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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: 2004-12-14 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.