It is no secret that contemporary Japan is barely the shadow of the cultural richness of Japan's past. Even that shadow, from the perspective my time here has granted, seems to be losing itself in the overwhelming process of the new culture. There may have been a well constructed, well traveled dirt path, but that path bas been almost completely covered by a brand new pavement road. Cracks in the road let you peer through the surface and into the past but soon they are re-paved to again hide the old-fashioned past and to show the shiny new present.

The Japanese city, if lucky, has a generous amount of its ancient heritage still standing for you to see (Kyoto, Nagasaki, Kumamoto). If unlucky, (and this includes places like Hiroshima City, Sendai, and Tokyo) then the old parts have been almost completely built over with what can be said to be just about the most steriized, sterilizing modern architecture that exists. What is left has, like the paved over dirt path, just a fragment of the richness that once was. And as people tend to become the things they do, people also become their environment. The rich cultural past is easily shed from most peoples' backs and replaced by a shiny and new, shallow one. Like the buildings that all look alike, people too tend to fashion themselves with similar styles (and this happens all over the world) and, because of the political and educational system in place here many people share similar behaviors and opinions (also like many parts of the world, let's admit). Fortunately the behaviors and characterisitics people tend to share here in Japan are mostly incredibly pleasant and nice.

Here in the coutryside I have the good fortune of seeing less of the paved-over Japan and more of the old dirt path underneath. Still, there is much that has been lost here as well.

The explanations for all of these occurences here appear as complex as Japan's cultural heritage. I won't begin to pretend that I could properly discuss them. What I can note is that when America forced Japan's unconditional surrender, and thus made the Japanese governement vulnerable to America's cultural influence, this country was given some of the tools that would help make it the second biggest economy in the world. Those tools would also contribute to the rebuilding of Japan after the war and thus the restructuring of the culture and government (education in particular).
The tradeoffs for achieving economic competeitiveness were huge. The electronic revolution has its side-affects as well. Let's just say they don't exactly help reinforfce, or even remember, the cultural ancestry of Japan. Just watch any TV channel in Japan and you'll see what I am talking about. Consumption, and the commodification thereof, are central aspects of most of the shows you'll see. Along the lines of obsession over subtle gourmet dishes tasted by the rich and famous as their faces are projected, close-up, to millions as their make their careful judgments of the foods. At least we can say that it is tantalizingly amusing how people can be so enthralled by this stuff. It is also mostly harmless. Harm is done though.