Japan: a world of two cultures
Jul. 26th, 2010 08:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
acroyearThe puzzle of Japanese web design – Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report:
Japan has, since the war ended, been a nation of 2 cultures. The historical one of patience and minimalism, of haiku and single-color painting, expressed in modern terms through examples like the music of Toru Takemitsu.
Then there's the modern one, the one that embraced the culture of the victors in the war (that would be us) and maximized it. Everything we do, they would do better, they would take to an extreme. Neon cities, car enhancements, animation, graphic soap operas, dangerous game and reality tv shows, even Disney World* itself, all outdoing what we did. The trouble is that they are missing something we still have, that filter of conservatism. For some reason, the two cultures don't meet.
Where our traditionalist nature and the conservative side of our culture does call for a restraining of the artistic extremes to at least have some adherence to taste, theirs (in that most appropriate of ironies) remains silent on the matter.
* however, Tokyo Disney Seas shows what Imagineering can really do if money is no object, and is a huge artistic success.
It is odd that in Japan, land of world-leading minimalism in the traditional arts and design, web users and skilled web design practitioners believe more is more.As a commentor on /. noted: Ever been to Tokyo?
Japan has, since the war ended, been a nation of 2 cultures. The historical one of patience and minimalism, of haiku and single-color painting, expressed in modern terms through examples like the music of Toru Takemitsu.
Then there's the modern one, the one that embraced the culture of the victors in the war (that would be us) and maximized it. Everything we do, they would do better, they would take to an extreme. Neon cities, car enhancements, animation, graphic soap operas, dangerous game and reality tv shows, even Disney World* itself, all outdoing what we did. The trouble is that they are missing something we still have, that filter of conservatism. For some reason, the two cultures don't meet.
Where our traditionalist nature and the conservative side of our culture does call for a restraining of the artistic extremes to at least have some adherence to taste, theirs (in that most appropriate of ironies) remains silent on the matter.
* however, Tokyo Disney Seas shows what Imagineering can really do if money is no object, and is a huge artistic success.
