I arrived in Tokyo on June 21st, two days prior to the program start day. I did random explorations in the city and I observed people, architectures, commercial cultures and other aspects of Japanese society.
Prior to my trip, I knew Japan from books and news. I see Japan from a distant perspective, and I can feel the clash between the Western and Eastern cultures wherever I go. What books and news tell me is that Japan has gone through “lost decades” and has been actively sought for economic solutions for years; that Japan is largely a monoethnic society and culturally exclusive; The books also tell me Japan has an issue in gender equality, a lot of women face huge pressures from both work and families and Japan is seeking help from technology, hope technology can solve various social issues in the context of population aging..... Equipped with all these knowledge and pre-perceptions, I landed on the ground and try to picture Japan using my observations.
My understanding of Japan is gradually deepening as I spend more days here, but I want to talk about my first impression of this country.
One of the busiest crossroad at Shinjuku
Japan is extremely clean, organized. Etiquette culture is prevalent. Everyone seems to be very polite and helpful. Since the first few places I visited are the airport, hotel, and the central business districts where people I met are mostly in the service industry, I assume their polite is largely a professional requirement. But as I visited more places and saw more people, I have to say Japanese are "obsessed" with details, and the politeness is a virtue most people have. The reason I claim Japanese are "obsessed" with details is that I feel their emphasis on details made their society more organized, convenient and human-centered. For example, their trains almost never late, the public restrooms have separate rooms for ladies to touch up makeups, and tiny seats for baby to sit which is extremely convenient for moms, etc.
An extremely clean street, Shinjuku
As my exploration expanded to a greater area, what impressed me is a harmonious coexistence of traditional and modern culture. Take a very simple example, I visited the Shimbashi, a business district where many well-known corporates have their office located at. It is imaginable there are many grand tall buildings with glass facades, white collars hold their briefcases busying walking around. The district is so normal that I can imagine there must be hundreds of thousands district like it around the globe. But there is something that can surprise me! Just a street away from the fancy modern building, I saw a traditional Japanese temple hidden in an old but peaceful neighborhood. The electric wires tangled in an unpleasant way, but they also tell the history of how many years this neighborhood has existed. The noise of a bustling street magically disappeared. The temple hidden inside a cement forest makes me feel like history adds another layer to a modern city. The coexistence of traditional and modern architectures in city planning reminds me of my National Diet Building tour. I learned from the reading that from the beginning to end, the Diet Building took 70 years to build. The reason why it took so long is on one hand the budget constraints, but more importantly, is because of the undecided national identity in a modernizing country. The final Diet Building has a neoclassical, pro-Western exterior and pro-Japanese interior. Not only the Building itself, the landscape design also reflects a balancing mixture of Western and Eastern aesthetics—the fountain is western, and the garden is Eastern. The appreciation of both modern and traditional ideologies created many interesting culture fusions, and that’s something charming about Japan.
The National Diet Building
I can also see the respect of nature landscape and interior design. I found Japanese designers are fond of showing the natural texture and color of materials in their designs. The respect of nature is deeply rooted in Japanese culture that the essence of design is to use craftsmanship to show the beauty of a piece of wood, textile, and rock in their original form. These architectures, although has stood for hundreds of years, still have impressive exuberant vitalities which stem from the primitiveness of building materials.
Comments