The Essence of Japanese Culture: An Intense Obsession with Form?
<p><a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/smith-japan.html#:~:text=%22In%20fact%20the%20whole%20of,before%20Wilde%20made%20this%20observation." rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Oscar Wilde wrote in 1889</a>, “In fact the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people.”</p>
<p>Japanese culture has been Orientalized, romanticized, and exoticized for over a hundred years. The result? Much of the (Western?) world has come to think that there is something inherently profound, unique, and intrinsic about Japanese culture.</p>
<p>Just look at the output from ChatGPT — which basically spits out existing data that it has been trained on:</p>
<p><img alt="" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:875/1*b2wYyzVu-ucsvbIrBNQSwQ.png" style="height:621px; width:700px" /></p>
<p>Screenshot from OpenAI ChatGPT, prompt by author.</p>
<p>Even I have been accused of committing cultural essentialism in the piece “<a href="https://medium.com/japonica-publication/five-things-about-japan-i-didnt-fully-appreciate-until-i-lived-there-ef372d0d369f" rel="noopener"><em>Five Things about Japan I Didn’t Fully Appreciate until I Lived There</em></a><em>.</em>”</p>
<p>Cultural essentialism refers to the now-outdated belief that there is something intrinsic, primordial, and unchanging to a culture.</p>
<p><a href="https://medium.com/japonica-publication/the-essence-of-japanese-culture-an-intense-obsession-with-form-d92062255178"><strong>Website</strong></a></p>