1. What Japan is
1. History of identity issues
During World War II, the Japanese were briefly identified. "The Japanese have always viewed domestic and international issues from a hierarchical point of view, and during World War II, they believed that they were gradually approaching the apex of the national hierarchy, and according to the premise of the hierarchical order, Japan should support backward China.
States should be united in a world anchored by international hierarchies. With this in mind, the Japanese have never been satisfied with their national pride and with their identity. But soon, with the defeat of World War II and the personification of the emperor, Japan was soon thrown into the void world after the war. I began to question why I worked hard but only received small satisfaction. Unfortunately, before they could find out, the Japanese economy collapsed, and the bursting of the stock and real estate bubbles in the 90s hit the Japanese economy hard and has not recovered to this day. The selves that had just been built through consumer culture were shattered again.
2. First awareness
With the collapse of the goal, the uncomfortable question once again arises: what kind of culture does Japan need, and what is the source and essence of Japan's uniqueness? Does the first consciousness mentioned by Saul Bello not exist in Japan? Sol Bello said of his Jewish identity: "I can continue to do what I have done for the rest of my life; That is, naturally turning to my first consciousness.
The first consciousness is within reach and very real. At the same time, when Oe accepted the Nobel Prize, he still expressed the dilemma of Japanese culture." Japan has been opening up to the outside world and embarking on the road of modernization for 120 years. But from my observations, Japan today is still divided into two levels of contradictory opposites. The effects of this contradiction are pervasive, dividing both countries and nations,...... The direction of Japan's modernization is to learn from the West and imitate the West, however, our country is located in Asia and has a deep-rooted indigenous culture. Unclear positioning makes Japan... Isolated by other Asian countries, this isolation is not only political, but also social and cultural. Our culture is quite open to the West, but even in the West we remain mysterious, or not fully understood. ”
Second, involuntary sorrow
After analyzing the social reasons, we also need to interpret these literary works from an aesthetic point of view. It is an important reason for the pessimism in these works. The other primitive is given by Japan's unique aesthetic consciousness, "monomono". When it comes to Japanese literature, it is impossible to avoid the word monomo, and its influence is not only artistic creation, but also as a national aesthetic consciousness, like bushido, it also guides the Japanese lifestyle. The so-called mourning consists of two parts, "things" and "mourning". These two words represent precisely the two trends of thought in the development of Japanese literary thought, and when the two words are combined, what we now call the idea of mourning appeared.
1. The pursuit of truth - things
"物", as a noun, "世間で知られている內容。 The general affairs of the world. "Translated as what is perceived in the world, everything in the world. Ancient Japanese literature, with folk narrative literature centered on myths and legends, developed in parallel with lyrical literature centered on songs and tankas. These literatures mainly express the simplest and most sincere trust and impression of God, the emperor, and the community or country, showing the germination of the "true" realistic literary consciousness and the rudiment of literary and artistic beauty. This primitive literary consciousness is inseparable from primitive Shinto. The present reality is a representative abstract concept that gives people a very believable feeling, but cannot be concretized into each individual. This breaks the limitations of the previous private novels with strong personal colors and is not widely represented, and makes the concept of "real" more social.
2. Helpless emotion - mourning
"Mourning" is mainly used to express "after the Heian period, there are deep feelings and concerns, or a state similar to this feeling, initially expressing feelings such as sighing and nostalgia, and gradually expressing sadness and pity."
From the perspective of the structure of ancient Japanese literary thought, the process of completing the literary consciousness of "Manyoshu" is also the process of differentiation between personal consciousness and 'real' literary consciousness, and the process of forming 'mourning' literary consciousness... The differentiation and flow of 'real' literary consciousness is mainly the role of injecting personal emotions, that is, subjective lyricism... It is not only based on the simple emotional migration of the individual, but also other feelings with the subjective reflection of the singer, and more personal will content. From here, the Manyoshu completes the transition from the national spirit centered on 'truth' to the spirit of individual consciousness centered on 'mourning'. Mr. Ye Weiqu believes that the transformation from the "real" literary trend to material mourning has gone through three periods: mourning splits from "real", that is, the emergence of mourning; During the monogatari period, it changed from mourning to mourning; The idea of material mourning was theorized, and a unique theoretical system was established, which went beyond the field of literature and became a trend of social thought.
3. People and things, truly sigh - object mourning
"Mourning of things" is the product of the emotional tone of "mourning", from simple sighing to "unity of material and heart". That is, the connotation of "mourning" is extended, and it is produced by combining it with "things". That is, the exclamation of "mourning" is limited to the object, which can be a person, a natural object, or a personal feeling. When the literary trend of "mourning" and the literary trend of "truth" diverged, Zi Shibu's "The Tale of Genji" perfectly combined the two, so that "mourning" is an exclamation on the basis of "things", that is, reality; So that the "thing" carries feelings, and the subjective and objective are reconciled into one. This idea of the unity of material and heart gradually went beyond the field of literature and applied to all cultures, and even became a norm of thought and behavior, covering the entire life.
In short, the essence of "object mourning" is lamentation and sympathy for real things, real emotions. It was completed by the hands of Shikibu and is a fusion of Shinto and Buddhism, mainly based on the "reality-based" spirit of indigenous Shinto, with a classical romantic atmosphere. It has influenced the aesthetics and lifestyle of the Japanese.
4. Changes in material mourning
Material mourning is to emphasize the truth, to express one's feelings of love and compassion, sorrow. However, this aesthetic sense will inevitably make people fall into negativity, and at the same time it is easy to be limited to personal feelings. And truth is always an important point in the literature of material mourning, so it is easy to infer that when the world in front of us is full of moral decay, it is easy to enter a pessimistic and world-weary mood. The mourning itself originated from the aristocracy representing the feudal class, and was born from the traditional monist mode of thought, which pushed Japan's conservatism and feudalism to the extreme. That is to say, there is a strong conservatism in the aesthetic consciousness.
This conservatism determines the difficulty of self-establishment, in short, the modernization of culture has not kept pace, leading to a fault line in the aesthetic and social status quo. Using a conservative aesthetic to reflect the real world is bound to produce contradictions. In order to deal with this contradiction, it became the task of literature to merge traditional monomono ideas with Western ideas to produce an idea that was suitable for Japan. Whether it's Yasunari Kawabata, or Kenzaburo Oe, to Haruki Murakami, until the young writers of the 21st century, they are all working this.
Third, the way to solve it
"In today's society, it is very possible to adopt a nihilistic attitude, which can actually rival the deaths of millions of people. The vast excess energy they possess is either self-defeated in a vague emptiness with little future in a strictly managed academic society, or can only burst out in the form of black cloud hatred or violence. But perhaps it has the potential to change human society. If the right track can be introduced, it will definitely make their stored energy burn. It is able to guide students who only want to kill their parents, or who boast that shooting kittens and birds with airsoft guns is in the best mood to steer in a good direction. "For the Japanese, how to solve the cultural contradiction is a difficult problem. It's not impossible, because Japanese culture has a strong compatibility and a good experience of cultural integration. It is necessary to bring into play the spirit of "wa" that characterizes the Japanese nation.
1. What is "and"
A national character is definitely related to the living conditions of the most primitive indigenous people. In terms of economic form, Japan mastered primitive agricultural technology very early (relatively speaking), and the dominant society was dominated by the dominance of agricultural culture rather than religion. The relationship between man and agriculture and man and nature is not antagonistic, but a primitive agricultural economic form formed by integration and neutrality. In terms of ethnic form, due to geographical restrictions, the inflow of foreign population basically will not return to the outside world, and the peaceful combination with the aborigines has formed a unified Yamato nation.
2. And how it is carried out
The first to absorb was Sinology, that is, China's advanced culture. The earliest introduction is Chinese characters and some sinology classics, and there are many theories about the first transmission of Chinese books, which are still inconclusive, but it is indisputable that the introduction of Chinese characters and Chinese books is an important opportunity for the development of Japanese culture. The introduction of Chinese characters brought Confucianism to Japan, and Confucianism was used as the guiding ideology for the reform of its political system. In the following years, the frequent dispatch of Tang envoys brought Sino-Japanese cultural exchanges to a peak. At this time, Chinese poetry, learned from China, quickly became popular in Japan, contributing to the prosperity of waka that appeared at the same time.
The literature of the time also disputed Western European centrism. At the same time, it can also be seen that no matter what creative methods these advanced intellectuals adopt or which faction they belong to, their ultimate goal is to find a new system that is beyond the above-mentioned extreme patterns of "conflict-exclusion" and "conflict-identity". However, this new system is also constantly changing.
3. How to use the spirit of "harmony" to resolve today's contradictions
Why Chinese and Japanese culture can be good "and". The spirit of the so-called "harmony", in fact, is more precisely, a method, which is essentially to take the initiative to build a center, and when there is this center, cultural integration is carried out through peaceful methods. The exchange of two or several cultures must lead to a consensus, that is, to establish a value that can be accepted by all parties, so as to achieve the purpose of meeting the needs of all parties. For Japan, because when the initial exchanges with China began, Japan was still a clan country, and it was an absolute disadvantage compared to China economically, politically and culturally. For the ruling class, how to consolidate its rule and how to strengthen its strength is a very important issue. Since "harmony" requires a core to carry out, and building a true self is where this core lies.
IV. Conclusion
It is not a contradiction between personal and social rules, but the Japanese do a good job of being subject to rules. This contradiction is a contradiction between the self and the self, between a completely independent individual and an individual controlled by the consciousness of the group. Building a strong self is the core problem of solving the integration of modern Japanese society and culture. To construct this strong self, we need to base ourselves on our own culture. Only by basing ourselves on our own national culture can we finally find a point of convergence between the independent self and the group self, so as to form a perfect cultural integration.