Re: Re: [OT] [OA] Japanese Traditions Questions
Shin Okada said:
First of all, I must say that Chinese culture and Japanese culture are very different indeed. The difference is far more then those those between two European countries. Indeed, all the Europeans are Christians, and they are all on the same continent. But Japan and China has different religion, and not on the same ground.
Though it has become more pronounced in mondern times this is an important, if really complex, point.
Japan and China do share some very fundimental historical roots; primarily because of Japan's habit of adopting Chinese culture, art, history, philosophy, religion and just about everything else. But there are a lot of key differences so that you can't really talk about them easily together.
I've lived in China and I live in Japan now and in terms of behavior and worldview I think that mainland Chinese I've met tend to be more similar to Westerners in behavior & values than they are to Japanese (at least Japanese from the Kanto region around Tokyo -- Osaka is a totally different bag of beans).
The changes that the Japanese made to the Chinese culture they imported are instructive. This is a pretty good example:
At some point prior to the closed-country period (and for the life of me I can't remember which period this was) the Japanese adopted the Confusian form of government that was being practiced in China at the time.
So the social structure was broken up into 4 classes
1. Warriors (from 2-10% of the population)
2. Farmers (80%+ of the population) -- to keep them happy because their lives sucked. I think this probably also included fishermen but I'm not sure.
3. Artisans & craftsmen (5-10%)
4. Merchants (5-10%) -- because they were "parasites who produced nothing"
[Lots of Westerners like to talk about the eta or hinin who were an untouchable class and did work related to death like tanning, working in slaughter houses, etc. They're kind of like a fifth class.]
The intersting part is that the Chinese didn't have warriors on top.... they have beauracrats. Japan was fundimentally a warrior nation, though they later aquired the trappings of education and civility in the guise of samurai Japan's history is littered with brutal warfare for a reason. The period when you had the Emperor ruling with a noble class in Kyoto was only a few hundred years, the almost-a-thousand-year period after that was basically the emperor ruling as a figurehead while the various powers jockied for control behind the scenes. By the time of the Tokugawa period this trend was so pronouced that the Shogun was effectively the Emperor (but he wasn't of course, there was still somebody living in virtual poverty in a run down palace in Kyoto).
Depending on how intensly historical you want to get there is a lot of good stuff here.
Shin Okada said:
One other comment, though it depends on region a woman who marries is no longer a member of her family. She's a member of her husbands family; she moves into his house where she does exactly what his mother says, for years and years she takes care of the whole family, until the mother dies. Sterotypically the mother-in-law is pretty much tyrannical (not nessessarily mean, just very strict and very demanding)
This was taken to a pretty intense level even just fifty years ago. Both my host mom and (especially) host grand-mom have some really intense stories, about it. Among other things you basically act like your family doesn't exist, you usually comminicate infrequently, if at all and when you do interact you (at least publicly or in the presence of the new family) use strict formal address.
The name change thing (which happens in Western culture too, of course) is much more serious here. For a long time even if you were divorced you weren't allowed to change your name from your husbands in the official registry.
Other stuff (bear in mind my knowledge comes from traditional Japanese TV dramas more than anything else)
*the wife usually greets the hustband when he comes home (by kneeling and bowing her head)
*in upper class families the wife uses formal address with her husband, the husband never does with her
*(this has changed a lot recently but) children are very strictly educated; seen-but-not-heard kind of thing.
Though most people talk about Shinto and Buddhism as different religions the reality was much more hazy. Shrines (shinto churches) and temples (buddhist churches) were often located on each other's property and there were scholars and thinkers who insisted that Shinto
kami were really aspects of the buddhist
boddhisattwas.
Buddhism was seen as being stronger than Shinto, or at least that's what somebody told me once. They though it was better at removing the taint of death so that was why the funerals were Buddhist.
Modern Japanese have the saying that they're Shinto at birth, Christan when married and Buddhist when they die. It's kind of a joke, but most Japanese have a Shinto birth ceremony, a western-style wedding (minus the actual religious stuff) and Buddhist funerals. And their remains are kept in Buddhist graveyards.
If you're looking for cool Japan related ideas the different religious sects and variations give a lot of good grist.
During the closed-country period everybody was registered at their local temple.
I'm kind of at a loss for what other kinds of things to mention there's a lot out there, can you tell us a bit more about what you're looking for? What's your campaign like (especially the social class of the party members)?
