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:
“When women finally get liberated, they’ll do the same that men do—dog eat dog— that’s what our culture is.... Not cooperation but assassination. Women will cooperate until they attain certain goals. Then one will begin to destroy the other.”
—Alice Neel (1900–1984)
“Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The first time many women hold their tiny babies, they are apt to feel as clumsy and incompetent as any man. The difference is that our culture tells them they’re not supposed to feel that way. Our culture assumes that they will quickly learn how to be a mother, and that assumption rubs off on most women—so they learn.”
—Pamela Patrick Novotny (20th century)