Otaku: The Last Nerds Left Standing

Fujiwara Hiroshi and Fujiwara Hiroshi Nigo (usually known as "Nigo") live on the top two floors of glamourous Roppongi Hills - the most concrete and visible symbol of achievement in contemporary Japanese society. Both run fashion labels and provide consulting services for multinational brands (Nike and Louis Vuitton, respectively), but neither have a background in fashion design nor make their bales of cash from directly artistic pursuits. (If I had to give an obnoxious Malcom Gladwell name for these men) they rose to fame as pointers: giving monthly magazine readers a short list of hot items and must-haves. Nigo, in particular, used this editorial-lifestyle approach to guide A Bathing Ape's creative direction and offer style pastiches of his favorite items - be them Buddy Holly glasses, 60s sci-fi films, or British knit sweaters.

Good editorial on a particular topic requires an obsessive mind and endless quest to pierce the bounds of general knowledge and find hidden gems lurking below. Engaged consumers do not need someone to tell them what they already know, and legitimacy is only often gained by being one step ahead of the crowds. A soft rock "expert" will not win points for recommending The Association to fans, nor will a Wired columnist win points for introducting you to Gmail.

To be quite frank, the Ura-Harajuku guys, Cornelius, DJ Shadow, Beck, and all the other wonderboys of the 90s were nerds, always aggressively digging crates and photo plates to win the arbitrage game of cashing in unknown or forgotten information. Japanese consumers and fans in particular internalized this info-obsession and ultimately judged the quality of their heros on their nerdy levels of cutting-edge, yet trivial knowledge. Nerdiness breeds a maniacal energy - much more than the resignation to just buy whatever is two-feet in front of you. Running around, researching, and comparing notes give birth to high levels of involvement in culture.

Then came the God damned internet: too much information, too much easy access. We still need editors, but anybody can find secret emeralds now, not just those "in the know" like Fujiwara and Nigo. The free-for-all democracy of the Net destroyed the distinctive, invidious pleasure of pointing to objects before the masses could. So, Nigo and Fujiwara went bling bling and started to distance themselves from the common folk by showing how many diamond-encrusted watches and vintage automobiles they could own. Instead of talking up Barbara Kruger and Karl Marx, Fujiwara is now content to show fast cars, travel pictures from Capri, and a two-shot with Zidane on his Honeyee blog. (Although the dude is way into John Mayer.)

Editorial is out, and with it goes a very dependable source of energy and consumer involvement. Why be a modest nerd now when you can be covered in jewels while driving your red Ferrari? Fans know what Ferraris look like, know they will never have one, and then stop thinking about them.

That being said, there is still one group of nerds that has not gotten the memo: the otaku. But thanks to their absolutely and utter lack of coolness motive, they go on being obsessive and highly-involved with their own personal interests - despite the internet or changes in the Zeitgeist.

And this is exactly why we are living in an otaku boom, because they are the last nerds standing in a cultural economy desperate for youth obsession. Normal kids could care less about much of anything and are especially suspect of any actions that require what used to be called "effort" (and is now referred to as something like "面倒臭さ"). So the media shifts all attention to Akihabara, because they still purchase items, go the extra mile to find rare artifacts, and show an envious loyalty towards their heros and icons. It's not that anime or manga are "cool" all of a sudden but they are the only ones to show up on the field. Mainstream society would find very little nice to say about otaku but they do have energy. And energy is what we need.

Jun Takahashi article in new Nylon for Guys

I have a relatively long story on fashion designer Jun Takahashi of Under Cover in the Fall 2006 issue of Nylon Guys. Check it out on newstands or wait a bit for their tech team to up the entire issue online (which they are doing these days.)

I Know What Boys Like

As part of some professional research I am engaged in, I talked with two female fashion marketing experts last night about contemporary Japanese women in their 20s. For a majority of the post-war, a Japanese woman's lifestyle - fashion, makeup, hair, hobbies, general dispositions - could be almost perfectly deduced from her primary magazine of choice. The instruction and guidance are so precise that even the most individual extrapolation of the ingredients would still result in an extremely manifest membership to a certain style.

Knowing this, I have been interested in the grand meaning behind the giant octopus Can Cam currently sitting on top of Japanese society. The magazine has a circulation estimated between 600,000 and 750,000 - quite possibly the best selling title in Japan outside of the phonebook weekly manga. According to my sources, even women who consider themselves non•no readers may also be glancing at Can Cam to skim tips. CC's popularity has been attributed to the three exclusive models (専属モデル) in their pages - Ebihara Yuri, Yamada Yu, and Oshikiri Moe - but these women (all in the same K-Dash jimusho keiretsu) have only broken into pop culture over the last year, whereas the magazine started quickly increasing readership after 2001.

Source #1 sees modern culture revolving around goukon (合コン) - the traditional group date system that introduces an equal number of boys to an equal number of girls. Can Cam readers are obsessed with goukon success, and in the past, that meant catching the eye of that one special boy on the other side of the tatami mat. Now girls aim to win the hearts and minds of the entire enemy side, and ultimately, their parents.

Boys who attend goukon don't like designer fashion, weird haircuts, queer collars, innovative fabrics, challenging appearances. And they don't like the strong and chic Yamada Yu. They prefer the slightly grown-up yet sweet and adorable Ebihara Yuri ("Ebi-chan" to you). Opposed to its rivals, Can Cam best shows you how to dress exactly our goukon heroine Ebi-chan and is apparently moving Yamada out of the picture to make more room for Ebi, Ebi, Ebi.

This meta-narrative of female desperation towards capturing ideal boyfriends at group dates leads to another question: who is the ideal boyfriend? Rich and hot. How is this different from the 3高 (tall, well-educated, large salary) ideal of the late 80s? It's not really so different, they claim, although girls today care a lot less about where the money is coming from (something revealed by the deletion of the educational requirement.) Post-Bubble, the 3高 made room for the 3C (comfortable, communicative, cooperative), but that sounds less like a husband and more like a social worker, am I right ladies? In the last several years, that pipe dream of sensitivity got thrown out the window, and girls are on their feet with a new pipe dream, lusting after rich men in fancy suits sans cravate who will save them from a dull life of economical savings and buying clothes for their nobody kids at the Uniqlo across from Bldy. Needless to say, the bulk of Can Cam readers come from middle-class and lower middle-class backgrounds and are a bit concerned about their own abilities to pull themselves up to the top echelons of the class ladder, where all the real action is.

Can Cam girls may be a plurality, but there are two other groups worth mentioning.

First, the Ero Kawaii ("erotic cute") crew - exemplified by butter caramel squash Koda Kumi, the magazine ViVi, and the popular lingerie catalog Peach John. These are girls who do not necessarily care about finding boyfriends, because boys have never shown much interest in them to start with. Japanese guys don't like too much skin - they prefer the demure, conservative beauty of Ebi-chan, remember - so the Ero Kawaii crew make up for it by the self-gratifying passage into softly aggressive outfits that leave a 20% pie piece to the imagination. I hate using the term "ero kawaii" - feels like I got some memo from Dentsu and am explaining Japanese "cool" to you in Fall 2005 - but I think it is important to realize how attracting boys is not at the core of the controversial look. Also for reference, these girls - like their Can Cam second-cousins - want to become very wealthy, just not necessarily through the economic transaction of marriage.

Second, the "independent" girls who are generally from wealthy backgrounds. They are not necessarily interested in boys because their birth-right gives them a confidence that failure to attract a well-to-do guy in a banana yellow Porsche will not lead them to a bland, frugal future. This confidence also means not having to follow all the instructions in those 2 kg. magazines: ensembles can be put together more freely. Not caring what men think about you opens up some serious options.

New Outkast Album

A double album??? I had a friend on the inside sneak me some mp3s last night, and I say without hyperbole: this is going to be big. "Hey Ya" drops two beats and drops hard. Get your extra CD player out of the closet and buy a looseleaf notepad and ballpoint pen - Bigg Boy and Andres will make you sit down and listen and take notes. If you prefer mp3s, buy two Rio PMP300's. To their credit, one will not do.

Pirates are bad. Now enjoy this movie about Pirates.

After a year of quiet mockery, Japanese movie theatres are still running this ridiculous anti-piracy PSA. The film industry folks obviously do not heed much opinion from English language blogs or realize how their schlocky sob-story of profit loss counterproductively melds with the burden of 1800 yen tickets to make you want to run out and start pirating movies immediately.

In normal contexts, this ad is just "retarded" (not my words) but an ad visually warning you of the dangers of piracy through use of a Jolly Roger skull and black flag with white X right before presenting for your enjoyment Pirates of the Caribbean - a film celebrating the aberrant bad-boys of the sea - is just retarded (my words).

I Didn't Say It #2

「芸能界はコワいところ」って言いますが、ズバリ、いろんな意味でその通りなんです！！不正・不当な圧力・金まみれの権利構造・・・・・・教え上げたらキリがありません。一見きらびやかなギョーカイのその裏にこびりついた数々のヨゴレを白日の下にさらし、いまこそ、その体質改善を目指しましょう！！

We may say "the entertainment industry is scary" but frankly speaking, the statement is totally correct - in all sorts of ways. A rights-structure stained with dishonest and unjust use of pressure and money.... if we started giving you examples, there would be no place to end the discussion! Behind the scenes, numerous stains cling to this seemingly flashy industry, and by exposing the dirt in broad daylight, let's aim to improve its constitutional make-up - right now!

-- Introductory paragraph to the feature story on "Cleaning Up the Entertainment Industry" in Cyzo's September 2006 issue

Best T-Shirts

Best T-shirt seen at Fuji Rock 2006: "KURT COVEN"
Best T-shirt seen at my local grocery store by a 85 year-old woman suffering from a serious case of osteoporosis: "HEMP ORGANIC"

Corrections to the Last Post

* There are essentially no panty vending machines in Japan at present - at least in Tokyo.
* Nyutai mori - eating sushi off of a naked woman - ranges from ultra-rare to nonexistant.
* Wanikuge is not a word.
* Neither is "ristolance."
* Miyakayi and awogavi are impossible in the Japanese language.
* Kurozaruo is far from brazen.
* There is no American TV show called Bear Bactor.
* Nobody has ever mounted a cow for a cross-country trek on Japanese television - not yet anyway.
* Everything that was in italic should have been in bold, and everything in bold should have been underscored.
* There is no word "synecdoche."

Japan: Still Crazy After All These Years

God Bless the Inogashira Line. Bored on a Sunday afternon? Board on a Sunday afternoon, sit in the air conditioning, read Gaddis, get off at the last stop, return your crazy episode of The Prisoner where No. 6 is in the Wild Wild West ("The Escape Club"?), and then treat yourself to a walk around Shibuya.

In the short time since I moved out of Setagaya, Shibuya has quietly seceded from Japan and become an independent enclave of the Asian continent. Not that I have been to Bangkok, but Shibuya is Bangkok if all the Thai girls got really good at ripping off Japanese lumpen fashion. Lots of white backpackers and Asian tourists/residents. The streets emit a rotten odor. There's an Outback Steakhouse, a Baskin Robbins, and a very popular coffee chain called Starbucks.

I can get over odors - they make clear clothespins now - but I think most of us want Japan to stay pleasantly off-global model and unpredictable. We fear the mediocrity inherent in economies-of-scale, the environmental damage of plastic-fantastic-throwaway society, the chain outlet's massacre of small charms. Who needs Japan if Japan is just a more expensive version of Everywhere with less floor space.

I nestled back into the Inogashira Line, clutching onto such despair. But coming down the staircase from my station, I glimpsed the main panty vending machine of our neighborhood. Totally empty - that rare moment between the big runs on Saturday night and the refilling on Sunday evening. This is certainly not a sight one wins upon exiting Steinway on the G or Dupont Circle. Globalization may have eaten Shibuya but it cannot slow the used panty market here in the outer reaches of Tokyo. Admittedly, the panty vending machine closer to my house had a couple of leftovers - but they were all a shade of light green that has been nearly impossible to sell since its peak in the mid-70s.

Eating nyotaimori sushi with my girlfriend later that night, we got to talking to the model whose rigid curves provided the platform for the food. (They can chat as long as you don't make them laugh. Oops!) I had seen her work at the other nyotai place down the street, but she says that her favorite location near the park closed down last month, leaving only four nyotai bars to serve our entire train stop area. (Kichijoji has a half-dozen, thankfully.) First, the demise of wanikuge, now this. If sushi becomes nothing but Yo!Sushi conveyor belts, count me out.

Miyakayi, however, seems to be growing, as long as you know where to look. A little different from the sensuality of awogavi or the brazen ristolance of kurozaruo, miyakayi is probably the most Shinto of all popular Japanese entertainments. Not exactly a place I would take my boss - but I get the sense that it's where my boss would take me, if you know what I mean.

But no matter whether American TV producers rip off the East with cockroach-eating, gall bladder puree-drinking Fear Factors and Bear Bactors - Japanese game shows still carve a deep moat between this island and the rest of the world. Ever see a guy ride a cow cross-country? A contest where comedians see how long they can touch a 35,000 volt open wire? Blindfolded women sucking on sneakers and rats in another installment of "What Do I Have In My Mouth?" None of it is pretty, but it is adequately insane.

Family Tree

Even though Abe Shinzo's got a lock on the Prime Minister election, Foreign Minister Aso Taro formally announced his candidacy today. The two men are cousins, by the way, linked to several former Prime Ministers and the Imperial family. Thanks to the family tree on this page, we can better understand which side of the eternal political dynasty will be ruling Japan in the near future.

Aso is grandson of post-war PM Yoshida Shigeru ('46-'47, '48-'54), and his sister is married to the son of Emperor Hirohito's younger brother Prince Mikasanomiya. Aso's wife is the daughter of PM Suzuki Zenko ('80-'82). Yoshida Shigeru shares the same grandfather as PMs Kishi Nobusuke ('57-'60) and Sato Eisaku ('67-'72) - who are brothers! Abe is the grandson of Kishi.

I Rove You

Okay, imagine a new American television show called I Rove You where they collect Asian-American women and have them complain about their Anglo-Saxon husbands. Sound like a hit?

Last night, I got to see a bit of Aichiteru! - a relatively new show on late night TBS that brings together a gaggle of foreign women in Japan, wearing kimonos and bitching about their Japanese husbands. The title is an intentional misprounciation of the words "愛している" - meaning "I love you." The "chi" in place of the "shi" sounds cute and childlike, and while I doubt the producers are actively making fun of their guests' pronounciations, you have to wonder whether they would give a similar name to a program featuring native speakers. "I rove you" is also "cute" in a Scooby-Doo kind of way, but more sensitive types may have avoided diminuitive linguistic tricks in such a context.

But no matter - I shall not air my contempt against said program in an Arudouisitic accusation of racism. I will merely suggest that this program is "trash" much like Wife Swap and its ilk. Looking at the increasingly multicultural faces of today's Tokyo elementary school students, I had hoped for an end to the days of rewarding hack entertainers and pundits fluent in Japanese with stardom and authority. For all extents and purposes, Pakkun should be the last Glee Club member to move to Japan, announce with virile certainty, "I will be a star in this land!" and be rewarded with a seat next to Ota Hikari on primetime debating American foreign policy. But no, this increase of fluent foreigners means only one thing to the entertainment world: more supply to fill the unwavering demand for 70s-era cardboard charactertures of "Foreigners." They used to have to go to the Church of Latter Day Saints to dig up some specimens, but now they can snap their fingers and find a rainbow of aspiring stars to take low monthly salaries and overact on cue.

Five percent of all yearly marriages in Japan now contain a foreign partner, so maybe a show like Aichiteru has its place in society. In the real world, 80% of couples involve a Japanese man and foreign woman, and the vast, vast majority of those women are of East or Southeast Asian origin. So, let's take a look at the lineup: 40% white people!

Last night involved some super-fake yarase-esque "real life ghost stories" as told by the Egyptian woman. A Japanese woman provided a first-person narration, even though the actual woman's Japanese is almost flawless. (There is perhaps a fear that actual foreigners may mix up their "chi" and "shi" as the program names suggests.) The Egyptian woman's ability points to a long term residence in Japan. A 19-year old Chinese woman also had excellent Japanese, questioning whether she could have picked it up without having lived in Japan during her teen years.

Now, I am not going to raise the PC banner and demand these woman become "Japanese-Egyptian" or "Japanese-Chinese," but boy am I ready for everyone to be bored with this kind of automatic distinction as "foreign." The notion of "linguistic-racial nation" has some pretty firm roots, but how many years after chewing gum gets introduced does a television show solely featuring a guy chewing gum cease to be interesting?

The classic Tokyo snob excuse for this kind of lame cultural content is: "it's big in the countryside." Maybe few old souls remaining outside of urban areas do not come in contact with Japanese-speaking foreigners and want to see the Barnum exhibit televised.

But as more and more foreigners become fluent - or gasp, become citizens - you evidently will not see a decrease in astonishment: just more and more opportunities for campy television.

I Feel So Old

Last weekend I got yelled at on the street for not popping my collar. I forgot exactly what the guy said, "Pop it or lose it" or something - it took me a second to figure out what he was talking about, and then he flipped the collar on his kelly green Lacoste shirt up and down and I got the picture.

According to the FAQ on Generation Y, "popping collars" is a big deal to young people. I don't like it - it rubs me the wrong way. When I was fifteen, I limited my polo shirts to ironic usage. These kids not only brought back the nouveau riche country club chic, but upped it five points by raising up the collar, like an unconscious symbol of the imperial crown. The collar down is much more plebian and respectful to the lower classes who stay up all night knitting those shirts and eating pickles in Orchard St. sweatshops.

Looking over the total accomplishments of GenY, I have to admit I hate all of it. These kids are just pogs and blogs. "lol" - every heard of periods between words in abbreviations? And since when has "laugh" been "laff"? MC Hammer is just "Hammer"? Did young people not learn in school that it is "come" and not "cum"? Since when has "sex" been written "styx"? I am pretty sure the latter is a bad 70s rock band. And who would have thought that J. Press would have made such a huge revival? Or that Mazdaism would go hand-in-hand with hip hop? (No, it has nothing to do with the car. Look it up.)

"Pop it or lose it" - like I am going to lose the collar on my shirt. You know what I did when he said that to me: I popped it. But when he turned around, you better believe I put it back down. Even if this popped collar thing takes off in America from here on out, I don't want any part in it.

「国家の品格」, Chapter 5: Reviving the Bushido Spirit

Bushido has been Japan's moral compass since the days of the Kamakura Bakufu. Kindness (慈愛), sincerity (誠実), perseverance (忍耐), justice (正義), courage (勇気), compassion (惻隠), honor (名誉), shame (恥) - who can say no to such a long list of great things that accompany the proper behavior while killing other human beings in war? But ignore my cynicism: this "battlefield Confucianism" guided many a wayward soul throughout the peaceful Edo era, spreading down the rigid class structure from the most louse-ridden peasant to the bottom-dwelling, ultra-wealthy merchant.

Fujiwara quickly admits that Bushido is not a purely indigenous creation. From Buddhism, a calm acceptance of fate, contempt for life, and intimacy with death. From Confucianism (first mention in the book!), the Five Relations (subject and servant, father and son, husband and wife, old and young, friend and friend) and rulers' benevolence towards the people. From Shinto, loyalty towards the lord, respect for elders, and filial piety.

Wait a minute - aren't these last three are also essentially Confucian? Not like the word 孝行 popped out of thin air. Nevertheless, even if the Chinese invented Zen, Fujiwara points out that nobody does Zen like the Japanese do Zen. Same goes for many aspects of Confucianism, whether the Japanese realize it or not.

But despite its historical grandeur and bento box appropriation of all the major Eastern philosophical traditions, Bushido has been in decline ever since the Showa era. Things got bad once Japan picked on the weaker China after the Marco Polo Bridge incident, something that Fujiwara sees as "mean" (卑怯). The lack of Bushido also apparently explains why Japan made an alliance with Hitler.

Fujiwara thinks the Russo-Japan War and the Pacific War against the Americans were necessary at their respective times for Japan's independence and survival. But the war against China - Japan totally dropped the moral basketball, first and foremost because Japan's actions just invited Stalin and Mao to prosper in the 20th century. And again, the war against China was bullying the weak, which is a big Bushido no-no. The Chinese did not even have an air force! Fujiwara reminds us also that the Emperor was against the deep expansion into China - placing the blame for that ugly side of the war squarely on an Imperial Army gone awry.

「明治以来、欧米の列強が例外なく弱い者いじめという卑怯に走っていたといえ、この日本までがそれにならったということは、武士道精神が廃れつつあったことの証拠です。」

"You can say that after the Meiji (restoration),the great powers of the West without exception raced towards the cowardly act of bullying the weak, and the fact that Japan at that time learned from this is proof that the Bushido spirit was being disposed."

Here is the score: a ethical/moral code based on warfare and fighting would have never endorsed Western-style Imperialism. Only when the Japanese abandoned the samurai spirit were they able to go invade other countries. Odd that Fujiwara never mentions Korea, seeing that the Japanese had attempted invasions of the clearly weaker country before they learned anything from the awful Bushido-less West. I do not want to put words in his mouth, but his silence on that issue somewhat suggests that the Korean Annexation of 1910 was not an "unfair" act like the invastion of China.

Modern Japanese society contains a lot of interplay between pacifism and jingoism. Last night, many people got together to hold up candles spelling out "YASUKUNI NO" in candles, but Koizumi still took it upon himself to head over to Kudanshita and praise the Class A war criminals. (Maybe they should have written it in Japanese...) China and Korea will take it upon themselves to get angry about it.

So in the midst of deteriorating Asian relations based on past military aggression - and a World Gone Wild thanks to unneccessary military excursions by America - why call for a revival of an ethical/moral system based on military honor - especially when its most positive tenets were taken directly from the much more peaceful, humanistic Confucian tradition? Bushido has never been a progressive doctrine: it was a mish-mash of philosophical justifications for military juntas ruling the country and taking human life. So take out the "we love dying and killing equal foes" part, and you just get Confucianism. But Fujiwara is never going to for that - too Chinese. I cannot imagine Fujiwara suddenly advocating the modern adoption of any kind of foreign philosophy. He has placed himself within a small box of "everything we do must be Japanese in origin," and with such limiting parameters, Bushido is the only moral system he really has to choose from. As if Anglo-Saxons wanted to revive medieval chivalry, because Christianity is too Semitic. Or Americans preferring Mormonism, because it was Made in the USA.

While Bushido may be true blue Japanese, we shouldn't think that Fujiwara believes it is only for domestic usage:

「まず日本人がこれを取り戻し、つまらない論理ばかりに頼っている世界の人々に伝えていかなければいけないと思います。」

"I think that first the Japanese must take back (Bushido), and then go and spread it to the people of the world, who are too reliant solely on boring logic."

The entire world being the West, I guess.

I Didn't Say It #1

So often my arguments get destroyed wholesale for the fact that they come out of my mouth. In response, I offer you a new series at neomarxisme entitled, "I Didn't Say It."

「週刊誌のアンケートなんて、ほとんどがヤラセだから、あたしは、イマイチ信用してない。」
"Those surveys in the weekly magazines are mostly faked (yarase), so I don't quite believe this one."

- Kikko discussing a recent Shuukan Bunshun poll which asked women to name the female entertainers they hated the most. She also has a long analysis of Ogura Yuko's contrived usage of her own name in self-reference, which her handlers added onto her persona to make her seem more infantile.

How about that weather!

I have not looked at the data (nor will I, thank you), but this is the coolest summer in Tokyo I can remember. I have activated my air conditioning unit only three or four times so far, the first time being August 2nd. While the United States bakes and Europe melts, Tokyo is pleasant - a dry heat that is tolerable as long as you stray into the shade. Tsuyu was long and sporatic, but it kept temperatures low.

Speaking of heat, that last blog post is about to hit 150 comments - a new record for neomarxisme. Unfortunately, the actual topic once again got lost within a referendum on this blog and then on its "rival" Momus. My lazy Friday post was neither interesting nor new nor particularly offensive, but things reached some boiling point, and I was instantly called "racist" within the first two comments. After a weekend of seeing missives of spite and bile continuously roll into my Outlook Express, the last thing I wanted to do is open up a new essay and endure the same unproductive flamethrowing.

My paranoid suspicion is these angry few aim to make me not want to blog at all, and I will admit: it works. I do other things besides writing for this site, and I feel like it is a tremendous waste of my time to have the same conversation over and over again about why this blog is not allowed to exist. My best bet is to prevent myself from getting dragged into meta-conversations about biases of the participants.

I also plead with you to realize that this blog should not read as a sole source of information on Japan, but I seriously doubt anybody reads me that way.

I will get back to Dignity of a Nation tonight, and I hope the level of hostility subsides a bit on all sides.

Does the Long Tail Apply to Japan?

The July 2006 issue of Wired had an excerpt from Chris Anderson's book The Long Tail called "The Rise and Fall of the Hit." In recent years, sales for "blockbuster" movies and "hit" songs have been in decline. Smash-hit TV shows like American Idol cannot hold a candle to The Cosby Show. Anderson sees cannibalization as the primary cause: there has been a massive increase in niche media alternatives which eat into the sales of mainstream, mass-market items. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 created 700 FM stations, and this fragmentation sent shrapnel into the big boys. Cable is killing network TV. Internet values of personal-tailoring hurts the idea of "broadcasting."

This all makes perfect sense, and just across the sea, Japan is suffering from a similar host of symptoms. Media markets have all being shrinking since the late 90s, CDs almost never break the 1 million mark, and hits lack a cultural importance they once did: Orange Range is no Pink Lady.

Of course then, similar structural forces are at work? Not really.

The first point of contention is the fact that Japan has not seen a dramatic increase in alternate content. Cable diffusion is still low, and nary a non-basic channel has scored a real hit on the scale of The Sopranos, Sex and the City, South Park, and Battlestar Galactica. Second, a lot of the technological change has not had a big impact on information diffusion. Radio is as marginal in Japan as it has ever been. Anderson sees the iPod as a direct competitor to radio in American daily car commutes, but in Japan, the iPod replaces the MD player - used mainly by those on foot and train. This does not lead to a substantial change in habits.

Third, despite cheap and widely-available broadband, there seems to be no indication that the internet is giving rise to a large amount of "culture" in Japan. Think about the Japanese YouTube boom of recent months: for the most part, Japanese fans are uploading pre-recorded pieces from mainstream TV and posting them for archival purposes. This is a great service to the world and tends to create new memes, but the content itself is just a re-arranged version of Big Network programming. Where is your Homestar Runner or Ask a Ninja or Yacht Rock? Not that these are giving Lost a run for their money, but they perfectly illustrate the new "water cooler" content you may chat to your peers about.

Anderson writes, "The hierarchy of attention has inverted - credibility now rises from below." This seems to be a culturally-contingent idea. Americans are open to the idea of credibility collected from grassroots, democratic action in a way that the Japanese are not. I see this as related to Confucian ideas of propriety, but regardless, young Japanese consumers need their cultural items to have a legitimacy that can only be bestowed from above. It is not just that they saw a song on the primetime TV show Music Station and decided they like it: transmission through that institution makes it a "safe" purchase. This goes hand-in-hand with an extremely closed entertainment industry where one megalithic advertising firm works with a half-dozen shady talent agencies to create nationwide cross-media campaigns and anoint stars through sheer force. Lightsaber kid has no chance against this kind of monster - unless he signs up with Burning Production.

Japan's cultural industry meltdown is better explained by a sharp decrease of youth consumers with discretionary income - something that does not seem to plague the United States. Right now, Japan sees smaller market hits but those items that hit are still being widely regarded as "the most important" - a phenomenon I call "the Leftover Plurality. Johnny's Jimusho boy idols like Kat-tun seem to be big time players these days even though their sales for that genre are essentially the same as ever. The rest of the market has just fallen under their toes.

Anderson sees American consumers as having "internalized the bookkeeping of entertainment risk capital" - supporting market winners and assigning cultural importance by sales. In Japan - especially the music market - this has always been true, and the decrease in sales means more and more items drifting below that arbitrary "threshold" of sales that represents a necessary level of "social acceptance" for safe purchase. A lack of safe items means congregation in big ticket champions with easily-understood social meanings, Louis Vuitton being your perfect example.

Technological progress will help niche culture flourish in Japan, but the system's traditional orientation towards using the market as a way to validate social propriety should fundamentally marginalize anything not coming out of the TV box. The Long Tail depends upon legitimacy from below and this is not the most natural concept to Japanese culture.

The Excitement of Shuukanshi Irrelevancy

On my Tuesday night commute home, I spied an advert for the newest issue of weekly magazine Shuukan Bunshun. The mag promised five stories on the Kameda fight controversy, including dirt on the Korean judge, an interview with the losing fighter, and explorations into the "dark" figures assisting the father. I immediately picked up the issue the following morning and gave it a read on the Ginza line.

Talk about complete and utter letdown! Bunshun offered nothing new to anyone who had been following the story on the internet, and moreover, would not even name the yakuza boss in Kameda's support organization. He is listed merely as "ある広域指定暴力団の幹部" - "a leader for an organized crime group with control over a specified large area." Any third-rate website will give you his name, a link to his wikipedia page, and pictures of him with the young fighter.

Conversely, however, this lame showing is a very exciting development. Shuukanshi used to be the vital leak in a tightly controlled information system. They managed to break the Lockheed scandal in the early 70s and bring down the Tanaka government in a time when the newspaper reporters all knew about the bribery but refused to inform the public. But now, these once valiant gossip rags are total wusses compared to the irresponsible, amoral tidal wave of free information on the internet, crashing over evil-doers and drowning them in the 21st century.

Access to information is no longer a barrier in Japan, meaning that we are less dependent upon the ethical leanings of the mass media. The remaining issue is legitimacy. Although not as trustworthy as newspapers, the shuukanshi are legitimate publications. The internet has yet to win credibility, but the visibility of Kikko's blog suggests that legitimacy may be just around the corner. What has been interesting for the last two years is the social contract between the mainstream gossip mags and anarchic cesspools like 2-ch. The internet chatter provides the leads, and the editors get to breach taboo topics as if they are just reporting on "voices from the street."

I hope Shuukan Bunshun can follow the Kameda story, use their institutional know-how, ask the right questions, and come to more solid conclusions. But if you are looking for raw data, dangerous claims, and anonymous knights of valor, save your 350 JPY and buy a mouse.

Happy Anti-Russia Day

What did you get your significant other for Anti-Russia Day (反ロシアデー)?

I had completely forgotten that ARD was upon us, but the nice people from the Dainippon Aikokutou (Greater Japan Patriot Party) rolled by the office in soundtrucks this morning and spread the word across the entire Akasaka area. Apparently, this day maligns the illegal dissolution of the Soviet-Japan Neutrality Pact and the Soviet army's entry into Japan on Aug. 9, 1945. The stalwart uyoku behind the aforementioned political group sanctified this day so we would never forget about the unethical Soviet transgressions. (Also on Aug. 9th: Nagasaki was bombed, but this doesn't seem to bother the radical right in the same way.)

Before the Soviet Union collapsed, the day was called "反ソデー" but now it's ”反ロデー." Technically, Russia and Japan are still at war even though the Communists have been out of business just as long as Pan Am has.

I think I will celebrate this year's ARD by programming an 8-bit boxing game and calling one of the villians Vodka Drunkenski. If you are going to drink vodka tonics tonight, choose Grey Goose and its innovative use of artificial luxury pricing over Stoli and its Kuril island-stealing tang.

Japanese Magazine Stats

The Boys:
Boon (streetwear): 1997 (1st half) - 563,924; 2005 (2nd half) - 49,090
relax (street culture): 2001 (2nd half) - 46,239; 2005 (2nd half) - 19,982

The Girls:
nonno (general fashion): 1995 (2nd half) - 898,771; 2005 (2nd half) - 324,736
Can Cam (OL fashion): 2001 (1st half) - 320,135; 2005 (2nd half) - 594,499

The magazine market peaked in what year? 1996!

(Courtesy of the ABC)

Further Kameda Conspiracy Theories from Encyclopedia Brown

* A friend had ramen in some shop in Yamanashi, and the boxing-obsessed owner went on a diatribe about the terrible Kameda decision. According to this particular piece of hearsay, the Korean judge was paid off, and the Kameda victory was meant as birthday present to Hanabusa Gorou - a member of the Yamaguchi-gumi, head of the "All Japan Youth Health Training Association" and a vocal supporter of the Kameda brothers. Why have a title fight on a Wednesday night, asks this site? Well, Hanabusa's birthday is August 2nd.

* Someone close to me almost took a job at TBS a couple of weeks ago. The news station was desperately searching for staff to fill out their "complaint call handling department." Good they were hiring because TBS got 60,000 complaints right after the fight.

「国家の品格」, Chapter 4: Japan - the Nation of Sensitivity and Form

All right, class. Back to your seats. Open up your copy of Fujiwara to page 95.

The last three chapters have seen the author launching a concerted critical attack upon what he sees as Western institutions forced upon Japanese society: democracy, English, capitalism, promotion based on merit, political correctness. In Chapter 4, we finally begin to hear his arguments for the superiority of the Japanese alternatives.

His initial reasoning, however, never goes beyond pronouncements of Japanese excellence in artistic sensitivity and craft. This makes the chapter difficult to criticize or thoroughly analyze - seeing that his focus so far has been objectively judging specific institutions and systems on their merits and demerits (ironically, a rationalist pursuit). Artistic sensitivity is a harder concept to gauge, as it has no points of measurement nor defined goals.

Fujiwara sees the Japanese having a delicate sensitivity towards nature, a tendency to make normal activities (writing, drinking tea, flowers) into aesthetic exercises within long artistic traditions, a special attention to transience and the melancholy parts of life (もののあわれ), and a unique concept of hometown nostalgia. All of these are crucial to Japanese aesthetics, and inarguably, "good" things. Perhaps they are not as unique to Japan as Fujiwara would like to assert, but definitely more pronounced within the Japanese tradition when compared to other cultures. As part of this argument, Fujiwara again repeats the baffling yet well-held belief that Japan is unique in having four distinct seasons (is the American South the one other exception or am I also unique?), but we will at least give Japan credit for making this environmental phenomena a large framework for its productive output.

The author, however, is not content to just state his love of Japanese aesthetics from a personal standpoint. Fujiwara employs those with greatest authority of them all: foreigners. Right off the bat, he quotes the diary of Katherine Sansom - a British woman who lived in Japan in the late 20s - for choice quotes about the superiority of Japanese aesthetics. As much as Fujiwara loves Mt. Fuji, he is "happy" to also read a foreign woman write, "Fuji is a dream, a poem, and inspiration. My heart stopped upon seeing it for the first time in ages." But it isn't just Samsom: on Japan gardens, "Most of the foreigners who have stayed in Japan for a long time and written a diary give high praise to the same thing." Later in the section about mono no aware, Fujiwara brings up Donald Keene's expert opinion that it is "a sensitivity unique to the Japanese."

I don't mean to damn Fujiwara for using foreign voices, but why even trust these suspect foreigners who lack the inherent artistic sensitivity native to the Japanese populace? Westerns make an appearance later as "not getting" haiku, and India guest stars as a physical space in which haikus cannot be composed. Sure Americans have cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C., but to Americans, they just say things like "Oh, wonderful" or "Oh, beautiful" and see them as things to be viewed. According to Fujiwara, in America "there are no men of leisure who take in the beauty in deep breaths, as a reflection on our fleeting lives."

Towards the end, Fujiwara ties Japanese aesthetics and emotions into issues of patriotism. He has his own concept of "four loves" - love of family, love of hometown, love of country, and love of human - and sees this as a progressive order with no possible leapfrogging. On this note, "If I ran into a guy from Ghana who hated Ghana, I would knock him down. If there was a Korean who did not love Korea, I would send him flying. Even if I didn't knock him down, I would never be friends with anyone even a little like that." In other words, everyone must love their home nations.

A lot of Japanese may believe that "patriotism" (祖国愛) led to World War II, but to Fujiwara, "It's the total opposite. It's those who have no love of their country who start wars." I can definitely understand a certain twist of this logic: those who protest their country's actions in defense of its fundamental principles. If Bush loved America a little more, he probably would not have invaded Iraq. Fujiwara, however, thinks "nationalism" is not something the common man should get mixed up with - it is strictly an important disposition for politicians! "If politicians and bureaucrats and those people who interact with the world as representatives of Japan do not naturally embrace nationalism to a certain degree, we are in trouble." I am not sure this makes me feel any better about Abe.

For Wednesday, read Chapter 5 and write a 200 word essay on the indigenous content of bushido.

Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

On Wednesday night, Kameda Koki won the WBA light flyweight belt in Yokohama on a 2-1 judges decision. A brief glance at the morning papers, Yahoo! polls, and blogs, and it appears that basically every single Japanese person believes the fight was a fix. Kikko received 13755 emails out of 13767 stating that Kameda lost.

His defeat has become such an obvious fact that the dialogue has shifted towards the sources of bribery. Was it TBS who bribed the judges for ratings? Was it the boxing association in order to crown a new star and raise viewer involvement? Is there a web of intrigue between the fight's pachinko sponsor, the Korean peninsula, and the Korean judge who ended up giving the match to Kameda?

Professional fighting - whether pro wrestling, Pride, and K-1 - is well-known to be mob-linked and tends to emphasize the entertainment spectacle over authentic sportsmanship. Everyone loved Rikidozan - and maybe no one had any idea that all his fights were fixed at the time. But Rikidozan actually looked like he won! The Kameda fix was so poorly played off: the concept was eerily similar to the Rikidozan model - bringing familes together again to watch Japanese fighters battle the world on their home TVs - but they left too much to athletic realities. Kameda could not keep up his side of the bargain by actually appearing to win. And it is a lot to ask of a viewing public hot off the Olympics and the World Cup - true battles based on international standards - to go back to the hybrid fantasy-sports sagas of the past. Instead of crowning a new king by silent sinister manipulation, they ended up pulling out the big guns and sinking the ship.

Thirty years ago, an obvious fix may have led to small grumbles on commuter trains and in office cubicles, but now the suspicious can go online and find thousands of others with the same doubt. No matter if TBS can align their subsidiary publications to their side of the story: this controversy will rage in the online world. The sports papers and shukanshi will add fuel to the fire. The mainstream media is powerless to slow down the momentum.

If anything, this episode further rejects the ridiculous notion that the Japanese public - somehow different from their peers around the world - want to be lied to. But it is only when the fix is so clear that the doubts can be aired and indignation is embraced. When things go 15% smoother, the criminals get away with their chicanery and lingering skepticism gets put aside.

A common declaration of the disaffected is, "This is embarrassing for Japan." Fans do not see this as a problem of the boxing federation and its affiliate parties: everyone understands that yaochou and bout-fixing is not acceptable on the world stage.

Odds and Ends from the Japanese Version of the Internet

* Young boxing thug Kameda should have lost last night? Yaochou? The Japanese boxing world is rigged? Has nothing changed since the days of Rikidozan? Say it ain't so, Kikko! ("I want an honest confession from the judges about how many millions of yen they received in bribes from TBS.")
* I found a Japanese hatena page linking to my "ダーリンは愛国人" post on future Prime Minister Abe Shinzo in which the writer proclaims that this must be some sort of negative campaign, but the commenters are all childish idiots (お子様っぽい、頭悪そう). Now we know that discussing Abe's hair only further bolsters the right-wing. Be more careful in the future.
* This 2-ch thread on anti-Japanese statements in the foreign media picks at my article on Japanese war guilt as "lines from the typical Japanese leftist script = ignorant Western historical view." The person also disapproves of my calling Japan a Confucian bureaucracy. (Confucianism is Chinese, you lamestain!)

Update 8/11/06: Feedback loop as 2-ch folk find that I linked back to them. Now they are posting my biographical details. Apparently, I "look like an arab."

Kiiiiiii DVD Gold & Silver Begins International Orders

Kiiiiiii's fantastic DVD-debut Gold & Silver is now available for international orders through PayPal.

For those who doubt the magic of this region-free visual masterpiece, here is a teaser trailer on YouTube. (Thanks, LanceAwesome!)

(Disclaimer: no record companies, publishing companies, or management offices were employed in the production of this DVD.)