The Paris of our dreams

[imomus]

VenusFort is a synthetic European city laid out inside a warehouse in Odaiba -- itself an artificial island in Tokyo Bay. "Inside the enclosed building," boasts the theme park-cum-shopping mall's blurb, "the 17th-18th century European-style streets come to life. The open ceiling manifests the ever-changing sky from the clear blue sky to the evening sunset, and to the darkness of night. There are about 170 shops and restaurants lining the streets, just like true European street scenery. It is unbelievable that the whole scene has been reproduced inside a building."



Unbelievable indeed. A spectre haunts Tokyo -- the spectre of Europe, and particularly Paris. The Japanese capital boasts chef schools, boulangerie-style bakeries, pavement cafes with white-shirted, black-apronned waiters, French luxury goods stores on Champs-Elysees-like avenue Omote Sando, and even its own reproduction of the Tour Eiffel.



You'll see similar visions in the animations of Japan's most popular film director, Hayao Miyazaki. Here's Helen McCarthy on his early film, The Castle of Cagliostro: "The story takes place in the never-never land that is the Japanese dream of Europe, a rustic paradise of crumbling yet infinitely sophisticated cities and castles; ancient titles and even older secrets; lakes, mountains, and high flower-strewn meadows; and mystery and romance. There is a Japanese phrase that sums up this yearning for the beautiful, mysterious fantasy otherwhere -- akogare no Paris, the Paris of our dreams."



According to Dani Cavallaro, the anime Rose of Versallies "exemplifies an attraction to old Europe, steadily evinced by both anime and manga, as a synthesis of majestic yugen [subtle, profound grace] and unpretentious sabi. This fascination is related to what the Japanese designate as akogare no Paris ("the Paris of our dreams") -- namely, a speculative version of that world envisioned through Eastern eyes, akin to the West's imaginary configurations of the East founded upon the figment of the exotic."

This, then, is a sort of romantic projection, a reverse orientalism -- "occidentalism", if you will. Being exoticised in this way helps the French -- Paris is the number one European destination for Japanese tourists, with 700,000 visits every year. But it makes the Japanese suffer; Paris Syndrome is the name not just for a very particular form of culture shock, but for a nervous disorder that -- as Libération reported in 2004 -- sees over a hundred Japanese hospitalised each year. There's even a special unit for it at the Sainte-Anne Hospital in Paris, with a Japanese doctor -- Dr Ota, the inventor of the term -- in charge.



A couple of video reports on French TV give us glimpses into why Japanese in Paris fall sick. In the first, a trainee with Hermes called Akiko says: "My first visits to Europe were to little German villages where everything was very pretty and picturesque. When I came to Paris first it was with a group tour, and we stayed in a hotel at Place Clichy, the working class district. It wasn't what I'd dreamed of."

"Administrative queues take forever and you have to start all over again. The quality of service is not what we'd expect in Japan. Standing up in front of people and giving your opinion is difficult for us Japanese. We're used to holding back, staying in the background, listening to others. But if we are able to change this behaviour and be more forthright, here in France nobody listens to us." The sarcastic French sense of humour also proved difficult.



"When you see articles about Paris in magazines elsewhere in the world, you see nice districts, restaurants and boutiques. But when you see those articles after having lived here, you ask yourself "Where are these places?" It doesn't correspond with reality. It's a constructed image."

In the second video report a writer called Kenzo explains how, after a few months in Paris, he developed depression and a psychosomatic back problem which stopped him leaving the house.



His disillusionment began, Kenzo says, with cafe waiters. "In Japan, even if they're busy, they'll say, sorry, please wait a bit, i'll be over. Here, they don't give a fuck. They pretend not to see you. It's not the waiting I mind, it's this reaction, when you're not used to it, that can be a bit humiliating. If you're a bit paranoid, you think "It's me, isn't it?" Or queuing for a taxi here, it's a queue, but it isn't a queue. If someone at the back of the queue sees a taxi passing, he runs after it, and the others shout "What's he doing, that bastard!"

"It can destabilize you, that sort of thing. For Japanese it's shocking, shocking, incredible. In Japan, the taxi driver would categorically refuse to take such a person. We're used to order." Soon Kenzo was walking with a stick, and cut all social contacts, especially with French people.

Could it be that Kenzo was a victim, not of French rudeness, but of the unrealistic expectations whipped up by the spectral Paris conjured by Tokyo? A victim not of Paris, but of "our dreams"?

Comments

We French don't take kahndly to ya'll outsiders . . .

[endoftheseason.livejournal.com]

I wonder if there's a more general France Syndrome and if it's got something to do with this:

"French woman threatens legal action over 'burkini' ban

Muslim convert evicted from public pool for modest swimwear fuels row over religious symbols in secular nation"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/12/burkini-ban-islam-france

Re: We French don't take kahndly to ya'll outsiders . . .

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Since the woman is French, that's not a story about outsiders, though. It's a story that shows how, although not-wearing-veils is often presented as liberation, in fact this not-wearing-veils is compulsory, and therefore the opposite of liberation.

In Saudi Arabia you're banned for wearing a bikini, in France you're banned for wearing a burkini. And the difference is...?

[theartoflamb.livejournal.com]

paris syndrome was an answer on QI recently.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

Their visit is 200 years too late perhaps. Maybe Victorian society more closely resembles modern Japanese ideals than modern western society.

I remember mentioning the mangaka Kaoru Mori (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaoru_Mori) a few entries back. She's an anglophile who's most famous for her Victorian romance comics.



She's shy and dislikes giving interviews, but in a rare interview she mentioned her experiences of Britain:

----------------------------
Could you tell us more about your experience in Britain?

I was very pleased to discover that my imagination was not too different from what I experienced in Britain in person. However there were many new discoveries as well, such as the fact that British food was not as awful as rumored.
----------------------------

So yeah, she clearly had very low expectations. Just kidding, Britain! (I'm so not).

I don't quite get how you can spend your days fantasising about Victorian Britain, on a personal level and as a career, then turn up here and not be deeply disappointed. She should have dropped dead of 'London Syndrome' the moment she got off the plane.

[endoftheseason.livejournal.com]

"such as the fact that British food was not as awful as rumored."

Never understood this rumor, well, except maybe when it comes to jellied eels and such. But roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, haggis, pasties, curries, various pies with good beer, tikkas, and so on--these are all good food, although I suppose some make vegetarianism difficult.

Also, if this woman spends her days fantasizing about Victorian Britain, I wonder if she dashed right off while in London to get some of those fabulous eel-based dishes.

No

[(Anonymous)]

This would happen to Japanese if they tried living in any European country for long periods of time. It's not because of Paris, it's because they're so insulated back home. Insulated from any hint of aggression or confrontation, so much so that they can become physically ill when faced with it.

Re: No

[(Anonymous)]

You mean "outside" aggression or confrontation. There's plenty of that internally---extreme bullying at school, drunken bluster on the streets, wife beating, etc.

[(Anonymous)]

I like how I hate how you write about stuff I should have written about.

ashtray

[count-vronsky.livejournal.com]

Re: ashtray

[count-vronsky.livejournal.com]

Re: ashtray

[(Anonymous)]

Aren't those Jad Fair's drawings?

[zenmonkeykstop.livejournal.com]

For fun and profit, sub in "the mall at Caesars" for Venusfort, "fat hoods from Jersey"/"New Jersey" for Japanese/Japan, and "Rome"/"Italians" for Paris/French.

[(Anonymous)]

the plip-plop-raindrop in birthday chat is just too good :)

[(Anonymous)]

Have you been to Venus Fort, Momus?

No place for the modern flaneur; the sterility of it all
made me want to top myself so I got out of there sharpish...

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I have been a couple of times and I rather like it. I really do feel as if I'm in Italy when I'm there. It's a sort of opera set Italy, but Italy is like an opera set anyway.

[st-ranger.livejournal.com]

Instead of a new syndrome, I just think we just have a hundred garden-variety, self-absorbed, spoiled wussies who should pull themselves together. I however am just some dude, and have no professional opinions of any kind.

They've contracted Occidentalism

[(Anonymous)]

But it certainly works both ways. If fact, it sounds somewhat like the dreaded Tokyo Syndrome (the Osaka Syndrome is a milder version, I've heard), where "gaijin" arrive in Japan only to find it's not governed by a bakufu govt of samurai and local daimyo warlords, but small, ruddy faced men with comb-overs and ill-fitting suits.

Adding insult to injury one finds that not all restaurants look out over rock gardens, but are typically dusty and reek of a million cheap cigarettes. Finally, all their illusions of an orderly and deferential Japanese people are dashed upon shopping for food or boarding trains, where they are elbowed, cut in front of or jostled to death. Where's the meek and eager to please geisha's? they usually cry out to themselves...

This is when the romanticising barbarians usually have a complete meltdown and need medical attention. (But not in Japan mind you, where you literally take a number and wait like you're at the dept. of motor vehicles).

Re: They've contracted Occidentalism

[mildsevens.livejournal.com]

i was curious about this too....how the younger generation of japan-enthusiasts (otaku?) react to visiting...to see that it is just a place, like any other...there are flaws, there is dirt.

[(Anonymous)]

Another strange, but nevertheless documented, ailment has been called "Toilettes Syndrome" (in the manner of Tourettes, one supposes) where foreigners, upon discovering that a great many public bathrooms have neither hot water, soap nor towels of any kind, reusable or otherwise, began blurting and screaming to no one in particular things like, "I thought the Japanese were obsessed with hygiene!!...The bath is a ritual!!...The sacred hot springs!!...Shintoism!!...Purity!!...Blah Blah Blah!!...

They're often later discovered curled up on the floor of a train station or department store, and usually by those one of those ubiquitous people handing out advert tissue packets on the streets.

[(Anonymous)]

It's seems people haven't learned a thing or enough from Madam Bovary.


Alex P.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm guessing the underlying point of this post is that this sort of fantasy Europe vs living there is contrasted by the Western fantasy of Japan and living there really long. Then again there is less Western fantasy about feudal Japan as there is less fantasy about modern Europe though clearly some attraction to move or study there. And then there are the Euro fantasies in Las Vegas.

As for Venusfort, I think the seed fantasy idea was Venice (within budget). The "Venus" in the name is has definite significance since I've seen English language promotional literature pointing out it is intentionally a mall oriented toward women.

It's worth also noting that Odaiba in general is more or less a dating destination + convention center.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Actually, a couple of underlying themes here (they're buried quite deep, but there nonetheless) are:

* Gypsies: I took exception, last week, to someone in a newspaper saying that positive romanticisation of gypsies is as bad as negative vilification... for the gypsies. I pointed out that romanticisation / exoticisation brings in tourist dollars. The people "hurt" are the exoticisers / tourists, when they discover a more complex reality. This is clearly what's going on with Paris Syndrome. To be romanticized doesn't hurt the Parisians, but it does hurt some of the head-in-clouds Japanese.

* Plethora: This relates to the point I made yesterday about Aki Onda, and how traveling a lot when he was a kid made him unhappy at school in Japan. A trip to Paris might seem like a godsend, but not if it destroys the more delightful Paris you had in your head. Having a plethora of options open to you might be great, but it might also be a curse, because it opens a negotiation between alternative realities, and one might come off worse (either your dream will be shattered, or your former reality will begin to seem inadequate).

"A victim...

[(Anonymous)]

not of Paris, but of 'our dreams'"?"

Probably dreams. You could pose the same question and replace "dreams" with "morals." Oddly enough, the antidote I would suggest for this problem is actually French (or in French, anyway) - the Brassens' attitude (cf your electroacoustics of humanism piece). Kind of ironic I guess that french pop is some of the lightest, flippest, and most dreamy (in the most reassuring way) that I know of (Brassens, Toog, Katerine, etc.) but I guess it isn't "saving" the Japanese in this instance.

And who are they to believe they can find paradise on earth!

-Robyn

[(Anonymous)]

I think you mean "miyabi" and not yuugen.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The "yugen" usage isn't mine, it's in a quote from Dani Cavallaro. As I understand it, miyabi would have more of a Heian resonance. Not sure if that's what we're after.

I asked a Japanese speaker, and Hisae said: "No-one uses those words. It's so gaijin topic, I think!"

[loveishappiness.livejournal.com]

Kept thinking about Des Esseintes sitting at a train station cafe, on the brink of traveling to England, but, becoming overwhelmed, decides that being around the English at the station is enough and goes home.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Des Esseintes was a wise man!

funny

[milky-eyes.livejournal.com]

AWESOME that you would post this.
Japan does French (and everything else) so wonderfully.
I'm thinking of the french food. The pasteries are perfectly sweet and tender without being too sweet... the tables and interiors so cute...
It's a glorified version... yes... but its done w thought and skill.
Hard to find any blame in that.

The harsh reality that life is not a wonderland outside of japan... is similar with everyone. Ask any cab driver in NY... they say they came here to make money... but now they sit in this cab all day, barely getting by....

on cultural differences:
I was using a bathroom at JAS mart (japanese cafe/grocery store) and someone knocked on the door... so I kicked it to say "I'm in here"... when I opened the door to leave.. the Japanese man waiting was IRATE becasue I kicked the door too loud and he felt insulted... I felt bad because I totally couldnt take his anger seriously so I was half laughing which made him EVEN more upset...

Re: funny

[(Anonymous)]

yet again he encountered an uncooth barbarian, one that couldn't be bothered to actually speak a reply (a simple "hai" would do)---but preferred to express themselves through ape-like aggression. a strange breed, these gaijin-san...