Japanese Culture Literature & Language Essay Paper

An In-depth Analysis of the Japanese Culture
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Japanese Culture
All cultures are strange when viewed from the lens of another culture. For Westerners, Asian, Middle East, and the Far East cultures are very ‘unwelcoming,’ and the people are cold while to the inhabitants of these regions find Western cultures very hypocritical and disrespectful. Secondly, cities reflect the culture of the dominant communities around it. As you move further from the city, the city’s culture changes proportionally. For example, Tokyo’s culture is slightly different from Osaka’s culture, though they are both Japanese cities. Inhabitants of both cities can notice the difference but oblivious to foreigners. Thus, in arguing the differences of Japanese culture through the lens of how their cities and their inhabitants behave, the perspective adopted for this essay assumes a ‘Western outsider.’
Japanese culture reflects its environment in many dimensions. First, Japanese people like fish and seafood. As a country of four islands, their immediate ‘neighbor’ is fish, and over the millennia the Japanese people have perfected their fishing. Their menu largely consists of seafood. The Japanese cuisine like Sushi is Japanese and the delicacy was exported to the rest of the world. Japanese culture is also reflected in its architecture. The country is situated along the Pacific ring of fire which is a seismically active fault line which often leads to disastrous and catastrophic earthquakes and tsunami. Japan has been on the receiving end of these natural elements for centuries, and they have found new innovative ways of navigating this natural disaster which they are predisposed to in their architecture. The Japanese have come to reflect their geographical positions in the way they build their houses. According to the author of Theory of Affordances, ‘the possibilities of the environment and the way of life of the animal go together inseparably. The environment constrains what the animal can do, and the concept of a niche in ecology reflects this fact. Within limits, the human animal can alter the affordances of the environment but is still the creature of his or her situations.’ Thus, the skyline of Chinese cities does not have many skyscrapers like in many Western cities such as New York. The technology to build higher was not ‘perfect’ enough in the past to build very high. Most of the residential neighborhoods the houses rise just a few stores, and they are visibly built to withstand earthquakes and tsunamis. It is one of the ways the Japanese have adapted to their environment, and they have had to invest in better building technology to maximize the utility of earth space and build houses that can withstand earthquakes. Though the Japanese people have mastered and dominated the natural world around them, their architectural culture shows the overarching dominance of nature over humans.
The Japanese people are also exceptionally polite by Western standards. They are also helpful, and patient. In the article Mission to Tokyo, the author details several instances when he was baffled by the Chinese people’s respect and patience. ...