Before you get all hot and bothered, I'm not talking about the manji (卍).

but you need to note that in the japanese dictionary, the manji spins both ways, bub!
dj bobofete

I think it would be more appropriate to associate things the Nazis invented forever with their evil, rather than things they merely appropriated, like the swastika. The Nazis actually invented freeways, for instance, in the form of Hitler's beloved autobahn system. I think there's a mucn better argument for saying that freeways "contain" some of the essential evil of the Nazis than for saying that an ancient Indian symbol does. If you want to fight Nazism as it appears in today's Tokyo, don't pick on skateboarders. Write something about the freeway being built right through the northern part of Shimokitazawa. Get angry about it, start a campaign, radicalize people, pinpoint a conspiracy, defeat (the ghost of) Hitler!

yeah! i think tender perv is on the right track with this rant!

What about Japanese punk bands that use kamikaze imagery and Imperial slogans on their releases and try to justify Japan's wartime past in their songs? (Yes, I'm referring to a particular girls' group called Softball, and I'm sure there are others like them.)
THAT is even more disturbing to me.
A Japanese punk kid wearing swaistika is just a nuisance, but the emergence of right-leaning punk bands like Softball just shows how right-wing propaganda has worked its way into the heads of Japanese youth.

I wouldn't have expected momus to think that the originators of any mark or technology were to be the only ones associated with it; that the swastika should be associated with india and freeways with germany. I would have picked him for more of a practical application sort. Also a bit surprised that he would insist on the "literal" meaning of the swastika as being the only true one when the metaphorical meaning is so wide spread.

Somehow I did know that he would forgive the japanese youth for swastikas. Would he forgive American youth for swastikas?

I find it more disturbing that the japanese otakki (and a significant part of their grown up brothers among the salarymen) are so fascinated with WWII german machinery and uniforms. I get to read my son's model and character magazines, and you find a HUGE selection of panzers, from the cute Choro Q and okashi omocha to the gigantic radio-controlled Tiger, along figures of Wehrmacht or SS officers and soldiers. And yes, you find also US or Russian stuff, but not nearly as much. It's creepy, because nobody seems to know, or CARE about the historical context. It seems to be just the material for yet another manga, a sort of ancient gundam.

At the toy/comic conventions you will almost always see groups of middle aged men dressed up in a variety of Third Reich uniforms. Waffen SS is the most popular. Of course they are pussies. After talking to some of em and figuring out they have no idea what they are representing, I decided all of em needed to be spat upon and chaced around the back parking lot. A splendid time was had by all, and by all I mean me and by splendid on their part I guess the urine stains on the uniforms would be a joy to launder.

Remind me never to take you to the theatre.

chris b probably doesn't get irony of the thing he did heheh ...

T-shirts? Hell, in Harajuku you can buy jumpsuits covered in swastikas.

I would guess most of it has to do with kids wanting to be bad and knowing the Nazi swastika is something you shouldn't wear. Rebelling against authority and all that.

As for the guys in the Nazi uniforms, I think that's solely because the uniforms look cool. Fascists always did dress the best.

the manji spins both ways, bub!

It doesn't accidentally find itself in a white circle on a red flag, twisted on its axis.

If you want to fight Nazism as it appears in today's Tokyo, don't pick on skateboarders

Well, look, I'm not trying to complain about Nazism in Japan as much as an embarassing lack of historical comprehension. If these kids were actually Nazis, it would perhaps make sense to wear these shirts. Just more of my insatiable Confucianist urge to "Rectify the Signs."

What I don't get, however, is the fact that lots of sensible people have been bitching about selling the swastika shirts for a very long time - I'm sure that real Western punks aren't so cool with it either - and these shirts never go away. Is there no institutional learning or is Sid Vicious just that fucking cool?

What about Japanese punk bands that use kamikaze imagery and Imperial slogans on their releases and try to justify Japan's wartime past in their songs?

A lot of the Yankii right-wing symbols are just for play. Like calling your high-school bicycle gang, La Cosa Nostra. If they are really preaching Nationalist dogma, that's a different issue. (Just so we don't have to spend the next 15 comments arguing: I'm against right-wing politics, Momus is for, as long as they aren't Western peoples.)

I would guess most of it has to do with kids wanting to be bad and knowing the Nazi swastika is something you shouldn't wear.

No, they wear that t-shirt solely because Sid Vicious wore it. They don't know what the symbol means, there's no irony, there's no intentional use for aggrevation. They simply think it means "punk." I found that my 16 year-old host brother in Gifu-ken had spray-painted a swastika on his wall, and he had no idea what it meant until I lectured him on where it came from. Maybe three or four guys are really anti-Semitic, and three and four are Vice-style ironists. Everyone else is just a poseur.

marxy: sid wasnt cool, he was product. As for the punk kids here, I go back and forth with this, it used to irritate me to no end that these kids were buying a very expensive premade image set w/o any understanding and pretty much without any chance of a beat down for the "right" to be punk, but right now I'm on the side of "when I was a punk kid I did alot of stuff I didnt understand either".

These kids dont really seem punk to me, but maybe all it takes is being young, dumb and full of cum. I guess punk means different things in different eras and places. It sure as heck was a different think in Texas in the 80s than in NYC or London in the 70s. At least there is a kind of distinctive signature of japanese punk fashion of hanging as many things on one's posterior as possible (also noted in Tokyo Damage Report).

In any case "No Future" turned out to be just as much of a lie as anything else. We grew up, made our bargains with the world (and end up making payments on a sofa or a girl) and sometimes get a wild hair to still show our colors.

porandojin: I'm fully aware of the irony in that. I was a Class A Arsehole for what I did. Unfortunately I dont regret it at all. Two wrongs still dont make a right. Whats an old dog to do?

momus: duely noted. But if you ever do, I'll do my best to behave.

Well, look, I'm not trying to complain about Nazism in Japan as much as an embarassing lack of historical comprehension. If these kids were actually Nazis, it would perhaps make sense to wear these shirts. Just more of my insatiable Confucianist urge to "Rectify the Signs."

That's a good summary of your position here. Except for the word "Confucianist". This is pure PC. You don't want to attack the substance of fascism, just the signage. Like all PC people, you just want to take certain subjects off the conversational agenda. You kill the messenger. This is essentially a conservative, anti-controversialist stance, a form of embarrassment. It's no more politically engaged than the punks you're criticizing. In fact, it's less so, because those punks risk meeting Chris B and having to explain themselves, whereas if they did as you wish and suppressed the signage, perhaps by wearing Gap or Uniqlo, no political conversation would ever be necessary.

You hate Vice magazine for the same reason you hate these punks. You hate them because of features like this one, in which blacks explain why they have swastika tattoos.

But I have to ask you:

1. Why don't you want politics foregrounded?
2. Is it
a) the political meaning of the swastika that you want suppressed
b) the non-political re-appropriation?
3. If a), don't you think that making the swastika taboo and "forever Nazi" actually gives it a power it doesn't really deserve, and makes it more dangerous?
4. If b), don't you think that dissociating the swastika from Nazism is a tactic that diminishes its power, and is therefore to be encouraged?

I personally wouldn't wear a swastika. But my feeling is that those who do, whether blacks or punks or rockers or hardcore faggots or whatever, do so to say something like "I'm a hard motherfucker" or "I'm a nihilist" or "I want to shock you" or "I'm very very camp" or "Ask me about politics!" Some, perhaps a tiny minority, are wearing it to say "Hitler was a cool dude". And they must be madder than you are at all the others.

When I googled the Vice photos, I found some right wing French white supremacists discussing them. They called the tattoos "surprising and almost insulting", and noted with perplexity that "the world is upside down!" In other words, they agreed with you that the swastika must forever mean what Hitler wanted it to mean, and therefore forever strike fear into the hearts of black people, gypsies, Jews, gays and the others Hitler persecuted.

(Just so we don't have to spend the next 15 comments arguing: I'm against right-wing politics, Momus is for, as long as they aren't Western peoples.)

That's ridiculous! I'm for cultural pluralism and respecting the self-created identity of others (including national identity) is part of that, but creation of national identity is as likely to be the vocation of artists, museum curators and tourists as right wing bigots. There's nothing inherently right wing about respect for cultural differences. You're way to the right of me because you fail to respect them, it seems to me. Ethnocentrism, the belief in a Golden Age from which we've fallen, belief in "absolute standards", mistrust of centralised government power and collectivism, these all characterize a right wing mindset, and they're closer to your positions than mine.

A parallel phenomenon: Otherwise left-wing Western punks (like the Clash) appropriating kamikaze imagery. In fact, I knew a left-wing American punk who bought one of those DaiNippon Teikoku tshirts that you can get at tourist spots around Japan, wore it on a trip to SouthEast Asia, and subsquently learned an awful lot about Japan's Imperial past from the people who bore the brunt of it (or rather, their descendents). I don't think he ever wore the shirt again...

Marxy said: "I'm not trying to complain about Nazism in Japan as much as an embarassing lack of historical comprehension."

Yes, it is quite easy to find people born in the 70s and after who have absolutely no idea that Japan and Germany were allies in WWII, or that the Nazis were German. Some may not even recognize that Hitler was an actual historical figure, and not just a scary villain from old black-and-white movies. And I'm talking here about people who have completed secondary education...

guest: You are completely correct. But it is worse. There are plenty of people here born after the 40s who have no concept of that slice of history to which we discuss. The iconography of the Third Reich is fetishized by the parents of the young punks, why shouldnt the kids be as equally ignorant? Those who don't know their history yada yada yah.

momus: 4b in your resoning above is terribly soft skulled and does great disrespect to those who died and even more to those who survived. You are not stupid, I trust that I dont need to spell it out for you.

Additionally, how exactly is "mistrust of central government" a right wing postition? Are you perhaps describing a localized phenomenon? Where I come from it is something shared quite equally by folks across the political spectrum. Where I live now, the opposite of what you assert seems to be the case.

Except for the word "Confucianist".

I wouldn't start protecting Confucianism from me until you know what Confucianism is about. I'd love to have a long discussion about it sometime if you're up to it.

You kill the messenger.

This is coming from a guy who has spent hundreds of hours personally attacking a kid with a website for trying to ask questions about the darker underbelly of Japanese social arrangements.

You hate Vice magazine for the same reason you hate these punks.

This is something you've never considered, because you are so enamored with them and enamored with the fact they like you: Vice is just a bad magazine. It's boring, repetitive, poorly-written, and the absolute transmission-center of what you like to call moronic cynicism. Its only redeeming factor is that it's free. I'm not as much politically opposed as completely bored with everything they do. They're like a 21st century brand of fake vomit.

But my feeling is that those who do, whether blacks or punks or rockers or hardcore faggots or whatever, do so to say something like "I'm a hard motherfucker" or "I'm a nihilist" or "I want to shock you" or "I'm very very camp" or "Ask me about politics!"

Don't you notice that all of these people above understand what they're doing. My complaint is that Japanese kids are wearing it purely as fashion, and if you told them about it, they would probably stop. If dudes want to wear it to offend me, that's fine, I'll be offended. But, this is not the issue at hand. This is not just about the swastika but widespread ignorance in Japan that ideas or symbols could possibly be political.

That's ridiculous! I'm for cultural pluralism and respecting the self-created identity of others (including national identity)

I played unfair on this part, but I do think you exhibit the classic tendency to judge Western Nationalist and right-wing movements with contempt compared to those of "lesser peoples." You hate rednecks and Bush and bad American food and bad American culture (hey, so do I), but then attack me for feeling the same about the guys at the Yasukuni shrine or the textbook revisionists. This is where we have to agree to disagree, but I think you're better off supporting the more liberal aspects of Japanese society, which tend to be more for real internationalization, instead of the guys who find their country's glory in war uniforms and land grabbing.

my last comment notwithstanding...(this one also notwithstanding)

If the swastika is about camp and intentional controversy, why's it so proudly on sale up and down harajuku? Can the kids be wearing it to be shocking without knowing that it's shocking?

If it's worn for the sake of controversy and discussion, don't the momuses beaming from on high, proudly endorsing the entire world severely dilute the message? Don't the takeshitadoori shops?
---
If I photoshop filter an incendiary racist phrase into a hansome logo does it cease to be racist, having just become a mutable sign? Or were the words of the phrase only mutable signs to begin with?

Chris, I had a higher estimation of the elder generations' historical awareness, but for very limited anecdotal reasons: the only Japanese people I've talked to who give a shit about politics of any kind are over 50.

Momus, allow me to make two criticisms of your devil's advocacy pastiche...

First, you said: "creation of national identity is as likely to be the vocation of artists, museum curators and tourists as right wing bigots."

So "artists, museum curators, and tourists" can't be bigots themselves? It's a staggering act of essentialism to automatically give everyone in those categories a passing mark, but I guess by now I shouldn't be surprised. Just so you know, plenty of "cultural creative" types were ga-ga over the Japanese empire and the glories of violent expansionism. But I guess you'd consider Japanese artists to be doubly unimpeachable: once for their status as artists, and again for their status as Japanese.

Second, "mistrust of central government" is a libertarian position, not an inherently right-wing one. Fascists only dislike central government insofar as they are not in control of it. Local autonomy is anathema to proponents of centrally planned economies (e.g. Fascist, Communist, and Development State models).

The Sid Vicious "template" is exactly that, a template. With impeccably ripped, unrusted safety pinned, dry-cleaned punk outfits (cleanest punks in the world, I tell you) the swastika (which is, as was mentioned, presented as such and wouldn't be mistaken for the 卍 found at nearby Chôsen temple etc.) is simply another design element, isn't it? That's what pissing Marxy off. Prince Harry should've known better as any Western young person at least has a basic idea of what Nazism is and what the Nazis did.

Taking a larger view, is there perhaps a lack of attaching meaning to symbols in Japanese education? What about kanji? The meaning is attached to the graphic simply through memorization, not through an understanding of the radicals used (which is how foreigners often remember what a kanji means).

My favourite: ask almost any Japanese why the symbol for hemorrhoids is: 痔 , a combination of "sickness" and "temple". Well, being Buddhist priests, there were no women around, so anal sex was the order of the day...you can fill in the rest.

My favourite: ask almost any Japanese why the symbol for hemorrhoids is: 痔 , a combination of "sickness" and "temple". Well, being Buddhist priests, there were no women around, so anal sex was the order of the day...you can fill in the rest.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't 痔 a Chinese character, and therefore, created in description of something that happened a long time ago in China, not Japan? Also, aren't there other explanations for the combination of radicals that don't involve anal sex? Like sitting in a meditative pose for too long, etc. And there are plenty of meaningless radicals, much like the "bug" part in 虹.

I don't think the problem is an overall, systematic misunderstanding of "symbols" as much as total ignorance to the meaning of that particular one. I doubt there is another country on earth where middle-class kids without extreme political idelogies or anti-social behaviors casually adopt Nazi props as part of a pre-packaged fashion look.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't 痔 a Chinese character, and therefore, created in description of something that happened a long time ago in China, not Japan?

Yeah, I'm sure this particular kanji was adopted "as is"...I was just trying to make a (funny?) point about how the system of study here doesn't involve thinking about the meaning as far as a ji's makeup.

Also, aren't there other explanations for the combination of radicals that don't involve anal sex? Like sitting in a meditative pose for too long, etc. And there are plenty of meaningless radicals, much like the "bug" part in 虹.

Well, not with the importance of cushions in meditation (but maybe they weren't used back then!) And you're right, a lot of kanji don't "make sense" (I'd guess about 30% or more), and those are sometimes the hardest to remember for foreign learners (me, anyway).

I don't think the problem is an overall, systematic misunderstanding of "symbols" as much as total ignorance to the meaning of that particular one.

I don't believe it's just that one, but ignorance of that one is going to stand out more than any other (as it should). Was the symbol for anarchy ever in fashion here?

I doubt there is another country on earth where middle-class kids without extreme political idelogies or anti-social behaviors casually adopt Nazi props as part of a pre-packaged fashion look.

True. What's the remedy?

I couldn't articulate what I meant, but it just came to me as

"Could ignorance of a symbol with that powerful of a negative connotation in world history be caused by anything else but a systemic lack of something or other?"

I'm out of my territory now...

jasong: as marxy pointed out your guess is a bit off base. FYI there is no strong concept of a "vow of celebacy" in the buddhist clergy overall.

FYI there is no strong concept of a "vow of celebacy" in the buddhist clergy overall.

I didn't say there was one. But such priests lived, ate, and slept together, often in remote locations without women being around.

Anyway, it was Kitano Takeshi that mentioned the origin of that kanji, and he likes to make people laugh or get a rise out of them.

I can't believe I just looked up the origin of the kanji for hemorrhoids, but there seem to be arguments for both interpretations:

http://oshiete.eibi.co.jp/kotaeru.php3?q=579372

http://www.wombat.zaq.ne.jp/imh/pharm/sazikagen/panf60.htm

Momus: 4b in your resoning above is terribly soft skulled and does great disrespect to those who died and even more to those who survived.

So you, like Marxy and like the white supremacists I cited, believe that the swastika should stay "forever Nazi" as a mark of "respect" for the victims of Nazi crimes? I have a much more radical solution: the swastika must be made to mean nothing. It must be demythologised. That doesn't mean forgetting the victims of Nazism, but it does mean aggressively re-purposing the symbols it, itself, aggressively repurposed from elsewhere.

nick sez: I have a much more radical solution: the swastika must be made to mean nothing. It must be demythologised.

r. sez: this position is so un-radical it isn't funny. this can never be made to mean nothing, but in the meantime...i guess we can also expect to see you start using the words "nigga" and the phrase "that's sooo gay!" a lot, right? but this is where actually DAVID/MARXY fails to understand some of the twisted beauty of VICE magazine. i think that one aspect of what they are trying to do is just this...demythologiZe these symbols. the question is, isn't there a better way to do it?

i still can't understand your point marxy- if they wear it as a fashion why to force them to 'understand' it??? who do they hurt??? you?
i never heard any nazi victim complaining about japanese youth fashions

i just think you are somehow too sensitive about some images /like this bushen bar/ and it may look like some weird /sentimental?/ kind of censorship

momus sez: the swastika must be made to mean nothing.

Are you really that foolish? Evidently you do need it spelled out. This isnt a case where a repressed set of people take a perjorative word and reposition it as their own "identity" word. Your suggestion just pisses all over the memory of Holocaust victims, conquered nations and those who died fighting against the Third Reich. Your suggestion DOES equate to forgetting the victims. How can you claim that it is simultaniously possible to "agressively" bear the symbol of agression while respecting the suffering which it has come to symbolize?

You live in Berlin right? Try that out for yourself. Prove to us that you stand behind your words by "agressively repurporting" that symbol in your own neighborhood.

As for your sad-assed attempt to put words into my mouth, give up already.

porandojin: just for the record I have seen one case where someone offended over a swastika wearing punk to the point where he had to be held back by his more police concious companions. Of course I guess its not that often that Israili paratroopers happen to be visiting Harajuku...

Chris said: "This isnt a case where a repressed set of people take a perjorative word and reposition it as their own "identity" word."

Yes, one crucial difference is that the swastika was the symbol the aggressors used to identify themselves, not a symbol they assigned to their victims (though such symbols do also exist, of course, and are no doubt problematic in their own right).

Does Momus really imagine that Japanese punks are thinking "I'm aggressively repurposing this symbol so that we can come to terms with the horrors of the 20th century through popular catharsis?" More likely they're thinking "This is supposed to be cool and edgy, maybe it will get me laid."

Who gets to make the decision about when the time is right for historical baggage to be shed? What precedent is there for the rehabiliation of symbols of aggression? This isn't just a rhetorical question, take the Japanese case for example:

The Hinomaru (complete w/red rays) was apparently considered wholesome enough by some to be returned to use when the SDF was commisioned in 1954, less than a decade after the war's end. But even the more symbolically benign ray-less Hinomaru is still rejected by many older left/liberal Japanese, and it doesn't have a lot of fans in Asia either.

And (just to beat Momus to the punch) why are the Stars and Stripes so popular in Japan after Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the firebombing of Tokyo? Yes, this is a big can of worms...

Chris also said: "just for the record I have seen one case where someone offended over a swastika wearing punk to the point where he had to be held back by his more police concious companions."

And after that, I'm guessing something like this transpired...

J-Punk A: What was that all about?

J-Punk B: Who knows, foreigners are scary/crazy!

I assume in the above that guy you mentioned was a foreigner (I think that's a safe assumption to make), and while I completely understand the offended guy's feelings, I do hope he at least made clear why he was offended. The kid could have had a very valuable epiphany...

Although it wouldn't be my response now, whenever I used to encounter anyone (including Japanese) wearing a swastika I used to tell them to take the fucking thing off or threaten to kick their head in. These days I just verbally harangue them and it takes a fair amount of effort to restrain myself to that. It's one of the very few things more or less guaranteed to make me entirely lose my temper and see red. I don't doubt that this behaviour is not exactly productive!

It's not a subject I feel sufficiently indifferent about. I can see that there may just be some mitigating circumstances in Japan but I can't think of anything at the moment.

As for rebranding the swastika, I can think of better things for people to do with their time. For me, it's not a matter of being content with Nazi ownership of the symbol, rather it's that most attempts to do anything else with it come across as horribly arrogant. Such projects would all too likely be about career advancement on the part of the artist and not an actual exorcism of the symbol's current power. Sometimes things are just too stained to bother with cleaning. Maybe I should try yawning very loudly instead of shouting...

Nazi imagery has also been appropriated to an extent by the National Bolshevik Party in Russia. They're an organisation I can't quite make my mind up about as there is more than an air of the prankster about them. I'd ignore them except they are engaged actively in resisting Putin rather than just selling newspapers about it. I wrote to them once about their use of the word "cosmopolitan" and they claimed they didn't quite see why I would take this to mean "Jewish" when used in a Russian context and said they used the term to describe capitalist speculators of any origin. Anyway, in the long term they're planning to retake lost eastern territories so you'd better keep an eye open for them:

http://www.nbp-info.org/

I also find it hard not to like a party, however uncertain I am about some of their politics, who have a page called "Our Combat Girlfriends". Perhaps a little Vice-like in its way...

http://nbp-info.ru/new/photo/girls/

guest: The foreigners in question really were Israili paratroopers who were staying with someone in the same building I lived in at the time. They didnt speak enough Japanese to explain and there wasnt really alot of time for discourse anyways. Its probably very fortunate that two of the three guys realized that if their buddy were to break the punk's skull open it might cause more than a minor inconvenience for them.

I really doubt the kid understood his offence and pretty much doubt even a beating would have helped him. I've found the best one can get out of the locals in these cases is a great show of appology without any meaning or understanding.

sarmoung: amen brother.

A lot of the Yankii right-wing symbols are just for play. Like calling your high-school bicycle gang, La Cosa Nostra. If they are really preaching Nationalist dogma, that's a different issue.

Those girls are as serious as they can be, though rather pathetically, and they have nothing to do with the Yankiis whatsoever. I'm talking about a band that has gained some kind of INTERNATIONAL FAME in the punk community.
It seems to me that Japanese youth today are prone to falling prey to right-wing propaganda like WWII historical revisionism if they want to be political.
Since I'm from Taiwan, former colony of the Japanese Empire, I think I'm entitled to be sensitive about such things.

BTW, for all of you Japanoise fans out there, check THIS out. I don't think it's intended to be ironic. That 日本鬼子 must be cracked in the head or something....

I doubt there is another country on earth where middle-class kids without extreme political idelogies or anti-social behaviors casually adopt Nazi props as part of a pre-packaged fashion look.

Actually, this is hardly unique to Japan at all.
In Taiwan, big Nazi flags can be found on blatant display in some youth fashion shops. I reckon it's more or less the same in the whole East Asia.
Becasue Nazi atrocities never took place here, there's no taboo about the swastika. That said, however, everytime I see fashion-conscious kids wearing Nazi symbols just for the sake of "cool", I can't help shaking my head.

Kill Momus

am really surprised by your radical opinions on smth that in my country would be considered maybe bad taste or smth- i mean asians wearing svastika for fashion ... and my country was really damaged by germans and this horror still occupies collective memory ... it's history, and it's not that simple as you think- what if the guy asked the israeli /?/ what sionists did during the war to help jewish worriors? and answer is quite difficult and ugly, being jewish doesn't mean one can beat someone because of anything one finds inapprioprate ... and what did your american or british goverments to stop trains coming to kl auschwitz? maybe you have not really right to judge such things?

it's just a sign, ornament in a culture where it means probably close to nothing ... i can understand not liking it but forcing unknown people to take it off is ... weird at least ...

and this israeli should also remember that no other nation had Chiune Sugihara before behaving so emotional

Chris said: "The foreigners in question really were Israili paratroopers who were staying with someone in the same building I lived in at the time."

Oh man, I thought you were just saying that to make a point! Sounds like an "international incident" narrowly averted...

Chris also said: "I've found the best one can get out of the locals in these cases is a great show of appology without any meaning or understanding."

I remember one time when I objected to being subjected to an anti-Chinese diatribe ("They are all theives," etc) by a Japanese co-worker. He then made the most backhanded non-apology I've ever heard, saying something like "I'm sorry, we Japanese shouldn't say these kinds of things around foreigners because we have different cultures."

My own sensitivities aside, I thought it was incredibly presumptuous of him to assume that all Japanese people share his prejudiced opinion of the Chinese.

In fact, I didn't even really want him to apologize to me. I don't think people have to change their minds, I just want them to know that some people do object to that kind of nonsense. It's a matter of silence equalling consent, and it allows bullies to get away with a lot, especially in a place like Japan. Whenever I hear someone cranking up the old "ware ware Nihonjin," alarm bells go off. Who are they presuming to speak for?

I have just three brief points to add to this debate.

1. In my essay Superlegitimacy I say: "On a superficial level, Japanese cities look like western cities, their parks like our parks, their trains like our trains, and so on. Nevertheless, this 'likeness' is an illusion. 'A train' is a western invention adopted by the Japanese in the 19th century. But when we look at, board, and ride a train in Japan it would be foolish to see it as anything like a western train. It's a set of Japanese etiquettes and assumptions travelling through space. It only looks like a train." Similarly, a swastika worn by a Harajuku fashion-punk is not the same as a swastika worn by someone else. Please take context into account and don't beat anybody up because of absolutist assumptions Hitler himself would approve of ("Of course the swastika will always remind people of me!")

2. I've just spent the day with an Israeli-born (and Jewish) Australian fashion designer, a really interesting guy called Struli. He wears forecurls (both ironically and sincerely, he told me) at the moment, but said he wants his next haircut to be a "Nazi haircut from an old German barber". Why? "Because it goes so well with those severe Italian suits."

3. Many Japanese girls wear crosses around their necks. Less than 1% of Japanese are Christians. I am rather anti-Christian, but if I see a cross around a Japanese girl's neck I no longer even think of it as a Christian symbol. They have successfully decontextualised the cross, and I'm rather pleased about it.

porandojin: good points. the whole issue is complicated and no one's hands are clean.

guest: I'm just stating what I saw. I didnt know those guys and have no connection to them.

momus:
1 cop out. messy issue but you are dodging again. Even in the local context, it is what it is.
2 cop out again. Unrelated example brought up as a dodge, almost on the same level as "some of my best friends are jewish".
3 AFAIK the cross is not currently percieved as a symbol of oppression. At times in places it has been. once again cop out topped with disengenious use of $5 words.

dzima: thats pretty damn harsh. I'd even go as far as to say thats fucked up.

momus: very gentlemanly of you to not rise to that one. I will however restate that if you believe what you said before, try it for yourself in Berlin. If not then I assume you are still just playing with words and little more than a tease.

I never really expected this thread to go crazy like this, but it's a topic everyone has an opinion on. I don't get especially offended by the Harajuku kids wearing swastikas, but as my girlfriend says, it's dasai.

I get Momus' post-Modern/Super-Contrarianist point, although I am naturally inclined to think that regardless o where you live, no one with any decency and wisdom wears a swastika.

A look at my bracelet: W.W.A.M.O.P.I.D (What Would a Market of Perfect Information Do), makes me think that Japanese kids probably would not continue to wear swastikas if they "knew better." I don't think it's a conscious protest at all.

For Christmas, I am going to get Momus that T-shirt with the picture of the mushroom cloud that says "Made in America, Tested in Japan" because he knows that we should make the American atomic bombing of Japan mean "nothing." Right?

I hope this doesn't sound like an obscure point, because I think it's crucial: many of the disputes here arise because I'm fighting people who, like Chris B, say of something symbolic "it is what it is". And I can never, ever say that again because I've been altered by Saussure's "Cours Generale de Linguistique", and specifically by his point that the relationship between the signfier (symbol or word) and signified (thing designated) is arbitrary. That point is so important.

JI　痔

the 寺 part of 痔 is basically used phonetically hinting that the kanji reads じ here's a few more 侍寺峙恃時畤持蒔壽.

i don't think any person actually using the kanji would want or need to go into the bizzare kind of semiology like the one above. .

Also: "it is what it is" is an "individualist" reading of meaning. In this view a meaning has a pre-existing, never-changing indentity, a kind of John Wayne identity, a rugged individual which must stand its ground. The "collectivist" reading of meaning is that it depends on what the context is, and what others are saying. There's a kind of fascinating farce enacted daily on Neomarxisme, which is American individualists trying to make sense of Japanese collectivists. Perhaps it's some sort of homesickness.

There's a kind of fascinating farce enacted daily on Neomarxisme, which is American individualists trying to make sense of Japanese collectivists.

Momus' next album will be titled Nevermind the Irony that Calling the Japanese a Collectivist Society is an Essentially Essentialist Reading, and the CD jacket will have him wearing the "Made in America, Tested in Japan" Atomic Bomb shirt I got him for Christmas.

So when you call the Japanese "orthopractic" you're doing something much, much less "essentialist", are you?

Also, I would have thought that people who qualify as "essentialist" are people who think that language corresponds to things in the real world in the ratio of 1:1. People who, like our very own Chris B, say "It is what it is".

Marxy, the starting point of this arguement is sort of lame. I mean it's obvious to anyone, whichever side of the arguement thay may on be that a (loosely quoting neomarxisme- ) japanese punk-like character controlled by layers upon layers of power from above, uninformed unable to make an individual choice even about the clothes he wants to wear and what he actualy wants to communicate through them, is hardly a threat to anyone, hardly a reason for anyone to get heated up about. Why don't you try actually raise a concerne that this lack of historical and political understanding, easy impressionability of the japanese and so forth youth put in the wrong hands could cause another Pearl Harbour, another Detroit car industry crash etc. The arguement would be more edgy.

Momus: Similarly, a swastika worn by a Harajuku fashion-punk is not the same as a swastika worn by someone else

Do you mean to the wearer or to the offended person who sees it? Is it more offensive when someone wears it because they know what it symbolizes or when they don't?

Saw a teenaged girl on the subway tonight with a tank top emblazoned with a big pink heart, a photo of Al Pacino and the words "I Love Tony Montana". I was going to ask her if she'd ever seen DePalma's "Scarface". If I played the chainsaw scene and forced her to watch it repeatedly, would she still wear the top I wonder...

Alin: I didn't post the link for the discussion of the reading of 痔 (minutiae, I agree) but for the mention of a teacher's teaching of the kanji's origin in 男色 and 稚児趣味 (ugh).

Collectivism vs. Individualism has nothing to do with this issue at all.

I think a better Momus-type argument would be, we generally enjoy that the Japanese attach new, unexpected signfied meanings to signifiers, that all the cultural code of the West gets mixed up and put into new innovative arrangements. And thanks to globalization, these new morphed cultural items get thrown back into Western vocabulary. So, if we have to deal with the most hated of all symbols being "misunderstood" and made meaningless, it's just a negative externality of the whole game that we otherwise enjoy. So be it.

I could buy that argument, but I'll still frown upon the individual kids for 1) idolizing the utterly worthless Sid Vicious and 2) lacking even the most peripheral knowledge about the outside world. And if I run into American kids wearing "朝鮮人狩り" T-shirts, I'll be equally disappointed.

I didn't post the link for the discussion of the reading of 痔

the point of my comment was to draw a paralel between the fact that the conversation about ji went on for 100 lines or so going further and further into the minds of the observers and away from the stuff actually discussed, and the whole swastika/nazi issue which has nothing to do with the punk marxy saw on the street, or the japanese youth of today or japan in general , little to do even with japan during ww2 i'd dare say.

Hey, I was just trying to keep my hemorrhoid thread alive! Okay, enough already.

Most English-language blogs or bbses about Japan are worse than a case of piles -- this is the first one where I can actually learn something. The tangents in the threads are often really interesting (despite some silly name calling now and then).

Well, you know we all sing "Springtime for Hitler and Germany" when we meet up and do a big swastika-shaped Busby Berkeley dance number down Omote Sando, don't you?

one where I can actually learn something

basically agree, yet alas almost any time it's near the point of reaching some sort of subtlety or complexity the flow either gets cut short or starts looping onto itself.

idolizing the utterly worthless Sid Vicious

let's start it all over replacing Hitler with Sid Vicious. It would hold..

American kids wearing "朝鮮人狩り" T-shirts, I'll be equally disappointed.

you must be equally dissapointed about american kids wearing the 大和魂 tshirts. is there a blog entry on that?

大和魂

For hell's sake, i do have to elaborate on this. in a historical context 大和魂 is the equivalent of the swastika. a few japanese friends were quite shocked when they first saw them on the streets (in America) when they first popped out around 1999. now they've been sort of filtered down and occasionally you see them worn by japanese kids in japan, still a fraction of the number you seen on americans or westerners in general. Lets not bring up the japanese imperial symbols worn by california glam-ey metal bands in the 80s etc etc. will you stop talking about japan as some sort of evil freak.

equivalent of the swastika

read 'nazi swastika'.

Proposal for an office for Marxy.

idolizing the utterly worthless Sid Vicious

let's start it all over replacing Hitler with Sid Vicious. It would hold..

Two points
1. That kid doesn't actually idolize Sid the way you're inclined to think

2. The problem you seem to have with old Sidders is the same one you have with Japan. He didn't have the political awarness and articulatedness of a Jello Biafra or Henry Rollins. You might or might not like those guys but i doubt you'd call them 'utterly worthless'.
Hasn't it ever occured to you that all the political and so forth opinionatedness, rethoricism and the freakily good ability to articulate it, best so when it concerns other people's business (partly a product of the american education system i suspect) is more of a curse than something to be evangelical about.

I'd just like to clarify I didn't make that picture of Momus as Lee Oswald. I found it on an ILX thread and posted it here to illustrate the constant 'Momus bashing' that goes on in this blog.

(Momus has probably seen this picture before anyway)

Thank you Alin for your Marxy outrage. When Momus gets soft, we now know that we can always turn to you.

大和魂 = Swastika

While there are some political connotations to 大和魂, it's a word that existed a lot longer than just the period of Military-Imperialism, and you absolutely do hear it today in Japan. I think it has a meaning of Japaneseness-being-bound-within-race etc. and some right-wing assocations, but it's something you casually still see a lot.

There are a whole set of other Imperial words and concepts that you can't use or talk about (and that generally, kids in Japan have never even heard of), like 国體 , and maybe even the 教育勅語, but I'm not sure that these are direct parallels to the swastika.

Marxy outrage

it was a night attack as well :-) while you were sleeping

geez, what on earth are you trying to hold on to? i mean you know your stuff and insights are cool (just scanned your onsen/country side spiel you just posted is cool, i'm looking forward to read it properly (onjce my coffee is done) , just why do you have to get into that superiority position and lose the plot.

大和魂, it's a word that existed ... and you absolutely do hear it today in Japan there's layers and layers of nuances that get lost as the discussion is carried in american english following the respective logical progression.
No dude, in a particular context and nuance it can be a pretty powerful and nasty word.

cheers

ヅィマ : OK, it werent yours. Please accept my appology if you felt really stepped on. Fer me it aint so much bashing Momus in particular as I have a low tolerance for fools in general. I think momus can do so much better so when he acts the fool I say it.

marxy: when you typed 大和魂 = Swastika I went into geek mode where one "=" means the left side variable takes on the value of the right side symbol (at least in Perl it does). Had you typed "==" I would have read equality rather than assignment. I need more time in the sunshine, less time at the screen.

alin: Sid was indeed a fool. I have to wonder if the members of The Clash were aware of the meanings behind their kamikaze symbolized t-shirts back in the day. IIRC some of the Japanese versions of their early records or singles used similar imagery as well.

Swastikas on T-shirts call a certain clothing brand to mind. For the life of me, I don't understand where the fun is in misspelling 'fuck' on six thousand different t-shirts.

I suppose it would be fun to have a t-shirt that read 'Can't be fcuked to do something original'. Or maybe Chinese New Union T-shirts?

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v13/v13n4p29_Weber.html

Swastikas on T-shirts is nothing. I was once invited to dinner and fed white asparagus on a plates with a border of little red swastikas in Germany. By a (claimed to be) left-wing middle aged German woman who probably had a crush on me. I was puzzled more than offended. But I have to admit that this experience helped me to get past some of my knee-jerk negative associations with a sign that pre-dates Nazism. The plates, incidently, were about a hundred years old, she explained and also predated the Nazis.

Momus wrote:

If you want to fight Nazism as it appears in today's Tokyo, don't pick on skateboarders. Write something about the freeway being built right through the northern part of Shimokitazawa. Get angry about it, start a campaign, radicalize people, pinpoint a conspiracy, defeat (the ghost of) Hitler!

Alex Kerr would be thrilled.

If you go to the lobby of the old section of the New Grand Hotel in Yokohama (near Yamashita-kouen), you can see items from Hitler's stay (announcement cards, menus, etc.) at what was then, in the 30s, the only fully Westernized hotel of any grandeur in Japan.

Ummm... after having run in our annual city relay race with my officemates, I was told that I had yamatodamashi... it was a couple years ago already, but gosh, I feel a little offended that I was accused of being a japanese imperialist.

(granted, it's a weird usage, but this was my first encounter with the word, and I remember it)

Nate, my first encounter with Yamato damashii was being told that I had it as well. It was definitely intended as a compliment, not that I really wanted it. Can't remember what I said or did to merit it, though. I guess there's a whole 5th column out there of foreigners with Yamato damashii...

I wonder if that Bulgarian sumo wrestler has enough Yamato damashii for the peanut gallery? I remember previous foreign wrestlers being criticized. I rather like the Bulgarian guy, if only because, as one of the trimmest wrestlers, he proves that all that fat doesn't really provide a competitive advantage in wrestling. Why set yourself up for a coronary if you don't have to? I guess that's Western pragmatism at work!

Chris, it's a shame about the Clash, they should have known better. It wasn't the only time their taste failed them in their political hero worship: the Red Army Faction wasn't really cool at all, were they? They should've stuck to the Spanish Civil War stuff.

I'm not fully convinced that yamato-damashii is a 100% taboo, Imperialist word, although it has a lot of those connotations.

are we done with this one now?

yamato-damashii is a 100% taboo

neither is the swastika, i can't believe this is still going.
so while you're doing safe cutsey new entries you keep secretly coming back to this one,

have you seen the ヨソ様　Tshirts ? I reckon they're part of a pretty vicious conspiracy.

'yamato-damashii' is up for fair use in normal everyday japanese conversation and no-body will bat an eye if you use it. don't believe what they are telling you about it having these connotations in modern spoken japanese.

nick sez: They have successfully decontextualised the cross, and I'm rather pleased about it.

and r. sez: it takes two to tango! they have only seccessfully decontextualised the cross if YOU are the one looking at it hanging around their necks. they don't have a clue (as david sez). but what if we were to show this to an christian? would they tell us that the real pity is that this girl isn't able to understand that the cross represents "agape" one of the higher forms of love?

have you seen the ヨソ様　Tshirts ?

Well, last time I checked, Yoso-sama was not responsible for the murder of six million people, so I can let that mistake slide.

'yamato-damashii' is up for fair use in normal everyday japanese conversation and no-body will bat an eye if you use it. don't believe what they are telling you about it having these connotations in modern spoken japanese.

Yeah, I'm with Robert here. Anything too ethnocentric can always be construed as being part of the war-time Nationalism, but yamato-damashii is hardly an unequivocal symbol of that era. Making a shirt with the words 國體 or 大日本帝国 would probably be close to what you are trying to say 大和魂 is.