From Joseon Dynasty To K-pop? Today's Korea And Japan, Shaped By The Past - Free Websites, Share News And Posts Publicly

Good morning.

Japan and Korea are the global pop-cultural supernovas of the moment. Yet, both countries are deeply rooted in ancient tradition.

How did their past shape their present? In the second season of The Mark of Empire, I go on a quest to piece together the historical big picture through a trove of smaller stories.

I find out, for instance, what Korea’s Joseon Dynasty has to do with K-pop today; and about the unique culture of the islanders living in Japan’s extreme south.

As a Singaporean, I grew up feeling viscerally connected to so many cultures. This taught me to enjoy making connections with people I met on my travels, which therefore became adventures focused on resonance and familiarity, not the exotic.

On this journey, history came alive for me through things the locals drew, wrote, cooked, excavated, weaved, danced and sang about. I met the Ainu, ancient indigenous people of Hokkaido, where I also searched for wild bears.

I tried my hand at samurai swordsmanship and making supersized sushi, while learning how the Tokugawa shogunate laid the basis for modern Japanese culture.

One splendid example of how a single experience revealed a fused sense of the past, present and future, was my visit to the gallery of the artist Genius Mitsuo in Naha, Okinawa.

He makes these exuberant, zany versions of the mythical Shisa, guardian lions of the island’s old Ryukyu kingdom. They have tails made from fragments of tiles salvaged from Shuri Castle, which was razed by fire in 2019.

His shisas encapsulate history, contemporary art, humour, hybridity, indigenous expression, and the transcendence of optimism over tragedy.

Ultimately, history is about universal themes. And to me, the knowledge I seek should break down barriers. So if I can convey that successfully to viewers, it would make it all worthwhile.

Peter Lee

Presenter, The Mark Of Empire