawa and Hokkaido can claim rather different histories from those of the central islands, but the latter have enjoyed a degree of isolation that made possible a long continuity of geographical identity. Since there has been written history, they suffered no real occupation by outsiders until after the Second World War, and the extraordinary weather conditions that deterred two Mongol invasions in the thirteenth century encouraged the inhabitants to see themselves as being blessed with divine protection — an earlier use of the term kamikaze, or ‘divine wind’.

This is an area of considerable geological disturbance, however, and it is likely that the earliest human beings settled or developed here long before the islands became separated at their extremities from the Asian mainland between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago. Early hunters and gatherers left various stone tools to mark their existence, and the age of the oldest of these has been the subject of some contention and even fraud, as research inevitably becomes drawn into nationalistic ideology, and proposed dates have varied from 50,000 to 500,000 years ago (see Hudson 2005 for a discussion of the fraud)! Evidence that is more or less agreed is the start around 13,000 years ago of the Jomon period, named for the attractive rope-marked pottery produced until the third century BC, and these early ceramics have provided one source of artistic origin for Japanese culture. Although there have been various theories about the fate of their producers, including the suggestion that they fled north and became the people now known as the Ainu, they still provide an important source of identity for contemporary Japan. Tatsuo Kobayashi (2004) is a good source for this period, and Josef Kreiner (2017) summarises various changing anthropological approaches to the subject.

There are several different types and stages of stone tools and ceramic remains, however, and there are also several ethnological theories about the earlier origins of the Japanese people, who seem to combine characteristics of the ruling Tungus people to the north and the Austronesian people to the south. Theories have been developed using comparative studies of language, examining worldviews of Pacific peoples, such as those based on the relationship with the ocean, on appropriate behaviour for political interaction and on aspects of reciprocity, as well as by the examination of archaeological artefacts and even continuing building styles. I think the idea of putting Japan back into a Pacific context is an area ripe for future research (see Hendry 2012 for detail, also Dvorak 2011).

The islands of Japan have clearly received many diverse influences since their first settlement. However, a sense of continuity is also encouraged, at least at a popular level, and new archaeological findings are often reported prominently in the news media. An interesting article by Clare Fawcett (1996) examined the way archaeological sites are used to foster a sense of identity in Japan, in particular the representation in several places of the next important period, known as the Yayoi. It was during this time, from about the third century BC, that metal tools and rice cultivation were introduced by an influx of people from the mainland, and during the next 600 years or so, elements are said to have developed of what is now regarded as ‘true Japanese tradition’. Remains of Yayoi communities may be visited, objects found there can be inspected, and houses, rice fields and grain stores have also been reconstructed to demonstrate the archaeologists’ version of life at the time (see Figure 1.1). Children who visit may dress in Yayoi costume, try their hand at Yayoi tools and listen to lectures about their ancestral forebears. A detail that interested Fawcett (1996:70–1) was the emphasis on the cleanliness of the Yayoi people.

Figure 1.1Reconstruction of a Yayoi period house displayed at the Toro archaeological site in Shizuoka.

This Yayoi period is also cited as the source of considerable cooperative activity in Japan, associated with the rice cultivation that was introduced at this time, and the selective access to bronze and iron metal objects is said to have encouraged social divisions and a system of social stratification. Objects were also assigned a religious significance, and the present style of the Ise shrine (see Figure 1.2), which contains some of the most sacred buildings, dates back to this period, as do the mirrors that adorn the innermost sanctum of most Shinto places of worship. The notorious samurai sword no doubt developed from the splendid spears that were introduced, and one example of the cultural forging that is favoured in depicting Japanese identity is the idea that the fine decorative work often found along the blades combines a Jomon love of nature with Yayoi craftsmanship. A detailed source on the Yayoi period, which uses multiple sources to argue for the genesis of the present Japanese people at that time, is Mark Hudson (1999; see also Mizoguchi 2006).

Figure 1.2Some buildings of the Ise shrine, showing the roof structure characteristic of the Yayoi period. (Photograph courtesy of Bill Coaldrake)

Mythological origins of Japan

The symbolic importance of these objects is made clearer when one turns to the mythological foundations of Japanese identity, recorded in eighth-century chronicles and taught as history in Japanese schools during a period leading up to the Second World War. According to these tales, the islands of Japan were created by a god and goddess named Izanagi and Izanami, who leaned down from the floating bridge of heaven and stirred the ocean with a jewelled spear. The first island was formed from drops of brine that fell from the spear as it was lifted out. The heavenly couple descended to this island, where they gave birth to what is referred to as an Eight Island Country. The Sun Goddess, Amaterasu, the ultimate ancestress of the imperial line and tutelary deity of the Ise shrine, was then created out of a bronze mirror held in Izanagi’s left hand.

During some considerable turmoil that ensued in the heavens, caused particularly by Susano-o, her younger brother, Amaterasu is said at one point to have hidden herself in a cave, thus plunging heaven and earth into darkness. In their efforts to lure her out, the other deities used a bronze mirror again, and another goddess performed a comical dance with the aid of a spear, so that the ensuing laughter aroused Amaterasu’s curiosity and she peeped out. Captivated by her own image in the mirror, she was lured out long enough for the cave to be closed behind her, and the world was granted sunlight again. Among the paraphernalia used by the gods in this story to entice Amaterasu out of her cave were also some curved jewels, or beads, and, sometime later, when Amaterasu’s grandson was sent down to earth to become the first Emperor, she presented him with three gifts, to this day regarded as the Japanese Imperial Regalia, namely a bronze mirror, a sword and a curved jewel.

According to the mythological accounts, the grandchild of Amaterasu and his companions spent six years of battle and adventure moving from the southern island of Kyushu, where many outsiders also first landed, through the Inland Sea, to the Yamato Plain in the central part of the main island of Japan. Here, the tale runs, he established a palace on the first day of spring in 660 BC and became the first Emperor Jimmu. The eighth-century account lists a continuous line of imperial rule from that time, although some of the rulers are said to have lived for well over 100 years, and the records are now seen as written support for a later established supremacy.

This formation of an imperial line, said to be unbroken to the present day, provides another important source of Japanese identity. The Imperial Palace in Tokyo occupies a piece of land said at the height of Japan’s economic success to have had a real estate value approximately equivalent to that of the whole of California (see Figure 11.2). In southern Japan, at Takachiho on the Island of Kyushu, a cave may be visited where Amaterasu is supposed to have emerged, and versions of the Kagura dances may be seen at any number of Shinto ceremonies to this day (see Averbuch 1995 and Lancashire 2006 for further detail). When the Emperor Shōwa died in 1989, his funeral was the occasion for the greatest known gathering of heads of state up to that time. This emperor, known abroad as Hirohito, was personally charged to renounce his divinity at the end of the Second World War, and his funeral could be regarded as a special case, but the wedding of his grandson in 1993 also attracted extraordinary media interest at home and abroad. Stefánsson (1998) has a good description of this ‘fairytale’ wedding. That crown prince, Naruhito, is due to be enthroned as Emperor in the year this book comes out, as was proclaimed in the Introduction.

Chinese historical accounts of the ancient period

The earliest historical accounts of the Japanese people are to be found in ancient Chinese chronicles known as the Wei Zhi (Tsunoda and Goodrich 1951). In the second and third centuries AD, these tell of a country of 100 kingdoms, some 30 of which had sent emissaries to China on business of one sort or another. They speak of an earlier male ruler, but after much warring among these kingdoms, the Chinese report that a kingdom named Yamatai gained supremacy in the third century under the rule of a queen named Himiko. She is reported to have lived hidden in the depths of a great, guarded castle, where she spent her time in communication with the gods, allocating the everyday affairs of state to her younger brother.

As it happens, the location of Yamatai, according to Chinese directions, falls in the Pacific Ocean, and there are at least two possible adjustments to their calculations that would be plausible. One would put this kingdom in the southern part of Japan, where there is later evidence of this type of sister–brother rule, and some archaeological findings in Yoshinogari in northern Kyushu were briefly identified with the site of Himiko’s castle. The other, in the Yamato Plain, closer to the eventual documentation of the existence...