Hi, this is Masa, the president of ISC64, welcome to our blog media and hope you will enjoy the best reading through this article.
Below, I will describe about my home country, Japan.
I have a pure Japanese background. Since I was born in Japan, I’ve been raised up by my Japanese parents,and spent most of my life inside this beloved country. (except for a couple of years spent in U.S.A.)
Now, I’m at a position of the “president” of ISC64, which brings me lots of opportunity to interact with foreign friends. And here is one thought which always occurs my mind, whenever I talk with my friends from other countries.
“ What a good country Japan is! “
It’s sometimes hard for a domestic man like me to notice that Japan is a country that is full of wonderful cultures. It’s even hard to list up all. Sushi, Anime, Manga, Yukata, Kimono, Sumo, e.t.c. And these cultures are impactfull enough to attract lots of foreigners interest.
These are the comments below I heard before from my international friends.
“ I love Japanese anime, “Captain Tsubasa” is amazing! ”
“ I decided to study abroad in Japan, just to try the authentic Japanese Sushi haha “
“ Hey why don’t you teach me Sumo, I heard all the Japanese are professional. “
They speak to me enthusiastically, sometimes even overwhelming me with their affluent knowledge about Japanese cultures, and I often learned a lot of new things from their stories.
So, what is the point? What made Japanese cultures so great and attractive for foreign people?
First of all, how can we define “culture”? It’s so hard to know where it was originated, or who exactly come up with that tradition. And furthermore, how could that culture become so familiar among people? There is few logical explanation to make these myths clear.
But here is one thing that can be clarified for sure. Culture can never be sophisticated in a short span of time. Revolutionary invention sometimes arises out of blue, but that never hold true for culture. Cultures require so a long time to become popular among people, and even attractive for people coming from outside. Long history is always necessary. And from that point of view, Japan has an absolute advantage.
It is true that there are many nations which has a longer history than Japan, but there is no racially homogenous country that existed as long as Japan, without being invaded or colonized by other nations.
And this is what made Japanese culture as it is today. We now have our own sophisticated culture, which is due to the fact that Japan has been grown up their own culture without any external influence.
For example, Sushi! I never know how could our ancestor come up with a idea like putting raw fish on rice ball, but the reason why Sushi now is so popular among people surely lays down on the history as “Pure-Japanese-Culture”.
These days, globalization occurs rapidly and the international society is becoming closer and closer to Japan, and now that Japanese cultures started to be disclosed to foreign countries. And all my foreign friends show me their high appreciation on Japanese cultures whenever they talk to me, which makes me proud of my own country, and even motivates me to transmit our beautiful country more strongly and widely, all around the world.
This summer, I have a alluring chance, ISC. Students from 30 different countries will gather all the way to Japan. I will do my best out of myself to make this summer camp a wonderful opportunity for them to directly feel and touch the “Pure-Japanese-Culture”. And I strongly hope that our wonderful culture someday gets to be known by all citizen on this earth.