Culture of Japan

Japanese culture has changed greatly over the millennia, from the country's prehistoric Jōmon period, to its contemporary modern culture, which absorbs influences from Asia and other regions of the world.

Since the Jomon period, ancestral groups like the Yayoi and Kofun, who arrived to Japan from Korea and China, respectively, have shaped Japanese culture. Rice cultivation and centralized leadership were introduced by these groups, shaping Japanese culture. Chinese dynasties, particularly the Tang dynasty, have influenced Japanese culture throughout history and brought it into the Sinosphere. After 220 years of isolation, the Meiji era opened Japan to Western influences, enriching and diversifying Japanese culture. Popular culture shows how much contemporary Japanese culture influences the world. As of 2023, Japan's overseas exports of cultural content recorded 5,776.9 billion yen.

Identity History

There are two competing hypotheses that try to explain the lineage of the Japanese people.

The first hypothesis proposes a dual-structure model, in which Japanese populations are descendants of the indigenous Jōmon people and later arrivals of people from the East Eurasian continent, known as the Yayoi people. Japan's indigenous culture originates primarily from the Yayoi people who settled in Japan between 1000 BCE and 300 CE. Yayoi culture spread to the main island of Honshu, mixing with the native Jōmon culture. Modern Japanese have an estimated 80% Yayoi and 20% Jōmon ancestry.

The second hypothesis proposes a tripartite model of genomic origin. This hypothesis proposes that contemporary Japanese people are from three distinct ancestral groups: Jōmon, Yayoi and Kofun, with 13%, 16% and 71% of genetic ancestry, respectively. During the Kofun period, it is said that migrant groups from China came to Japan and settled on the island, bringing with them various cultural advances and centralized leadership. The migrants who came to Japan during the Kofun period appear to have had ancestry that mainly resembles the ancestry of the Han Chinese population of China. The Jomon people were hunter-gathers; the Yayoi people introduced rice cultivation; and the Kofun migrants introduced imperial state formation.

Japanese culture was influenced from ancient times to the Middle Ages primarily by multiple Chinese dynasties, with substantial derivation from the Tang dynasty, and to a lesser extent by other Asian countries. For example, one of the scripts for writing in the Japanese language is Chinese characters (kanji), but Japanese has no genetic relationship with Chinese. Since the Meiji era, Japan has been primarily influenced by Western countries.

During the Tokugawa shogunate, the inhabitants of Japan experienced over 220 years of relative isolation from the outside world until the arrival of the Black Ships precipitated the Meiji Restoration and subsequent Meiji era.

The Showa period underwent a cultural mobilization as arts, literature, and architecture were co-opted to promote imperial nationalism and traditional warrior values until reforms dismantled state Shinto at the end of World War II, introducing a democratic constitution, and giving citizens new civil freedoms. The period experienced the birth of modern consumerism, and popular culture icons like anime and convenience stores known as konbini.

Today, the culture of Japan stands as one of the most influential cultures around the world, mainly because of the global reach of its popular culture. In 2023, U.S. News & World Report ranked Japan's cultural influence as the highest in Asia and 4th worldwide.

Language

Japanese is the national and primary language of Japan. The language features a lexically distinct pitch-accent system. Early Japanese is known primarily by its state in the 8th century when the three major works of Old Japanese were compiled. The earliest attestation of the Japanese language was found in a Chinese document from 256 CE. However, the Japanese language has no genetic relationship with Chinese, nor any clear affiliation with any other language. While there are a number of theories about the origins of Japanese, the strongest arguments for affiliation are with Korean on the basis of similar syntax. More controversially, it has also been paired with Altaic languages due to a similar number of systems and verb forms. While Japanese is the only official language of Japan, other languages such as Ainu and Ryukyuan are spoken on the Japanese islands.

Written Japanese uses a combination of three scripts: Chinese characters pronounced as "kanji" in Japanese, hiragana, and katakana. Japan had no writing system prior to adopting kanji from China in 751 CE, and like Chinese, kanji are used extensively in Japanese as logograms. Presently, there is a notable number of kanji in modern Japanese with a different meaning from the corresponding character used in modern Chinese. Modern Japanese also features far fewer simplified Chinese characters in comparison to modern Chinese as Japanese typically uses fewer kanji, mainly for nouns, adjective stems, and verb stems. Both hiragana and katakana are phonetic syllabaries derived from , a phonetic Chinese characters originating in the 5th century and maturing in the 8th.Yookoso! An Invitation to Contemporary Japanese 1st edition McGraw-Hill, page 13 "Linguistic Note: The Origins of Hiragana and Katakana" Hiragana and katakana were developed from simplified kanji; hiragana emerged somewhere around the 9th century. Women used hiragana informally, while men used katakana formally. By the 10th century, both systems were common.

Japanese vocabulary consists of 49% words of Chinese origin, 33% words of Japanese origin, and 18% loanwords from other languages, including European languages, words of mixed origin, and the made-in-Japan pseudo-English known as wasei-eigo. The Latin alphabet is often used in modern Japanese, especially for company names, logos, advertising, and when inputting Japanese into a computer. The Hindu–Arabic numerals are often used for numbers and can be read in either Japanese or English, but traditional Sino–Japanese numerals are also common. The influence of Japanese culture in the Western world over the past few centuries has led to many of its terms, such as origami, tsunami, karaoke, and pop cultural terms like shonen and shōjo being incorporated into the English language. Words like these have also been added to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Religion

Shinto and Buddhism are the primary religions of Japan. According to the annual statistical research on religion in 2018 by the Government of Japan's Agency for Culture Affairs, 66.7 percent of the population practices Buddhism, 25.6 percent practices Shintoism, 7.7 percent other religions. According to the annual statistical research on religion in 2018 by the Government of Japan's Agency for Culture Affairs, about two million or around 1.5% of Japan's population are Christians. Other religions include Islam (70,000) and Judaism (2,000), which are largely immigrant communities with some ethnic Japanese practitioners.

Shinto

Shinto is an ethnic religion focusing on ceremonies and rituals. In Shinto, followers believe that – Shinto deities or spirits – are present throughout nature, including rocks, trees, and mountains. Humans can also be considered to possess a . One of the goals of Shinto is to maintain or strengthen the connection between humans, nature, and . The religion developed in Japan prior to the 6th century CE, after which point followers built shrines to worship .

Buddhism

Buddhism developed in India around the 6th and 4th centuries BCE and eventually spread through the Sinosphere and South East Asia. It arrived in Japan during the 6th century CE, where it was initially unpopular. Most Japanese people were unable to understand the difficult philosophical messages present in Buddhism; however, an appreciation for the religion's art and its close relation to China led to Buddhism growing in popularity by the 8th century.

Christianity

Christianity was introduced in the 16th century. When the religion was banned during the 17th century, a group of hidden Christians blended Christian theology with Shinto and Buddhist practices. Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region have become World Heritage Sites, and the unique style of Christian art is now recognized.

Despite being a minority religion in Japan, Christian chapel marriage ceremonies are a popular wedding style in Japan.

Islam

A minority of Japanese are Muslims. Cultural differences and a predominantly non-Muslim society present unique challenges for Japan's Muslim community, mostly immigrants from Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Iran.

Muslims are scattered in Japan. Mosques and halal food are scarce due to their dispersion. Family-linked long-term residents are assimilating into Japanese society despite language and cultural barriers. Analysts say the small Muslim community and cultural differences between Islam and Japan reduce future conflicts. Syncretic Sufi Islam may increase Japan's Muslim population.

National character

The Japanese "national character" has been written about under the term , literally meaning 'theories/discussions about the Japanese people' and referring to texts on matters that are normally the concerns of sociology, psychology, history, linguistics, and philosophy, but emphasizing the authors' assumptions or perceptions of Japanese exceptionalism; these are predominantly written in Japan by Japanese people,Peter N. Dale, The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness (London: Routledge, 1990; ), passim. though examples have also been written by foreign residents, journalists and even scholars.

Literature

Early works of Japanese literature were heavily influenced by cultural contact with the Chinese Empire and Classical Chinese literature, often written in Classical Chinese (Kanbun) or utilizing Chinese characters for their phonetic properties. Eventually, classical Japanese literature developed into a distinct aesthetic style in its own right as court writers began utilizing unique phonetic syllabaries, particularly Hiragana, to compose native works like waka poetry and prose narratives. The Tale of Genji, written by the court lady Murasaki Shikibu during the peak of the Heian period, is recognized worldwide as a masterpiece of unique Japanese vernacular prose and is frequently cited as the world's first psychological novel. Since the Bakumatsu era, when the island nation reopened its treaty ports to Western maritime trade and diplomacy in the 19th century, Western and Eastern literary movements such as naturalism, realism, and modernist prose, have strongly affected each other through cross-cultural translations and continue to do so in contemporary global comparative literature.

Visual arts

is a traditional Japanese art and East Asian calligraphic discipline. Japanese calligraphers use the traditional Four Treasures of the Study: brush, ink, paper, and inkstone, to write kanji and kana. Several different styles of Japanese calligraphy exist, with considerable effort put into the outcome; in some cases, it can take over one hundred attempts to produce the desired result of a single character. This form of calligraphy is known as , literally meaning 'the way of writing or calligraphy', or more commonly, , 'learning how to write characters'. Commonly confused with calligraphy is the art form of , literally meaning 'ink painting', which is the art of painting a scene or object using diluted black ink. Japanese terminology distinguishes from and . Shodō presents calligraphy as a cultivated artistic path within Japanese aesthetics and the broader culture of dō arts, while shūji and shosha usually refer to school instruction in handwriting, character formation, and brush practice.