Is your daily paper transvaluing values?

[imomus]

As 2009 dawned, I found myself rearranging my newspaper bookmarks. The website of UK newspaper The Guardian has been my main -- almost exclusive -- newspaper site for years; I hit the front page several times a day. But this year, for various reasons, I've felt the need to see whether I can replace The Guardian with something else. I turned to two rather odd newspapers, The International Herald Tribune and the Japan Times.



These papers are odd because they're, in some way, parachuted into the cities they're based in, Paris and Tokyo. They're both English-language papers in non-English-speaking capitals, and there's a blurriness and precariousness in their identity which I find, actually, very valuable, and which matches something in my own. I also like a certain quietness and restraint in their manner. Until fairly recently, the culture section of the Japan Times, for instance, was dominated by a column on yakimono pottery.

The International Herald Tribune (the only newspaper I've ever heard David Bowie endorse, incidentally) may speak English, but its outlook is cosmopolitan. It's linked with Monocle magazine and The New York Times. But it also covers Paris rather well; there's an interesting video story today (very much in the style of the video reports on the Monocle site) about the progress of new Paris art centre Le CentQuatre. The lead story on the paper's front page this morning was a style story: In the lap of luxury, Paris squirms. The focus was on how the recession is impacting luxury fashion brands, but I liked the way writer Elaine Sciolino presented this: "The recession brings anxiety to France but also a welcomed values debate on the French way of life."

"Only in France is the recession lauded for posing a crisis in values," writes Sciolino. "There is... an underlying satisfaction here that an era of sometimes vulgar high living is over and that a more bedrock French way of life will emerge. Some French intellectuals want to go much further, calling for the death of the entire luxury industry as a sort of national ritual of purification. "Since the ancient Greeks, luxury goods have always been stamped with the seal of immorality," said Gilles Lipovetsky, a sociologist who has written several books about consumerism. "They represent waste, the superficial, the inequality of wealth. They have no need to exist."

This is a post-materialist message, and it's something I don't find much of in the Anglo papers, even The Guardian. On the front page of The Guardian today we had Dan Black, one of the paper's music tips for 2009 -- a somewhat annoying young man who sounds like an estate agent doing karaoke versions of Britney Spears numbers -- telling the paper that in ten years time "I'll either be swimming in a swimming pool full of champagne and diamonds or crying in a gutter trying to get ten pounds to buy a bag of skag." Black, like Britain, is still oriented to America, to consumerism as a selfish "guilty pleasure", to money-as-drugs, to bling. His vision of his future in Britain is a parody of a high Gini coefficient; he'll either be massively wealthy or homeless.

The cultural coverage in the Japan Times is much more to my taste. In the art section we have Donald Eubank on Brazilian artist Vik Muniz and his work with Brazil's catadores, people who recycle rubbish for a living: "An estimated 3,000-5,000 people live in the dump, 15,000 derive their income from activities related to it, and some that Muniz met in Jardim Gramacho come from families that had been working there for three generations. "These people are at the other end of consumer culture," he says. "I was expecting to see people who were beaten and broken, but they were survivors." His aim — besides the creative challenge — was to see... if the experience of creating art could change people".

There's a sense in both The International Herald Tribune and The Japan Times that the papers know what time it is; that they realise a "transvaluation of all values" (in Nietzsche's phrase) is necessary at this point. Even while it reports David Miliband's important public recognition that the War on Terror was a mistake, The Guardian doesn't seem to have taken this transvaluation thing on board. For instance, a story about a minister who said she saw "green shoots" in the UK economy basically takes for granted that green shoots mean economic growth, and that that's good, and its absence bad. There's no actual green perspective in the green shoots story -- it lacks the angle Sciolino wrote into her IHT story about how economic downturn is an opportunity to rethink priorities.

Another Japan Times story I love today is Antiforeigner discrimination is a right for Japanese people. Here, Gregory Clark plugs -- without mentioning him by name -- the ridiculous Debito Arudou (David Aldwinckle), who has plagued his host country with lawsuits alleging discrimination against foreigners (in, for instance, barring him from certain bathing houses frequented by troublesome Russian sailors). Clark boldly says something I've long believed too: "Japan girai — dislike of Japan — is an allergy that seems to afflict many Westerners here... It is time we admitted that at times the Japanese have the right to discriminate against some foreigners. If they do not, and Japan ends up like our padlocked, mutually suspicious Western societies, we will all be the losers."

What I enjoy here is that an article by a foreigner in a foreign newspaper takes the side of Japanese against foreigners. That seems to express very well the complexity and ambivalence of these cuckoo newspapers, and the awareness, typical of sensitive foreigners, of one's own fragility and awkwardness. This guilt, for me, is at the root of consideration for others. It transcends selfishness, and to achieve it you have to be slightly decentred, as these odd expat papers are. I think their willingness to transvalue values is all tied up with these newspapers' transplanted, lateral, parallax positions in foreign cities.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

This is a post-materialist message, and it's something I don't find much of in the Anglo papers

Well, you'll find the exact same post-materialist message on the New York Times website, because Elaine Sciolini is in fact a Times foreign correspondent and that story was first published there. Since the Times bought out the IHT, the vast majority of its stories are sourced from the Times and there are very few IHT-only correspondents. These days, the paper is mostly a stripped-down Times with the international stories to the fore instead of the purely American ones.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh! Well, perhaps I need to restrict "Anglo" to "English" in this case. I think The Independent is probably an honourable exception, but I don't find their website particularly compelling.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

(I did note in the piece that the IHT is linked to the NYT and "parachuted".)

[choan.livejournal.com]

The cultural stuff in The Japan Times is often interesting, but I'd hate to have to rely upon it for news. I don't know whether its news stories are largely translated, but it has some of the stiffest, most boring writing known to man. And don't even get me started upon its columnists and its letters to the editor section...

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I like that they've got a Views from the Street (http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20090113vf.html) section now. I always used to like Japan Today's Pop Vox feature (http://archive.japantoday.com/jp/popvox/525), but it seems to be defunct now. Though I think there are too many gaijin in the Japan Times version; it gives it a kind of Roppongi feel.

Donald Eubank actually asked me to contribute to the Art section of the JT last time I was in Japan, and that always disposes me well towards a newspaper, obviously!

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

Everyone knows the only reliable news source is the North Korean Central News Agency (http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm). Everything else is written by imperialist pigs.

"Here, Gregory Clark plugs -- without mentioning him by name -- the ridiculous Debito Arudou (David Aldwinckle), who has plagued his host country with lawsuits alleging discrimination against foreigners (in, for instance, barring him from certain bathing houses frequented by troublesome Russian sailors)."

If I was a hotel owner and I didn't want to allow gay couples to rent my rooms because they offend my moral sensibilities, should I be allowed to turn them away?

Dan Black

[boof-boy.livejournal.com]

The Dan Black argument is very interested and deluded. It imagines only one kind of success, and indeed one kind of failure. It's rarely that way as those of us outside the mainstream understand. A for instance; remember Kitchenware Records - the Daintees, the Kane Gang, Hurrah! and Prefab Sprout - a kind of Geordie Postcard perhaps?

Many of the Kitchenware alumni are successful in music, long after their 'pop' career has finished. Wendy Smith of Prefab is a music project officer at the Sage Gateshead, and Martin McAloon now works for Generator - the North East's music development agency. Martin Brammer of the Kane Gang has written songs for all sorts of soft soul acts - from Tina Turner to Lighthouse Family.

Martin Stephenson of the Daintees still gigs (pubs and clubs mostly, but it's a full time job), and Paul Handyside of Hurrah! also plays occasionally, though it's not his day-job.

If you'd told any of these people, thirty years ago at the birth of Kitchenware, that they'd still be involved in music in 2009, they'd probably have been delighted. None of them are in the gutter, and none are floating in a swimming pool full of coke. But they're all successful in being involved in music and creativity. There are many ways of measuring success and failure - or perhaps it's not even relevant?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, if you'd had multiple episodes of them shitting in the beds or something, I think you'd be entitled to. These Russian sailors go into the saunas drunk, and start fights, and splash people, and so on. But only a tiny minority of sentos have racial restriction -- I've been to dozens, and I've never seen any "No Foreigner" signs.

I would definitely put a "No Debito" sign outside any institution I started in Japan -- the man is a serial legal harrasser.

Re: Dan Black

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I guess people just don't want to say, in their debut music interview, "I may well be a music project officer in Gateshead or something ten years down the line".

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"Well, if you'd had multiple episodes of them shitting in the beds or something, I think you'd be entitled to."

So, I take it you're also in favor of stopping and searching black people to a higher degree than other races because statistically speaking they're responsible for a higher proportion of street crime?

Sleekit News

[(Anonymous)]

The Independent's commenters appear to be more liberal left-ist. I don't think the notion of 'Guardian reader' carries to online - they get more neigh-sayers, human blanks and right wing cast-offs, possibly due to the advertising/multi-media direction, possibly thanks to publishing all comments (which, shamefully, more conservative papers don't. "Debate? Interesting? Begone.")

Re: Miliband. I was waiting to see who'd take the first "Obama-friendly" steps, and distance the party from the war machine. The UK are obviously US copyists to the letter. Or "everything a front, everything a sale", perhaps. The Sleekit News rolls on.

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

I think the point is that there always seems to be a certain segment of the foreign population (I see the same thing in Korea) who are constantly railing about how racist the natives are toward them, and how everything is just horrid for foreigners, and blah blah blah, painting themselves as the "coloreds" of Japan (or Korea), when whatever they're experiencing is nowhere near the same magnitude or severity.

It's not that the dude is objectively wrong, it's that he's annoying and obnoxious, and seems to have this vision of himself as the grand martyr for all foreigners in Japan. But if his activities were to be compared to anything, I think it would be the legally-enforced integration of an all-female college, or something of that sort. It's petty.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Let me put it this way, do you think there should be just as many aid agencies on the ground in Israel as there are in Gaza? Is it "racial profiling" not to give everybody the same amount of aid money, if Africans need it more?

A world without discrimination is a world without justice. I've always thought it was a particularly cruel irony that Justice is so often depicted with a blindfold. More than anyone else, that beeyatch needs to see.

[(Anonymous)]

You live in Germany. Don't you ever read the German press? You seem strangely cut off from where you live.

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

Well, I think discrimination is generally pernicious, but at the same time, I think we would do well to differentiate between levels of seriousness/severity.

This Abadou guy argues, for example, that "gaijin" is equivalent to "nigger," which is just the absolute height of absurdity. There is absolutely no equivalent historical basis for that kind of comparison.

The sad thing is, I think he has a pretty concrete point, being that he's now a Japanese citizen. But he acts as though he has to go about it in an American Civil Rights Movement style, as though his protest is built on hundreds of years of brutal oppression. It's as though he doesn't care to present his complaint in a way that will stand the best chance of garnering support. He assumes that a brutal pushback will occur, and hits first with his hardest blow. As though Japanese people are just supposed to be conditioned to an American sense of multiculturalism because a few foreigners live there.

In the meantime, it's not as though Abadou is being kept in an internment camp (as the Japanese were in America, one might add) or forced to use separate bathrooms and water fountains. Or worse yet, killed for consorting with Japanese women. Yet for all his outrage, you'd assume that such things were happening routinely to foreigners there.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I actually enjoy being cut off from where I live. It gives me a sense of freedom. But I bumped another news URL up my bookmarks list, Spiegel International (http://www.spiegel.de/international/). It's not very interesting, but it's German.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

(It's worth adding that I do write for the German press, even if I don't read it much. I do articles (in English) for Berlin-based 032c magazine (http://www.032c.com/).)

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"It's not that the dude is objectively wrong"

Then we agree.

"it's that he's annoying and obnoxious, and seems to have this vision of himself as the grand martyr for all foreigners in Japan."

The Guardian's infamous uber-liberal tree hugging George Monbiot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Monbiot) comes from a family of upper-middle class Tory toffs, his whole Shtick reaks of rebellion against Mummy and Daddy that's lasted long into adulthood, but that's neither here nor there -- we should be judging protesters purely on the legitimacy of their causes, not the annoyingness of their personas.

I don't see how anyone can have an issue with Debito objecting to discrimination in Japan. It's not just the racist actions of certain onsens he objects to but the offensive and utterly spurious public campaigns by the Japanese police warning the Japanese of "gaijin criminals". That issue to is not petty at all in my book, it breeds hatred and fear.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"Let me put it this way"

Please don't when a much more straight-forward analogy was put to you which you didn't answer. You're being intellectually dishonest.

If you support the right of a Japanese onsen to reject foreigners because they've had a few rowdy russian sailors who've caused problems, then you have to support the hotel who doesn't want to take in blacks because they've had bad experiences with a few black people in the past.

Debito can be annoying, I admit that, and perhaps there are better things to protest against than one wrinkly old japanese women who wont let you use her bath-house, but that doesnt take away from the moral legitimacy of most of his crusades.

[(Anonymous)]

I dunno. Hanging around with a bunch of expats, not bothering to learn the lingo, essentially living within an Anglo-Internet bubble, all that actually condemns you to an even more constrained version of the Anglo world. I mean, you're learning about Japan exclusively from other Anglos and those few Japanese who can speak good English. Spiegel International is your idea of the German press? There are some great German newspapers, of exactly the sort of neutral, dry, informative type you seem to like. But I guess you'd actually have to learn German to appreciate them.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I do speak some German, actually. And I speak some Japanese. And a lot of French. Considering my handicaps -- and we all have those, even Anons on blogs -- my enthusiasm for Japan has actually allowed me to educate myself quite extensively about the country. You know, if publishing books with two German publishers (Sternberg and Blumenbar) this year and writing for a German magazine (032c) is your idea of cultural alienation, about 80% of the German population must be more alienated from their nation than I am, because they're less culturally active here.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

(Oh, it's you, Cogent Communications, Washington DC! I should have known. How many languages do you speak, then?)

[jermynsavile.livejournal.com]

While I'm sympathetic to everything you say about The Guardian I can't agree with you about the absence of a post-materialist message in the British press. I linked back to this (http://jermynsavile.livejournal.com/64643.html) article a whle ago. If the repellent Evening Standard is running this kind of story then I rather doubt it'll be alone.

As for the British political situation - guilty as charged. The only God Britain has left is America - and the leadership of the two main political parties is made up entirely of true believers.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

"Since the ancient Greeks, luxury goods have always been stamped with the seal of immorality," said Gilles Lipovetsky, a sociologist who has written several books about consumerism. "They represent waste, the superficial, the inequality of wealth. They have no need to exist."

When's the first bling burning, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonfire_of_the_Vanities) Savanorola?

[(Anonymous)]

As far as 'rights' exist, can there be such a thing as the 'right' to be proactively racist?

Let's assume that there can. Of course the Japanese can 'do what they want' in their own culture, in the sense that it's something that just happens anyway, decided by the hegemony either of political power or of cultural majority, but at the same time, I then have the 'right' to get very annoyed when Japanese people ask me what I think about Japan and only want to hear about how wonderful it is, and walk away satisfied (only if you oblige with flattery), and make no further attempts to get to know 'the gaijin'.