Ravina Mark J. Understanding Japan: A Cultural History

Course Guidebook. — Chantilly: The Teaching Company, 2015. — 176 p.Japanese culture presents us with a paradox. Many aspects of Japan’s culture seem insular and exclusive, and the Japanese people often pride
themselves on their distinctiveness. Yet the Japanese people are also voracious consumers of foreign culture, and parts of Japanese culture have gone global. Japanese automobiles, sushi, and animation are known around the world. In this course, we’ll confront this paradox head on, looking at the tension between globalization and isolation over two millennia of Japanese history and culture. We’ll begin in prehistoric Japan, when the islands were ruled by dozens of warring kingdoms. Next, we’ll see how Japanese rulers confronted the challenge of ancient globalization in the 6th through 8th centuries. When powerful empires on the Asian continent threatened Japan both culturally and militarily, Japanese rulers imported ideas, such as Confucianism and Buddhism, and technologies, ranging from writing to metallurgy, to build a newly powerful state. Then Japan fell into relative isolation, limiting contacts on imperial aristocrats in Kyoto and, later, on a rising warrior class. From the 1300s to the 1600s, Japan experienced a second wave of globalization. Westerners arrived in Japan and introduced new weapons—guns—and new ideas—Christianity. Japanese merchants spread throughout East Asia, establishing trading posts in China, Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam. Japanese warlords sent envoys as far as Rome, and some converted to Christianity.