Ah yes, the famous homogenous Japanese culture.

Just today I had my traditional Japanese breakfast of cafe latte & rye campagne with Dutch Gouda. On my way to work passed by a Buddhist temple, whose roots are Indian by way of China. I arrived by a train, introduced via Europe. https://twitter.com/sugabelly/status/1322174008062824449

Japan once considered cremation a privilege for royalty. Then it was subversively Buddhist and antimodern and spread disease. Then it was a way to prevent the spread of disease. Then it was normalized after World War 2 because it was cheaper. Then efficiently industrialized.

My mother-in-law was cremated in a massive municipal facility which conducts cremations and the expected rituals with clockwork efficiency. It's as traditional as deep sea maguro sushi, which depends on a global air freight supply chain.

In college a professor talked about the typical Ja. grocery shopping experience circa 1950-60, and it often involved a choice of about 6 vegetables depending on what was growing that time of year. My neighborhood has a dozen grocery stores stocked with food from around the world.

I'm always amused by assertions of homogeneity and isolation but Japan has been interacting with other parts of the world for at least a couple thousand years, has long had multiple ethnic minorities even just indigenous to the current islands of Japan.

A lot of the history of Japanese pottery is the history of Korean pottery, because Japanese warlords literally went over and, erm, obtained Korean potters. Like the guy who "unified" Japan, Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Japan was so homogenous he had to force the country to unite.

One of the fascinating things about "homogeneous" Japan was the story of late 19th century students who came from China and somehow studied anarchism, Marxism and various nationalist ideas, and returned to lead the Republican era and Communist/ Nationalist/anarchist movements.

It's fascinating to me how few people understand that the notion of Japanese homogeneity is a fundamentally modern ideology. That Meiji/Taisho/early Showa transformation had some pretty powerful side effects.

By the way if you're interested in some resources that diverge from the monolithic Japan narrative, I'll add a few books I enjoyed to this thread: Herbert Bix's Peasant Protest in Japan, 1590-1884. https://www.amazon.com/Peasant-protest-Japan-1590-1884-Herbert/dp/0300034857

Zengakuren: Japan's Revolutionary Students https://www.amazon.com/Zengakuren-Revolutionary-Students-Stuart-Dowsey/dp/4871870502/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=zengakuren&qid=1604202875&s=books&sr=1-1

Oh, a little break for the twits who keep sending decontextualized CIA World Factbook stats like "98% Japanese" at me, what do you consider the Ainu, Ryukyuan, or even the Burakumin? What about naturalized citizens? Because if they're "Japanese" then that homogeny is ideology.

Of course who am I kidding, 90% of the people atting me never read past my "traditional Japanese breakfast" joke.