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Yeah, this is one of those things that everyone seems to know about, but when you ask Japanese people, most are like, “That’s a thing? Maybe I’ve seen it but probably not.”

There are… a lot of things like this, and I’m not sure why Japan is made out to be more mythical than most countries.

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Japanese not knowing about things Japanese seems to be common. Most younger Japanese don't seem to know the difference between a Buddhist temple (tera) and a Shinto shrine (jinja). I'm pretty sure the kintsugi stuff stems from Shinto ideas. Shinto can enshrine anything as sacred. Usually it is an object from nature, but it doesn't have to be; it can be something people have created (matsuru (verb) - to make a god; matsuri (noun) - a festival (celebrating a god). It can be an object that someone has loved or used for a long time. If used in a negative way, such objects can become "cursed," or perhaps "angry" that they have been abused. This seems to be projection, of course. This isn't voodoo; Japanese are probably aware of this. The enshrining in this case has been degraded to "care for," at least in terms of repairing the item. This may be more recent as a more prevalent idea, but I think the inclination, due to Shinto, has been there for a long time.

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