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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: to 1912, and was a time when Japan plunged head-first into Western-style
modernization. By the "fashions and the changes and the disintegrations of
Meiji" Hearn is lamenting that this process of modernization was destroying
some of the good things in traditional Japanese culture.
ANTS
(1) Cicadas.
[1] An interesting fact in this connection is that the Japanese word for
ant, ari, is represented by an ideograph formed of the character for
"insect" combined with the character signifying "moral rectitude,"
"propriety" (giri). So the Chinese character actually means "The
Propriety-Insect."
Kwaidan |
