Japanese culture is quite different from American culture.
We did rebuild them, and McArthur is revered as a god, over there.
But they really have their own culture, and some aspects can strike us as quite strange (as, I am sure, some aspects of our culture weird them out).
I worked for a Japanese company, and went there, multiple times a year, for about twenty years (all Tokyo, so I can't speak for the rest of Japan). I think that there are a number of Japanese and US/EU expats that live in Japan, on this board.
While he's undeniably a famous historical figure in Japan, my impression is that the majority of Japanese people don't have any strong opinions about him. After all, how many people actually care so much about historical figures when they're busy watching cat videos on YouTube? But for the people who do have some interest, I assume many have mixed feelings on the matter, which is natural for citizens of a former military dictatorship turned democracy only because they lost the world war. The rest are far-right people who, as you can imagine, hate him with a passion, though I do hope they're only a minority of Japanese people whose voices are amplified by Twitter echo chambers.
I'll have to hunt down the article that talks about it, but McArthur was actually "Emperor of Japan" for a few years, in everything but title.
I had several people point out his office on the top floor of a building facing the Emperor's Palace (some of the priciest real estate on Earth), in hushed, reverential tones.
Yes, he did have a strong political influence during US occupation, and yes, there may be people who worship him, but I can guarantee that it's not the norm. I'm actually fluent enough in Japanese to know this.
Because the kinds of people who likes to pile on McArthur are mostly far-right people who are trying to discredit the positive things he did, especially his team's work on drafting the current Japanese constitution which established a democratic system with strong safeguards for human rights. It's not McArthur's own character that I'm taking issues with.
I remember once it felt a bit jarring when I heard native American cultures contrasted with "western" ones. Surely they are more "western" than Europeans.
"Western" in this context is referring to the western tip of the Eurasian landmass. The western hemisphere is part of the cultural "West" because of the European diaspora, not because of its geographic location.
Correct. The division goes back to the Roman Empire and the reforms of Diocletian. Arguably however there were underlying cultural differences between the Latin Romans and the Greek Romans that were beneath those reforms and the later Great Schism between East and West.
Words are never some sort of perfect encapsulation of their meaning. They only achieve that via their definitions.
What you're suggesting is basically using the etymological fallacy as a basis for changing words. Because of linguistic drift, a majority of words would have up be changed at some point - words like "nice" which came to mean their opposite, for example.
I think my suggestion that we should "perhaps" choose different words occasionally was mistaken for a demand that we must.
Choice of words is an individalized thing and language allows us to be as flexible as we like within still getting the point across. If I choose to say "European" instead of "western" when contrasting with indigenous Americans that sounds fine to me. If you don't make that same choice that's fine too. We'll all be understood.
>It's my personal opinion that when we see such a discongreguity that we should perhaps choose other words.
Not really. Then we'd be changing terms established for centuries, that most people understand in their two contexts (geographical and cultural), with some new words we'd have to explain every time we use them -- so making things worse.
If I contrasted indigenous Americans with "European" culture rather than a "western" one, you would completely understand the meaning and it wouldn't be a big deal.
I wouldn't know if you mean "European culture" in the sense of something unique continental European (the way Europeans have unique cultural traits different from US traits, e.g. analytical vs continental philosophy), or the shared western culture Europeans and US Americans, and Australians, etc have?
That would sound to me like a deliberate misread in the same way that taking "west" literally is to you. You would know what I meant to say, and so would I should you say it the other way.
It's common to divide US/European culture (even though both western), or to include Japan in the western culture (even though not in the west, and their culture is not European of origin -- west in that sense is more like "westernized").
Native Americans and pre-Christian pagan Europeans had a lot in common. Both cultures that honor seasonal cycles, animals, nature, ancestors, animism etc.
Unfortunately “western” is now seen as the Abrahamic judeo-Christian capitalistic worldview, even though the west sprang out of pagan Greece and Rome.
Rome was Christian when the Western and Eastern empires were founded, and when they fell. My understanding is that modern West/East etymology is heavily influenced by the Western/Eastern Roman empires.
>Unfortunately “western” is now seen as the Abrahamic judeo-Christian capitalistic worldview, even though the west sprang out of pagan Greece and Rome.
The west "sprang out of pagan Greece and Rome" when they decided to become Christian. The actual pagans had been slowly abandoning paganism as a dead-end and turning more into esoteric religions and neo-planonism etc and the influence of Egyptian etc religions for several centuries before Christianism was a thing...
"Both cultures" ? What cultures ? Neither pre-Colombian Americas nor Europe shared a culture on their respective side. Even if most of Europe shared a common Indo-European root, religious practices were varying widely. Be it from the cross-pollination with different tradition (pre-Indo-European, Semitic and whatnot) or social changes. It's very hard to argue the official Roman religion as practiced in cities was any more "closer to nature" than Catholicism is.
A cursory glance at Japanese culture and values shows me that America has had far less influence on its development than you believe. On the scale of individuality/community, Japan is further on the opposite side. The anime/manga industry is quite different than anything we have in the West, and a lot of their values tie into the things that are depicted, what's okay, what's not okay, etc. We often see traditional influences on their media that simply don't exist in the West in the same way (comparison of the American and Japanese versions of The Ring: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01956051.2011.5...).
Yes. First you attribute what Japan is to how the US rebuilt it, when in fact this society has thousands of years of history before the US. Sure we can't deny US influence after WW2 and how integrated they are in the global economy, that doesn't make it a westernized country.
Continental Europe is considered, by and large, to be "The West", as is the United States. In this context, the US is a new country but very much representative of the Western world.
Culturally yes, but it depends on context. As mentioned in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world , during the Cold War and after, "Western World" was roughly analogous with "First world".
That is to say, (again, roughly) - "modern, stable, (primarily) capitalist, democracies aligned with Western Europe/USA".
So, in the context of geopolitics and political ideologies many people still consider it to include Japan and South Korea. Yours truly included.
Not that I care as much about the "aligned with" part anymore, but certainly the "modern, stable, democracy" part.
