A Comparative Research Of Chinese And Japanese Group Tribalism

Some “clansmen associations” are seen in "chinatowns" of internationalmetropolises in the West; but in neighboring Japantowns and Koreatowns arevarious kinds of "trade associations". The differences between them in the same"cultural circle" are obvious. Chinese clanism and Japanese collectivism were alloriginated from farming culture, but with changes of the time, why two cultureshas diverged?Clanism is not unique to China, and collectivism is not unique to Japan. Inthe last century, the works of British writer Henry Maine, French writerCoulanges, Soviet writer Appjyev and others already mentioned aristocratic clanand civilian clan. On the basis of modern cultural anthropology and socialanthropology which had been developed since the second half of the19th centuryand researchers’ personal experiences, the social systems of most nations aroundthe world were recorded and compared in detail, further proving that somedegree of clan form existed in certain historical period or still exists for thesenations. Although clan is common, but any other area, country and nation didn’texperience the clan system like China. People in places other than China don’tclosely connect their private lives with their own clan systems together likeChinese. With changes of the time, most ancient nations in the world had placedtheir historical clan into the museum, except Chinese and Japanese, and theconsciousness of clan (group) is still ingrained in their blood.The comparatively big difference between eastern and western cultures isthat eastern countries more regard collectivism and western countries moreregard individualism. Collectivism has been historically inherited in easternChina and Japan since ancient times, but comparatively big difference exists intwo countries’ collectivisms, influenced by different national and culturaltraditions. From the perspective of collectivism development process, two countries see “familism” or collectivism as ethical standard. Chinese collectivismis just the clanism which is often mentioned today. Two countries have manysimilarities in society, tradition and family, but there are some differences inqualification identification of family members, that is, Chinese more emphasize"blood tendon" that is commonness in blood lineage, while Japanese are focusedon “geographical relationship” that is “field” where they live together. Secondly,the doctrine inside Japanese group is “loyalty, filial piety and obedience”, whichrequires that group members should absolutely obey and execute all resolutionsand adopts the principle of general "uniform system" and rare "majority voting".Chinese clanism mainly stressed “filial piety" and “kindheartedness” in ancienttime, but a modern Chinese social group mainly adopts the system of "majorityvoting". With development of the time, China and Japan have had a bigdifference in group’s attribution, that is, in modern society Japanese have moregroup consciousness of attribution while Chinese more regard personaldevelopment.