Something about his bio just doesn’t make any sense–actually, a lot.

Joking aside.
Theoretically there is no essence in Japanese culture but there is just a set of family resemblances through changes.
When there is a felt pressure from foreign countries, a felt need to change radically, there is reactionary on the part of some Japanese. (Note that it seems Totten wrote several books on international relation amid the frictions between Japan and the U.S in the 80′s.).
In the process of reactionary and progressive, Japan has been moving forward, without losing the “sense” of identities and continuity.
I am glad that Japan has been open enough to accept changes, preserving some tradition, what has constituted Japan..
Without reflecton on the traditon, there will be no national continuity: without accepting changes, a nation will not be able to surivive.

Japan’s contacts with the outside world during the so-called ‘sakoku’ period (a term not used at the time) were more extensive than is commonly supposed, at least in the West. Dejima in Nagasaki was just one access point. There was also the Ryukyus, Tsushima, and Ezo (Hokkaido) for more or less official/unofficial contacts. The Shogunate kept a close eye on global events through the reports of the Dutch as well.

Excuse me, if got to continue my study of hanzi. I mean, kanji.

http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/TOKJAPAN/TOYOTOMI.HTM

And they succeeded brilliantly. It’s always rather difficult to critique Meiji-Taisho policies, as although we may reject them today as being at best authoritarian, at worst rather fascist, the plain fact is that they DID work: Japan DID become a first-rate power – to the extent that after WW1 the PM, Hara Takashi, was shot by a nutcase angry that Japan, in the Washington Conference, was placed behind the US and the UK. As Hata Ikuhiko points out, that meant Japan was merely rated third in the entire world. More powerful than France or Italy, for example.

Also let’s remember that when Japan kissed white butt, they did so to get behind them so they could boot the oyatoi gaikokujin out of the place as soon as possible, which they did – and still do in some ways (read Debito or Ivan Hall on English teachers at Japanese universities). Also, many of the reforms were introduced not as the White Man demanded them, but as Japanese men in power thought they would work as bait – anything to revise the unequal treaties and get back control of tariffs etc.

To give him his due, Totten doesn’t just talk about that – in the page referred to, he talks about wanting to wear kimono to work. But then again that is just weird (as his Japanese staff pointed out). One of the first places the kimono vanished from was the public workplace (the very first was the army of course). Talk about swimming against the current.

I do kinda envy him his house, though I think Kyoto one of the most over-hyped cities on the planet. A nice traditional minka would be very acceptable.

Come to think of it, perhaps he’s not Kerr. He sounds more like Lafcadio Hearn, especially in his more bitter Tokyo years.

Sheesh. Women these days.

Take Japanese pop music for example of kissing [fillintheblank or White or Black]‘s ass. It’s been dead for years imho. I just can’t stand it coming from Japanese TV and radio. I listen to Jazz blues and trance…

Did my first comment (when there were no other comments) vanish into limbo or is it still being digested by the spam filter?

It’s almost as if he’s kissing Japanese ass in his assertions (catering to their vanity about traditional Japanese culture and uniqueness) rather than encouraging them to continue to do what has made them so successful in the past decades.

You got it. That’s the right question Japanese have to keep asking!

Anyway, Silicon Valley is the center of the earth ( or gravity as Linus Torvalds put it) if you are in IT industry today. But that does not mean kissing White’s ass. Japanese have been adapting the best of the best from all around the world(Chinese characters, technologies, and medicine) and refining and creating unique and often better things. Just like Isaac Newton once remarked he was “On the Shoulders Giants”.

But I’m, for one, afraid Japan may be losing the way use to be and what constituted Japanese.

The problem is that some people call someone like me or someone more conservatives “right-wingers” “nationalists praising war” yada yada yada… That’s really sad.

But I like Japan being not fanatic about anything. It’s good thing for Japan to be able to judge if something is a good thing or not rationally.

Listen dude. Culture is not static. It changes. Get over it. No Clavellian geisha for you. Not yours.

Sounds a lot like a more financially-astute Alex Kerr, bemoaning the loss of some idealistic “real” Japan that was the Japan he first knew.