Mukokuseki diasporans
Sep. 20th, 2006 07:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomus
Mukokuseki: the Japanese word for "without nationality".Diaspora: an ex-patriated or exiled population, spread through the world.
Marxy has an interesting piece up just now on the new Japanese Tokion. It's very much an insider's perspective, since Marxy was once an editor at the American Tokion. He runs through the confusingly complicated permutations of the magazine's various owners, editions and editors on two continents (this new Tokion is the Japanese one, and is now owned by INFAS, who publish my favourite Japanese magazine, Studio Voice).
Marxy concludes: "The new Tokion is not so much about this messianistic mission of exporting Japanese cool, but looking at the local culture arising from the contemporary mix between foreigners and Japanese."
Now, this is a program I can get behind. While I'm very much into exporting Japanese cool, I do think a goodly amount of it is created by the Japanese who've left Japan to study abroad, and who've miscegenated, culturally and biologically, with foreigners, as well as by foreigners who've been drawn to Japan, "Japanizing" themselves in the process. Sure, I love the pure stuff too, but I'm definitely into bastard chic.
This celebration of the mukokuseki chimes with something I said the other day on Click Opera, when talking about Donald Richie's long and lonely Tokyo exile. Anon commented: "It's not that you want to live in Japan but can't afford to. You actually don't want to live there, only visit once a year. Just like people who live in England but who like to visit France once a year, to eat nice cheese and practise their rusty French. And on top of that, you actually find the intellectual climate there frustrating, and anything but invigorating."
I responded: "I'd say it's more like preferring "the Japanese diaspora" to Japan itself. The Japanese diaspora is multi-culti, and contains many of the most creative Japanese people as well as those foreigners who love Japan. It contains the best of both worlds, and leaves all that's provincial and stifling in both the West and Japan behind."It seems to be very much this "Japanese diaspora" that the new Tokion will concentrate on. Issue 2 will focus on Tokyo-based Japanese-French couple Yoshi and Audrey, who run cool music / fashion magazine OK Fred, and in many ways they're typical Jap-diasporans, collaborating across racial boundaries, as post-national as Shibuya-kei seemed to be back in the day.
Marxy has some well-founded doubts, though: "My only concern is whether "we foreign Tokyo residents" are actually so interesting or dynamic to warrant such coverage. Tokion Japan does not ignore Japanese creators to solely focus on the ex-pat fashion world, but the latter may end up providing a baseline view of the "glocal" culture... The success of Tokion Japan will eventually depend upon how interesting Tokyo inter-racial, inter-national "glocal" culture actually is."I think that's the key question, and a very interesting one. Nowhere more than in the style press does the question of "who's interesting, who's dull" feature so centrally. It's all about "who's hot, who's not", and "who's in, who's out of the clique". It's also "who has the right to decide these things", and on the answer to that hangs a self-appointed would-be style authority's success or failure.
There's no doubt that the mukokuseki creators being spotlit in the new Tokion's features have the necessary self-confidence. Last week, for instance, Audrey Fondecave ruffled a few feathers by telling Martin Webb of Japan Times that "when we take our daughter Liliyo to parties, like the opening of an exhibition or shop, and it’s full of people that are unbelievably dull, I see some of them really change when looking at Liliyo’s smile."
This prompted one "Fletcher" to comment (on Jean Snow's blog): "This woman comes across as somewhat pleased with herself in a less-than-modest way... Audrey ...you and your family are among the Beautiful People. Gag me." (I responded by citing a much nicer quote in which Audrey said Tokyo had made her "a better, more tolerant person".)But it's not enough for we diasporans to be confident, bold and narcissistic, or to bring sunshine into a grey, racially monolithic world with our mukokuseki children. We need an audience, darling, and they must not only be dull, but see themselves as dull before they'll shut up and pay attention to us, or smile back at our gurgling, gurning trans-national babies.
The thing is, it's by no means certain that Japan in 2006 is the right place to find such an audience. Recently the Japanese, once in thrall to all things foreign, seem to have discovered a self-satisfaction worryingly congruous with our own. It's not just evident in Shinzo Abe's "Make Japan proud!" slogan; it runs throughout the whole culture. Switch on TV and it's very hard to find anything non-Japanese at all. The archipelago curves towards itself in an arc of narcissism.
In this climate, a magazine like the new Tokion may have to content itself with a pretty small audience. How many mukokuseki diasporans are there in Tokyo, anyway, to read in Japanese about people pretty much like themselves? And how much disposable income do they have, after their Tokyo rents get paid?
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-20 06:59 am (UTC)How much of this do you think is due to the increasingly conservative nature of the world's major economic powers? There seems to be a doubling going on here: insularity bred by nationalistic pride (in the US, at least), and insularity bred by the fear of the "global monoculture" of late-capitalism. The latter seems like a...I won't say healthy, but "understandably reactionary" response to the increasingly homogenous nature of life and commerce in "The New American Century," while the former portends, well, nothing good for any of the players involved.
German neo-Nazis, American neo-cons, Swedish conservatives, "Make Japan proud!"...this is reaching a crisis point, methinks.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-20 08:48 am (UTC)I feel there will be a good shot of that in the art world at the Mori next week too. I'm betting the odds that after his ouster this month, David Elliott's replacement will be someone far closer to home and more in tune with the mythical japan of contemporary nihonga.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-20 08:57 am (UTC)It would be interesting if Mizuma (http://www.mizuma-art.co.jp/news_e.html) got the job, he's got quite a roster of Neo-Narcissists.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-20 09:03 am (UTC)"The announcement of his successor -- Fumio Nanjo, the museum’s deputy director, is thought to be a shoo-in by some -- is expected by the end of the month. Elliott had a five-year contract that is not being renewed."
Fumio Nanjo has just curated the Singapore Biennial (http://www.artsingapore.org/) with the assistance of Roger McDonald of AIT / Tactical (http://rogermc.blogs.com/tactical/), an online ally of mine, so I'm rather pleased at this development.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-20 09:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-20 09:12 am (UTC)Africa Remix was pretty fantastic I thought, an mind-opening exhibition to be sure.
Mizuma would be great, but I would say the good money is on Fumio Nanjo or Fram Kitagawa. But I am hoping its a surprise.
And its struck a chord with me, as does your post today about a sense of loss I have been having in JApan these days. The global vision? yeah I guess its being lost... Even the korean dramas dont shine so bright these days do they?Sorry I can't post links not usually a LiveJournal user...just enjoy your blog.
thinking about this in the context as an immigrant
Date: 2006-09-20 09:17 am (UTC)Re: thinking about this in the context as an immigrant
Date: 2006-09-20 09:29 am (UTC)Re: thinking about this in the context as an immigrant
Date: 2006-09-20 10:05 am (UTC)well sure if I lived in the UK
Date: 2006-09-20 11:09 am (UTC)But don't you get it? That's exactly why its harder, a protected job market within Sweden when it comes to areas of Culture. The KAF (Kulturarbetsförmildingen) web site I am not allowed to be a part of has a huge data base which promotes visual artists of all kinds and has enough memory to upload video, and all out of my access! But yet I understand, they have to protect the market from the "exotic" influence such as myself.. as we are far too strange and interesting..
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-20 09:45 am (UTC)I have to disagree, insofar as there's currently a strong Japanese obsession with Korean popular culture right now (dramas, variety shows, music, food, etc.). To an outsider, it may not look like imported foreign culture, but it definitely is.
Perhaps it's a sign that Japan is re-asserting its Asian-ness. The foreign influences the Japanese are choosing to absorb these days, perhaps, are from their neighbors.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-20 12:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-20 01:45 pm (UTC)But we can relax, because when we go back and read history, we realize that the Greeks and Romans faced all the same issues that we do now.
A country shifts a little left, a country shifts a little right. A culture looks outward for a little while, then looks inward, then repeats. The pendulum swings back and forth, and has an equlibrium effect.
National boundaries are not going to disappear in our lifetimes. Utopia cannot be achieved by adopting socialism or any other revolutionary doctrine fashionable among half-educated college-aged kids with lots of time on their hands. One president or PM doesn't have the power to destroy a country or turn it into a paradise. Whether you know it or not, by clamoring to set up one-size-fits-all unifying bodies like the EU, you are helping to further advance the monoculture of McDonalds, Toyota and khaki pants. National "self-satisfaction" helps preserve cultural difference. Balance is the key. Paradoxically, a group of people who are frightened into respecting "diversity" over everything else end up becoming bland and homogenized, unified only by the consumer culture they share.
-henryperri
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-20 02:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-20 03:53 pm (UTC)"For those of us hoping to create Utopia here on Earth in the next 15-20 years, each right wing politician elected seems like another death blow."
You make a good point in general. It's amazing how terrified people are of George W. Bush, mostly out of their own bigotry & incredible cowardice, instead of pertaining to actual reality. Things have never been better for Beckler, & the Beckling is good! Ultimately, my feeling is that one must continue to persevere with one's plan regardless of the political climate.
Jewpanese?
Date: 2006-09-20 03:49 pm (UTC)Re: Jewpanese?
Date: 2006-09-20 04:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-20 04:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-21 02:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-21 02:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-21 02:26 am (UTC)I was in Berlin a few weeks ago. My girlfriend took me to the Ampelmann shop, but I found it hard to get excited about a crossing lamp.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-21 04:05 am (UTC)Audrey Quote, Tokion
Date: 2006-09-25 08:25 pm (UTC)That quote from Audrey should have read "when we take our daughter Liliyo to parties... and it’s full of people that look unbelievably bored," rather than "...unbelievably dull."
I was leaving for London soon after it went to press, so the piece got slapped onto the page in quite a hurry and that editing glitch ended up going to print. My bad.
Audrey is being misrepresented: I didn't catch the slightest whiff of arrogance from anything she said in the interview.
Anyway, what a fascinating few days in the Tokyo-centric blogosphere I've been missing out on whilst on the shores of Great Britain.
And oh, how monocultural Tokyo seems when compared to London - endless material for a magazine about cool immigrants there. Tokion, though, seems likely to run out of cool collaborators pretty soon.
Whether Tokyo suppresses the creativity of its denizens or whether, as supposedly is the case in Sweden, the system prevents outsiders from competing on a level playing field remains to be seen. It is certainly not an attractive environment for international creators to base themselves in, though, principally due to its marginality on the global creative scene as a result of linguistic and geographical handicaps.
In fashion, at least, you've got high-profile Tokyo-based gaijin like Sonya Park, AVGVST, Han Ahn Soon, Yab Yum, Christopher Nemeth and Patrick Stephane.
But are there any Tokion-worthy gaijin in other fields?
I hear there are a couple of decent musicians about, but there certainly aren't any cool writers, apart from Marxy, of course...
Will they feature Japanese people engaged in creative pursuits overseas? Do creators who've spent a couple of years at a foreign college count as mukokuseki?
I perceive a continued interest in things foreign, and especially Japanese bicultural, among Japanese media consumers. Look at the popularity of Anna Tsuchiya and model Jessica, for instance. Mass circulation men's fashion magazines Men's Non-no and Popeye feature almost exclusively half-Japanese models. Top-seller LEON has bilingual Italian Girolamo Panzetta on its cover every month.
As one of the diasporans at whom it is targeted, I'm very excited about the Tokion project. Let's hope that it does strike a chord with the public.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-05 02:48 am (UTC)"In the post-year 2000 New York City, the notion of the artist-driven metropolis has slowly given way to the rising tide of the corporate imperative...While some local artists continue to stick it out...a startlingly large number of artists have opted to move out of the country to cities supposedly more friendly to cost-of-living concerns...Japan has emerged as a newly attractive locale in which to feed one’s artistic muse while managing to get in three square meals-a-day and keep a roof over one’s head".
http://www.nypress.com/19/40/news&columns/feature.cfm
Mulboyne