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Culture
The Great Wave off Kanagawa (1832), an ukiyo-e from Thirty-Six Views of Mount
Fuji by Hokusai.
Japanese culture has evolved greatly over the years, from the country's original
Jomon culture to its contemporary hybrid culture, which combines influences from
Asia, Europe and North America. Traditional Japanese arts include crafts
(ikebana, origami, ukiyo-e, dolls, lacquerware, pottery), performances (bunraku,
dance, kabuki, noh, rakugo), traditions (games, tea ceremony, budō,
architecture, gardens, swords) and cuisine. The fusion of traditional woodblock
printing and Western art led to the creation of manga, a typically Japanese
comic book format that is now popular within and outside Japan. Manga-influenced
animation for television and film is called anime. Japanese-made video game
consoles have prospered since the 1980s.
Japanese music is eclectic, having borrowed instruments, scales, and styles from
neighboring cultures. Many instruments, such as the koto, were introduced in the
ninth and tenth centuries. The accompanied recitative of the Noh drama dates
from the fourteenth century and the popular folk music, with the guitar-like
shamisen, from the sixteenth. Western music, introduced in the late nineteenth
century, now forms an integral part of the culture. Post-war Japan has been
heavily influenced by American and European modern music, which has led to the
evolution of popular band music called J-Pop.
The earliest works of Japanese literature include two history books the Kojiki
and the Nihon Shoki, and the eighth century poetry book Man'yōshū, all written
in Chinese characters. In the early days of the Heian period, the system of
transcription known as kana (Hiragana and Katakana) was created as phonograms.
The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter is considered the oldest Japanese narrative. An
account of Heian court life is given by The Pillow Book written by Sei Shōnagon,
while The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki is often described as the world's first
novel. During the Edo Period, literature became not so much the field of the
samurai aristocracy as that of the chōnin, the ordinary people. Yomihon, for
example, became popular and reveals this profound change in the readership and
authorship. The Meiji era saw the decline of traditional literary forms, during
which Japanese literature integrated Western influences. Natsume Soseki and Mori
Ogai were the first "modern" novelists of Japan, followed by Akutagawa Ryunosuke,
Tanizaki Junichiro, Kawabata Yasunari, Mishima Yukio and, more recently,
Murakami Haruki. Japan has two Nobel Prize-winning authors — Kawabata Yasunari
(1968) and Oe Kenzaburo (1994).
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