sj_zero on Nostr: Historically, it makes sense to consider Japan as a contemporary modern state, and ...
Historically, it makes sense to consider Japan as a contemporary modern state, and the west's nations as contemporary postmodern states. The people who rebuilt Japan after World War 2 were somewhat conservative -- businessmen and military men -- and so rebuilt the world to the ethos they understood, which was modernism. You can see this in their media which may question narratives but does not wholesale reject them. Japan is a fundamentally conservative country who modernized because they realized if they did not the colonial powers would eat them whole just as they did to much of the modern world in the era before World War 1.
Both the west and Japan use the trope of the bad guy who turns out not to have been a bad guy after all. There's a big difference in how the two accomplish this trope, however. The west believes in destroying existing standards and narratives, so it asks the question "Maybe what Dr. Evil is trying to do isn't so bad after all? From another perspective maybe trying to stop him from using his moon laser to blow up the earth is wrong?". Japan derives this trope from the Chinese stories "Journey to the west" in which the evil can be chastened to understand they have been wrong and convinced (through either force or reason) to change their evil ways and become good, suggesting that there is a good and that people ought to strive towards that good.
Modernism isn't perfect, mind you. There's a reason why it ultimately failed in the west despite its overwhelming successes. It helps align entire peoples towards a set goal, it has a focus on rationality and moral certitude which helps ensure modernist people are good people. It has a drive towards progress with a positive end goal in mind but that drive can push a people to feel morally justified to go well beyond what would normally be considered just. The world wars shattered the modernist mindset in part because they showed that the European man was not as morally perfect as his modernist ideals suggest he was.
On the other hand, modernism is incredibly powerful as an ideology. It allowed tiny Great Britain, an island nation so tiny you could barely find it on a map if you weren't looking carefully, to take over an empire so massive the sun never set on it. It produced almost every technology we consider important today. It massively increased the human population and increased the quality of life of people. Look at Japan, and consider that a tiny island nation is a cultural and manufacturing powerhouse, renowned around the world despite the country being an insular backwater just 200 years ago before the arrival of Commodore Perry's ironclad steamships.
I sometimes think of Japan as similar to the Muslim world during its golden age during the time after the fall of the Roman empire. The west lost a lot during the fall of that empire, but the Muslim world was still carrying on philosophical traditions of antiquity -- both maintaining transcripts and building on them. When that work finally made it back to the west, it sparked the renaissance as the wisdom of antiquity combined with the internal advancements of Europe at that time to produce something new and powerful. I tend to think that Japan is successful in part because there's a thirst for the positive traits of modernism in the west. Entire generations of kids are growing up not watching the dreck being produced by Hollywood for the most part, and instead is gravitating towards the modern storytelling of Japan. It's only a matter of time until that fact ends up leeching into the culture and media of the west, perhaps seeing a postmodern resurgence of modernism.
Both the west and Japan use the trope of the bad guy who turns out not to have been a bad guy after all. There's a big difference in how the two accomplish this trope, however. The west believes in destroying existing standards and narratives, so it asks the question "Maybe what Dr. Evil is trying to do isn't so bad after all? From another perspective maybe trying to stop him from using his moon laser to blow up the earth is wrong?". Japan derives this trope from the Chinese stories "Journey to the west" in which the evil can be chastened to understand they have been wrong and convinced (through either force or reason) to change their evil ways and become good, suggesting that there is a good and that people ought to strive towards that good.
Modernism isn't perfect, mind you. There's a reason why it ultimately failed in the west despite its overwhelming successes. It helps align entire peoples towards a set goal, it has a focus on rationality and moral certitude which helps ensure modernist people are good people. It has a drive towards progress with a positive end goal in mind but that drive can push a people to feel morally justified to go well beyond what would normally be considered just. The world wars shattered the modernist mindset in part because they showed that the European man was not as morally perfect as his modernist ideals suggest he was.
On the other hand, modernism is incredibly powerful as an ideology. It allowed tiny Great Britain, an island nation so tiny you could barely find it on a map if you weren't looking carefully, to take over an empire so massive the sun never set on it. It produced almost every technology we consider important today. It massively increased the human population and increased the quality of life of people. Look at Japan, and consider that a tiny island nation is a cultural and manufacturing powerhouse, renowned around the world despite the country being an insular backwater just 200 years ago before the arrival of Commodore Perry's ironclad steamships.
I sometimes think of Japan as similar to the Muslim world during its golden age during the time after the fall of the Roman empire. The west lost a lot during the fall of that empire, but the Muslim world was still carrying on philosophical traditions of antiquity -- both maintaining transcripts and building on them. When that work finally made it back to the west, it sparked the renaissance as the wisdom of antiquity combined with the internal advancements of Europe at that time to produce something new and powerful. I tend to think that Japan is successful in part because there's a thirst for the positive traits of modernism in the west. Entire generations of kids are growing up not watching the dreck being produced by Hollywood for the most part, and instead is gravitating towards the modern storytelling of Japan. It's only a matter of time until that fact ends up leeching into the culture and media of the west, perhaps seeing a postmodern resurgence of modernism.