My reflective Essay discusses how I used familiar facets of my own culture as a comparison point for facets of East Asian culture. This strategy allowed me to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the cultures in the countries we examined and of how these cultures affect the existing political systems.
Freshwater fishing for largemouth bass has been a recreational sport in the United States as long as people have been fishing here. The industry for bass fishing grows each year in the United States due to the increasing demand every year for the artificial plastic lures that are used to catch the fish. Curiously one of the most prominent fishing lure companies in the United States is Japanese. Gary Yamamoto Custom Baits sells lures from many lucrative American sporting outlets, such as Dick’s Sporting Goods and Cabelas. Yamamoto baits are even sold at Walmart. As a fairly regular bass fisherman, I was curious as to how it was that a Japanese company decided to enter a somewhat limited North American hobby market.
At some point the North American Largemouth Bass was introduced into Japanese freshwater systems. The fish is now regarded to be an invasive species and has multiplied rapidly in the short amount of time that it has existed in Japan. The Japanese became avid bass fisherman much like the Americans. The rapid adoption of this sport is reminiscent of Japan’s love for baseball, another American import. Baseball is now a wildly popular sport in Japan and although the teams in Japan are certainly no match for their American counter parts, it certainly seems that baseball isn’t leaving the island nation any time soon. The same can be said of the largemouth bass and the surrounding sport industry.
While the Japanese have typically sought after saltwater fish, the largemouth bass all but created the freshwater fishing craze in Japan. While oceanic fishing is almost always an expensive endeavor, largemouth bass can be fished at little to no cost. With the rise of Japan’s middle class following World War Two, and the exploding fish population, bass fishing became a common for Japanese. This in turn created a market for fishing products, which Gary Yamamoto’s company dominates in Japan, though he is certainly not without competitors. Recently the largest ever Large-mouth bass was caught in Japan by an amateur angler. The fish weighed in at nearly 22 and a half pounds, narrowly surpassing the long held American record. It seems that Japan’s bass fishermen may have surpassed the prowess of the American anglers, and may be poised to surpass American businesses in this niche market as well.
http://www.in-fisherman.com/2011/06/02/bass-fishing-in-japan/
This poster reflects China’s growing green movement which the government has recently decided to support. A country like China with a strong centralized government can start or cancel projects such as solar panel installation without consent or approval from its populace. However, i think that propaganda encouraging the use of these panels and emphasizing their role in China’s future would encourage the populace, and may help alleviate concerns that some people have over the pollution in China generated by power plants.propaganda poster
I got the idea for this poster from a CCTV article detailing the project’s origins in large southern Chinese cities. The article states that solar panels are being rapidly adopted in more northern cities such as Beijing and that Chinese authorities hope for solar panels to eventually provide more energy for cities than coal burning plants. The move towards solar panels might be more widely supported than a switch to nuclear power which may be viewed as dangerous particularly in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan. Curiously, while the article’s headline remains, the story has been replaced with a story about keeping Penguins at the zoo as of this writing. Hopefully this problem will be rectified in the future.
http://english.cntv.cn/2014/07/14/VIDE1405286284594510.shtml
Taegukgi provides an interesting look into the zeitgeist of South Korea. The film portrays two brothers who are less than voluntarily drafted into the Korean war. The older brother joins and undertakes increasingly risky missions ostensibly to have his brother sent back home. However when he has increasing success on near suicidal missions, the fame and recognition that he gains go to his head and he soon develops insatiable blood lust and ambition that cause him to change, creating a rift between the two brothers. From an American perspective it is interesting to view a production of this scale concerning the Korean War. This war was largely forgotten by American popular culture, so my level of exposure to media on this conflict is limited. In South Korean history, the Korean conflict is undoubtedly the nation’s defining moment, whereas for Americans the Second World War and Vietnam captured more of the nation’s attention.
While some American Word War Two films typically capture the sacrifice that Americans underwent in order to save the world from dictatorial ambition, Taegukgi focuses more on the brutality and futility of war, more like many American Vietnam war films. While the Korean war was smaller than World War Two, and less protracted than the Vietnam war, the intensity of the conflict and the massive loss of life rivals both of these conflicts. Additionally, South Korea and the NATO forces very nearly lost the war before China even entered North Korea. After recouping most of these losses and pushing far into North Korea, Chinese intervention forced NATO and the South Koreans back to the 38th parallel where the demarcation zone exists today. The horrific portrayal of war in Taegukgi seems to function as a deterrent to further conflict with North Korea. The film questions the validity of violence and conflict in general, pointing to its futility and destructiveness. This film seems to tap into a South Korean fear of further conflict with North Korea. Although North Korea has lost its Russian and Chinese allies support in the last few decades, Taegukgi seems to discourage further violence against North Korea and rather seek a peaceful solution to the North Korean crisis, or to let the regime collapse it its own time.
The IMDB classifies Let the Bullets Fly as a comedy, drama, and curiously as a western. Although this is undoubtedly an Eastern film, with exclusively Eastern actors, I find this classification accurate. Opening with “Pocky Zhang’s” group of outlaws conducting a daring horseback raid on a moving train, the film is instantly reminiscent of many Hollywood Westerns. The setting of 1920’s Sichuan is equally reminiscent of the American West. The region lies in the Western reaches of China, and at the time of the movie was largely lawless and ruled at a local level. Despite the tight control that the central Chinese exercises over its populace now, the film works on many levels as a critique of Chinese governmental corruption, while also supporting the today’s central government and the ideals of communism.
Let the Bullets Fly diverges significantly from the themes of an American Western. While Westerns often criticize corruption with a figure such as a wealthy rancher, or a corrupt sheriff, typically the hero of the film is portrayed as a rugged individualistic figure, whereas Jian Weng’s Zhang is more communal minded. This is evidenced in his plan to gain control of the town he fraudulently assumes governorship at the expense of Chow Yun Fat’s drug dealing crime lord. Zhang creates an egalitarian society where nobody kneels for anybody else, and where wealth is distributed evenly among the populace. While the film does not explicitly support the notion of a strong central government, the absence of a central power in the film speaks more to its necessity to the audience. The lawlessness and violence in the film suggests that without a strong government in place, society will result to the chaotic antics and gun battles witnessed in Let the Bullets Fly.