Libmonster ID: U.S.-1405
Author(s) of the publication: E. KATASONOVA

The history of foreign policy relations between Russia and Japan over the past century has been marked by a number of military conflicts, but the history of cultural contacts indicates a deepening search for mutual understanding between the Russian and Japanese peoples.

Today, culture and cultural exchanges are the most advanced area of Russian-Japanese relations, and it is quite obvious that they should be given priority in a situation where the political dialogue is moving forward with limited speed.

The beginning of Russo-Japanese relations dates back to the 18th century. Even the first contact led to success in cultural rapprochement: in 1697, the discoverer of Kamchatka, Vladimir Atlasov, discovered among the locals a Japanese sailor named Dembei, who in 1702 appeared before Peter I, who showed a keen interest in the stranger. By Peter's decree, a Japanese Language School was established in the capital, which was later transferred to Irkutsk; it lasted until 1816. Other interesting historical facts are also known. However, until the 1980s cultural contacts between our countries were sporadic. It was from the second half of the 19th century, when Japan, after two and a half centuries of isolation from the outside world, was forcibly brought out of this state by the arrival of the American squadron under the command of Perry to its shores, that the Japanese began to actively develop foreign culture, including Russian.

JAPAN OPENS UP RUSSIA THROUGH LITERATURE

In 1883, The Captain's Daughter by A. S. Pushkin was published in Japan, translated from English, and in 1886 the translator Tai Mori translated 23 chapters of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace from English into Japanese. However, the year 1888 was taken as the starting point for the spread of Russian culture in Japan, when the inhabitants of this country first got acquainted with the "Three Meetings" and "Rendezvous" from I. S. Turgenev's "Notes of a Hunter" translated from Russian by the then-novice writer Shimei Ftabatei.

Soon the rest of the stories in this collection became known, as well as the story "Asya" and other works of this Russian writer. In 1897, the magazine "Taie" published from issue to issue in the translation of the same S. Ftabatei Turgenev's "Rudin" - a novel that made a serious ferment in the minds of the Japanese intelligentsia.

The famous Japanese writer K. Tayama, without waiting for the publication of this novel in a separate edition, cut out the published parts from the magazine's issues and read them out. These clippings were taken from him by his literary colleague D. Kunikida, and both future luminaries of Japanese naturalism were unanimous in their admiration for this Russian novel. Under the influence of "Rudin", the story of the Japanese writer F. was written. Oguri "Youth" and other works by Japanese writers.

Among the translated works of those years, special mention should be made of M. Y. Lermontov's "Hero of Our Time" translated by K. Koganei, and F. M. Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" translated by F. P. Tolstoy. Uchida and others. Since then, entire generations of Japanese people have been fascinated by Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Anton Chekhov.

"Russia attracted a part of the Japanese intelligentsia, especially in the field of culture, drama, music, ballet and Marxism. The breadth of the Russian land, the generosity of Russia and the warmth of Russians in communication have become a common concept about Russia. But the general understanding of the masses about Russia was often overshadowed by the constant competition with Russia for influence over Manchuria, culminating in the Japanese-Russian war of 1904 and the intervention of the Japanese army in Siberia. With a few exceptions, the Russian Orthodox Church has not been able to find broad support among the Japanese, " notes Japanese writer and diplomat Akira Kumano in his article "East or West? - Is the statement of the question"1 .

This statement, in my opinion, is only partially true. After all, even when the Russo-Japanese War began in 1904, anti-war sentiments were quite strong in Japanese society, despite the lack of open opposition to the government's policy. The Japanese intelligentsia was greatly influenced by the appeal of Leo Tolstoy, in which he condemned the war. His article " Come to your Senses!", addressed to the governments of the two countries, caused a great public outcry in Japan and gained respect for the writer among the Japanese.

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LESSONS FROM THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR

It is widely believed that it was after the Russo-Japanese War that Russian literature finally conquered Japan. The magazine Uranishiki (Modesty), founded by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Japan, Father Nikolai (in the world Nikolai Kasatkin), along with information about Russia, its history, customs, and cultural life, published small but detailed articles about Pushkin, Turgenev, Krylov, and poems by Koltsov, Nikitin, and Nekrasov. Many translations of Russian writers who have become popular in Japan came from the pen of his students and followers. The Russian Orthodox Church in Japan is undoubtedly responsible for this.

It was through culture that the attitude of our peoples towards each other changed. In this respect, the fate of the already mentioned outstanding Japanese writer and translator S. Ftabatei is quite symbolic. With the tenacity of a fanatic, he sought to enter a military school: drugged by the chauvinist propaganda of the time, the teenager dreamed of fighting the Russians. Having exhausted all the possibilities - he was rejected three times because of myopia, Ftabatei decided to get his way in another way. He became a student of the Russian department of the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages, intending to study the language of a potential enemy and serve as a military translator. Fate decided otherwise: Ftabatey went down in the history of his country as a writer who paved the way for modern literature. In this he was helped by Russian literature, which he knew perfectly well, considered great, and admired. The novels of Turgenev and Goncharov, the critical works of Belinsky, Dobrolyubov, Chernyshevsky and Herzen helped him to study society and human life in depth.

In turn, one of the lessons that the Russians learned from this war forced them to seriously study their closest Far Eastern neighbor. Societies for the study of Japan and the East began to appear in Russia. The most notable of these was the Imperial Society of Orientalists.

Immediately after the end of the Russo-Japanese war, the idol of the Japanese intelligentsia, Leo Tolstoy, was visited in Yasnaya Polyana by his great admirer, the writer Roka Tokutomi. Talking to him, Countess Sofya Andreyevna Tolstaya will say: "Russian prisoners of war all, as one, say that the Japanese treated them well. The wounded are very grateful for the kindness and attention of the Japanese doctors and nurses. " 2

Her sentiments were fully shared by Leo Tolstoy. He persistently tried to emphasize even the small things that can serve to unite our peoples. Reflecting on the fate of Russia and Japan, Tolstoy shrewdly remarked at the time: "You are asking about the destiny of Japan and the ways to establish a lasting friendship between Russia and Japan. This is necessary. Only if we go to the same goal, united by a single aspiration, can we achieve this goal. " 3 And these words turned out to be prophetic in many ways.

The Japanese are well on their way to mastering Russian literature. This is felt by everyone who, in one way or another, came into contact with this problem. Today, almost no one is surprised that all Russian classics have been published in Japan, translated by different translators and at different times. Only Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" was published 11 times in various translations. In the 1920s, this list of literary and social idols was supplemented by the names of M. Gorky, and then V. Mayakovsky, who had a great influence on the formation of the so-called "proletarian writers" who entered the literary arena of Japan in the 1930s.

RUSSIAN THEATER AND CINEMA THROUGH THE EYES OF THE JAPANESE

The young Shingeki theater, which was developing in those years, also owed its first successes to the works of Russian classics. In the studio of the literary and artistic society, which opened in 1909, among the first performances were "The Living Corpse" and "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy, as well as" On the Eve " by I. S. Turgenev.

The 20s and 30s were marked in Japan by a close attention to the "Stanislavsky system" and the Moscow Art Theater traditions in the theater. Under the influence of the Moscow Art Theater and other Russian theater schools, the modern theater of Japan - shingeki-began to form. Its founder and first director, Koru Osanai, in his difficult work drew ideas and creative inspiration from the works of Chekhov, Gorky and other Russian writers.

In 1908. Osanai went to Europe to study European theater. In Moscow, he attended several performances of the Moscow Art Theater. The impression of these performances, as well as his acquaintance with K. S. Stanislavsky, largely determined his views on theatrical art and on the tasks of the director in the theater. In 1924, together with Yoshio Hijikata, another major figure in the new theater, Osanai organized the famous Tsukiji Segekidze Theater-the Small Tsukiji Theater, famous for its productions of plays by A. P. Chekhov and M. Gorky. It was one of the first performances of M. Gorky's "At the Bottom" staged in the Moscow Art Theater traditions, as well as a number of plays by Soviet authors, including A. V. Lunacharsky's "Don Quixote Liberated". In addition to the Small Tsukiji Theater, a number of small theater groups appeared in Japan in the 1920s, which staged plays by Soviet authors.

At the same time, there was an active introduction of Japanese people to Russian cinema. It began with an introduction to the products of Khanzhonkov's studio in 1907, when Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons" appeared on the Japanese screen. In 1909, under the title "Siberian Snow", Tolstoy's "Resurrection" was shown, the following year - "Anna Karenina", as well as" Terrible Revenge " by Gogol, etc.

The first works of Japanese filmmakers themselves were adaptations of the novel" Resurrection "and the play" The Living Corpse " by Tolstoy, where all female roles, including the main characters, were played by male actors, as was customary in traditional Japanese theater. And although these films have not been preserved, but judging by the fact that no history of Japanese cinema is complete without mentioning them, highlighting them as products of early cinema, we are talking about really milestone works for the formation of young art.

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The next milestone for the Japanese was studying the works of such outstanding masters of Soviet cinematography as V. Pudovkin and S. Eisenstein. S. Eisenstein's theory of editing, which has had a huge impact on many famous Japanese directors, including the famous Akira Kurosawa, is particularly widely used in Japan.

First of all, its artistic impact affected the work of left-wing Japanese cinematographers who worked in the Prokino association in those years, and the official authorities tried in every possible way to restrain the spread of Russian cinema in Japan. Nevertheless, since 1929, the commercial demonstration of Soviet films in this country has begun. The first to be shown were such paintings as "The Collegiate Registrar" and "Bear Wedding". And, judging by the numerous mentions of the Japanese press, they aroused great interest here.

A well-known Japanese film director who visited the USSR in 1928. Teinosuke, who many years later, together with the Soviet director E. Bocharov, directed the first Soviet-Japanese film "The Little Fugitive", in one of his interviews noted: "It was only when I saw October, The End of St. Petersburg, and Mother that I realized the full impact of cinema and the extent of its potential as a completely original art." 4

Thus, there is practically no area in the artistic life of modern Japan where there are no traces of Russian influence. Earlier and most profoundly, it affected literature; later, the visual arts, music, ballet, theater, cinema, and even fashion were more or less involved in this process.

The reason lies in the fact that Russian culture has always felt something close to the Japanese artistic consciousness, aesthetic tastes and preferences of the Japanese. Russians and Japanese have always shared a common vision of goodness and beauty, of the priority of universal values over any other. This provided a dialogue of cultures that took place despite political, national and other differences.

THE FIRST JAPANESE-RUSSIAN FRIENDSHIP SOCIETIES

In 1925, immediately after the normalization of relations between our countries, the Japanese-Russian Literary and Artistic Society (Nichiro Geijutsu kyokai) was created on the initiative of progressive artists in Japan. It was headed by the famous proletarian poet and writer U. Akita, a great expert on Russia, journalist T. Shigenori, and the famous linguist Ts. Kaneda, directed by K. Osanay. Its members included the composer K. Yamada, the theater worker Ye. Hijikata, translator of the works of Leo Tolstoy M. Enekawa and others. The magazine "Art of Japan and Russia" ("Nichiroo Geijutsu") became the printed organ of the Society, and since 1929 - the magazine "Soviet Art" ("Sobieto Geijutsu").

The society made an appeal to the Japanese people. It said: "With the November Revolution of 1917, Russia revealed its true identity. Her new art became a world-famous miracle. The eyes of young people run around the world... and there is no doubt about how seriously they would like to learn especially Russian art. We strive for an authentic and immediate rapprochement in the field of art. It goes without saying that mutual understanding and friendship are a prerequisite for this."

The appeal also noted that the objectives of the society "are not only to organize meetings, publish printed works and arrange lectures, but also to establish direct links between the literary world of Russia and Japan by sending members of the society to Russia and inviting Soviet artists and writers to Japan." 5

With the assistance of the Society, Irma Jaunzem, a performer of Russian folk songs and songs of the peoples of the world, toured Japan in 1926. In 1927, the famous violinist Mikhail Erdenko was on tour for six months. In the same year, violinist Naum Blinder successfully performed in concert halls of the country. In 1927, a large Soviet art exhibition was shown in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, with almost 400 exhibits. She first introduced the Japanese public to the paintings, graphics and drawings of Soviet artists, as well as to the folk art of the masters of Palekh.

In the future, public and cultural relations between the USSR and Japan were mainly carried out through the Society for Japanese-Soviet Cultural Relations (Nisso bunka koryu kyokai), which maintained close contacts with VOX. Since its inception in 1932, it has worked on translating and distributing Russian and Soviet literature in Japan, promoting Soviet cinema, etc.

Slowly and with great difficulties, the experience of Soviet-Japanese cultural contacts was accumulated, which constantly felt open opposition from official Tokyo. After 1931, feelings of hostility to the Soviet Union gradually took over in Japanese politics, and this reduced the cultural ties between our countries to almost nothing. Nevertheless, the peoples of Russia and Japan have never lost their mutual interest in the culture of our countries.

As the Russian scholar Kiyoshi Sato wrote, at this time, interest in literature, in particular, Russian, increased. "People,"he writes," sought to enter the realm of literature, beauty, and harmony in order to avoid the catastrophic disharmony of the real world. " 6 And although the works of Russian writers were considered dangerous by the official circles of that time, were banned or published disfigured by censorship, according to some critics, they "turned out to be very healing in the chaos of war" 7 .

JAPANESE CULTURE COMING TO RUSSIA

The influence of Russian and Soviet culture on the spiritual life of Japanese society was not one-sided. Many cultural figures of our country were fond of Japan and Japanese art. Japanese motifs can be found in the works of many Russian writers and poets-I. Goncharov, B. Pilnyak, V. Bryusov, K. Balmont, directors V. Meyerhold and S. Eisenstein, etc.

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Junichiro Tanizaki's novel "The Love of a Fool", published in 1925 and became a literary sensation in Japan, was almost immediately published in our country in the translation into Russian by N. I. Konrad with a preface by the author himself.

Each new encounter with Japanese art was a source for Soviet writers, artists, and musicians for new artistic searches and finds. A landmark event was the arrival in Moscow in 1928 of the world-famous Kabuki Theater, which had a great influence on the work of S. Eisenstein. The great director studied with great inspiration the aesthetics and stage features of traditional Japanese Kabuki theater, which corresponded to his innovative artistic search. The grotesque manner of playing Japanese actors formed the basis for creating the image of Ivan the Terrible in the movie of the same name. The so-called "road of flowers" (hanamichi) - a kind of podium in the auditorium, where the most emotional parts of the performance are played out, the rotating stage was introduced into the artistic practice of S. Eisenstein.

The normalization of diplomatic relations between the USSR and Japan in 1956 made it possible to expand contacts in the field of culture and art, which later developed rapidly and successfully, despite the realities of the Cold War. The world was divided by the Iron Curtain, and the Bolshoi Ballet was applauded by Japanese audiences. Full halls in Japan gathered performances of the Soviet circus. Exhibitions of masterpieces of Russian art were successfully demonstrated. It is enough to name the paintings of Kramskoy "Unknown " or" Boatmen on the Volga " by Repin, which were exhibited in one of the exhibition halls in Tokyo.

In the Soviet Union at that time, the name of the Japanese writer Kobo Abe and his novel "Woman in the Sand", which struck the imagination of the Soviet reader, were on everyone's lips. The intelligentsia was discovering Japanese cinema: Akira Kurosawa's Rasemon was shown in cinemas in our country, albeit with a great delay compared to Western Europe.

By the way, Kurosawa himself also had a special relationship with Russian culture. His lifelong fascination with Turgenev, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky, and other Russian writers has influenced many of his works. This is a film adaptation of such works as "The Idiot" Dostoevsky," At the Bottom " by Gorky," The Death of Ivan Ilyich " by Tolstoy, as well as other films that use certain motifs from Russian literature. So, in the characters of the film "Live", shot based on a Japanese novel, you can find similarities with the characters of Gogol's works.

Many of the Japanese director's works have been awarded with awards and prizes at the Moscow International Film Festival. In particular, the film "Dersu Uzala". This is the result of a collaboration between the Japanese director and Soviet cinematographers based on the novels of V. K. Arsenyev, which Kurosawa dreamed of adapting all his life.

"Dersu Uzala" is one of a series of films of joint Soviet-Japanese production, created in the 70s-80s. The first of them was "The Little Fugitive", which was released on Soviet and Japanese screens in 1966. The newspaper Pravda wrote that this film " not only tells Russians and Japanese a lot about each other, but also generates mutual sympathy... Another step has been taken towards expanding mutual understanding between the two neighboring peoples. " 8 This was followed by the films "Moscow - my Love", the 30th anniversary of which was celebrated by the Russian and Japanese public in September 2004, "Melodies of the White Night" and others.

RUSSIAN CULTURE IN JAPAN: HOW CAN I RETURN YOUR INTEREST?

Unfortunately, in recent years there has been a steady decline in interest in Russian culture in Japan. The generation of connoisseurs and lovers of our culture has noticeably aged, and the young people brought up on American models are far from the old artistic tastes. In addition, the political and economic situation in Russian-Japanese relations does not encourage young Japanese people to study Russia, its language and culture.

As stated by Akira Kumano: "Great interest in Ros-

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shii no longer exists in Japan... The most important thing is the lack of knowledge about Russia. Even if they (the Japanese - ed.) think about other countries, then most likely-about the United States (but only about New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles mostly), Paris and London. Recently, countries such as South Korea, China and India have attracted an increasing number of Japanese tourists. Russia, for some inexplicable reason, still remains an alien, distant and terrible country for most Japanese people. " 9

And these conclusions are confirmed by Japanese public opinion polls commissioned by the Prime Minister's Office in 2003: 15.1% of respondents have positive feelings towards Russia, while 77.7% have no such feelings. For comparison, the level of positive attitude towards the USSR in 1980 was 8%, and the peak occurred in 1991-22%. It should be noted that in this indicator, Russia is now seriously lagging behind the United States (75.6%), China (45.6%), South Korea (54.2%), and the European Union (58.5%) .10

"The older generations of Japan have a more specific image of Russia, they still have a fresh memory of the Soviet Union during World War II... And for other Japanese (a small number), the word Russia resembles a wide field, dreary folk songs and kind, fat women in the village. And if you ask a question to Japanese youth: "What does Russia mean to you?", then most would instantly fall silent, then laugh, saying: "What difference does it make to me? Russia? Well, yes, the mafia, Balalaika, Stalin... They say there isn't even enough bread. Oh yes, the Cheburashka doll. Pretty. I bought it too. Is she from Russia? Really? I didn't know..." Interest in serious culture is falling, and therefore Russian literature and Russian folk songs have almost lost their support not only among the general public, but even among intellectuals. The Japanese of our time are immersed in their own life,and they are not up to foreign cultures, with the exception of American pop culture, " explains A. Kumano11.

First of all, it is striking that modern Japanese people have become little interested in Russian literature, on which their parents and grandfathers were brought up. And if there is still some interest in this area of Russian culture, then in modern Japan, a clear preference is given to the works of modern writers-Boris Akunin, Viktor Pelevin and others.

Modern Russian painting and sculpture are also little known and quite a narrow circle of specialists. But exhibitions of the Russian avant-garde are extremely popular in Japan. In 2002, an exhibition of paintings by V. Kandinsky from the collections of the Hermitage, the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, the State Tretyakov Gallery and a number of other Russian museums was successfully held in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Fukuoka. The same museums provided paintings by M. Chagall for the exhibition. A notable event in the cultural life of Japan in 2002 was the exhibition " Modernism of the Russian Far East (1918-1928)", composed of exhibits from the Primorsky Regional Art Gallery (Vladivostok), the Far Eastern Art Museum (Khabarovsk), the Khabarovsk Museum of Local Lore, and the Chita Regional Museum of Local Lore. The exhibition was shown in Machida, Utsunomiya, Hakodate. In 2003, the exhibitions "Russian Avant - garde of the 20s-30s in Poster Art" and "Russian Avant-garde in Ceramic Works"were held in many cities of Japan.

The highlight of 2003 was the exhibition "Treasures of Russia and the Romanov Family", which was held in Tokyo from April to July. It was visited by the Prime Minister of Japan D. Koizumi, as well as more than 180 thousand residents of the Japanese capital.

The main form of Russian cultural presence in Japan is performances and tours of well-known Russian creative groups and performers. The Bolshoi Ballet Company and Orchestra, the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, the Mussorgsky Leningrad State Opera and Ballet Theatre, the Moscow Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, conductors V. Gergiev, G. Rozhdestvensky, Yu. Temirkanov and others performed in Tokyo and other cities. The range of Japanese companies that organize such tours is quite wide. They know Russian performers well and work with them on a long-term contract basis.

In recent years, Japanese interest in Russian dramatic art has begun to revive. The most striking reflection of this was the successful holding of the first Russian theater festival "Russian Season in Japan" in the history of bilateral cultural relations in Shizuoka Prefecture. The festival included a gala concert of Russian ballet soloists, performances of famous theater directors P. Fomenko's "War and Peace", Yu. Lyubimov's "Marat and the Marquis de Sade", and the ballet "Swan Lake" performed by artists of the Krasnodar Theater under the baton of Yu. There was a creative discussion between Oleg Tabakov and the director of the center, T. Suzuki, and the exhibition "A. P. Chekhov and the Russian Theater"was shown. In November 2002, A. P. Chekhov's play "The Seagull" performed by artists of the State Academic Maly Theater took place in Toyama.

Significant positive changes are also taking place in the field of cinematography. After a long break, the competition program of the 17th Tokyo International Film Festival (2002) included the film "Metamorphosis" by the famous Russian director V. Fokin, which, although it did not win prizes, was well received by the audience and specialists. As part of the screening of the best films in the world

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The film "War and Peace" by S. Bondarchuk was shown.

At another international film festival "Tokyo Filmex 2002" (December), three Russian films of the 60s were shown in a special program, and on the opening day - A. Sokurov's film "Russian Ark", which is now very popular in Japan and is successfully shown in many cinemas.

Reflecting the interest in our cinema was a joint project of the local company "I-V-C" and the Russian "Russian Cinema Council" to release to the Japanese market a collection of 120 best films of Russia, recorded on modern DVD media with improved image quality.

Friendship societies and various associations of Russian culture lovers are an important channel for Russian-Japanese cultural exchanges. The peculiarity of this area of cooperation is its rather wide geography. It is at the regional level that cultural and humanitarian ties between our countries are developing most dynamically. Traditionally active here are the prefectures of Hokkaido, Niigata, Toyama, Ishikawa and a number of others, which have developed stable partnership and twinning relations with the Far Eastern and Siberian regions of the Russian Federation. Among them - mutual trips of professional and amateur art groups, organization of exhibitions of works of fine and applied arts, sending teachers of Russian and Japanese languages, sports exchanges, etc.

JAPANESE BOOM IN RUSSIA

If we turn to the past, there has been a disparity in the level of cultural knowledge between our countries for many years. Russian culture was firmly rooted in Japanese soil more than 100 years ago, having had a noticeable impact on the formation and development of almost all the main directions of modern Japanese musical and theatrical art, ballet, literature and painting. Until recently, the majority of Russian residents had only some information about Japanese culture and the most superficial ideas with a large touch of exoticism on the one hand, and the ideologized cliches that were long imposed in Soviet times, on the other.

In the last decade, cultural initiatives have come mainly from the Japanese side, which is increasingly rapidly filling the Russian cultural space. Now Russia is experiencing a real boom in Japanese culture, and there is an ever-growing interest in Japan, especially among young people.

There are several reasons for this. You can talk a lot about a kind of "eco - friendliness" of Japanese culture: cuisine, design-everything is close to pristine nature. You can see in this phenomenon the attraction to the mysterious exotic in search of salvation from the hard technological world, etc. Perhaps all this is true. But here you can also see the manifestation of a global phenomenon. The current boom in Japanese culture in Russia is reminiscent of the 70s and 80s of the last century in the United States and Europe, where there was literally a general fashion for everything Japanese.

Moreover, its causes have objective prerequisites in the Russian society itself. A. Kumano sees in the cultural processes taking place in Russia today, first of all, the result of "disillusionment with capitalism (in its primitive form)". Secondly, " the unwillingness of Europeans to introduce Russians pushes them to the East in search of their place." Third, "some Russians try on Eastern culture as a decoration, as a fashion"12 .

This is not to say that in our country before there was little interest in the culture of Japan. At the same time, information about the culture of our Far Eastern neighbor was episodic, fragmentary and was available only to a narrow circle of intellectuals. A truly significant national interest in Japan and Japanese culture emerged in the wake of the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo. The next international event was the international exhibition Expo-70, which once again made the whole world talk about Japan.

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But, nevertheless, until recently, in Russia, at the mass level, Japan was usually associated with Toyota or Mitsubishi cars, Sony radio electronics, Nikon cameras, etc. The spiritual side of Japanese life opens up for us at a very slow pace and for most is limited only to general (sometimes even not so much absolutely correct) information about the art of arranging flowers "ikebana", about geisha, karate or sumo.

What is most striking today is the abundance of Japanese restaurants in Moscow (well over 100), which at a fairly high price level are always full of visitors, especially young people. Karaoke is also a now familiar attribute of Moscow bars. World championships in karate, sumo, and ikebana clubs are held in Moscow, not to mention the extensive study of Japanese, which is taught not only in higher educational institutions, but even in secondary schools.

Novels by Japanese writers are published. About 50 titles of books by Japanese authors have been published in recent years-from historical to modern literature. And it is fundamentally important that modern authors, such as Haruki Murakami, are in steady demand among young people.

Clothes from Yamamoto, Issei, Kenzo are widely represented in large Moscow department stores and expensive boutiques, and many metropolitan fashionistas consider it a matter of prestige to have things from Japanese couturiers in their wardrobe.

In Moscow, the Central House of Artists created one of the permanent exhibitions of the gallery - "Little Japan", which was organized in 1997 on the wave of growing interest in Japanese philosophy and culture.

But the greatest interest is attracted to Japanese cinema. Suffice it to say that the name of the Japanese director and actor Takeshi Kitano today has become almost a cult: all film lovers know him, his films and films with his participation are on television. In 2002, more than 20 Japanese films - from classics to the newest ones-were released at the box office in the country.

I am also pleased with the growing interest in Japanese theater and other traditional dance and other genres that are not so easy to understand. In the summer of 2002, as part of the Chekhov Festival in Moscow, the so-called "Japanese Season" was organized, which was a response to the events of the "Russian Season" held in Japan a year earlier. Thanks to this theatrical festival, Muscovites and residents of St. Petersburg were able to get acquainted with the Japanese Kabuki theater and its famous actor Ganjiro Nakamura, as well as with the Noh Theater, with the works of young women choreographers Ikuo Kuroda and Reiko Noto, with Tadashi Suzuki's new reading of the famous play "Cyrano de Bergerac" by Rostand, etc. Japanese musical art was presented by the orchestra "HH-Kei" and the ensemble of traditional music "Gagaku" under the direction of the famous performer Hideki Toga.

In recent years, Russians have witnessed brilliant victories of Japanese musicians at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, Japanese cinematographers at the Moscow International Film Festival, etc.

It can be stated that Russian interest in Japanese culture has been stable in recent years and, most importantly, it does not depend on the political or economic situation in Russian-Japanese relations.

CULTURAL DIPLOMACY

On January 10, 2003, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Dmitry Koizumi signed a joint statement in Moscow on the adoption of the Russian-Japanese "Action Plan", which is aimed at developing relations between the two countries in many areas, including in the field of culture.

By agreement of the leaders of the two countries, a festival of Japanese culture was held in Russia to mark the 300th anniversary of the founding of St. Petersburg. It is important that after it, we can carefully analyze what was fully achieved and what was not, and build a strategy for the future, taking into account the preparation and holding of a response event in Japan - the Festival of Russia in Japan, which is expected to be held in 2006. It should be aimed at correcting some of the imbalances that have developed in Russian-Japanese cultural exchanges in recent years.

It is extremely important to show that Russia has not stopped in its cultural and spiritual development, that we have excellent representatives of the new generation of art-artists and sculptors, composers and performers, writers and poets. After all, it is through the prism of cultural values, in particular, that public opinion in both countries will be formed in the XXI century.

-----

1 www.globecom.net, 24.11.2003.

2 100 years of Russian Culture in Japan, Moscow, 1989, p. 8.

3 Ibid.

4 USSR - Japan. To the 50th anniversary of the establishment of Soviet-Japanese diplomatic relations, Moscow, 1989, p. 173.

5 Ibid., p. 135.

6 100 years of Russian culture in Japan ... p. 117.

7 Ibid.

8 Pravda, 19.12.1967.

9 www.globecom.net

10 Materials of the "round table" on Russian-Japanese cultural cooperation held by the" Committee of the XXI Century " on December 24, 2003 in the Russian National Library.

11 www.globecom.net

12 Ibid.


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E. KATASONOVA, Culture, literature, and art. RUSSIAN-JAPANESE CULTURAL TIES: ACQUIRED AND LOST // New-York: Libmonster (LIBMONSTER.COM). Updated: 02.06.2024. URL: https://libmonster.com/m/articles/view/Culture-literature-and-art-RUSSIAN-JAPANESE-CULTURAL-TIES-ACQUIRED-AND-LOST (date of access: 02.11.2024).

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Ann Jackson
Chicago, United States
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02.06.2024 (153 days ago)
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