a post-blog
 | Digiki's wild remix project of his own semi-remix album Kitchen - entitled Animals Don't Care - is available for a special one-week download. Track five "Daidokoro" was remixed, rehashed, and hammed up by me, Marxy. (I would be kicked out of remix school.) |
Take a listen to the whole thing while you can.
 | The New York Times had a story last Sunday on the new A Bathing Ape store that recently opened in SoHo. Unfortunately, the piece was mainly just descriptions and cheerleading, not any kind of deeper appraisal of the Ape phenomemon or accurate reporting on the brand's current decline in Japan. Like every article I seem to read about Japan these days, this one perfectly describes Tokyo in 1998, not 2004. For example: |
| But judging from the customers that Bathing Ape continues to attract in Japan, none of this growth or attention not even collaborations with Pepsi and MAC cosmetics has put a dent in the brand's street credibility. |
Do you mean customers like housewives and rural yokels? Bape's marketing in the late 90s miraculously preserved the brand's "underground" image, even while selling millions of t-shirts. But around 2000 and the Pepsi campaign, Nigo himself decided to forget all the Mo Wax and limited-edition nonsense and go bling-bling, and as a consequence, the brand lost its hipster cachet in Tokyo (and I would argue, elsewhere as well). For true Japanese fashionistas, the brand was "dead" by 1997 or so, but I can't even find young kids really wearing it in Harajuku anymore. Seems as though people from places like Fukui-ken just pick it up and wear it in their small towns.
I have always been disappointed with Bape in the last couple of years, because the company could have become a Stussy-type, New Traditional brand, but Nigo always made the clothes a "big deal" with all the rockstar promotion and rarity factor. Once Bape - a brand primarily sold on the idea of exclusivity - could be bought on Ebay or at actual stores outside of Japan, that kind of destroyed a huge part of why the brand was attractive in the first place.
The SoHo store, however, is an extremely smart move, since he now has access to American hip hop stars and can re-import this street cred back to Japan. Will Japanese hip hop kids buy Ape as a hip hop brand? I find it highly possible.
I am on Japan-hiatus until early January. In the meanwhile, please enjoy some "Year in Review"-type pieces and a new segment called "Deconstructing America."
Mr. Duckworth beat me to it: the kanji character picked to symbolize Japan in 2004 was "災" - disaster. See: there are 20,900 Japanese pessimists out there.
This article in Yahoo News suggests that Japanese girls living in Paris are becoming suicidal in a fit of depression related to "having to reconcile their romanticism about Paris with reality."
I don't know if this article really shows me convincing causative evidence for a link between disillusionment with an idealized culture and clinical depression, but I understand the idea: consumer culture turns nations into utopian wonderlands - a process which then causes disappoinment in the consumer when it is determined that the idealized wonderland is indeed just a real country with real problems. (Obviously, I think a lot of foreign disillusionment with Japan stems from this problem in expectations.)
I do find a problem with this sentence:
| [Dr Ota] and other experts underlined Japan's ideal of collectivism, or putting the group first, as a barrier for some of the immigrants who suddenly find themselves in a Western society based more on individualism. |
There is some Nihonjinron nonsense in action! It's not the language barrier or disillusionment with an idealization of culture or separation from home or lack of maturity and street-smarts - of course, it's that the Japanese are "group-oriented" and can't hack it in an Individualist culture. If they are so Groupist, why did they abandon Japan in the first place?
The Japanese government likes to boast that Japan enjoys the lowest income inequality rate in First World, and although the equality of income distribution peaked in the early 70s, this is probably still true today. The reason for this income leveling, however, has little to do with Japanese culture and more with the huge loss of wealth for the capitalist class in the War and Occupation. As Mouer and Sugimoto write in their 1982 book Images of Japanese Society:
| Much of the difference between the prewar and postwar distributions lies in the dislocation caused by the war and in the occupation policies themselves. The authors know of no scholars who would seek to explain variation in the level on inequality over the past three decades by reference to changes in the cultural values or attitudes of the Japanese (118). |
The boss-to-lowest-paid-employee ratio in Japan is extremely low compared to the United States (something like 6:1 compared to America's 100:1), but this has nothing to do with Japanese Confucian paternalism: The working classes won that reward from a highly reluctant top management after a successful campaign launched by the Left-leaning unions in the postwar. Upon this structure, economic growth in the 60s was highly egalitarian, but the Bubble brought a period of reckless wealth-creation for only those who already owned substantial capital or property.
For better or worse, the image of a classless Japan has remained throughout the post-Industrial period. In the past, I have found this to be one of Japanese culture's greatest advantages. Once Japan made it through the very nouveau riche (narikin in Japanese) cultural explosion of the 80s, the 90s was all about subcultural fashion and music and the display of "taste" as the ultimate sign of status. Bourdieu would probably find this equally class-biased, but when a populace feels no need to prove its own self-worth through expensive and established branded European products, it has room to innovate and create another set of values. I would much rather see someone wearing Undercover than Fendi, although I cannot philosophically justify the difference in wanting a culture based on exclusive symbols more than one based on conspiciously expensive products.
Income equality is on the rise in Japan, especially with the IT boom creating new pockets of wealth for e-business spheres and a widening digital divide among the Japanese people. Income and media literacy in Japan are almost perfectly correlated, which will undermine the great social advantage of full literacy that Japan enjoyed in the 20th century (see Chapter 9 of Kenji Hashimoto's Class Structure in Contemporary Japan). And like in the US and Western Europe, globalization is shipping a lot of jobs from the manufacturing sector out to China. Higher market deregulation in the future will lead to more growth, but possibly more inequality as safety nets are withdrawn.
Culturally, I feel like the Aughts have brought with them two unfortunate, but understandable developments in Japan: the acknowledgment of wealth discrepancy and a re-emergence of narikin culture. Although the myth of "everyone being middle class" still drives more and more people every year into consumer debt and sarakin-related troubles, the difference between poor and rich is becoming much more apparent in everyday Japanese life. Especially with the friitaa and those joining the workforce, some people clearly have money to spend and the others are eating at Yoshinoya everyday. I don't want to exaggerate this phenomenon, but I do think the rise in income equality has crossed a threshold and the peak of the iceberg is dipping above the water.
Very noticeable, however, is the rise of branded products in women's fashion over the last decade. Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, Fendi, Christian Dior, and Hermes are all enjoying amazing growth at the expensive of smaller and more experimental brands. There does seem to be a return to status-consciousness in women's wear, and for some reason, these companies enjoy such a permanently strong brand power that wide diffusion into lower middle-class society does not lead to a reduction in image. The problem with brands based on "good taste" is that taste changes, and no one can afford to dump $2,000 on a bag and not have it last forever. Women want these products under the assumption that they are eternally meaningful - teiban not hayari. Japan 2004 is in the weird position of being rich enough to buy these luxury products, but not rich enough to experiment with less stable brands, like consumers did in the 90s. The result is a society resembling the tacky nouveau riche-ness of the Bubble - all about expressing wealth over displaying taste. Roppongi Hills certainly opened at the right time.
I don't want to blame Japan for its growing income inequality, since the same trends are happening all over the world, but I am a bit unhappy with the new wealth-consciousness' impact on pop culture and fashion. Ura-Harajuku is crumbling, and Omotesando-doori is shinier than ever. If the marketing system is supposed to work to provide the best products and culture to consumers, count me as part of the ever-growing "unsatisfied" group. I'd rather see a bunch of girls in X-Girl legwarmers than "J'adore Dior" shirts.
Here are some close-ups from Kiiiiiii's large art piece currently being shown at the Hiromi Yoshii gallery:
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I was out with the academic community last night at a Chinese restaurant, and after we toasted the occasion and drank our "beer," everyone was like... wait, this isn't beer! Happoushu in its draft form is much better than from a can, but most people at the table immdiately knew it was happoushu even though we thought we were drinking beer. And throughout the night, the restaurant still called it beer, but people at the table would say, pass the happoushu.
Hair seems to attract a lot of antipathy stemming from the universal and intense hate of Hippies starting in the mid-to-late 70s (and rightly so, you foul dreamers!), but goddamn cazart if it's not the greatest rock musical - nay, musical - ever. It is no mere long-haired, groovy celebration of the 60s counterculture - it is both festival AND real-time criticism! Joan Didion getting a monologue in the middle of Sgt. Peppers. How can people be so cruel? How can they care about the bleeding hearts but not those who need a friend? Where do I go? Should my 5 year-old really be taking LSD? (Yes, says this page of Tolkien, you Beautiful Person!)
There's the black song, the gay song, the female song, the homeless song, the Vietnam song, the Patriotism song, the dirty words song, the Krishna song, Black boys, White boys, Frank Mills, the Bed... an old fashion melody. Fuck all the White people of 1948. We see Green-Orange, Purple-Pink! Walking in space, oh my god your Skin is soft, I love your face. How dare they try to end this beauty! (Kids, collect call from the future... Yes? They ended it. Bummer, man.) Tell me about it. In the process of sobering up and watching your dreams all crash like that Nazi blimp, you also totally destroyed the effacy and hope of Liberalism for two or three generations.
Hair and Head - the long hours, days, weeks, years, decades of unfair dismissal end now! Long live 1968. If we're going to slouch (which we are), let's at least do it towards Bethlehem and not fucking Orlando. BANG!
A weird byproduct of the Bubble Economy was the entrance of organized crime into the Japanese art market. They apparently have not relinquished much control over the last twenty years.
Recently an artist team I know was invited to do a show at a well-known gallery. When they unveiled their work and attached the "conceptual" price of 7,770,000 yen, the owner of the gallery had a fit. And without even once viewing the art itself, directly confronted them about their financial transgressions. If anyone had doubted the dubiousness of this famous gallery owner, everything was cleared up when he roared at the artists: "jingi wo misero" (「仁義を見せろ！」) - an expression denoting a very feudal idea of "humanity and justice" used solely by members of the yakuza. The artists panicked and not wanting to actually sell their work at a gallery run by organized crime, demanded to quit the exhibition. Their manager meanwhile - fearing for their livelihood and future career - forced the artists to attach a more manageable price and play along so they could all go home in one piece.
Yet another lurid tale from the Japanese art market.
Lots of Japan talk and Marxy bashing over at Momus' Click Opera. Prolific Neomarxisme poster Sparklingbeatnic sticks it to me as being a part of "rational, liberal post-industrial revolution European culture." (Apparently, the idea of free will is out of vogue.) Someone else compares the arguments on my blog to the awful Colonialist expat blather of the Japan Today bulletin boards. Oh, those Post-modern bullies!
For a Pagan nation, Japan sure loves Christmas carols. Today is only December 8th and I can't walk into a store without hearing "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" or "Let it Snow."
I am not breaking new ground with this idea, but clearly Christmas is the most holy day of Consumer Culture. And if so, it makes perfect sense that the Japanese would be as interested in its celebration as the God-fearing West.
I just want to tell everybody that I am bogged down with a report for school, a magazine column, a small side-job, demos for twelve new songs, a remix for Shugo Tokumaru, and Christmas shopping - all of which have to be completed by the time I go back to the United States for the Holidays on the 18th. Last week, I read around 300 pages of books - just for this blog - and the duties of my real life have finally caught up with me. I won't be totally absent on the so-called blogosphere (are we doomed that all new words will be horribly geeky?), but I want to give you a heads up on the infomation slow-down planned for the next week.
From the Japan Media Review, this article and interview summarizes the Supreme Court case of freelance journalist Terasawa Yu's fight for the right to receive a seat at trials and court transcripts - a right denied to him since he does not belong to a kisha press club. The great irony is that when he lost his first legal battle against the press clubs, he was not entitled to receive the verdict summary of his own case because he was not in a press club.
1) Sum 41 - "Still Waiting" video
This is the one where they parody the Strokes' video for "Last Night." Things are so confused in the rock music world that the most mainstream, polished punk rock band takes it upon themselves to challenge the pomposity of a different genre of polished mainstream rock for the real crown of "authenticity." Seeing that Sum 41 is clearly the chart-topper of the two, this is where punk rock rebellious anarchy just becomes authoritarian bullying. I'm glad we never ended up electing Sid Vicious as president.
2) A commercial for 175R Live at the Budokan DVD
Meanwhile in Japan, punk-rock chart-toppers 175R played a sold out gig at the Budokan and have released the footage as a DVD. The clip used in the commercial showed 10,000 young Japanese girls all moving their hands over their head in time with the music (like they are required to). This punk rock/melocore boom has not exactly challenged the Jpop system as much as found itself a bigger home.
This article in the Christian Science Monitor - titled "What Japanese women want: a Western husband" - is a perfect example of why you have to take newspaper journalism with a grain of salt.
The author states that Japanese women are frustrated with the insensitivity and feudal expectations of Japanese men and are looking to Western men as the answer. Deductively, that sounds like a decent argument, but then scroll to the bottom to actually see the number of Japanese women who married Western men in 2004: around 2,000. In a country of 128 million people, this is nothing.
Essentially, white-collar working women (who are thus already outside of the mainstream ideal female role in Japan) have a hard time finding a Japanese partner. But since this small minority of women are the probably the most connected to the Western media, their story comes to represent "the plight of the modern Japanese woman." I very much doubt that working class women in Saga-ken are really pining away for Western men.
If you look at the stats again, you'll also see that way more Japanese women married Asian men (5,318 Koreans and 890 Chinese). Why does that not become a story? Maybe because the article was written by a Western man and assisted by a Japanese woman with a foreign surname.
 | Our heroine Shiina Ringo would like to see her new band Tokyo Jihen as something larger than a solo project, but we must fill in the bubble "C" - the correct answer is: Shiina Ringo:Tokyo Jihen::John Lennon:Plastic Ono Band. |
Kyouiku (Education) has some good songs towards the front and the band manages to extract vaguely experimental sounds from their very traditional instruments, but the album is just another showcase of standard Ringo operating procedures: the rock version of a previously-released quiet song ("Ringo no Uta"), extended flat melodies with the hook coming at the end of the phrase ("Sounan"), throw-away songs drenched in vocal distortion ("Crawl"), Showa-era melodies ("Ekimae"), carnival songs ("Bokoku Jousho"), and quiet piano-ballads descending into fierce rock explosion ("Yume no Ato"). And unlike the previous Shiina Ringo albums, I do not have the pleasure of getting lost in the multicolored ether of sounds, textures, and melodic fragments. With this "rock band" roadmap in hand, I know exactly when everything will erupt into chaos and where I'm supposed to clap.
I get a sense that facing the wide range of production possibilities available in a "producer album" like Karuiki Zaamen Kuri no Hana (KZK) opened up Ringo's songwriting skills, and subsequently, the wish to be merely "a good rock band" has forced our protagonist into a box - trapped to create melodies replicable and comprehensible within the live setting. I find "Gunjou Biyori" to be the album's most compelling moment, and she's not the one who wrote it. The reach for Rockist authenticity and shrugging of full responsibility just plays to her weaknesses. Shiina Ringo is a terribly creative melodic songwriter and overflowing volcano of ideas. Why put her into a jazzy trad rock prison?
Having said that, she still provides some of Jpop's most interesting melodies, and the arrangments are certainly interesting. The band members seem to throw out little licks and promptly retreat as not to step on the other instruments' toes. Shiina's voice sounds great, especially on "Gunjou Biyori." Kyouiku is not a bad album, but it's hardly the work to redeem Japanese popular music in a year of absolute blandness.
I am sure the guys at Toshiba-EMI all filled with insane glee the moment they heard the master - she's come back to planet Earth! They might as well have called this album "Re-education" in the sense of its retreat into normalcy. I can enjoy these letters penned in the rock gulag for the time being, but I hope she finds it in her interest to stage a jailbreak in the near future.
I just finished reading a short book called Hegemony of Homogeneity by esteemed anthropologist Harumi Befu, and I'd like to stop the usual Japan bickering to approach this idea of "Japan" from a different angle.
Befu's book looks at how Nihonjinron - the Japanese theory of self-uniqueness - became a civil religion in Japan and eventually came to dominate the domestic and international discourse on Japanese culture. He never explicitly judges the contents or statements of Nihonjinron - for example, the beliefs that Japanese societal structure was formed through monsoon weather/rice cultivation or that the language is linked to pure, homogenous blood - but instead analyzes the role of these beliefs within modern Japanese society. For a moment, I would like to take the same approach.
There are plenty of Western books that debunk the myths of Japanese uniqueness through scholarly analysis, but they are missing the point: you can't argue facts against religion. The Nihonjinron canon takes on an important structural role within the Japanese national-consciousness. If these beliefs are indeed a civil religion, all the facts in the world cannot remove the grand myth from its supporting role in society. Try arguing the science of evolution with a Fundamentalist Christian - it will get you nowhere.
I can understand the right of this Nihonjinron myth to exist within Japan as a source of culture nationalism, but the conflict starts when objective foreign parties also end up believing the myths. The Japanese government has worked to propogate the positive Nihonjinron theories of Japanese uniqueness to "explain" Japan to the world, which is an understandable PR move, but does not mean we should take the arguments at face value. Scholarship continously aims to uncover and explain reality, and therefore, much academic work in the field of Japanese Studies has been focused on repudiating the more mythic parts of Japanese cultural beliefs. Many Western scholars see Nihonjinron's implications of Japanese superiority as a new form of ethnocentricism - a natural critical position of anyone foreign who has no structural need for those particular myths themself.
I find it odd that Momus has essentially taken on Nihonjinron as his own civil religious belief, but this would at least explain why we have reached such an impasse in arguing. He stands behind the Nihonjinron writers' monolithic Japan as a more morally correct alternative to Western Rationalism and Christianity. The Japanese all believe in Groupism, and Groupism is better than Individualism. The Japanese all avoid conflict, and this is better than Protestant bickering. Momus sees this holistic "Japanese system" as a complete set of beliefs that naturally exist and rule Japan, and therefore, any arguing to the contrary would not be "debunking" as much as an affront to his personal spirtuality.
There are a few common approaches to challenging the grand Nihonjinron explanation of Japan. We could challenge the scientific validity of the claims. Or, we could prove that Japan has too much heterogeneity to be defined by monolithic theories. And if that fails, we can attempt to show that the system fails on a moral level against human rights.
Forget all that for a moment. For the sake of arguing, I would like to take the Nihonjinron theory at face value - as a factual body of work that explains Japanese uniqueness - and in the next installment, I will attempt to explain modern Japanese society through the interaction of this monolithic and unique Japanese system with the Western hegemonic Globalizing juggernaut.
A tip from Les and recently featured on WNYC:
 | A Public Betrayed is a new book about "media atrocities" in Japan written by an American journalist and a Japanese media professor. Looks like it covers familiar material, but I will try to give it a read as soon as possible. |
Update: The book seems to be a journalistic extension of the New Religion Soka Gakkai and published by one of America's most conservative publishing companies. Intriguing back story, but I am in no rush to get my hands on it for the info inside.
This month's teddy is apparently a drunken white-collar bear who has strayed too close to the track in an alcohol-fueled act of sociopathy. When I snapped this pic, a little girl was studying the ad for about a minute - why does this bear have a tie around his head like some sort of corporate commando? Indeed, little one, why? Apparently she doesn't know the whole conceit of drunken Japanese businessmen undoing their necktie and wrapping it around their heads. Mom will tell you about it when you're older.
The poster's text aims for triggering the antisocial shame reflex over some imaginary Puritan guilt complex by never calling the intoxication itself into question, just the antisocial behavior caused by the overindulgence. The odd combination of cute little teddy bear with public drunkenness makes sense to us grownups, but must have confused the living daylights out of the kindergardener in front of me in line.
The wellknown mp3 site Fluxblog has discovered Kiiiiiii. Read the write-up.
Resident ex-pat Robert Duckworth throws his weight into the Japan debate with a very long and oblique essay on his site. Check it out.
