About the period when Japan resisted the American cultural assimilation of its own culture, that was probably around fifty years ago. The folk art movement in Japan actually began quite early. Many of the things that China is now starting to talk about, or that Korea is doing quite well, were very likely already explored by Japan before in the field of design, maybe they still focus on this ,this is not a problem we can solve in 5 years even 500 years maybe, we always try to explore.

If look at Japanese design today, we can see that it indeed has a lot of distinctive qualities, but it is not entirely traditional. So sometimes when we consider a problem, our limitation lies in the lack of comparison, we do not even compare ourselves with our neighbors enough.

This makes me think that many of the passionate research projects people are doing often carry strong temporal limitations. Even if they are valuable from a cultural perspective, it is possible that our neighbors have already done similar things long ago. Or even if we say we can conduct deep, localized research on how a certain city or even a small neighborhood might develop its own culture, let me use an example: a thousand years ago, Muslims ruled Spain. What is Spanish culture like today? It is still splendid, brilliant as ever. But if a Muslim scholar back then had studied how their culture could take root and localize in Spain, and then the next day the Spanish culture was restored and the enemy troops reached the command post, would that effort not feel in vain?

Historical contingencies are things we cannot prevent. If tomorrow aliens suddenly invaded Earth and blew up the planet, would all my environmental and geographical research become useless? So what we should look at are things that are more long-term and profound.

However, from the perspective of doing cultural research, it still makes sense. Although I am saying that some cultural research may not seem that necessary, actually every kind of research has its meaning. When I say “not necessary,” I mean that certain conclusions can be limited in scope. But for example, if I am doing a design study for one community, and the results can be applied to hundreds or thousands of communities, methodologically, as long as humans exist, it can be used, then that research is valid.

That said, I cannot help thinking of how I sometimes resist fixing my research within a specific community. But thinking through this logic today, I realized the significance of focusing on a small community. It allows the research to land and to develop a more concrete framework. This framework relies on a targeted experimental carrier, a community. Therefore, there is no contradiction between doing broad research and temporarily connecting it with one community. I do not know why I used to struggle with this, but by thinking in reverse today, I moved from criticizing community-based localization to realizing that every localized project has a meaning beyond that single community, and by accepting this logic, I think I have made a good discovery.