Queen'News Of The World' Japan [CD] { } ~54.00.00 88919

If «pure poverty» and «knowing what is enough» were the supreme points of Japanese culture, where in the world did Japan's modern gigantism, the insistence on the biggest and the longest, the taste for the bombastic, come from? Within traditional culture itself, coexisting with pure poverty has been an other tendency, a competitive streak. When the imperial court built cities like Kyoto and Nara, it did so with an eye over its shoulder at China and Korea. In Nara, the very first order of business was to devote all the energies of the state to building the Hall of the Great Buddha, intended to compete with the largest temples of the Tang-dynasty capital in Chang-An. Today's Todaiji, though a much smaller reconstruction, is still the largest wooden structure in the world. Later rulers celebrated their reigns with undertakings such as the Great Buddha in Kamakura, Hideyoshi's Himeji Castle, and the Shogun's Palace in Edo, which are among the larger structures of the premodern world. In short, Japan also has a strong tradition of celebrating its rulers' power through impressive monuments ...»