Culture
As a part of Ryukyu cultural sphere, Amami culture is closer to that of Okinawa Prefecture than to that of Mainland Kagoshima. However, the islands' history is different from Okinawa as well. Okinawa, including Sakishima, had strong cultural influences from China, whereas Amami was affected more by Mainland Japan. Because of this, the Amami people themselves believe their culture is distinct from that of Okinawa. The mainland Amami people treat the area between Kikai, Amami Ōshima, and Tokunoshima as the part of their own cultural sphere.
On the other hand, Yoron Islanders, just 22 km away from Mainland Okinawa, have much closer culture ties to Okinawa.
Read more about this topic: Amami Islands
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least.”
—Jacques Barzun (b. 1907)
“The anorexic prefigures this culture in rather a poetic fashion by trying to keep it at bay. He refuses lack. He says: I lack nothing, therefore I shall not eat. With the overweight person, it is the opposite: he refuses fullness, repletion. He says, I lack everything, so I will eat anything at all. The anorexic staves off lack by emptiness, the overweight person staves off fullness by excess. Both are homeopathic final solutions, solutions by extermination.”
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