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Japanese concept of HARMONY

ricecake

先輩
13 Jun 2006
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The Kanji character WA means harmony.

Japanese never fail to mention " harmony " plays an inseparable part of their culture.Japanese have a proverb,a nail stands up gets hammer down.

How are Japanese mold into this conform mentality as a people,through family unbringing or society as a whole or national education ?
 
Is that all you wanted to say? By the way, I think you mean that 和 means harmony. 話, 輪, 環, 我, etc. don't.
 
I think that the early rulers of Japan aggressively encouraged conformity, so that through the generations, parents taught their kids that individuality gets in the way of larger things. I also think that the national education system is responsible as well.
 
604 years, April 3
The text which Prince Shotoku made(聖徳太子)
17条憲法(Seventeen-article constitution)
Its Article 1
一曰。以和為貴。無忤為宗。人皆有黨。亦少達者。是以 或不順君父。乍違于隣里。然上和下睦。諧於論事。則事 理自通。何事不成。
サービス終了のお知らせ
1. Harmony is to be valued, and an avoidance of wanton opposition is to be honoured. All men are influenced by class feelings, and there are few who are intelligent. Hence there are some who disobey their lords and fathers, or who maintain feuds with the neighbouring villages. But when those above are harmonious and those below are friendly, and there is concord in the discussion of business, the right views of things spontaneously gain acceptance. Then what is there which cannot be accomplished?
Ancient Japan

"Seventeen-article constitution" is not a thing for the nation.
A thing for a noble and a bureaucrat.
 
Yet, I wonder if harmony is still so valued here in Japan. Greed seems to be playing a bigger role than before, though I suppose the 'fallen' are villified and held up as bad examples. Also within companies, mostly it's towing the company line, which is not exactly keeping harmony but rather bureaucracy.

But with harmony comes a certain lack of imagination...🙂
 
I used to think by and large that all aspects of Japanese life & society were dictated by a desire to fit-in. But then I realised that everyone I've met since that idea formed has been an individual person, not just a representitive of some collective culture.

For sure, societal/racial homogeny play a big part of Japan's social mores and ideas, but these ideas are closer to things like responsibility to Japan, such as recycling, Japanese tradition, national pride, etcetera...

Likes, dislikes, feelings, etcetera are as varied as anywhere else, with the exception of there being a sharper curve as one grows older and has to put away 'childish things'... A few exceptions are the ganguro girls & other teens who ignore the social expectations of them and act wild and rude when they feel the need.
 
That's not the point. It's from the seventh century; hiragana didn't even exist. Everything was written in Chinese at that time.

My comment was in reference to ricecake saying that what he quoted had Chinese origin, while I was saying that it all had Chinese origin. But then again, maybe I misunderstood what he was saying.
 
Glenn said:
That's not the point. It's from the seventh century; hiragana didn't even exist. Everything was written in Chinese at that time.

My comment was in reference to ricecake saying that what he quoted had Chinese origin, while I was saying that it all had Chinese origin. But then again, maybe I misunderstood what he was saying.

at first eveything was not written in Chinese
Everything was written in Chinese characters.
i think most of country was same incidents happen
that is, new power burns all the books on the previous power.
In japan that was happend around AD 700.

.
 
Before the Japanese tried adapting Chinese writing to their own language they wrote everything in Chinese. Only later did they start changing the word order of sentences to reflect their own, but then it just looked like funny Chinese. After that they started using it phonetically to represent their language, and from there the hiragana developed. I didn't read through the links you posted thouroughly, but from what I saw they have to do with education during the Meiji Era, which has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.
 
Japan didn't have own written language until this one Japanese scholarly linguist spent nearly 20 years in China during Tang Dynasty to studied Chinese script KANJI for the development of hiragana.His name should be documented in both Japanese and Chinese history texts.

Korea's HANGUL script was developed during Chosun Dynasty King Sejong's reign,he sent a royal envoy named Shin Cho Sook spent 15-20 years with a Ming linguist scholar who had expertise in Mongol phonetics living in China's Liao-dong peninsula at that time.Korean Hangul was based off Mongol Phaspag script created by Mongols.
 
I seriously doubt they studied kanji for the purpose of developing hiragana, especially since it was pretty much an accident. It developed from the highly stylized women's writing of the Heian period.
 
I am waiting for fellow Japanese forumer Hiroyuki to clarify this,he seems well educated from his posts.Maybe,he can shed some light here.
 
Before the Japanese tried adapting Chinese writing to their own language they wrote everything in Chinese
I confuse....
in chinese ...it means chinese language or just kanji(chinese charecter)?
 
Alright, I want to you to be clear with what you're saying here. Are you saying that the Japanese never wrote in Chinese?
 
I promise you the Japanese wrote in Chinese. Then they changed the word order to reflect Japanese word order. Anyway, what do you think kambun is?
 
Anyway, what do you think kambun is?
kanbun is the chinese classic language.
it is not the japanese.
there were some doccuments(nihonsyoki or kojiki ) by japanese ppl in chinese in japan?

kojiki is older than nihonsyoki(kanbun)
 
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