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imomusIf I started this Body Week partly to get away from blogging about Japan, I've failed. Because here I am back in Japan (in my mind, anyway), sitting on a raked, ultrarapid shinkansen train feeling like I'm in the future, while opening a basketwork bento box in which a block of rice and fish is wrapped in a bamboo leaf. And here I am reflecting once again that Japan has managed to combine the most exciting technological aspects of postmodern life with something healthily and beautifully medieval: the train is fast and futuristic, but the food (also 'fast', for it's pre-prepared and pre-cooked, snatched from a platform vendor) has nothing manufactured about it, no unhealthy chemicals, no MSG, no added salt or sugar. It's fish, rice and bamboo leaves in a basketwork case. It looks and tastes great, and I know that it's going to be good for my body. This eki ben or boxed snack lunch, along with the sugar-free cold green tea I've bought, might help me live as long as the Japanese themselves (and they're the world's longest-living people).
Japan has negotiated not only the most modern landscape of any 'advanced' nation (there it goes, flicking by silently outside my shinkansen window, buildings as raked and recent as the train itself), but also the least toxic. Because, no doubt, of some freak of history, some combination of aesthetic, geographical and religious serendipities, Japan has negotiated an excellent compromise between technology and the body. In Japan, the body is not abused or neglected, and this is reflected in a range of body-oriented technologies and facilities that we just don't have in the West.
Let's pretend it's a Friday night and I'm in Kyoto. What kind of things can I do? I could go and sit in various body-passive places (cinemas, bars, theatres) or I could opt for something more active. In the West I might search for a gym, a bowling alley, skating rink or nightclub. If I'm kind of shady and sketchy I might embark on a dangerous quest for some quasi-legal brothel or peep show. In Japan I have many more options. I could go to the Club Ichi Maru Maru, for instance. Here, spread across five floors, is a dizzying range of embodied things to do. I can shower and lie in a vibro-massage chair (many Japanese have these in their houses too) which will give my body a relaxing shake from my neck to my feet. I can fish in an artificial rock pool, or play the shamisen in an electronic music game, or shoot pool. I can also do disembodied stuff: surf the net, or read mangas, or play go. Nearby, and open until late, there are sentos where I can soak, enjoy water jet massages, and take a sauna. There are 'pink salons' and 'soaplands' and 'teleclubs' if I'm alone and seeking sexual experiences, and if I'm with someone I can go to a love hotel, a cheerful 'people's palace of sex' in which I can, for forty dollars or so, spend a few hours in the kind of erotic luxury known in the West only to Elton John. I can soak in a jacuzzi, sing karaoke, make love, watch porn featuring wholesome girls doing unwholesome things, grapple with mysterious vibrating sex gadgets, bathe again, or just listen to calming sound effects in a tender yet incredibly hi-tech environment of temporary privacy.
If I add a little money and spend the whole night in the love hotel, I might be surprised by the people I see leaving in the morning: middle-aged couples, office workers, affectionate teens, just your normal average person. In the light of day this place feels the very opposite of 'sleazy', and the people don't look furtive or fugitive. If the Western sex industry seems to be frequented by scary bald guys with pot-bellies, here in Japan it seems to be much more mainstream, more normal, more accepted. Perhaps that's because the body has never been vilified and excoriated here. Christianity, with its body repulsion (the iconography tells you everything) was firmly repelled, allowing indigenous body-celebrating traditions like shunga ('images of the spring') to flourish without stigma.
Chindogu is the Japanese word for making silly inventions. It's striking how many of these inventions are extensions of the body, from strap-on milk-filled breasts that allow a father to breast-feed his infant to a device which lets you sleep on the subway standing up. Blue boilersuited Japanese conceptual band Maywa Denki have turned 'unuseless invention' (they prefer the term 'nonsense machines') into an artform, making a whole range of fish-o-morphic musical instruments and marketing them online.
Maywa Denki took their name from a failed electric equipment company their father founded, and their link to real Japanese industry is not so far-fetched. Toyota recently released a robotic pod-car prototype, the Toyota Walker, which almost rivals a Maywa Denki fish-motif nonsense machine like the 'fish controlled tractor vehicle'. (Watch a slideshow of a Maywa Denki performance here.) A couple of days ago I joked that if Apple did a HUD display iBook for the Walker, I could kiss my body goodbye forever. But the fact is, if I live in Japan, or with Japanese-style respect for my body, I know that kiss off will never happen. The same zany yet deeply sane engineers who make robotic walkpods and nonsense machines will always be coming up with something interesting for my body to do.
Japan has negotiated not only the most modern landscape of any 'advanced' nation (there it goes, flicking by silently outside my shinkansen window, buildings as raked and recent as the train itself), but also the least toxic. Because, no doubt, of some freak of history, some combination of aesthetic, geographical and religious serendipities, Japan has negotiated an excellent compromise between technology and the body. In Japan, the body is not abused or neglected, and this is reflected in a range of body-oriented technologies and facilities that we just don't have in the West.
Let's pretend it's a Friday night and I'm in Kyoto. What kind of things can I do? I could go and sit in various body-passive places (cinemas, bars, theatres) or I could opt for something more active. In the West I might search for a gym, a bowling alley, skating rink or nightclub. If I'm kind of shady and sketchy I might embark on a dangerous quest for some quasi-legal brothel or peep show. In Japan I have many more options. I could go to the Club Ichi Maru Maru, for instance. Here, spread across five floors, is a dizzying range of embodied things to do. I can shower and lie in a vibro-massage chair (many Japanese have these in their houses too) which will give my body a relaxing shake from my neck to my feet. I can fish in an artificial rock pool, or play the shamisen in an electronic music game, or shoot pool. I can also do disembodied stuff: surf the net, or read mangas, or play go. Nearby, and open until late, there are sentos where I can soak, enjoy water jet massages, and take a sauna. There are 'pink salons' and 'soaplands' and 'teleclubs' if I'm alone and seeking sexual experiences, and if I'm with someone I can go to a love hotel, a cheerful 'people's palace of sex' in which I can, for forty dollars or so, spend a few hours in the kind of erotic luxury known in the West only to Elton John. I can soak in a jacuzzi, sing karaoke, make love, watch porn featuring wholesome girls doing unwholesome things, grapple with mysterious vibrating sex gadgets, bathe again, or just listen to calming sound effects in a tender yet incredibly hi-tech environment of temporary privacy.
If I add a little money and spend the whole night in the love hotel, I might be surprised by the people I see leaving in the morning: middle-aged couples, office workers, affectionate teens, just your normal average person. In the light of day this place feels the very opposite of 'sleazy', and the people don't look furtive or fugitive. If the Western sex industry seems to be frequented by scary bald guys with pot-bellies, here in Japan it seems to be much more mainstream, more normal, more accepted. Perhaps that's because the body has never been vilified and excoriated here. Christianity, with its body repulsion (the iconography tells you everything) was firmly repelled, allowing indigenous body-celebrating traditions like shunga ('images of the spring') to flourish without stigma.
Chindogu is the Japanese word for making silly inventions. It's striking how many of these inventions are extensions of the body, from strap-on milk-filled breasts that allow a father to breast-feed his infant to a device which lets you sleep on the subway standing up. Blue boilersuited Japanese conceptual band Maywa Denki have turned 'unuseless invention' (they prefer the term 'nonsense machines') into an artform, making a whole range of fish-o-morphic musical instruments and marketing them online.
Maywa Denki took their name from a failed electric equipment company their father founded, and their link to real Japanese industry is not so far-fetched. Toyota recently released a robotic pod-car prototype, the Toyota Walker, which almost rivals a Maywa Denki fish-motif nonsense machine like the 'fish controlled tractor vehicle'. (Watch a slideshow of a Maywa Denki performance here.) A couple of days ago I joked that if Apple did a HUD display iBook for the Walker, I could kiss my body goodbye forever. But the fact is, if I live in Japan, or with Japanese-style respect for my body, I know that kiss off will never happen. The same zany yet deeply sane engineers who make robotic walkpods and nonsense machines will always be coming up with something interesting for my body to do.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-13 02:26 pm (UTC)My obsession began, like that of many nerds, with anime. I thought to myself, "This stuff is pretty cool. There must be more cool stuff in Japan." Thus, I became familiar with the language (which isn't as hard as people seem to think) and with other non-animated bits of pop culture like music (The Pillows are one of my favorite bands) or film.
Over time, my interest in Japanese animation would wane, but my interest in other things Japanese would grow as I learned more about the culture (and began to study the language) and discovered things like Japanese cinema, which, in and of itself, is an art separate from any other cinema.
My favorite part has to be the oddities one comes across in studying Japan, like Chindogu. The type of things that in my part of the world would be written off as stupid by the general public are appreciated in Japan. Now there's a country with some taste.
It's a shame a good deal of the things that come from Japan are mocked in America. "Japanese heavy metal bands? How silly! I suppose we should make our own Godzilla movie, then... er..."
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-13 05:43 pm (UTC)And I think the real party is going on in Korea these days rather than Japan when it comes to film.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-13 05:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-13 07:24 pm (UTC)Look at that, you even like learning the language like all the little Japan nerds I knew in school.
Forget it, your interest in Japan is superficial.
Well, I hope you at least watched some Kurosawa films. Now go boast to your friends.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-13 08:19 pm (UTC)I am aware that I'm a complete moron, thank you. I don't need some asshole on the internet to point it out to make himself feel better about whatever insignificant inadequacies he has to deal in his pathetic life. I do that enough myself.
I'm sure you'll be glad to know I'll never read this journal again, much less post on it, because I am obviously too stupid to converse with elitists who are not only smarter than me, but are far less shallow.
Thank you for ruining my day, you dick.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-13 08:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-14 03:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-14 08:29 pm (UTC)I'll buy two copies of your album!
As well as the Man of Letters DVD I've been eyeing at work.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-13 04:04 pm (UTC)The Bitman "video bulb" makes a terrific amusement at parties, although it tends to reduce guests to semi-hypnotised staring.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-13 05:45 pm (UTC)Maywa Denki's consumer range of products or gudzu (mobile straps, fish extension cords, Knockmen and so on) have been produced by Yoshimoto Kogyo (http://www.japan-zone.com/modern/yoshimoto.shtml) (or here (http://www.yoshimoto.co.jp/)) for some time now. I think the world of entertainment (geinokai) qualifies as a real Japanese industry.
Their 1997 book Maywa Denki Nakizukan (http://www.amazon.co.jp/exec/obidos/ASIN/487188533X/250-5807511-4396235), produced when they were still a brotherly duo, is well worth hunting down.
Here's a promotional clip (http://www.ntticc.or.jp/Schedule/2004/NONSENCEMACHINES/) for the new show.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-13 06:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-13 07:06 pm (UTC)Tell your knee to get well soon!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-14 07:17 am (UTC)pastoral cybernetic paradise?.... Not really, but nice try.
Date: 2004-12-13 09:54 pm (UTC)"Least" and "most" and "toxic" may be relative terms but some of the rhetoric in your entry today seems quite divorced from my current experience living in Japan. Mind you, I live in Osaka.....but there's plenty of manmade filth and toxicity here.
One might assume from your description of a bento on a train that all the food here is healthy.....I dunno....check the local combini for PLENTY of junkfood options,.Doubtless that food has plenty of unhealthy chemicals and tastes wonderful..
I love living in the filthy, funky city of Osaka....and this is not meant to whine or complain about my current host country.( Alex Kerr's book Dogs and Demons book has plenty of examples of toxic cover-ups and such if one is interested in that.....but I found his relentless complaints and negativity too shrill to finish.)While they need not be crushed, the rose-colored glasses you use towards "healthy/natural" Japan should slip at least slightly......it's not as Universalized and General as one might assume from reading today's entry. Justin Lincoln
Re: pastoral cybernetic paradise?.... Not really, but nice try.
Date: 2004-12-13 10:19 pm (UTC)I'm keen to underline that many of these pleasures are urban, and pretty affordable. Club Ichi Maru Maru, for instance, is pretty cheap to use, as is your local sento. Many of the homeless people in Shinsekai use the local sento because they don't have a bathroom of their own. Love hotels are also very widely used by ordinary people in Japan, as I point out in the entry. This embodiment thing is not the preserve of the rich in Japan, as it tends to be in the West. I think it benefits from the high levels of public safety in Japan and from the rich public life (itself the result of the tiny private spaces most Japanese inhabit), but above all it's a cultural attitude to the body. You can see this very non-Western attitude in these vintage Shiseido commercials, which I blogged earlier in the year:
Puppet taking a bath:
http://www.nyu.edu/pages/greyart/exhibits/shiseido/ramfiles/tvcom11_high.rpm
Children's parade at the sento:
http://www.nyu.edu/pages/greyart/exhibits/shiseido/ramfiles/tvcom14_high.rpm
(Open RealPlayer and paste those addresses into 'Open Location'.)
Re: pastoral cybernetic paradise?.... Not really, but nice try.
Date: 2004-12-14 12:59 am (UTC)Also, the fact that most people live an hour outside of Tokyo in the suburbs prevents those who want to meet up with their boyfriend/girlfriend for a middle-of-the-workday tryst from going back to their apartment. Thus, use of the love hotel.
There is a more expensive genre of love hotels catering to "get-away" type fantasy experiences, but I think the majority of love hotels are kind of dingy rent-a-rooms. The number of sentou have always decreased as the number of apartments with private baths increase. The Japanese choose privacy when they have the option.
Marxy
Re: pastoral cybernetic paradise?.... Not really, but nice try.
Date: 2004-12-14 07:04 am (UTC)Re: pastoral cybernetic paradise?.... Not really, but nice try.
Date: 2004-12-14 09:33 am (UTC)Given the choice, Japanese like to be together in public places; they stay out in entertainment districts with work colleagues until late into the night instead of rushing home, as the British do.
I have recently seen a lot of good evidence that Japan - when given a choice - do tend to spend their non-work related leisure hours doing something by themselves. There are less hobby clubs in Japan than in the United States. Japan never went through a Fraternal Organization boom like the United States did in the 50s with the Elks, Rotary, etc.
What you are describing is the extension of work responsibility into after hours, which is different than the expression of free choice of how to use leisure hours. I haven't seen numbers for this, but I would assume that most afterwork drinking is probably
bosses inviting his inferiors out - a request that cannot be turned down out a sense of workplace duty. Japan appears to be more of a Formalist Group society - people enact organization-based rituals to show loyalty and adherence to social mores. But I'm not convinced that if Japanese workers had a choice they would beg their boss to take them out. Same goes for Golf or Keiba with the boss on Sunday.
In my own personal experience with school (which should NOT be taken as anything but anecdotal evidence), all the grad students dread the "mandatory fun" activities we must attend throughout the year. But you can't say no. The word used to describe these outings is "kyousei sanka" (mandatory participation).
Drinking afterwork is certainly kyousei sanka for most employees who have better things to do than get drunk with their boss (like playing a part in the child-rearing process). Your assertions of Collectivism seem to be based on the idea that all Japanese all want to go to things in groups out of their own free will and have no other impedance for attendance. If I feel a social obligation to do something and fear that the risks of deviation are too great, is my choice for involvement really based on a perfectly free choice?
Marxy
Re: pastoral cybernetic paradise?.... Not really, but nice try.
Date: 2004-12-14 02:02 pm (UTC)Chris_B
This I'sn't really related to relation of technology to the body but...
Date: 2004-12-13 10:01 pm (UTC)I've recently made the switch from mostly-passive web user(which I had comfortably been for years) to a more active and participatory relationship with the internets(cheap dig I know, but I think I've got good enough reason). This, along with getting introduced to Derrida(who I'm now getting ready to take a course on) via the many obituaries and your blog, has led me spending an excessive amount of time thinking about how the various web communication mediums differ from past ones(not necessarily web based) and each other. The Derrida comes in when faced with real-time text communication, which I've begun to hypothesize feels so odd to me because it forces quickly assembled concise dialog and promotes small talk. In other words it promotes the kind of communication that usually requires more contextual information(even just audio and visual emoting), and at the same time promotes hasty concision. This is probably something that has already been explored in greater depth elsewhere that I don't know about, but I just thought you might have some interesting pre-cooked or partly-cooked thoughts on the subject.
Re: This I'sn't really related to relation of technology to the body but...
Date: 2004-12-13 10:30 pm (UTC)Re: This I'sn't really related to relation of technology to the body but...
Date: 2004-12-14 01:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-14 02:22 am (UTC)I also thought that Japan was the country with the world's longest life expectancy. Until I checked that is. It turns out that average life expectancy is significantly longer in Andorra.
Japan is number 2 or 3, depending on whether or not San Marino is counted.
Yoshio Taniguchi
Date: 2004-12-14 03:35 am (UTC)Cheers
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-14 05:06 am (UTC)that is kind of strange to say. how about the ubiquitous fastfood restaurants that sell overly fatty ramen, "curry", and the huge sections of deep-fried foods at the supermarkets?! also, so many people smoke and drink here. also, i think the body is often neglected here, due to the popularity of pachinko, video games, manga, etc.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-14 07:24 am (UTC)I think it's undeniable that Japan is a much more 'embodied' culture than the US or UK, and that cultural (including religious) factors underlie this, and that it's reflected in the prevalence of technologies like vibro-massage chairs, the watery pleasures of the sentos, the erotic pleasures of love hotels and shunga, and so on. You're right to point out that there is some disembodiment and bodily abuse going on, some of the time, though. But who's to say that those pachinko players don't then cycle home, stopping off at the sento?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-14 08:07 am (UTC)A good source for up-to-date statistics on cancer in Japan, as well as comparisons with other countries is the Japanese National Cancer Center (http://www.ncc.go.jp/). Stomach cancer rates are falling, whereas the rates of most other cancers, particularly lung cancer, are on the rise. For males, the rate of lung cancer is predicted to reach that of stomach cancer by 2015. Some say that excessive consumption of pickles (tsukemono) may cause of the high rates of stomach cancer.
The latest JT posters do not portray smoking in a postive light. There's still a little note about "smoking etiquette", but there is also a veryclear warning (http://www.jti.co.jp/JTI_E/Release/04/no24.html) about the dangers of smoking.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-14 08:11 am (UTC)The most striking statistic in their 2003 report to me is that alcohol consumption (total volume) has doubled since 1965.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-14 10:06 am (UTC)hm... i've seen way more people at pachinko parlours then at sento. there are also many more parlours than sentos. many people go to onsen for holidays but only a few times a year. and certainly sitting at the office for too long everyday is not good for the body.
Re: Life expectancy
Date: 2004-12-14 09:40 am (UTC)They do eat a lot less than Americans, for sure, but they don't eat as healthy as their grandparents.
Marxy
Re: Life expectancy
Date: 2004-12-14 09:56 am (UTC)On the other hand medicine has improved everywhere, including Japan. The stats on the National Cancer Centre site I linked showed survival rates for cancer treatment improving.
I presume you've noticed that obesity is much less of a problem here than it is in just about all other industrialized nations, especially the USA.
But, yes, the quality of food young people are eating has suffered as a result of the conbini boom of the mid- to late 90's. Starbucks, MacDonald's, et al. are certainly not helping the situation.
Re: Life expectancy
Date: 2004-12-14 10:10 am (UTC)the ramen, curry, yaki-niku, kushi-yaki, pastries, and too much sweets is probably having more of an effect than "western food" and conbini food...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-14 02:16 pm (UTC)I like living here, I choose to live here. There are indeed a lot of great things. But it sure aint the fairy land you see on your visits.
Chris_B