JAPAN

People and Culture

Culture Name: Japanese

Orientation

Identification.  The Japanese names, Nihon  and Nippon,  are alternative readings of written characters that mean
"origin of the sun" ("Land of the Rising Sun").

European names for the country probably originated with Marco Polo, who most likely adopted a name for Japan
used in a Chinese dialect.

The name "Yamato" is used by archaeologists and historians to distinguish Japanese artistic genres from their
Chinese counterparts. When used as a contemporary term, Yamato has strong associations with the imperial
system, and thus with conservative nationalist ideologies.

Contemporary Japan is considered a highly homogeneous society, but regional variation in social and cultural
patterns has always been significant. Pride of place and identification with local cultural patterns remain strong.
Japanese people often attribute personality traits to people from particular regions, and regional identity often is
expressed through local culinary specialties and dialects.

Location and Geography.  The Japanese archipelago consists of four major islands and over six-thousand minor
ones, covering approximately 234,890 square miles (378,000 square kilometers), and has enormous climatic
variation. The four major islands are Hokkaidō, Honshū, Shikoku, and Kyūshū. The southern island group of Okinawa
(the Ryūkyū Islands) is geographically, historically, and culturally distinct.

Japan faces the Pacific Ocean along the entire eastern and southern coastline. To the north and west are the Sea of
Okhotsk, the Sea of Japan, and the East China Sea. The Korean peninsula is the closest point on the Asian
mainland. Japanese life has always been oriented toward the ocean. The currents that converge offshore create
fertile and varied fishing grounds.

The climate is shaped by Asian-Pacific monsoon cycles, which bring heavy rains from the Pacific during the summer
and fall, followed by icy winds from North Asia during the winter that dump snow in the mountains.

There are approximately 1,500 volcanoes, and because the islands lie on major fault lines, earthquakes are common
occurrences. Only about 15 percent of the land is level enough for agriculture, and so the population density in
coastal plains and valleys is extremely high. Because of the steep mountains, there are almost no navigable inland
waterways.

Demography, Linguistic Affiliation & Symbolism

Demography.  The population in 1999 was 127,000,000. The country is heavily urbanized, and urban areas
have extremely high population densities. According to the 1995 census, 81 million people (65 percent) live in
urban areas; that constitutes only 3 percent of the land area.

During the last 150 years of industrialization and economic development, the population has grown from
around thirty million to its present size. This increase occurred as a result of a rapid demographic transition
characterized by an enormous movement of people from rural to urban areas, dramatic decreases in infant
mortality, increases in longevity, widespread reliance on birth control, and transformations of family
composition from large, multigenerational extended households to small nuclear families.

Life expectancy is the highest in the world, and the birthrate has been declining dramatically. Because of these
trends, the population is projected to peak early in the twenty-first century and then shrink.

Linguistic Affiliation. The official and predominant language is Japanese (Nihongo).

Meiji Restoration in 1868, the government attempted to create a strong centralized state. Linguistic
unification was a step toward shaping the national identity. Through the national educational system
and the military, a dominant national dialect replaced local and regional dialects. The resulting
dialect, hyōjungo ("the standard language"), was based on the linguistic patterns of Tōkyō's samurai
("warrior") classes and has become the norm in the educational system, the mass media, government,
and business.
Japanese is linguistically related to Korean, and both languages are thought to be members of the Ural-Altaic
family. Despite similarity in syntax, vocabulary, and grammar, the contemporary languages are mutually
unintelligible. Japanese also has close connections to various Oceanic (Malayo-Polynesian) languages,
suggesting that in prehistoric times the archipelago may have been settled by populations from Oceania as well
as from the Asian mainland.

Although Chinese and Japanese are fundamentally unrelated and differ in phonology, syntax, and grammar,
Chinese has had enormous impact on the Japanese language and civilization. The Chinese system of writing
was introduced along with Buddhism in the sixth century, and Chinese orthography was used to transform
Japanese into a written language. Until the nineteenth century, stylized versions of written Chinese remained a
hallmark of elite culture.

The introduction of Chinese characters 1,500 years ago established semantic and orthographic systems that
make Japanese one of the most complicated languages in the world. The contemporary language relies on an
enormous number of words and terms that are Sino-Japanese in origin as well as words derived from
indigenous Japanese terminology. Most written characters can be read in contemporary Japanese with both a
Sino-Japanese pronunciation and a Japanese reading.

In addition to the adaptation of Chinese characters to preexisting Japanese vocabulary, two phonetic systems of
writing were developed after the ninth century. Those orthographies made it possible to write Chinese
phonetically and to write spoken Japanese terms that had no equivalent Chinese characters. Literacy therefore
became attainable for people not educated in the Chinese classics, and many masterpieces of classical Japanese
literature, including the Tale of Genji, were written in those scripts.

The writing system rōmaji  ("Roman characters") is used to transcribe Japanese into the Roman
alphabet. Rōmaji  is widely used on signs, in advertising, and in the mass media. An alternative system,
adopted but not mandated by the government, is much less commonly used.

Although spoken and written forms of Japanese are largely standardized throughout the nation, there are
several linguistically distinctive ethnic and regional dialects. The most distant dialects are those spoken in the
Okinawan islands. Okinawan dialects are considered by many linguists to be distinct from Japanese. After the
Kingdom of Ryūkyū was annexed in 1879, the national government tried to replace the use of the Ryūkyū
language with standard Japanese, but the isolation of the islands, their lack of development before World War
II, and the American occupation until 1970, enabled Okinawans to maintain the use of their dialects.
Other linguistic minorities include the Korean-Japanese and the Ainu. Most Korean-Japanese are bilingual or,
especially among the younger generations, monolingual speakers of Japanese. There are only a handful of
native speakers of Ainu.

Symbolism.  National identity and unity are formally symbolized by a number of conventional icons and
motifs, including the cherry blossom, the red and white national flag portraying the rising sun, and the
chrysanthemum. These symbols have contested meanings because they are associated with the imperial family
and World War II. The chrysanthemum, for example, serves as the crest of the imperial family, and cherry
blossoms were invoked in wartime propaganda to represent the glory of kamikaze suicide pilots. Progressive
political groups resist flying the national flag and singing the national anthem (Kimigayo) because of their
wartime associations.

Stereotypical images that are deployed in foreign representations of Japan, such as Mount Fuji, geisha, and
samurai, are not regarded by Japanese people as symbols of contemporary identity.

Contemporary Japanese culture emphasizes symbolic expressions of local or regional identity. For example,
local identity and pride are commonly expressed through "famous local products." Almost every village, town,
and city is famous for something, often a locally distinctive folk craft, a local culinary specialty, or a traditional
song or performing art.