The Japanese animism is particularly fascinating, because Japs tend to classify objects based on what they do, rather than what they are. A television is not 'a' television, it is 'a thing that does X.' This is why their mascots look so bizarre: they are critters comprised of parts that perform certain related actions. Ex: a sea creature that has fins and gills, but also crustacean claws. Hence, in Japanese folklore, household objects come to life. They 'do' things like people, and are thus treated with great care and respect. Japan was a mountainous island country devoid of many resources. So Japanese became perfectionistic about their use of tools and materials. Hence their supreme sensitivity, and their empathetic relationship with inanimate objects. Note also their great fear: what friends and neighbors will think if they make a mistake, if they forget to shave or use bad handwriting. They have an intense, intrusive social life. And it is so intense that these inanimate things constitute an ambient social life -- the 'extrasocial.'

Jul 11

This is animism, a form of vital religiosity that holds that personhood is not limited to human beings.

@JohnnyMcIvor

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