t is not possible to evoke Japan without recalling that nature and more generally constraints have a strong capacity of differentiation between our two countries and beyond between our two populations. It is also a factor strongly discriminating compared to other countries of the Far East.

France is a country supported by a varied, peaceful and fertile nature. The various types of relief and the climates, always moderate, make it possible the human activities to thrive almost everywhere, that it is about of agricultural productions or human establishments. It is added to that an environment favorable, as well maritime as continental making France a country hinge within Europe and of the Western world.

With the opposite, great Japanese originality, it is living in the need for always having to face an ungrateful and parsimonious nature. Japan much more populated than France, does not have that a territory much more restricted, limited by the mountains and the sea, with a poor basement, territory made up of an archipelago of thousands of islands offering few agricultural resources.

Most constraining however, it is the violence of the natural elements. Indeed, Japan rests on an unstable ground: the ground trembles there very often. That undoubtedly explains the fatalism of the population and her conscience of the transitory one. How to believe in the permanence of the things on a ground agitated by a thousand of tremors each year? The seisms involve also destroying tidal waves which sweep the coasts (tsunami).

The climate also is interfered. The typhoons are current things in Japan, waited as much than dreaded because they bring the water necessary to the cultures.

These natural conditions induce a duality of the Japanese towards nature. Indeed, the elements have a too disproportionate force so that the Japanese people can fight them, it can only undergo them humbly. It dedicates a worship with nature that it is necessary to respect and fear, which led the Japanese to seek to reconcile themselves (deification in the shintô) or to tame (art of the garden and floral art) these forces. This contributes to survival of animism expressed in the Shintoïsm.

For the Westerners, it is thus difficult to understand this state of mind, themselves not being confronted with all these problems. Admittedly disastrous climatic events as those which France knows with the hinge of the millenium lead to more humility and a perception of the common feeling of precariousness among Japanese.

eirs of religions and different philosophies, French and Japanese thus are influenced in their ways of life and their culture.

The French culture owes much with the Judeo-Christianity. The primitive pagan practices, of animist type, were largely unobtrusive there with the favour of the romanisation. This one then became the vector of the Christianity which imposed itself like single religious model. Religion monotheist with a god immanent who offers eternity to right at the end of individual search of the hello.

Of course this religious substrate underwent some misadventures with the wire of time, in particular with the Reform or more recently with the irruption of Islam to the favour of immigration and the rise of atheism However, beyond the reality of the religious practices or no practices, Christianity always influences the moral and the social organization, even in a laic state. The primacy of the individual in is a feature here dominating.

Does a joke say that Japanese people is born shintô, reflects Confucianist and dies Buddhist. One of the characteristics of the Japanese is to assimilate quickly any foreign contribution considered enriching. It is thus religions. Thus, to the original beliefs, were added external religious influences. Japan represents a perfect illustration of the religious syncretism.

The considerable influence of the natural environment was strongly translated in a deification of the natural elements giving rise to the Shintoïsm, religion fundamental of Japan. This belief animist, it is at the base many structures, of the family to the social life. Its permanence is due partly to its capacity to coexist fortunately with other religions. The Emperor was guaranteeing shintô of State.

The Confucianism, arrived of China in the first centuries of Christian era, rather than a religion, constitutes a social philosophy seeking to explain things. It is a system of thought turned towards knowledge. In Japan, the doctrines Confucianist influence the social order.

Buddhism penetrated in Japan at the 5th century but it is really established through zen Buddhism about the 12th century, under Japanese influence who had studied in China. Zen allows to the Japanese to achieve the Buddhist goal who consists in seeing the world such such as it is, with a spirit of very thought or any feeling, it is a perfect abandonment of its desires and its "illusion of ego". Moreover, for the Buddhist, the things exist only if they are comparison, it is necessary to avoid the extremes, to disavow its desires which cause the suffering. Buddhism thus creates a morals which influences still considerably the practice and the thought of the Japanese.

The monks Zens also inspired the Japanese cultural models: ceremony of the tea and the theatre nô. Zen transforms esthetics in the field of the fine arts: ink painting, ceramics, architecture, art of the gardens, art to arrange the flowers (bouquets), art of the lacquer, the work of the bamboos and metals.

The Japanese sense of the beauty is a force of identification with the whole.

Even if French and Japanese are bathed today in a civilization materialist which goes hand in hand with the passing of the religious sense, their cultures and ways of life remain for a great part marked by their respective religious models.

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ld Westerners cannot forget finally the image associated with Japan, it is its writing (essential element of a culture) popularized thanks to the Japanese manufactured goods, writing which, at the same time, appears stranger by its sophistication and appears quite enigmatic to him.

Admittedly, this writing is not completely original since it is with the 5th century that the Japanese adopted the erudite Chinese ideograms carrying total sense. There exists nearly 50 000 kanji of which nearly 2 000 are of current use. Their study in is very difficult imposing a great discipline of training and a memory without fault to control thousands of signs. Penmanship associated with this complicated writing is a true pictorial art: to order with the hand the drawing wanted by the brain, without making overflow ink, to hold the quite right brush, all that concerns virtuosity. In addition to this writing in kanji, the Japanese language enriched its expression by creation of the hiragana and katakana alphabets, simpler writings spelling-books (2 sets of 46 signs).

Contrary thus with the Japanese who involve themselves to distinguish the sense instantaneously, the French have a vision much more analytical things by using only 26 letters which they combine to form syllables, those forming in their turn a word but that remains more abstract than a drawing. The comprehension of the word prevents their immediate perception. This way of expressing and of communicating the knowledge goes hand in hand with the primacy of the reason compared to the action. In arts that as results in certain overloads and heavinesses that one can oppose to the quintessente expression of Nipponese arts.

Using an alphabet of Latin origin, like all the countries of Western cultures, our writing presents however the avantage to be an easy training for the children and to be a convenient support for the diffusion of mass, whether it is of printing works or data processing.

These different writing systems, the conditions of their training influence much the formation of the mind and the structures mental (memory and until the request different from the cerebral hemispheres) of the two populations and contribute to their differences.

aturally, it appears that between French and Japanese, the differences are essential more than the similarities. Fundamental elements such as the natural conditions, the beliefs or th writing contribute if not to oppose them, at least to make difficult their reciprocal comprehension. Even if the shape of universal culture, consumerist and materialist, seems to touch the two populations, of great differences remain sometimes even beyond appearances.
Whereas the French assert the universality of their culture while proudly remaining perched at the top of their bell-tower, in all humility, the Japanese that one often regards as isolationist conservatives launch out easily to discovered of the other regions with a great desire to learn which is not new (old contributions from China and from Korea).