The meaning and values of Dentou – generally translated as tradition in English

Upload: 30 March 2019, Last update: 9 April 2019

The definition of Dentou is not completely same as tradition although in the previous article “How a tradition survive, develop, and decline — Japan as an example“, I used tradition as a word of Dentou. Particularly, Japanese society has been putting values on Dentou. I do think that we should respect dentou, but just continuing something cannot keep dentou alive in the future.

Some Japanese people may misunderstand what “Dentou” is. “Dentou” doesn’t mean just persisting in old styles. It has essential values unchanged from the emergence of its custom. “Kanshu” includes more cases of continuity without respects as it sometimes expressed as “ashiki-kanshu” in Japanese meaning impractical custom[1]. Importantly, the values remain in modern days.

When I look at the Japanese society, people continue to do in the same way even if it is not efficient or some people are noticing that it doesn’t work.

The traditional or conventional way is not effective or not valuable in contemporary society, we don’t have to continue. Indeed, this is not dentou. We should change it to more practical style. There’s cases that traditional ways prevents progress and it often can be seen in Japanese society.

“Dentou” has a long history, but it doesn’t mean that everything old they continue is “dentou”. If it doesn’t have values evaluated in modern society, it becomes a piece of history and it has historical value.

The conservative charactaristic of Japanese society puts more emphasis on conventional ways, but it hinders progress and development. It’s sure that there’s many dentou in Japanese society they should preserve, but it should be preserved if it is valuable and evaluated in a society.