I'm with ya 100% on this one.

You indulge in some massive historical re-ordering yourself here! "Hippies" are what came after the psychedelic era (66-67). Sgt Pepper, Piper At The Gates Of Dawn etc. aren't hippy, but parts of the White album and Let It Be are. Psychedelia was a plastic pop, unashamedly studio-created, music that was the soundtrack to The Prisoner, The Avengers and other examples of the "popular inauthentic". What came after was the earnest singer-songwriter stuff - and that was what the hippies were listening to. Hippies didn't really happen until 1968.

Well, now. I think we would all agree that the "Summer of Love" involved Hippies, and that was '66 (or '67). You're defining "Hippie" as being Woodstock-esque, when all that '66-'67 psych stuff is directly related. Are the Merry Pranksters not Hippies of some order? If it makes you feel better about yourself to seperate early-Hippies from late-Hippies go ahead and do it, but Joan Didion was already writing about the horrors of Haight-Ashbury in '67.

Check out Barry Miles's Hippie if you don't believe me.

Well, maybe I was being nitpicky there. But the LSD freakery and studio trickery of 66-67 do seem to be coming from a different, darker place than the more acoustic peace and love of 68-69. I don't think the Beatles' turning their back on horns and whimsy has much to do with their turning their back on hippies. The fact is that most of those psych bands were turning to something else by '68, some to rootsy stuff like the Beatles, others to more proggy stuff like Pink Floyd.

the beatles turned their backs on whimsy before Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine? Coulda fooled me.

Also, I wonder if the appreciation of rap and punk is not due to the lack of exposure to the mass consumed watering down of the cultures, but the lack of exposure to the real cultures. That is to say that the experience of the Japanese mirrors that of the subarbanite honkies. They interact with the worlds of punk and rap and all the rest in a carefully filtered version, where the violence, drug abuse and creativity are strictly fanciful ideas, and the large mass of worthless unintersting music is easily ignored. (The way todays 28 year olds look back on the eighties).

(re: last post-oops... that is I think that I agree... slightly tangential, not contrary)

But the LSD freakery and studio trickery of 66-67 do seem to be coming from a different, darker place than the more acoustic peace and love of 68-69.

I think the whole hippie thing was not a unified mass - it had class-like segments - and it wasn't a stationary culture - it moved from LSD experimentation to more earthy vibes with Eastern religious overtones. Donovan seemed to have straddled the line between both.

The songs for Magical Mystery Tour were made in the summer of '67, no? The Beatles soon after went from LSD to Maharishi and wrote all those campfire songs in India. Yellow Submarine had very little input from the actual Beatles, and the new tracks were leftovers or children's songs.

That is to say that the experience of the Japanese mirrors that of the subarbanite honkies

I think both Japanese kids and American surburban kids like the rebellious outlaw image of both punk and hip hop. I don't get the sense that urban kids dislike the music because they have direct exposure to the original environment.

I think the filtering is more of the culture's bad parts, which may include "less exemplary" adopters, but defining who is "bad" for the cultural product depends on the product. Everytime Old Dirty Bastard got arrested, I'm sure the Wu-Tang's went up, although I'm not sure that those stories were carried over to Japan...

Marxy, I'm no sure where you conducted this straw poll of Londoners who have never met a "real" mod, but I can assure you that I've met plenty of people who describe themselves as having been one in the '60s. A mod that is, not a "real" mod. From my perspective, mods didn't evaporate (or come into being for that matter) overnight, they just switched to different tailors and barbers. I don't agree with him much of the time, but have you been reading your Paolo Hewitt?

What is perturbing me more is the following:

"Before we start stating definitively that "the Japanese" think x or y in regards to their arch-inauthentic consumer lifestyles based on past subcultural fashions, we have to recognize that there's no other sophisticated consumer market on Earth with less exposure to the original adopters than Japan"

I know Momus is away (or rather here in London), but don't think you can get away with a piece of balderdash like that in his absence! Ho, ho... Why the Sam Hill would we begin the formation of any definitive statement of the x and y of what "the Japanese" think? It's about as productive a task as alchemy. Genug with the arch-inauthentic Western theorising of Japan! For me the question is not the why or whether of Japan differing but why "we" think that is such an issue.

I'm not at all convinced that the American experience of the 60's matches that of the UK. Neither does Japan's. Or anywhere else's. The experience of the 60s and hippiedom in America isn't monolithic either. West Coast/East Coast for a start. Never mind the Mid-West and the South. And as for London, Manchester, Truro, Aberdeen, Coleraine... These places all have various stories to tell that are odds with any generalised or definitive account.

We can all agree that Japan didn't have an huge outburst of hippiedom. But neither did Ulan Bator. Montevideo was surprisingly lacking in suedeheads also. Yes, there's certainly a huge influence of the 60's aesthetic in Japanese design and similar, but I'm unconvinced that the reasons for that are a lack of longhairs in stinky Afghans or similar. Even if I did accept that the 60s are worshipped more in Japan than anywhere else, that's not to say that they are worshipped above all else.

Your use of "original adopters" suggests that there are authentic experiences of the 60s that Japan missed out on (for some reason, I'm reminded of those long tedious arguments between Japanese Marxist factions over the nature of the Meiji Renovation - as if hippies are an inevitable product of historical and economic forces). Japan had its own experiences, as did everywhere else, they weren't the same. That's not remotely surprising. I think there is a question of how the domestic 60's experiences are remembered in Japan. How have those memories been displaced or affected subsequently? In what various ways do differing groups and people remember these?

As to Japanese youth being able to bypass the nature of original adopters. I think this is an early diagnostic sign of "you're getting old, Marxy" [no slur intended!]. I've notice the same in myself. These young kids who call themselves punks these days, what do they know? Back in my day... Just as many of the kids of friends I meet say they like hip hop but their eyes mist over if I start talking about Stetsasonic or similar.

1) Why the Sam Hill would we begin the formation of any definitive statement of the x and y of what "the Japanese" think?

I meant that statement as... "Before we get carried away by saying that the Japanese 'think this way'..." because we (as bloggers, as Westerners?) seem to draw huge conclusions about Japanese postmodern feelings towards authenticity etc. from their consumer lifestyles.

2) I can assure you that I've met plenty of people who describe themselves as having been one in the '60s.

There certainly were few American or Japanese mods in the 60s and I probably extrapolated this out to assume they were few and far between in the UK. Of course the Brighton clashes were front-page news, but I know a lot of square Brits of upper middle-class roots who seem pretty clueless about what the working-classes were up to. I appreciate your correction.

3) We can all agree that Japan didn't have an huge outburst of hippiedom. But neither did Ulan Bator.

I don't think that's a fair comparison, because Japan's economy was the second largest in the "Free World" by 1968. The Japanese themselves weren't such wealthy, savvy consumers quite yet, but they did have a contemporary movement of hippie-esque counterculture (folk guerillas, fuutenzoku, leftist student riots) that fizzled out much quicker than in other countries.

I'm more interested in how the counterculture changed Western society (and not Japanese society by extension) more than "why are there no Japanese hippies?" The 60s counterculture provided a "cool" youth-friendly critique of the capitalist system. It didn't overthrow anything but a lot of the new values got sucked into the mainstream. In Japan, the counterculture barely even rocked the boat. Today, Japan's cultural markets still resemble that of 1950s America - payola, rigged Quiz shows, and little critique of pop culture.

whats most interesting to me is I dont know of an example in the west where the trappings of an otherplace trend are so dilligently studied and copied. sure there was vanilla ice and a million others, but that dont quite look the same to me because 1) that was like "tonari no pakuri" with white artists copying the styles of black artists that were right around them, 2) for all the copying, there always had to be some semblance, however thin, of originality about the copier. this is really something else and something amazing.

Well there's a question to be asked: why do the Brits seem to adopt American musical styles and then turn them into something totally new (ie, D'n'B or Grime) whereas the Japanese are equally enthusiastic about said American musical styles but do localized copies instead? There are some examples of unique Japanese genres coming out of US/UK influences - I would nominate Shibuya-kei as a possible candidate - but I think Japanese hip hop and reggae is no more than just "Japanese hip hop" and "Japanese reggae."

My first guess goes back to the underlying Confucian theme of orthopraxy - a belief in a "right way" to do something leads to exact copying. But I can't help but think that the US-UK cultural interchange over the years has seen a lot of adopters work hard in not directly copying as part of the respect to the originators.

The best Japanese stuff seems to be when exact copies go horribly wrong, but there's only a handful of times when you see Japanese artists intentionally working into new territory to not violate the original material. Do SDP and Rip Slyme have more respect for hip hop culture than Zeebra and Dabo or are they just copying middle-class hip hop like De La Soul and the Beastie Boys - who have felt the need to not directly copy inner-city sounds?

well the Beastie Boys are an odd case since they were a NYC punk band before they did rap, and their first record was pretty much a joke between them and Rick Ruben, but I see your point.

one case I can think of where a western genre was copied and continued in the spirit rather than form is Japanese dub reggae. Mute Beat, Dub Master X, Audio Active and Dry & Heavy all hold their own on the world stage and have gotten respect in their genre.

I think it's easier to copy foreign production roles than performance roles. With a producer-centered genre like dub, it's easy to hide in the shadows and let the music speak for itself.

Meanwhile Japanese brotha's are on the mic keepin' it real.

moot really, but I didn't mean that the originators of rap and punk hated the aesthetics of their scene, rather that the suburbanites probably wouldn't have dug the scene so much if they weren't enjoying it from a very safe distance. So long as it's all encapsulated in the guise of fantasy, it's acceptable.

Orange County punks don't like dirt. They like the idea of dirt. Were there real dirty people involved in their cultural enclave, they'd jump ship for cleaner shores.
It's not the lack of exposure to the inauthentic that makes the scene friendly and popular, but the lack of exposure to the authentic.

Orange County punks don't like dirt. They like the idea of dirt. Were there real dirty people involved in their cultural enclave, they'd jump ship for cleaner shores.

Everyone loves the idealized image of the originators and adopt the styles themselves to get close to that image. As in Simmel's theories of fashion, the originators abandon once lower groups start stealin' their shit, and then the early adopters later start abandoning when even lower groups start stealin' again.

Japanese consumer culture gets to have the original idealized styles without having to encounter any of the lower groups. So, they get the Sid Vicious story without having to deal with 100,000 surburban American kids going through a Sid phase. They do have to deal with a million other Japanese kids paying homage to Sid and Nancy (and sometimes, wearing swastikas), but they're pretty accustomed to this anyway.

Question- is the tradition of Asians flashing the peace sign when getting photographed related to 'the Sixties'? i.e. it spread from wester media back in the Beatles era, and took root in Japan and other from there in other parts of Asia?

I have yet to find anyone who can explain the meaning when they do it in a picture- they just agree that it is the thing to do, to show you are having fun.

Great question. I asked somebody about that a while back and they gave the same explanation you did: it's a relic of the Sixties that got sucked into Japanese culture and made into a commonplace thing.

I'm sure if you asked people in their 50s, they would know exactly how and when it started. This would make a very interesting research project...