[Reading Record] How to View the World and Japan for 17-Year-Olds: Seigow-sensei's Lectures on Human Culture

Book Read

Overview

A book compiling the content of five lectures given by Seigow Matsuoka, a leading expert in Japanese cultural studies, to 17-year-old high school students on the topic of "what is human culture."

Regarding what it means to study human culture, it is explained early in the first lecture as follows.

I had assumed this book would be about things like 'How is Japan viewed from the world?' and 'How should Japan view the world?', but it was completely different. Haha. I was betrayed in a good way.
After explaining abstract concepts in the first lecture—such as what relationships, editing, and information are within human culture, what culture is, and what flow human history and culture have been built upon—the subsequent lectures discuss the stories that people of various countries have spun; that is, what religions they have believed in, in what context, and how they have integrated them into society.

For what it's worth, I attended a Catholic school during my student days, so I think I was in an environment where I learned about Christianity longer than most people (we always had a religion class once a week to learn about Christianity, and there were events like masses every season), but there were so many histories of Christianity I knew nothing about, and I was taken aback, realizing once again that there is so much in the world I don't know. (Come to think of it, while the school immersed us in Christianity, this book speaks about the history and philosophy of Christianity objectively, so the perspective is different.)

The stories about religion, which I had only known superficially until now, are explained very concretely and in an easy-to-understand way, including the background behind each, making it very readable. Although the book has small, dense text per page and a high page count, I found myself in a state of 'I want to know what happens next!' and finished it in a shorter time than I expected.
However, because it is packed with so much information, I have the impression that I could not possibly understand it all just by reading it once. I intend to read it again. (Thinking that this content was spoken to high school students, I wonder how much they actually understood? Haha.)

The first edition of this book was in 2006. And the copy I have is the 40th edition, published in September 2024. I think it is a masterpiece that continues to be read by many people even after more than 20 years.

Impressions

As mentioned earlier, because the school I attended was Christian-based, I thought I had a reasonable understanding of religion. In fact, I even thought I was more knowledgeable than others (I can sing 'What a Friend We Have in Jesus,' which we were always made to sing at weddings, by heart).
However, after reading this book, I felt ashamed of myself for thinking that way. Even if I understood a little bit about Christianity, I knew absolutely nothing about 'how the world has been formed by religion.'
The story of religion does not exist only within religion. It is intricately intertwined with various fields of the world, such as civilization, culture, economy, philosophy, and science. Since everything is something that humans have conceived, it is clear that the world has evolved while human thought has shifted between being abstract and concrete. The power of human thinking is amazing.
In school, we learn these in separate subjects, so I had never thought about them in relation to each other. But, as the title suggests, if you know from the time you are a high school student that everything is actually connected, I think your view of the world would change. Just that alone makes world events and problems feel much closer to home.
Since Japan is an island nation, there are few opportunities to learn about countries other than Japan, and one can live without trying to know, so I think the extent to which one feels the necessity of this book depends on each person's values, but I found it very interesting.
I think there are many people whose breadth of interest will expand because of this book.