East Asian Culture Research Paper

‘East Asian Studies’ is a highly complex undertaking. Building on excellent studies of the peoples of East Asia and their cultures, the field is now invigorated by fresh insights and perspectives. Historically the Chinese, Korean, and Japanese ‘civilizations’ have had much in common, due mainly to the diffusion of the Han and Tang civilizations from China to the rest of the area. Linguistically, the Sino-Tibetan languages, all of which are characterized by the tonal system (whereby tones give distinctive meanings to the same sound types), belong solely to the Chinese; the Korean and the Japanese, together with the Ainu and Gilyaks, come from an altogether different, non-tonal linguistic stock. Yet the Chinese writing system was adopted and imposed on the spoken languages of the Korean and the Japanese, although both later added their own system.

1. Recent Developments—‘Non-Socialized Culture’

Given Japan’s indebtedness to Chinese civilization, Japan has had a long tradition of Sinology, attracting scholars of China—including Chinese—to study there. Asian peoples themselves, along with scholars, used to view their country primarily in relation to ‘the West’. However, at least since the mid to late nineteenth century, there have been vigorous dialogues on and by Asians and Asianists on the relationships—cultural, political, economic, etc.—among Asian peoples. Representations of Japan, for example, to the rest of the world have, until recently, been made primarily by Western scholars alone, but Chinese, Koreans, and other Asians—and not exclusively the elites as in the past—are now taking part in the study and representation of the Japanese. Conversely, Japanese scholars have greatly shifted their focus to other Asian peoples, especially Koreans (Shima and Janelli 1998). A new Pan-Asianism, distinct from the one imposed by the Japanese during their imperial period, is a product of renewed recognition of cultural, social, economic, and political relationships of long standing among Asian countries and peoples.

Recent changes of emphasis and perspective in East Asian Studies derive from criticisms of, and even some frontal attacks on, the concept of culture—a cherished or, some would argue, the most fundamental concept in anthropology. Today, the term culture is in increasingly common use outside of anthropology, and in fact flourishes in Cultural Studies and various other disciplines, while becoming widely used in the mass media. At the same time, anthropology remains divided on this issue. Those who advocate to do away with ‘culture’ altogether have been accused of not offering alternatives to deal with collectivity, that is, ‘society’ or ‘culture.’ Even those sympathetic to the criticisms of the culture concept feel it is hard to discard it altogether, or, ‘[W]hatever the infirmities of the concept of ‘culture’ (‘cultures,’ ‘cultural forms’ …) there is nothing for it but to persist in spite of them’ (Geertz 1995).

We are now increasingly aware that the concept of culture, if used as a hermetically-sealed entity, fails to explain the very dynamics of culture, always in the process of transforming at the confluence of internal local historical development and external global historical forces. Almost all major foundational features of Japanese culture and political economy came from the Asian continent, usually via Korea. They include the ‘wet-rice economy’ in early times, and later—during the fifth and sixth centuries—the imperial ritual, the writing system, city planning, metallurgy, and a host of other activities. The draft of the Meiji constitution, promulgated in 1889, was drawn up by German and Austrian legal scholars and many of the key articles were adopted almost verbatim. Japan’s modern army and navy were modeled after the French and German army and navy. In fact the modernization in Japan, as in other Asian countries, was, to a great extent, Westernization. No society is an island in history. Hybridity is a sine qua nom of any culture. Recent emphasis on globalization makes us keenly aware of the basic nature of culture as a dynamic, unending process of the interpenetration between the local and global.

2. Dynamics Within

A powerful critique of the notion of culture as a ‘totalizing’ and ‘essentializing’ representation of a people or a culture led our studies in several productive directions. One such direction is the further emphasis on diversity, multiple voices within an artificially demarcated unit of our study—be it a people, a culture, or a society—resulting in a plethora of research on social groups other than the dominant ones. These groups include not only the so-called minorities but also the homeless, school dropouts, etc. This move is a corrective to representation in the past, for example, of the Chinese by the Han Chinese, or the Japanese as the agrarian Japanese: the emphasis on the latter led to a label, ‘rice paddy courses,’ refering to introductory courses on Japan. The recent research on minorities places these social groups not as isolated groups but in relation to dominant social groups, especially but not exclusively in regard to power inequality between the dominant and marginalized social groups.

In the case of Japan, wet-rice agriculture, which originated somewhere as yet unidentified within tropical Asia, reached northern Kyushusome time around 350 BC, supplanting the hunter-gatherer economy of the first occupants of the archipelago, who had arrived around 200,000 BC. It laid the foundation for the political economy of the Yamato state and the imperial system. Gradually the segment of the population engaged in rice agriculture—or, more accurately, who reaped the economic financial crop from wet-rice economy—became the dominant social group, representing ‘the Japanese’. The agrarian cosmogony and cosmology became those of the Japanese, whereby the rice agrarian seasonality governed all Japanese and rice paddies came to represent the Japanese space.

There is an increasing awareness now among scholars that the other side of the development of ‘Agrarian Japan’ was the marginalization of ‘the Japanese’ in nonagrarian sectors. They included those people whose livelihood derived from the resources of the sea and the mountains. In particular, this included what later became known as the ‘hisabetsu burakumin’ (settlement people under discrimination). These were people who engaged in nonagrarian occupations such as the performing arts, architecture, and trading, plus itinerant religious specialists, who, from late medieval times—when the notion of impurity received radical negativity—became increasingly marginalized, until 1582 when they were codified as two categories of ‘outcasts.’ The marginalization of the Ainu, who continued to engage in hunting, fishing, and plant gathering well into the nineteenth century, was similarly based on the yardstick of agrarian values, which placed emphasis on plant domestication. In addition, the assignment of ‘primitiveness’ to them was a byproduct of the Japanese, who tried to ‘modernize’ their nation according to the model of Western modernization (Ohnuki-Tierney 1987, 1993).

A related development is the shifting of focus among scholars from males to females—their voices, their life experiences, and women as social agents who actively carve out or change the courses of their lives. The issue of gender preferences, both institutionalized and culturally sanctioned as well as individual, has also received considerable attention. Gender-related issues often address the question of gender inequalities, which are in turn juxtaposed with the power in-equalities between classes within society, on the one hand, and between the colonizers and colonized, on the other, breaking new ground for various disciplines ( Watson and Ebrey 1991).

3. Transnationals, Diasporas

Another major critique of culture is how it was presented in the past as being spatially tied. The non-isomorphic nature of the cultures, locality, and peoples of East Asia was realized early by scholars of East Asia, who have contributed to the studies of ‘overseas communities’—numerous ‘Chinatown’ studies, Brazilian Japanese, and the like. ‘Emigrant communities’ are a native category of villages from which people regularly emigrated to overseas communities, while closely maintaining ties with their home villages (Chen 1939, Watson 1975). Building on this distinguished tradition, scholars of ‘transnationalism’ study emigration, the resultant overseas communities (some diasporic), and especially transnationals with ‘flexible citizenship’ in the contemporary context of globalization which created a unprecedented flow of population across borders of nation-states (Ong 1999). The recognition of the non-isomorphic relationship between a political unit—such as a nation-state—and a people culture became more than obvious in East Asia when ‘the Chinese’ were divided into those in the People’s Republic of China, those in Hong Kong— first under the British and then the People’s Republic of China—and those in the Republic of China (Taiwan) across the Formosa Strait. Likewise, ‘the Koreans’ were split into North and South. Japan, which has been stereotyped as homogeneous in terms of demographic composition, has been a multi-ethnic nation throughout history. But, to give one example, in 1940 the then prime minister of Japan, Konoe Fumimaro, delivered a now infamous speech that ‘one hundred million Japanese with one soul’ be dedicated to the service for the Emperor. This figure included 30,000,000 Koreans, Chinese, and others who resided in Japan and its occupied territories, who were given an equal right to death, that is, from 1944 they were forced to become Japanese with the Japanese soul in order to be drafted to fight for imperial Japan. This is not to mention the diversity within, with the Ainu to the north, and the Okinawans to the south, who were once thought of as distinct from those on the main islands, and ‘Westerners,’ including the ‘white Russians’ and Jews.

The political mosaic in East Asia offers a fertile ground for studies of ‘identities’ and conflicts among social groups within a nation-state and between nationstates. Within a nation-state, the majority vs. minorities are interlaced with the question of what makes a social group ‘ethnic’ (the Okinawans in Japan ‘used to be’ ethnic); whereas the two Chinas and two Koreas present a different situation—the question of two nation-states consisting of one people. In other words, East Asia offers a microcosm of what we see in the world in which collective identities form flexible circles, some of which overlap with each other.

4. Nationalisms, Colonialisms, Imperialisms

At the level of nation-states, the identity of a people could be expressed through peaceful ‘cultural nationalism’ which defines and represents a people of a nation-state as distinct from another, often those who, physically or symbolically, press at the ‘border’—figuratively and politically. Thus, when the Japanese began to emerge from their total immersion in the Han and Tang civilizations of China, they began to assert their own culture, switching from embracing the Chinese aesthetics of plum blossoms to that of cherry blossoms as their flower. Since the mid-nineteenth century Japan’s nationalism, both cultural and political, has been informed by paradoxes and ambivalence of the Japanese’s own identity, which was formed in part by rejecting Western political imperialism—while at the same time eagerly emulating Western civilization—and in part by rejecting their own Asian identity—while seeking it in order to establish a difference from the West.

Research on the complex problem of identities in East Asia will join the now burgeoning field within social science of ethnicity, nationalism, and ethnonationalism. Ethnonationalism is ‘the politicization of ethnicity,’ related to ‘the generation of regional or subnational reactions and resistances to what is seen as an overcentralized and hegemoic state’ (Tambiah 1996, p. 16).

Colonialism in East Asia is another genre of research in which interest is growing, and which promises a rich source of comparative work. Studies of Western colonializations have yielded rich fruit for scholars in the past. The Opium War (1839–1942) and the resultant cessation of Hong Kong became the symbol of the power of Western (British) colonialism over Asia, whereas the Boxer Rebellion (1899–1900), crushed by the combined forces of Western and Japanese powers, foreshadowed not only Western but Japanese imperialism. Another growing field of interest concerns the histories and cultures of Japanese colonialism during its military period, as in the colonization of Korea (1910–1945) (Duus 1995), and the building of the puppet state of Manchukuo (1931–1945) (Young 1998). These studies offer important comparative bases for Western and non- Western colonializations in Africa, the Americas, and other parts of the world.

A genre which is similarly regarded as important, although it has not yet received systematic attention, is cultural imperialism, especially of Western European cultures over many parts of Asia, and also of the world—how political domination by other, primarily Western European nations (but also Japan to a lesser degree) nonetheless became the cultural mirror to emulate. Western cultural imperialism has been at the center of modernization processes in Asia, with the often eager adoption of Western science, technology, and capitalism leading to almost everything from the ‘West’ being revered, including the body esthetics. Even before affluence led the Japanese to seek out designer names such as Gucci, Bally, and Louis Vuitton, American Revlon lipsticks and Ivory soap were far more expensive than their domestic counterparts and were preferred as gift items.

This is an important area of study, not only because it offers us a valuable window onto the other side of political colonialism but also because it constitutes a significant dimension of the current globalization, in which the notion of brain death, organ transplantation, human rights, environmental conservation, and the like, which involve concepts and values that are predominantly Western in origin, are considered outside their areas of origin. Medical high technologies, saluted as the golden achievement of Western biomedicine, brings prestige to those in another society who embrace them as being ‘progressive,’ although such technologies may require not only radical reconceptualization about the death in relation to the body but also mortuary rituals, with beliefs, values, kinship, and a host of other important dimensions of a people needing to be considered and, where necessary, renegotiated.

5. Global Forces And East Asia

Another category of studies that offers an approach to study people not as an enclosed entity is ‘global studies,’ or studies of trans nationality—there are a wide range of approaches within this field. Those at the forefront of the study of globalization consider the twenty-first century as a new era marked by an unprecedented flow of people, goods, and signs. Others urge us to compare the present with the past when spice trades, capitalism, colonialism, features of Western High Culture, etc. spread throughout the world. The present globalization is marked by the spread of high technology and market economy of late capitalism. The global flows of people are studied as research on tourism, diaspora, and transnationals. The flows of goods and signs symbols are studied through research on global dissemination of youth fashion, fast food, television programs, films, pop music, and a host of other things that are engulfing the globe. Most originate in the West, but some, such as reggae, do not. Reassessments of the claims for ‘McDonaldization’ or ‘CocaCola-ization’ are underway, for example, in Watson (1997), which offers a close examination of the fast food industries in Beijing, Hong Kong, Taipei, Seoul, and Japan. These studies of the introduction of McDonald’s—a symbol of postmodern fast-lane life in the USA and an epitome of Americana for peoples elsewhere—show a simultaneous transformation of the locale, which in turn transforms the fast food in significant ways.

6. Cultural, Social, Political Institutions

East Asian studies continue to produce distinguished scholarship on: kinship and social organization; religions (beliefs and rituals); educational systems; arts and performing arts; and healthcare systems. Excellent studies of the institutionalized religions of Buddhism and Confucianism, shared by most Asian societies in variant forms, and of Shintoism in Japan describe how they have impacted on sociopolitical organizations as well as arts and science. They also tell us how people experience these religions in their daily lives. The emphasis on the impact of religion in individual lives receives the focus of attention in the studies of ‘ancestor worship’ shared by most peoples of East Asia (Ahern 1973, Watson and Rawski 1985, Janelli and Janelli 1982, Smith 1974). ‘Ancestor worship’ is a misnomer but refers to the practice of taking care of the souls of deceased family members and relatives through a long series of rituals. Despite profound changes that such worship underwent in each society, it remains perhaps the most important aspect of religious beliefs and rituals in these societies.

Shamanism and other religious beliefs and practices that have been regarded not to belong to institutionalized religions are also well studied in relation to the day-to-day lives of contemporary peoples. In contemporary Korea, for example, Shamanism is of exceptional importance and recent studies highlight the role of women in Korean shamanism (Harvey 1985, Kendall 1985). Although their pervasive influence is less recognized, Taoism and geomancy, as practiced in China and spread to Japan, constitute important dimensions of cosmology comprising symbolic oppositions (expressed in yin-yang) and remain important in the daily lives of people in East Asia.

In addition to these traditions—large and small—of religions that are considered to be ‘indigenous’ or of long standing in East Asia (Buddhism originated in India), we witness recent studies on Muslims and Christians in East Asia, again showing the recent view of culture as not localized or hermetically sealed. Indeed, Protestantism is quite a strong force in contemporary Korea, while many influential intellectual and political leaders of Japan since the Meiji ‘restoration’ in 1868 have been devout Christians, some of whom were presidents of the University of Tokyo, taking on important roles as intellectual and moral leaders.

The academic study of healthcare has a long tradition in East Asia. ‘Chinese medicine’ in particular has received attention from distinguished scholars such as Joseph Needham, who explicated how their medicine constitutes a science distinct from Western science (Needham 1969), and Manfred Porkert, who later produced a similarly distinguished work (Porkert (1974). A compiled work by Arthur Kleinman (1976) focuses on doctors, patients and their interactions, rather than medicine as a system.

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