education was conducted by the Japanese government and feudal clans but education outside the formal system appeared here and there. That is, the general public opened schools by themselves one after another. Thus in the Edo Period market economy and Culture were developed simultaneously I mentioned before the relations between the Edo Period and Southeast Asia. One example is a striped kimono.
In the Edo Period the striped kimono was produced in large quantities and many people wore it as you can see in ukiyoe.
There was one type of casual kimono in those days. Stripe, ("shima" in Japanese), was at that time written by Chinese character meaning "island". East Asia is part of the continent when seen from Japan but it was considered an island including Southeast Asia. This type of kimono was called shimamono. There is a word "shimamono" in the world of pottery for tea ceremony too, and in the world of the kimono.
And the name of each place of India was attached to this word, shimamono. For example, "santome", which means Madras, appeared in the market along with shima (stripe), too.
This is just one example. There are many other examples.
Those articles, culture and technologies were brought to Japan by East Indian Company of Holland from Southeast Asia in the Edo Period. The same ship carried things from Europe, books and lenses to Japan. Of course world maps were also carried in large quantities. Chinese world maps and European world maps were brought to Japan in the Edo Period, which changed people's viewpoints. For example there appeared stories similar to Swift's novel in the Edo Period.
To look at your own county through the eye of a foreigner, to look at it critically, is possible only when you look at the world as a whole. You cannot compare your Own county unless you have a relative point of view. Anyway, such stories were written in Japan. The culture of the Edo Period emerged as a result of globalization. As I said before, however, globalization means crisis, so the Edo Period was also the time of crisis.
Dr. Kawakatsu also talked about recycling. This is another result of globalization. Glohalization made the domestic market economy very active, and products were made in large quantity by craftsmen and used products were recycled.
The point of recycling is that what seems to be waste can be used as important material for another product, I will give you two examples. One is ash and the other is excrement. Both are waste but they were very important in the recycling society of the Edo Period. The society was circulated because of these two things, Such a society was built as a result Of globalization, not by imitating others. A document was found which tells that a considerable number of chief administrators of Hikone were from the trading class, the lowest class. It was reported as a very special case but I do not think so, I think there were many similar cases throughout Japan in those days. A local community must have been divided into a very small group and run by themselves in the Edo Period, Such a system may be called an autonomous group using present terminology, and it was also the result of globalization.
I learned something very precious from Dr. Reid, Dr. Kawakatsu, Dr. Nandy who said "self" means "self of others" and that Asian culture should not be just an ornament. If Japan can play a role for other Asian nations in future, it is not to establish and show some ideology or policy to them but to establish a certain system, a system which look new and yet which existed in the past. Japan must rediscover it while building it. This is, I believe, very similar to what Dr. Kawakatsu said. It can be a financial system inside Japan and at the same time it will be connected to the outside world.
I think we need such a system.
｡?Goenawan MOHAMAD
Director of ISAI, Institute for the Study of Free Flow of Information
My favorite quote is from Edward Side who says, " No one today is purely one thing". Of course the problem with people living in the cities of Asia today, except Japan, I think is that there is an anxiety of impurity. That's why identity becomes an issue: identity becomes an issue for a stranger who walks into the gate. But then today, everybody is a stranger and everybody is entering everybody's gate. That is why it's important to remember what Professor Nandy tried to point out with the possibility of multiple identities, if I understand him correctly. With this perspective, I have a problem with Dr. Kawakatsu's concept of culture. If I understand him well, his idea of culture is that it is a well-defined entity which you can put into numbers. I think it's a mistake of European modernity which created Asia as a project of power and imagination. It was not only Vasco da Gama who started it.
You read it even in a classical Greek play, "The Persians", in which Asia means Persia and Persians means people who were not free while the Greeks were free people that could fight better.
That's why I always have a problem with this reality of
