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imomusI'd like to join those who are congratulating Princess Kiko on the birth of her son today. It gave me a little pang of joy to hear the news, because demography, children and the continuation of the traditions of the Chrysanthemum Throne are all important and emotive topics for the Japanese.
It's been interesting to see how the news got reported. Some coverage, like the BBC's, stressed the emotional tone-colour, picking out probable future PM Shinzo Abe's line: "It's a refreshing feeling that reminds us of a clear autumn sky". (Personally, I'd love to see Tony Blair's eventual resignation covered with this kind of poetry: "The blossom has now fallen, after excessive clinging to a blood-spattered branch.")
There were also empathetic reports of the joy of ordinary Japanese. "Women clad in traditional yukata summer kimono gave a dance of joy in a public square outside of JR Mejiro Station in Tokyo's Toshima-ku Wednesday to celebrate the arrival into the world of a new Prince," reported the Mainichi Daily News, which sold 2000 extra copies of its special commemorative issue at Shinjuku station alone.
The Western press either saw the event from an economic or a political perspective. For every report that the royal birth was creating a boom in baby-related products -- or quoting grumpy taxi drivers saying the royals sponged off the taxes of ordinary Japanese -- there seemed to be three seeing the important drama here as the one being played out between Japanese conservatives (who are against a matrilineal royal family) and reformers (those who, like Koizumi, want to let females carry on the royal line). Many articles almost seemed to cast this latest royal birth as a blow to "feminism in Japan".
From a certain angle, the whole story really does look like a Grimm fairy tale rewritten as a didactic soap opera by a gender equality commission. We have two "sisters" incarnating two different types of woman. The younger one, Princess Kiko, has given birth to the boy-child that the elder, Princess Masako was unable to. Kiko is easily stereotyped as softly feminine and compliant, whereas Masako is the Harvard-educated (according to the New York Times) or Oxford-educated (according to the London Times) career diplomat who fell into a depression thanks to remorseless pressure from the evil Imperial Household Agency to produce a male child. Harvard- (or Oxford-, if you're English) educated Masako is the West's horse in this race, but the outcome most Western commentators seem to prefer is that neither of them should produce a male heir, thus forcing the imperial system to change.
Tellingly, none of these commentators are calling for the abolition of the imperial family in Japan. Venturing anywhere near the opinion that someone else's imperial system should be scrapped would look a bit like meddling, and after all, many of us in the West have royal families too. What harm do they do?
Instead, these Western commentators want the Japanese imperial family to "modernize" and Westernize from within. The villains of the piece, for Time and the New York Times, are the Imperial Household Agency, the state bureaucracy which keeps tight control on the royals, and the "resurgent" Japanese conservatives, right-wingers and nationalists who resist all change. The Japanese can keep their institutions, but not keep them unchanged.
"Former Trade Minister Takeo Hiranuma's xenophobic comments were typical," Time reported. "If Aiko becomes the reigning empress and gets involved with a blue-eyed foreigner while studying abroad and marries him, their child may become emperor," he said in February. "We should never let that happen."
Those articles which went on long enough did eventually mention that there have been eight Japanese empresses already (although they haven't been able to transmit the imperial DNA; they were seen as stop-gaps until a male emperor could come along), and that a majority of Japanese people are rather in favour of allowing women to ascend to the imperial throne, and pass on the imperial genes. After all, Japan was founded by a mother figure, the sun goddess Amaterasu.
As usual, Western coverage of the royal birth attacked Japanese ethnocentrism without examining its own. Extremist figures in the shadows of Japan's political fringe were invoked, but also isolated from the opinions of the person on the street. Nobody was criticizing Michiyo Miyamura, the 39-year-old Setagaya-ku housewife who told the Mainichi News: "I'm the same age as Princess Kiko, so I was almost as happy as though it was my child," she said. "I'm so glad it was a baby boy."
It's much easier, obviously, to say "There are some creepy right wing xenophobic politicians in Japan who worry us" than to say "Japan's people and traditional institutions are wrong, and worry us". That, after all, would be a bit creepy and xenophobic in itself. It would leave us open to accusations that our own right wing was doing more than trying to preserve its royal family: it was actually invading other countries and restructuring them "for their own good".
It's also perhaps better to leave unexamined the basic assumption that a depressed Western-educated "career diplomat" is necessarily a better kind of woman than a happy Japanese mother.
In the words of an actual career diplomat, Sha Zukang, China's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva: "It's better for the US to shut up. Keep quiet. It's much, much better." His advice was a response to Donald Rumsfeld's concerns about China's military spending. In 2005 China spent $35 billion on its military. The US spent more than $420 billion.
Whatever we actually do, we still want to speak as if we're the ones who best love women, peace, and other people's right to celebrate their colourful traditions. They have a scary right wing, we don't. They're militarists, we aren't. They treat their women badly, we don't. They criticize foreigners, we don't -- except when we're criticizing the foreigners who criticize foreigners. We like to think well of ourselves. Luckily, they don't.
It's been interesting to see how the news got reported. Some coverage, like the BBC's, stressed the emotional tone-colour, picking out probable future PM Shinzo Abe's line: "It's a refreshing feeling that reminds us of a clear autumn sky". (Personally, I'd love to see Tony Blair's eventual resignation covered with this kind of poetry: "The blossom has now fallen, after excessive clinging to a blood-spattered branch.")There were also empathetic reports of the joy of ordinary Japanese. "Women clad in traditional yukata summer kimono gave a dance of joy in a public square outside of JR Mejiro Station in Tokyo's Toshima-ku Wednesday to celebrate the arrival into the world of a new Prince," reported the Mainichi Daily News, which sold 2000 extra copies of its special commemorative issue at Shinjuku station alone.
The Western press either saw the event from an economic or a political perspective. For every report that the royal birth was creating a boom in baby-related products -- or quoting grumpy taxi drivers saying the royals sponged off the taxes of ordinary Japanese -- there seemed to be three seeing the important drama here as the one being played out between Japanese conservatives (who are against a matrilineal royal family) and reformers (those who, like Koizumi, want to let females carry on the royal line). Many articles almost seemed to cast this latest royal birth as a blow to "feminism in Japan".
From a certain angle, the whole story really does look like a Grimm fairy tale rewritten as a didactic soap opera by a gender equality commission. We have two "sisters" incarnating two different types of woman. The younger one, Princess Kiko, has given birth to the boy-child that the elder, Princess Masako was unable to. Kiko is easily stereotyped as softly feminine and compliant, whereas Masako is the Harvard-educated (according to the New York Times) or Oxford-educated (according to the London Times) career diplomat who fell into a depression thanks to remorseless pressure from the evil Imperial Household Agency to produce a male child. Harvard- (or Oxford-, if you're English) educated Masako is the West's horse in this race, but the outcome most Western commentators seem to prefer is that neither of them should produce a male heir, thus forcing the imperial system to change.Tellingly, none of these commentators are calling for the abolition of the imperial family in Japan. Venturing anywhere near the opinion that someone else's imperial system should be scrapped would look a bit like meddling, and after all, many of us in the West have royal families too. What harm do they do?
Instead, these Western commentators want the Japanese imperial family to "modernize" and Westernize from within. The villains of the piece, for Time and the New York Times, are the Imperial Household Agency, the state bureaucracy which keeps tight control on the royals, and the "resurgent" Japanese conservatives, right-wingers and nationalists who resist all change. The Japanese can keep their institutions, but not keep them unchanged.
"Former Trade Minister Takeo Hiranuma's xenophobic comments were typical," Time reported. "If Aiko becomes the reigning empress and gets involved with a blue-eyed foreigner while studying abroad and marries him, their child may become emperor," he said in February. "We should never let that happen."
Those articles which went on long enough did eventually mention that there have been eight Japanese empresses already (although they haven't been able to transmit the imperial DNA; they were seen as stop-gaps until a male emperor could come along), and that a majority of Japanese people are rather in favour of allowing women to ascend to the imperial throne, and pass on the imperial genes. After all, Japan was founded by a mother figure, the sun goddess Amaterasu.As usual, Western coverage of the royal birth attacked Japanese ethnocentrism without examining its own. Extremist figures in the shadows of Japan's political fringe were invoked, but also isolated from the opinions of the person on the street. Nobody was criticizing Michiyo Miyamura, the 39-year-old Setagaya-ku housewife who told the Mainichi News: "I'm the same age as Princess Kiko, so I was almost as happy as though it was my child," she said. "I'm so glad it was a baby boy."
It's much easier, obviously, to say "There are some creepy right wing xenophobic politicians in Japan who worry us" than to say "Japan's people and traditional institutions are wrong, and worry us". That, after all, would be a bit creepy and xenophobic in itself. It would leave us open to accusations that our own right wing was doing more than trying to preserve its royal family: it was actually invading other countries and restructuring them "for their own good".
It's also perhaps better to leave unexamined the basic assumption that a depressed Western-educated "career diplomat" is necessarily a better kind of woman than a happy Japanese mother.
In the words of an actual career diplomat, Sha Zukang, China's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva: "It's better for the US to shut up. Keep quiet. It's much, much better." His advice was a response to Donald Rumsfeld's concerns about China's military spending. In 2005 China spent $35 billion on its military. The US spent more than $420 billion.
Whatever we actually do, we still want to speak as if we're the ones who best love women, peace, and other people's right to celebrate their colourful traditions. They have a scary right wing, we don't. They're militarists, we aren't. They treat their women badly, we don't. They criticize foreigners, we don't -- except when we're criticizing the foreigners who criticize foreigners. We like to think well of ourselves. Luckily, they don't.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-06 09:24 am (UTC)At ikebukuro eki, people waved off the birth announcements like another pack of tissue. The news found a couple people with enough tatemae still left to share some kind words for the imperial line, while most of the folks are ambivalent or, like the western media, and yuki and my girlfriend and every other japanese person I've talked to today, they're kind of bitter.
meanwhile on my local public access channel theyre rerunning the samba festival, something more than a small number of nationalist old biddies thought worth celebrating. But it doesnt matter what other channel i turn to those 8 old ladies dancing in akasaka are on. The conservative voices are being given so much media time, you'd think they were counter-protesting an anti-war rally.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-06 09:35 am (UTC)and
after your marriage announcement (if I'm not mistaken): any plans of having a petit prince of your own?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-06 09:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-06 09:43 am (UTC)They would undoubtedly demolish the Eiffel Tower and build in its place an exact replica of the Eiffel Tower. They'd replace the German U-bahn and S-Bahn system with copies of the Tokyo versions (based on the German U-bahn and S-bahn systems). And so on.
after your marriage announcement (if I'm not mistaken): any plans of having a petit prince of your own?
I have hundreds of thousands of copies of the special commemorative edition of Click Opera all printed up already. They're under the futon.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-06 09:58 am (UTC)and there's a nice line of cherry blossom trees along a canal going past the Okura Hotel here in Amsterdam, they wouldn't have much trouble turning that into a Philosopher's Path. (something they would have to work on: I discovered these trees blossom twice a year, interesting from a commercial point of view maybe)
Re: the view from up close
Date: 2006-09-06 10:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-06 10:21 am (UTC)Over in the blue corner, Prince Akishino (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Akishino) (who also studied at Oxford) apparently wrote his PhD dissertation on "Molecular Phylogeny of Jungle fowls, genus Gallus and Monophyletic Origin of Domestic Fowls" and is credited with introducing tilapia to Thailand and is widely known as a "catfish specialist (http://www.brettsfishfarm.com/prince.html)". Supporters of this line could wear Akishino moustaches as a sign of affiliation.
Princess Kiko went to school in Vienna and studied psychology at Gakushuin. Potentially she may have been compromised by Freudians or indeed Actionists during this period. Or not.
Akishino has more of a playboy air about him, but at the same time his piscine enthusiasms hark back to Hirohito and his marine biology. As to which of these two couples writes the best tanka, I've no idea. Quite possibly some of this affair will be settled over a vigorous three set tennis match between the two couples or, more likely, an afternoon session of kemari (http://www.footballnetwork.org/dev/historyoffootball/history2.asp) amongst the Imperial Household Agency.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-06 10:43 am (UTC)She also studied at the University of Tokyo, but the Western press never calls her "University of Tokyo-educated". If she's going to be the "career woman princess", you have to emphasize her Western education. It goes without saying.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-06 11:41 am (UTC)Only funny because it's true. ^_^
Of course, when you live in a country ravaged by geological forces it's probably healthier to develop an affinity for replicas than be constantly mourning the destruction of yet another priceless remnant of your cultural heritage.
"What harm do they do?"
Date: 2006-09-06 01:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-06 03:03 pm (UTC)(That still doesn't solve my long-standing ignorance as to the exact relation between the 1989 prawn crash (http://www.fao.org/docrep/007/ad505e/ad505e04.htm) and Hirohito's death. Did people in Japan stop eating prawns because of the late Emperor's love for them?)
Double Standards?
Date: 2006-09-06 03:04 pm (UTC)I don't think there's any question of Japan being singled out or being held to different standards than any other developed nation here: The Western media also pounces on the rise of rightists in other countries. Skinheads in Germany are regular features fodder for European newspapers and there was quite a huge hoo-hah after racist politicians found electoral success in France and Austria. Mob violence motivated by racism in Australia hit headlines worldwide, etc.
In the West, Japan is generally perceived as a pacifistic nation and lauded as such. The Western media expresses alarm at recent rises in outwardly aggressive nationalism and the gathering pace of militarization, which right-minded folk everywhere would agree are Bad Things anywhere. They send troops to Iraq, are planning to revise Article 9, Abe talks of preemptive strikes on North Korea and now Nakasone says they should examine the nuclear option. That peace-loving image ain't going to last long at this rate. The media have a duty to report it and not a few commentators are bound to express indignation. What would pundits say if similar circumstances transpired in Germany?
As for women's lib, there's little doubt that Japan is backward by Scandinavian standards, but let's not get into the cultural relativism thing...
Back to war-mongering, it goes without saying that evil "we" are in no position to take the moral high ground, but Japan has been funding "our" butchery for years, and could be a force for peace on the world stage (i.e. stop "us") if it wasn't run by such a spineless bunch of self-serving idiots.
How much longer
Date: 2006-09-06 03:07 pm (UTC)How much longer until your new album?
-James
In praise of monarchy
Date: 2006-09-06 03:27 pm (UTC)The supposedly odious residents of those two most famous revolutionary-built nations, the U.S. and France, immediately spring to mind, but compare the accommodating Japanese to the abrasive Chinese, the fun-loving Thais to the sharp-elbowed Vietnamese, the carefree Spanish with the exasperating Italians.
I'll leave it to Momus to comment on the Commonwealth.
Re: In praise of monarchy
Date: 2006-09-06 03:29 pm (UTC)Re: How much longer
Date: 2006-09-06 04:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-06 05:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-06 06:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-06 06:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-06 07:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-06 07:30 pm (UTC)Currency
Date: 2006-09-06 07:43 pm (UTC)It is convenient for the Chinese to engage in unspoken ad hominem tu quoque. The military spending is a distraction.
There is perhaps an atavistic thrill for someone English in seeing someone in a position to put their money where their mouth is, tell America to shut up.
That is all it is.
Oh Momus!!
Date: 2006-09-06 08:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-06 08:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-06 09:34 pm (UTC)Very nice post!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-06 09:51 pm (UTC)It's great that there is an heir to the throne. I think that there is nothing wrong with patrilineal inheritance of title, especially since the Japanese people are paying loads of cash to the royal parasites to have them be a nice, little dollhouse family that's cute and impressive to look at. If you're going to let women be empresses, you might as well stop saying you're all about tradition and give the Japanese taxpayers a discount.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-06 09:56 pm (UTC)Sorry for the oversight. How's supper coming along?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-07 01:25 am (UTC)The reason "they" say she is "Harvard-educated" is that she entered as an undergraduate directly from an American high school. I do not believe she actually graduated from Tokyo University. I don't think this is much of a conspiracy. She should be considered however a "kikoku shijo" (帰国子女) - not "really" Japanese in many people's eyes.
As for everything else, I still feel like all your essays are simply requesting us not to talk about the right-wing in Japan. As someone mentioned, I think most journalists are writing articles against the backdrop of Japan being a "pacifist nation" and are genuinely concerned about abolishing the War Constitution to legalize the military. The evil New York Times - daring to criticize Japan! - also spends a lot of time criticizing conservative currents in the United States (although maybe not enough). I'm not sure what you want other than a total abolition of criticism on Japan until the West "cleans up their act." I think we've been waiting for that for the last 2,000 years....
Marxy
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-07 01:45 am (UTC)Growing up in the U.S., one simply does not learn the rules about interaction between the rei and the elected bodies. I am suspicious of power passed by birth. Frankly, I'd rather have corrupt elections; at least, with elections, we can strive to do what best suits the populace. Despite Diebold (and even with Diebold, we have hackers working on that problem, we can do something about it).
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-07 05:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-07 08:48 am (UTC)You're confusing me again. Didn't you say yourself that most Japanese aren't against a female heir to the throne? I.e., have a stance that is opposed to that of creepy xenophoic politicians. And you even linked to Yuki's comments. So are you saying that one should in this case be against the "people and traditional institutions"? And who is this "we" you are always talking about? How exactly does the NYT fit into one "we" with Donald Rumsfeld?
Again you give us a bunch of contradictions, when all you want to say is JAPAN IS MINE!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-07 09:25 am (UTC)1945 was potentially such a year for Japan. But the rulers of the American republic chose to preserve the Japanese monarchy. Why? At the time it was felt that the disappearance of the Hohenzollerns in 1918 had made Germany more ripe for takeover by the Nazis. The House of Savoy hadn't stopped Mussolini's takeover of Italy, so this argument isn't really convincing. Whatever their reasons I think they did the right thing, not simply forcing a replica of US institutions onto a very different society.
It's often noted that many of Europe's monarchies - Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands etc - seem to be more liberal and easy-going than the republics. Is this really true? Finland and Iceland seem just as liberal to me.
One European country which might be happier if history had let it keep its king is Poland. Poles loved Pope John Paul II - even while ignoring his advice about contraceptives - because he was a symbol of the nation who was "above politics" - in other words, a kind of monarch.
In the UK I'm a theoretical republican. But a badly thought out republic could be worse than continued monarchy. The Australians voted to keep the Queen precisely for this reason. Most people don't want an executive president on the French or American model, but they don't want any more of "Tony's Cronies" either. Something like the German president, I suppose.
Re: In praise of monarchy
Date: 2006-09-07 09:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-07 09:45 am (UTC)Is it not possible to be critical of one's own culture and someone else's?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-07 10:07 am (UTC)I doubt, however, that there is a principled stance behind this -- he's mostly just using this rhetorical figure to praise what he likes and put into disrepute what he doesn't.
der.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-07 11:25 pm (UTC)My guess would then be that keeping this symbol of power would have seemed expedient in the creation of the new U.S. backed government.
Curious...
Date: 2006-10-02 04:30 pm (UTC)If you could help me out on this, I'd be sooo happy! ^_^ It just seems that you seem to know a great deal about this stuff.
Maybe it was up in your post, but I only skimmed it, since I don't have time to read it all.
Do you mind if I add you?