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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.
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