August 23, 2005

Academics are the New Rock'n'Roll

Yesterday, a generous reader of this blog currently enrolled at my former university (a kohai, if you will) put me on the "guest list" for an academic conference being held at Roppongi Hills. I went to go "check in" and was told that there is no such thing as a guest list and they don't let non-paying nobodies sit-in on sessions. So, I lingered outside for five minutes and ran into my former professor, whose speech I had come to see. He promptly snuck me inside, using the rock-star-esque privilege of overriding venue policy. At one point, I had to feign scrounging in my bag for a solid minute to avoid being seen by the original front-desk scrub who booted me from the club, er, I mean, conference. All of this to just learn about civil society in Asia...!

Posted by marxy at August 23, 2005 12:48 PM
Comments

If you run into someone named Mariko with a British accent, about my age, at this conference, say hi for me...

Posted by: Sameer at August 23, 2005 1:39 PM

I read your interview by Lanha. I was struck when you say "Japan was hot but only a few people were going there or knew about it." Well, I suspect that the relevant implied population is fairly narrow here: educated urban hipsters in US/Canada/UK. I'm curious and you may know better than me: Would there be other places in the world where the Japan pop stuff is both popular and well understood? My impression is that Bollywood rules throughout south asia, west asia, and africa. I think the French are well aware of the Japan stuff. I suspect most of South America is into it. How about the Russians?

Posted by: Sameer at August 23, 2005 2:43 PM

That's a good criticism/point. I think what I am referring to is essentially cultural snobs being interested in Japan, and cultural snobbery is directly related to a country's economic level. So, I'm sure South Koreans loved the Japanese culture they were illegally obtaining, but I'm not sure there was much "hipster" appreciation of "Japan cool." I'm not sure anybody in the West was rocking out to Amuro Namie in the 90s, although I could be wrong.

So, short answer: if we just mean, countries that like Japanese culture vaguely... sure, there are a lot of places that knew about Japan. I guess I was talking more about specific parts of "underground" culture like Uraharajuku-kei, Shibuya-kei, etc.

Posted by: marxy at August 23, 2005 2:49 PM

Har! Roppongi Hills always is a rough area of town ^_^

We got the boot before even getting in the door at some posh 51st floor executive lounge :(

Posted by: MrGado at August 24, 2005 12:50 AM