The Japanese are almost Japanese
Feb. 7th, 2005 12:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomus
The Art Habour website has been expanded and now includes a biography of me lifted from a Japanese music website. My Japanese translation skills are limited to the Apple Sherlock translation module and educated guesswork, but this sentence caught my eye:
日本で滞在することも多い彼の日本への偏愛は、本当は日本人ではないかと思わせるほど。
It seems to say something like "He chooses to spend much of his time in Japan, to the extent that you wonder sometimes whether he isn't Japanese." This is a comment I've heard a lot in my life, and not just in Japan. A Finnish newspaper once described me as 'almost domestic'. When I go to Greece they dwell on my appropriation of a Greek god's name, and a couple of childhood years spent in Athens. My recent discussion of Vice magazine on Design Observer drew the comment "The Vice boys are not from New York. They started here in Montreal (as did you, once upon a time)."
Now, all this might suggest that Momus has become a truly global brand, appearing 'almost domestic' in different ways in different markets. But a recent piece I wrote for Metropolis magazine advanced the opinion that the secret of happiness is to stay foreign, to expect (like those alienated writers Paul Bowles and Franz Kafka) to be at home nowhere. Is there a contradiction here? Not really, for two reasons. The first reason is that if you turn the phrase 'nearly domestic' around it can be rendered as 'not quite one of us'. We find ourselves back in the eerie mineral smoke of the 'uncanny valley', the idea that we feel increasing empathy towards things that resemble us... but only up to a point. Beyond that point ('the uncanny valley') there's a sudden plunge into spookiness and repulsion. The similarity becomes uncomfortable.
So when this Japanese music encyclopaedia wonders whether I'm not 'almost Japanese', this isn't necessarily good news for me. My Metropolis article cites the widely-held belief that Japanese don't want gaijin to become too like them, and start to cold-shoulder those who try, like Arudou Debito, or David Aldwinckle, a self-styled 'social activist' against Japanese monoculturalism. (Whenever I mention Debito, I like to mention Yuri Kochiyama, a veteran Japanese-American campaigner against US racism, for balance.) In the article I state my happiness with this state of affairs, a mutual holding-at-arm's-length which can also be seen as a mutual enchantment, an eternal yet unconsummated honeymoon between the Japanese people and myself.
I entered Japan, and Japanese culture, thanks to 'Trojan horse' Kahimi Karie, in the globalist 90s. It seemed easier then to be both a foreigner and a good object for the Japanese. Shibuya-kei was globalist, pluralist, post-modern, open, eclectic. The young Japanese I met in the 90s--kids now aged between 25 and 35--were open to foreign travel, to collaborations with foreigners on equal terms. The Japanese I'm closest to are still these people, widely-travelled, formed in the 90s, cosmopolitan, outward-looking.
But this year I've been very aware of a surprising new mood in Japan, an intensely inward-looking mood akin to narcissism. Japan, increasingly, performs itself to itself as 'the other', as an exotic tourist destination primped for internal consumption. TV here in Hokkaido is an endless advertorial presentation of winter resorts where Japanese families go to marvel at intensely, even stereotypically, Japanese wonders; to bathe in hot springs, to sit on tatami mats in ryokan hotels, to sample inevitably delicious food. It's what deconstructionists would call "the staging of difference against the scenery of standardisation and globalisation". But the globalisation part of the equation has been hidden.
I had dinner on Friday night with some 20 year-old Japanese kids, students of the Future University, and asked them some questions. None of them had been outside Japan, and none of them seemed very keen to travel. They planned to spend their whole lives in Hokkaido. A recent Pop Vox feature on Japan Today saw 20 year old Komachi saying "I have no interest in the U.S. and politics, whatsoever..." and Hisamoto, 23, concurring "What Bush does is not related to me. There is no reason why I even need to think about him so much."
I tend to agree with the 'stupid wisdom' of this young generation of Japanese. The US (the standard-bearer, in the 90s, for globalism) has, alas, become objectively vile over the past five years thanks to misgovernance, a new spirit of situatedness, and the abandonment of its Enlightenment heritage. Ironically, the new mood of Japanese self-obsession closely resembles the new mood of American self-obsession; in both nations internationalism has been dismantled and replaced by nationalism. The big difference is that America is aggressively exporting its currently ugly culture all over the world, whereas Japan is keeping its beautiful culture rather secret. Not only is Japan not invading and 'reforming' other nations, it isn't even advertising itself abroad as a tourist destination. Its tourism is very much an internal affair.
Although I'm sad that the current Japanese mood of intense self-love seems not to need me in quite the same way as 90s global pomo Japanese culture seemed to, I'm generally positive about the trend to national narcissism. I believe Japan really does have a culture worth protecting, celebrating, and being proud of. It's a sensual culture, a refined and beautiful culture. It contains radically different, particular and valuable ways of thinking, feeling, tasting, seeing, embracing, bathing, being. I want Japanese, rather than tourists, to be the curators of this culture, and I believe that foreigners will benefit from there being a 'Japanese way of being' even if they seem, in some ways, excluded from it (if only by the huge cost of holidays here, and the difficulties in negotiating Japan's rather foreigner-unfriendly infrastructure).
Watching Hokkaido TV last night, I saw Japaneseness being 'performed' for a Japanese audience in the form of travelogues and internal tourism puffs. The evening's viewing was a parade of beautiful, archetypical Japanese experiences being marvelled at by Japanese people as if they were foreigners in their own country. Narcissism, after all, implies both self-love and a certain self-alienation. Can that lovely face looking up from the pool really be... me? I have an inkling that this self-alienation is the point at which foreigners can insert themselves into Japan. Because if the Japanese need Japan 'performed' for them as an exotic spectacle, they're already foreigners in their own land, just like me. The Japanese are almost Japanese... just like I am.
If you think it's odd that I find such self-absorption heartening, you have to remember that in the country I was born and brought up in, the TV mostly showed images of another country – the US. What's more, it mostly showed situations of crime and conflict rather than the sensuality and beauty on display in a typical evening's viewing in Japan. If I imagine a Scotland in which Scots are as in love with being Scottish as Japanese are in love with being Japanese, I must say I find it a lovely picture. Love, even self-love, often starts off as a lie, but it's a virtuous and transformative lie; a lie that might just become the truth. If you believe contentment is something good, something a nation should aspire to, you have to accept that self-contentment might be a perfectly good way to achieve it. But if the Japanese are only, like me, on the way to becoming Japanese, then perhaps we shouldn't use the word 'self-contentment'. Perhaps we should say 'self-aspiration'.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-06 08:49 am (UTC)How would you characterize the Japanese interest in Western literature?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-06 08:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-06 09:23 am (UTC)You (or someone you linked to -- I forget which) wrote last year about young Japanese adopting visual styles from other cultures without bothering to acquire the contexts that go along with them. It seems the massive outflux of Japanese culture to the West since the 1980s has affected much the same phenomenon in foreigners. Sure, I can buy Tezuka's Phoenix or Yukio Mishima's novels at the local bookstore, but to what extent do I understand what I'm looking at?
The same may be true of Western literature as it's viewed by native Japanese. Do you think the overall indifference they show towards us has anything to do with ignorance of Western art's subtleties, or is it more of a general disdain for our (arguably) barbarian ways? Or, maybe it's not even appealing on the surface level, as Japanese art tends to be for us.
Someone give them Henry Miller.
Re: foreign lit in Japanese
Date: 2005-02-06 09:56 am (UTC)The problem is that the flow of Japanese literature lacks the same sentence-logic as the West, and all translated books have a stiff kind of "only the facts ma'am" kind of feel to them. Unless the translator is great, Camus reads the same as Hemingway. Oddly, Murakami Haruki's early stuff reads like imported fiction.
The language barrier prevents a lot of Post-modern fiction like Pynchon from getting translated or read.
Also, something I'd like to write about a bit: the Japanese don't really believe in a liberal arts education, so unless you are a Literature major, you've never read anything substantial. Everything is specialized and based on Completism (except when you get a job and they bounce you around as a specialist so that you can't leave the company and get a job based on your skills.)
Marxy
Re: foreign lit in Japanese
Date: 2005-02-06 10:01 am (UTC)Can you point me to any reading on how the Japanese academic community interfaces with its artists? Where do Japanese artists get their funding?
Re: foreign lit in Japanese
Date: 2005-02-06 09:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-06 10:31 am (UTC)The last place I lived in Japan had a locked room in the back that I was instructed by the landlord never to enter. So, I of course broke in. The house has originally been the town's surgery back in the 1920's. I was expecting specimen jars and skeletons. Aside from a rather attractive hypodermic set, the room was filled with Taisho translations of Western literature: Dostoevsky, Zola, Shakespeare, Thoreau... There were a few photo albums that reconstructed his life: studied German and medicine in Osaka, where he met his wife, opened the first Western surgery in the town and then sent off to Manchukuo and repatriated at the war's end. He did seem far more international in his yearnings than most of the people I met in town.
He had a way out. Most people who remained in the town had a future in construction of some sort. Fishing was finished as a profession. Young people left and never came back. I suspect it's maybe not so different for some people studying in Hakodate from various small towns in Hokkaido. What is to be done?
I suspect that doctor would have heard of Chernyshevsky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Chernyshevsky) though.
Re: JPNLIT
Date: 2005-02-06 11:54 am (UTC)True, but isn't "literature" itself a pretty new concept to Japan? You have all the Heian court stuff and maybe some common literature (travel diaries) of the Edo period and poems, but no one set out to write literary works until the late 19th century. The Kojiki can be translated but I doubt anyone in the West is going to be as interested in it when compared to something like Kokoro or Sore kara.
Then there's the question: how much Japanese stuff is worth translating? Are there a thousand unknown amazing writers out there? A lot of the academic translators are snobs and don't really respect anyone outside of Mori Ogai, Natsume Soseki, Kawabata, Mishima, Oe, Abe, Akutagawa, Dazai, and maybe Murakami Haruki. (Maybe also Enchi Fumiko?) Banana Yoshimoto and Murakami Ryu get read, but they are not really considered "literary." We aren't going to do anyone a favor by translating Tanaka Yasuo's Nantonaku, Crystal out of Japanese - unless for historical purposes.
I suspect that doctor would have heard of Chernyshevsky though.
I don't know too much about pre-war education, but I'm sure people were ga-ga over anything Western post-1868. Socialism was hip, ya dig.
Marxy
Re: JPNLIT
Date: 2005-02-06 01:00 pm (UTC)Translating Tanaka Yasuo? Well, I'd have the option at least. You've made frequent mention on your own site about how information is disseminated/controlled within Japan and how this skews perception. I don't disagree. I'm suspicious as to why we wouldn't be doing anyone a favour by putting more on the shelf. I don't read "high" literature every day. Our perceptions of Japan would be enriched by less filtering of information by specialists. It's an empty dream. Perhaps when translation software is more reliable, if ever, we might have the freedom to wander Kinokuniya and know that every book is within our reach and understanding with no regard to the material's supposed literary qualities.
(Hmm, there's a slight meeting of Shibusawa and Momus at the bottom of this page (http://www.creativebehavior.com/index.php?PID=134))
I have to disagree on the nature of Japanese literature. Edo period literature is vast in scope and most certainly volume. True, it may not be of much interest to a contemporary readership in either Japan or Britain, but neither are, say, the essays of Hazlitt.
Re: JPNLIT
Date: 2005-02-06 02:36 pm (UTC)It's funny, when I was living in Japan - studying Japanese literature, as it happened - I think I must have got homesick or something at some point, because I bought a copy of David Copperfield and devoured it. It was quite an amazing experience after having lived on a diet of Japanese literature for so long. My God, I thought, there was nothing like this in Japanese literature at that time - it's so advanced in terms of plot, characterisation, humour, social commentary, general observation, depth of learning, and so on. Well, this is true. But it's also true there are things in Japanese literature that you just won't find anywhere in Western literature.
I like the fact, for instance, that plot has never been of such great importance in Japanese literature. I like the zuihitsu tradition of writing whatever comes into your head, and I love the refined aesthetic of, for instance, the tanbiha.
Unfortunately, the further back you go, the harder the literature is to translate into anything that has the sophistication necessary to hold the attention of a modern audience. I think this is more a problem of a language barrier than anything else. Reading Hojoki in the original and in translation is like reading two entirely different texts. Japanese poetry doesn't translate at all either.
Re: JPNLIT
Date: 2005-02-06 02:38 pm (UTC)Re: JPNLIT
Date: 2005-02-06 04:05 pm (UTC)Re: JPNLIT
Date: 2005-02-06 04:53 pm (UTC)Having said that, I did enjoy a translation of Basho's haiku as a naive sixteen-year-old, before I'd ever really conceived a specific interest in Japan, so... I suppose what I mean is, I wouldn't like the value of Japanese poetry (and other traditional/classical literature) to be judged on the strength of its translations. That was really my main thrust, but somehow it got diverted into some other channel.
Re: JPNLIT
Date: 2005-02-06 07:34 pm (UTC)Re: JPNLIT
Date: 2005-02-06 10:53 pm (UTC)Re: The gaijin are coming
Date: 2005-02-06 09:48 am (UTC)Re: The gaijin are coming
Date: 2005-02-06 09:57 am (UTC)"Japan is a country that does not exist, and has never existed."
- to misquote Oscar Wilde once again.
Re: The gaijin are coming
Date: 2005-02-06 10:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-07 04:28 am (UTC)Beautiful.
Re: The gaijin are coming
Date: 2005-02-06 09:58 am (UTC)Marxy
Re: The gaijin are coming
Date: 2005-02-06 10:11 am (UTC)From what I know of Arudou, he's not down on or critical of Japan in general. He's just trying to correct what he sees as a problem with racial discrimination. And he works with the Japanese legal system, as a Japanese citizen.
On the other hand, Marxy, you seem to critique everything from Bear posters on the subway to J-pop. Indeed if I understand your opinion correctly most of Japan's problems stem from a cultural lack of criticism, or a proper dialectical process. If I'm not mistaken your dream of introducing this kind of process to Japan makes you a cultural crusader.
we suck young blood
Date: 2005-02-06 10:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-06 11:06 am (UTC)For some reason, they love Maugham and Saroyan above all others.
I've noticed the Somerset Maugham thing, too. Weird! But I remember a conversation with my 'tutor' (what I would call a 'college mum') at Kyoto University in which he asked me who was the best known Japanese writer in the West. I said that these days it is Murakami (by the way, I hate Murakami), but that it used to be Mishima. He was really surprised at this. "Who do you think it should be?" I asked. He replied that his answer could only really be Natsume Soseki. (I went to a book launch of a new translation of Soseki's works in London the other day, where the translator spoke about how terrible it was that Soseki was virtually unknown in Britain, where his literature was arguably born. On the mainland he is, apparently, widely translated. Well, what a surprise, the British are not interested in culture!) It seems like the fact that Mishima is so popular in the West is a bit like Maugham being so popular in Japan.
I'd just say that, I've read both Mishima and Soseki in the original, and it seems to me that Mishima is far the superior writer. Of course, that's largely personal taste. I think Mishima was, more than Westerners often realise, heavily influenced by western thought and literature. He was far more interested in dramatic plot developments and so on than someone like Soseki, whose style is closer to a slice of life with oblique metaphysical content lurking about.
Something else I would say - I think Japanese translations into English are generally of an appallingly low standard. I wonder if Marxy or any others interested in things Japanese would agree with me? I think there are just a lot of Mickey Mouse translators about. In fact, I've had something to do with one of them - a charlatan and opportunist whose name I shall not mention. It's funny, 'Sinology' sounds respectable, but 'Japanology' sounds like a load of kids writing their dissertations on manga and puricula machines. I think it's because academic interest in Japanese culture is relatively so young, just about anyone with a smattering of Japanese can set themselves up as an expert.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-06 11:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-06 04:58 pm (UTC)Re: Soseki and Mishima
Date: 2005-02-06 11:37 am (UTC)Didn't Soseki hate Britain and go totally crazy when he was sent there for a couple of years?
Mishima is better known as a historical persona in Japan than Maugham is in the West, probably because of his crazed coup-attempt/suicide. But his stuff is a little headier than the usual low-brow lit that sells.
I think there are just a lot of Mickey Mouse translators about.
I think Jay Rubin and Alfred Birnbam's translations of Murakami are well-done, (I like Rubin's translation of Nosaka Akiyuki's "American Hijiki" too) although Murakami writes like translated prose to start with. I didn't really gain anything from reading the Japanese. I have a feeling that the language would make a world of difference with Oe or Kawabata or Soseki. But isn't that why Murakami is so well read in the West? His stuff reads like Western books. Kawabata's works do not.
When you get out of the academic world though, I find that the lack of Japanese-speaking foreigners creates a vacuum in which anybody gets a chance to participate in translation. I've seen ridiculously bad translations of English and very selfish translations of Japanese. It goes both ways.
Marxy
Re: Soseki and Mishima
Date: 2005-02-06 11:53 am (UTC)I think there are some good translations of Japanese literature - for instance, Donald Keene's translation of No Longer Human is, in my opinion, as close to perfect as you can get in a translation - but I also find that too much of it reads like an unedited first draft, really as if the translator's only skill is in understanding the original Japanese, and has no idea about prose style at all. I agree that it cuts both ways, but fewer people seem to mention the low quality of translations from Japanese.
Re: Soseki and Mishima
Date: 2005-02-06 12:02 pm (UTC)I do mainly industrial or magazine translations, which give more leadway, but I often feel guilty that I've made the speaker sound they way I want him to in English. It's hard to translate an improper use of Japanese into English without making it sound like bad English.
MXY <-- oops, but an AR in there.
Ideas out and in.
Date: 2005-02-06 12:21 pm (UTC)I just did an article for OK Fred about the generational split that divides the Japanese indie rock world. The Shibuya-kei generation is very international and built up their whole meme pool by borrowing from the West's forgotten history. Meanwhile, Shibuya-kei's success made that whole curational mass a Japanese item and the younger generation sees no need to look West for inspiration. This is the downside of the 90s Cultural Bubble: the younger kids are not so much pro-Japan or anti-West as totally apathetic to anything beyond their field of sight.
I'm all for Internationalism and cross-culturalism. I like it when the Japanese recreate Western things and end up making it totally incomprehensible to the West, but Jpop has become so completely Japanese that it needs a breath of new ideas - whether those come from the West or Java or the Artic. Cultural incest gets boring after a while. nurui's the right word. Japanese bands don't need to copy DFA or the Strokes, but it wouldn't hurt for them to take them into account instead of carrying on like Green Day was still the most important band in the States.
In the past, Japan was 1) export stuff to West 2) import ideas/culture from West or in other words, 3) no importing stuff from the West 4) no exporting ideas out. Now as manufacturing ceases to be a major part of the economy, it's oddly 1) export ideas/culture to the West 2) do not import ideas from the West.
80s Japan with its horrible "gaijin complex" - where every douchebag from the Commonwealth would be treated as a king - was no good, and what I liked about Japan was its cultural self-confidence in the 90s. But now, they've stopped getting the ingredients for their cultural stew from new locations and kept being just as arrogant and lazy about it. There's a balance, and Japanese pop culture never seems to be able to find the right point of import/self-love. Nationalism also seems to only be popular when it supports the hegemonic system: tear down those old traditional homes and keep putting Johnny's Entertainment acts on TV!
Marxy
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-06 09:21 pm (UTC)Hall Of Mirrors
Date: 2005-02-06 11:53 pm (UTC)Re: Hall Of Mirrors
Date: 2005-02-07 06:20 am (UTC)Re: Hall Of Mirrors
Date: 2005-02-07 07:53 am (UTC)Could you provide some context?
For example, is the bar Korean or Foreign owned?
Are there similar bars that are "Korean, only" or "No foreigners"?
In general do Korean bars and other public establishments welcome foreigners or are there a lot of exclusive places?
Is there a motive behind the "Foreigners only" policy?
Do they discriminate among foreigners. For example, what about Korean-Americans? Do they check I.D., passport?
And finally, what kind of flack do they catch for this? If none, why?
Re: Hall Of Mirrors
Date: 2005-02-07 08:01 am (UTC)Re: Hall Of Mirrors
Date: 2005-02-07 08:16 am (UTC)I've never seen anywhere that says 'Koreans Only'.
The experience of the (white) foreigners I know is that yes, you are always 'welcome' in a traditional Korean bar. Koreans are usually very keen to make a good impression.
I suspect that Momus is right about the motive. Any Koreans who go to Itaewon are looked on with suspicion by their compatriots anyway.
I think it's fair to say that white foreigners get a warmer reception than black, Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakastani people etc. I'm not an expert and my experience is limited, but that's been my perception.
None, I don't think. Perhaps it's similar to the complete lack of PC that an earlier poster mentioned in reference to Japan.
Re: Hall Of Mirrors
Date: 2005-02-07 11:31 am (UTC)When I visited Seoul I stayed with a professor at one of Korea's top Uni's. I mentioned to him how much I was enjoying Insadong, particularly the high density of stylish and stunningly beautiful women there. His reply was that he much preferred Itaewon. He then went out to tell me that his whole department used to regularly go whoring together in some very down and dirty places (can't remember whether or not he meant Itaewon), but that it was all spoiled when they hired a female member of the department. This was after a few beers, of course.
Re: Hall Of Mirrors
Date: 2005-02-07 07:38 pm (UTC)thanks
Date: 2005-02-08 01:32 pm (UTC)With only one point would I have to disagree:
Both Japan and the U.S. seem to be heading towards another period of isolationism. The Japanese government has already started deporting Kurdish refugees just last week. With Koizumi and others wanting to turn the Self Defense Forces into the "Self Defence Army" perhaps Japan WILL soon be able to spread their narcissism around the world. That is what the PR of China and the two Koreas fear. Koizumi is best friends with Dubya remember. In my opinion, whether good or bad, and except for in Okinawa, the US has not really lost much of its appeal to the Japanese. If anyone Japanese has lost their desire to travel to the U.S., it probably has more to do with their Canadian English teacher's influence rather than any current events.
BTW, Isn't Tony Blair, Dubya's other best friend, a Scot?
Re:
Date: 2005-02-08 01:59 pm (UTC)Could there be some Momus projection going on here?
Re: thanks
Date: 2005-08-09 07:10 pm (UTC)re: The Japanese are almost Japanese
Date: 2005-02-08 03:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-23 09:24 am (UTC)hello
Date: 2007-04-06 11:30 pm (UTC)Nice homepage! :)
Good luck !
hello
Date: 2007-04-08 05:54 pm (UTC)