Does Japanese Culture Have Three Layers? The Curious Pattern of Returning to Yamato

Looking at Japanese history, I am struck by how its culture seems to have accumulated in geological layers.

At the bottom lies the indigenous culture that developed in the Japanese archipelago. Chinese civilization was layered over it, followed later by Western civilization.

Put very roughly, Japanese culture consists of these three layers.

What makes this interesting is that the arrival of a new culture never completely erased the older ones. They all remain. Every so often, one of the deeper layers suddenly rises back to the surface.

I think of this as a “return to Yamato.” Yamato is an ancient name for Japan; here, I use it as shorthand for the country’s indigenous cultural roots.

The Three Layers That Shaped Japanese Culture

The deepest layer is the indigenous one, stretching from the prehistoric Jomon period into ancient Japan. It includes a sense of the divine in nature, beliefs that would develop into Shinto, and Yamato kotoba—the native Japanese vocabulary that existed before the adoption of Chinese characters.

Chinese civilization was layered over this foundation.

Japan adopted Chinese characters, Buddhism, Confucianism, and the ritsuryo system, a centralized state governed by written legal and administrative codes modeled on China. To ancient Japan, China represented an overwhelmingly advanced civilization. Japan imported not merely writing, but also religion, law, and systems of government. In modern technological terms, it did not simply install a few new apps. It replaced the entire operating system.

Then, in the modern era, Western civilization formed a third layer.

Japan adopted Western science and technology, modern law, parliamentary government, capitalism, military organization, and public education. Following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the new government rebuilt the country’s institutions at extraordinary speed.

You do not need to open a history book to see these three layers.

They survive in the Japanese language itself.

Three Cultural Layers in One Word: Ashi

Japanese began with its native vocabulary. Chinese characters and Sino-Japanese words were later added, followed by loanwords from Western languages.

Consider the word ashi.

In native Japanese, ashi was a single word. It covered what modern Japanese distinguishes in writing as 足, referring mainly to the foot, and 脚, referring mainly to the leg.

Chinese characters then entered Japan.

The writing system provided separate characters for the two concepts. Japanese assigned the native reading ashi to both of them. At the same time, it retained readings derived from Chinese pronunciation: soku for 足 and kyaku for 脚 when the characters appear in Sino-Japanese compounds.

Japan did not abandon its own word and switch to Chinese.

It kept ashi, then layered the Chinese-derived characters, conceptual distinction, and readings over it.

Later, Western loanwords written in katakana joined them.

Japanese now has ashi; the characters 足 and 脚; and the English-derived loanwords futto, from “foot,” and reggu, from “leg.”

The relationship is not perfectly one-to-one, but the three layers can be summarized like this:

A concept once expressed by the single native word ashi acquired Chinese-derived distinctions and writing, followed by vocabulary from the West.

This is one reason Japanese can be so difficult for learners from abroad.

Learning the characters is not enough. There are native Japanese readings and Chinese-derived readings, native and Sino-Japanese vocabulary, and then katakana loanwords entering from other languages.

To a Japanese speaker, ashi, 足, 脚, futto, and reggu are all perfectly ordinary parts of Japanese.

From the outside, however, a single language appears to contain vocabulary systems from several different eras, stacked like geological strata.

The three-layer structure of Japanese culture does not exist only in history books. It remains embedded in the language Japanese people use every day.

Japan Absorbs Chinese Culture, Then Turns Back Toward Japan

Japan does not merely continue importing foreign cultures.

After absorbing them to a certain point, it begins turning them into something distinctly Japanese.

One clear example is kokufu culture, literally “national culture,” which flourished during the Heian period from the late eighth to the late twelfth century. Japan moved beyond directly imitating China. Kana, the native phonetic scripts, developed from Chinese characters, and a distinctive literary culture produced works such as The Tale of Genji and The Pillow Book.

Yet Japan did not discard either Chinese characters or Buddhism.

It first swallowed a foreign culture, then digested it into a Japanese one.

An even more explicit example is kokugaku, or “National Learning,” an intellectual movement of the Edo period.

Scholars such as Motoori Norinaga believed that Japan’s original sensibilities had been obscured by Confucianism and Buddhism from China. They studied early Japanese texts such as the Kojiki, an eighth-century collection of myths, legends, and accounts of Japan’s origins. Norinaga’s criticism of karagokoro—literally “Chinese-mindedness”—symbolized this effort.

They were searching for Japan as it had existed before the arrival of Chinese culture.

This was a remarkably clear “return to Yamato.”

Even Beyond Westernization, Japan Returned to Yamato Again

With the Meiji Restoration, Japan began importing Western civilization at a furious pace.

It Westernized its military, schools, laws, industries, and political institutions.

Before long, however, another question emerged:

“Who are we?”

Personally, I see Japan’s path toward World War II as another period in which this “return to Yamato” appeared in an extreme form.

After desperately trying to catch up with the West, Japan increasingly came into conflict with it. The country began placing intense emphasis on an emperor-centered vision of the state, a supposedly unique Japanese spirit, and Yamato-damashii—“the spirit of Yamato,” an idealized notion of native Japanese courage, loyalty, and character.

It was presented as a return to a Japan fundamentally different from the West.

But there was an enormous irony.

The state promoting this “ancient Japanese spirit” in opposition to the West was itself a modern nation-state built with Western models in mind.

Its warships, aircraft, and modern industries all came from Western technology.

Japan used a modern bureaucracy and military to proclaim the superiority of the Japanese spirit over Western civilization.

It appeared to be returning to the deepest cultural layer, but in reality it was fighting with all three layers at once.

Digging Up Yamato Without Letting Go of Anything Else

In the end, Japan never truly returns to the past.

Chinese characters survived the rise of kokufu culture. Buddhism and Confucianism did not disappear when kokugaku became influential. Shinto shrines remained even as Japan Westernized.

Japan does not erase an old layer. It adds a new one on top.

Then, whenever an imported culture becomes especially powerful, the buried question of what it means to be Japanese is unearthed again.

The word ashi never disappeared.

The characters 足 and 脚 were layered over it, followed by futto and reggu.

Yet Japanese speakers use all of them as part of a single language.

Japanese culture does not expel foreign influences in order to return to Yamato. It carries every layer with it—and occasionally digs Yamato back up.