Japanese Anachronisms - Intro
People often use the cliché ‘old meets new’ when describing Japan, a reference to the country’s unique mixture of tradition and modernity. The cliché can also be applied, however, to several anachronisms found in Japanese culture.
Although the difference between ‘anachronism’ and ‘tradition’ is perhaps difficult to distinguish, anachronisms are basically things or practices that appear to belong to another time, the most common cultural examples being those that appear outdated because they’ve been superceded by new technology or more modern practices.
Since Japan is such a technologically advanced country, there are also numerous anachronistic examples of stuff that is so cutting edge that it seems too futuristic to be contemporary, but for the purposes of this series I’m just going to focus on the former type of seemingly-outdated anachronism.
The way we view anachronisms is, of course, highly dependent on our own culture as this informs our perceptions of the ‘here and now’ that are essential in determining what appears anachronistic. For example, someone from a developed country might regard oxen being used to plough fields in a developing country as an anachronism because they are used to seeing tractors being used for the same purpose in their country, despite the use of oxen appearing entirely contemporary to the farmers using them.
My interpretations of Japanese anachronisms are therefore influenced by my being a foreigner, yet undoutedly seem natural and contemporary to Japanese people; in this series then, I’ll be focusing on why these anachronisms became popular (i.e. their history), why they seem like anachronisms to foreigners (i.e. thinking about what they should logically have been replaced by) and considering how likely their continued use is in the future.
I’ll add the links to the list below as each post appears on Big On Japan:
- soroban (abaci)
- kasshu (cash)
- kanji (Chinese characters)
- fakkusu (fax machines)
- hanko/inkan (name stamps/seals)
May 6th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Hi, Majestyk san.
I found my way here from Mixi.
Interesting perspective!
I agree with most of those listed above, however, let me give my couple of thoughts.
As for the abacus, you’d think you have only to use a calculator and of course, I agree.
However, I’ve once seen those who went to abacus school doing quick math in their head on big digits just by pretending to work the beads (without using one).
I suppose it’s surely something unneeded in this contemporary world but, it might help reinforce your swift mental calculation.
And without Kanji, what would you suggest as its alternative to distinguish the homonyms?
Our culture has been mostly built upon importing and expansion from other cultures though.
I think fax machines are for the older people left behind by the currents of digitalization, like my mom with no clue about how to e-mail whatsoever.lol
May 7th, 2007 at 12:42 am
Thanks for your comments yonyon. I was supposed to post new articles about these anachronisms a long time ago but I still haven’t got round to finishing them yet!
As you’ll see when I do finally put the articles on this site (sometime later this year) my approach to these anachronisms is figuring out why they are still used, and from researching them I agree entirely with what you said about abaci and kanji.
The only thing that really puzzles me about Japanese use of kanji though, is that Koreans no longer use it and seem to have no trouble with homonyms in their language. I don’t know much about Korean language, but I do know over 40% of it comes from Chinese originally so I would think that they have lots of homonyms too, and yet they don’t need kanji. Interesting differences there.
BTW, since you found Big On Japan through Mixi I’m guessing you’re Japanese. If so, then I’m very impressed with your English ability!
May 8th, 2007 at 9:34 am
Thanks for your reply and compliment to my English.
Actually, I have to admit I sometimes cheat having my Canadian hubby help me out as it seems to me that it might take forever to make out all of my thoughts.
I look forward to seeing those articles finalized, but there’s no need to rush.
so take your time with your research.
As for the kanji use, I decided to look into the invention of the Korean alphabet as well as their disuse of kanji though I know next to nothing about Korean language.
Although they’d imported Chinese characters earlier than Japanese did, Koreans had been writing Chinese classics while speaking Korean language till they made up the Hangul letters in 15th century.
Meanwhile, Japanese notational system was built up pretty early after the import of Chinese characters.
The primary reason why they developed their own alphabet system would be because of its phonetical system.
Compared to Japanese, Korean language has much more syllabic sounds, so it was quite tough to apply each Chinese character to all the syllabic sounds. (*As a result, you can easily guess that it has less homonyms but more problems especially in homonymic clash since its meaning relies on the context as Hangul letters is phonogram.)
Actually, at a point, they were writing Korean language in Chinese character but it went out of use for its complication. Also, it was only for the elite who were literate then, anyway.
So, it was caused not by an anti-anachronistic act, rather its necessity to be easy to use.
FYI, seems like Japanese government still uses Chinese classics on some of these official documents.
In my opinion, that itself is quite the anachronism.LOL ;D
May 11th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
Wow! Some great research there! Thanks a lot, it’s very interesting. Also, another reason why kanji is still used in Japan is suggested in the excellent book ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’ - because of ‘prestige’, basically preserving an important part of Japanese culture/history.