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!

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.

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.

Re: Enter stage left...

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, you also like the Japanese girls, perhaps you can answer your own question!

I'm fantastically old, so I've lived through many different eras of Japanese history. The first song I ever wrote is about Japanese women. I wrote it in 1967. It says "I can see Japan, I can see the mountaintops and I can see the villages and I can see your images and baby, best of all, I can see your love". It really says everything you need to know about me and Japan, really, that song. By 1976 I was corresponding with a Japanese girl, Yumiko. By 1988 I had my own Japanese girlfriend, Junko. These events all happen in different decades, with Japan's economy in different states. But as far as I'm concerned, my feelings are the same.

Re: Enter stage left...

[(Anonymous)]

But I didn't forget how the rest of the world completely hated Yoko Ono, even before the breakup of the Bea-tles.

Marxy

Re: Enter stage left...

[dzima.livejournal.com]

Yes, because she was smarter than all Beatles fans, a woman but more than that, a Japanese woman. Did all the world hate Damo Suzuki (not a woman I know)?

I think the Lennon/Can cases show people that actually became more Japanese by having Japanese people around. They were clearly not creepy fetishisers as the Americans would like to point out.

[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.

Re: Enter stage left...

[spoombung.livejournal.com]

I don't know how this relates to your own personal tastes (probably not at all) but there certainly is a comforting idea among British men that no matter how many rejections you get from British women there will always be a nice Asian girl somewhere who will happily accept you, warts 'n'all... at any age... and indeed, there's a whole industry dedicated to it. I once saw a TV programme where a British man signed to a inter- continental dating agency claimed Asia (Thailand, in this case, as I remember) was the last home of REAL women.

I don't mean to pychoanalyse because I know you're trying to broaden your nippo thing out to some sort of global discussion but perhaps it's just another facet of your personal escapism, after all, you've already advised us to 'Walk away' and 'Vote with Our Feet' . You know, Gobalism or escapism, whatever you want to call it, perhaps your Japanese women are just offering a route East away from chilly Scotland and the UK.

[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?

Re: Enter stage left...

[imomus.livejournal.com]

A relationship with someone is above all a choice of a way of being. So for me this is all about how you choose a way of being in a historical era (postmodernism) when ways of being are laid out like products on a supermarket shelf. Or simply, how you choose your way of being when you've reached the position of actually having a choice.

[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.

[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!

Re: Enter stage left...

[spoombung.livejournal.com]

Okay make your choices, but don't exclude the other races - they're fun too!

After all, you might meet a nice middle class women from Surrey who wears long A-line shirts, subscribes to 'Lady' magazine, enjoys walking and goes bell ringing every Sunday. That might be the best relationship of your life!

[ohnefuehlen.livejournal.com]

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

[imomus.livejournal.com]

And imagine how he felt when he discovered the flight wasn't direct and he'd have to spend a year dossing at Mumbai International Airport!

Re: mukokuseki

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

i mean, "it's okay"

[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.

The simpler explanation

[(Anonymous)]

As always, I try to apply Occam's Razor to any question like this. Many people look down on "Nipposexualism" simply because we look down on any obsession with one single thing. If someone told me, "I only eat granola", I'd think them strange. If someone told me, "All I live for is robot anime", I'd wonder why they're so closed minded. And thus someone saying, "I could only fall in love with a Japanese [woman]", and I'd wonder why the rigidity.

If said person could list out, "I love X, Y, and Z about Japanese culture", that's a little better. But who's to say you couldn't find a Chinese, American, French, etc. woman who shares X, Y, and Z traits?

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.

[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.