文化と文明
日本人は、お祭り好きです。一年中どこかで御祭礼があります。三社祭は初夏ですが、夏から秋の季節に催されるお祭りが一番多いようです。
お神輿・山車・お花見・温泉・露天風呂・お寿司・お刺身、これぞ日本文化と言われるものは、意外に数多いですね。でも、昔々、大昔から有った訳ではありません。新品ほやほやの文明だった時があったわけでしょう。 「韓国料理とトウガラシ」・「ドイツ料理とジャガイモ」４００年前には、物珍しかった組合せ。それが、慣れ親しみ、経験則として受け入れられると、文化と呼ばれるようになり、何時の間にか、固有文化として、疑われなくなります。 文化自身の基礎的要素・言語もこの原則に従っています。
つまり、文化は、ずうっと不変だったわけではないし、固定して永遠に続く・永久不変ではありません。徳川将軍家・チョンマゲ・侍の二本差しが消滅しても、庶民は驚きませんでした。最近起こった出来事の例に、タバコ文化がありますね。生命の極端に短かった文化？の例には、厚顔・無恥・無謀にもアジア中に押し付けようとした、天皇中心・現人神・神国日本文化があります。
神社本殿の奥にある御神体を覗いてみようという悪戯心を抱いたり、実行したりした悪童は珍しくありません。オシッコを掛ける話は、ケン・フォレットの「大聖堂」にも出てきます。 お神輿の中には何も無いことは、誰でも知っていますね。
お盆・お彼岸に行う行事・仕来たりにも、各地方・各家庭によって、いろいろあります。どれもＯＫ。当人が満足・心が安定すれば、ＯＫということです。

Culture and Civilization
Japanese love festivals. In Japan, at any time through the year there are going some festivals you can enjoy. The Sanja Matsuri of Asakusa (my photos) goes at the end of the spring, but the majority of the festivals are held in the summer and in the autumn.
There are many typical Japanese cultural events and manners: Carrying a cute mini shrine on the shoulders, pulling and pushing an enormous float, crazily enjoying hot spring baths especially the open air baths, and loving to eat the raw fish are just some of them.
But none of them is old and original enough to be named as a genuine cultural pattern of Japan. Any cultural pattern has a time when that was a bright new strange civilization. The Korean dishes with red peppers, the German dishes with potatoes, these combinations are not at all so old but only 400 years. When those new manners turned out to be quite practically useful and got to be accepted and to be deeply rooted in a society, then they are entitled as it's own and traditional culture. Even the language, that is considered the basis of the culture, must go through this process.
No culture could have been unchanged, could exist eternally. When Japan transformed from the Edo period to the Meiji, the Tokugawa dynasty, the Samurai classes with two long swords and the top knotted hairstyles disappeared. The dynasty had ruled over Japan for almost 300 years. Samurais with their long swords had been remarkable figures in Japanese history for longer than 600 years. But the common people in Japan were not shocked by the disappearances of these patterns that the Samurais considered to be eternal, and took the new ones. Just now we meet the disappearance of the tobacco culture. There was a short period from 1930th to 1945 when Japan tried to force people of Asia to accept the Japanese imperialism, which had rather peculiar pattern calling the emperor of Japan God. Today, most of us can tell this sort of pseudo-civilization was doomed it's short life from the beginning. But so many of us are stone sure the eternity of Zionism and Allah.
In the depth of a shrine, of any religion, there is a thing, a holy thing, perhaps with mighty power. Many boys and girls have tried to examine, to touch, and to replace it with a useless object. A woman pees on it in "The Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett. In the little shrine carried by many cheerful people, there is a thing but not so terribly mighty and serious. People know it isn't any holy staff. But why not? There are so many different ways to celebrate and to worship one's own God in the world. All of them are very spiritual and nice. If it satisfies her or him, it is irreplaceable and has great power.