Which East Asian culture do you find the most interesting?
 

And by culture I'm talking about things such as food, history, clothing, language, religion, traditions, etc. Let's keep politics and societal issues out of this.

My vote goes to Japanese. I think Japan has the most interesting history of the four countries. And it also has my favorite language in East Asia. As for its pop culture... well Japan has tons of video games and anime, so it's not really fair to compare. But when it comes to cinema, Hong Kong has produced a lot of quality titles. Also, I prefer Chinese food to Japanese and Korean(a bit too spicy).

Korean and Chinese culture have a lot of interesting aspects as well. Chinese history is huge and very interesting. The most interesting one after Japanese, imo. The Korean language has sort of grown on me as well. And I love the way Hangul looks on paper. Simple and functional alphabet. You can learn it in like a day or two. Seriously.

Sadly, I don't know that much about Mongolia other than Genghis Kahn's era.

I think the most interesting is Japanese and then comes Chinese.

I just find everything beautiful that is Japanese. The art, symbols, traditions, dances. the history. I fell in love with it at the age of 13 and Japanese culture made me interested in other Asian countries, too.

I especially love their languages. ^___^

As a history buff I must say, Russian history is the most interesting while Japanese culture is the most appealing of all the diverse cultures on the Asian continent to me.

Japan is where all the technological marvels came from. Mainstream videogames and consoles, the Sony walkman, anime, Toyota cars, etc.

China being a communist country and Korea being split into two warring nations really prevented them from ever being as progressive as Japan is.

Japan, hands down.

Its rather ironic that a little sliver of an island like Japan managed to influence the world. And this is on top of the fact that America dropped two Atomic bombs on them in 1945 and they bounced back from that.

If it's not clear already I'm kind of a Japanophile. :tlol:

That's because the USA also re-built it after destroying it. They feared Japan would fall under Communism/USSR's sphere of influence like China did. In fact, the second atomic bomb's main reason of being dropped was for the USA to show the USSR the military power they had in hopes of scaring it away. Later, they'd go to war in Korea to prevent the same thing, although they were only able to divide the peninsula in half.

Of course that doesn't mean the Japanese didn't dedicate themselves to re-building their own country. They did it through hard work and used the money very wisely.

Korea didn't rise until the last couple of decades due to being a smaller country than Japan and China and thus being unable to outmatch both. Also, they got invaded and colonized by Japan in the first half of the 20th century. And after WW2 and the Korean War, South Korea was a dirt poor country, one of the poorest in the world. And also had to put up with a far-right wing authoritarian regime for the next decades.

It's quite amazing how South Korea was able to develop so fast from the 80s onward. And China is barely even Communist anymore. It's certainly not Communist economically wise. Otherwise it wouldn't be where it is today.

Mongolian.....or maybe Tibeten....I also think Indonesia is nice.

My vote goes to Japan first, for the same reasons as most others have mentioned. Second is a tie between China and Tibet. I've always found Chinese and Tibetan medicine and spiritual practices to be fascinating, And briefly dabbled in Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism in high school before I became Wiccan.


As for non-Eastern cultures and history, my main area of interest is Celtic and Greek/Roman, as well as ancient Egyptian. Hindu culture is also interesting, as is Gypsy culture. Basically anything that deals with metaphysical practices and spirituality other than the three largest main-stream monotheistic cultures. I have even made a study here and there of North and South American and Australian tribal cultures,

I voted for Japan :D

I was like ten years old, when I read my first manga and was instantly hooked on the idea to find out, why they wrote the book in the opposite direction :lol:

That was the start of a long journey of anime, manga and watching documentaries about their history and NINJAS :P

Was Japan the birth of martial arts? Or was that China?

China seems to have some of the "oldest" forms of martial arts, but that is misleading, because even ancient Greece and Gaul had their own types of martial combat, both armed and unarmed. In fact the idea of martial arts as an Eastern Asian inventian is sort of a myth. Martial arts are formal rules and techniques for fighting developed for use primarily in war, no matter where or when they are developed and used. Africa has several very old forms as well, as do/did several Sourh American cultures.

I actually happen to have 2 adopted cousins from Korea. Unfortunately, I'm not very close with either of them.

I think it lies a lot in the modern misconceptions of the English usage of the word "Martial Arts", cause within that label there is a vast ocean of things that are martial arts that don't involve fisticuffs. Yet when invoking the word, most people associate it with East -Asian fisticuffs combat systems. Few see boxing or wrestling as martial arts, or even techniques of espionage or gunplay.

I don't think East Asian martial arts(Kung Fu, Karate, Judo, Tae Kwon Do) would work outside of competitions, anyway. Who's gonna pull such moves in, let's say, a bar fight where people won't play by the rules? Or what if someone points you a knife or a gun? How will your black belt get you out of that situation? It can't be a coincidence that more people these days are trying the Israeli martial art Krav-Maga. In fact, it seems that many girls are trying it out these days. At least from my observation.

It works just fine when you've been trained by a proper instructor and not a money grabbing color belt pusher.

Exactly. That was sort of my point, though I didn't come out and say it. Martial arts is sort of a "catch-all" term for any type of combat skill training. It's Eastern Asian culture saturation that has made most people automatically associate the term with that culture. Basically, Hong Kong kung-fu movies and Japanese manga/anime have permanently left their stamp on what people see as martial arts.



Not true. Properly trained martial artists can and DO handle themselves quite well in real-life situations. That's what these arts were originally designed for, after all. As a case in point- my husband has told me stories of a woman he knew when he lived in California before we met, whose hands were register as lethal weapons because of her martial arts training- and she proved it a few times. He knew of an instance where she had been jumped by a couple of guys, and using her training, had downed them both before escaping. She even thought she might have killed one of them, because he didn't move after he was down. She was too freaked out about it to check, though, and never talked much about what happened. But it shows how a well-trained person CAN defend themselves even against armed attackers.

As a side-note, I've taken a couple of women's self-defense classes, where they teach you how to get away from such attacks, using the most effective moves for a quick escape. Most of them involve going for vulnerable or weak points on the attacker. Thankfully, I've never had to actually use any of them for real.



Yup. This. When we lived with my grandmother, I helped take care of two of my young cousins, who were in a tea-kwon-do class. Unfortunately, their instructor was one of those belt-pushers, teaching form, but no substance. The only thing that class would have been good for was competitions and crap like that. In contrast, we had an instructor in my hometown who was known as a very competent and experience practicioner, with a reputation that was well-respected in the field. I always wanted to take one of his classes, but never got to.

If we're talking about (relatively) small countries influencing the world, things would look VERY different today without Germany, France, Italy and England.
Although not technically 'East Asian', I have a soft spot for Polynesia, or at least the idea of Polynesia.

I would have to go with Japanese culture, They are far more advance then we are, Lots of cool things came from them, Anime, Video Games, Electronics, Ect.

Hmm I should have included Tibetan, and I suppose Okinawa applies as a different culture than the Japanese one. As for Indonesia, that's South East Asia and doesn't have as much in common with the ones on the poll.

Japan. Their society and culture is extremely intriguing to me.

Now I love Japan for the same reason everyone else here does..as a kid I loved martial arts, anime, their food, technology and videogames. And they all came from japan, the fact that their culture was so different was also very appealing. Now after the anime craze in America and the stereotype of "otaku" I kind of started drifted from the fandom. Japan is great but they're far from the perfect culture. I always wanted to learn Japanese as a kid/teen but when i finally got the chance 2 years ago I realized it wasn't for me and I preferred to learn Mandarin Chinese.

Now China had always been interesting to me but I always saw it as a lesser version of Japan and I couldn't have been more wrong. I decided to take Chinese classes since it'd be good for business and I think in order to learn a language you need to be interested in their culture which I already was so I started learning more and more and it's been fascinating. One of the most interesting things is many things that I liked about Japan were taken from China, including stuff like martial arts and spirituality, but it goes further than that. The Chinese culture has basically existed for at least 4000 years and you can still read any of the recorded history if you know Chinese since it hasn't changed unlike other languages. Their culture is as fascinating as Japan's and is unfairly looked over and thought of as a place where cheap crappy things come from when it couldn't be more wrong.

Well, obviously my vote is going to go towards Japan, as that's the reason I'm here. I'd been very interested in the culture and such for years now. The other three are interesting too, especially China, but yeah...Japan gets my vote and I owe it all to the music group Hiroshima and seeing the music video for One Wish nearly 30 years ago, where I saw a Japanese lady doing Nihonbuyo (modern Japanese dance) that just fascinated me. lolIt's ahead in some ways...backwards in others. ><

People seem to be picking Japanese mostly due to anime and video games. Pop culture is very powerful can really mold people's minds.

Yeah and I said this on another message board too. Went into more depth, so I'll copy and paste it here.So yeah, there goes a more thorough reason of how I became interested in Japan.

I love Japanese culture out of all of these the best. I wouldn't say it's just because of video games and sushi, but I just love learning about Japanese culture in general. I love all kinds of Japanese food, history, martial arts, entertainment, practically everything. I like a few anime's, too. I certainly don't know as much as I should, but that's why I continue learning about it.

Oh I didn't mean to say that everyone who has voted Japan was only due to anime and video games. Obviously Japan is a country that interests a lot of people, one way or the other.

Anyway, I'm not surprised it's leading the poll. I must say I'm surprised Korean doesn't have any vote thus far, though. Korean pop culture and electronic products have become very popular in the last decade. South Korea is an odd and incredible case. It went from one of the poorest countries in the world to a very high-tech country. Seriously, google pics from Korea cities back in the 50s and 60s and compare them to today. it's insane.

CyberCubed mentioned how incredible it was that Japan was able to climb up like it did, but what can you say about South Korea? It's not like Japan came out of nowhere. It's been a relevant country for quite a while now. And it was already the most powerful Asian nation in the early 20th century.

However, the Korean civilization is arguably living through its golden period right now. I'm not an expert on Korean history, but didn't Korea spend most of its history fighting off invasions from China and Japan? Being a fairly small country in comparison to its neighbors. Not to mention that Korean history in the first half of the twentieth century is pretty depressing.

The fact that Korea was the fastest developing nation in the 20th century and probably in history is quite insane. This is a small country(just barely bigger than Hungary and Portugal in terms of area) that has one of the highest GDPs in the world. And it also boasts a population of 50 million(!) people :o

No worries, Prowler. I didn't think you were saying that at all! Japanese culture and history has always fascinated me. It's probably the historian inside of me, lol.

You bring up some really interesting points about South Korea, I'd agree that they are living through their Golden Age, and considering their rough history of fighting off invasions and the Korean War, I'd say they've come very far as a nation.

Although, South Korea's economic growth has slowed down in the past decade hasn't it? Let's see if the country won't go through a recession like Japan did for about 20 years.