Will the issue of separate surnames for married couples change the concept of family in Japan?The issue is not gender equality but the concept of ``home'' that is unique to Japan.
2021-11-04
Category:Japanese culture
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Is it gender discrimination for married couples to have the same surname
The issue of selective marital separation has recently become a hot topic in Japan. Japan is the only country in the world that has a family registration system that stipulates husband and wife status by law.
A growing number of people are arguing that this is gender discrimination and that it is acceptable for couples to have different surnames. The origin of the problem is that when a woman gets married, she usually takes the man's surname, so it is difficult to use her maiden name at work, or to change information in social procedures, banking, and various other contracts.
However, it is logically incorrect to view this as gender discrimination. This is because under the current law, equality is guaranteed because the surname must be chosen from either a man or a woman. The question becomes what it means for a husband and wife to use the same surname.
The concept of the traditional Japanese house
In Japan, the concept of family has been around since ancient times, and when you get married, you move into a family. A married woman moves into a man's house and becomes part of his family. There is a cultural background that makes her a member of the family, including her ancestors. The child born there will take the family name of that family. Uji means belonging to the same group, and dates back to the surname system in ancient times.
Japanese people are taught to respect the concept of home and to act in a way that lives up to the name of home. A family crest is a symbol of a family.
In the West, the idea seems to be a little different. Children seem to think that they belong to both the father's and mother's families. In this case, there are four grandfathers and grandmothers, and they belong to the four people. I wonder if the next idea will be to belong to eight people. If you go back in time, you will belong to 100 people.
In other words, the way of thinking about Japanese houses is completely different. In Japan, people search for their ancestors by tracing one family line. In this respect, the opinion that we should refer to Western countries seems to be a rather wild opinion.
Symbol of Japanese house
Japan has the imperial family as a symbol of the family. The issue of separate family names for married couples and the issue of male lineage inheritance seem to be unrelated, but they are closely related.
The imperial family has stubbornly protected the traditional Japanese concept of home. Joining the imperial family means joining the imperial family. As a unique entity, the imperial family does not have a clan. When a male member of the imperial family marries, the woman he marries loses his family name.
This is stipulated in the Imperial House Law, but when a female member of the imperial family marries and becomes a commoner, like Her Imperial Highness Princess Mako, or a former female member of the imperial family says she does not want to take her husband's name, she is considered a commoner. If current laws are followed, will women remain members of the imperial family? Or will they live a normal life without having a surname?
Can we discuss the family system apart from the imperial family
The Liberal Democratic Party is reluctant to promote separate marriages. This is also because we see it as a problem not with gender equality, but with Japan's unique cultural background and the concept of the Japanese home, which is the foundation of society. Japan has an imperial family that has been connected uninterrupted since recorded history, unlike any other country in the world. Japan has a history of following this model of inheritance.
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A celebration of shadows, a blend of Japanese and Western Japan.The continent abolished writing and destroyed its past.A completely different approach to history.
Japanese culture and shadow worship
Beautiful Japanese lacquerware in the dim light
Japanese aimed for balance and harmony
What was done on the continent was the denial of the past
Kanji abolished in Korea
The introduction of simplified Chinese makes it difficult to read the past
If you can't read past documents, you can't read history
Learn ancient Japanese and Chinese texts
A continent that burns the past and creates history
Japan's imperial family continued to exist
When I think about Japanese culture, I sometimes think of Junichiro Tanizaki's ``In Praise of Shadows.'' He remembers that during his junior high school Japanese class, he encountered some difficult sentences and had trouble understanding them. He talked about how you can rediscover the wonders of Japanese culture by learning about the background in which that culture was born.
Japanese lacquerware is based on black, and Japanese lacquerware was created in an era without electricity to create a beautiful appearance on a dimly lit dining table lit by candles. It was explained that.
White plates and glass cups became prized, perhaps because black dishes didn't look good in the light of a light bulb. However, if you eat on Japanese tableware in the dim darkness of candlelight, you will notice something beautiful about it.
To put it simply, in Japan there is a term called fusion of Japanese and Western styles. During the Meiji and Taisho eras, a large amount of Western culture flowed into Japan, but the Japanese strived to balance and harmonize with Japan's ancient culture. This is inheritance based on compatibility and harmony.
Yukichi Fukuzawa described Western culture as being like an epidemic. He preached that resisting these things would not prevent them from becoming infected, so we needed to think in terms of accepting them.
Japan sought compatibility and harmony not only in vessels and cultural customs, but also in the letters and documents that conveyed them.
On the other hand, what happened on the continent seems to be different. What is China's Cultural Revolution? In introducing socialism and communism, it was a movement to destroy the historical Chinese culture that they were proud of, and they actually destroyed cultural properties and slaughtered the people who had protected them.
What about in Korea? After becoming an independent country after the war, in 1948, it was decided that official documents should be written in Hangul under the Hangul Special Law, and in 1970, the abolition of Chinese characters was declared, and Chinese characters began to disappear from textbooks one after another. It seems that there is no problem with using Hangul as the national script, but by abolishing Hanja, it became impossible to read past documents. Efforts to abolish writing are incomprehensible to Japanese people.
The same meaning applies to simplified characters (current Chinese characters that have been simplified and symbolized), which were introduced during China's Cultural Revolution. By replacing Traditional Chinese (old Chinese characters) with simplified Chinese, people who received subsequent schooling were unable to read documents written in Traditional Chinese in the past.
Currently, traditional Chinese characters are used in Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. This was because he wanted to be influenced by the Cultural Revolution.
Particularly in South Korea, historical perceptions change so freely that one major reason can be said to be the inability to approach past documents.
Documents from the Japanese colonial period and even earlier were written in Chinese characters, and modern Koreans are unable to read any of them. You probably don't even want to read it. Does it mean that history does not already exist in documents?
As an Asian, this is truly deplorable and pitiful. Is it possible to foster national consciousness and culture in this way? Both of these are unthinkable in Japan.
Japan continued to utilize the writings of the past, reinforcing the sounds with hiragana called Manyogana and inventing Japanese writing.
Texts from the past also have different phrasing and adjectives, so in Japanese education, we study classical and Chinese texts and try to read past documents. This is to experience the way of thinking and cultural customs of Japanese people who lived in the past.
To begin with, the history of the continent is one in which kings kill other kings due to wars, and dynasties change. At that time, many things built by past dynasties will be destroyed, creating a structure in which a good king reigns after defeating a bad king. At that time, something called ``book burning'' is performed. Documents from the previous dynasty were burned and destroyed. The destruction and fabrication of history is not new.
The only dynasty in Japan exists outside of the imperial family, and the Japanese imperial family has been protected and maintained through all eras. The Japanese never thought of abolishing the imperial family in any social change. For this reason, we can know that Japan existed with the Emperor even during the #Imperial Era.
In other words, the continent's approach to the past and Japan's approach to the past are fundamentally different.
Continent - derived "surnames" and historical background in Japan - History that disappears when two eras are confused.
There are people who look only at his name and reason that he is of Peninsular descent. Typically, clans with names such as Kaneko are said to be of peninsula descent, but this is correct and not correct.
Takano Shingasa, a descendant of the Baekje royal family, was the mother of Emperor Kanmu during the era when many Baekje people fled to Japan after losing the Battle of Hakusonko. The Taira clan descended from Emperor Kanmu and called themselves Taira, and the Kaneko clan is said to descend from the Kanmu Taira clan. If that is the case, then if Mr. Kaneko is from the peninsula, then is the current Emperor also a peninsula citizen?
In other words, it is necessary to know that in order to construct such ridiculous logic, the people of the peninsula have taken up this story many times and made it known to the Japanese people. They enjoy using exclusionary and anti-Korean sentiments to attack everyone on the peninsula. They consider people who have come to Japan to be nothing more than traitors.
This means that Japan accepted a large number of refugees in the latter half of the 7th century. These people have been assimilated into Japan for over a thousand years and have established families, so they do not have Peninsular surnames but Japanese surnames. If we go back to the Jomon period, many immigrants had already immigrated to Japan, and some of the words became ingrained in the Japanese language.
This is a completely different issue, as the Kim surname, which means "zainichi" and was given as a Korean name by people on the peninsula who came to Japan to work during the Japanese colonial period, is a completely different issue, and it is a story from at least 1910 after the annexation. . This is Kim as a Korean surname. Zainichi does not naturalize and his nationality is Peninsular.
Koreans say they were robbed of their names during the Japanese occupation, but they had to apply. In fact, when people went to work in Manchuria, the people of the peninsula, who were vassals of the Qing Dynasty, wanted Japanese names because they would be bullied or because it would be easier to do business. In this case, they wanted a Japanese surname rather than a Korean surname, so in many cases they had a common surname that was no different from a Japanese surname.
In Japan, there is a ``misunderstanding'' that the inclusion of the ``Kojiki'' in school education violates the constitution, which prohibits religious education.
When asked about the idea of teaching the Kojiki in compulsory education, I was surprised to find that even self-proclaimed conservatives became so passionate about counterarguing it. When I asked the basis for this objection, I was told that the ban on religious education is written into the Constitution. And it seems that there are many people who are poisoned by the self-deprecating historical view that Shinto led to the Greater East Asia War. These people have no understanding of religious education.
Legal opinions have already been issued regarding religious education under the Constitution, and education should not promote a specific religion or exclude or deny a specific religion. Alternatively, the view is that it is education that recommends one to take refuge in some kind of religion, or that it is education that says one should not devote oneself to some kind of religion. Simply put, it's just that education that propagates or excludes religion is no good.
I wonder if Christianity comes up when explaining Michelangelo's murals. If you look at The Last Supper, would you explain who the person in the center is and what kind of circumstances the painting depicts? Why do we know that the founder of Islam was Muhammad and that the founder of Buddhism was Buddha? In other words, in Japan, we firmly believe that such things should not be taught only in Japanese Shinto.
Japanese people know the story of Golgotha Hill and the story of Adam and Eve, but they do not know what kind of being Amaterasu Omikami is or what kind of being Qiong Qiong-no-Mikoto is. It is said that there are more than 80,000 shrines across Japan, which are said to be the most religious facilities in any country in the world, but these should not be explained.
In other words, the interpretation of Japan's ban on religious education is that only Japanese Shinto should not be mentioned. Or there are teachers of the Japan Teachers' Union who are poisoned by a self-deprecating view of history and give off-the-record lessons as if Shinto led to war, showing the children a sense of justice that does not advocate Kimigayo. This is Japanese religious education. Far from being dangerous, there is no other religion as peaceful and tolerant of other religions as Japanese Shinto. On the contrary, GHQ feared the Japanese's familial view of the nation and their unbelievable power of integration, and simply eliminated the Shinto religion at its core.
Isn't Japanese Shinto necessary to teach Japanese culture? Because they are not taught, they cannot learn deeply about Japanese culture. There is no law that prohibits explaining the religious background that is a prerequisite for studying a culture.
When Japan meets the king, the royal family protects the world, and Japan gathers together with the world.
Sunjong, the last emperor of the Korean Empire, lived in Changdeokgung Palace as a member of the royal family during the Japanese colonial period. When Changdeokgung Palace was destroyed in a fire, he lived in Nakseonjae, which was left over from the fire, but when asked to move to Deoksugung Palace, he reprimanded Lee Wanyo, saying, ``You can't move because it's Changdeokgung Palace, which was given to us by His Majesty the Emperor.'' did.
Puyi, the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty, lived in the Forbidden City during the Xinhai Revolution in exchange for his abdication. The Xinhai Revolution was a collaboration between Japan and Sun Yat-sen. At the time of the Great Kanto Earthquake in Japan, Puyi converted the treasures in the Forbidden City into gold and entrusted a large amount of donations to Kenkichi Yoshizawa. After Yuan Shikai's death, Puyi was expelled from the Forbidden City, placed under Japanese protection, and became Emperor of Manchukuo. The Qing Dynasty was an enemy country of Japan that fought in the Sino-Japanese War.
There are a small number of countries that cry out that Japan has invaded or invaded without drawing much attention to this kind of Japanese thinking. At least the former monarchs of these countries were treated respectfully and protected by Japan. China itself expelled the Qing dynasty's Ai Xinjuo Luo clan.
Izumo Taisha is a shrine that is famous both in Japan and among overseas tourists. Many tourists visit from Japan and abroad. The reason is magnificent, and the scenery is truly art itself. In the first place, Izumo Taisha Shrine was built for the god Okuninushi, who surrendered the country. This is a story from Japanese mythology.
At first in Japan, Izanagi's son Susanoo no Mikoto was banished from the heavenly world (Takamagahara) and landed on earth (Ashihara no Chugoku), where he expanded his country. Okuninushi is his descendant. In the first place, it was Amaterasu Omikami who was ordered by Izanagi to rule the earth, but in order for Amaterasu Omikami's grandson to come down to earth to create a country, he sent Takemikaraijin to earth in advance and ruled the country. Concession negotiations will take place.
Takeminakata, the second child of Ōkuninushikami, resisted and was cornered by the battle with Takemikaraijin and would not leave the province of Shinano, so he asked to be allowed to live here, and was enshrined in the province of Suwa. This is Suwa Shrine in Nagano Prefecture. As a result, Okuninushi committed suicide, saying that if he would build a palace in the country of Izumo, he would serve him from a faraway world. It is said that Izumo Taisha was built there. In response to this broken myth, he built Izumo Taisha, which still stands magnificently in modern times. There is no doubt that this is Japanese culture.
Japanese cuisine that brings out the taste of ingredients.Japanese unique evolution without spices.
Japanese food is said to be unique.Japanese food uses very little spice.The West colonized Asia for spices.In Western cuisine, pepper is a magic powder used to eliminate the smell of meat, and pepper is indispensable for preserved meat such as pancetta.It is said that Japan did not have access to spices because it was closed to the country at that time, but since the Meiji Restoration, there have been no dishes that use a lot of spices.South Korean food is rich in chili peppers, which came from Japan when Hideyoshi went to Korea.Soy sauce comes from China.The distinctive difference between Chinese and Japanese cuisine is that Chinese cuisine uses a lot of oil, but the Japanese don't like it.As a result, it led to the longevity of the Japanese.
The basis of Japanese cuisine is soup stock.In Japan, umami ingredients derived from seafood are historically used.Glutamic acid, the ingredient of Ajinomoto, was discovered by a Japanese, Ikeda Kikunae, and is said to have made world cuisine delicious.Glutamic acid is one of the delicious ingredients, which is also derived from the exploration of the taste and ingredients contained in Japanese ingredients.
In 1907, Ikeda Kikunae succeeded in extracting sodium L-glutamate from kelp.
In the West, the concept of soup stock includes French cuisine using consomme soup.In Italy, fish and shellfish are boiled down or fried as toppings, so you can get soup stock as a result.Boil down the ingredients in soup and you'll get the soup stock.The world-famous soups are Borscht and Tom Yum Kung.
Many foreigners say that Japanese sushi is delicious because it is fresh, but that's not the case.At high-end sushi restaurants, tuna is matured with the restaurant's technology for a reasonable period of time and sushi is made with ingredients that bring out sufficient flavor.Since there were no spices in Japan, it is the present state by pursuing technology and harmony that fully brings out the taste of the ingredients.This is one of the unique dishes in the world.
Japanese food has developed into its own style because spices did not enter Japan during the long period of isolation.