The painting The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai really captures the live spirit and character of Japan. In the painting you first notice that it is all sea and only on mountain in the background. This definitely shows how small Japan is at least the areas that can be inhabited. I never knew that Japan is the size of California and only has 20% of land that they can actually live on. I thought to myself that this would make a grumpy country by how many people live in such a small amount of space but I now know that they are quite the opposite. They are a go with the flow society in a sense where they seem to adapt to any threats or future threats that are around them. This has a lot to do with their size and the fact that they aren’t so spread apart so it makes it very easy to mobilize and transform. We talked about in class how Japan is one of the only countries that enjoys its purity--on one hand it is well protected and at the same time it is well connected. There is enough room to make their own culture even though their culture is known to be a “boring” culture. This is because they never hesitate to borrow from other countries like their writing system is borrowed from the Chinese. Whatever is useful they take it which is weak in basic scientific research but they always overlook that.
The painting shows two boats being tossed to and fro by the waves. The boats almost look like lifeboats which expresses their dependency on imported resources which is caused by their lack of lush land since Japan is mostly mountainous and terrain. In the 19th century they made great amounts of rifles even though they thought that arms corrupts order if use of fire. In the movie Twilight Samurai you see this when Twilight fights he fights with a stick and others swords but never firearms. The movie also shows honor being a big role in the culture of Japan. There is honor within the family and not disgracing them by turning down certain jobs or losing...