Culture-shock depressurization chamber
Feb. 28th, 2006 08:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusWhere solo is sociable, my latest Wired column, continues the individualist-collectivist dialectic that's been going on here at Click Opera over the last couple of weeks. "Shouldn't individualist societies cater better to the needs of individuals, and collectivist societies cater worse to them? How come it seems to be the other way around?" the article asks. "In a truly individualistic culture, you shouldn't have to feel "quirky" when you're out and about alone, should you?" (By the way, thanks for helping me "collectivize" the writing of the article, all those who commented last week! In the end, though, being the hopeless maverick I am, I just submitted it as originally written. To fit in all the issues you raised would have needed book-space, and a whole chapter of acknowledgements. And the idea of collectively-written articles is a pretty grey one, morally and legally. Writing an article for a magazine isn't folk music, even if blogging kind of is.)
My article concludes: "Given current U.S. trends toward living, working and playing alone, the infrastructure of American cities could benefit from resembling a little more the monad-welcoming floating world of the Japanese city". It's a rather provocative statement, and I'm not at all sure how possible it could be. I mean, sure, one aspect of America has always been its genius at incorporating bits from other cultures into its mosaic. Just as they've been Italianized, Irishized or Lithuanianized, bits of American cities have certainly been "Japanized": sushi bars have sprung up, Japanese bookstores and supermarkets appeared, whole parts of the West coast have become Pacific Rim Asia Towns.
Like the Bowie character in "The Man Who Fell To Earth", some people have even opted to furnish their American homes in Japanese style. This week I'm staying in just such a place here in New York, a kind of culture-shock depressurization chamber between Japan and America: it's the apartment I mentioned in a previous Wired column:
"A grad student named Karl Haley read a blog entry I wrote entitled Japanize your ass! and decided to kit out his tiny apartment in New York's Lower East Side with Japanese technologies: a Toto S300 Jasmine washlet toilet, a Zojirushi 3-liter "Panorama Window" Micom Electric Dispensing Pot, a Neuro Fuzzy rice cooker, a kotatsu (a low table incorporating an infrared heater and canopy), and a robotic iJoy 100 massage chair."
The apartment does indeed contain these Japanese marvels, and others. It's all the more reassuring to me because it's on the same side of the same street where I lived between 2000 and 2002, though slightly further north than the Chinatown block I lived on. A mere three blocks south, most of the signs on the street are in Chinese, most of the faces you pass Chinese. And although it may seem unreasonable or unfair to ask a society as multi-ethnic as the US to "Japanize its ass", it's precisely this chameleon side of the US -- the fact that it's a huge patchwork quilt of ever-shifting immigrant groups, loyalties, languages -- which allows it to be the subject of all sorts of speculations and projections, including my own orientalist ones. And since immigration, wholesale importation, ethnic and special interest lobbying has always played a part here, Americans by and large take recommendations like "Japanize your ass!" in good sort. After all, what could be more American than being... less American?
My article concludes: "Given current U.S. trends toward living, working and playing alone, the infrastructure of American cities could benefit from resembling a little more the monad-welcoming floating world of the Japanese city". It's a rather provocative statement, and I'm not at all sure how possible it could be. I mean, sure, one aspect of America has always been its genius at incorporating bits from other cultures into its mosaic. Just as they've been Italianized, Irishized or Lithuanianized, bits of American cities have certainly been "Japanized": sushi bars have sprung up, Japanese bookstores and supermarkets appeared, whole parts of the West coast have become Pacific Rim Asia Towns.
Like the Bowie character in "The Man Who Fell To Earth", some people have even opted to furnish their American homes in Japanese style. This week I'm staying in just such a place here in New York, a kind of culture-shock depressurization chamber between Japan and America: it's the apartment I mentioned in a previous Wired column:
"A grad student named Karl Haley read a blog entry I wrote entitled Japanize your ass! and decided to kit out his tiny apartment in New York's Lower East Side with Japanese technologies: a Toto S300 Jasmine washlet toilet, a Zojirushi 3-liter "Panorama Window" Micom Electric Dispensing Pot, a Neuro Fuzzy rice cooker, a kotatsu (a low table incorporating an infrared heater and canopy), and a robotic iJoy 100 massage chair."
The apartment does indeed contain these Japanese marvels, and others. It's all the more reassuring to me because it's on the same side of the same street where I lived between 2000 and 2002, though slightly further north than the Chinatown block I lived on. A mere three blocks south, most of the signs on the street are in Chinese, most of the faces you pass Chinese. And although it may seem unreasonable or unfair to ask a society as multi-ethnic as the US to "Japanize its ass", it's precisely this chameleon side of the US -- the fact that it's a huge patchwork quilt of ever-shifting immigrant groups, loyalties, languages -- which allows it to be the subject of all sorts of speculations and projections, including my own orientalist ones. And since immigration, wholesale importation, ethnic and special interest lobbying has always played a part here, Americans by and large take recommendations like "Japanize your ass!" in good sort. After all, what could be more American than being... less American?
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-28 02:21 pm (UTC)But maybe people simply have missunderstands the whole "flock" thing after all. They look for people who "look" the same and "feel" the same but misses something out because of that since perhaps we don't really need to look for a complete replica but someone who knows what we mean and what we want but is still indifferent enough to keep it interesting for ourself.
Somehow we need to learn about eachothers individuality, but it can only be achieved in a group society I suppose.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-28 02:35 pm (UTC)Anyway, it's definitely a lot easier to be alone in NYC than anywhere else. I was sitting in a bar some night after a long day of crap, and a couple just sat down next to me ... we got to know each other and we all bought each other drinks.
You can also just go to bars alone, meet up with people there, and bar hop with complete strangers. A lot of relationships have formed between two strangers alone who meet on the subway - people alone ("monads") meeting up in public spaces is classic NYC.
Of course, you do have to be fairly pleasant... the whole stranger-socializing thing doesn't help if you look like a mugger.
Alone in Japan
Date: 2006-02-28 03:12 pm (UTC)Which, I think, is part of why obvious western foreigners are a bit scary to japanese - you don't have a group as a guarantor of your behavior (or worse, you're part of the Badly Behaved Drunk Caucasian Language Teacher group, guaranteeing embarrassment or worse).
Re: Alone in Japan
Date: 2006-02-28 03:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-28 03:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-28 04:18 pm (UTC)It seems that here in America that's often an issue, but I've found that Japanese people tend to love it when you take on their stuff. But then, they are the biggest perpatrators of the punks that couldn't rebel themselves out of a paper bag and grabbing on to the zaniest look rather than the coolest ideal from a scene. Or other such flagrant fakeries.
But in the end, I personally believe that it's this stumbling through cultural trade that makes change on either side as one thing retranslates back and forth and back again, leaving America with "fruits fashion" and Japan with maid outfits. Though honestly, I'd say "fruitsy" tends to be done better in Japan, and Goth better here. But I think it's the adaptations of these things that really work. It takes some discerning eyes to know what's good in any case. But in your own culture, often someone else has done the discerning for you. lol.
Anyway, I wish more of America would Japanize it's ass! I want the next apartment I live in to have a nice sit down bathtub!
Re: Alone in Japan
Date: 2006-02-28 04:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-28 05:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-28 05:48 pm (UTC)Run the other way if you see this man. He doen't like Scots. (http://www.cheapsurrealism.com/sounds/02_27_2006Rachel_Maddow.mov)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-28 06:02 pm (UTC)I love it.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-28 06:43 pm (UTC)Re: Alone in Japan
Date: 2006-02-28 06:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-28 09:10 pm (UTC)SO when I came back after this last year and a half or whatever it was, I fealt like I needed just such a thing. Or more importantly, Chinese friends that had any clue what the world I've been living in is.
I find that only multi culturalized people really grasp this no man's land "interloper in all kingdoms" feeling. Or the converse, many homedness that one can also feel.....
Re: Alone in Japan
Date: 2006-02-28 10:17 pm (UTC)This very rarely happens when I'm out with my girlfriend. She and I both signal that I'm the speaker of our little group. I want to practice the language, and so does she (and I believe she has a latent sadistic streak), so I usually end up being the one trying to order, or explain something impossibly complicated.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-28 10:41 pm (UTC)Very True.-Jed
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-01 02:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-01 02:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-01 05:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-01 05:56 am (UTC)Re: Alone in Japan
Date: 2006-03-01 07:03 am (UTC)Japan is less collectivist than america
Date: 2006-03-01 08:05 am (UTC)I know, it sounds abosultely shocking to you, but here are a few quotes from my organizational behaviour textbook:
"One notable observation in Exhibit 2.4 is that people in Japan are less collectivist than most cultures. This is in stark contrast to statements in many cross-cultural books that Japan is one of the most collectivist countries on the planet! The problem was that a major study over 20 years ago identified Japan as collectivist, but measured collectivism in a way that bears little resembalnce to how the concept is usually defined.* Subsequent studes have reported that Japan is relatively low on the collectivist scale, but this truth has been slow to take hold"
"Individualism: The extent to wich a person values independence and personal uniqueness.
Collectivism: The extent to which people value duty to groups to which they belong, and to group harmony."
Paraphrased: "Collectism and Individualism are actually unrelated values, this is a recent develpment.**"
* (A whole bunch of quoted studies, ** is one of them)
** D. Oyserman et al., "Rethinking Individualism and Collectivism."
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-01 10:30 am (UTC)Sounds intriguing.
Re: Alone in Japan
Date: 2006-03-01 10:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-01 10:49 am (UTC)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n23_IsU4Uic
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-01 05:56 pm (UTC)Re: Alone in Japan
Date: 2006-03-01 05:59 pm (UTC)Re: Alone in Japan
Date: 2006-03-01 06:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-02 01:57 am (UTC)