Japan’s eightfold fence
Eight clouds arise. The eightfold fence of Idzumo makes an eightfold fence for the spouses to retire [within]. Oh! that eightfold fence.
—Kojiki, “Records of Ancient Matters” (AD 712)
(内憂外患) Troubles within, dangers without.
—Mid-nineteenth-century phrase describing weakening of Tokugawa bakufu and Western imperial encroachment
For Westerners sympathetically acculturated to accepting radical multiculturalism, Japan offers an almost shocking vision of an alternate reality. As engaged as the Japanese are with the world through trade, diplomacy, study, and the like, they also live in a society that celebrates both its uniqueness and its segregation from the rest of the world. Perhaps some of that is natural to an island nation, but this feeling of detachment exists in a society whose wealth has come primarily from economic exchange outside its borders, and the surface of whose national life is largely indistinguishable from the modern West.
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