5/13/2010

Changing Impression

Now, I really feel that Visual Anthropology class gave me the chance to reconsider “what is the Japanese culture.” As for my present impression of Japanese culture, it may have many unique aspects which I never realized all the more because “I am Japanese.” I have lived in Japan for more than 21 years, that is, everything I see here should be nothing unique in that sense. Every Japanese culture such as manga, sushi, host club, onsen, etc is the invention created by Japanese. We Japanese must be familiar to these things since everyone had enormous chances to get in touch with them in any occasions. I myself have naturally accepted what I experience here without thinking it unique, but “normal.”



"Konpirasan金刀比羅宮"
"Ashiyu足湯"

However, from outsiders’ perspective, everything they see here must be unique as I feel whenever I travel abroad. I mean, what I want to say is that I learned the way of thinking towards Japanese culture in outsiders’ perspective through this class.

To be honest, when I saw the images related to Japanese culture, or watched the Japanese documentary films in this class, I did not know the points on which I had to focus because the objects on the screen were mostly usual for me. Although I understood that I needed to think about them in an anthropological way, it was still difficult to find the points. Yet, as I heard the comments of exchange students, I learned what Japanese aspects they paid attention.

Moreover, as the reason why I was not so stimulated by the images shown in the class, my indifference to Japanese culture is considered. In my opinion, indeed Japanese basically know their culture better than foreigners, but their knowledge is very shallow, vague and imperfect. In spite of that, they feel like knowing everything, and the feeling leads us not to have interest in our own culture.

Over this semester, I was taught many aspects of Japanese culture by some professors, and strongly felt that, especially as to the religious practices, we are close to the ignorance. For example, once someone died, we need to practice a series of rituals including the funeral even after the departed was cremated. However, many Japanese people have no idea about how and why they are done. We seem to just follow the professionals of these practices. Though I do not know people from other countries know well about such customs of own countries, after all, I found that our lack of knowledge of ceremonial occasion is a kind of shameful thing.


Finally, with regard to this class, I think I learned more than I expected. I am going to major in anthropology in U.S.A, so this class gave me a great opportunity to practice the basic anthropological approaches like field research. For me, exploring the new world and analyzing what I experienced was really enjoyable because the process has the more crucial meaning rather than just visiting with own curiosity. Therefore, in future, whenever I have new experiences, I want to continue to do the work.