Every photo you've ever taken with a Japanese camera is Japanese

[imomus]

Made in Japan is an essay by Gary McLeod (a student at Camberwell School of Art currently living in Tokyo) on the TAB site which poses an outrageously provocative question: are digital photographs inherently Japanese? McLeod thinks they are, and while his arguments are somewhat ridiculous, I do think his modest proposal leads us into a fascinating parallel world.

McLeod starts off with something Donald Keene wrote in 1971: "It seems safe to say that the aesthetic ideals which have formed Japanese taste over the centuries will find their outlet in media yet undiscovered and maintain their distinctive existence."

Now, that's a fairly straightforward idea. It simply says that Japanese national distinctiveness is not confined to the past, but will keep expressing itself via new technologies. Applied to digital photography, Keene's idea could be expressed: "Digital photography in Japan is, and will continue to be, distinctively Japanese." Nothing too shocking there.

But McLeod takes this much, much further when he suggests that digital photography, as a technology, integrates specifically Japanese aesthetics. Therefore, digital photography wherever it is practiced worldwide is inherently Japanese.

Now, that's a radical idea. It means that whenever you take a photograph with your digital camera, you're making, in some sense, a Japanese image, whether you're in Japan or not, and whether or not you've been influenced by Japanese aesthetics and are consciously thinking about Japanese ways of seeing. There's something in the mechanism itself which leads to -- excuse the pun -- Japan-eyes-ation.

What this "something" is, McLeod tells us in the least convincing part of his thesis, is two Japanese sensibilities, yûgen (a kind of strategic nebulousness or vague essentialism) and aware (the sigh-ness of things, perishability). McLeod admits that Sony got the CCD (Charge Coupled Device) technology which underlies digital photography from AT&T Bell Labs in the 1970s, but then attempts to say that this appropriation itself is characteristically Japanese (a logic which conveniently but confusingly makes everything non-Japanese Japanese!), and then tells us that CCD arrays have yûgen because there's a gap or flattening between the curves seen in the real world and the stepped straight lines of digital representation, and have aware because (and this really takes the biscuit!) your hard disk might crash and you might lose your snaps.

Now, this argument is, to say the very least, unconvincing. But the parallel world it opens up is very interesting. I think, for a start, that the world in which we're Japanizing (or Japan-eyes-ing) when we use our digital cameras is no more ridiculous than the world in which we're assumed to be Westernizing (or Western-eyes-ing) when we use modern technology. And although most of us would dismiss McLeod's thesis about the imagery from digital cameras being inherently Japanese, we all too often give a free pass to cultural commentary which suggests, for instance, that Chinese who drive cars are somehow more "Westernized" than Chinese who ride around in rickshaws, even when the cars involved aren't Western ones.

In other words, McLeod's nihonjinron argument flushes out, usefully, a series of Westernjinron assumptions that often fly below the bullshit radar. Modernization and Westernization are not, as we never tire of saying here at Click Opera, the same thing. The West's avant garde has often resembled the East's antiquity, our periodic "modern" rediscoveries of our mojo-libido (in the 1920s and 1970s, for instance) are frequently outstripped by Asian versions, and even our modern plumbing achievements have been leapfrogged!

What I do find quite persuasive is looking at my own formation in the West through the eyes of McLeod's thesis. I'm a media man, profoundly influenced by the ways electronic media mediate our experiences. Just about all the music I've listened to has come to me via Japanese-made devices, from the Sony "cigar box" radio I heard the kabuki-clad (and Kansai Yamamoto-styled) David Bowie singing on in the early 70s through the National Panasonic music centre which pumped out postpunk later in the decade to the Sony CD player I bought in 1990. When I came to make music -- and long before I made music specifically for the Japanese market -- I used almost exclusively Japanese technology. Kawai and Roland and Technics synths, for instance.

My flirtations with motorbikes and cameras were also mostly Japanese-themed: the cameras I lusted after were, in the chemical age, Pentax, Nikon and Olympus models. In the digital age they've been mostly Fujis. I have lived in an age dominated by Japanese electronic goods (in all areas except computers, where I've bought American). The idea that there might have been something inherently Japanese in the music I made with Japanese synths, for instance, doesn't strike me as too outlandish. After all, even if McLeod's arguments about CCD arrays and mono-no-aware are ultimately unconvincing, I do find a lot of truth in McLuhan's idea that the medium is the message.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

theres something that bugs me about that note you keep hitting... about how the future is the past is the future and all that.
I don't for one second think that many people believe that art and fashion are one a one way trip down the chronoban. In the macro-political scheme, it seems hardly worth mentioning that something in an art-type field is similar to or based on another, older thing.

Now if only Japan could be inspired by 1990's Japan like the rest of us.

Nate

[akabe.livejournal.com]

it's beyond doubt that japanese technology , economics and innovation (of sorts) at one point have not only competed against and won but irreversably altered and japanized say, german cameras, french bicycles , american cars but at this point i think we can say that a japanese camera or bycicle etc is itself rather taiwan-ized or whatever.

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

THE EAST

[(Anonymous)]

You must be busy coz ... shitty entry.

Alex P.

[dzima.livejournal.com]

It seems a bit of a stretch to claim that digital photography is inherently Japanese though I still think your pictures look a bit flat and unflattering to their subjects (specially Hisae).

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

This theory is somewhat shaky logically.

When I look at a Taiko, I think "this is Japanese" because it has been culturally established as a Japanese invention and is used predominantly by the Japanese. When I look at technology like computers, synths, mobile phones, personal stereos; I don't see a particular dominant culture it's associated with because these inventions are part of the global age.

If anything, practically all "modern" things are associated with the west, fairly or unfairly. Japan wouldn't be the modern powerhouse today if it hadn't westernised. China is slowly becoming more powerful because it's becoming more and more Capitalistic in its approach. Modernity is in today's society associated with the west.

I believe as the world becomes more globalised and international, and cultural lines become more blurred, you'll see "indigenous culture" become little more than a caricature of what it used to be when it was isolated from the world. It'll be much like when amusement parks try to create "themes" around their rides. This is something we see in Japan, even today. I believe the real future is a future free of isolated nationalist identity.

[(Anonymous)]

Computer operating systems = clearest example of the medium being the nationalist message. Whatever language you use them in, they always somehow feel American.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

fairly or unfairly... Modernity is in today's society associated with the west.

It's the "unfairly" bit that interests me, because I think this assumption has long ago been overtaken by events, and I don't hear enough people trying to decouple modernity from the West.

I also see a contradiction in your position -- you seem very pro-globalist, yet reluctant to decouple globalism from regional affiliations (in this case, with the western hemisphere). You can't have it both ways.

[(Anonymous)]

I think it makes sense to say that "modernity" is a Western phenomenon, which is not to say there weren't similar things happening in the East parallel to or prior to what we consider the "modern" age. After all, it fits into and defines itself against a specifically Western chronology of pre-Modern/Modern/postmodern etc., and the reference points are Western: Enlightenment, French Revolution, secularisation, industrialisation, universalisation, etc. etc. In fact, why borrow a specifically Western framing device to talk about the East? That seems like quite an un-Momus project!

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

technology, politics, fashion, etc. -- it's all very global nowadays.

The west still dominates modern culture, but it's hardly the heart and core of modernity. Only the most reductive of thinkers take the "West = Modern" meme at face value. I'm not gonna sit here and repeat the same old cliches about globalisation such as "I can buy sushi in Tesco's now, it's just as popular as the sandwiches apparently", it's more complicated than those examples.

Just because I believe we will become more globalised in our identities doesn't mean I'm pro-globalisation in every sense. It's a complex issue. I still believe in politics being regional and having relevance to local people. I can be a Londoner, an Englishman, a Briton, A European and a member of the world. I don't see how these automatically conflict.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Okay, Ralf, is this woman better or worse looking than my picture of her?



Warning: it's a trick question.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You use the language your readers use, in general.

But in future I will say that there is a Long March towards modernity!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Do you think you could be Japanese if you wanted to? It's a serious question.

And the follow-up question: would being Japanese (assuming you could achieve it in some way) make you more modern than being British?

I think I'd personally answer that: No, I can never be Japanese. But if I could, yes, I would be more modern than I am as a British person. That's tied up with my first -- and abiding -- impression of Tokyo as a city which has embraced modernity more wholeheartedly than London seems to have done.

[dzima.livejournal.com]

I think you love being racist to your own race.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, my point wasn't merely one of vocabulary! The concept of "modernity" embodies an ideology, a set of ideas, its own parameters, etc. If you really want to escape Western ideological colonialism, then why do you want to claim "modernity" for the East? Sure, there are plenty of things that we associate with modernity that were happening in the East a long time before. But is it right or interesting to claim that China was being "modern" because it invented the printing press before the West? The contexts were so different.

Of course, if all you mean by "modern" is technological advance, then it's different.

[(Anonymous)]

What do you mean by "modern" here?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh, spanking new buildings, escalators and elevators, hi-tech gadgets, people immersed in electronic space, the blaze of neon lights -- the whole rush of contemporariness which greeted me when I first got the NaritaExpress into The Metropolis -- a place far closer to Fritz Lang's visions than Dickensian London could ever be.

[(Anonymous)]

What with climate change and the energy crisis, tomorrow's cities are probably going to look a whole lot more Dickens than 1920s sci-fi fantasy!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think modernity is a collective effort (and it would be quite possible to include all colonised nations as part of the enterprise), but that western hubris has, for a couple of centuries, assumed it was its own. I think that hubris is now passing to the east. Modernity, for a while, is theirs. It's a bit like the European Union's rotating chair system (France is about to take over the chair as we speak).

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, but had Fritz Lang been to Funland at the Trocadero? Methinks not.

[akabe.livejournal.com]

just as well you didn't focus on the 'narita beige' (it's enough to make one want to take the first plane back home) otherwise your life might have taken a completely different turn.

[akabe.livejournal.com]

this really hits the nail on the head. modernity couldn't have happened without the colonies.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think she looks great, but I'm wondering how you'd judge how photogenic she is if my picture is the only way you've seen her, that's all.

pics speak louder ...

[(Anonymous)]

Re: pics speak louder ...

[(Anonymous)]

that didn't show up as intended:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Boyle

meanings exist beyond

[pay-option07.livejournal.com]

McLeod went too far for me. There are relevant characteristics in products created by companies in different countries. Pointing to a nations identity as a characteristic
in there world wide products is bordering on a whiter shade of pale.

[dzima.livejournal.com]

Keep on playing those mind games...

I think the photograph presentation does affect the subject (this photos features a distracting car hatch, random windows, disjointed colours and lines in the background, bland composition and general flat lighting/contrast) so I'd probably not pay much attention to her as she deserved.

Which reminds me, the other day I witnessed the presence of a most stylish Japanese senior. His clothes were perfect mixture of old school French gentleman with traditional Japanese style garments. I wish I had a camera on me at the time. Better to have a flat picture than no picture at all.

[(Anonymous)]

Which Japanese invented the camera again?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I actually like very flat, face-on compositions. I think it's the graphic designer in me, or the collector (I like very standard format pictures which build into comparative sequences), or it may well relate to Japanese aesthetics, or the flattening effect of seeing the world through just one eye. Probably all of the above.

[sam-ayres.livejournal.com]

To me now, the medium isn't the message. The message is the message.

Unless your music is only important because you use Japanese synths? McLuhan's ideas were formed before the luxury brand culture of the 80s - where we DO judge a book by it's cover. Which is fine but not when it is greater value than the content.

Technology to me feels neither Western nor Eastern. Brands create cultural differences. The only response to your idea would be Buddist koan Mu!

"For example, it's stated over and over again that computer circuits exhibit only two states, a voltage for "one" and a voltage for "zero". That's silly!

Any computer-electronics technician knows otherwise. Try to find a voltage representing one or zero when the power is off! The circuits are in a mu-state."

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

Amaterasu

[(Anonymous)]

Dear Imomus,

Thank you for taking the time to read through and write about my discussion paper "Made in Japan". Your thoughts regarding what the west still considers to be "westernization" are useful and I sense, even support the notion that the occidental/oriental relationship is still very much alive. Globalization ultimately finds it difficult to flush away the relationship between this person and that person's "other". Is it always about "us" and "them"?

With regards to my theory, and this has been a common response, there is a tendency for people to overreact to it. It is interesting how in suggesting something is one thing, the first thing people tend to do is immediately say that it isn't that. Such a reaction is just, if there was malicious intent in the appropriation of CCDs etc, but I don't believe that there was. I'm not convinced that Japanese culture is naturally invasive, although many people in Europe and America would argue that plants such as Japanese Knottweed (Itadori) are.

I'm also not saying that every picture someone takes is completely Japanese, but rather some part of it is Japanese, even if only 1%. Obviously, how Japanese a picture is depends on the photographer's ability to infuse their perspective into their image (an act easier said than done) but I feel the whole approach would differ little to, say, a european printmaker using Japanese paper to compliment and suport his printed images. An artist should always be considerate of the materials they use and its in this respect, where I am drawing attention to the Japanese aesthetics that can be viewed in the technology of digital photography.

In a sense, I am suggesting that anyone has the potential to become an artist (or look through artist's eyes) through consideration of their medium, and given how common these digital cameras are, is it unfair to prompt people in the direction of a set of aesthetics that they might not have previously thought about? Although, admittedly, such a theory might never reach the audience it is intended for.

I have heard a lot of "so, my TV could be spanish because it was made there?" or "is my starbucks mug therefore Korean?" and as was recently pointed out to me, perhaps whilst sitting on my ikea chair, my writing is being influenced by swedish culture? Arguably, this is true, but the chair or the mug aren't so synonymous with a process of looking, or overlooked, as is the case with digital photography, and that is ultimately what prompted me to write the paper in the first place.

Regards

Gary McLeod

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ah, good to hear from you, Gary!

I think every technology has an etiquette built in -- an etiquette or a habitus or a set of assumptions about how and why it's going to be used. This etiquette is designed in (for instance, the red light on the front of a video camera that politely informs people they're being recorded -- what is that but an etiquette?) but also elaborated in the Manual.

And now I'm trying to imagine (it could be a nice art project) a digital camera manual with some added chapters on Japanese aesthetics, in all the languages of the world. Things like "try to make parallel lines remain parallel rather than converge as they travel into the distance" and "shoot scenes looking down from a 45 degree elevation" and "denote important figures in your photograph by showing a small golden cloud floating above them".

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Kitsune Talbot?

[(Anonymous)]

Wouldn't hurt to add something to that manual like "Always ask someone politely if they wish to have their picture taken" or "please remember that although your camera is not a gun, do at least be careful who you shoot". Surprised they are never in the manuals.

Gary

March towards modernity!

[pay-option07.livejournal.com]

The Pacific rim lacks Galileo-esque
disgrace or indignities.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

To answer your question: "Do you think you could be Japanese if you wanted to?"

Depends on your definition of Japanese. I could officially become a citizen of Japan if I wanted to emigrate, and I could assimilate to the extreme by leaving behind every aspect of my Britishness (which wouldnt even be that objectionable to me) but I would always be the green-eyed English gaikokujin to the people there... I can't escape that in Japan.

Japan isn't like Britain. In Britain, if you assimilate into the native culture totally, the vast majority of people will accept you as British. It's when foreigners start wearing foreign traditional dress and worship foreign gods and speak foreign languages that some of the British start to notice (and fear) "otherness".


In Japan, If you're not part of the Yamatos or the Ryukyuans, you will always be on the "outside", even if you assimulate totally. Even the Ainu, which are native to Japan, have an otherness about them in Japan. "Pure blood" is a much bigger concept to the Japanese I believe, where as in Britain we just want people to be secular/softcore religious, speak English, and watch footy on the weekend down at the pub to be "one of us".

[fishwithissues.livejournal.com]

i got a similar sense when we were shooting on a RED camera, and realized it was the first piece of American video equipment I'd ever seen or used. The thing looks like Xbox, but it shoots like a dream. There's something bold and scary about the aesthetic and rhetoric of the designers/fans of that camera... they talk in no uncertain terms about KILLING the competition with their superior megapixels. There's even a RED RAY coming out that's supposed to slay BLUE RAY. Maybe I'll make a WHITE RAY and we can all see some stars.

[fishwithissues.livejournal.com]

and their website is a nerd-jock snarkfest:


^this is called "lol.png"

[akabe.livejournal.com]

the car and random windows in the background only shed more light on the subject and enhance the composition which , yes, might owe a bit to the fathers of japanese photography, lee freelander, william eggleston and diane arbus.

[akabe.livejournal.com]

but then until the day bulgaria proprerly takes the chair we can say the eu is just a slightly updated version of good old 19thC colonialism and the arguement does a 180.

[akabe.livejournal.com]

that's something people alway like to exagerate. i can assure you, even with your bear-ish looks, if you got the language and more importantly your timing and response paterns just right (a pretty damn impossible thing to do i'd say if you havn't grown up here) you'd be fine, in fact you'd be mistaken for a japanese once you got involved. yamato blood my ass, it's communication patterns.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

Hm... I'm not so sure. I dont think Japan is enough of a melting pot for it to be on par with the US and the UK in regards to accepting someone of foreign origin as "Japanese". I still think theres very much an us and them view in the hearts of minds of the Japanese, but I could be wrong.

[akabe.livejournal.com]

>you'd be mistaken for a japanese

i kind of put this wrong it's not about being 'mistaken for' but about being treated as a normal (ie. japanese) person.

that mask doesn't really refer to non-yamato damashi people living in japan but rather to the semi-mythical , type that is known to possibly have taught english in the now defunct english schools or done 'bussiness with the japanese' during the bubble etc in the day then hang out in areas like roppongi at night. etc
if you looked in donki or wherever this picture was taken you'll see that it's part of a huge taxonomical range with types and subtypes none of them either more or less offensive than this one.

tokyo is actually quite a melting pot and fundamentally speaking can compare with london - large communities from the ex-colonies etc on one end, then the fear of the savage continental (east european/ gipsy etc ) on the other

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

I've heard it claimed that the Walkman was a uniquely Japanese modern invention; it would have been less likely that, say, an American would have come up with the idea because there is something very Japanese about creating a virtual area of personal space in a crowded communal area. Then again, I've wondered whether, had the Japanese not come up with it, the English (another negative-politeness culture on a crowded island) would not have.

[eclectiktronik.livejournal.com]

is that reel to reel deck on the bookshelf a Uher, by any chance? (in the pic of Hisae)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

No, it's a Tesla!

[farblust.livejournal.com]

Do you watch football yourself? If you don't watch football how do you escape that pattern?