Japan’s cultural borrowing cycled between open contact and isolation that preserved identity

Evidence

Japan followed the same pattern. In the seventh century Japan imported Chinese culture and made the “transformation on its own initiative, free from economic and military pressures” to high civilization. “During the centuries that followed, periods of relative isolation from continental influences during which previous borrowings were sorted out and the useful ones assimilated would alternate with periods of renewed contact and cultural borrowing. Through all these phases, Japanese culture maintained its distinctive character. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 205

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Deliberate cultural withdrawal can serve genuine connection