Japanese Culture

I think Japanese people should come to learn harder about Japanese cultures. Japanese people may not notice that Japan has a lot of important cultures. Of course, there are a lot of unique cultures in Japan, and every culture has its history. Histories are very important and without histories, there may be no culture in Japan. For example, Sushi, Haiku, and Kana Letter have its histories.

Sushi is a dish on behalf of Japan and is made by riding raw fish on rice seasoned with vinegar called “shari”. It is said that the origin of Sushi was Edo era. It was an opening of Sushi that a merchant sold dishes which were cuttlefish and lobsters on rice. In those days, the rice didn’t contain any vinegar and fish was not raw but boiled. In this way, the Sushi is pretty different from current Sushi. Then, 200 years later, Sushi became the food which was known in the world. Although Sushi was originally luxury food, after the expanse of belt-conveyor Sushi shop occurs in 1970s, we can eat Sushi cheaply.

Haiku is Japanese short poem with lines of five, seven, five syllables. In Haiku, a Haiku poet expresses his idea and feeling in this short style of poem. When we talk about Haiku, we mustn’t forget this person, who is the most famous Japanese historical Haiku poet, Matsuo Basyo. He lives in Edo era and he wrote a lot of Haiku while he lives and one of the most his famous Haiku is this.
“古池や　蛙とびこむ　水の音”
In English, this Haiku is translated as follows.
“An old pond
A frog jumps in
The sound of water”
In this Haiku, Basyo tells us the silence around him. He can hear the very small sound of water because it is very silent around him. So he attempted to express that silence. From this, we can understand that Haiku let us imagine many things even if it is not written in Haiku.Haiku is especially popular among old people, and Haiku poems which are written by old people are placed in newspapers every day. Haiku is very profound, so writing Haiku is very interesting.

Kana letter is a letter whose figure Kanji changed a little into, so some figures of Kanji resemble that of Kana letter, for example, 安 (Kanji) and あ (Kana letter). Kana letter was first used in the 8th century which was in Nara era. At that time, Kana letter was a letter for women, so men didn’t use Kana letter so much. It was in about the mid 10th century that men came to use Kana letter. Then, why men didn’t use Kana letter in old days? In old days, people regarded Kana letter as the letter for the people whose position was low. And because men’s position was higher than women’s position, women use Kana letter, and men didn’t use Kana letter. Now, we all normally use Kana letter and Kana letter is a special letter to Japan.

From these, you can understand that each Japanese culture has its own history. Current Japanese cultures owe entirely to old cultures. We must not forget that every culture has its history and that thanks to a history, there is a culture.