Slob oxidized sophistication

[imomus]

Does this Japan consist only of white men and Japanese girls?

They're asking it daily, the anons. And the answer is, by and large, yes. Many of the people I'm meeting here do fall into that pattern. But it's a bigger picture than that.



Take yesterday. Risa and Hisae and I rushed to see the free Lullatone show at Tokyo Midtown. Lullatone, a culturally-productive couple of mukokuseki diasporans, met in Kentucky when Yoshimi was studying there. Shawn wasn't one of those Japan-crazed anime-and-manga kids. Not at all. But he fell for Yoshimi and came to Japan to be with her -- and, more importantly, to produce some kind of third-culture hybrid, a fusion of American and Japanese culture.



At the show there were other permutations, adding up to the same "third culture". Mumbleboy was there with his Japanese wife. Kinya Hanada is already something of a cultural hybrid in himself -- born in Japan, but living most of his life in the US (he's about to move to Portland, after staging a one-man show at hpgrp Gallery in Omotesando -- it opens on June 14th).

After the show half the audience rushed off to Naka-Meguro to see Sawako in concert. She lives in New York now, but I first met her in Tokyo -- she came to my farewell party in 2002 -- and we both contribute vocals to O.LAMM's "Monolith" album. If you followed the Sawako link you'll see photos of her in Central Park by Hikaru Furuhashi, who I've also raved about here. The circles are international in scale, but run very tight.

We missed the Sawako show -- as well as a Digiki birthday lunch where we could have met another Third Cultural figure, Shane Lester of W+K Tokyo Lab -- but bumped into an interesting couple in Muji, a tall fashion co-ordinator from Leeds, Marc, and his girfriend Natsuyo, a yoga instructor.



Marc, Natsuyo, Hisae and I ganged up and walked halfway across Tokyo, from Roppongi to Aoyama through the cemetery, ending up in Cafe Madu, just off the Aoyama Dori.

Marc and I both modelled ourselves, when we were younger, on David Bowie in The Man Who Fell To Earth. We both felt like exotic aliens, mating with the planet's residents. And we both sought out Japan as a place where we could wallow in a satisfying kind of alienation, and maintain some kind of extra-terrestrial feeling, some sense of the glam exoticism both of ourselves and of our surroundings. Marc -- who's been here almost twenty years now -- also turned out to know people I knew in both Tokyo and London; Ally the hypnotist, or my 1980s sleeve designer Thomi Wroblewski.

"I prefer the Japanese diaspora to Japan itself," I declared in my Mukokuseki Diasporans piece about the relaunch of the Japanese edition of Tokion magazine. "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."

"The new Tokion," analyzed misanthropic marketing guru Marxy, "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." This was a program I could 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."



Sure enough, when Hisae and I browsed in ABC we found ourselves in a tiny picture in the May Tokion, snapped not in Japan but at a Yoshitomo Nara opening in Berlin. We also checked out another couple of cultural fusions, the bizarre new marriage cathedral in the middle of Aoyama (which joins the odd Italianate buildings in the Shiosite complex for sheer postmodern perversity)



and the UT store on Meiji Dori, Uniqlo's flagship t-shirt brand, which basically fuses elements from American Apparel, Graniph, Pantone and the LED displays from Cow Books into a t-shirt superstore:



We also saw a bizarre sign, right next to Tadao Ando's architecture studio, announcing "Slob Oxidized Sophistication". I don't know whether it was a bar, a strip joint, or a hot metal shop. But the phrase might just sum up the chemical reaction that fizzes when foreign slobs Japanize.

Comments

[obliterati.livejournal.com]

I bet oxidized refers to "rusty", again with the patina.

[wingedwhale.livejournal.com]

Sometimes people lose perspective. I think the main problem people should have with this situation is the utter lack of Japanese man/Western woman pairings? I suppose it's the same situation as in the US in the 90's when people feared all financially successful black men would marry white women and leave black women all alone to fend for themselves.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think the main problem people should have with this situation is the utter lack of Japanese man/Western woman pairings?

Is that a problem in itself, just because it's asymmetrical? Life and geometry are not the same thing. For instance, some accuse liberals of asymmetrical multiculturalism (http://imomus.livejournal.com/214973.html) -- the idea that ethnic minorities should celebrate their ethnicity while majorities should be guilty about their own. But that exists for a good reason: there's a massive power imbalance between an ethnic minority and an indigenous majority.

To say that symmetry should always exist in human relations is some kind of Procrustean seeing (http://imomus.livejournal.com/194903.html), ne? Asymmetry looks pretty good in Natsuyo's haircut, too.

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

"the utter lack of Japanese man/Western woman pairings?"

see my comment downthread.

[jogs6000.livejournal.com]

In Japan I've seen quite a few Western women with Japanese men. Near my house there is an African woman who is married to a Japanese man, but of course its freakishly common to see white "Loser Back Home" guys with Japanese ladies.

[(Anonymous)]

its freakishly common to see white "Loser Back Home" guys with Japanese ladies

It would be wrong to look at a couple who are happy and see anything other than two people who are lucky to have found each other. But we value those who have a lot of competition for their affections, and we also admire anyone who has managed to beat off the competition, against the odds, and ensnare the partner of their choice. Rightly or wrongly, when I see a Western man with a Japanese woman, I just think "That was a bit too easy for him." For some reason I eye with suspicion those who fall into a relationship without having to battle for it. And particularly - as in the Western man in Japan scenario - when there seems to be an unhealthy imbalance of supply and demand. Of course, this is an absurd generalization, and all present company excepted, but when I'm in Japan and I see a Western man with a Japanese woman, there's just a very small part of my brain that says "sex tourist".

[(Anonymous)]

The circles are international in scale, but run very tight.

The circles are rather incestuous, and we all use aeroplanes a lot.

[(Anonymous)]

Japan is a haven for ugly white guys and hebephiles.
Me, im only interested in the culture :)

[(Anonymous)]

Fair comment ;o)

[mandyrose.livejournal.com]

Mmmm... reminds me of those favorite photos of Yayoi Kusama frolicking in Central Park. But as for us white women such as myself, where do we fit in?

[mandyrose.livejournal.com]

Oops, well, I guess I can answer my own question. I'm very happy with my white husband, and we are Japanophiles... so there's another triangulation of this "3rd culture".

John and Yoko

[(Anonymous)]

It's all so old. Retro thinkers.

Re: John and Yoko

[(Anonymous)]

John Lennon was suuuuuch a sex tourist

sylvian is still my bishie

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

"Does this Japan consist only of white men and Japanese girls?"

They´re getting funnier every day, those anonymice.

Also, by what the internet tells you, Japan should the other way around, what with all the Western gothicloli´s, yaoi fangirls, and cosplayers in online fandoms all clamouring for jpop boys.

It´s the old THERE ARE NO WOMEN ON THE INTERNET, THERE ARE NO MEN IN FANDOM thing I imagine.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"and, more importantly, to produce some kind of third-culture hybrid, a fusion of American and Japanese culture."

I really enjoy a lot of your entries, but sometimes your analytical writings cross the line from intelligent to pretentious to just downright fucking stupid. How has this hipster electronica band created "a hybrid culture" exactly?

The Meiji restoration - An enormous shake up of Japan's social and political structure - created a Japanese-western hybrid culture that still lives today. Lullatone create alternative music and trite cutesy manga inspired imagry to go on their album covers.

Adding sweet and sour sauce to a bacon sandwich is novel and it'll probably taste OK, but dont turn around and tell me your main motivation for doing it was "an attempt to create a Chinese-British hybred culture". Jesus. I cringed so much at that shit it felt like I took a bite of a lemon.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry it's too small for you, but Lullatone do make something hybrid -- something that requires the creative participation of Japanese and Americans, and couldn't come from either side alone. Do you really need something as vast as the Meiji restoration before you'll let someone use the word "hybrid"?

If you think I'm saying Lullatone are the sole originating source of everything hybrid ever, or the beginning of all Japan-West collaboration, you need a crash course in reading comprehension... and some anger management while you're at it! Jeez, the internet!

half-full disclosure

[(Anonymous)]

For the record (not that it can be traced back to meaty me!) I'm the same anonymouse who asked both this entry-prompting question and a couple weeks ago finally realized that you are one of those "third culture kids" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Culture_Kids). I myself am a somewhat self-hating product of postmodern globalized diaspora etc: I'm mixed race (east/west), only child, my various grandparents are literally from the "four corners" of the earth, virtually all my immediate family are deeply estranged from one another (I was not even conceived within a "relationship"), and I live in a nation of immigrants in which I do not feel at home vis a vis the mass (western) culture I grew up in. So I maintain a fragile peace accord with your orientation toward the world that often inspires censure.

[(Anonymous)]

What's the difference between art produced by the "diaspora" and art produced by Japanese people living in Japan but inevitably exposed to and influenced by Western culture? Aren't all artists in the globalized age hybridizing even if no physical collaboration with gaijin is involved? I guess what I'm trying to say is, is it accurate to elevate the world of white men and Japanese girls above the normal mainstream Japan?

Also, I know you generally don't think highly of novelists, but what's your opinion of David Mitchell and Haruki Murakami? They're also diaspora artists by your definition, aren't they?

[(Anonymous)]

oh come on now, we don't want your attempt at objectivised common sense to get in the way of hubristic subjective hyperbole.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Early socialization counts for a lot. People who've been socialized in Japan -- who spent their childhood and adolescence here -- have a different habitus from people who spent their childhood in the West. Different habits, norms, ways of seeing, feeling, thinking, being.

When the two groups collaborate, something emerges which is hybrid on a different level than the sort of global cultural hybrid represented by, say, Disney's Tokyo resort. A Lullatone record contains the personal input of two people from two cultures. Disneyland is a global product that retains a strong monocultural identity wherever it is. There's no negotiation with Mickey Mouse! He's already patented! He doesn't change!

I haven't read David Mitchell or Haruki Murakami. I'm made a little suspicious by HK's success in the West. I've read Ryu Murakami (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryu_Murakami), and wondered why Western people never rave about him. Too "domestic"?

the hybrid one

[(Anonymous)]

that show I mentioned is actually both me and e*rock.
we'll be working on the show starting on the 11th, so if you're still around, please drop by!

-Kinya

[(Anonymous)]

Why does it seem that when a Japanese girl collaborates with non-Japanese in a music project, she seems to ends up being the singer? And they all seem to have similar identical vocal mannerisms.

Lullatone:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt66avmL0vk

Enon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDJlo9XwnJw

Deerhoof:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZop8QFv1xU

Asobi Seksu:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8paDhfGQH4E

Blonde Redhead:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7FqUNlEdwA

The only alternative appears to be to channel Yoko Ono via the Frank Chickens:

Mu:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_5mhO3PeA0

[(Anonymous)]

Whabout Kahimi Karie!

[(Anonymous)]

For what it's worth:

http://www.slob.co.jp/

[britpoptarts.livejournal.com]

Engrish + Jenny Holzer + commercialism = fascinating.