Nipposexual 2: Live your dream and stay where you are

[imomus]

As I suspected, our weekend theme of nipposexuality has run and run: at 150 comments and counting, it's had an even bigger response than the piece advising Democrats to leave the United States after the 2004 Bush victory. And weekends are usually quiet around here...

We don't seem to have reached any sort of unanimity on the basic question, though. Is it okay to be a nipposexual? My favourite answer was one of the most succinct: "It's funny that it's acceptable to fetishize someone's shoes," observed Slinka, "but orientation toward their culture is such a touchy subject. Really, what says more about a person?"

There were some attempts to tar the nipposexual with guilt by association: I was directed to a website in which gaijin boasted of their sexual conquests (luckily it didn't load properly and I couldn't read the gory details), and inevitably the noun picked up a nasty qualifying infection: "the Roppongi nipposexuals". An effective smear indeed — I loathe the leering, shaven-headed jet trash that throngs Roppongi sidewalks at weekends!

Luckily a line was drawn between playas and sex tourists like these sleazy Roppongi louts (who mostly pay for their sex) and western men in longterm relationships with Japanese women. The latter category, by the way, (what do we call them, nippocommittos?) includes many of those who comment regularly here, as well as most of the Japan-based gaijin bloggers I mention on this site: Marxy, Jean Snow... and of course me!

If we remove sleaze, promiscuity, and sex tourism from the picture, what we're left with is nipposexuality as a fairly typical consequence of globalism. So I want to make globalism my focus today. I've already declared my position on this: I'm a fairly enthusiastic Phase 1 globalist. I want to travel, to produce and consume the products of global trade (and yes, I want a fair distribution of profits), to pick and choose the best of cultures with fairly clear identities. I realise that it's slightly paradoxical, though. Just as tourists who flock to an unspoiled beach inevitably spoil it, globalists who seek pure and strong alternative cultures surely dilute them, making them pretty much like anywhere else.

That "pretty much like anywhere else" is what I call Phase 2 globalism. I don't think we're there yet, and I think we might never be. If we see the referendum on the European constitution as a verdict on globalism (and many of the no voters in France and Holland last week were concerned by the likely internationalisation of their jobs and the loss of their local identities), it seems that Phase 2 globalism is an increasingly unpopular scenario. People are afraid they'll drown in the melting pot. There were even rumblings last week that Italy might pull out of the Euro and re-instate the Lira. The suggestions were quickly condemned by the European Central Bank (it would be "economic suicide" for Italy), but not before they wiped several cents off the value of the Euro.

I happened to be watching a piece on Arte about the appointment of Roger M. Buergel as the curator of Documenta 12, the biggest German art event, next held in 2007. Buergel's pet themes are autonomy, grassroots initiatives, and the right of the viewer to assemble his own stories rather than have some high concept imposed by a superstar curator. These themes were particularly poignant in the light of the solid rejection by voters of the EU's perceived centralisation and technocratic elitism. During the report on Buergel there was a shot of a piece he'd included in one of his shows, a big photo of a text that said (and I may not have the wording exactly right): "Live your dream and stay where you are".

It's a simple phrase, but the implications are fiercely utopian... and somewhat puritanical. It's difficult to imagine how I might "live my dream and stay where I am". My philosophy is very much the opposite: "live your dream by travelling far away", or possibly even "live someone else's dream by travelling far away". If I try to construct the parallel world where I live my dream despite staying where I am, the best I can come up with is a kind of Alice-in-Wonderland Scotland where I drink little bottles of hallucinogens in order to shrink my aspirations to the size of Scotland, swigging from the Drink Me bottle to make my local surroundings look incredibly attractive when they, frankly, aren't.

So, okay, I stay in Edinburgh all my life, I marry a local woman, we raise children, we consume only local produce (um, porridge? Turnips? Fish and chips? Edinburgh rock candy?), we listen to the radio rather than using the internet or seeing tantalising far-off places on TV... It's a life my grandparents might recognise (although even they fought in the world wars which, some might say, are the true beginning of the globalist era). It's either wildly utopian—it's possible that a Scotland with some sort of cultural renaissance going on would be as magical to me as Japan presently is, although it's hard to imagine a renaissance without a global trade in ideas—or terribly depressing.

So perhaps nipposexuality is just a facet of advanced Phase 1 globalism. The votes that came in yesterday on whether it's okay, like the votes in the EU referendum, represented a complex variety of views on what the subject was about, choc-full of all sorts of completely different, yet passionately-held, pet causes. I've totted up your votes on whether nipposexuality is a constitutional treaty you approve of: 45% said yes, 55% no. I am currently in crisis, considering my future.

Comments

[dzima.livejournal.com]

Slightly unrelated but Ms. blackbauble's comments really describe the eternal (and very disappointing for me) condition of Australia: so close to Asia, yet it couldn't more far away. People here would be happier if this country was located in the Atlantic, somewhere in between America and the UK. (For another ridiculous example, the New South Wales government is hiring consultants who work in the London tube to fix the Sydney train system, while completely forgetting about a much closer and better example around the corner, Japan).

I don't think Duckworth is a nippocommitto by the way.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes, I actually removed his name from that list before I even read your comment!

It's not just Australia.

[artysmokes.livejournal.com]

What Momus describes as "Phase 2 Globalisation", I call "Americanization". That is what many people in France were voting against, and I support that view.

I'm not entirely sure if there is a link between globalisation and nipposexuality. Having given the latter some thought, I'd come down on the side of "I think it's slightly odd, but each to their own."
Personally, I've never fancied a black woman, but I'd be horrified if someone levelled accusations of patronization or racism at me.

mukokuseki

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

as a filipina brooklyn jew with a japanese/russian name who advertises herself as a wind-up doll and is wearing bear ears & pigtails at a co-op party, i try to fetishize myself before i am fetishized.

my global perspective is blocked off by the inside of my skull, but i would like to think that so long as we remove my shoes at appropriate times and avoid tripping over toes, we are welcome everywhere.

but then i don't fit in anywhere. except maybe the internet.

Re: mukokuseki

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

i mean, "it's okay"

Enter stage left...

[(Anonymous)]

Nipposexuality is just capital fetishization.

Do you not think it's odd that widescale Nipposexuality "blossomed" worldwide in the late 90s, maybe with roots from the late 80s? When did you ever hear about "how hot Japanese girls were" in the 60s or 70s? Back in the 50s, all the Japanese wives were war brides - and the Roppongi school seems to directly descend from this kind of victor U.S. + defeated Japan = amour.

But Madame Butterfly colonialist love based on economic exploitation is out of vogue, and so modern Japan provides us with an opportunity to orientalize without the vulgar idea of dating "under" one's social position.

I don't think this is all about economic capital à la Marx, but it is about cultural capital (à la Bourdieu) - you like the way Japanese girls dress and act and "be," and these attributes did not come out of nowhere. They are hardly ahistorical, but direct extensions of Japan's emergence as a post-industrial economy. And just as "white" features are considered "beautiful" because of American-European worldwide economic power, so now are Japanese features - but not necessarily Chinese or Korean or Mongolian, which are all lower on the economic totem pole.

I already await the Momus brow-beating on this idea, but I think it's ridiculous to somehow claim that all this hipster Japanese fetishism is not a byproduct of Japan's economic ascent. Do you like Japanese girls without all the hi-tech makeup techniques, expensive clothes, excellent "taste," and good-girl manners?

Marxy

Re: Enter stage left...

[dzima.livejournal.com]

You forgot John Lennon.

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't know how much percentage my vote is worth, but I would vote 'yes'; Nipposexuality is OK. I should perhaps also add that this is a fairly impartial vote, as I'm not voting in self-defence. I'm not a Nipposexual myself.

Also, I think, even if there are, amongst Nipposexuals, loathsome types such as those that throng Roppongi (I'm thinking of Gas Panic now - horrible place), one can hardly legislate against this.

I actually agreed with just about everything in yesterday's post, and I really didn't expect to.

I think it does, as more than one person said, depend on how one phrases it as to how offensive it is. Just as I have no problem with people saying they prefer Japanese women (or men), I have no problem with Japanese people saying they prefer European men (or women), or even American. However, I think I would feel at the very least uncomfortable if someone revealed they only liked me because I was a Westerner. To me that would be pretty much the same as saying they didn't like me at all. It's a strange attitude too, to be able to say something like that, as if one can seperate the fact that I am Western from the rest of me somehow.

[cowardlykitten.livejournal.com]

Dazai Osamu icon. Yay. <3

[butterflyrobert.livejournal.com]

Perhaps this is a topic that, through over-elaboration, has gotten confused tonight. Fetishists and creepy "shagamuffins" aside, there's a basic (and pleasant) honesty in saying "My love's race and culture is attractive to me."

I think its a bit presumptuous to believe that everyone does, or should, feel this way, but there's nothing about it that warrants taboo.

[rwillmsen.livejournal.com]

It's difficult to imagine how I might "live my dream and stay where I am".

You might have to - http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5183651-108958,00.html.

I'm starting to accept that long-haul flights will soon return to their previous status as luxuries. I'll be living in Madrid come September, and I'm rather looking forward to a life of train rather than plane travel. There's something appealing about feeling and seeing the distance that you're travelling, rather than just waking up 4,000 miles away without feeling in your bones that for every one of those miles the differences you're now faced with have been slowly accumulating around you.

Incidentally, if it's okay to say that you feel an attraction to people from another culture, is it also okay to say that you feel an aversion in the same way?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

"He has decided to restrict himself to one flight a year."

That fellow should have chosen an even number, now he's stuck in Nepal until 2006!

[ohnefuehlen.livejournal.com]

Well, count me as a "yes" vote - moreover, a "yes" confused as to why anybody would be a "no". Perhaps I'm displaying a certain naïveté here, but the big "no" voters I saw have been banging on about grand themes like patriarchy and cultural capital and Western economic and military dominance and honestly I have no idea how any of that is at all relevant.

I'm not a nipposexual myself. There are certain features about Japanese women (and mend) that make them uniquely attractive, but the same could be said for African women, Eastern European women, North American women, Russian women, Jewish women...

But nevertheless if somebody only finds himself attracted to Japanese women, well, so what? I can't see the big controversy, myself.

[ohnefuehlen.livejournal.com]

Tch - those brackets should read "and men". It's early.

[jennvix.livejournal.com]

I believe that there is no harm in someone having an aesthetic.

[spoombung.livejournal.com]

Of course - but others are argueing here that it's more than an aesthetic - the nippo fetish comes with colonial, cultural and class baggage. That's the contraversial bit.

In Defense of Phase 2 Globalization

[(Anonymous)]

I know the feeling that we want other cultures to stay true to themselves. But we must resist that feeling, because it is selfish. Why?

For Amazon indians to stay true to their culture, they should continue to live without electricity and medicine and technology. People on the Indian subcontinent should continue to castigate the "untouchables". Japanese should deny women career opportunities. Saudis should prevent women from driving.

Western culture has driven human rights and societal development for the past 200+ years. We should invite other cultures to take what THEY want, to adopt the aspects of our culture that make THEIR lives better; we should not hope they stay stuck in their past against their wishes.

Sure, it might make the world less of a fun playland for us rich Westerners, but if it makes the rest of the planet happier/healthier/more successful, it's right.

Some people dream of being a vampire's victims

[klasensjo.livejournal.com]

There has been a lot of criticism of your choice of women/cultures (see Man of Letters and the discussion about 16 year old Shazna with Rozelle Bentheim) being a "construction" of the mind combined with intellectualised postmodern idealism. In some ways I don't see this as a less valid reason for love, but I see that this is where it collides with the traditional western idea of a "mature" relationship.
Is there a grain of truth to this criticism? Rozelle Bentheim called "theatrical posturing". Hmm, then again, what is mature?

This nipposexual discussion is really an extension of the discussions you had on that DVD, except yesterday everyone dug themselves into their little bunkers and fired in a non-constructive way.

Re: Some people dream of being a vampire's victims

[dzima.livejournal.com]

I read your comment and had a second look at that scene on the Man of Letters DVD.

During that conversation, Momus says 'I use Shazna and Shazna uses me' and Rozelle gets annoyed and says 'There's a lot of theatrical posing, you're not being honest with each other'. I think Momus is questioning, correct me if I'm wrong, the concept of "true love". Should we let ourselves be guided by 'superficial' and more 'sensorial' features while choosing our partners, or should we ignore them and go for 'deep' and 'true' things that attach us to our lovers? Or better, is it possible to comprehend other people, is it possible to even comprehend ourselves? Should love be ruled by social and cultural prejudices? If you accept that it's impossible to know what's going on in other people's minds, maybe you'd have an easier time having a 'positive prejudice' about them. (By the way, 2046 is all about the impossibilities and misunderstandings of love, like KimuTaku falling in love with Faye Wong when they don't even speak the same language, or Tony Leung being traumatized by a love experience and later on not being to get himself attached to anyone else)

The hint of honesty in Momus relationship with Shazna is that he considers becoming a Muslim to please her family and be able to marry her.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

I am myself constantly disappointed by the parochial attitudes people exhibit toward globalisation and the mixing of cultures. Cultures have changed, evolved, and grown most where they have come into contact with other cultures. I don't believe in isolation or artificially imposing collective values on individuals merely because of some inherited notion of race or nation or volk. If globalisation leads to a world where everyone is multi-lingual, coffee-coloured and free from the constraints of this or that tired old mythology or tradition or arbitrary national boundary, then that is how the people will have chosen.

Anti-globalisation sentiments around here tend to come from the far Right, who fear the proverbial Polish plumber, and from the far Left, who likewise fear an influx of foreign labour but are also critical of free trade and its economic effects on less fortunate countries on a wider scale. I'm not saying that all their arguments are inherently and always wrong. On the contrary. Given that the new economic orthodoxy of the world is laissez-faire, it is healthy for there to be a camp of naysayers to offer an alternative, whether those naysayers are rightists or leftists. Provincialism, however, tends to flourish among these extreme ideologies and I tend to distrust extremists of all sorts for that exact reason.

[ratz.livejournal.com]

All of us that have an interest in another culture to any extent think that there is a line between genuine, justified interest and crass fetishization. And we all think we're on the safe side of that line. And anyone else is a sick bastard. So go figure. That being said, though, I think maybe the issue is a little touchy. I said to my girlfriend once that Anne Curry is awfully lovely, now her and her mother keep on saying I have yellow fever.

[petit-paradis.livejournal.com]

witte de with, the art centre here in rotterdam, the netherlands, now runs a show curated by buergel, entitled:

BE WHAT YOU WANT BUT STAY WHERE YOU ARE

as you know, I have part time deskjob there. I read that his show was not very well received by the dutch press. then the netherlands all voted NO last week to the EU too.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

That's the one I was talking about!

[scottbateman.livejournal.com]

I didn't get around to answering yesterday, but I approve of your Nipposexuality. Hell, I'm just hear SOMEone's getting laid. :-)

ok here i go again

[lil-octopie.livejournal.com]

I had this thought though I'm not sure it has a point (and i suck with words since i'm a visual person but here goes)

So thanks to globalization, you were exposed to different cultures around the world which allowed you to develope this nipposexuality.

But based on your comments from yesterday, it seems you are only interested in Japanese women actually from Japan and may be turned off by Japanese women from - say America because they have been 'americanized' (or other countries not Japan) which in turn may be their form of experiencing globalization.

There is a contradiction here, but I cannot verbalize. ugh sunday morning.

maybe something to do with the romanticism of the pre-globalization of another culture in retaliation towards your own culture's globalization?

Re: ok here i go again

[no1herene-more.livejournal.com]

he's a connoisseur of women and picks them up fresh and untainted like good caviare. he has such a plethora of women to choose from he's only able to sort thru them if he judges them by their culture and appearance, get rid of those ugly jews, and those god awful germans, and whiney poms....

but he's not racist. he's just.... a rich white man able to afford to be picky.

[encyclops.livejournal.com]

My favourite answer was one of the most succinct: "It's funny that it's acceptable to fetishize someone's shoes," observed Slinka, "but orientation toward their culture is such a touchy subject. Really, what says more about a person?"

Fetishes and orientations are two different things. A fetish is something you find enjoyable in a purely sexual context. Often it's defined as being a substitute for another person, in the sense that if you are a shoe fetishist it doesn't actually matter who's wearing the shoe; the desire has been displaced from the person to the object. If you had a cultural fetish and you presented it as such, that would be one thing.

But an orientation is a more holistic thing, and explicitly pertains to people. If you are sexually oriented toward shoes, this means you want to have a relationship with shoes, or less absurdly that you want to have relationships only with people who wear those shoes. I think that would be more likely to seem shallow or disrespectable than a shoe fetish. Likewise, it's one thing to say that Japanese girls turn you on, that there's something about their Japanese-girl-ness that makes you particularly horny. That's a fetish. Fetishes are easier to excuse, if you believe they need excuses (I generally don't). It's another to say that you have been since birth (or since you became fully sexual, or whatever you like) programmed in such a way as to be capable of a full relationship only or at least predominately with females of a certain national origin. That's something that's open to a little more scrutiny, I think, especially if you're inviting it.

I've totted up your votes on whether nipposexuality is a constitutional treaty you approve of: 45% said yes, 55% no. I am currently in crisis, considering my future.

I'm sure you're being somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but for what it's worth, although the white-guy-bags-Asian-girlfriend phenomenon does bother me a bit (I see it a lot around here, and the white guys are almost invariably so homely and/or obnoxious), I don't see where anyone needs my approval of it. I'm attracted to Asians of both sexes, but then I'm also attracted to subsets of just about every other race on the planet, a few more consistently than others. For me, that's more about physical features I prefer for whatever reason; when we talk about personality and emotional connection, that's a totally individual thing and race has nothing to do with it that I've been able to discern.

When racial preferences bug me, it's the idea of someone saying, "I'm a white guy and I only like white girls." Or gay men who explicitly say in personal ads, "Sorry, not into Asians." Exogamous racial preferences tend to bother me less than endogamous "racial purity" type preferences. Whatever the reason, however shallow, I'd always rather see people mix races and cultures than not. Perhaps it's optimistic but it's hard to imagine even the shallowest not learning something from it.

[rozencrantz.livejournal.com]

It's another [matter] to say that you have been since birth (or since you became fully sexual, or whatever you like) programmed in such a way as to be capable of a full relationship only or at least predominately with females of a certain national origin. That's something that's open to a little more scrutiny, I think, especially if you're inviting it.

I can tell you that I have been sexual since before I had any understanding of race or national origin, I can date my sexuality to 2nd grade at the latest, and even then I had a thing for teh azn, a preference for asian features and skin coloration. This was before I had any knowledge of asian sex tourism or Wu Xia or Love Hina, I just happened to think the asian girls were prettier. So I'm not exactly nipposexual, just... oriosexual? No, that sounds like I'm attracted to cookies.

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

I was raised as an American, denied my asianness, and am making up for it in adulthood.


Japanese women, to me, are just part of my other half (culture-wise.) The fact that they're ridiculously easy and simultaneously evil and devious make for interesting conversation around the pub table.


If Momus likes his slanty-eyed women, more power to him. There are certainly plenty enough to go around.

[(Anonymous)]

that Roger M. Buergel link gives me a fucking Crazy Frog pop up that's impossible to get rid of. Looking forward to the Crazy Frog Documenta.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar

[theopsys.livejournal.com]

"I believe that there is no harm in someone having an aesthetic."

It took 200+ comments for someone (Ms. Vix) to get at what I think is one of the core issues, if not the core issue, of this discussion. While there has been much talk of culture and sex, there has been nothing said of art. If you believe, like I do, that women are walking, talking, thinking, breathing, loving forms of art, then the natural inclination is to search for the aesthetic that appeals to you the most. Call it vain if you want, but I would suspect there are many less valid reasons for finding someone attractive, such as a person's monetary value. Furthermore, if you were to ask someone why they like a particular work of art, after giving a few specifics, they would likely end by saying,"I don't know, there's just something about it that grabs me." The same can be said for one's preference toward another person, or group of people. Thus, the overwhelming urge to justify one's preference as it pertains to certain things--sex, culture, art--is, I think, a huge waste of time. The more we try to be specific (subjective) about why we like what we like, the more we open ourselves up to scrutiny (also subjective), and the more scrutiny we invite, the more likely we are to get ourselves into a pointless debate. Oops, too late!

Re: Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar

[encyclops.livejournal.com]

If you believe, like I do, that women are walking, talking, thinking, breathing, loving forms of art,

Do you also believe this of men?

[no1herene-more.livejournal.com]

i don't think anyone here is afraid of phase 2 globalism, unless you're speaking for yourself? I live on a street with indian, vietnamese, english, australian, korean, irish... that's all i can think of right now. Each contributes the the whole, the local cinema plays bollywood, the local restaurants reflect local tastes, the local churches will accommodate various different religious gatherings. Yet each family keeps their own cultural pride, each house has different flavours spilling out into the evening air at dinnertime. This is part of what it is to be australia, more so than other melting pots, we take on many Asian flavours along with european and (finally!) we are seeing more africans arriving as recent refugees (why did it take 22 years for the abolition of the white australia policy to finally work?) and very quickly we start to see more film, more news services more newspaper stories to reflect the new immigrants/refugees needs. Our street takes on the flavour of whatever the migrant trend of the moment may be, at first vietnamese, then chinese, now indian. very indian.

And yes there's a certain melding, kids lose their indian accents and speak english with an aussie lilt, and begin to prefer vegemite for breakfast and start to recognise names like John Farnham as being "theirs", and bring their friends over after school and teach them about their own culture just by living it.

thats the joy of being australian, it's a very beautiful experience and you find something amazing every time you walk out the door. Your urban australian (which is your majority) enjoys, even revels in this. It is part of our culture as a very new country.

I don't expect the world to become phase 2, but it will be a better world if more countries like japan open their doors to other cultures - hell the only reason you could even function in japan, was because of Japan's tolerance for english-speaking tourists. but they still continue to treat koreans and chinese like dogs. they resist the flavours of their neighbours taking hold, despite how much of japanese culture is stolen from its neighbours.

[sardonicsmile.livejournal.com]

yes, there is a lot of defending the fetishisation and whether it is okay or not, but what would the subjects think of it?

although i am not high up on the ladder due to my origins as i realise from marxy's post (an in general find this is true), finding someone attracted to you on the whole for your racial origins just gives me a sick slimy feeling.

i would hope globalism would help to break down the stereotypes and perceptions of people from other countries and races, but i may be being too hopeful.