A celebration of shadows, a blend of Japanese and Western Japan.The continent abolished writing and destroyed its past.A completely different approach to history.

Photo by 森正洋デザイン研究所 (licensed under CC BY 3.0)

Japanese culture and praise of shadows

When I think about Japanese culture, I sometimes think of Junichiro Tanizaki's ``In Praise of Shadows.'' He remembers that during his junior high school Japanese class, he encountered some difficult sentences and had trouble understanding them. He talked about how you can rediscover the wonders of Japanese culture by learning about the background in which that culture was born.

Beautiful Japanese lacquerware in the dim light

Japanese lacquerware is based on black, and Japanese lacquerware was created in an era without electricity to create a beautiful appearance on a dimly lit dining table lit by candles. It was explained that.

White plates and glass cups became prized, perhaps because black dishes didn't look good in the light of a light bulb. However, if you eat on Japanese tableware in the dim darkness of candlelight, you will notice something beautiful about it.

What the Japanese aimed for was balance and harmony

To put it simply, in Japan there is a term called fusion of Japanese and Western styles. During the Meiji and Taisho eras, a large amount of Western culture flowed into Japan, but the Japanese strived to balance and harmonize with Japan's ancient culture. This is inheritance based on compatibility and harmony.

Yukichi Fukuzawa described Western culture as being like an epidemic. He preached that resisting these things would not prevent them from becoming infected, so we needed to think in terms of accepting them.

Japan sought compatibility and harmony not only in vessels and cultural customs, but also in the letters and documents that conveyed them.

What was done on the continent was the denial of the past

On the other hand, what happened on the continent seems to be different. What is China's Cultural Revolution? In introducing socialism and communism, it was a movement to destroy the historical Chinese culture that they were proud of, and they actually destroyed cultural properties and slaughtered the people who had protected them.

Kanji abolished in Korea

What about in Korea? After becoming an independent country after the war, in 1948, it was decided that official documents should be written in Hangul under the Hangul Special Law, and in 1970, the abolition of Chinese characters was declared, and Chinese characters began to disappear from textbooks one after another. It seems that there is no problem with using Hangul as the national script, but by abolishing Hanja, it became impossible to read past documents. Efforts to abolish writing are incomprehensible to Japanese people.

The past cannot be read due to the introduction of simplified characters

The same meaning applies to simplified characters (current Chinese characters that have been simplified and symbolized), which were introduced during China's Cultural Revolution. By replacing Traditional Chinese (old Chinese characters) with simplified Chinese, people who received subsequent schooling were unable to read documents written in Traditional Chinese in the past.

Currently, traditional Chinese characters are used in Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. This was because he wanted to be influenced by the Cultural Revolution.

If you can't read past documents, you can't read history

Particularly in South Korea, historical perceptions change so freely that one major reason can be said to be the inability to approach past documents.

Documents from the Japanese colonial period and even earlier were written in Chinese characters, and modern Koreans are unable to read any of them. You probably don't even want to read it. Does it mean that history does not already exist in documents?

As an Asian, this is truly deplorable and pitiful. Is it possible to foster national consciousness and culture in this way? Both of these are unthinkable in Japan.

Learn ancient Japanese and Chinese literature

Japan continued to utilize the writings of the past, reinforcing the sounds with hiragana called Manyogana and inventing Japanese writing.

Texts from the past also have different phrasing and adjectives, so in Japanese education, we study classical and Chinese texts and try to read past documents. This is to experience the way of thinking and cultural customs of Japanese people who lived in the past.

A continent that burns the past and creates history

To begin with, the history of the continent is one in which kings kill other kings due to wars, and dynasties change. At that time, many things built by past dynasties will be destroyed, creating a structure in which a good king reigns after defeating a bad king. At that time, something called ``book burning'' is performed. Documents from the previous dynasty were burned and destroyed. The destruction and fabrication of history is not new.

The Japanese imperial family continued to exist

The only dynasty in Japan exists outside of the imperial family, and the Japanese imperial family has been protected and maintained through all eras. The Japanese never thought of abolishing the imperial family in any social change. For this reason, we can know that Japan existed with the Emperor even during the #Imperial Era.

In other words, the continent's approach to the past and Japan's approach to the past are fundamentally different.