Japanese Culture

The orient has been long associated with riches and a diverse culture. Whether it is the Sub-Continent or other components of this vast treasury of tradition-based communities, the East is truly where the Sun rises, illusion or not. The intriguing Japanese culture has stood the test of the pre-historic, recorded and medival times and the Rennaisance and has evolved into a great storehouse of ethics and practice. The journey from the original Jomon culture to the modern hybrid version, the Japanese culture offers splashes of color and variety from Asia, North America and Europe. This combined influence springs from the immigration to and from the continent over time.

The contemporary culture is an importation from China, the original inhabitants of Japan and the relative phases of isolation from and exposure to the outside world. The distinctively different culture has developed and thrived recognizing the Japanese as resilient and persistant. The Japanese language is agglutinative, with a relatively insignificant sound-inventory. It is spoken with a lexical, pitch based accent. The earliest available record of the Japanese language is actually within a Chinese document dating abck as far as 252 A.D! The Japanese script is a combination of Chinese characters, and two syllabic scripts, namely Hiragana and Katagana. The numerals comprise Hindu-Arabic forms and Sino-Japanese numerals.

Japanese painting is an integral part of Japanese art, where the brush has always been the traditional writing tool. The techniques adopted over a period of time have been absorbed from Asia and Occident. The Japanese culture also comprises the art of calligraphy. The esoteric art has limited exposure, but is a traditional artform to convey well written and information. The art of Calligraphy in Japanese culture is used to hand down poems and stories and even popular phrases and quotes. The style and format of calligraphy in Japanese culture can actually mimic the subject matter, down to the texture and stroke. The artform is backed by the creative Sumi-e, which involves grinding a solid ink stick on a special stone, to get the ink of the desired texture.

Japanese sculpture is also an inseparable part of Japanese culture. Most of the artifacts have the Bodhisattava, Myo-o and Tathagata images of the Buddha as the subject. The Amitabha wooden statue at the famous Zenkoji Temple in Japan is the oldest sculpture within the cultural artifacts left. At one time, Buddhist statues were made by the ruling government to boost its popularity and prestige. Wood has traditionally been the chief sculpting material in Japan. The statues are often brightly painted, lacquered or gilded and along with wood traces of bronze and other metal work is also observed.

Ukiyo-e, another art form of Japanese culture, literally means ‘pictures of the floating world’! The wood block prints could be mass-produced and were once easily available to the Japanese populace. The art of wood block printing thrived between the 17th and the 20th centuries. The widespread popularity of the prints have lead to their recognition and modern mimicry of the style is seen in advertisements and posters. Ikebana is the Japanese art of flower arrangement and is known and aped all over the world because of its overwhelming sense of harmony, color and rhythmic and elegant design structure. It is an art that celebrates the different seasons and human expression.

Japanese architecture is probably the most flaunted culture component. It has the longest history in comparison to any other aspect of Japanese culture. The Shinto shrines, temples and castles are perfect examples of traditional architecture. The traditional gardens seen at some of these buildings are deeply influenced from Zen ideologies. Today, inspite of the amalgamation of traditional Japanese architecture with that from the West, the Japanese art stands out. The Japanese costume ‘kimono’ has become synonymous with the land itself. The word means ‘something worn’, and is used to refer to all types of clothing. The Japanese have a well balanced cuisine that, like ikebana, is highly sensitive to the change of seasons.