neomarxisme

....someone is trying to be the first one to get their anagram Tokyo subway map up on BoingBoing.net. ("Nazi G","I Buy Ash","Uno E","I Euro Bukk"...).
....someone is shopping for vegetables to a muzak version of Bachman-Turner Overdrive's "Takin' Care of Business."
....someone is completely bored with Jared Diamond's Collapse.

A couple of weeks ago, my professor invited me and the other grad students out to Ryogoku to watch a rakugo performance. For those unfamiliar with the artform, rakugo is a traditional type of long Japanese comic monologue, dating from the Edo period. Performers sit on a small pillow in front of the audience and retell an established set of stories word-for-word. Although the ochi (falling) at the end of the story is akin to the punchline in the Western sense, devoted fans already know how things turn out and evaluate the performance on the individual's storytelling technique and articulation. Rakugo performers sometimes write their own material, but not usually until becoming a certified master of the art. In general, new stories are not a dominant part of the overall experience.

This was my first time to see rakugo in about a decade. I could somewhat navigate the arcane language, but I unfortunately lack the necessary familiarity with Edo period urban cultural references to create an adequate context for the ha-ha. In the case of Japanese drama like Noh, you can sit back and enjoy the music and movement without understanding the "dialogue," but non-textual clues don't get you very far in rakugo: there is almost nothing besides the performer talking in various voices and making the occasional Michael Winslow sound-effects of eating crunchy food. Watching rakugo as a foreigner is maybe as difficult as a non-native English speaker watching a Colonial-era Seinfeld perform at the Ye Olde Improv.

Compared to modern manzai, rakugo may not be the most popular comedic form in Japan, but it authentically appeals to young and old alike. When compared to comedy in the West, rakugo differs not just in format, but in the fundamental philosophy behind the humor. Rakugo is orthopraxical comedy: performers deliver well-known scripts line-by-line, attempting to reconstruct a "perfect" reading. Only masters with hierarchical stature can make additions to the canonized form. Across the seas, rakugo's cousin - American stand-up - is orthodoxical comedy. Besides old-timey Vaudeville, new material is a basic requirement. Whereas rakugo gains its legitimacy with links to the past - kimonos, old language, formal "Japanese" gestures - American comedians like Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, and Mitch Hedberg secure their place in the history books by breaking taboos and innovating on past methodologies.

Viewed from a certain perspective, the rakugo audience come to enjoy clichés, hear stories they already know and giggle at punchlines that were hot stuff two-hundred years ago. Although it may be unfair to compare a "classical" artform to cutting-edge pop culture, comparing cliché usage in rakugo and recent American comedy is a fairly illuminating undertaking.

The half-hour Comedy Central show Stella - starring Jewish-American The State alumni Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter, and David Wain - has a unique comic language that can best (or pretentiously) described as a lexicon of schizophrenic comedic material built upon an absurdist grammar. Although the Monty Python comparisons are somewhat deserved, the better jokes are not just illogical wackiness for the sake of absurdity. Stella relies on the classic Dada/Surrealist technique of compressed time but only to create ample opportunities for the real meat of the show: the ironic usage of bad movie clichés and well-worn dramatic conventions. In a scene from the episode "Campaign," for example, Michael Showalter gives David Wain an apologetic friendship make-up speech that snakes from frat brother heart-to-heart to bad Degrassi Jr. High Canadian accents to faux-Scottish solidarity ("Are we still mates?") to a disinterested airhead departure - all in the span of thirty seconds. In "Paper Route," they cycle through a laundry list of terrible job interview clichés in order to secure morning newspaper delivery work, including the line, "My greatest weakness is that I care too much...? Is that a weakness?"

The cover article for the Feb. 4th Asia-edition of The Economist was titled "Saving Japan from the shadows" - referencing the idea that the old secret, cabalistic Japan had risen up again to swallow the New Capitalist Horie. The editors assure us all that Japan's economy was gangbusters and Horie was indeed a crook, but the tone seems to imply some heightened worry about the actual transparency of Japanese economic and political matters in the Koizumi era.

Here on the streets of Tokyo, there is certainly some serious paranoia a-brewin'. As some of you may know, right after Livedoor was raided in late January, one of the company's high-ranked executives named Noguchi was found dead in Okinawa. The police immediately labeled it a suicide, and the sudden 100% increase in dead executives made Livedoor look guilty as sin. But the coroner could never confirm the death as a suicide, and this has spurred the shukanshi into trying to connect the dots behind what really happened. After a month of new doubts about the original story, I would go as far to say that almost no one in Japan still believes Noguchi killed himself EXCEPT for the Okinawa police, who - despite obvious irregularities in the circumstances - have essentially closed the case.

So who killed Noguchi? The latest theory floating around media types is that Noguchi met his demise at the hands of an Okinawa-based criminal syndicate - the same one behind the success of a certain top-selling rock-rap musical act also from Okinawa! And just today, my reasonably-rational colleagues at school were telling me that the LDP was using their allies at Japan's largest ad firm to suppress the story from getting into the mainstream media. Supposedly, this thing goes all the way to the top politicians...!

I'm not sure where these crazy stories are coming from, but perhaps Kikko is one specific source. Kikko is your normal girl with a blog, a make-up and hair artist who just happened to break a huge story on the construction industry scandals before the shukanshi could even get to it. No one knows who "Kikko" really is, but she currently has the hottest blog in all of Japan. Today she's railing against the new Denan law.

I know my love of conspiratorial drama massively erodes my credibility, but my attitude is that historical precedents give us absolutely no reason to give the benefit of the doubt to organizations like the LDP, the media cabals, and others tied up in the kuromaku. It's best not to jump to conclusions, of course, but what proof do we have, for example, that traditional ties between the yakuza and the LDP suddenly disappeared one day after many. many years of stability? It may seem ridiculous to start pointing fingers to cover-ups and diabolical schemes, but it's just as ridiculous to ignore the numerous cover-ups and diabolical schemes already etched in the last chapters of our history books.

In this age of blogs and greater access to taboo information, the mainstream media's refusal to dig deeper into the most obvious news stories is ironically eroding their credibility now too. Who knows what really happened to Noguchi, but when no one with any kind of authority steps in to set the record straight, even the freelance makeup artist can determine the sway of public beliefs.

Early tomorrow morning, I'm jetting off to Lusitania for a short vacation. Thanks to globalization, I can keep doing this blog, even on the road. But seeing that this is a vacation away from my normal routine, I am going to try to keep away from computers: no new posts until the 15th.

I haven't been anywhere besides Japan and the U.S. since spring 2001 (why, again, did I go to Iceland?), so I'm very excited to get the chance to expand my horizons and refresh my head. I've intentionally planned a vacation that's not so much "sight-seeing" as "site-being" - drinking vinho verde under the shadows of ancient castles, a billion miles from home.

16:43 Local bus from Salema crossing to Lagos
18:15 Express bus from Lagos to Lisboa
20:00 Subway from Jardim Zoologico to Restauradores
22:30 Taxi from Rossio to airport
05:50 Flight to Amsterdam
10:00 Arrival in Amsterdam
14:00 Flight from Amsterdam to Tokyo
09:00 Arrival in Tokyo
10:55 Limousine bus to Shibuya
12:00 Taxi to Home

Tokyo has a reputation for being the world's most irrationally expensive big city, but once you actually live here, you realize that prices do not live up to the hype. Few individuals in New York City can expect to rent their own apartment for $600 a month - something that is relatively simple in Tokyo as long as you don't care about square footage. Cooking at home or a constant diet of Yoshinoya provide ample calories on small budgets. Well-planned transportation schedules can be economical, especially for students buying tsuugaku subway passes.

But if you really want to save money in Japan, the most important thing to do is not have any friends. The Friend Tax (友人税）is where the Japanese economy empties your pockets every month.

Last night was a typical night in the city, where I and the girlfriend went to a goodbye party for a young visiting European scholar. Late leaving my house, we arrived thirty minutes before the nomihoudai (all-you-can-drink) period ended and were greeted by a large group of red-faced revelers and uneaten plates of whale bacon. Drinking warm Asahi Dry in tiny cups, we made merry and met new friends, only to be greeted with what is always the ugly reality to our hedonistic escapism: "the bill will be 4200 a person." Now, this is quite a lot for thirty minutes of minor imbibing, and since I had to pay for my date as well, a lofty sum for my meager government-subsidized living. But despite the gracious apologies from the host, I did not flinch: for I know the reality of the Friend Tax.

Whether it be birthday parties, gigs of friends' bands, seasonal events, or school-related functions, you will never walk away paying what you would just pay by yourself - even if you had gorged and binged at maximum speed and force. That margin between your expected payment and the actual inflated bill is the dreaded Friend Tax. And the greatest irony is that you will no doubt be drunk, but the more money you drop, the more likely you will still be hungry at the end of the evening.

But it's not just groups buying into badly-valued meal plans and drink sets. If you go a la carte, you do equal damage to your financial standing. Buying a pitcher and playing darts may be fine, but this is a country of unending formal engagements to mark various occasions, and if you are part of an organization, there is only the rare chance to have fun that is not "mandatory." The only way to avoid the Friend Tax is to have no friends or keep all fraternizing inside your peers' tiny apartments across the city suburbs.

For those planning on moving to Tokyo, make sure you budget yourself at least 10,000 to 20,000 a month to deal with the Friend Tax (particularly if you are a student). The Kokuzeicho keeps its existence secret. Perhaps the hikikomori want to go outside and galavant, but they can't afford it.

A wise sage once spoke, "Always stay a tourist" - for no one is more adept at analysis and explanation than the occasional and casual traveler. Just recently, I spent a half-fortnight in the Atlantic nation of Portugal, and this brief experience has given me an unquestionable authority on the subject. I find it almost comical to believe that my total lack of Portuguese language ability, ignorance about Portuguese history, and stubborn refusal to read academic works on Portuguese society somehow put me at a disadvantage in serving up sharp commentary upon this wonderful land. Conversely, all that knowledge and understanding would only cloud my general perceptions. Who needs to know what someone is saying, when you can feel out their motives and orientations through the power of imagination!

My travels took me first to the capitol of Lisbon - an adorable "big city" overflowing with ancient neighborhoods and beautiful tile work. I would almost go as far to say that Lisbon feels safer than Tokyo: besides the occasional hash dealer in Rossio, there were few people who even looked suspicious.

No matter how urban the area, communality takes a central position in daily lives. The Portuguese possess something I call superintimacy (short-lived Wikipedia entry coming soon): despite Portugal's rapid economic progress in recent years, its citizens have managed to keep their traditional social networks firmly intact. Whether they walk around the block or take the #33 bus up to the castle, they greet and chat with their neighbors both known and unknown as if nothing has changed in 1000 years.

How is this possible in the 21st century? The Portuguese are guided by an ancient religious tradition called Catholicism, which dates all the way back to directly after the death of Christ. Unlike the ideological bickering of Protestantism, Catholics value stability, family, order, and ritual. And now with their growing economy standing firmly upon this spiritual base, the Portuguese enjoy something like a socialist capitalism where everyone instinctively helps out everyone else. Furthermore, inter-generational conflict is relatively marginal, thanks to the Catholic rituals of "baptism" and "confirmation" that turn young people into valid members of the community at a relatively early age. And in the spirit of the Eucharist tradition, large families dine together every night - something unthinkable in economically-obsessed nations like Japan.

As we traveled from Lisbon to the walled village of Marvão to the stunningly-preserved Évora, we couldn't help but think that Portugal has handled modernity far better than its neighbors: McDonalds are rare, and other chain restaurants barely exist. The Portuguese have limited the existence of crass global commercialism to the Algarve beach area - outlet mall hells brought forth by the pasty-white Brits and Krauts living there in retirement. Portugal shames the U.S. and Japan through its careful protection of local culture and traditional architecture. Only the occasional earthquake is allowed to erase the past.

Portugal does not just provide an alternate take on the process of modernization - a brisk stroll into the future while maintaining the "slow life" of the past - but the one-and-only correct take on modernism. With a history of pacifism and a monolinguistic multi-racial harmony, Portugal may just be the most progressive country on the planet.

We Protestant individuals may scorn the communalist Catholic way of life, but Portugal's existence shames all of us from the Post-Industrial countries. As the inheritors of the Earth, we are failures, and we must embrace the progressive Catholic post-modernism before it is too late.

As of next Wednesday, I am officially an ex-student, and the last week has been spent tying up loose ends: listening to teary, drunken speeches at the oidashi konpa, ridding my room of all hardcover books, securing new means of financial support from corporate institutions, maniacally trying to reach level 99 in a stupid portable game I bought for the plane. My last government paycheck dropped from heaven to my bank account today, and now I'm going to have to rough up these soft pink hands to keep myself afloat. My visa status will have to be changed, but the transition from Spring Vacation to The Rest of My Life should relatively easy.

Just tonight, I had one of my last "baito" type missions - perhaps the weirdest on record. An acquaintance of an acquaintance has a music project I quite enjoy, and he also does commercial songs for a well known Japanese electronics company. Somehow I got drafted into singing the main vocal of a track related to the firm's upcoming film festival in Taiwan. I altered some of the English lyrics to better match the company's original Japanese marketing message - a weird combination of all my sundry half-talents. But, I'm not sure I should ever be singing songs besides my own marginal compositions. Modern technology will probably bail me out and make the track work at the end of the day, but I felt the dull creepiness of being the foreign guy in Japan who gets the job solely because he is the only foreign guy in the room. I will be the first to admit that I am an okay indie musician, but a sham voice-for-hire.

The best part though was doing overlapping harmonies on the final line in the chorus, which happens to be the company's catch phrase. Imagine actually being the guy in front of the microphone, with the headphones wrapped around your head, singing the 21st century equivalent to a rock version of "Food Folks and Fun." As a kid, I had dreams of rock stardom, but I'm not sure this kind of scenario ever swam into my mind.

...that McDonald's hamburgers are not as good as backyard grilled burgers?
...that some of the fashion from the 1970s is no longer regarded as being in good taste?
...that The Da Vinci Code is not exactly a literary masterpiece?
...that Tori Spelling was not the most attractive or charismatic cast member of 90210?
...that "Underwater Basketweaving" is not an actual college course?
...that some Ben & Jerry ice cream flavors take their names from famous 1960s personalities?
...that Celine Dion's Titanic song is not the "best song ever"?
...that Hollywood's version of events often deviates from reality?
...that "hipsters" sometimes show predilections for objects based on factors other than the objects' internal qualities?
...that Japanese copy writers often misuse English to comical effect?
...that prom was not "the best night of your life"?
...that calculators are superior to slide-rules?
...that Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison is a different book than The Invisible Man?
...that politicians often say things the public wants to hear around election time but act differently once in power?
...that rain is sad?
...that text is indicated through creating differentials in color and shape upon surfaces?
...that Steve Guttenberg has appeared in few movies since the 1980s?

Being the stereotypically uncouth American, the proverbial unruly bull in the particularly fragile china shop, I intentionally decided to search for gainful employment this Spring without undertaking one of Japan's great social rituals: shuushoku katsudou, the rigid and formal three-to-four month job search conducted at the beginning of the university student's fourth year. Had I made like my fellow graduates and spent the first months of 2005 attending informational meetings of three dozen companies and then revisiting firms up to eight times for round after round of interviews, I would have most likely found myself with a splendid naitei (informal acceptance) from the physical distribution management division of an esteemed meat manufacturer and coasted through my last year without a single worry about my future. (Except, perhaps, the eternal question - IRA vs. Roth IRA?)

Instead, I chose to dedicate my time to my thesis, and this vile act of hubris meant a somewhat chaotic and unpredictable last three months of job hunting. Things worked out very well in the end, but even one of my interviewers asked me point blank, "Uhh... why is it that you didn't look for a job a year before your graduation like everyone else?" I immediately admitted my folly, and promised to tell my vast online readership not to follow in my sad example.

In the days of the post-War "lifetime employment system," college students used the brief months of shuu-katsu to plan their remaining 60 years left on Earth. At the tender age of 21, students' ability to answer cliched questions from old grumpy men decided their entire fates. Working for former zaibatsu like Mitsubishi could mean kids in private school, drinking Blue Label mizuwari in Ginza every weeknight, and plenty of extra income to blow on insensible women in their late 20s. Working at a second-rate firm meant ill-fitting discount suits and constant bouts of schadenfreude. But no matter the case, you were always just picking up leftovers from the Spartan memorization kings at Tokyo University anyway.

Originally, the Game began shortly before graduation, but companies kept starting earlier and earlier to beat out rivals for access to the greatest human capital at the elite universities. Finally, a stalemate was reached, and things settled down into early Spring of the students' fourth year. These days, foreign banks and financial institutions start up their recruitment in Winter and scoop up a large number of Todai geeks before Japanese companies even have the chance.

For many obvious reasons, I decided to advertise my services in a different manner than the shinsotsu saiyou (new graduate admission) model. I was sending around sans-serif English resumes, but my future employer still required me to fill out the Japanese rirekisho (resume).

Just as I had imagined, the standard Japanese application form still reflects the stone-cold recruitment system of the Showa era. Opposed to the American style of resumes, where applicants tailor the form and content to best reflect their identity and accomplishments, young Japanese job seekers pop into their local bookstore and buy the standard blank rirekisho. The form must be completed in black pen (you can still tell everything about a person in Japan by their penmanship), and a misspelling or stray mark automatically means starting over. The information required: name, address, school history, work history (part-time work generally not included), awards, punishments, and licenses - leaving no place to actually describe yourself in any manner of detail. The Japanese form also requires a photograph, because, unlike those insipid kindergarden posters, you can certainly judge a book by its cover.

The elite white-collar salarymen of today sometimes switch jobs, so there is a more detailed chuuto saiyou (mid-career) application form. But in general, you are no more than your birthday, academic pedigree and one-sentence personal statement.

I don't have a lot of formal work experience, but I do a lot of crazy things that fit nowhere on a Japanese employment application, like freelance writing for American magazines, freelance research for ad firms, and a "blog" with too many readers. But if you are a Japanese student trying to curry favor with the Big Companies, the last thing you want to do is suggest that you've ever had anything on your mind outside of total and complete dedication to your future employer. In the old orthopraxical employment scheme, companies had their one, unique "correct" way of doing things, and employees with prior experience often posed a great threat to standard protocol.

Of course, everything in Japan is in totally flux, and the employment system is becoming somewhat more relaxed and "American." From watching the college students in my flock over the last three years, however, my impression is that while changing jobs (tenshoku) for upper-level occupations is now a possibility, getting through the narrow gate right out of college is still an unbending requirement. Graduate school is the only acceptable alternative. Now with social stratification becoming more and more extreme, shuushoku katsudou actually seems more important than ever. That first job may not last forever, but it still sets the course.

So comb your hair and use proper stroke order, boys.

Once I let Bloglines start managing my Internet blog reading routine, I suddenly found myself with excess time to subscribe to a superfluous number of websites only tangentially related to my core interests. Within days, I sadly dedicated around thirty minutes each morning to keeping up with the Schadenfreude Dailies - Gawker.com, Defamer.com, and TheSuperficial.com - gossip sites staffed by bitter twenty-somethings bent on wrecking every pillar of contemporary popular culture. The anger may conveniently resemble common arguments against the wretchedness of the entertainment/media business, but their bile comes less from structural opposition and more from being left out in the cold. Co-optation would be easy and swift: an editorial assistant position at Conde Nast or an honorary degree from Dartmouth.

But combine the SD's with other "content aggregators" like BoingBoing.net, and you will easily read about the same stupid Britney Spears childbirth sculpture six or seven times within a fifteen minute period. Almost every Internet "item" is just a one-note gimmick to start with - somebody made jewelry out of old Cracker Jack toys! somebody made a map of the former U.S.S.R. out of cupcakes! somebody made an granary out of this old chemical weapons factory! - and you are exhausted by the whole thing just minutes after the first appearance of the information.

Esteemed economist Richard Caves has a nice explanation of this phenomenon in his book Creative Industries:

Creative goods differ greatly in the technology that determines their speeds of diffusion through the consuming public. That speed controls the maximum pace at which the novelty can be exhausted as a conversational gambit. Hence there is likely a negative correlation between the technical rate of diffusion for a creative good and the time for which it stays in consumers' active stocks. The bigger the fad, the faster the fall.

First of all, a lot of today's entertainment is not even "creative goods" but bits of novel information and trivia passed around on blogs. That being said, many musicians and artists are introduced through the same blog medium, and their entire existence generally becomes quantified within a similar information packet. Blogs have not only maximized the possible diffusion speed for novel information, but the sheer number of blogs increases the level of exposure as well. So, if Caves' inverse relation theory is correct, more blogs means less of this information eventually enters the cultural canon.

For a minute, let us simplify the pleasures of a cultural item into three categories: experiential pleasure (how much you enjoy experiencing the work itself), social interaction (how much you enjoy talking about the work with other people), and social distinction (how much you enjoy the fact that you know the work when other people do not). Caves notes that the first is intrinsically diminishing: "People - adults, anyhow - seldom read a book or view a movie twice." Now there are obvious exceptions where individuals grow to like a work over the first period of use, but no artwork has infinitely increasing benefits. So, more exposure will eventually lead to diminished utility.

For social interaction and social distinction, overexposure both lead to diminished value. Widespread knowledge also increases the speed and intensity of possible use in social interaction. If everyone knows about a certain item, there is also no way to use it as a means of social distinction. More importantly, blogs have any sort of illusion of elitist authority the way we perceive to be glowing from magazines or friend-of-a-friend word-of-mouth. Maybe high school kids can impress their friends with boingboing tidbits, but the invidious dividers of New York social scenes essentially have to operate in a parallel world - intentionally keeping information off of the Internet to make sure social distinction can be preserved.

At the end of the day, like Caves predicts, the new speed of fads essentially makes the content all forgettable and meaningless. This is expressed in the words of scandalous music writer Nick Sylvester from last year's Pazz and Jop poll, "When are bands going to realize nobody cares about them after their debut?" The intense hype surrounding bands like the Strokes, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and the Artic Monkeys tends to create a large amount of immediate resistance, but more importantly, quickly burns out even the most dedicated fan.

I am curious to see whether the continuance of this phenomena spells the death of new entries to the cultural canon or whether a clever new way of slowing down information dissemination will appear. Today's increasing obsession with 60s music, vintage fashion, and "classic" brands seems to be a direct reaction to the ridiculous speed of flimsy modern culture. But sadly, if some new solution does pop up within the next few years, there will be a link posted on one of Meta Blogs, and we'll all be sick of the idea an hour later.