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Lecture Outline:
Key Concepts: Primary focus in this course on "objective" aspects of the Japanese environment; paradox of relationship between the Japanese people and their environment (conflict between domination over nature and living in harmony with nature); polarised view of culture vs nature as a "Western" perspective, integral to the scientific basis of modernisation after the Meiji Restoration of 1868; the dangers of cultural stereotyping and "green orientalism"; orientalism driven by the Japanese discourse on national identity, the nihonjinron; attitudes towards nature are a significant part of this Japanese discourse of difference; ambiguous meaning of shizen, the Japanese word for the Western conception of objectified "nature", at odds with its older meaning of 'spontaneously self-existing totality' - the essence of everything, including man the natural world, cultural artifacts, and divinities; "faith in fakes" rooted in the antiquity of Japanese culture; origins of traditional conception of nature in China (taoism, buddhism and confucianism), further developed in Japan through zen; indigenous roots of the traditional conception of nature in shinto; living in harmony with the kami that inhabit elements of the physical landscape; significance of the boundary between mountain (yama) and fields (ta) to the annual migration of the mountain deities into the fields; link to cherry blossom viewing; cherry blossoms as a Japanisation of plum blossoms; the outside (soto) and the inside (uchi) in Japanese culture; "objective" nature can also be found in two realms, the outside and the inside; nature on the outside as rough, raw and frightening; nature brought "inside", absorbed into culture, through the depiction of its ideal, its "essence"; nature thus "tamed", "wrapped" or "cooked"; "tamed" nature as the nature with which the Japanese claim to live in harmony, and inseparable from culture; examples of nature absorbed into culture include: calligraphy, ikebana (flower arranging), bonsai (gardening on a dish), and methods of Japanese gardening including zen rock gardens, enclosure, framing, and borrowing views of physical features from a distance. Revision Questions: "The Japanese hold conflicting views towards the natural environment". Discuss. Examine, with examples, some of the ways in which nature is incorporated into Japanese culture. Recommended Reading: Augustin Berque, Nature, Artifice and Japanese Culture. Northamptonshire: Pilkington Press, 1997. Joy Hendry, "Nature Tamed: Gardens as a Microcosm of Japan's View of the World". In: Pamela J Asquith and Arne Kalland (eds.), Japanese Images of Nature. Richmond: Curzon, 1997, Chapter 5, pp. 83-105. Arne Kalland, "Culture in Japanese Nature". In: Ole Bruun and Arne Kalland (eds.), Asian Perceptions of Nature: A Critical Approach. London: Curzon Press, 1992, pp. 218-233. Arne Kalland and Pamela J Asquith, "Japanese Perceptions of Nature: Ideals and Illusions". In: Pamela J Asquith and Arne Kalland (eds.), Japanese Images of Nature. Richmond: Curzon, 1997, Chapter 1, pp. 1-35 Josef A Kyburz, "Magical Thought at the Interface of Nature and Culture". In: Pamela J Asquith and Arne Kalland (eds.), Japanese Images of Nature. Richmond: Curzon, 1997, Chapter 14, pp. 257-279 Brian Moeran and Lise Skov, "Mount Fuji and the Cherry Blossoms: A View from Afar". In: Pamela J Asquith and Arne Kalland (eds.), Japanese Images of Nature. Richmond: Curzon, 1997, Chapter 10, pp. 181-205 Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, "Cherry Blossoms and their Viewing: A window onto Japanese Culture". In: Sepp Linhart and Sabine Frühstück (eds), The Culture of Japan as seen through its Leisure. Albany: SUNY, 1998, Chapter 11, pp. 213-236 Keiichi Takeuchi, "Traditional View of Nature and Natural Resource Management in Japan: Sustainable Development and Geographical Thought". Hitotsubashi Journal of Social Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2, December 1998, pp. 85-93 |