Accomplishing our institute’s vision ‘Pax Japonica’. How can this word be defined?

This time, it will examine how the ‘Japanese brain’ relates to the characteristics of Japanese culture. It is important to know where the passive and introvert characters of Japanese people biologically come from for examining the concept of ‘Pax Japonica’.

It is argued that languages closely relate to logical and systematic thinking differing from the processing part of the brain for emotions and creativity.

In detail, the left hemisphere functions for logical and analytical processing, whereas emotions and general judgement for the right hemisphere.

However, the Japanese speaker processes most of the emotions and sounds with the ‘left hemisphere’, which are usually processed by the ‘right hemisphere’. This characteristic is only seen in Polynesians other than Japanese.

According to the theory from Tadanobu Tsunoda, Japanese speakers process languages with the left hemisphere while listening to non-western music with the same left hemisphere. Therefore, logic and emotions are mingled in the brain. Thus, Japanese people processing music in their brains creates a unique Japanese sensitivity.

Why does Japanese differ from other languages to process in a brain?

It is argued that ‘vowelism’ is largely related. While the Japanese language is constructed by ‘consonants and vowels’, other languages do not consider vowels as important.

The characteristics of the Japanese people and their language cannot be seen in others. It is interesting to think how this uniqueness will impact and construct the Japanese way of ‘peace’ to accomplish Pax Japonica.

We will examine the concept of Pax Japonica again next time.

Reference:

（参照：角田忠信　著　「日本人の脳ー脳の働きと東西の文化大修館」,大修館書店,　1978年1月

：Tsunoda, K., Sekimjoto, S. and Itoh, K. 2016. Near-infrared-spectroscopic study on processing of sounds in the brain; a comparison between native and non-native speakers of Japanese.[pdf] Available at; <TF-IOTO160007 568..574 (europepmc.org).> [Accessed on 17.06.22]. )