a post-blog
| Flaubert, for example, explores the question of representation of heterogeneity and difference, of simultaneity and synchrony, in a world where both time and space are being absorbed under the homogenizing powers of money and commodity exchange. 'Everything should sound simultaneously,' he wrote; 'one should hear the bellowing of the cattle, the whispering of the lovers, and the rhetoric of the officials all at the same time (263).' |
| - David Harvey The Conditions of Postmodernism, 1989. |
| In Murakami's view, the multifocal composition of a group of roosters on an 18th-century gold-leafed screen requires a viewer's eye to dart here and there, without providing a comfortable place to rest...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. |
| - Arthur Lubow - "The Murakami Method" The New York Times, 4/3/05 |
I'm not quite sure what you're saying here... Flaubert is seen by some as a precursor of postmodernism. His Bouvard et Pecuchet in particular, a weird novel in which two friends try a series of hobbies and projects one by one. And of course Julian Barnes made his most postmodern novel, Flaubert's Parrot, a tribute to Flaubert.
If you want to make a parallel with Japan, both Flaubert and Japan "leapfrogged" the Modern period and went straight to pomo.
Posted by: Momus at April 5, 2005 4:40 PMWhat's so aggrevating about this argument over Japan and Postmodernism is that you're treating postmodernism as if it were a conscious adoption of a certain cultural code and not a natural outgrowth of changes in perception of space/time caused by social and technological changes.
While Flaubert may share some common traits with postmodernists, he is absolutely "modern" in the sense that he's a 19th century writer being influenced by the social changes in modernity and putting them into prosaic form. He's not reacting to post-industrial society, nor "modernism" as an established set of cultural practices - he's reacting to the collapse of time and space that capitalism and new technology wraught in the mid 19th century.
Murakami's reacting to the similar changes - which still exist, but have been amplified - but he's trying to build a unique nationalist model of "innate equality" around it. I was just trying to point out that this idea of "superflatness" makes perfect sense within Modernism too, only you're going to now define Modernism in such a narrow, straw-man way that superflat instantly a bold reaction against it.
Leapfrogging is also a silly concept that fundamentally admits a hard, cold chronology of societal progression. Japan has certainly a different modernity (perhaps: non-modernity) than the West, but that doesn't mean it's fully gone through all the social changes that made up modernism in the West. Japan is a mix of premodern, modern, and postmodern, and it's silly to assume that the mish-mash assumes perfect completion of a linear path that you usually argue isn't linear in the first place.
Posted by: marxy at April 5, 2005 5:28 PMyou "leapfrogging" reminds me of deleuze's entries on superficiality in llogique du sens? (in French, the chapter is titled "des effets des surfaces). i'm sure you know that. this is why i happen to like some of murakami's works in spite of his scary statements and obvious, readable, shallowness. everything in his art happens on the surface.
Posted by: odot at April 5, 2005 5:52 PM
In other news, Japan is helping Americans lose weight:
Japan is a mix of premodern, modern, and postmodern,
Yes!, and I'm sometimes surprised by the extent to which such elements can be seemingly compartmentalized and adjacent but isolated from each other. Japan is schizo-historical.
Posted by: sparkligbeatnic at April 5, 2005 6:34 PMYou should make another Marxy's hot sheet that goes like:
Five Minutes Ago: NY Times, Murakami Takashi, Post-modernism in America, Momus.
In: OK Fred, Gustave Flaubert, Post-post modernism in Japan, Sparkligbeatnic.
Flaubert was also an Orientalist.
Posted by: dzima at April 5, 2005 10:23 PMdavid said: Leapfrogging is also a silly concept that fundamentally admits a hard, cold chronology of societal progression. Japan has certainly a different modernity (perhaps: non-modernity) than the West, but that doesn't mean it's fully gone through all the social changes that made up modernism in the West. Japan is a mix of premodern, modern, and postmodern, and it's silly to assume that the mish-mash assumes perfect completion of a linear path that you usually argue isn't linear in the first place.
and i say: well put, david!
also, as a bit of a tangent, i would like to say that nick has been brandishing his smarmy little 'japan as a collapser of binaries' phrase (regarding japan's supposed function in relation to the 'platonic' west) around unchallenged long enough! naturally, i have my fair share of doubts with this as a concept in and of itself, but setting these aside for a moment, i'd like to bring up the fact that EVEN if japan were functioning as a 'collapser of western binaries' (and again, i seriously doubt this) that doesn't preclude the possibility that japan is (and always has been) creating it's own copious list of 'binaries'. i think if anything, some of the energy that marxy is expending here on this blog is directed to exposing and 'collapsing' some of these unique 'binaries' all by himself. how modern of him.
Meanwhile, Momus is posting the same flashy article about Japan being THE FUTURE on his Click Operetta as if any doubt of Japan's total postmodernism was nonexistant. At least we can all start trying to figure out why Japan is postmodern - more than it simply being "non-Platonic" by mass self-determination.
Posted by: marxy at April 6, 2005 1:56 AMdavid,
i still prefer the term 'clique opera' but your's works pretty well too...
as for momus quickly snatching up the NYT article from the discarded pile and trying to play it as some kind of intellectual 'trump card' against the serious (and still standing) questions that are being dealt here, i think this goes back to something that i mentioned a while back when you and i were having drinks over here: when it comes to japan, nick isn't interested in anything that isn't affirming what he has already said about this country. reasons for this are legion, and i don't have time to go into it here. now of course, that doesn't mean that you, mr. david, don't have anything up your sleve either, but at least you are willing to call a spade a spade. (please forgive the extended poker references)
actually, for all of his 'burliness', i think that one thing i enjoy very much about the comments that we get here coming from CHRIS is that they are all tempered by the very pragmatic viewpoint of a man who has has tried (and has more-or-less succeeded) in approaching that slippery status of being "ensconced" somewhere in the middleish regions of the japanese tate-shakai. he speaks from experience, and it is amazing how this kind of experience has a way of bucking whatever kind of theory that has been set up to describe how DAVID shouldn't be going thru the things that he has in fact gone thru. DAVID, if you'd only known about MURAKAMI's art earlier, you'd have had such an easier time dealing with all of the 'non-existant binaries' that surely havn't been plaguing you from the get-go.
i mean, naturally the reason that the homeless of osaka are WAY too cool to talk to momus (reporting for VICE magazine)...
http://www.viceland.com/issues/v10n8/htdocs/moo.php
...is that they are confident in their knowledge that the 'binary' of the structural disenfranchisement that they apparently HAVEN'T ever had to face was neatly pre-collapsed for them by their rockin' japanese superflat socio-economic NON-hierarchy (see murakami for the artistic version). shit, no WONDER they are too cool to talk to momus. he is so 5min. ago, and they ARE SOOO super-future!
moo kari makka,
r.
I can understand that you, as ex-pat Americans in Japan with a line in attacking Japan's postmodern superficiality, would be very alarmed at Arthur Lubow's message from back home, which is essentially "Hey guys, back here in CONUS, the homeland, it's getting exactly like you're saying Japan is." I mean, let's make a checklist of what Lubow says is now characteristic of both the US and Japan (but a bit more of Japan):
1. Grab-bag appropriation
2. Inexact simulation
3. Accelerated speed
4. Distinctions are arbitrary
5. Originality is devalued
6. Hierarchies are discredited
7. Authenticity seems meaningless
8. No pecking order
9. Ultra-consumer society
10. Shops and museums conflated; art and commerce one
It's not like you disagree on the symptomology. These items are, after all, familiar complaints against Japan in Neomarxisme. But there's a constant, if unspoken, suggestion that America is hors this particular texte. While it's often suggested here that Japan is prey to the same processes of increasing social stratification as the US, for instance, it's never admitted that the US is prey to the same postmodern processes as Japan. And while it's often suggested on Neomarxisme that the US is ahead of Japan (in the fight against payola, for instance), it's never suggested that Japan might be ahead of the US. In anything. But that's what Lubow is saying.
You two (Robert and David) remind me of ex-pat first-generation Bengalis I knew in London who refused their second-generation kids freedoms which kids back home in Bangladesh had, in the meantime, won. Like time capsules, they preserved in aspic an older way of life. They criticized life in the UK -- its lax morals, in particular -- without realising that life back home had, in the meantime, gone the same way. You are both in that odd hybrid hinterland where you're some way from your culture of origin, yet not naturalised in your culture of destination. Robert's odd twirly moustache would look even odder back home in Athens Georgia, and David's Ryan O'Neil ivy league preppiness would seem terribly quaint in today's New York. ("Ah, your music reminds me of that 90s group They Might Be Giants...") You both deplore Vice magazine -- it laughs at the mentally ill and the homeless, apparently -- but Vice is actually a much better barometer of how your peers back home are thinking and feeling about life than you are.
Your problem, as I see it, is this. Sure, you can dismiss unacceptable messages about postmodernity when they come in from Japanese magazines. You can dismiss Clique Opera and Jeans Now. But when these same messages are coming from Vice and The New York Times, and you start dismissing those too... well, you begin to look like ostriches or dodos. What's left? What sources are untainted? Old sociology texts from the library? Do they tell you how can you be a "Modernist" in 2005? Do they give you a way to call your personal taste "Absolutist"? I'll tell you something good about Japan: it's the last resort for foreign eccentrics.
Posted by: Momus at April 6, 2005 4:47 AMnick said a lot of things, so i'll take them one at a time.
"...as ex-pat Americans in Japan..."
please check the facts, nick. i think that david and probably have different citizenships (i renounced my american citizenship quite some time ago.) furthermore, i'm spending about 1/3 of my time these days in shanghai, learning as much as i can about THAT place (it has it's own charms, different than tokyo, different than the other places i've been in america and europe), and about 2/3rds of my time here in tokyo finishing up my PHD...which is actually something that david and i DON'T have in common with the garden-variety ex-pats here, or anywhere: we are both involved in academia (i'm in the fine-arts end of things, david is in his end of things) AND we are both doing music (again different kinds of music, but the point holds). so there!
"...with a line in attacking Japan's postmodern superficiality..."
and i say again that i'm not attacking japan's supposed 'postmodernism' any more than i am confirming it. see nick, it would make things too easy for you if i was hard-line anti-postmodernist, when the truth of the matter is, my thoughts and feelings are much closer to those of my friend Roddy, with whom you had this recent exchange with over on 'rubberlazerband'
http://www.fundamentallysound.org/cgi-bin/weblog/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=259
Hi Roddy, keep up the comments on Neomarxisme, I think they need more Americans there who are also sympathetic to broadly postmodernist positions!
Posted by Momus at April 4, 2005 11:52 PM
Yeah, I'm definitely sympathetic to postmodernism, no doubt about that! But I'm simultaneously suspicious of it, I would not want my world to be limited to only postmodernism. Sometimes I want to hear and see things that have a concrete message, that are more than just sensory stimuli and atmosphere. If everything really can just happen everywhere, don't they also become rather boring? I'm so happy that "protective spaces" for playing freely exist, I just don't want to be caught in that space forever. But don't get me wrong, I also know that I can't wait to visit Japan again! After spending the last seven months in a country where everything is all too Real (with a very big fucking r) i'm soooo ready to be in a protected space that is full of fun and beauty. Hey, that sounds like japan to me.
Posted by roddy at April 5, 2005 12:20 AM
nick, wouldn't isn't one of the primary crits of PM that is has to--by it's own definition--accept things that are outside the scope of PM? surely you aren't saying that PM is the summum bonum of philosophy? isn't there always room for something more, even something outside/within PM? sorry, nick, but you are trying to set me up as a binary to collapse, and i'm anything but that. as my friend roddy, he'll set you straight!
"While it's often suggested here that Japan is prey to the same processes of increasing social stratification as the US, for instance, it's never admitted that the US is prey to the same postmodern processes as Japan."
we think you (much more than us) are much better at doing this kind of suggesting HERE instead of on your own blog. so much so that we thought we'd just let you run with this kind of thing and see how far you let yourself get before you realize that everyone from click opera is reading this...
in case you didn't hear me the first time, nick...america is full of holes, and so is japan, if you know where to look! and i'll also say that america has some great things about it that japan doesn't have, and vice versa. sorry if my position is a 'non-position' but i'm not trying to please any readership here with what i write, or 'confirm' myself in/with japan. i see a lot of conflicting evidence, and i don't write any more anti-japanese diatribes on my blog that i do anti-american.
here are two examples from my blog this week
questioning the 'freedom tower'
http://glitchslaptko.blogspot.com/2005/03/two-towers.html
questioning the role of the japanese female in the mass-media
http://glitchslaptko.blogspot.com/2005/03/newscasters.html
>And while it's often suggested on Neomarxisme
>that the US is ahead of Japan (in the fight
>against payola, for instance), it's never
>suggested that Japan might be ahead of the US.
>In anything. But that's what Lubow is saying.
look. i think i'll let david address this, since this is his blog. all i'll say is that in terms of inalienable rights, i think america has it hands down over japan. again, i'll bring up all of the issues which you either sidestep or ignore everytime by saying to you (and anyone else who has the time to read it) please visit this posting i did on my blog.
this and that
part 1
http://glitchslaptko.blogspot.com/2004/11/this-and-that-part-1.html
part 2 (my favorite part here is the conversation between momus and his friend Byung-jik! do check it out!!!)
http://glitchslaptko.blogspot.com/2004/12/on-genealogy-of-blind-gaijin-you-are.html
ok, getting back to business here...nick says...
"You two (Robert and David) remind me of ex-pat first-generation Bengalis I knew in London who refused their second-generation kids freedoms which kids back home in Bangladesh had, in the meantime, won. Like time capsules, they preserved in aspic an older way of life. They criticized life in the UK -- its lax morals, in particular -- without realising that life back home had, in the meantime, gone the same way. You are both in that odd hybrid hinterland where you're some way from your culture of origin, yet not naturalised in your culture of destination."
and to this i say. nick let's just assume that you right on this one (btw, i don't agree with you at all, but just for the sake of argument, ok?)...you say that david and i aren't naturalised in our culture of destination? fine! so we aren't! but at LEAST we are MAKING THE EFFORT by doing things like learning the language (or actually, we have learned the language, and are studying OTHER subjects in it), taking in as much as we can see around us, and not being afraid to voice our honest reactions to things in a comparative/critical way. what are you doing, NICK? fashioning yourself as the eternal tourist/the hop-on-a-jet-and-go eternal guest?
and why don't you comment on what yuki is blogging these days? she is 100% japanese, early 20s, and full of wry things to say about her own country!!!
in fact, today she lambastes the NYT 'japanese fashion girls' article on her blog today!
check it out!
http://kissui.net/
-----------------------
ﾇ 109-2 Junior Section is Creepy | Main
April 05, 2005
Tokyo Girls in New York Times
There's a Japan special in New York Times, and a section called Tokyo Girls with snaps of girls in Tokyo.
Let me just say that there are no girls with superextra long hair wearing cream-colored vest over it. The girl "Neo, 11" is probably "Nao, 11". And most of them are stereotypical "Asian" looking girls and not much into sporting modern looks. Maybe the schoolgirls are close to how most schoolgirls look, wearing their PE pants beneath the skirt and all.
Are you sure they aren't from Gunma?
------------------------------
anyway, nick, i think aesthetically, a lot of what you say holds water, but when you try and start applying these aesthetic concepts to modern japanese society, i just think you are really full of hot air, nick! you haven't done the reading/research that david has done, and you haven't done your own footwork in tokyo anyplace outside of the daikanyama-urahara-nakameguro triangle. sure, nick, as long as you don't ask me to accept your ideas having to eventually apply to real, living, breathing people in tokyo, i'm with you all the way!!!
>Robert's odd twirly moustache would look even
>odder back home in Athens Georgia, and David's
>Ryan O'Neil ivy league preppiness would seem
>terribly quaint in today's New York.
ok, nick, you aren't going to go there, are you? i'll assume that you are joking. and even if you are serious, i'll just pretend that you are joking. otherwise it is pistols at dawn in setagaya park, boy!
you know, my 'mini-Kaiser' has received rave reviews here in japan as well as in america. also, if you think that all it takes to look odd in athens, ga is a little festive facial hair, you should spend a little time hanging out with my friend paul at the oracle...or have a few drinks down at the manhattan across from the 40watt.
i mean it isn't like i didn't go to an art school in america (we all know how 'poser' calarts is anyway, right?)...and it isn't like i'm not going to an art school here in tokyo...oh, i guess i'll have to try to be more 'authentic' damn...
hey, i know! when i start to go bald, can i have permission to try some hardcore 'vertical bar-code' stylings like you?
anyway, about david's totally gay fashion...everyone knows that david is am ivy league nerd beyond any help, right? god, i'd never be caught dead drumming for him in his band!!!
>You both deplore Vice magazine -- it laughs at
>the mentally ill and the homeless, apparently -- >but Vice is actually a much better barometer of >how your peers back home are thinking and
>feeling about life than you are.
i don't deplore vice.
i just think that vice thinks that offering solutions to whatever problems you say it has it's finger on the pulse of isn't 'cool' (i'd caution you as to the use of the word 'peers') and that's why it has to mask everything.
>Your problem, as I see it, is this. Sure, you
>can dismiss unacceptable messages about
>postmodernity when they come in from Japanese
>magazines. You can dismiss Clique Opera and
>Jeans Now.
who CAN'T dismiss 'Jeans Now'? as for your CQ, i think you have done a pretty good job of dismissing yourself here with your comments on david's blog.
>But when these same messages are
>coming from Vice and The New York Times, and you >start dismissing those too... well, you begin to >look like ostriches or dodos. What's left?
well MY GOD, nick! when you put it that way, i guess there really ISN'T intelligent life outside the pages of the New York Times and VICE. thanks for setting me straight, i'll make sure and wait to hear from some magazine in new york what i should think about what is happening in tokyo.
>I'll tell you something good about Japan: it's
>the last resort for foreign eccentrics.
i'll take being called an eccentric as a compliment! thanks! but once again...W-R-O-N-G, mr. currie...or i should say, not QUITE right. the only place that isn't a resort anymore for foreign eccentrics in america. the rest of the world is GAME as far as i'm concerned!
whoops, got to run off to go join a few new 'activity clubs' at geidai...this week is the first week of the new semester!
ta-ta!
r.
http://glitchslaptko.blogspot.com/
umm are there any girls on here?
Posted by: Rrose Selavy at April 6, 2005 12:00 PMumm are there any girls on here?
We've discussed this before: not really and we're worse off for it.
Posted by: marxy at April 6, 2005 12:25 PMumm are there any girls on here?
Ellie, if that's you, get off of this blog and back to work pronto!
To keep things simple:
1) There is a difference between "postmodernism" - a natural process of cultural/social change caused by technological innovation and capitalist rearrangement - and "Postmodernism" - a politicized form of the above that sees these changes as liberating mankind. Don't confuse the two.
2) Not everyone agrees that Postmodernism is more liberating. Many see it as apologizing for and celebrating late capitalism's commodification of everything. While I can't deny that this change is naturally-occuring, I am not required to believe it's good for humanity. Yes, capitalism causes pollution, but you don't see me celebrating smog.
3) Japan's postmodernism is still fiercely debated within the academic community, and even the Japanese scholars of postmod do not agree that Japan's social structure is the most "progressive" (as we saw with Asada). I don't mean this as hyperbole: the only other people that echo Momus' view on Japan are ultra-rightists like Nakasone. There are people who want to change Japan into something like Momus prescribes, but they admit that it still has to dismantle a lot of the current structure.
4) Japan shows more symptoms of postmodernity than the U.S., because Japan never went through an Enlightenment or full modernism, which means that a lot of social constructs entered without resistance to older ones. For example, there's never been widely-accepted consumerist critique in Japan like the American Ralph Nader/hippie movements in the 60s U.S. Japan is postmodernism without resistance, plus a modernist government and premodern social relations. Whether you think "Japanese girls are the most advanced in the world," sex-determined cultural/economic social divisions are essentially the same now as they were in the premodern period. If anything, they are slowly becoming more like the West (with women who don't have to quit when they get pregnant, gasp!), but they never went through a period of "modernizing" before choosing to go back into extreme masculinity and feminity.
5) Seeing that modernism and postmodernism are natural outgrowths of economic/technological change, the next cultural era is dependent upon those factors. Japan's capitalism isn't any more "progressive" than America's, and as I've shown, they are no longer the far-and-ahead leaders in technology. I'm not sure we can predict Japan or anywhere else to "lead" us out of Postmod, but again, that whole idea of salvation is based on a politicized reading of Postmodernism, not an objective one.
Posted by: marxy at April 6, 2005 12:52 PMSince you're into "objective" readings of postmodernism, David, could you give me a source for your distinction in 1) between postmodernism and, er, Postmodernism? Could you explain how one is "natural" and the other is "political"? And why you seem to think political = bad? I'm trying not to confuse the two, but since they have the same name (except for the capital P, and the fact that you seem to like one of them more than the other) I'm having a hard time disentangling them. I'd like to know the history of this schism. When did postmodernism and Postmodernism go their separate ways? And when I take a political perspective on something natural, must I always add a capital letter? For instance, if I say "I like postmodernism's emphasis on levelling out hierarchies", I should add the capital P there, right?
Also, could you explain how the only person who shares my view on Japan is right winger Nakasone, when in fact we've established in this discussion that Arthur Lubow of the New York Times shares my analysis? (Along with countless others who come to Japan and marvel rather than grouse.) Is the New York Times part of the Nihonjinron movement? Is admiration of a nation inevitably nationalistic, even if it's not one's own nation?
On the women question, your concentration on paid pregnancy leave makes you miss a much bigger picture: consumer societies tend inevitably towards the feminine. Japan's consumer leaders are women. Women control the domestic purse, women spend more than men, women's opinions and tastes are canvassed much more than men's. Japanese men were metrosexuals long before America discovered its own term for "femio". Japanese cell phones and robots and cars are far more feminine than American cell phones and robots and cars -- although, if I'm right about Japan being just a bit ahead in these matters, we'll see American products slimming down and becoming prettier, cuter and more caring over time. Perhaps. If the ultra-right wing militaristic regime currently in power in America (one you have really done almost nothing to attack ideologically in these pages, I'm sorry to say, apart from telling us that Bush is wild lightning, a freak statistic, an anomaly) doesn't basically militarize all domestic production, that is.
Posted by: Momus at April 6, 2005 6:26 PMIt's all so abstract guys. Any twiddler can push around these different words with different ideological constructs and it all gets so smart and complicated, but, I don't know, I think you both do better when you are looking at the specifics. In fact, I think the ideas that come from looking at the specific examples of culture; the songs, art, buildings, events, etc.; these ideas are what can give rise to a clear theory. Now, I'm pretty certain that you both have a much stronger theoretical grasp on what is happening than I do, but we all need to admit that we don't really know what is going on. I mean, the reason that Japanese culture and contemporary international culture don't seem to make any sense is that we don't have a theoretical construct that actually works. It is much better to try and understand what is actually happening than to try to stitch up the holes in your theories. I really don't mean this as a dis, and I am not at all prepared to defend myself here...
Earlier we were talking about Murakami Takeshi's superflat theory; that he had included as a theoretical framework these very specific instructions for producing the art, packaging, publishing, marketing, etc. Isn't he looking at the specifics? Isn't that what people always say when they try to prove that Zen has a deep influence on contemporary Japanese life? Like, the monk asks, "What is the true nature of Buddha?" and the master replies, "The beat-up dust mop" or "Aloe Nomi-Yogurt" or something. I don't know if this is true for the culture at large, but it does seem to be for this blog. From points abroad people can (and do) force Japanese culture (any culture) into these narrow theoretical boxes, but since you are in Japan you can find the specific cultural examples from which an accurate theory can be built. That's what we need; "a fact finding mission"... As for fighting the neo-con global ww4 conspiracy; do you remember the fiasco last fall about the "reality based community"; how Bush claimed Kerry was limiting his views to "reality". It is important that he was not saying "rationalism"; he just meant the opposite of "faith-based community." This is exactly what I am saying here; that to view things with the theoretical construct first is to be similar to Bush - even if your theory seems opposed to all he stands for. But to look at reality - even if it is not as a rationalist - to look at reality and then allow the theories to grow, rooted in this reality, is a way of fighting the neo-con's power. That is why not only scientists and activists but artists and yes - even obscure internet bloggers have an important role. I have seen so many amazing examples of culture on these blogs that I would not have had a chance to see otherwise. You are able to search for them, and recognize them when you find them. That seems to be your main power. I'm not saying we don't need a theory - we do; we need to understand things before they explode! - just that the theory must come from the specifics.
Farley, I'm sympathetic to your point, I think that, as Brecht said, "truth is concrete", and I very much admire Murakami for his down-to-earth, hands-on approach. Then again, he does have this whole theory element going on, a conception of Japanese culture, a class model and a(n anti-) metaphysical model. And I think that even the most concrete-sounding things, like that beat-up dust mop you mention, turn out to be metaphors, in other words arbitrary mappings of one thing to another, according to a personal perception of the universe. The concrete is, in other words, always already theoretical. And I certainly wouldn't equate theory with Bush's "faith-based community", although all theory certainly is subjective, despite Marxy's desperate wish for it to be otherwise.
In the end, I think there are three important questions to ask of a theorical-political position.
1. Does it have the power to persuade others?
2. Where does it take me, personally?
3. How does it impact on the world I'm describing?
"Is it objective" is not a legitimate question. No theoretical-political position can be "objective" except in a sociological sense: we can observe that people hold it.
Posted by: Momus at April 6, 2005 7:52 PMWow, where to start... ok I'll start from the end.
mr. momus suggested three questions regarding a "theoretical political position". Need I remind you sir, that phrenology was once considered rational in the west just as determining personality from blood type is here now? Both of these satisfied all three of your questions and both have been used for political ends.
farley: I dont get the impression that Marxy or R are seeking to promote the vew of Japan as the fabled zen monk. I definitely would not describe my home as that by any means.
mr momus said some things about feminization and women's economic power. You pointed out the obvious answer, women control how the money is spent so the natural action is to market to them. Women also control reproduction so the men will style themselves in whatever way the women like at the time. As far as whatever words you want to use to describe the girlyman phenenomenon, well I for one will be glad when its gone. Give me Mifune or Katsushin over SMAP any day of the week. So how is it you think US consumer design will target women when the balance of earnings and control over finances are on a different model?
I'm not gonna get into the dick-waving contest over pPostmModerism except to restate that I think the way mr momus applies it to everything is a crock and his continual beating of that dead horse is becoming tiresome.
Its cute when mr. momus tries to glitchslapTKO R for his facial hair. r does not seem to make a big point of showing off his latest look on the internets, nor does marxy. mr momus has speculated as to my looks but there are no pictures of me on the net at all. mr momus has alot of pictures of himself on the internets. I kind of envy his caring about it so much. What would the world be like if we were all advanced fasionistas? Japan would be so different! No more grey/navy suits for example. Personally I think the worst western custom that was ever adopted here is the business suit. Completely unstuited to the weather in the Kanto or in Kansai.
To echo a bit of what brother-r said about living la vida ex-pat, there is a big difference between the people who try and make it somewhere yet voice their frustrations and those who do nothing BUT whine. I've seen lots of folks from the US, UK, OZ, ME, etc, who have been here 20 years or more and still dont know any of the language and hate living here and will not hesitate to tell you so at length. Then again, there are miserable people any where you go, expats dont have a monopoly on misery. This here place is no more of a wonderland than anywhere else and in fact takes a lot more work for native speakers of germanic-indo-latin decendant langages than many other places.
All that aside, I'm much more willing to listen to the opinions of people who live and are engaged in my homeland than those of tourist experts such as the NYT author or for that matter, mr. momus. I've been to Germany a handfull of times, only to one city and only on business. Do I qualify as an expert on German culture? Shall I expand on the virtues of their efficiency and dicipline as mr. momus expands upon the superflat society of Japan? I read marxy's posts because right or wrong he is engaged in the society. He is well qualified to have opinions on it. To echo brother-r once again, mr momus is interesting at times when confining his artsy opinions to artsy matters, but beyond that I feel mr momus is lacking the experience to speak at length on life in Japan.
In the end, performers have an image to maintain and can not compromize that persona lest they loose their street cred. Once you earn your bread carrying a certain standard, you must wave that flag until you cant any more lest you loose your sponsorship. Tell me mr momus, what have you sacrificed for the country you love so much?
r: thanks so much for the kind words, they probably arent deserved.
Posted by: Chris_B at April 6, 2005 11:28 PMSome of your points are reasonable, Mr CB, but I must take issue with:
r does not seem to make a big point of showing off his latest look on the internets, nor does marxy
Have you looked at his blog? Every third entry is "and here's another shot of me with my twirly mustache"! The man is a cross between a mirror, a broadcasting tower, and a bottle of Scotch.
As for my involvement in Japan, you're excused your ignorance -- I don't tend to trumpet this, but I did help script the 90s music phenomenon called Shibuya-kei, writing hit records for Kahimi Karie. Basically western perceptions of Japan and Japanese perceptions of the West bounced off each other endlessly throughout that period of heady hybrids, and I was privileged, as a writer and producer, to have not only an insider's perspective, but also to get to drive the great machine of Japanese self-perception (as it played out in pop music, anyway) for a block or two. As Robert has pointed out, songs I wrote are on karaoke machines in Japan to this day. So, yes, I am the tourist you describe, but I'm also a participant in the Japanese culture industries, and have been since 1992.
Posted by: Momus at April 7, 2005 1:45 AMWhat puzzles me, when I read Momus's postmodernism list-summary above, is how little things have changed analytically from when I was studying Theory in my Communications course in the mid-eighties. It was exactly the same sort of analysis of what's happening to cultural exchange in the developed world - except that was 20 years ago! Hasn't there been any new developments since then? This was all said by Lyotard 30 years ago! Which leads me to wonder whether postmodernism isn't, in fact, a kind of conservatism. Also, I wonder whether bagging together postmodernism in the West and what's happening in Japan isn't some sort of category error. The two phenomena are converging from very different places and perhaps only look the same.
Posted by: H. at April 7, 2005 2:50 AM>>>>The man is a cross between a mirror, a broadcasting tower, and a bottle of Scotch.
what can you postulate better than this???
kiss,
r.
p.s. no you can't! but that is OK!!!
Posted by: r. at April 7, 2005 3:23 AMman, fuck this shit, momus, you are SOOOO 2004!!!! goodbye! and why don't you try coming to japan???
kiss,
r.
This is waaaaaay agro postland! I can't figure out if its exciting or scary...
I can see how what I was saying could be interpreted as fronting objectivity, but I got 2 B down with subjectivity. So down yo. But there has got to be a difference between subjectivity and faith-based reality. I don't have the kind of sharp mind that can say how, but you can see the difference. I mean, every schmo you meet on the street experiences the world subjectively, but then you get stuck in some uncomfortable conversation/dead-end arguement with someone who has a deep faith in one particular view of the world and it's like - whoa - how the hell is this person thinking?!?! There's really no way you can have anything approaching a rational or for that matter an interesting conversation. (I ain't talking about anyone here). Maybe its only a quantitative difference in degree - but don't tell me quantity isn't important here.
It just strikes me that the most valuable information on these sites is the specific examples of culture. I mean, we're going to hear all y'all's opinion anyway, but at least at the beginning we can experience it a bit more for ourself and get our own idea of it. Murakami does have this whole theoretical construct, but I see that as being a lot more boring than his actual art, the specific objects. I mean, I see his theories as interesting too, but I want to see more done with the art alone. The theory is stifling, especially to younger artists in his harem.
I mean, as soon as you look at a Murakami or a beat-up dust-mop you are going to think; oh - how pathetic - or - I feel just like that... But as I get it, Zen teachings always push you back towards looking at the object without these B.S. ideas getting in the way. I haven't been able to do it - but there's a lot of people says they can.
And I'm not saying that Zen is this huge influence in people's everyday lives here. I haven't seen much evidence of that really, certainly among the freetas and neets that I hang with nobody has ever brought it up, and I can't tell you how many times Japanese people have told me, politely, what an asshole I am for mentioning something about how Japanese religious thought might have had an influence on contemporary society here. Well, I think it does to an extent. Now, most people, from any country, think that by being born in that country, or having citizenship makes you a certified expert on every detail of that country's culture etc. Well, just last week I was out at karaoke room with this friend of a friend type and he gets up and does this perfect version of some whatever Elvis song. And I'm just like ... ??? I mean, he's the expert - I have no idea how to sing an Elvis song, but I guess he has a bit of an influence on the music I listen to now. I mean, unless Ishihara and his ilk gets their way, Japan is going to have to let a lot more outside county's persons immigrate, and those people are going to become "Japanese." And then they are going to get to say whatever stupid things they want to about the culture. This is just starting now, and I think it's going to be a kind of wild ride.
Confusing myself now too. Well, you didn't have to read the whole thing - that's what the scroll bar's for...
mr momus: Was that last paragraph just pasted directly from your press kit? I know you were involved with some moldy oldy popsicles and that deserves props. (Next up on where are they now, Shibuya-kei'ers on the internets). For a laff, go back and read your own impressions on your first trips here around that time where you played the tamborine for an adoring crowd.
H: that was funny! Keep up the good work.
farley: its ok.
Posted by: Chris_B at April 7, 2005 8:59 AMGotta go to school, but...
Murakami does have this whole theoretical construct, but I see that as being a lot more boring than his actual art, the specific objects.
Yes, good point. I don't mind his art, but I think the idea of applying "superflat" to anything bigger than his own work is a mistake. (Mention Murakami's name in Japan and the first thing people will tell you is "He doesn't pay his workers and they work nonstop.")
I think Jean's blog is a lot better for raw cultural display, and I read it everyday to see what's going on. This blog is intentionally focused on explanations and theory. I can tell you now that the music industry and street fashion industry have totally bottomed out here, and I personally am interested in figuring out why and what this means. If anyone here is new to the site, I recommend skimming the archives, because there's a lot of interesting topics already overdiscussed.
Posted by: marxy at April 7, 2005 10:21 AMjean's site is cool for what it is and I dont expect it to be anything else.
Posted by: Chris_B at April 7, 2005 12:52 PMThe funny thing is that for all his proselytism of postmodernism, Momus's discursive style is anything but postmodern! Postmodernism celebrates the playful, the eclectic, the non-teleological, the feminine... whereas beyond his veneer of jovial bonhommie, Momus is a relentlessly aggressive arguer who never concedes a point, who is not above sneering at someone's dress sense, who manages to fit every element of the world into his tightly prescribed paradigm, who for some reason feels in desperate competition with someone 20 years his junior and can't let a single of Marxy's comments go without ripping into it!
Posted by: H. at April 7, 2005 6:14 PMHey, I enjoy Momus' provocations, but I also enjoy writing parodies of music/film reviews.
Posted by: marxy at April 7, 2005 6:34 PMAh, but what if all that is just an online avatar, a persona? Then it would all be ludic and pomo again, wouldn't it? Ask Marxy if I was terribly scary and macho when we were sitting on the terrace of Idee Cafe in January!
The only people I get aggressive or competitive with are the people I consider to be unnecessarily aggressive and competitive themselves. I do think Marxy is intellectually aggressive towards Japan in ways that his guest status in the country don't warrant. I think he's still too American to be able to understand Japan, despite his erudition, and as a result of this unexamined ethnocentricity I think his analysis is wrongheaded. If he's going to call this analysis, with its deterministic link between economics and the cultural sphere, "Marxist", I'm going to tell him that's not my understanding of Marxism.
As for Robert, anyone who knows him will tell you that he's almost insanely competitive, to the point that he stops making sense altogether. It's a shame, because when lucid he can make good points. I also like his lack of patriotism (he's renounced his US citizenship). To be honest, the person I'm closest to, and therefore sweetest with, in this whole blogger soap opera is Jean Snow. I love Jean's positivity and enthusiasm, and as a person he's someone I would trust with my children, my money, my girlfriend... hell, he could even guest edit my blog if he weren't already doing that for half the world's design blogs!
Posted by: Momus at April 7, 2005 6:45 PMI'd add that Jean is the most admirably "Japanese" of all of us, for his trustworthiness, his avoidance of conflict, and the sheer concreteness of the information flow on his site. Information without judgement! Design Zen!
Posted by: Momus at April 7, 2005 6:53 PMMomus, I'm sure you're a big fluffy kitten to meet in person, and I'm sure I'd be suitably charmed! But of course from a pomo perspective there's no reason to privilege your real-life persona over your on-line one. Actually to me you do come over as more intellectually aggressive than Marxy, who will often enough concede a point or change his discourse as new information comes to light. "Too American to understand the Japanese" strikes me as a bit rich coming from someone who doesn't speak or read Japanese, and is therefore cut off from 95 percent of the discourse on Japan. You are a very fine writer and I enjoy your blog, but I have to say I enjoy it most when you're not talking about Japan. There's a sect-like air of unreality about your Japanophilia - you're like one of those converts who end up more catholic than the catholics!
Posted by: H. at April 7, 2005 7:27 PMFrom a pomo perspective, H, there's no reason to think a "sect-like air of unreality" would necessarily be a bad thing! But I do try to "keep it real" in my thoughts about Japan. Witness today's entry about toilets -- how much more observational and street-level can you get than that?
http://www.livejournal.com/users/imomus/2005/04/07/
Also, I can't agree with you that "95% of the discourse of Japan" is in the Japanese language. We're all exchanging English-language information about Japan right now, ne? What's more, I speak some Japanese, and what I don't understand I get translated by my Captive Japanese Female (CJF), who spends a lot of her time explaining things to me. And if you meant that "95% of all impressions of Japan are linguistic" I disagree even more vehemently. Japan can be tasted, smelt, sensed through the skin, bathed in, seen from an airplane, seen from a bicycle, heard, bought, ridden, sold, kissed, remembered, missed, touched, copied, copulated with, played like a musical instrument... In fact, these are by far the best ways to truly understand the place, in my opinion.
Posted by: Momus at April 7, 2005 7:47 PMI did say "95 percent of the discourse", not 95 percent of information received through the senses. And yes, I was sort of interested to read about Japanese toilets, but ultimately it's still just grist for the rhetorical mill, isn't it? Would you bother mentioning them if you couldn't didn't fit them snugly into your East/West paradigm?
Anyway, blog on Momus, you're an interesting fellow!
Posted by: H. at April 7, 2005 8:46 PMultimately it's still just grist for the rhetorical mill, isn't it? Would you bother mentioning them if you couldn't didn't fit them snugly into your East/West paradigm?
That would be a valid objection if you could be sure that the Japanese didn't also have an East/West paradigm, and that the super hi-tech toilets they made weren't designed to fit a niche in their perception of exactly this. Something like "Let's incorporate the Western toilet design, but go one better." If you can't be sure that something like this didn't figure (and end up making a toilet design which may, one day, benefit all of mankind), then I don't think you can dismiss my framing of the issue.
Posted by: Momus at April 7, 2005 9:54 PMUnsurprisingly, I can't be sure what went through the minds of Japanese toilet designers - I'm afraid my entire knowledge of the toilet industry is derived from "Carry On At Your Convenience". My point was more general - that you rarely mention anything that won't fit into your tightly constructed paradigm. The mind rebels, I think to myself life is messy, it can't all be so neatly binary as Momus makes it! Your musings on Japan end up sounding like Soviet-era propaganda and I switch off!
Posted by: H. at April 7, 2005 10:38 PMI rarely step in to these arguments because they never really go anywhere. It's just a lot of wheel spinning. But the quote by Momus about David being "too American to be able to understand Japan" really struck me. I'm really puzzled by it. How does being an American render one unable to understand a foreign country? Is it because all Americans are ignorant of the rest of the world? Too stupid? What? Nice stereotype, to be sure, but such a broad generalization is surely unwarranted?
And so, on the flip side, you, Momus are what? Just Scottish enough to understand Japan? Just German enough? Enough of a Citizen of the World? What makes you qualified to speak about the country and David not?
Had the quote been "too foreign to understand Japan", I probably would have gone by it without a second though. Well, no, I would have thought it was a stupid statement, but it wouldn't have warranted a response. But this was too rich.
I'll second, third, whatever the opinions of others who say that the arguments of David, Robert and Chris_B, (maybe myself?) who live here and have learned the language carry more weight than someone who just flew in for a while.
I'm still not sure why you insist on refusing David the right to complain about this country. You seem to be irritated by Bush and what he's done in the U.S., but are you an American? No? Then how can you complain about what he's doing?
Posted by: Brad at April 7, 2005 10:51 PMThe fact is that when you go to a country as foreign as Japan is to most of us, you have to do a bit of a snake act and shed your skin, shed your habits of mind. You have to step into a rather mysterious zone where you suspend judgements. It's not as simple as "when in Rome", but I really do think guests shouldn't be judges, and certainly not in public places like a blog. I think guests should always err on the side of the positive. It's not their business to tell a nation how it should do things, but they can appreciate all they like.
Now, most foreigners I know in Japan -- and I'd include Robert -- are willing and able to step into this liminal intra-cultural zone. But David remains weirdly rigid, stubbornly insisting (and I can only assume it's an intellectual game that he finds fun to play) that most of the phenomena he observes are signs of a great conspiracy by the Japanese authorities upon their hapless subjects and citizens.
Don't you find it weird that David has never made an entry saying something like "Today is setsubun here in Japan, and kids are wearing masks and throwing beans at the devil..." The kind of thing that fills many foreigners' musings on, and observations of, Japan are weirdly missing here. It's also weird that although I believe David's SO is a Japanese woman, we never, ever hear anything either from or about her: what she thinks and feels about his positions here, for instance.
Instead what we get is a rigid ideological series of assaults on the Japanese mindset, usually disguised as a radical and populist agenda, but actually consisting of "sighs with footnotes", or weird snobby marketing observations about the failure of the Japanese upper middle class to take the lead in consumer markets for clothes and music.
So perhaps I don't mean Marxy is "too American". Perhaps I mean he's just bloody weird. It's also weird that I get singled out as the ideologue here, when it's actually Marxy who hammers at the same agenda day in, day out. I mean, I suppose the reason I find it so stimulating to fight here is that it's actually very rare to find someone who sticks so very rigidly to such an untenable set of propositions.
Bush is a special case. Because of current American world hegemony, the acts of the Bush regime affect us all, and we all have the right to speak out about them.
Posted by: Momus at April 7, 2005 11:57 PM[pasted from my other reply]
mr. momus said but what if all that is just an online avatar, a persona?
Are you finally admitting it or is this being playful in response to being called out?
mr. momus commented in regards to marxy his guest status in the country
Of course I dont speak for marxy, but its interesting that you bring this up. You have been in and out of the country for short periods over several years. AFAIK he has been here pretty much continuously for several years. While none of us can ever not be "外国人" in the literal reading of the term, some of us are forever お客様 and some of us become 隣の外人. I'm guessing marxy is in the second group, but again I dont know him in person.
[now back to our program]
gosh, with all the back and forth between mr. momus and H, I cant add anything execpt "hi Brad" and then take issue with mr. momus for the post whinging about David (marxy for those just tuning in). Why should marxy's SO comment through him or why must she comment at all here if she doesnt want to? I've only ever used my wife's voice here in jest to counter your use of hisae as an authoritative voice. People who have something they must say will do so. Marxy has something to say, this is his web page and this is where he chooses what to say or not to say. Want the sights of daily life in Tokyo? Go to the web page that I link here, thats all it is, almost no words.
Dont feel too picked on mr. momus, I'm just as willing to call shenannegans on anyone esle as I am to take potshots at the broad side of the barn that you present here. Frankly you make yourself a broader target by whining about the US government using words like "hegemony" which carries the stink o discredited f Sino/Soviet propaganda. Its like you bring out a barrel full of opinions and hand your readers a loaded shotgun and invite everyone to try and take them out one by one. Its just too easy because as I've said over and over, you havent lived or worked here for any period of time so you are at best a Knowledgeable Tourist.
Chris, I lived in Tokyo at least half of 2001-2002. I spend at least three months each year in Japan. In the past eight months, four months. But yes, you're right, my position is basically that of a tourist, and I want to keep it that way. Especially after seeing just how cynical you long-timers get!
Hegemony is more relevant today than it's ever been, I'm sure even Marxy will agree on that. And by the way, Sino-Soviets didn't embrace Gramsci, the concept's progenitor, any more than the current Washington wolfpack has.
Posted by: Momus at April 8, 2005 12:25 AMmr. momus: cynical? not really, not as much as I was when I lived in NYC by a long shot. I'm just a hybrid Yankee-Texan who calls em as I see em. I love my life here and would not trade it. I got family, a decent job and a place to call my own as well as some free time to enjoy life. Works just as well here as anywhere else. Next time you are in town I'd be happy to show you around some of the parts of town you might not see on your usual trips thru.
And thanks for conceeding my point. I'd respect your writing on the topic alot more if you made a point and habit of qualifying yourself consistantly.
Posted by: Chris_B at April 8, 2005 12:32 AMI'm a bit perplexed by the way Momus personalises the debate. There's Marxy's "quaint preppiness", "snobby observations", he's "just bloody weird"...
I think Marxy makes a hell of a lot more general, off-the-cuff remarks or observations about Japan than Momus ever does on his blog. As someone said upstream, all Momus's comments have some ideological intent, even when he's talking about toilets. I don't always agree with what Marxy posts, but I get the impression he's trying to critically engage with Japan in one form or another. With Momus, I get the feeling he's created a total fantasy Japan which he perpetuates by not living here and not speaking the language.
Posted by: Susan Tasic at April 8, 2005 12:42 AMHe is preppy, Susan. He's also cute as hell, which makes it all the more "bloody weird" that you're the only female we've seen all week!
Posted by: Momus at April 8, 2005 12:51 AMSorry to everyone that I have been out of the house lately but - school, cherry blossoms, theatre performances, bike riding. I appreciate my defenders and salute my detractors for caring enough to deride me.
But David remains weirdly rigid, stubbornly insisting (and I can only assume it's an intellectual game that he finds fun to play) that most of the phenomena he observes are signs of a great conspiracy by the Japanese authorities upon their hapless subjects and citizens.
I'll keep this brief, but I essentially have tried to do this blog in a way that shares the information I have from being in Japan without revealing too much detail about my private life. Most bloggers don't/can't do this, and I am limited by my refusal to talk about my love life or school life. In the same way that Momus is a lot nicer in real life than on my blog, no one understands how Japanese I am in real life. I do all that duty stuff for school, I play the game, I speak keigo, I know how to navigate Japanese cultural customs and do it daily. I'm from the South and all Confucianism makes a lot of sense to me. So, in some ways, my blog is a way for me to deal with some of the cultural conflicts outside of reality, but back in reality, I am not bitching at orthopraxy on a daily basis. I am doing as the Romans, but then questioning the effacy of the Roman system later.
Second, I've been studying Japanese and going to Japan since 1996, have already been through my early years of "look at this crazy custom" type experiences. I'm personally over it, and I'm more interested in more theoretical, deep debates - honestly, none of you want me to write about Engrish or convienence stores.
Third, most of my ideas come from other academic works about Japan, so I beg you all to not blame the messenger and just pick up some books to see where I'm getting all of this. If anything, I'm a Japanese studies geek more than a "journalist" writing about his time in Japan.
I disagree even more vehemently. Japan can be tasted, smelt, sensed through the skin, bathed in, seen from an airplane, seen from a bicycle, heard, bought, ridden, sold, kissed, remembered, missed, touched, copied, copulated with, played like a musical instrument... In fact, these are by far the best ways to truly understand the place, in my opinion.
Of course you disagree, because it's in your self-interest to disagree. But I'll tell you this and I think this is where some of the debate is coming from: you will never understand what it's like to speak/comprehend Japanese. You will never understand what you are missing.
Posted by: marxy at April 8, 2005 1:31 AMnick said: ...Jean is the most admirably "Japanese" of all of us, for his trustworthiness, his avoidance of conflict, and the sheer concreteness of the information flow on his site. Information without judgement! Design Zen!
and i say: the choice for someone NOT to judge JAPAN is actually a very big judgement in and of itself, especially when japan is constantly judging YOU. anyway, as far as information and 'raw culture dump' i agree with everything that you say about jean's page (if you are reading this, hi jean!), nick...it is nice...but nothing more. and i also, like marxy and like most of you, visit jean's page daily. but a few things keep bothering me about jean's opus.
1. the design objects he loves are incapable of loving him back.
2. he has fallen in a love with a world of things that he (at this moment in his life anyway) is incapable of possessing. i guess it is a kind hyper-consumerist version of 'unrequited love'...although perhaps one day he'll win the japanese lottery and then his house can be just like his webpage.
3. there are vast strata of the tokyo cultural space that he isn't privy too (either thru ignorance or denial), but since he gets most of his info thru magazines and/or from the internet, the 'distance' involved always keeps the information interesting, but ultimatly mundane. although this DOES happen to me from time to time when i read Click Opera, i have never once read jean's blog and thought "damn, i am SO glad i read jean's blog today!"
4. reading a blog like jean's somehow makes it ok NOT to meet the actually person who is writing it, which for me is a kind of failure in some humanistic way. if i read your blog, nick, or david's blog, i want to meet you and talk about your ideas. the man behind the blog and the ideas are connected in a very personal way. i say this half in jest, but i feel that with the proper, carefully tuned 'search algorhythm', we could generate jean's page like google generates its news.
5. i think that you, nick, love jean's blog because it isn't ever going to tell you that you are wrong, question you, and it will never try and think for you...which sound like pretty good qualities to have in a pet (captive or not). a critique of the sheer 'ocular' nature of his blog itself would probably be interesting homework for marxy. i mean, jean is so lacking in the ability to critically 'orient' himself in japanese cultural blogspace that he was actually duped by marxy today into thinking that this "The Pink Hamster Group" was real, that they are a street art social protest on the "hamster wheel of absurdity of modern society" or something like that, and changing his post with a HOT UPDATE.
http://jeansnow.net/2005/04/07/the-pink-hamster-group/#comments
so here the 'ocular organ' as blogspace reveals itself in its vapidness...its inability to do anything but mutely reflect images projected by others onto its own pupil, which remains blankly transfixed by a culture that it constantly observes, but never truely SEES.
6. i forgot was #6 was.
susan says: he's trying to critically engage with Japan in one form or another. With Momus, I get the feeling he's created a total fantasy Japan which he perpetuates by not living here and not speaking the language.
and i say: i agree, susan, but you know what? the thing that keeps me coming back to nick's blogspace is that sometimes his fantasies are strikingly accurate, despite their lack of a ground. this is probably because, as nick says himself,
"Japan can be tasted, smelt, sensed through the skin, bathed in, seen from an airplane, seen from a bicycle, heard, bought, ridden, sold, kissed, remembered, missed, touched, copied, copulated with, played like a musical instrument..."
but I DO NOT think that i, if given a choice, would try to limit myself only to this sensory was of experiencing japan. it is direct, yes, but even in a 'superflat' country there is a lack of depth in this way of taking in everything which i find difficult to have complete trust in. what you see (or don't see) isn't always what you get, so i ALSO rely on text, conversation (i do regular interviews with japanese people in the vernacular), and other kinds of inquiry. only a way that incorporates the sensory as well other ways of investigation would be, in my opinion, 'grounded', which is why i can't agree with nick when he says that,
"In fact, these are by far the best ways to truly understand the place, in my opinion."
nick also says about david: He's also cute as hell
and i say: well at least i'm not the only one who thinks so!
nick also says: Don't you find it weird that David has never made an entry saying something like "Today is setsubun here in Japan, and kids are wearing masks and throwing beans at the devil..."
and i say: we can all thank our lucky stars for that!!
nick also says about me: Now, most foreigners I know in Japan -- and I'd include Robert -- are willing and able to step into this liminal intra-cultural zone.
and i say: i'll take that as a compliment. i'm not trying to PROVE anything about japan, but then again i'm not NOT trying to prove anything. some ideas have formed in my mind since i've been coming here, and some of these resonate with some of the things that you say, and some of the things that david says.
nick also said: As for Robert, anyone who knows him will tell you that he's almost insanely competitive, to the point that he stops making sense altogether. It's a shame, because when lucid he can make good points. I also like his lack of patriotism (he's renounced his US citizenship).
and robert says: to borrow a line from john cage: "i was never psychoanalyzed, let me tell you how it happened."
also nick said (i'm quoting this again): Have you looked at his blog? Every third entry is "and here's another shot of me with my twirly mustache"! The man is a cross between a mirror, a broadcasting tower, and a bottle of Scotch.
and i say: looking back at this quote today, i actually kind of like it! in all honesty, i can't think of anything better than this that i'd like to be called by you, nick, or anyone else! i think i'll use this on my blog's title bar. (don't worry nick, i'll give you credit for the quote!) thanks!
oh yeah, i rememberd #6!
6. do these big corporations (apple, ntt, whatever) REALLY NEED someone to hype them on their blog?
http://jeansnow.net/2005/04/06/apple-store-mobile/#comments
robert
http://glitchslaptko.blogspot.com/
david said: But I'll tell you this and I think this is where some of the debate is coming from: you will never understand what it's like to speak/comprehend Japanese. You will never understand what you are missing.
and i say: compelling! this is a very simple, powerful critique, and i wonder how nick will reply. of course, we all already know the official party line on clique opera:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/imomus/32969.html
i should mention at this point that nick knows a lot more japanese than we give him credit for (he taught me the word 'panchira' one day when we were chatting!)
but he is very careful about letting on that he knows what he knows, since this probably wouldn't work to his advantage here on this blog, or in japanese society.
but of course, it isn't like momus hasn't had the TIME to become at least semi-proficient. he has been coming here for 13 years, since 1992 when he did his first tour. that is more than twice as long as i've been STUDYING japanese. so time isn't the problem.
well what about language brains? well we all know that nick isn't SLOW! i know that he can speak english, french, and i'd bet his german isn't that bad. heck, his Gaelic is probaby pretty good too. hummm, what is it then?
power. it all boils down to a linguistic power game being played by a wise 'umisenyamasen' kind of chap. nick will be the first to cite the 'barthes' approach to non-language learning (of course i'm talking about roland barthes essays 'the unknown language' and 'without words' from his book the empire of signs), and i'll grant him that as an initial phase, this is probably something we all experience and enjoy (or fear, depending on our personality). but to exert such energy as he does trying NOT to learn the language seems...what DOES it seem like? let me think.
if we take a look at something nick said back on his blog almost a year ago...
"'Remaining a foreigner' and 'preserving the incommensurable otherness of the host culture' obviously relate to my love of ostranenie -- they are estrangement devices, verfremdungseffekt. "
we see this idea of verfremdungseffekt as being paramount. fine. but i'd like to suggest something for a moment...a sort of dialectic slight-of-hand if you will. i think that in a primary stage (i.e. nick's first contact with japan) this philosophy ala 'the unknown language' indeed has a PURE function as nick describes it (but he is just rehashing barthes anyway); the verfremdungseffekt DOES, in the words of roland barthes himself, allow us to enjoy:
"The dream: to know a foreign language and yet not to understand it: to perceive the difference in it without that difference ever being recuperated by the superficial sociality of discourse, communication or vulgarity; to know, positively refracted in a new language, the impossibilities of our own; to learn the systematics of the inconceivable; to undo our own 'reality' under the effect of other formulations, other syntaxes; to discover certain unsuspected position of the subject in utterance, to displace the subject's topology; in a word, to decend into the untranslatable, to experience its shock without ever muffling it, until everything Occidental in us totters and the rights of the 'father tongue' vacillate..."
but again let me restate myself. i think that in a primary stage philosophy ala 'the unknown language' has a PURE function as nick describes it.
BUT i think that in a DISTENDED verion (nick's version, the one that he is trying desperately to prolong...and justify) an interesting reversal takes place. as this verfremdungseffekt gained via a bastardized barthes-like, self-imposed illiteracy [i can't believe the way this sentence reads] continues over time, it serves not so much to assist one in, as nick says, 'remaining a foreigner' as it does to 'preserve the incommensurable otherness of the host culture'. in other words, the SELF is not made any more foreign at this stage. the focus instead becomes an obsessive 're-foreignization' of the country/culture that was, thru the subject's own slowly increasing understanding of the socio-linguistic mise-en-scene, in danger of becoming 'known' too intimately, and thus too indiscreetly. doesn't a country and its people have the right NOT to be selfishly exoticized for reasons such as these? don't they deserve at least for their 'extended guest' (who is starting to overstay his welcome?) to show that he is making an honest effort to bring himself face to face with the very identity of the host without falling back on the phrase 'ignorance is bliss', which here takes on a very twisted meaning?
question: if roland barthes had been coming to japan for more than a decade, he would have made it a point to write a follow up essay to 'the unknown language' with something that reads like nick's "Why I don't speak Japanese"? i doubt it.
for more of my thoughts on this subject, please refer to this (short) entry on my blog.
http://glitchslaptko.blogspot.com/2005/02/take-walk-on-wild-side.html
and i'll leave off here with a short quote by lord byron, which i think somehow is fitting:
"the silence, once broken, can never again be made whole."
Posted by: r. at April 8, 2005 5:20 AM"too American to be able to understand Japan... blah blah"
If you are white and living in Japan, you are usually presumed to be アメリカ人 no matter what your country of origin. Perhaps Nick has picked up a little of the Japanese language after all.
Posted by: mmm at April 8, 2005 5:31 AMWell, I have to give Robert A- for that excellent analysis. Yes, I really am such a cynic / romantic / solipcist that I believe my mishearings or imaginings will always be better than the correct version of things. In fact, if I could unlearn English I probably would. I used to quote Captain Beefheart's line "Please God fuck my mind for good" to rock journalists. Just as the misheard lyric is always better (more fresh, strange, thought-provoking) than the correctly-heard one, so the misunderstood / imagined / overestimated culture is better than the correctly-understood one.
And is it even possible to have a "correct understanding" of a culture? Surely we all edit and select just by choosing to go where we go, see whom we see, eat what we eat? I could have spent my precious February week in Tokyo with English speakers. Instead I chose to spend it with a Japanese friend in Nishiogi who speaks no English. The most intense experience of the week was eating a fish in a local restaurant with that friend. The fish was white, soft, flat, weird-looking, immaculately cooked but barely seasoned. It melted in my mouth. I gave it my whole attention. It was worth 10,000 words.
In that "Why I don't speak Japanese" piece you mention, Robert, there's another argument I call 'Where the housewife is lazy, the cat is industrious':
"When the left brain is blocked, stumped or impaired, the right brain takes over. To the non-Japanese speaker, Japan becomes a succession of scents, textures, sounds, colours, lights, experiences, tastes, shapes, emotions."
That's how I choose to experience it. It's also how I'd choose to experience all cultures, given the choice. It's all the more useful not to speak the language given the fact that the ears, unlike the eyes, don't have flaps allowing them to be closed at will. I suppose an iPod would do the trick -- over to Jean Snow's Apple Store link!
Posted by: Momus at April 8, 2005 6:09 AMnick said: Well, I have to give Robert A- for that excellent analysis.
and robert says: thanks for conceding my analysis. [takes a bow] i'll try for an A+ next time, sensei nick!
Posted by: r. at April 8, 2005 6:17 AM[5:30AM in tokyo. robert can't sleep. sorry for the overcommenting.]
nick says: In fact, if I could unlearn English I probably would. I used to quote Captain Beefheart's line "Please God fuck my mind for good" to rock journalists.
and robert says: i like that quote! but of course the most important part of the quote isn't the 'fuck my mind part', it is the 'for good' part. if it isn't a permanent fucking, it isn't worth it.
this reminds me of my answer to the first question of an interview that my friend brad breeck gave me once. he asked...
1. Would you erase you desire for knowledge in favor of total contentment?
http://glitchslaptko.blogspot.com/1999/01/questions-for-robert-duckworth-by-brad.html
momus also said: Just as the misheard lyric is always better (more fresh, strange, thought-provoking) than the correctly-heard one,
and i say: i agree! hey nick, have you ever heard of this TV program in japan? it is called 'soramimi awa-' hosted by mr. tamori (the japanese johnny carson). 'soramimi' means a 'mis-hearing' and 'awa-' is just 'hour'. anyway, they take songs sent in by japanese viewers (usually the songs are in languages other than japanese) in which you can hear 'japanese' phrases...because of the japanese penchant for 'mishearing' everything AS being in the japanese language. the resulting japanese phrases are really odd and wonderful!
anyway, it is one of my favorite shows on TV here.
here is a page with a little info on the show.
http://nifty.excite.co.jp/News/blog/category/tv/soramimi_hour.html
I could have spent my precious February week in Tokyo with English speakers. Instead I chose to spend it with a Japanese friend in Nishiogi who speaks no English.
Wow, Momus. It's like you did what a lot of us do every single day: speak Japanese with native Japanese people. I've been extremely anti-ex-pat until very recently, but my daily interactions with roomates, classmates, teachers, and clerks are all 100% Japanese. And that was even true when my Japanese sucked and I lived in Tokyo in the 90s.
I understand that there's an interesting perspective about Japan from not knowing Japanese, but that perspective is essentially every single lazy piece of journalism about Japan. It'd be one thing if your essays were "impressionistic" subjective portraits, but you present them as objective dogmatic views of reality.
Honestly, if the Western media was less wrong/naive/superficial about Japan, this blog could be a lot more positive. I waste so much energy and expend so much negativity on just setting the record straight. And my greatest fault is that I overextend my dissent into equally incorrect dogma. But that's what happens when the other side refuses to bend...
Posted by: marxy at April 8, 2005 12:24 PMI've been extremely anti-ex-pat until very recently
I was pretty ex-pat-phobic (avoiding, not fearing) for my first three years in Japan, precisely because it took a continuous strong effort to break language and culture barriers. It can be pretty easy to fall into an ex-pat bubble and isolate oneself from Japanese society.
BTW the term ex-pat conjures images of employees of foreign firms, with generous hardship packages who tend to social at sports clubs and drinking establishments frequented by other ex-pats.
I consider myself a foreigner but not really an ex-pat.
The worst ex-pat places are ex-colonies like Hong Kong. There are completely Chinese places, like the Sunbeam Theatre, where Cantonese operas are performed and you don't see a single Westerner. There are completely Western places like the Foreign Correspondents Club and the Fringe Club, where Western journalists and bankers play squash together while their wives attend poetry classes. Then there are "liminal zones" where Western businessmen can meet Chinese women and give them money for sex. These liminal zones are full of Western-style pubs with loud music and appalling graphics. If "the myth of Japanese exceptionalism" keeps Tokyo from resembling Hong Kong, that's fine with me. (Although sometimes in Roppongi I get whiffs of it.)
Posted by: Momus at April 8, 2005 4:22 PM
But it's still my experience that the vast majority of foreigners in Japan work or study in a version of either a Rokumeikan or Dejima. It takes an effort to get out of these places.
mr momus: did you know there are places like that here in Tokyo?
Posted by: Chris_B at April 8, 2005 6:51 PMSure, Chris. In fact, Hakodate, where I worked during January and February of this year, was one of the few places that opened up to foreigners. As a result it's full of churches and has a much less "Japanese" feel than anywhere I've been in Japan. It's a cautionary tale, if you like.
Posted by: Momus at April 8, 2005 7:17 PMbut nick, as an avowed PoMo who is mostly intereted in Japan as a 'collapser of Western binaries', don't you see that your use of this kind of 'verfremdungseffekt thru self-imposed illiteracy' is just like shooting yourself in the ideological foot?
the paradox is that you are, thru your [non-]use of functional literacy, actually ENFORCING and engendering that most 'Western' of binaries, namely that of 'the Other'?
i'd like to quote something that i read today in a chapter from terry eagleton's book 'after theory' called 'the politics of amnesia' which, upon reading it, i felt may as well have been written with momus, as he is being slowly revealed here on neomarxisme this week, in mind:
"with an arrogance thinly masked as humility, the cult of the Other assumes that there are no major conflicts or contradictions within the social majority themselves. or, for that matter, within the minorities. there is just Them and Us, margins and majorities. some of the people who hold this view are also deeply suspicious of binary oppositions"
if your real concern was the enjoyment of japan as a raw collapser of binaries (i grant you that in can, up to a point, function in this fashion), then no doubt you'd have been cracking the japanese textbooks nightly during the decade or so in a effort to make your way out of the 'uncanny valley' of the shadow of socio-linguistic valetudiarianism and, logocentrically AS WELL AS sensually (for i do subscribe to what you say about 'corporal intelligence/knowledge' and japan), join WITH the Other instead of willingly trying to DISTANCE yourself from it--correction--distance IT from you.
if you did so (better late than never, as they say), i would be the first to laud you. indeed, i would sing your praises, something of a clarion, for being big enough to observe in an ideological arena the very 'joie de vivre' of the demigod you have taken as your namsake: Hail, Momus, the wry, sublime, jocular intellect who hasn't forgotton how to laugh...even at his former self!
therefore, i invite you to 'meld with the logos of japan' [i can figure out if this sentance sounds like yoda or mr. spock], surpass 'Either/Or' and join the company cloistered few of who occupy ourselves with the 'Neither/Nor' of japan on a daily basis.
japan does not OWE you your ignorance of it any longer.
I'm a big Terry Eagleton fan, but the point you cite is much more applicable to, say, Alex Kerr than to me. I welcome and enjoy the great hybrid eclectic postmodern Japanese cities, whereas Kerr builds his traditional Japanese house on an island and laments Japan's "ugly" postmodernity (while, oddly, calling for a foreign investment which would ultimately just replace the Japanese public-private concrete with international private-private developer concrete). I don't call for a return to the traditional Japanese squat toilet (as an advocate of Japan-as-Other would), but hail the Japanese "leapfrog" toilet, the washlet, which takes the best of Western technology and makes it better. Hybrid, ne?
Posted by: Momus at April 8, 2005 8:07 PMAlso, my position on Japanese politics is that I'm fine if conflict does emerge. My experience of Japan is that it's massively consensual and that people don't bother much with politics, but if splits should emerge (as they did in the 1960s) that's fine. What I really object to, though, is outsiders -- especially those who fail to criticize their own societies -- imposing prescriptive models on Japan, as, for instance, Kerr does. "Open up your labour and capital markets! Join the international system! Do things as we do them!" It's been the same fucking tune all along, and it's always accompanied by gunboats and firestorms.
Posted by: Momus at April 8, 2005 8:12 PMWhat I really object to, though, is outsiders -- especially those who fail to criticize their own societies -- imposing prescriptive models on Japan
Fine, then read the other 100 books on the history of Japanese conflict, written by objective scholars OR the Japanese themselves. Stop making the entire field of Japanese Studies out to be a diatribe work by a journalist.
My experience of Japan is that it's massively consensual
Well fights don't break out much in Daikanyama.
Posted by: marxy at April 8, 2005 8:29 PMmarxy said: I understand that there's an interesting perspective about Japan from not knowing Japanese, but that perspective is essentially every single lazy piece of journalism about Japan.
and i say: david, you COULDN'T be more wrong on this point. honestly, you sound as if you have never read 'empire of signs' by barthes, or if you have, you have forgotten it! it really IS a sublime book, written from what i'll call a 'primary stage' illiteracy standpoint (different from the one that nick is in now, which is self-imposed.)
but don't fail to keep in mind that a "lazy piece of journalism about Japan" (your words) by an idiot (usually only idiots or savants are prolific, the middle is always silent) who cannot speak japanese and an novel, perhaps even epiphany-bestowing work by a genius (for barthes' was nothing if not a genius) who cannot speak japanese are two VASTLY different things.
now don't get me wrong, i'm not putting nick's writing in either of these categories. of course, i DO find it stimulating and at times frighteningly accurate (especially some of his aesthetic observations about japan), but at the same time it reads like the japanese culture-based version of a lot of PoMo writing out there in the post-theory period. the upper echelons of thought have already been filled (by men such as Lacan, Althusser, Barthes, Foucault, Cixous, Edward Said, etc.) since the middle/late part of the 20th century, and the primary interest of the writing coming out now (and here i mean, in addition to nick's writing, a whole generations of writers his age or younger) is not in the sheer originality of the IDEA, but rather in the brute novelty of the application of the fruits of the 'golden age' of theory to a given range of cultural atomy and minutiae, in nick's case: japan.
a close reading of barthes, from a theory standpoint, naturally precludes having to read momus. BUT (and this is a big but), when barthes came to japan, it was a different japan. the mise-en-scene have radically changed, and we need new applications of the ideas in order to recognize them, let alone critique them. this is were i see nick as being an important player in the game, and also why i can honsetly say that i've done an extensive reading of EVERY single word on his blog (archives and old webpage included).
from my viewpoint, the primary value of nick's dialogue with japan is aestheic, psychological, artistic: in other words, the Humanities and fine arts, a subject which he is strongly grounded in.
granted, i do not always agree with his description of the MOTIVE force behind these various phenomenon that he finds himself facinated with, which is usally where i voice my objections. now when it comes to issues of socio-economics and politics, i think you, david, have your own niche, and i tend to defer to your postulates. i naturally, have my own areas of 'being', my own 'disposition(s)' here, and i blog accordingly...
and here is where nick's pet phrase about the 'blind men and the elephant' comes in handy...almost. i think our eyes are fully open (most of the time), we are searching, probing, asking questions...and that is why we seek out each other in blogspace.
but i suppose the fact that we chose to spend such time here, writing as we do with varying levels of rigor, instead of doing somthing more lucrative and less-anti-social like getting paid to do the same thing as part of a panel discussion at either one of our universities perhaps proves that if we are not at least blind, the we surely are dumb (in the old sense of the word).
time for some 'yozakura' action.
best,
r.
Can I ask where you last saw an angry political dispute in Japan, Marxy?
Posted by: Momus at April 8, 2005 8:33 PMActually, Nick, did you know that there are protesters and demonstrations happening outside the "Gaimusho" on a daily basis in Tokyo. Why not hang out there next time when you are in town and try to get to the bottom of things? Oh wait, I'm sure these folks, just like the homeless in Osaka, will be too 'cool' to talk to you. In that case, you could just do a fly-by and peep it from a distance.
Posted by: r. at April 8, 2005 8:49 PMThere's plenty of right-wing dissent in Tokyo, but I agree that their aggressive style doesn't win them any fans. I've seen the Communists out barking in my neighborhood recently too. There haven't been any Seattle type protests lately, but Japanese history is full of peasant uprisings etc.
Also, it's important to distinguish "consensus" - getting people's agreement on issues before making them - with "consent" - passively accepting decisions already made. Which one describes Japan the best?
Posted by: marxy at April 8, 2005 8:55 PMConsensus
1 a : general agreement : UNANIMITY b : the judgment arrived at by most of those concerned
2 : group solidarity in sentiment and belief
Consent
1 : compliance in or approval of what is done or proposed by another : ACQUIESCENCE
2 : agreement as to action or opinion; specifically : voluntary agreement by a people to organize a civil society and give authority to the government
An act of protest that is continuing on as we blog:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sparkligbeatnic/25252.html
More pictures if you follow the link through to Flickr.
This action has been peaceful, meaningful, well-organized, and effective.
Posted by: sparkligbeatnic at April 8, 2005 11:54 PM