...and you expect the NY Times to be up-to-date with what's going on in the world. Dream on! You probably heard about when they interviewed Sub Pop employees during the Grunge years and published all these lies and jokes they had been given as truly cool and hip things going on in Seattle at the time.

Hey, watch out. The Gray Lady writers are far from lamestains and totally score. Not like you Tom-Tom Club members would understand...

I would have liked to have read some of those articles but I couldn't be bothered to sign up for the free registration. I did have a look at the portraits of innocent young girls. Only the cover picture of that photo essay was interesting really.
Would probably have read the essay by Pico Iyer. He's quite good sometimes. Has anyone read it? Would they be willing to send it as a text file?

BTW what's up with all this publicity? Is this what Japan gets for doing the Star Wars Dance with the USA?

Or in other words is the good publicity, cum advertising, some kind of reward for being best buddies?

looks like lots of laughs to be had over at the NYT, I'll make a point of reading all that stuff... maybe tomorrow...

BTW what's up with all this publicity?

I offered an explanation here.

Yes I recall reading that thread. What it seems to boil down to is that the media in the USA is out of touch.

Still the theory that Japan gets good press in the American media because it cooperates with US foreign policy has greater explanatory power, wouldn't you agree?

And Japan is such a sweetheart isn't it - just look at the prime minister coddling Hollywood (or is it the other way around?).

I agree with what Sparklig is saying. If you want another example to prove this theory just look at Australia, and compare it to Canada. They fairly similar countries in size, population, economic growth, multicultural background, etc. The main difference between the two is their distance to America, it seems. Now, compare how they are rating in the entertainment industry. Are Australian actors getting main roles in Hollywood blockbusters and tv shows, winning Academy Awards and the like? Yes. What about Canadian actors? Michael J. Fox anyone? Are Australian bands winning Grammys and MTV awards? All the time. Any Canadian bands? Not really. Is Australia in the 'Coalition of the willing'? Yes. Canada? No. Being a neighbour country to America, one might think that it would have a higher international profile than Australia, but the opposite is happening. The reasons are pretty obvious.

Is Australia really that hot at the moment?

The weakspot in this "global politics rules fashion" theory is that most media personnel and fashion editors veer left politically, or at least, opposed the war in Iraq. I don't see there being internal pressure to support Coalition partners.

Pure and simple, Japan - the nation as a monolithic block - is "in style." And what I'm worried about is that if this Japanese cultural decline continues, Japan will be "five minutes ago" in a couple of years.

You can use that argument as a pre-emptive strike on all the hordes of Gwen Stefani, Kill Bill and Lost in Translation fans that are starting to invade Japan. They'll be saying 'Tokyo is so 1998, dude!' when they go back home.

If we're quite finished with all the absurd conspiracy theories, and Marxy's fears that people will use the NYT article's promotion of the superflat idea to project superflatness, incorrectly, onto Japan's social structure (in fact the article doesn't make any claims about social equality in Japan) or that Japan, because it's hot, will be off the boil in a couple of years... could we look at what the article actually did say? It basically said something very interesting and important, which I think explains why Japan is "hot". I'll just paste three quotes which say it all.

1. "The grab-bag appropriation, inexact simulation and accelerated speed that characterize this process no longer appear peculiarly Japanese. They feel now. We live in an age when distinctions are arbitrary, originality is devalued, hierarchies are discredited and authenticity seems meaningless."

2. "In the same way, there is no pecking order in Japanese tradition whereby an original outranks a well-made copy or a work of art in a gallery is more precious than a piece of merchandise in a shop. The time-honored Japanese worldview, in other words, closely resembles the postmodern one, in which sensations and images rain down incessantly and you have no choice but to take it all in as it comes."

3. "It may be that Americans feel they understand Murakami without conducting research because he is reacting to a hyperstimulated and decontextualized Japan that looks a lot like their own society. For unique historical reasons, the Japanese arrived earlier at an ahistorical worldview."

Now, this is exactly what I say about Japan too: that it's important to the 21st century because it's the first society to be emerging from extreme postmodern conditions. If there were a Marx today, he'd be in Japan, just as the original Marx was in Britain, studying the most advanced industrial society which then existed, trying to see what would come next.

there is no pecking order in Japanese tradition whereby an original outranks a well-made copy or a work of art in a gallery is more precious than a piece of merchandise in a shop.

This is simply an incorrect generalization.

Since the quote mentions tradition one need simply look at the central tradition of the Japanese arts, tea and note the high value places on artefacts made by certain households, for example, Rakuware. Any item which has been used in certain historical tea gatherings or by famous masters automatically acquires great value. A similar principle applies for masks and garments used in Noh.

It doesn't seem correct to call the Japanese worldview ahistorical, when there is a strong sense of nationality and a history and culture that go back the better part of 2000 years.

Maybe schizo-historical would be
a more appropriate term?

Someone sent me the Pico Iyer piece from that NYT supplement. I'm sure it has appeared in one of his books of essays before, probably Global Soul.

It's very 2000.

there is no pecking order in Japanese tradition whereby an original outranks a well-made copy or a work of art in a gallery is more precious than a piece of merchandise in a shop.

This struck me as true because I thought of the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto. What people marvel at now is a replica, but that doesn't seem to bother anyone. This obviously chimes with the emphasis on the simulacrum in postmodernism. Same thing applies to Murakami's use of assistants to make his works. And the gallery / department store thing is very apt. My first shows in Japan were in department stores, and I think Koyama is right to say (as he does in the NYT piece) that the history of art in Japan really does flow through department stores, which act as curators. (Koyama mentions Seibu, which I was reading about recently as the place where the man who runs Nadiff gallery and bookstore started.) This is why it makes little sense to criticize Murakami and Nara for their commercialism. Sure, Murakami decorates handbags and embellishes the Mori building. It's absolutely consistent with his fusion of the abject and the sublime. Notice also that his life is "superflat" -- there is no distinction between public and private space. He sleeps in a bungalow at the Hiropon Factory, in a sleeping bag. He also seems to want to erase the distinction between work and sleep!

The "ahistorical" thing needs clarification: "everything existing immediately and simultaneously" does not mean that history is ignored. What it means is that there's the illusion in postmodernism that all historical eras (and the styles of all foreign countries) exist out of context in an eternal present, like products on a supermarket shelf. It's more about anachronism than a denial of history. It's not that the past is absent, but that the pastness of the past is absent. This is what I mean when I say that availability of history and denial of history are two sides of the same coin.

The only place I thought the article went wrong was in the statement that the word kawaiso (poor, abject, pitiable) has its roots in the word kawaii (cute). In fact the author gives the definition for kawaiso but spells the word kawaiiso, which means something quite different.

while department stores have always been quintessentially middle-class social spaces, there's a huge discrepancy in who's just looking and who's really buying.

But art is a classic case where "just looking" is fine. That's what it's for. A few collectors and patrons basically subsidize the looking activity of the rest of us. Warhol sold Polaroid portraits to rich people (ironically using the cheapest, most mass market and disposable image-making technique) but said he'd be happy to see his work on postcards and carrier bags, or make album sleeves for rock bands. Murakami uses Mori exactly the same way Warhol used Jackie Onassis: to get his images subsidised by the wealthy so that they're available to the poor for free in the mass media. The Catholic Church did the same thing in the Renaissance, and it's pretty amazing how many Italian artists used their commissions to get sumptuously homoerotic imagery across to the masses.

Momus, good to have you back. This site gets boring without serious combat.

1. "The grab-bag appropriation, inexact simulation and accelerated speed that characterize this process no longer appear peculiarly Japanese. They feel now. We live in an age when distinctions are arbitrary, originality is devalued, hierarchies are discredited and authenticity seems meaningless."

I've been meaning to write about this more in depth, but if Postmodernism is a naturally-occuring cultural response to Late Capitalism, Japan got there first because they had no counter-critique to placing all aesthetic and artistic values on the free market. Japan is a hyper-extended version of America in the 50s, and the big media conglomerates now have finally gotten Americans over the Bohemian counterattack on plastic culture and reinterest in "auratic"
art posed in the 80s. The market has always wanted to destroy autheticity, and in Japan, there was no resistance. Japan became more "postmodern" because it had nothing to lose in total commodification.

2. "In the same way, there is no pecking order in Japanese tradition whereby an original outranks a well-made copy or a work of art in a gallery is more precious than a piece of merchandise in a shop."

This is tied to a false idea of classless society. There are clearly different values in symbolic capital, and the "massification" of the art world stems mostly from the lack of a widely-diffused snobby intellectual elite. The art market had to move to the un-intellectual upper-middle class to find demand, and in doing so, was required to remove the intellectual barriers to art appreciation, thereby making art simply another commodity no better than any other commodity.

3. "For unique historical reasons, the Japanese arrived earlier at an ahistorical worldview."

The Japanese play with the same pop culture as the West, but for them, it's totally ahistorical and rootless. Great.

If there were a Marx today, he'd be in Japan, just as the original Marx was in Britain, studying the most advanced industrial society which then existed, trying to see what would come next.

I'm a Marx and I'm in Tokyo.

Karl Marx would find Japan to be the most hyperextended version of capitalism on Earth - where the entire society revolved around economic growth and every emotion, relation, and art becomes a commodity. He would recoil at the wanton celebration of fetishization. A country is advanced when it chooses to go in a progressive directions, but Japan brings to the table no new ideas: it's just a nation fully-dedicated towards the logic of late capitalism without an inkling of self-critique or resistance.

This struck me as true because I thought of the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto. What people marvel at now is a replica, but that doesn't seem to bother anyone.

What are we going to do, not go see it? I think we're stuck enjoying simulcram. The idea that the Japanese don't value "original" or "authentic" goods is absurd. Look at the T-shirt market or vintage synth market. No one wants a Moog-lookalike, they want a real Moog and will pay 400,000 for it. Authenticity becomes a legitimizing force, and while some people have to settle for simulcra, others pay top dollar for the real thing.

This struck me as true because I thought of the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto. What people marvel at now is a replica, but that doesn't seem to bother anyone.

The most marvelous thing about the Golden Pavilion is how well it works as a sink for the tourist hordes. The Disney of Kyoto, and therefore no problem with simulacra.

Interestingly enough, there's a replica of the Golden Pavilion somewhere in Kyoto. A friend once considered renting it as a place to live.

Anyways this doesn't counter the more general examples I raised: famous tea bowls and utensils in tea, and the masks used in Noh. Famous masks become more and more valuable as they are used by generations of top actors. They are said to become repositories of kami.

What I'm saying is that the blanket statement in that quote is quite simply incorrect. There are vaious attitudes to tradition and history, certainly not a single ahistorical view as is claimed by the article.

BTW statement about a lack of distinction between public and private life is very untypical of Japanes life, where there are very well defined distinctions between public and private. It's reflected in the language, social customs, traditional and contemporary architecture.

There are vaious attitudes to tradition and history, certainly not a single ahistorical view as is claimed by the article.

I'm with you on this one. At least in the fields I study - youth fashion and music - consumer use legitimacy and authenticity as an attribute to create a vertically hierarchicial framework that legitimizes consumption choices (at least for foreign items, since domestic products are too political to judge.)

The Catholic Church did the same thing in the Renaissance, and it's pretty amazing how many Italian artists used their commissions to get sumptuously homoerotic imagery across to the masses.

It suggests a thing or two about their patrons doesn't it.

If things were as superflat as Momus claims it would be nearly impossible to purchase a real Rolex as opposed to a fake one. Whereas exactly the opposite is true in Japan (or at least so I am told, I have no interest in owning a Rolex).

And as we all know there is an entire magazine publishing industry devoted to the fetishization of such "authentic" goods.

I'm not even going to try and engage momus's absurdities, sparkling and marxy have worked hard enough on that.

As for the NYT, it seems like the Murakami article was the usual western press pastiche of half facts and projected fantasies about Japan. They seem to really pick up on Murakami's cultural self loathing. Portraying Japanese culture that way is always guaranteed to produce a self satisfied feeling amongst the Knowing Orientalist.

Somehow I got the feeling that Murakami's quotes were 100% tatemae, but I dont know him so I cant say for sure. I saw a show of his sculpture in NYC in the mid(?) 90s with the Hiropon & Lonesome Cowboy figures. Really odd to see in person thats for sure! I think I talked briefly to him at the opening party, but have no real memory of the conversation.

The part of the article that made me actually laugh out loud was this:

t 8:50 every weekday morning, ... Murakami leads the staff of his art studio, Kaikai Kiki Company Ltd., in a round of calisthenics.

I have to wonder, do they all sing the company song as well? Do the employees adress him as Murakami-shacho? Or does he prefer Murakami-sensei? If Murakami has transformed his work into an industry structured along traditional Japanese structural lines, then good for him. A man's gotta eat after all.

As a little PS to this, I wonder why the US press never publicizes the Japanese fetishism for the 3rd Reich? There is a never ending stream of manga, toys and "cosplay" product devoted to loving recreations of the stories and machines of the Nazi regime. And thats the facts Jack.

A few years ago, I heard that the Hiroppon Factory was hiring undergraduate students to do all sorts of work over there. Since I lived close to the Factory's atelier in Saitama, I though it would be a good idea to apply for a job there. But as soon as I read somewhere about the way Murakami treats his workers, in a traditionally Japanese hierarchical, super-unflattering way, I gave up. I thought that we were talking about art, not about becoming underpaid salarymen like people in the northern suburbs.

I read somewhere about the way Murakami treats his workers, in a traditionally Japanese hierarchical, super-unflattering

I'm glad you mentioned this, because Murakami is well-known for working his assistants for long hours and low pay. What's interesting about him is that he has essentially replicated the traditional Japanese work value system - vertical hierarchy, judging on effort > talent - in a new "non-traditional" industry like art.

What's interesting about him is that he has essentially replicated the traditional Japanese work value system - vertical hierarchy, judging on effort > talent - in a new "non-traditional" industry like art.

The Japanese work environment I know best has been "restructuring" (quotes important here) for years. There seems to be an interesting illusion at work, because the more we "restructure" the more we seem to move towards the Edo-jidai. The vertical pecking order has become much more explicitly defined, with nearly all of the real power residing at the very top.

Fascinating to observe as long as you are able to cultivate a detached mindset.

sparkling said The vertical pecking order has become much more explicitly defined, with nearly all of the real power residing at the very top.

and that is why anyone who has worked here in the last decade or more finds this idea of a "superflat" society or "colapsing heirarchies" to be completely laughable.

in nick's defence, he HAS worked here...but at the same time it hasn't been part of either the blue OR white collar workforce. case in point, he's been working on and off as a foreign-singer/songwriter, which puts him well out of reach of some of the binaries of the japanese entertainment world:
http://metropolis.japantoday.com/tokyo/recent/feature.asp
...or so he would lead us to believe.
but i'm sure if we had a birds-eye-view on his contractual dealings (nick, would you be willing to give us the skinny?) with japanese record companies, we might have something more concrete to go on...

the NYT said this: It became much more so following a notorious criminal case in 1989, when an otaku named Tsutomu Miyazaki was arrested for the kidnapping and murder of four preadolescent girls. ''When Miyazaki's room was revealed to the public, the mass media announced that it was otaku space,'' Murakami once told an interviewer. ''However, it was just like my room. Actually, my mother was very surprised to see his room and said: 'His room is like yours. Are you O.K.?' Of course, I was O.K. In fact, all of my friends' rooms were similar to his, too.'' Murakami added that Miyazaki was only ''different from us'' because he ''videotaped dead bodies of little girls he killed.''

and momus said this about m. jackson: http://www.livejournal.com/users/imomus/91662.html

and i say: hummm...neither/or?

Murakami is getting to be a real BORE! There are so many Japanese artists producing art that is exciting and relevant...
Flat equals yuck.

r: nice of you to stand up for mr. momus, but I dont call what he does work in any real sense. Not that I disparage the labor of creating content or performing, but that being a fly in/fly out contract laborer is not in any way the same as being a part or full time employee. Until mr. momus actually lives and works here for any length of time, he will be o-gaku-sama rather than tonari no momus-san. The same applies to any other expert tourist.

r: nice of you to stick up for nick, but by your own qualifications what mr. momus has done is not work in the sense of how almost all of the population here understands it. Not that being an entertainer/content creator isnt work, but that being a fly in/fly-out entertainer is a completely different thing than being a full or part time employee of a company. Until mr. momus lives and works here as an employee or otherwise participates in society even as a geinojin for a reasonable period of time, he, and any other expert tourist, will be an honored guest rather than tonari-no-gaijin.