Slob oxidized sophistication
May. 28th, 2007 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusDoes 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.
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.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-28 02:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-28 03:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-28 03:18 am (UTC)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.
Slob Oxidised Race/Age
Date: 2007-05-28 03:32 am (UTC)It also seems Nobuyoshi Araki is the only artist I've seen with grey hair, and he is quite oxidized.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-28 03:33 am (UTC)Re: Slob Oxidised Race/Age
Date: 2007-05-28 04:20 am (UTC)I noticed quite a few Japanese women advertising their interest in African-American males in the personal ads in Metropolis.If that doesn't answer your question, maybe this does:
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-28 05:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-28 07:35 am (UTC)The circles are rather incestuous, and we all use aeroplanes a lot.
Re: Slob Oxidised Race/Age
Date: 2007-05-28 07:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-28 07:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-28 08:07 am (UTC)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".
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-28 09:24 am (UTC)Really, it's all just stupid racism isn't it? I'm also guilty for at least thinking it, judging people by their race and looks.
So, that's all a bit shit then.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-28 11:32 am (UTC)Me, im only interested in the culture :)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-28 11:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-28 12:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-28 12:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-28 01:33 pm (UTC)John and Yoko
Date: 2007-05-28 02:36 pm (UTC)sylvian is still my bishie
Date: 2007-05-28 04:04 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-28 04:06 pm (UTC)see my comment downthread.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-28 04:47 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-28 05:20 pm (UTC)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!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-28 06:05 pm (UTC)(Does their sweat really smell like sour milk, or was the one I sniffed sick?) ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-28 08:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-28 09:47 pm (UTC)My qualm isnt with the word hybrid.
Californian rolls with cream cheese and red peppers and all that jazz are an American-japanese fusion/hybrid cuisine. its a hybrid. its lunch.
The creation of hybrid culture requires something with a little more weight than a few albums by a fringe act practically nobody has heard of.
"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"
You said "to produce some kind of third-culture hybrid"... "some kind" implying "unknown/unfamiliar/new" as opposed to "contributing to". My reading comprehension is perfectly fine.
Part of what irked me about this entry was the way you made sure to distance Shawn of Lullatone from the anime & manga fanboy stereotype associated with most young white guys who move to Japan with a Japanese girlfriend. I found it a little disparaging being a fan of anime and manga myself. And then to over-inflate their merits in an attempt to further distance them (and your taste in bands) from the stigma of being a fan of Japanese pop culture... it just bugged me.