Also, although still a generalization, quite a different attachment to things, especially buildings, partly due to the routine exposure to natural catastrophes.
I mean, sure people are attached to old buildings and monuments, but even those can be rebuilt more or less often.
I don't known if this is related or a reflection of a similar cultural thinking, but there is the important Ise Jingu shrine that gets torn down and rebuilt every 20 years, even though it is conceptually like 1500 years old.
20 years between rebuilds is just enough to transfer the knowledge and the craft to the next generation - and the craft is what they want to keep. I wrote a bit more about that in another post.
It's one of those things (like pieces of code) where:
A) You should build often enough that the institutional knowledge and practice can be handed down effectively between generations
or
B) Not build until it breaks and the people doing it have to rediscover and properly design it again from scratch.
It's the dangerous middle ground where people need to modify/rebuild something in the meantime, but lost the practice and knowledge about how to do it properly!
Earthquakes and typhoons. Historically buildings in Japan have been transient out of necessity, so it permeates Japanese culture.
Even shrines and temples are periodically rebuilt. For instance the Ise Grand Shrine (one of the most, maybe even the most important shrine of Japan) was rebuilt in 2015, for the 62nd time...
Even the wooden artifacts inside are being rebuilt. I was in Ise watching the rebuild the previous time. Bridges, buildings, everything. The new building is built beside the old building, a new bridge beside the old one and then you tear down the old ones (and that material is then re-used at other smaller shrines). Next time you swap back.
I was wondering about this system until someone in an Ise pub handed me a leaflet where it was all explained.
The Japanese believe that what's important to keep is the knowledge and the craft - how to build the things. The actual buildings aren't important - the history is in the craft, not in the buildings themselves. If nobody keeps building then the "how" is forgotten and the historical buildings will then just degrade and disappear over time anyway. And I understand that completely. I've watched how very experienced people try to recreate the techniques of building old boats, and even after years and believing they "got it right" there are still gotchas (and near-fatal disasters). So the Japanese figure that rebuilding everything every 20 years is just enough to transfer knowledge and the "how to" to younger people. A good millennium of rebuilding is a good track record in that respect.
>The Japanese believe that what's important to keep is the knowledge and the craft - how to build the things. The actual buildings aren't important - the history is in the craft, not in the buildings themselves.
There was an NHK program I saw recently that interviewed a carpenter who specialized in temple construction (I think he built a store front for a restaurant shown on the program, but I can't find it). I was wondering how that could ever be enough work to live off of. But now it makes sense.
