The blind gaijin and the Japanese elephant
Nov. 5th, 2004 11:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusPeople from other cultures who write about Japan often sound like The Blind Men And The Elephant. Everybody seems to be talking about a completely different Japan. Some change their opinion over time, arriving with a firm grasp of Japan's trunk but leaving clinging to its tail.
'Japan is very like a wall', said the first blind foreigner. Alex Kerr in his book 'Dogs and Demons' tells us that Japan is ruled by a corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy. That this bureaucracy is beholden to the construction industry and devises 'make work' schemes to keep it happy. That these include concreting Japanese rivers and erecting vast, ugly and unnecessary public buildings (including, apparently, Tokyo town hall). That Japan, unlike Hong Kong and Singapore, has failed to attract foreign capital or make an attractive climate for investors. That Japan does not allow for an influx of cheap international labour. That Japan has not developed its tourist industry. That Japan is behind in information technology. That Japanese people are burdened by high prices and personal debt. That their living standards (he cites uninsulated houses) are low. That Japan does not preserve its heritage well enough. That Japan cannot make art films. That Japan is a childish and superficial nation obsessed with 'cuteness'. And so on...
Kerr's book seems to have struck a chord, especially with American readers. On Chanpon, a site where foreigners lament that Japan is 'losing its soul', many readers say they've bought multiple copies of Kerr's book to give to friends, to 'open their eyes' about Japan. On the Amazon site one reader says:
'Ever since I arrived here I've known something was wrong - something was causing me to be utterly disillusioned. I thought it was only culture shock (and it may be, I'm still not sure), but I think it has more to do with what Kerr has written about. The environment I've encountered has been little more than glitzy, pop-culture, flashy trash, with a back drop of construction, concrete, concrete, and more concrete. Unless I can get over the shock and disillusionment, I may end up doing what another reader did: cutting my losses.'
'Japan is very like a spear'. Although Japan has been, for the last sixty years, one of the most peaceable nations on earth, and spends as much on its sex industry as its defense forces, there are always commentators telling us that it's just on the verge of major remilitarization, and about to fall into the clasp of dangerous right wing nationalists. In a debate on blog Neomarxisme between me and two Japan-based Americans, David Marx and Robert Duckworth, Robert states: 'the right wing is a growing presence in Japan. the current fervor over article 9 between the Japan Communist Party (JCP) and the Liberal Democractic Party (LDP) and the imperialistic resonances and undertones are frightening.' People at this point usually mention Prime Minister Koizumi's visits to the Yazukuni shrine, Japan's crimes against its Asian neighbours during the Second World War, and how Japanese textbooks lie about this. There's also a whole industry of books about how Japan has consistently denied the influence of Korea on its culture. (Some trend hounds, however, will tell you that Japan-Korean collaborations are currently fashionable.)
It's worth pointing out that since the 80s there have been fewer hysterically anti-Japanese books like George Friedman's 'The Coming War With Japan' (1992), a piece of sabre-rattling in a trade war made less threatening to America by the Japanese recession.
'Japan is very like a snake'. Some people who went to Japan thinking it would be like living in a copy of FRUiTS magazine found their dreams slipping through their hands with a hiss. David Marx probably won't mind if I cite him as one of the disillusioned. Neomarxisme isn't so much Marxist as Spenglerian, with 'the decline of the west' replaced by 'the decline of Japan' as its persistent theme. Marxy, a Tokyo-based American musician and journalist who used to work for Tokion magazine, is getting his master's in marketing and consumer behaviour at Tokyo's Keio University. Recent entries in his blog have been about how Japanese music journalism refuses to pass judgment on records or analyze lyrics, how Japan uses racist imagery of foreign ethnicities, how FRUiTS-type fashion eclecticism hides conformity, how the Japanese buy into art without understanding it, how the younger generation of Japanese is bland and spineless, how harmony is not the same thing as wisdom, how Japan encourages a taste for the infantile and the pedophile, and how Japan's version of postmodernism is not 'content-based' like the west's is. David arrived in Japan in 1996 with a lot of stars in his eyes. One by one, it seems, they've gone out.
Ah, just got an e mail from David! He adds: 'You know, there's a whole school of Japan "dismissers" called the Revisionists, like Chalmers Johnson (political scientist), Ivan Hall (professor of something, I forget), Edward Seidensticker (translator/literature scholar), Patrick Smith (journalist), Roy Andrew Miller (linguist), Karel von Wolferen (journalist), John Nathan (author/translator), etc etc. The basic argument is: the stagnation of the economy in the 90s shows that not actually being a liberal democracy or having a free market do indeed come back to kick you in the ass. Roy Andrew Miller is the world's greatest linguist on Japan and his books use a very strict Structuralist methodology to show how Japan's belief in self-uniqueness gets in the way of their intellectual progress as a nation. The popular Conventional Wisdom at this point is, well the economy sucks, but Japan is on top of the pop culture game. I think we both agreed to this at some point. My current mission is to prove: yes in the late 90s this was true, but the problems lurking behind Japanese society also hinder with cultural production and meaningful consumption, and now that Japan is broke, the system is falling apart and taking culture down with it.'
'Japan is very like a fan'. The last blind -- or at least partially sighted -- man grasping at Japan is me. And I'm very partial to the place. I think it's 'very like a fan' for a lot of reasons. Maybe because I have fans there who've always made the experience of being in Japan a delight for me. Maybe because I think Japan is cool. Maybe because I like small gadgets that fit in your pocket. Or maybe because I buy Takashi Murakami's line that Japan is 'superflat'; that Japan is the most postmodern society there is, that it's the most anti-metaphysical place there is, that it has a remarkably classless structure, and that it collapses binaries like high and low, past and present, surface and depth. I've written so much about my love of Japan that there's really no point adding more here. Just browse iMomus or Click Opera and count the ways I love the place. In all my time in Japan I can honestly say I've never once wished I was anywhere else. (I'm not incapable of the odd grumble, though.)
I've been a Japan fan since childhood -- the first song I wrote was 'I Can See Japan'. I don't know how I'd feel about Japan if the first book of Japanology I'd read had been 'Dogs and Demons'. I suspect I'd just have found it a very boring, grumpy and ethnocentric read and thrown it down quite quickly. In fact, my first book of Japanology was 'A Japanese Mirror' by Ian Buruma, which I read in 1987, and which influenced my 'Tender Pervert' album quite a bit. Buruma actually reviewed 'Dogs and Demons' in the New York Times Book Review in July 2001. He didn't like it. It's not that he disagrees with Kerr's attacks on Japanese bureaucracy and so on, more that, walking along a Japanese street, Buruma, like me, is lifted to a place where all spleen and all politics seem irrelevant, a place Marcel Proust called 'the liquid stream of happiness'. The Japanology tome currently by my bed is 'Japan at Play: the ludic and the logic of power' (Routledge Japanese Studies Series), kindly sent by Sarmoung of this parish. Play and Japan are probably my two favourite themes in the entire world, so I'm enjoying this book (about drinking, football, pop fans, gay bars, theme parks and tattoo parlours) a lot.
In a couple of months I'll be heading back to Japan to take up my residency at Future University in Hokkaido. Hakodate will be the smallest Japanese town I've ever stayed in. Perhaps it'll feel like grasping another part of the elephant. But, scrotum or tongue, ear or toe, I'm sure I'll find something entirely delightful about it. Call me partially sighted.
'Japan is very like a wall', said the first blind foreigner. Alex Kerr in his book 'Dogs and Demons' tells us that Japan is ruled by a corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy. That this bureaucracy is beholden to the construction industry and devises 'make work' schemes to keep it happy. That these include concreting Japanese rivers and erecting vast, ugly and unnecessary public buildings (including, apparently, Tokyo town hall). That Japan, unlike Hong Kong and Singapore, has failed to attract foreign capital or make an attractive climate for investors. That Japan does not allow for an influx of cheap international labour. That Japan has not developed its tourist industry. That Japan is behind in information technology. That Japanese people are burdened by high prices and personal debt. That their living standards (he cites uninsulated houses) are low. That Japan does not preserve its heritage well enough. That Japan cannot make art films. That Japan is a childish and superficial nation obsessed with 'cuteness'. And so on...
Kerr's book seems to have struck a chord, especially with American readers. On Chanpon, a site where foreigners lament that Japan is 'losing its soul', many readers say they've bought multiple copies of Kerr's book to give to friends, to 'open their eyes' about Japan. On the Amazon site one reader says:
'Ever since I arrived here I've known something was wrong - something was causing me to be utterly disillusioned. I thought it was only culture shock (and it may be, I'm still not sure), but I think it has more to do with what Kerr has written about. The environment I've encountered has been little more than glitzy, pop-culture, flashy trash, with a back drop of construction, concrete, concrete, and more concrete. Unless I can get over the shock and disillusionment, I may end up doing what another reader did: cutting my losses.'
'Japan is very like a spear'. Although Japan has been, for the last sixty years, one of the most peaceable nations on earth, and spends as much on its sex industry as its defense forces, there are always commentators telling us that it's just on the verge of major remilitarization, and about to fall into the clasp of dangerous right wing nationalists. In a debate on blog Neomarxisme between me and two Japan-based Americans, David Marx and Robert Duckworth, Robert states: 'the right wing is a growing presence in Japan. the current fervor over article 9 between the Japan Communist Party (JCP) and the Liberal Democractic Party (LDP) and the imperialistic resonances and undertones are frightening.' People at this point usually mention Prime Minister Koizumi's visits to the Yazukuni shrine, Japan's crimes against its Asian neighbours during the Second World War, and how Japanese textbooks lie about this. There's also a whole industry of books about how Japan has consistently denied the influence of Korea on its culture. (Some trend hounds, however, will tell you that Japan-Korean collaborations are currently fashionable.)
It's worth pointing out that since the 80s there have been fewer hysterically anti-Japanese books like George Friedman's 'The Coming War With Japan' (1992), a piece of sabre-rattling in a trade war made less threatening to America by the Japanese recession.
'Japan is very like a snake'. Some people who went to Japan thinking it would be like living in a copy of FRUiTS magazine found their dreams slipping through their hands with a hiss. David Marx probably won't mind if I cite him as one of the disillusioned. Neomarxisme isn't so much Marxist as Spenglerian, with 'the decline of the west' replaced by 'the decline of Japan' as its persistent theme. Marxy, a Tokyo-based American musician and journalist who used to work for Tokion magazine, is getting his master's in marketing and consumer behaviour at Tokyo's Keio University. Recent entries in his blog have been about how Japanese music journalism refuses to pass judgment on records or analyze lyrics, how Japan uses racist imagery of foreign ethnicities, how FRUiTS-type fashion eclecticism hides conformity, how the Japanese buy into art without understanding it, how the younger generation of Japanese is bland and spineless, how harmony is not the same thing as wisdom, how Japan encourages a taste for the infantile and the pedophile, and how Japan's version of postmodernism is not 'content-based' like the west's is. David arrived in Japan in 1996 with a lot of stars in his eyes. One by one, it seems, they've gone out.
Ah, just got an e mail from David! He adds: 'You know, there's a whole school of Japan "dismissers" called the Revisionists, like Chalmers Johnson (political scientist), Ivan Hall (professor of something, I forget), Edward Seidensticker (translator/literature scholar), Patrick Smith (journalist), Roy Andrew Miller (linguist), Karel von Wolferen (journalist), John Nathan (author/translator), etc etc. The basic argument is: the stagnation of the economy in the 90s shows that not actually being a liberal democracy or having a free market do indeed come back to kick you in the ass. Roy Andrew Miller is the world's greatest linguist on Japan and his books use a very strict Structuralist methodology to show how Japan's belief in self-uniqueness gets in the way of their intellectual progress as a nation. The popular Conventional Wisdom at this point is, well the economy sucks, but Japan is on top of the pop culture game. I think we both agreed to this at some point. My current mission is to prove: yes in the late 90s this was true, but the problems lurking behind Japanese society also hinder with cultural production and meaningful consumption, and now that Japan is broke, the system is falling apart and taking culture down with it.'
'Japan is very like a fan'. The last blind -- or at least partially sighted -- man grasping at Japan is me. And I'm very partial to the place. I think it's 'very like a fan' for a lot of reasons. Maybe because I have fans there who've always made the experience of being in Japan a delight for me. Maybe because I think Japan is cool. Maybe because I like small gadgets that fit in your pocket. Or maybe because I buy Takashi Murakami's line that Japan is 'superflat'; that Japan is the most postmodern society there is, that it's the most anti-metaphysical place there is, that it has a remarkably classless structure, and that it collapses binaries like high and low, past and present, surface and depth. I've written so much about my love of Japan that there's really no point adding more here. Just browse iMomus or Click Opera and count the ways I love the place. In all my time in Japan I can honestly say I've never once wished I was anywhere else. (I'm not incapable of the odd grumble, though.)
I've been a Japan fan since childhood -- the first song I wrote was 'I Can See Japan'. I don't know how I'd feel about Japan if the first book of Japanology I'd read had been 'Dogs and Demons'. I suspect I'd just have found it a very boring, grumpy and ethnocentric read and thrown it down quite quickly. In fact, my first book of Japanology was 'A Japanese Mirror' by Ian Buruma, which I read in 1987, and which influenced my 'Tender Pervert' album quite a bit. Buruma actually reviewed 'Dogs and Demons' in the New York Times Book Review in July 2001. He didn't like it. It's not that he disagrees with Kerr's attacks on Japanese bureaucracy and so on, more that, walking along a Japanese street, Buruma, like me, is lifted to a place where all spleen and all politics seem irrelevant, a place Marcel Proust called 'the liquid stream of happiness'. The Japanology tome currently by my bed is 'Japan at Play: the ludic and the logic of power' (Routledge Japanese Studies Series), kindly sent by Sarmoung of this parish. Play and Japan are probably my two favourite themes in the entire world, so I'm enjoying this book (about drinking, football, pop fans, gay bars, theme parks and tattoo parlours) a lot.
In a couple of months I'll be heading back to Japan to take up my residency at Future University in Hokkaido. Hakodate will be the smallest Japanese town I've ever stayed in. Perhaps it'll feel like grasping another part of the elephant. But, scrotum or tongue, ear or toe, I'm sure I'll find something entirely delightful about it. Call me partially sighted.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-05 10:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-05 10:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-05 10:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-05 11:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-05 11:10 am (UTC)I missed the earlier announcement of your residency. It's good to see sound becoming a subject of study. I recently almost did a course called Hearing Things (http://www.bbk.ac.uk/eh/eng/macc/hearing/) here in London, but it clashed with other commitments. I loved the idea of being assessed by audio work. I look forward to hearing how your own course goes. I might visit the installation since I'll be in Japan at the time.
I concur with many of Marxy's points about Japan, but I like your fan-based approach, it's filled with the flush of love and helps counter some of my own cynicism about the place. The elephant poem is very appropriate and don't forget that some of us need to keep this disputation going to feed and clothe ourselves. In some ways, I'm glad that changes in the economic situation since the 90s have meant that the study of Japan here in the UK is finding a more equal balance with China and, coming up fast on the outside lane, Korea.
I'm glad the book is keeping you awake!
Disillusioned with Moxie.
Date: 2004-11-05 11:14 am (UTC)Marxy
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-05 11:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-05 11:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-05 12:07 pm (UTC)1. Some Japanese sense that they are losing touch with their pure Japanese culture.
2. These Japanese are happy when foreigners come along to remind them of 'the essence of pure Japanese culture'.
3. However, these lapsed traditionalists are not so happy when the westerners try to bastardise the traditions they're learning.
4. Postmodern Japanese culture, prefixed with 'pop', is a Japanese creation which draws on multicultural and global influences as well as Japanese 'pure' culture.
5. Japanese are happy to export this culture, and also to let it be 'bastardised', since that's its essence anyway.
Now, clearly Alex Kerr is one of those foreigners who wants to guard Japan's eternal soul, its purity. This leads him (and his followers) to dismiss multicultural postmodern Japanese culture -- its current contribution to the world -- as cheap and impure. Clearly a very conservative position.
My experience has been mostly of the multicultural, postmodern Japan of the 90s. I was invited by Japanese people to participate in this culture, to make 'bastardised' records with Kahimi Karie which mixed Japanese and Western styles and subjects. I have a very positive view of this.
Ironically, I think Marxy is now treating this 90s 'mukokuseki' culture as a golden age of 'pure' Japanese culture almost the same way Kerr treats things like tea ceremony and flower arrangement!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-05 12:19 pm (UTC)1
Koreans' self-perception is that of a super-friendly people, and it is true that onve relationships are established, they are good for a long long time (is that different in other cultures ??), yet the lack of personal interaction between strangers is glaring to an outsider. Some people argue that it stems from the rapid adjustment from living in small communities to a 15-million strong city. To be on speaking terms with someone meant a serious commitment, and so, suddenly overrun by modern life, Koreans have circumnavigated the potential problem of keeping up with their complicated mental ledger of social debtors and creditors by ignoring everyone.
2.
Koreans pride themselves on their Confucian respect for elders, enthusiastically leaping up from their bus-seats to let someone three years older sit down, and yet the 'silver generation' are left to wither away with neither job opportunities nor social security.
3.
America really is universally reviled by Koreans under 40 (and quite a few over), while the same people unironically submerge themselves in Starbucks, Tommy Hilfiger, Macdonalds and Jennifer Aniston.
4.
Whilst the received wisdom of a country united through struggle and notions of brotherhood and community are taught in every school, Koreans will also tell you how they envy the Japanese capacity to operate collectively. A kind of inner rebellion rubs against an outward obedience.
Like most visitors to this country, I experience wildly ambivalent emotions about it. The standard experience seems to be a first year love-affair, followed by a second in which all the flaws reveal themselves in exaggerated form, until resolution, acceptance and harmony are restored in the third. Well, I've been here over five years now and while I have my quiet moans, my overwhelming feeling is that I am priveleged to have spent so much time here.
Rambling under the influence of overwork and Asahi
Date: 2004-11-05 12:56 pm (UTC)One thing that never ceases to annoy me is the western (particularly American) anthropological approach to Japan in academia. I did my senior thesis on the Visual Kei and Ganguro subcultures as both a paper and a documentary video (you'll be proud to know I used some of your essays as academic sources) and I couldn't help but feel like I was spouting a lot of other people's bullshit and mistaken assumptions. Americans loved my video, but honestly I'd be scared to show it to a Japanese person, or maybe they'd find the American perspective of Japan interesting from an anthropologically perspective. But the thing that annoyed me the most was the superior attitude a lot of the Western researchers take towards Japan, as if they are "civilized" Europeans observing the queer customs of a remote bush tribe. I think these scholars wind up reading in a lot of meaning from semiotics and social norms that don't exist in the Japanese sphere, and very seldom do actual Japanese people have a chance to read and contest the final product.
The longer I'm here the less absurd Japanese things seem, and the weirder my homeland becomes.
Re: Rambling under the influence of overwork and Asahi
Date: 2004-11-05 12:59 pm (UTC)Exactly !
Re: Rambling under the influence of overwork and Asahi
Date: 2004-11-05 01:36 pm (UTC)Well, having spent several hours in the company of Malcolm McLaren, the man who invented the Sex Pistols, I can tell you that the Japanese have a 'correct' understanding of punk if they see it as fashion rather than a political stance. Fashion is McLaren's passion. Maybe this is something we British understand better than the Americans. Content and style are flattened in Britain just as they are in Japan. We are much more into mediation for its own sake than Americans are, I think. We don't distinguish the message from the medium. We 'revolt into style'.
I completely agree with your comment that Japan just looks like the west, but that under that you find you're not having the same conversation at all. This strangeness is one of the things I really love about the place. I expressed that in my piece Superlegitimacy (http://www.livejournal.com/users/imomus/36990.html).
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-05 01:40 pm (UTC)Anyway, what I *will* say is this: I honestly wish that I still felt the way that you do about Japan--I used to, that's for sure, and my first book on Japan certainly wasn't Dogs and Demons!! Had it been, I highly doubt that I would have devoted the last ten years of my life to learning the language, reading/absorbing the words of Mishima, Kawabata, Soseki, Abe (Kobo), Murakami Haruki/Ryu, etc., acquiring a taste for natto beans and raw fish, obtaining an M.A. degree in Japanese literature (and religion), or spending enough time in Japan to eventually want to marry into a Japanese family (my wife and I were married in a Shinto ceremony, BTW--I'd love to talk more about that, but not right now) and possibly live here for the rest (?) of my life, or at least a good chunk of it.
At any rate, I do miss that, "Ah, Japan's so cool/post-modern!" ("superflat") feeling that I once used to have, I really do. I mean, hell, I can remember how isolated I felt when I went back to the U.S. after the first year here, how I would have done *anything* to get back to Japan at that time (which I eventually figured out how to do, obviously), how I tried to stay close to the culture by befriending every single Japanese person on campus...Those were the good 'ol days indeed (natsukashii naa). Perhaps if I were collaborating with Japanese artists and grasping the same part of the elephant as you've had your hands on (I think onsen are wonderful too!), I'd still be enamored with this place. Unfortunately, sometimes all that I can see are dogs and demons...
I have a lot more to say, but I honestly don't have the time to write right now...My tea is getting cold and I have to prepare for tomorrow's trip!!
Best,
~m
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-05 01:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-05 02:01 pm (UTC)Re: Rambling under the influence of overwork and Asahi
Date: 2004-11-05 02:04 pm (UTC)I dunno, I do think that the Sex Pistols WERE construed as a threat by conservative Brits at the time they came out (even if they were engineered by Malcolm to elicit exactly that reaction) and sad but true, it would still be considered too "threatening" to be played at most American corporate chain establishments. Another thing that interests me is that all in the US, music has to have lost its edge and be at least 20-30 year old universally recognizable pop music to become muzak, where is Japan, I hear songs by relatively innovative J rock bands that came out 2-3 year previously muzak-ified in the grocery store. It's as if they took the concept of muzak without the notion that it was supposed to be utterly dull and inoffensive. I think I might be appalled if I American corporations did the same but in Japan I can't help stop, recognize the beloved tune and think "huh, that's kinda cool."
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-05 02:08 pm (UTC)If I didn't have to work in a Japanese office for a living, I'd probably have a far less tainted view of Japan too.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-05 02:31 pm (UTC)First gaijin guardians like Alex Kerr build Japan up, telling anyone who'll listen how great her classical traditions are. Then they break her down, telling everyone how ugly she's become. Then they promise that if she lets them back into her life, they'll restore her beauty. Alex Kerr is actually running a tradional Japanese show house on Shikoku (http://www.chanpon.org/archives/2002/11/04/alex_kerrs_house.html), and his argument on economic liberalisation is that if Japan opened up to foreign capital and tourism she would have to spruce up her historical assets and become lovely again... in the eyes of people like him, who denigrate her present.
They're like a rejected man telling a woman, with a weird rhetorical mixture of misogyny and flattery, 'You're really not as great as you think you are, look, here's a mirror, see what I mean? Who would want you? But I do. Because I see you inner beauty, your old beauty. With me you could be stellar.'
To which I think Japan -- quite correctly -- says, 'Fuck off, I'm quite happy the way I am, thank you, and I have a date tonight, so if you'll excuse me I have to go wash my hair'.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-05 02:49 pm (UTC)Re: Int'l Japan
Date: 2004-11-05 03:13 pm (UTC)Marxy
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-05 03:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-05 04:01 pm (UTC)http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0918172020/002-3711850-4694438?v=glance
I don't know what the contemporary one would be... the problem is that by the time it got translated into English it would probably be dated. You could just buy Composite magazine, which has its articles translated into English at the back (ie the front).
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-05 04:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-05 04:42 pm (UTC)I also notice that the translated literature often privileges a sort of Western-inflected Japan. Writers like Mishima, Murikami, Banana what's-her-name and others portray a Japan fixated with the West in different ways. But maybe this is just the literature we're getting, ie we like the stuff that reflects us as well as them. I know the French have a lot more translated Japanese literature than we do.