Customs and Traditions

If we speak about customs and traditions first we need to accept that what is normal for us can be funny or even terrifying to other people. Besides what is normal? Let’s add the fact that there is a huge sea between Chile and Japan and it makes it a little easier to understand.

Japanese customs makes them a very known part of the world ,what make it so special are their people and it is very common for a foreign person to be pleasantly surprised or completely reject the practices of this country.

The fact that we have been raised in different cultures makes us accept like correct what we learned in our culture to judge the others, for that, in the moment to enter into a country as remote as it is Japan,  it is difficult for us to adapt.

It is possible that many people do not understand how a nation as developed can be as conservative as japan do , the truth is that to understand, the best option is to travel,to open mind and get involved in a culture that has lived for over 1000 years such as the Japanese culture.

Tea Ceremony:

Routines so simple for us like prepare a cup of tea for them is one of their sacred ceremony, which consists in a ceremonial ritual in the way of preparing and drinking tea, and a specific order and a significance in every detail like boil water. This ceremony is composed of many rituals, which is learned by heart and it is made very carefully and sensitively.

The tea is prepared by the host, which has series of essential instruments, while then passes it to its guests, the tea is "matcha" (green tea).

For the Japanese people the intimacy is very important not to be violated because the personal space is a personal temple, because of that the social events does not take place in their houses, they usually make their social events in public areas because their house is so sacred that they can´t stain their house with outer contaminants, that´s why every time they get inside the house, they take out their shoes

If you think in a Japanese tradition that has fat men with almost no cloth, fighting in a circle you get… sumo.

The sport started in Japan and is the only country   where this traditional sport is practiced. This traditional sport is not like other types of wrestling. The way to win in a sumo fight is either by taking the other out of the ring or, forcing the opponent to touch the ground with any part of the body that is not his feet.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so a video is worth a thousand pictures:

The whole sport has some traditions inside the “big tradition” that is the wrestling itself. For instance, before wrestling the sumo wrestlers throw salt to purify the dohyō (wrestling ring). And the preparations for the wrestling itself has a lot of traditions.

For us it is just a bunch of fat and naked guys wrestling. But in Japan is a big deal, up to the point that some wrestlers can win up to U$30.500 a month. They are celebrities, they are like our Iván Zamorano or Eliseo Salazar.

So, what is normal? Everything, it just depends how you see things. We have hopscotch they have Sumo, we drink tea as a regular thing, for them is a tradition.

Education and social science

Education 

The Japanese education is well known for how demanding it is. and of course thanks to that system is how Japan has become one of the most important producers of technology in the world.

 

The Japanese education system consists in four stages. First, six year of primary school; second, three years of middle school; third, three years of high school and at last four years of university.

 

The Japanese culture has a strong impact in the school system. In the internet it is  easy to found a lot of pictures laughing about this situation. It is important to say that not only the people in Japan have this necessity of having perfect grades. But also the Japanese immigrants in other countries as well.

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Japanese people are known for their Excellency in most of the areas that they study. But this has a problem. A lot of students suffer from a lot of pressure. This is due not just to the pressure put by their parent, but also due to the amount of subjects that they have every year.

In high school the attendance is voluntary. Well, that just is half true. mainly because of the same pressure put by their parents and the society. so it’s simple, it may be legal to do something, but it doesn’t mean that you should do it.

Well, the Japanese school year start in April and ends in March of the next year. Also, is divided in three parts: Summer, winter and spring. And, each one of them is followed by vacation. Nowadays almost all school has class from Monday to Friday. Except  for some private school that have class on Saturday also.

Things change from country to country. Here in Chile if a student (I am not talking about everybody) could just pay and get a degree they would do it.  A six day school week sounds like hell, in Japan a lot of students are asking to have a six day school week.
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The upper education can be a two year junior college or a four year university.

Social Science

The mass in japan is moved by the relatively new phenomenon that now also moves the world that is called technology. Now, there are plenty of contests and conventions where people show all their inventions and technology advances to renew announce and exchange plenty information that can be useful to continue innovating and keep improving that technology.
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Al these events that take place in japan are coordinated by a society call “the robotics society of japan” their principal mission is to spread information about the ubication, the date and the hour of every contest or academic exposition made in japan. This society was established in January 28 of 1983.

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As I said the principal objective of these expositions is to show the final product of a entire investigation, that means, in every aspect of the science. the people that usually goes to these conventions in first instance goes because it causes curiosity to see what new it is shown, but deeply, other people see that conventions as an inspirational supplement of ideas to get new inventions.   
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Historically those technology advances was made to facilitate humans life and to reach more activities in less time, that makes japan one of the most productive country in the world, because their automatized activities permit them to keep doing new things and progressing in many different aspects of the habitual life what makes a substantial progress not only in japan, but all around the world      
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The main feature of the technology is to cause curiosity about what comes in the future. And that curiosity itself is the thirst of the human in keep going and leave the past behind.

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Literature

Literature

The Japanese literature is very different from the western literature. It is an important part of their culture. Reflecting not only what was happening at the time, but also their hopes and dreams.

The Japanese literature began heavily influenced for the cultural contact with China and for its literature, often in classical Chinese.

Eventually the Japanese literature has been shedding the influence of Chinese literature and has taken its own course to become a special and distinct style. The Japanese began to write works of their own culture.

The Japanese literature can be divided into four periods; Nara period (710-794) , Heian period (794- 1185), Kamakura-Muromachi Period(1185-1573), Edo period and Meiji Period to present.

For a while the tradition were tell orally until a writing system was introduced to Japan in the Nara Period (710-794). 

From there, legends, myths and stories start to be wrote. Also, works of Chinese characters were used and modified in Japanese syntactic formats. The sentences were morphologically similar to Chinese but were read phonetically as Japanese creating the first form of kana or syllabic writing known as man'yōgana.

During the Heian Period (794-1185)

developed in the eleventh century was used the hiragana alphabet (Chinese). The women played an important role in the progress of literature. Also, the published  novels, stories, assays, tales and diaries stand out for its complete descriptions of Japanese lives.

Then, around the seventeenth and nineteenth century the literature was born as a way of general debate. 

This period was call Edo period (1603-1868). 

The Renga (poem) and the haiku were created.

The principal idea of the haiku (haikai in plural) is to say much in few words, according with the Japanese culture, the beauty is based in how much you can reflex straightforwardly, for that reason it is very difficult to translate them. haiku known as the shorter form of poetry usually represent the sensation of a season, scenes of the daily routine that we usually do not realize.

the normal structure of a haiku according to an explanation given by Harold G. Henderson (American academic Japanologist) it consist on 17 japan syllables into a line of 5-7-5 a clear example extracted from a creative writing page is a poem written by Noah from Kings Park, NY, USA called “the essence of summer”, and it goes like:

|The| Ma|ssive| ri|pples| = 5 syllables

|Mar|ching| on|to| the| mute| shore| = 7 syllables

|Un|der| the| bright| sun| = 5 syllables

As we can see the structure keeps the same syllables number of the first and the last verse and the middle verse is the larger one. All this just to keep the beauty of this small poem.

Through the Japanese literature the western countries have been able to try to understand such a different culture, with a total different way of seeing the world. For example the hara-kiri (a ritual type of suicide) that is to maintain the honor of the defeated warrior could not be understood without knowing the whole context in which takes place. That was something that the American soldiers couldn’t understand in the Second World War.  Even movies such as Star Wars have a base in the traditional Japanese literature.

The Japanese literature plays an important role in their culture. And also has a huge influence in our culture. It has allow the people outside of that island to understand in a better way how the Japanese people talk, think, their values and their way to see the world that surrounds them.

References:

Japanese literature. (2012). Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite.  Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica.

Nobel Prize winners by year. (2012). Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite.  Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica.

haiku. (2012). Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite.  Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica.

Kanzaki masahide. (1998).Text from "Japan: A Pocket Guide, 1996 Edition"

Reference: Research Institute for Publication, Shuppan shihyo nenpo.

haiku in english. (1965) Henderson G. Harold extracted in August the 28th. from http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED019266

haiku. (2011) youtube, broadcast yourself published by cae12810  extracted in August the 26th

http://www.youtube.com/user/cae12810/videos

A Brief History of Haiku. (2001) Kevin Kizer extracted in August the 26th.

http://www.litkicks.com/HistoryOfHaiku#.UjHZYdJLO24

Japan an awesome country to visit!

Japan

Just a few nations in the world have had such an extensive history and culture as Japan. this island has been occupied by people of the asian continent since the Paleolithic age.

Japan is a country in the southern part of Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean it lies to the Sea of Japan, China, South Korea and Russia.

The Japanese island are located in the southern part of asia. the country is composed by 6.856 islands. Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku y Kyushu are the biggest islands from north to south. being also the most important islands.

According the web page About.com he population of Japan is around 127.5 million inhabitants. It’s the 10th biggest population. Japan has a very small birth rate. The Yamato Japanese ethnic group is a  98.5% of the population. The other 1.5% includes Koreans (0.5%), Chinese (0.4%), and the Ainu tribe (50,000 people).

Japan uses English as a lingua franca. In part this was due to the second world war and the occupation of United States of America after the surrender of the Japanese army.

The official language spoken in Japan is the nihongo, in the eastern region. It is spoken by 125 million speakers approximately.

However, Japanese has borrowed heavily from Chinese, English, and other languages. In fact, 49% of Japanese words are loanwords from Chinese, and another  9% come from English. On  other hand the Japanese  have three writing systems; hiragana katakana and kanji into the japanese culture we can find a big number of languages, types of writing, religions, art in general and many features that make their population persons so singular with habits so particular that call the attention of the rest of the world  with such rich  culture that has been taken plenty of times to the big screen.

Japan has been the witness of the fall of many empires, the tough loyalty of the samurai, the isolation of the rest of the world, and of the numerous massacre happened in the line of time.

Arts & Music

Japan has an incredible range of diferents arts from writing even to folding paper.

Music

Traditional music can be traced to the Nara and Heian era. There is Shomyo also called Buddhist chating. Uses a wide variety of instruments from drums to winds. The western music makes his first appearance after the meji restoration. They are western music in school and military marches.

 


The wester pop music is called kayokyoku. Make it's first appearing in 1914. But wasn't until the 1950s when had a huge success. From this point foward became part of the music now called JPop.

On other hand, the western classical music has strong presence since prewar. With the past of time Japanese try to make it part of their culture.

Arts

In japan the art is a discipline. As an island, has always been exposed to foreign invasions and it was common for people there to practice their precision of fencing writing into the sand. In fact there was of schools that dedicated their whole lives to write characters in the sand in order to get better symbols and better fighting skills.

The most known Japanese art is the painting, and in a certain period of time, it was all related with the buddhism. As the painting  there are plenty of disciplines that can be considered like the cinema, the origamis, calligraphy, and  the martial arts.bunraku is the traditional puppet theater of japan. During the Edo Period in Osaka was introduced as popular entertainment for the people without noble rank or title. Calligraphy or shodo is the art of writing beautifully.Unlike Roman letters, the strokes Japanese characters must be done in a correct order.Japanese characters drawn one blow after another. This style is called kanji.