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Today, Japan rivals most other modern nations in its contributions to modern art, fashion and architecture, with creations of a truly modern, global, and multi-cultural (or acultural) bent. KANJI Most simple Japanese sentences (like "the cat sat on the mat") will have both kanji and hiragana in them. Kanji is used for nouns (words like "cat" or "mat") and the stems of verbs (words like "sat"), hiragana for the endings of verbs and for grammatical particles (small, common words such as the Japanese equivalents to the English "on" and "the"). Non-Japanese words or new loan words (except those absorbed into the language long ago or those with original kanji expression) are spelled in katakana. SAMURAI Most samurai (during the Edo period) were bound by a strict code of honor and were expected to set an example for those below them. A notable part of their code is seppuku (切腹, seppuku?), which allowed a disgraced samurai to regain his honor by passing into death, where samurai were still beholden to social rules. Whilst there are many romanticised characterisations of samurai behaviour such as the writing of Bushido (武士道, Bushidō?) in 1905, studies of Kobudo and traditional Budo indicate that the samurai were as practical on the battlefield as were any other warrior. Despite the rampant romanticism of the 20th century, samurai could be disloyal and treacherous (e.g., Akechi Mitsuhide), cowardly, brave, or overly loyal (e.g., Kusunoki Masashige). Samurai were usually loyal to their immediate superiors, who in turn allied themselves with higher lords. These loyalties to the higher lords often shifted; for example, the high lords allied under Toyotomi Hideyoshi (豊臣秀吉) were served by loyal samurai, but the feudal lords under them could shift their support to Tokugawa, taking their samurai with them. There were, however, also notable instances where samurai would be disloyal to their lord or daimyo, when loyalty to the emperor was seen to have supremacy. Zazen Zazen (坐禅) is at the heart of Zen Buddhist practice. The aim of zazen is just sitting, opening the hand of thought. This is done either through koans, Rinzai's primary method, or whole-hearted sitting (shikantaza), the Soto sect's method. (Rinzai and Soto are the main extant Zen schools in Japan; they both originated in China as the Linji and Caodong schools, respectively.) Once the mind is able to not be hindered by its many layers, one will then be able to realize one's true Buddha nature. In Zen Buddhism, zazen (literally "seated meditation") is a meditative discipline practitioners perform to calm the body and the mind and experience insight into the nature of existence and thereby gain enlightenment (satori). The posture of zazen is seated, with folded legs and hands, and an erect but settled spine. The legs are folded in one of the standard sitting styles (see below). The hands are folded together into a simple mudra over the belly. In many practices, one breathes from the hara (the center of gravity in the belly) and the eyelids are half-lowered, the eyes being neither fully open nor shut so that the practitioner is not distracted by outside objects but at the same time is kept awake.
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