Central Themes for a Unit on Japan
in the World Cultures Social Studies Curriculum

THE PHYSICAL/HISTORY SETTING OF JAPAN
[Suggested time: 3-4 lessons]

• Island Country in a Regional Setting
• Mountains and Sea
• Men Among Men - The Government

Island Country in a Regional Asian Setting

1. Japan's external geography is characterized by the insularity of a country without land borders, a condition the Japanese regard as fundamental to their psychology, often called the "island country (shimaguni) mentality." This insularity has fostered a sense of social closeness and national identity. Despite the emphasis on distinctive insularity, the Japanese people probably migrated from the Asian continent via Korea and are thus less isolated from adjacent lands than their myths of national origin suggest.

2. Japan's cultural setting was Sinic civilization, with China as the great center of culture, from which Japan in its earliest historical times borrowed the main elements of its own civilization, from forms of government to written language to art and religion. This aggressive cultural borrowing had as its corollary the adaptation of foreign ways, in this instance the Japanization of Chinese forms. The adoption of Buddhism linked Japan with India, the other great source of Asian civilization, marking the perimeters of the first phase of Japan's relation with its world , much as England was linked to the civilization of Rome. In the process of adaptation both native and foreign forms were modified and preserved, in the pattern of eclecticism which permitted Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto to coexist and also enabled the preservation of Japanese values even as foreign ways were introduced.

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Mountains and Sea

1. Japan's internal geography is determined by the mountainous terrain, from the peaks of which the sea is nearly everywhere visible. The resulting lack of arable land (only 16% is arable) has had social consequences: wet rice agriculture, the staple of monsoon Asia, crowded into small lands that required intensive labor to transplant, irrigate, and harvest the paddy fields also intensified the social closeness of the Japanese living and working together in small villages.

2. The lack of natural resources in the four Japanese islands has had obvious economic consequences, both for the inward economy, which was predominantly agrarian until the 20th century, and for the outward economy, which depended on the outside world for precious metals in ancient times and oil in the present day.

3. Shinto, the indigenous religion of Japan, celebrated nature, making the mountains and sea into sites of awe and beauty. In both religious and aesthetic terms, nature figures strongly as a cultural value.

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Men Among Men - The Government

1. The imperial institution, the most enduring institutional form in Japan's history, originated with the rulers of the tribe which conquered the other tribes in early Japan. Their god, the sun goddess, became the god of the nation; their ruler the highest officer of the realm, the emperor. But real authority was soon transferred to men who ruled in the name of the emperor, where it remained for nearly all of Japanese history. This quiet devolution of political power from the highest office to offices around or below the emperor reflected the Japanese preference for evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, change and also the value placed on political stability. Political change took place, while the emperor remained the symbolic center of the realm, never ruling and never overthrown, contributing to the preservation of Japanese culture embodied in the imperial institution and its national mythology.

2. Court culture, which reached its apogee in the Heian period, from the 9th to 11th centuries, constituted not only the political heart of old Japan but also its social and cultural center. Hereditary quasi-corporate court families were finely stratified within a small, interrelated ruling elite. These courtiers created Japanese high culture, epitomized by the elegance of Kyoto, the arts, the Tale of Genji. The aesthetic of court culture valued human feelings and human relations over abstract principles of morality, values that have since been preserved as quintessentially "Japanese". The period was one of adaptation , in which Japan retreated from relations with China and experienced cultural efflorescence in a period of geopolitical isolation.

3. The rise of the samurai occurred during Japan's medieval period (12th to 16th centuries), which saw a further devolution of political rule from court nobles to warrior families, most notably a shogun who ruled in the emperor's name. The daimyo were feudal military lords who possessed land and samurai retainers bound into close, stratified domains in the provinces. Samurai values of personal loyalty and service to the lord became a central cultural value preserved over the centuries in tales like that of the 47 ronin and of samurai loyal to the imperial throne.

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