Remembering the Essentially Multicultural Nature of Every Culture
The Asian Exhibition Gallery at the Tokyo National Museum features some of the most exquisite artefacts from Pacific islands to the depth of ancient Mesopotamia. The display is often a potpourri of different things from different eras, discovered by different people and sourced in different ways. But in all the confusing variety of the artefacts, the central message of the Gallery was never lost in each of the exhibit: that the various cultures of Asia, as represented by the artefacts present, serve as the cultural foundations of Japan as a country and people today.
The constant reminder is refreshing in an era of increased nationalism on the world stage. As governments scrumble to differentiate themselves from their neighbors in every way, the cultural portion of differentiation often becomes a vanguard of sorts. Political boundaries, for such nationalists, would ideally match cultural boundaries, on both sides of which live peoples with different ideologies that stem from different cultural traditions. Yet, as the Asian Gallery illustrates so poignantly, from the dawn of human civilization, individual cultures have been created and constantly shaped by endless interaction with others.
It is comforting to know that at least in the Japanese case, national museums are leading the fight against the blindly nationalistic attempts for clear, black-and-white cultural demarcations. Museums, after all, are not mere display of artefacts, but also concerted attempts to educate a selected audience (and through them, a wider general public) of how their elite curators and designers perceive society, culture, history, and ideology. Curating museums, in other words, is a political exercise that is often aimed to get the common people to think about certain issues in a certain way that is thought to be desirable.
The fact that a museum's attempt to get people to think in a particular way that opposite of the dominant political agenda is where the sense of comfort lies. For politicians, appealing to nationalism suits political goals by unifying the populace in the face of supposed foreign threat. People are convinced to make certain sacrifices for greater national achievements, which encourages social stability in face of economic issues. Playing up supposed uniqueness of national culture, both in terms of past achievements and psyche, can certainly help drum up nationalism.
However, the museum in question has instead attributed the country's past and current achievements to intelligent ways by which past elites borrowed ideas, institutions, and technologies from foreigners and molded them to fit the domestic environment. In other words, if any sense of nationalistic superiority should be had from the glories of the past, what ought to be celebrated is not the raw, isolated intelligence of residents in these geographies, but their abilities to, to put in rather crude and unappetizing words, take what are needed from others for one's own use.
While such behavior would be considered theft of intellectual property today, that is not even the most embarrassment such fact can bring to blind nationalists busying themselves with cultural boundaries. It is not only single ideas that are borrowed by often huge chunks of foreign cultures. To put differently, the domestic culture is not just "tweaked" by a few foreign borrowings, but utterly transformed by importing the entireties of cultural traditions that previously did not exist. In the Japanese case, the presence of Buddhism is a glaring one tying it to the Asian continent as far as northern India.
Sure, cultural nationalists may argue that such imported culture has been so drastically changed over course of centuries in a different environment that they no longer resemble the original borrowings. But no matter how thoroughly a cultural tradition changed, the very fact that it is adopted in one form makes it impossible to deny the existence of a unbreakable cultural linkage and the very multicultural nature of a society and its people. That very multicultural fact is enough to destroy any credible argument of a culture being unique, and thus sustain a country that is different from all others.
Now the task is to spread the message of the museums to the general public. Unlike politicians, museums have no million dollar budgets to blast its ideological messages to millions of people. And for public museums, their very funding and survival depends on the largesse of the political establishment. In a day and age where people pay more attention to their smartphones than any physical exhibits, how can a museum that contradict politicians' messages expect to survive? And when it comes under attack from politicians, who among the general public will stand up and defend their different messages?
The constant reminder is refreshing in an era of increased nationalism on the world stage. As governments scrumble to differentiate themselves from their neighbors in every way, the cultural portion of differentiation often becomes a vanguard of sorts. Political boundaries, for such nationalists, would ideally match cultural boundaries, on both sides of which live peoples with different ideologies that stem from different cultural traditions. Yet, as the Asian Gallery illustrates so poignantly, from the dawn of human civilization, individual cultures have been created and constantly shaped by endless interaction with others.
It is comforting to know that at least in the Japanese case, national museums are leading the fight against the blindly nationalistic attempts for clear, black-and-white cultural demarcations. Museums, after all, are not mere display of artefacts, but also concerted attempts to educate a selected audience (and through them, a wider general public) of how their elite curators and designers perceive society, culture, history, and ideology. Curating museums, in other words, is a political exercise that is often aimed to get the common people to think about certain issues in a certain way that is thought to be desirable.
The fact that a museum's attempt to get people to think in a particular way that opposite of the dominant political agenda is where the sense of comfort lies. For politicians, appealing to nationalism suits political goals by unifying the populace in the face of supposed foreign threat. People are convinced to make certain sacrifices for greater national achievements, which encourages social stability in face of economic issues. Playing up supposed uniqueness of national culture, both in terms of past achievements and psyche, can certainly help drum up nationalism.
However, the museum in question has instead attributed the country's past and current achievements to intelligent ways by which past elites borrowed ideas, institutions, and technologies from foreigners and molded them to fit the domestic environment. In other words, if any sense of nationalistic superiority should be had from the glories of the past, what ought to be celebrated is not the raw, isolated intelligence of residents in these geographies, but their abilities to, to put in rather crude and unappetizing words, take what are needed from others for one's own use.
While such behavior would be considered theft of intellectual property today, that is not even the most embarrassment such fact can bring to blind nationalists busying themselves with cultural boundaries. It is not only single ideas that are borrowed by often huge chunks of foreign cultures. To put differently, the domestic culture is not just "tweaked" by a few foreign borrowings, but utterly transformed by importing the entireties of cultural traditions that previously did not exist. In the Japanese case, the presence of Buddhism is a glaring one tying it to the Asian continent as far as northern India.
Sure, cultural nationalists may argue that such imported culture has been so drastically changed over course of centuries in a different environment that they no longer resemble the original borrowings. But no matter how thoroughly a cultural tradition changed, the very fact that it is adopted in one form makes it impossible to deny the existence of a unbreakable cultural linkage and the very multicultural nature of a society and its people. That very multicultural fact is enough to destroy any credible argument of a culture being unique, and thus sustain a country that is different from all others.
Now the task is to spread the message of the museums to the general public. Unlike politicians, museums have no million dollar budgets to blast its ideological messages to millions of people. And for public museums, their very funding and survival depends on the largesse of the political establishment. In a day and age where people pay more attention to their smartphones than any physical exhibits, how can a museum that contradict politicians' messages expect to survive? And when it comes under attack from politicians, who among the general public will stand up and defend their different messages?
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