> America has no past for the present to reflect off.

Well, what do you mean by "past"?

European settlement in America has a very long history, which of course extends back to the 17th century. It has a rich intellectual tradition, in which respects it surpasses many European countries -- and many of the dominant strains of thought today have their roots in America. It has an exceptionally rich literary and artistic tradition, with numerous styles which are characteristically American. In scientific achievement, few countries can compete. It even has its own aesthetic, just as Japan does.

You could say that Japan is regressing from modernity into older ways of being, but this is far from true. Japan before Meiji was strictly aristocratic and feudal. The average Japanese family were tenant farmers with zero political power, economic power, and near-zero potential for advancement in society.

If anything, Japan is apparently regressing into an American-style older way of being. A pre-New-Deal manner, with big winners, bigger and more numerous losers, and increased social strife. Also, the atomization the article picks up on isn't a Ye Olde Japanese thing; it's very American.

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silvestrov 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> a very long history [...] back to the 17th century

I think you proved the point (about no history) without wanting to.

How large percentage of history lessions in Europe do you think is spent on the years after the 17th century?

	▲	piva00 31 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		A lot, the period from National Romanticism onward is the most relevant for any form of study of a "nation". Before that you could only think in terms of loosely connected realms/kingdoms, before more in terms of tribes and some city-states. Those aren't that useful to study to understand the present, from the 17th century is where most of the current culture branched out from. The historical connection to the land from the people/tribes living in territories of modern Europe from before the Middle Ages is more akin to studying Native Americans in the USA, they were the people inhabiting the land, they had their traditions, and some of those traditions were used to forge the national identity of present cultures but there's a lot of this national identity that was myth-making by National Romantics to generate a sense of unity needed for creating the nation and nation-states.
	▲	A_D_E_P_T 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		A lot! The majority, surely. The period from the 18th through the close of the 20th centuries was a time of tremendous upheaval, where nations were forged. German students, for instance, don't spend all of their time on the HRE; they tend to focus more on the nation-forming events of the 18th and 19th centuries, and then of course the 20th. Of course, students also learn ancient and ancient-adjacent history -- the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Charlemagne, etc. -- but this is general and isn't unique to any national tradition, but common to the entire continent.