I totaly agree with you- Even if one can not read Kanji/Hiragana?Katagana etc, if some one plans on living in Japan for a long period of time, or even just visits, one must be able to speak a bit of Nihgo. Otherwise, as you stated, one is only able to understand Japanese culture via other individuals, like a filter.

However, I think this whole thing is silly. This is just pop culture, no? I think you are going to be hard pressed to find anything within popular culture, Japanese or otherwise, that's NOT contrived-Jed-chan

of course the language is important to understanding the culture - especially Japanese. The often recited point asks what other culture has a specific alphabet for foreign words (articulating its elitist or at least exclusionary nature); the lesser noted point asks what other culture has multiple levels of "honorary reference" - raising the other vs. lowering one's self. And then of course there is tatemae vs. honne - words to even point out that what is being said is often likely not exactly what is meant. All very important to understanding Japanese culture, and all needing to be mastered lest a Japanese person shrug their shoulders and sigh "eh, gaijin; they'll never understand".

I found that regardless of how good my Japanese got, there were people who shrugged their shoulders and said that anyway.

like all cultures, foreigners who don't speak the language do miss out in Japan. the difference is that Japanese are polite enough to cover up for that so the foreigner doesn't know just what they're missing.

i think the flip side is true as well: it's important for Japanese to learn to speak English. i firmly believe that one of the reasons Japanese women don't rise up against being treated like s**t is that they don't believe/hope there's a better way.

if more of them spoke english and could interact with Westerners, they'd realize that, "hey, maybe it's not so strange to hope that marriage have love" and "hey, maybe my boss should value me for my intelligence and productivity".

Anita, are you crazy? You can't say things like this, knowing that Momus will descend from Heaven and wield his post-modern moral lightning bolt against us for alleging that Japanese women may not be acting already in their best interests with perfect information! Everyone run for cover!

It is absurd that Momus sets himself up as some kind of Japanese culture pundit without actually being able to read or hear what Japanese people say themselves in their own language. Given that very little Japanese is translated, he is basically cut off from 95 percent of the discourse on Japan. It's like someone deciding to write a book on the French Revolution without bothering to learn French. I trust Momus will find it perfectly acceptable if I write a review of his latest album without listening to a note of it, basing my opinions on the pretty picture on the cover and what I've read about it on the Internet.

I think Momus would tell you that listening to music is overrated. You can pretty much understand an album by the way the CD smells and what your friends tell you it's like.

The essense of Being Momus (TM, C, PP, etc) is that his audience will most likely be even more ignorant of Japan than he is. The fans of any pundit naturally assume that the pundit knows more than they do, after all, the Momus in question has actually been to Japan and had musical relevance (at one time).

Once the pundit has staked his/her career on a certain angle, planted their flag in the moral high ground as it were, the pundit can never give any ground and must use any tactic imaginable, no matter how dishonest, to keep the moral high ground. Lets remember that this is the same Momus who wrote an article about the sex industry in Japan without ever actually paying to get off. The Momus who assumes the homeless of Osaka are too cool to be interviewed by him (in what language did he think he would perform said interviews anyways?) For a more thourough documentation of The Hypocracy Of Momus, I must defer to R's site.

Bear in mind, I don't think Momus is soft skulled, just lilly livered; a moral and intelectual coward.

PS anita say iii: How many Japanese women do you actually know in real life? Or perhaps you get your info from The New York Times?

hummm...here's an interesting spin on this whole thing. st. nick is fond of brandishing his "bind man" parable, we all know the story, so i won't repeat it here. anyway, i'd just like to point out a chink in the intellectual armor.

here goes: while most of the "blind men" (marxy, myself, and a few thousand others out there) who are, in an effort to try and understand japan as deeply as possible, trying to use ALL of our various "intelligences"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences

nick, on the other hand, has WILLINGLY discarded one of his "intelligences" (verbal-linguistic) and then in an effort to justify this, frequenty questions the "merits" of our "linguistic understandings" of japan.

the problem with this is, by focusing on the relative merits of his virtually senseless ("sans-sense") position, he implies that we AREN'T employing all of our other senses too! well, OF COURSE WE ARE! we are feeling, touching, tasting, smelling, etc. the "sensory" japan just as much as he is, if not more since we are here 24/7 and he is not.

of course, the next logical step for nick at this point, if he wan't to spend his time and energy to salvage this line of reasoning, is to concede my point, and then argue that he is simply more "intelligent" in the sensory areas that he has decided to focus on. this is a moot point, and i will not argue it here.

now if nick were somehow an idiot savant, and were INCAPABLE of speaking another language, or even his native one, then his position would be forgivable. even though his statements sometimes make me up this into question, i'm convinced he is in full possession of his mental faculties. therefore, no sympathy for him, and his whole intellectual edifice build around this parable as a kind of post-modern excuse is a complete sham.

imagine an astrophysicist who decided to throw away his "logical-mathematical intelligence" and decided to focus on exploring the chemical structure of stars with his "body-kinesthetic
intelligence"...or to put things another way: i'm sure IF stephen hawking were CAPABLE of doing just this, he would. sadly, he can't.

nick can no longer make use of this excuse, thank goodness.

now i'm off. bigger "pakura" to fry...

hi-five,
r.

Marxy, have you ever met Momus? Somehow in my mind i've created this fantasy world where you and Momus bicker endlessly under Cherry Blossoms with Jean Snow and Patrick Chipple sitting in the middle serving sushi from bentos to keep things from going over the top.

I've never really been able to take him seriously what with the eyepatch and all (if it's real, my apologies), but it almost seems to fantastic that you would have such a well designed rival.

Maybe it'll turn out that one of you are actually fictional tools of the Japanese pop culture machine. If that turns out to be the case, I hope you're the real one as you offer real insight (cynical or not) into modern Japanese popular society. Though I suppose to be fair, i should try to give Momus more of a chance.

Momus and I get along fine in person, and that's one of the reasons I get so peeved with the online battles. I know that there's a decent, civilized debate within us, but this impersonal, dehumanizing Internet just makes us into ideological enemies willing to resort to scorched earth tactics. I like Momus and respect Momus, and although I don't need him to believe in my perspective on Japan, I would like him to at least acknowledge that my views on Japan are not some fiendish American plot and do have basis in reality. I often appreciate his criticisms and alternative viewpoints, but he only seems to get off on the taste of his own bile and shows no interest in working towards any kind of compromise or mutal "understanding."

Or maybe this is all some secret altruistic attempt on his part to boost my "ratings."

robert said [what he just said above]:

hummm...here's an interesting spin on this whole thing

and nick said over on clique opera:

You know, fuck right off Robert. This point is a very tired one, and I won't be gagged. I understand enough Japanese to follow perfectly well the conversation Quentin reports above.
You manage to alienate a lot of people with your smugness about your own Nihongo skills, you know? A mutual acquaintance told me "What's up with that guy? Within five minutes of meeting him he was insinuating that his Japanese was much better than mine. So competitive! What a pain!" It's not actually very Japanese to boast the way you do. And if you know Japan well, it may not surprise you when I say that many Japanese also prefer gaijin who don't speak their own language well to those who do. Maybe we're more "cute"!

r. replied: news flash! hit dog hollers (film at 11)

It's official: The back and forth with Momus has become a tedious bore... like debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Let's please move along. Marxy, you have far more interesting ground to cover, rather than squandering your brain-cycles on such silly froth.

what other culture has a specific alphabet for foreign words (articulating its elitist or at least exclusionary nature); the lesser noted point asks what other culture has multiple levels of "honorary reference" - raising the other vs. lowering one's self. And then of course there is tatemae vs. honne - words to even point out that what is being said is often likely not exactly what is meant. All very important to understanding Japanese culture

But how many examples of tatemae and honne do you need to hear to confirm the original exposition of the system, in whatever language it was delivered to you? What if the original explanation of this and other distinctions is all you need, whether you hear about it in English, Japanese, or Swahili? Also, is it really any different learning things secondhand about a culture in Japanese than learning them secondhand in English? Is there some inherent advantage in "Oh, Mr Yamada told me X about the Japanese spirit" over "Oh, Roland Barthes says Y about the Japanese spirit"? Both Mr Yamada and M. Barthes have agendas. They are both subjective.

I, for instance, am quite happy to glean information from what I read on English-speaking gaijin sites like Neomarxisme, though I do feel I have the right to question the thinking behind it. I tend not to question the facts so much as the inbuilt ethnocentric suppositions. In other words, my criticisms are of one Westerner by another Westerner, and are entirely about issues within Western thought. I think the biggest problem Marxy and I have is that Marxy is a "status thinker" and I'm a "contract thinker". Marxy, in other words, believes that everything revolves around "the truth of the situation" whereas I believe that everything revolves around a consensual contract between the actors involved. In this I am way more "Japanese" than Marxy.

i second that emotion!

And the odd thing that when Marxy digs deeper and discovers that "consensual contracts between the actors involved" do actually determine the "truths" of the situations he observes in Japan, he doesn't switch over to "contract thinking" mode. He switches over to the most tedious form known to man: conspiracy mode. A contract is not a conspiracy!

See, this is productive debate!

A contract is not necessarily a conspiracy, but I think there's much reason to question exclusionary agreements or contracts not formed with equal access to perfect-information - both of which are dominant in Japanese society.

In the case of Densha Otoko, if consumers are buying the product based on the fact that they believe it to be a true story, then that is an unbalanced agreement giving the upper hand to the media/producers. If they are not expecting anything other than to be entertained, then it may be an equal agreement - no harm done. However, I do think there is value in at least discussing whether it matters that the story is sold as being true and is most likely a hoax. Just because consumers don't care about whether it's real or not doesn't mean they like to be hoodwinked. (And this is true for consumers everywhere.)

Have you ever heard of "the willing suspension of disbelief"? Have you ever heard of "the fourth wall illusion"? Have you ever heard of "catharsis through sorrow and pity"? When your mother weeps at the cinema, do you tell her she's an idiot and the people on the screen are only actors? That the film is a lie?

When you hear the statement "Based on a true story", don't ask "Is that statement true?" Ask "Where does that statement take me?" It might well take you to a more satisfactory consumer experience of the Trainman saga.

st. nick sez: ...In this I am way more "Japanese" than Marxy.

and r. be sayin': well speaking of 'honne' i think with this statement we've finally seen nick display his! i would also add that david/marxy dosen't seem the least bit concerned about his 'japanese quotient' and nick seems hyper-obsessed.

i guess it's like i was sayin' to david the other day, "david, you're easy-breezy and nick's japanesey [soon you'll mean exactly nothing to him!]"

oi vey!

Yes, those things exist, but you have to also assume that people trust authorities - the news and the other media - to tell them what is real and what is not. Forget the film for a minute; the media has essentially repeated over and over - as a semi-news story - that the Densha Otoko saga really happened. And this is just one example of a larger picture.

So, yes, consumers like to be entertained when purchasing cultural objects, but they also expect not to be lied to when getting "objective, non-fictious" information.

I admit that I'm trying to talk about one thing with a pretty poor example. (I'm not really talking at all about adapting real stories into fictional movies.) My greater question is: why is the media unwilling to check into doubts that the original story was a hoax? And I found my answer: because it appears that all segments of the media are making money off of it staying "true."

st. nick sez: ...In this I am way more "Japanese" than Marxy.

and r. be sayin': well speaking of 'honne' i think with this statement we've finally seen nick display his! i would also add that david/marxy dosen't seem the least bit concerned about his 'japanese quotient' and nick seems hyper-obsessed.

i guess it's like i was sayin' to david the other day, "david, you're easy-breezy and nick's japanesey [soon you'll mean exactly nothing to him!]"

oi vey!

momus seems to be saying something like "that's just the way it is..."

david seems to be saying "but it could be better!"

momus seems to be saying something like "that's just the way it is..."

david seems to be saying "but it could be better!"

momus seems to be saying something like "that's just the way it is..."

david seems to be saying "but it could be better!"

And Robert keeps repeating himself.

I think that a system being different does not mean it is automatically upholding its own values to a maximum extent. If Japanese social structure is guided by Confucian and samurai moralism (and not elitist economic and political structures), then it still fails to do what Momus assumes it does perfectly - just in the same way that America fails to be a true liberalized, free-market economy.

i may not always agree with momus, but sometimes i do wish i was momus. [i don't always agree with marxy either too] sometimes i wish momus and stephen merritt would work together again, i miss the pop momus sometimes. i don't so much like people i totally agree with everything with about. new ideas don't form with agreement. so i'm always happy to have marxy on pliink.com.
maybe sometime momus and marxy will do a song together? wouldn't that be crazy shit? would you guys do it? or maybe a quick guest appearence on a song?

i don't know about a song, but if they were porn actors, the 'make-up sex' would be off the hook!
r.

Yes, a duet cover of that Utada Hikaru song, as per R.'s suggestion!

Marxy: "I'm easy-breazy"
Momus: "and I'M Japanesey!"
Harmony: "There isn't much upon which we both can agree"

then a chopped&skrewed sax-solo.

I can't see how Momus can get around the simple fact that however he wants to construe "truth" - whether as Rortian consensus or Platonic absolute - the fact remains that his views on Japan are less well informed because of his lack of language skills. The pool of information at his disposal will always be significantly smaller, always second-hand. And I think that's very apparent in his debating style, which consists in laying out a case based on a simplistic binary, and then never, ever wavering from it. No doubt Marxy's position is "situated" as well, but it can afford to be more empirically based simply because he has more information and more direct access to it! Hence Marxy will often conceded a point or change his position to fit the evidence at hand. Momus never does this! Which is why he comes across as a propagandist rather than a social commentator.

I also read a lot of previous research about Japan so that I can have a greater perspective on my own personal experiences. I'm not usually only pulling from what's actually happened to me.

Marxy, your a very intelligent young man who provides excellent commentary on Japan/pop/culture...I dont know why you would waste your time with the likes of art pretender, art-charlatan word tricksters like Momus...it amazes me how people can perpetuate thier own myth via the internet...let him huff-puff and billow around without actually saying anything of anyworth nor interest.

I am to Marxy as Marxy is to Japan: a critic raising questions some would prefer left unasked. And you are to me as the men in sunglasses from Johnny's Jimusho are to Marxy's decapitated head, mounted on a pike on the Kabuki-Cho.

Why are you so obsessed with Marxy, Momus? It's a bit unseemly of you to be so obstinately and nakedly aggressive towards someone 20 years younger than you. Do you feel threatened by him or something? Can't you just accept that he sees the world differently from you and move on? Why this dick-waving need to spray your stuff on every post and always get the last word in?

I agree with jemima, momus and marxys message board bickering is ruining Marxy's site.Everyone used to know an uncle, father or someone who used to fume at letters to the editor in newspapers, message boards contributers are degenerating into daily mail letter writers.

Well, I don't know about this last round of Momus-bashing. I like hearing Momus' views on issues, but I don't particularly like it when criticism of my position becomes mere personal debasing or a refusal to fit broad philsophical ideas to the actual situation.

I fear the day that everyone agrees with me.

The site has not recently been very Momus-driven, and if you really want me to move out of this temporary flashback, you could comment on the Fruits Loops commercial instead of this.

Let's face it, controversy is the lifeblood of the internet. I've directed quite a lot of traffic to this site. Dialogue is also a great way to hone one's views, test them against opposing views. I actually have shifted my position thanks to stuff I've learned on this site about the intricate contractual ecosystem of the Japanese music industry, the publishing industry, and so on. And I think it's almost inevitable that as Marxy gets older he will shift towards a more "contractual" and less ethnocentric view of the things he's describing here.

One of the sternest warnings I gave Marxy was to read Spengler and see whether what he was saying about Japan's "decline" didn't map rather closely to what Spengler says in "The Decline of the West". Last night I was browsing a book about Georg Lukacs and the flap said Lukacs was "as eloquent a thinker on behalf of the Marxists as Spengler was for the fascists". The trope of "decline from a golden age" and the trope of "deviation from absolute truths" and the trope of ethnocentrism are all highly characteristic of the authoritarian or ultra-conservative mindset, which is why I attack them whenever and wherever I see them. Luckily for all of us, Marxy is highly empirical and makes a lot of his research available here together with the more dubious analysis.

"it's almost inevitable as Marxy gets older..." "one of the sternest warnings I gave Marxy..." You sound so awfully pompous, Momus! You're the wise old man on the mountain, imparting wisdom to the sadly misguided youth. Only in this case it's the youth who has a far better grasp of the subject than you do, since he actually lives in Japan, speaks the language, reads the books and magazines and is not dependent on the Japan Times for news and analysis. By the way, I really doubt you've read Spengler yourself if you see some parallel between his histrionic sub-Nietzchean ideas and Marxy's entirely uncontroversial picture of the effects of relative economic decline over the past decade.

You know, I read the introduction to Spengler last year in relation to Momus, and I could not for the life of me figure out what it had to do with my perspective on Japan. Do I need to read the whole thing to get it?