Comments on: Did Rice Change How Japanese People Think?

By: Raymond Chuang

Raymond Chuang — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 04:04:00 +0000

Actually, the rice nowadays grown in Japan are done less and less on terraced hills and more and more on flat land, where it’s easier to employ mechanization to reduce the need for human labor. That’s why rice farming in Japan is looking more and more like a reduced-size version of the highly-mechanized rice farming you see north of Sacramento, CA and in Arkansas, the lowlands of Louisiana and eastern Texas. I’ve seen videos the of the flatland around Izumo in Shimane Prefecture and in the eastern flatlands of Chiba Prefecture and there are rice paddies on a very large scale.

By: Viet

Viet — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 23:15:00 +0000

Is India where the Indy 500 is held?

By: guyhey

guyhey — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 23:12:00 +0000

India is just south of Michigan right?

By: Hashi

Hashi — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 22:07:00 +0000

Good point, the people who did this kind of research seem to have forgotten about India entirely!

By: Hashi

Hashi — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 17:38:00 +0000

A Vietnamese friend of mine says that leaving even one grain of rice behind is a sin. Guess I know where it comes from now :p

By: Jonadab

Jonadab — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 11:56:00 +0000

I don’t buy it. Ancient near-eastern cultures couldn’t grow rice (because there’s just plain not enough water in that part of the world — they were lucky if they could grow wheat, and many of them are based on nomadic pastoral subsistence), and yet they have a MUCH stronger sense of group responsibility and collectivity than is normal in the West.

Just for example, the Hebrew Bible speaks on numerous occasions of entire nations being punished for the act of one person (sometimes the offender was a leader, e.g., when King David counted the fighting men; and sometimes he’s just a regular guy, e.g., Achan). The reverse situation also occurs, where a person who did not participate in and even opposed the offensive actions is still held responsible for them as a part of the group, because “_we_ have sinned”. People are held responsible for the actions of not only their children but also their parents, grandparents, and even more distant ancestors. (Indeed, the blood feud between Israel and the Arab peoples started some three thousand years ago and shows no signs of ever letting up.)

Western society has largely rejected these ideas in favor of individuality and *personal* responsibility, but collectivism and group ethics did not develop uniquely in southeast Asia due to rice farming. It’s much older and was probably how all of humanity thought at some point in the past.