by Wayland Blue

Created on: November 28, 2008

Discovering the differences between Asian and western culture is at first difficult because the definition of "Asian culture" is an extremely broad and varied classification. Truly there are many Asian cultures from the Shinto, Mahayana Buddhist, Capitalist culture of Japan to the Confucian, Buddhist, Christian, Shamanistic traditions of South Korea to Marxist, Buddhist, Taoist, ancestor worshiping China with Hindu, Buddhist, Spiritist Thailand and many other cultures along the way. In reality, it is vary difficult to define a larger "Asian culture" based on the geography. There is simply so much variation within the area both in terms of economic development and in terms of cultural and historical influences.

Broadly speaking, most of Southeast Asia, excluding Vietnam, was historically most influenced by India and Indian Cultural traits can be seen in this area to this day. By contrast, much of the rest of East Asia, including Japan, Korea, Mongolia, and Vietnam were influenced predominantly by China. However, every area in this region has had its own unique culture, which plays a powerful role in the expression and identity of each of the modern successor states.

Economic development is also an important factor to account for. The effect that economic development can have on culture is easy to over look. However, it can be seen at work throughout the region and the rest of the world. In places like Burma, where development stalled in the last century, the culture tends to be fairly relaxed and easy going. This is because the main concerns of life, apart from surviving under the brutal dictatorship, deal with rice growing and harvesting. This is only highly time consuming at certain times of the year and thus there is a lot of free time available. The culture develops accordingly. By contrast, Japan, which went through its industrial revolution a long time ago, is the type of economy where only the hardest working and most determined can clime to a high level. People make sacrifices accordingly. In this way, economics has a vary heavy impact on cultural development. With the large differences in economic development in East Asia, it is only natural to see great cultural differences also.

Despite all this qualification, in the sense that we can talk about "western culture" despite all the diversity between the many European and American nations, we can make broad generalizations about Asian culture and from these discus the differences between western and Asian

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