What makes contemporary Japan Japanese? Walking around the famous Ginza area of Tokyo, I couldn’t help but think of similar, high-profile shopping centers in Beijing, Seoul, and London. It’s a good example of how globalization and modernization made the world more connected and reduced its varieties in culture and landscape. Are we really living in a “global village”?

The experiences in Japan gave me a clear answer: no. For starters, the further one walks away from large and international cities such as Tokyo, the more Japanese characteristics one will encounter. Taking the Skyliner express between Tokyo and Narita International Airport, I had a quite good general view of Japanese countryside. At first glance it became obvious that the population density was much more than that of rural America, and the farmland is mostly cultivated by small landowners. One could never mistake this scenario for the large, sparsely populated rural area of the United States. Even regarding life in Tokyo, the more carefully I think about it, the more Japanese it becomes. Food occupied much of my interests. Though I can easily find Japanese food in America, the quality is, unsurprisingly, much lower than that in Japan. One definitely enjoyable and authentic way to test this hypothesis is to visit Tsukiji district, where the best sushi restaurants could be found in Tokyo.

Another entertaining way for history students to embrace Japanese characteristics is to visit a Japanese bookstore. In the main Kinokuniya bookstore in Shinjuku, an intriguing theme that appears across many different sections is Saigo Takamori, a legendary samurai in the early Meiji period. Not only did Saigo’s name occupy prominent positions on the history shelves, but in literature and the entertainment sector as well. In fact, the NHK is now broadcasting a new TV drama series of Saigo’s life in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Meiji Restoration. Historical figures such as Saigo are an inherent part of Japanese collective memory, which is not shared by any other countries.

 

By Zhongtian Han, Sigur Center Summer 2018 Field Research Grant Fellow. Zhongtian is a history Ph.D. student at George Washington University. He is interested in modern East Asia and strategic studies, and his research focuses on the strategic history of modern China and Japan.