neomarxisme

Fuji TV show "Stamen" recently profiled a "female game otaku" Urakawa Kana who is a "normal OL" (at a "game-related company") but plays Street Fighter II like a pro. Turns out Urakawa is actually an employee at Capcom - the creator of such games as Street Fighter II. This is like if "Sam Withers, the Corporate CEO who likes to host S&M parties on the weekend" happened to be the head of a company called Marquis de Sade, Inc.

The television clip is available here.

My guess it that the program was trying to create a "otajo" (otaku female) subculture, setting the scene with the breakthrough crossover of good-girl lifestyle magazine Hanako's "Akiba-kei" issue. This revelation kind of puts doubt on whether there are a million everyday Can Cam OLs out there who collect figures and are secretly dressed like Fujiko under their beige uniforms. Is it just me or is all Japanese media now solely dedicated to creating the fantasy that Japanese otaku have a chance to be loved by beautiful women who understand their passion?

1) I never really saw this picked up anywhere else, so I wanted to bring it up here: on January 30th Freakonomics author Steven Levitt wrote on his Freakonomics blog about the recent allegations that yokozuna Asashoryu has been rigging his matches. He claims that every time sumo cheating claims actual make it into the Japanese media, it's when there's a foreign sumo wrestler to blame. His statistical evidence, however, shows that Japanese wrestlers are just as likely to cheat as their foreign counterparts. Also, note that the Japanese translation of Freakonomics sold rather well in Japan, but almost no one in the Japanese media reopened a look at sumo rigging based on their conclusive statistical analysis.

2) Every other Japan blog on Earth is frothing and frolicking over the Foreign Crime File mook. The most widely quoted caption eloquently laments, "Hey nigger!! Get your fucking hands off that Japanese lady’s ass!!" Editor Saka Shigeki (is that his real name or an awesome nickname [shigeki can mean "shock or stimulus"]?) quoted in a Reuters article shrugs the controversy off: the "n-word" is not offensive in Japan. I thought for a minute he was confusing the highly-offensive "nigger" with the re-appropriated and possibly-friendly-in-the-right-context "nigga," but the mook's caption adds a ー to the "ニガ" and loses all the possibilities of hiding behind clumsy use of hip hop lingo. Also, when you yell at others for totally legal behavior and identify the "perpetrator" by his racial profile, the word choice does not really abate the fundamental vileness.

Note that the mook publisher Eichi is also the long-time publisher of canonical schoolgirl lust magazine Beppin School. I have been trying to make the case for a long time that these two topics come from a certain holistic philosophical outlook, but maybe their American TV magazine is just for the $$$. Or what are they trying to say about Knight Rider? One more small chance at "coincidence": the company registered for imouto.tv in the WHOIS profile is "Eichi" although the address is different than the publisher.

3) Our favorite mainstream Japanese jingoistic T&A magazine Weekly Pureboi is once again crossing over child-semi-porn into the grownup porn market. Not content to just publish the breasty 12 year-old Saaya Irie's photobook, they now offer a look at the "best six" U-14 Next Generation Junior Idols in "very tight bikinis" (ぴちぴちビキニ). Click here to see the train advertisement for the issue.

The March 2007 issue of Nikkei Entertainment has a two-page article entitled "In Light of Court-related Problems, Music Fans' Debate Has Become White-Hot: We Test the 'Accuracy of Oricon.'" (『裁判問題で音楽ファンの議論が白熱「オリコンチャートの正しさ」を検証』) The Oricon suit against freelance writer Ugaya Hiro for publicly questioning the Oricon methodology (as an individual quoted in an article rather than the article's writer) is gaining some widespread recognition - despite the fact that the mainstream media has almost completely refused to report on this landmark media-rights case. Nikkei takes up the story by very objectively and impartially comparing Soundscan and Oricon Japanese music industry data from the year 2006.

Nikkei first admits that both charts are not "100% accurate." Unlike Soundscan in the United States - which has an estimated 90-95% reach to the sales data of all American record stores - both Oricon and Soundscan have much weaker penetration. This means they are forced to use statistical sampling based on their limited store data to extrapolate "national results." In the case of Soundscan Japan, however, the company openly admits that their data is based solely on POS (point-of-sale) data from scanning barcodes at stores. Oricon, for the most part, keeps their exact methodology secret, and according to Nikkei, the company still uses faxes from small record stores to receive information when POS systems are not available. They also count CDs sold at live performance venues and include internet sales.

While both numbers are not "precise," the differences in results suggest serious methodological differences. Nikkei writes that "Johnny's Jimusho groups, Morning Musume, Orange Range, and other idol-like artists" usually show more copies on Oricon than on Soundscan. Soundscan favors rock bands and indie bands. More importantly, Oricon often under-reports artists in a systemic way - suggesting that Oricon and Soundscan are weighing different data rather than Oricon working with more data than Soundscan.

Without verging into sensational territory, Nikkei actually provides proof to the claims in the original, controversial Cyzo article that Oricon gives "VIP treatment" to Johnny's Jimusho. Twice in 2006, Johnny's artists won the "Number One" spot on Oricon while being #2 on Soundscan. For the week of February 12, 2006, TOKIO's "Mr. Travelling Man" beat out Janne Da Arc's "Turning Back" on Oricon, while losing by 20,000 copies on Soundscan. Then on July 2, 2006, Kinki Kids side-project Endlicheri Endlicher beat out a Pornograffiti song on Oricon by a mere 893 copies to take #1. On Soundscan, Pornograffiti defeated Endlicheri by 16,000 copies. These are not small margins of error - more like 20%-30% increases.

The gaps may be simple sampling issues, but Oricon's insistence on using non-POS data makes it much more open to suspicion. Before using Soundscan, Billboard charts were always targets of complaints that record companies could tamper with the data collection and/or pay for position. Oricon faces the same critical voices now, although Oricon dismisses these claims. When Billboard switched over to POS data, they were able to silence doubters by creating a closed objective system that was ostensibly tamper-proof. (Actually, many distributors and wholesalers protested to Billboard about the change to Soundscan because they had relied on the "human touch" of the old system to allow more beneficial "adjustments" of the numbers.) Nikkei admits that Oricon's non-POS data collection methods are possibly open to human error and or intentional record company fraud.

Nikkei explains the Johnny's advantage on Oricon by the number of CDs possibly sold at live events, but without knowing how this data is relayed to Oricon, it is impossible to know if these sales reports can be truly verified. If Johnny's said they sold 20,000 CDs at live events, how would Oricon check that number? Also, wouldn't most Johnny's Jimusho event-goers already own the CDs of the artist?

Taking a politically-mild stance, Nikkei ends the article saying that Oricon is the "chart provider" and Soundscan is the "data provider" for the Japanese record industry. This much is for sure: if Oricon had not sued Ugaya, Nikkei certainly would not have conducted this research nor published this article. Although not damning nor muckraking, Nikkei's article definitely widens the debate by giving credence to dissatisfaction with the secret Oricon methodology.

Update on Ugaya Trial: Ugaya and his lawyers have filed a countersuit against Oricon for intimidation, economic bullying, and illegal abuse of the court system, asking for 110 million JPY in damages. The trial against Ugaya starts next Tuesday. Often this "countersuit" strategy leads to mediation and eventual forced-withdrawal of both suits. In their last free-speech trial against the Takefuji consumer credit company, however, Ugaya's lawyers were able to get the original suit dropped and eventually won their countersuit against the company.

In just 160 pages of their new book The Fables of the Keiretsu, Tokyo University economics professor Yoshiro Miwa and Harvard Law School professor J. Mark Ramseyer manage to raise doubts about almost all conventional wisdom regarding the structure of the Japanese economy. A summary of their arguments in Q&A form:

Are Japanese firms organized into informal industrial groups called keiretsu?

Keirestu have never existed, and the concept was invented by Marxists at the Economic Research Institute who wanted to identify a source of "monopoly capital" for the Japanese market.

Do firms in keiretsu arrangements cross-hold other firms stocks, therefore allowing them to pressure each other towards beneficial relationships?

Not really.

Was the pre-war economy controlled by zaibatsu financial cliques?

These firms were only deemed "zaibatsu" because they were successful in the market when other companies were struggling through the Depression.

Do Japanese firms have a "main bank" which will rescue struggling companies even without the explicit contracts to do so?

There is no such thing as a "main bank," and banks do not automatically bail out their clients.

Is the Japanese economy directed by the soft authoritarian guidance of the central bureaucracy (especially MITI)?

Japanese firms ignore MITI's direction, and the courts back these firms up when the bureaucracy gets decides to press.

For the most part, Miwa and Ramseyer supply an abundance of data and objective measures to show that the Japanese economy has never really operated in the "unique" way depicted by fifty years of mainstream scholarship in both Japan and abroad. In the case of keiretsu, they make a very strong case that the characteristic cross-shareholding is actually very rare, the so-called "lunch clubs" are rarely used for group decision-making, and most parts suppliers working under automobile companies make products for a large number of different rivals - not just their supposed keiretsu "parent." The authors re-analyze the Sumitomo Metals case study - which is supposed to show that MITI punished Sumitomo for refusing to enter into a production cartel. Instead they find that not only did Sumitomo freely challenge MITI's guidance but got away with it scotch-free.

I find Miwa and Ramseyer's arguments convincing for the most part, but as someone previously partial to the idea of the Japanese economy being a "developmental state" model rather than a complete "free market," I would like to see a heavyweight on the other side of the fence argue the opposing view. They are most certainly right about the narrow topics they picked up, but perhaps end up overselling their bigger conclusions. Instead of just correcting the record, they are obsessed with aggressively belittling a certain kind of cultural relativistic economic view where Japanese firms "sacrifice profits for the sake of cultural norms" etc. Chalmers Johnson's theories on MITI guiding the Japanese economy could maybe benefit from more attention to hard data, but Miwa and Ramseyer seem less interested in dealing with scholars like Johnson and instead channel their wrath towards a more extreme and less existent animal:

"East is east, and west is west, and never the twain shall meet, till earth and sky stand presently at God's great judgement seat." As politically incorrect as Sylvester "Rambo" Stallone and Mae "Peal-Me-a-Grape" West, Kipling nonetheless remained a cultural relativist to the end. Dumb down his verse six levels and it captures most of what passes for "theory" among modern cultural relativists and much of what passes for analaysis about Japan. And stripped of their political baggage, the modern cultural relativist and the old-school colonialists like Kipling fascinate for the same reason: they indulge our lust for the exotic and free us from the rules of social science (156).

The authors' main methodological advice is praiseworthy: economic theories about certain institutional systems need to incorporate inductive data and match behavior to pre-existing universal understanding before assigning behavioral choices to the black box of "culture." That being said, Miwa and Ramseyer show little interest in acknowledging the much bigger question that emerges in light of their refreshed view: aren't there many places in the Japanese economic and consumer structures that are drastically different than what is seen in the other mature capitalist economies? Maybe MITI does not totally control industrial policy in Japan, but did the American government ever proclaim that there should be only two car companies and that they would not assist new entrants? Honda, of course, ended up ignoring MITI's warnings about manufacturing cars and went on to unbridled success. But I think it still says something about the nature of the Japanese government that it believes it has the power to shape the industrial marketplace, to allow cartels, to barely prosecute monopolies and oligopolies. This could be a product of historical circumstances (rebuilding after a war, late development, etc.), idiosyncratic decision-making, or ingrained cultural traditions, but Miwa and Ramseyer leave themselves open for attack by failing to mention that there are differences and points of divergence.

The authors maintain that economic actors tend to follow the same logic all over the world, but if we accept this on general terms, it means that differences in output must thus depend on particular market arrangements. On this blog, I have made claims in this vein: for example, Japanese pop music sounds like it does because of the dominance of oligopolistic artist management companies like Johnny's Jimusho that continually use their market power to crush rivals and keep tastes stable. Johnny's behavior is no different than firms in the West, but American music companies, for example, never achieved the same kind of economic power over the media to be able to sustain such actions. What I want to know after reading The Fable of the Keiretsu is, what are the structures of the economy, the government decisions, the particular historical circumstances that are different than what are seen all over the world? Even if keiretsu do not exist, why do you see so much tolerance and/or esteem for monopoly and centralization? This may not be "Confucian," but the sources of these kinds of macro behavior still need to be clarified.

So yes, let us clear the deadweight of myth and the laziness of evoking deep-seeded cultural voodoo. But once we have gone back to the data and put our knees on the ground, we then still have to ask, why and how is a set of universal reactions being shaped and altered to produce a particular result?

Yesterday, February 13, saw the first hearing for the Oricon vs. freelance writer Ugaya Hiro civil trial. Now that Ugaya has countersued Oricon for infringing on his freedom of speech and abusing the legal system, both sides are on the offensive in the courtroom.

According to this OhMyNews article, 78 people lined up for 42 seats, but not a single member of the mainstream media press clubs was in attendance. Whether you think Ugaya had the right to comment or whether he should be expect to pay for the damage to Oricon's reputation, I find it hard to believe that the mainstream media could not find an interesting angle for this story. This is not only a landmark case on the right for companies to sue those quoted in an article - it's "sensational." Oricon is a famous and respected Japanese institution, and questions to its credibility are scandalous - and interesting.

The Asahi Shimbun (Ugaya's old employer) finally got around to reporting the story in a very short article last week, only after Ugaya countersued.

What is frightening is imaging how much information was totally squashed in the past when the mainstream media in Japan decided that it was in their economic and organizational interests not to cover a particular piece of reality. Thanks to internet journalists - and internet journalists alone - a certain portion of the public is now well-aware of this trial. And when you watch news being made and reporters willfully ignore it, you can't help but feel that the Japanese media conglomerates are becoming more and more irrelevant as the years go by.

Nothing really happened in this first hearing. The second hearing is scheduled for April 3. This is going to be a long, drawn-out process. Maybe at some point the archaic Japanese media will report on the trial and stop worrying so much about their conglomerate's media companies' relations with Oricon and/or Johnny's Jimusho. Maybe not.

Everyone is talking about Barack Obama, and nobody is talking about Obama (小浜) in Fukui-ken. What gives?

The March 2007 issue of Nikkei Entertainment! playfully warns that "Black Ships" - a reference to American Commodore Matthew Perry's 1853 opening of Japan - have arrived in the Japanese gravure (gurabia) bikini model world. Out of nowhere, a foreign model has stepped foot on sacred soil to displace the pre-existing domestic army of half-naked gals to win the hearts of hard-working Japanese men. In just the last few months, Leah Dizon has gone from the fringes of the industry to the becoming a ubiquitous face on the subway ads for weekly magazines.

Dizon - half-Caucasian/half-Filipino-Chinese - had been working as a relatively-unknown and slightly-naughty model back in the West Coast car circuit before somewhat miraculously being picked up by the Japanese talent complex and thrust into stardom. She is neither Japanese by blood nor speaks the local language, and her success proves that such properties were never actually necessary to fit into the plastic fantastic world of selling visual fantasy to the male of the species. She's a Weekly Playboy regular now, and Japan's nerds started salivating once they realized she looks quite similar to Maetel from Galaxy Express 999.

Dizon's cross-cultural journey gives a rare chance to peer into the differences in sexual-aesthetic between the two sides of the Pacific. She has gone from looking like a throbbing orb of aggressive sexuality to a demure and well-groomed model out of Can Cam.

Dizon's handlers appear to have tailored her public image to attract female fans as well as male (check out her ridiculous nail art and trademark Japanese girl cross-hand pose in the aforementioned Nikkei Entertainment! if you have a chance), but we should not assume that she has been "cleaned up" at the expense of male tastes. My contacts in the female fashion trade have argued that Japanese women need to maintain a certain amount of "class" and moderation in order to attract Japanese men. Over-sexualized fashion in Japan is strictly for "unattractive" women to feel good about themselves - not to reel in men.

In such an environment, Dizon's American persona and images are way too aggressive as a female product in the Japanese market. She first must become cute and adorable in a slightly infantile way to establish a non-threatening demeanor. Only then can she show off some skin. Otherwise her curves and sinister smile are an attack on non-confident male sexuality rather than a reward for it.

Here again we come to the psycho-sexual underpinnings of American and Japanese porn. American men appear to want women who echo their own hawkish and callous approach to casual sex. Japanese men are interested in reluctance rather than a predictable submission. Sex in Japan should be a sphere in which the man is the only warrior - where the hawk devours the dove.

So, Leah Dizon becomes the dove next door whose clothes accidentally fall off once and a while.

The uyoku right-wing soundtruck today is blaring out messages in Mandarin Chinese.

Here are three clips of Japanese female idol singers from the 60s and 70s. The first is Hirota Mieko's debut single 「子供じゃないの」 - a cover of Helen Shapiro's "Don't Treat Me Like a Child." Note that she is only 14, but sounds like she is about 40.

The second is Hirota Mieko at age 18 on Japanese TV. The third is Yamaguchi Momoe at age 14 singing 「禁じられた遊び」- her third single.

We have recently talked about the infantile sexuality of recent low-teen idols. These clips suggest that the 60s and 70s was more about young women acting like adults as soon as possible - don't treat me like a child.

Which is the real lolita complex - idolizing young women as adult sexual objects or idolizing young women as childish sexual objects?

Sorry to get all nostalgic, but this is absolutely my favorite skit from the SNL years with Eddie Murphy. Thanks to YouTube, I finally get a chance to see it again.

The uyoku right-wing soundtrucks this evening are blaring out "Stars and Stripes Forever" and also, a rousing instrumental of "The Star-Spangled Banner."

When did these thugs get so into irony?

The members of JAME - the Japanese Association of Music Enterprises - have taken out a very expensive banner advertisement in the subways (or at least, the Ginza Line) screaming out 「私たち、本気です。」 with the furigana above indicating that 本気 (honki) should be read as the more youthful maji. In other words, "We are like, totally serious."

What are these dozens of artist management companies totally serious about? Infringement on their "portrait rights" (肖像権). You see, the portrait rights are not only a "personal right" (人格権) but also a "property right" (財産権). "Portrait publicity rights" (肖像パブリシティ権) are a big part of the entertainment industry's profit structure, and although there are no laws specifically protecting these rights, the courts have ruled in the management companies (jimusho)'s favor over the years. These rights mean that I can't just throw a picture of Amuro Namie on my candy bars to help sell them in the market.

Now I appreciate the lesson in rights law, and most of this is pretty common sense. So what I don't quite understand is, who is JAME targeting with this serious plea for a curb in portrait right infringement?

In the general introduction to portrait rights on the JAME site, they write:

Have you ever been eating with your friend at a restaurant or walking with your girlfriend/boyfriend in the park, and out of nowhere, someone you don't know takes your picture without approval? Or, have you ever looked at a magazine and been shocked to see a picture of yourself there in a bikini walking on the beach that you did not give permission for?

The rights you can assert so that your picture is not taken without permission or used in public without permission are called "portrait rights."

This avenue of explanation makes me guess that the entertainment companies are not happy about paparazzi. In the past, portrait rights have been a serious vehicle for management companies to control the media. If someone wants to run a story on Johnny's Jimusho and use pictures of their talent - even press stills or CD covers - they have to have permission from Johnny's. This gives the management side a lot of leverage to which media conglomerates they lend images. If a scandal rag from one part of the company runs some unflattering stories, their young female fashion magazine is out of luck next time it wants to do even a tangential story on NEWS or Arashi. When FRIDAY reported on the blooming romance between 40 year-old divorcee Koizumi Kyoko and 20 year-old Johnny's talent Kamenashi Kazuya, portrait rights came into play as both companies from the jimusho side would not allow the magazine to use the paparazzi shots of the couple together. Instead the magazine compromised on using stock photos of the two separately (which surprised many that even these photos were granted.)

That particular case seems to suggest that even if paparazzi capture shots of celebrities out on the town - which could be considered journalistic use, I am guessing - the management company has economic leverage to stop their publication. Where this leverage totally goes away, however, is on the internet. Bloggers, for example, are individuals with no organizational ties and no co-economic dependence with the jimushos. This means they can exercise their freedom of speech and fair usage of paparazzi shots without much retribution. The internet is the management companies' worse nightmare: you can go out of your way to create glorious backstories of the Kano Sisters and some nobody (in pajamas, probably!) is going to go around the mass media and divulge their real names and the fact that one was married to an owner of a no-panty coffee shop for 17 years.

The other irony, of course, is that JAME claims that these "portrait rights" are a "personal right" (人格権) that protect personal profit, but talents in these agencies routinely transfer all rights - including copyrights and publishing rights - to the management company. That means when you snap a picture of Koda Kumi gorging on a double-fudge sundae, you are not exactly infringing on her rights as much as her rights manager - Avex.

Without a specific enemy pointed out on the poster, however, I have to guess that internet chaos is their greatest fear. Scientifically speaking, we know that photography steals the subject's soul. Let's leave the soul stealing to the management companies, OK?

An interesting tidbit from Eiji Oguma's A Genealogy of 'Japanese' Self-Images (translated by David Askew):

Furuhata Tanemoto, a professor at Kanazawa Medical University and later at Tokyo Imperial University,... his speciality was medical jurisprudence and blood types, and he triggered the postwar boom in the latter, writing a book aimed at a general readership. Blood types became the focus of attention for the eugencic theorists of that period in both Japan and Europe. An examination of the issues of Minzoku eisei (Racial Hygiene) and Yuuseigaku (Eugenics) published in the first half of the 1930s shows that a great deal of research was carried out on the connection between intelligence and physical abilities on the one hand, and blood type on the other. There were papers on the relationship between temperament and blood type, such as those that argued that individuals with blood type A are delicate, while those with blood type O are bold. The origin of the contemporary theory of blood types which is so popular in Japan today can be seen here.

Within the eugenic school, some argued that each race and nation had a specific distribution ratio of blood types, which was an index of the nation's temperament and of its superiority or inferiority. Furuhata's position was that the Japanese nation had a unique distribution ratio of blood types different from that of neighbouring nations, and that, to whatever degree mixture had taken place in ancient times, 'the Japanese nation is a superior, great family nation created in the Japanese islands and presided over by the unbroken line of Emperors, and the only homeland of the Japanese nation is the Japanese islands.' (226)

By the way, I am AB+.

At Rip Slyme headquarters...

Pes: Yo, yo, yo. 'Sup, 'sup, 'sup.
Su: What?
Pes: Sorry. I mean, hey, can I have your attention everybody? Fumiya - stop sampling for a minute. We need to plan out the video for our brand new single "I.N.G."
Fumiya: Wait, I thought we decided on a different name.
Pes: Ryo-Z thought it would be cooler if we named it after the Internationale Nederlanden Group insurance company.
Ryo-Z: Yo, I said AFLAC. No wait you said AFLAC. I said I.N.G.
Pes: That's what I said. Anyway, we need a video.
Ryo-Z: Alright, I got it right here. (Takes bite of comically large sandwich) Get this: we are in suits. We are like advertising executives.
Su: Keep going.
Ryo-Z: We are selling the Sony Vaio computer. They've got all these colored versions now. So the video is us selling pitches for the Sony Vaio campaign, pitching to the old guys across the table. And there's a bunch of cheerleaders.
Pes: I like it. Sony Vaio.
Fumiya: Wait, wait. Sony's never going to go for that. We can't just use their computer without permission.
Ryo-Z: Look, I don't care what it takes, we have to convince those guys to let us use the computer in the video. Record sales are down and if we don't have a hot video, we are never going to make any money.

At Sony Headquarters, Tokyo, Japan. An oriental melody floats through the air. Rip Slyme enters the building and STEP to the reception desk.

Receptionist: (trembling with fear) Ex... Excuse me, we can't let you in without an appointment.
Ryo-Z: We don't care about appointments, lady.
Su: You're fired.

Rip Slyme crash through the doors to the corporate boardroom where the President of Sony and his male Secretary are sitting and drinking brandy. The President removes his monocle and does a double-take. They both move away from the fireplace and step off the polar bear rug.

President: How dare you roustabouts enter in such a ramshackle manner!
Ryo-Z: Listen, Granddad. We want rights to use your Sony Vaio computer in our new music video.
President: Music video?! I wouldn't even know what such a thing would be if it on happenstance existed!
Secretary: Let's hear them out.
Ilmari: Times have changed. The people have spoken - the people in the streets. The streets have spoken. And they have spoken that they want us to use your Sony Vaio computer in our music video. We are inventing a whole new art form - from the streets.
President: I highly doubt your record company would like that! You are not even on Sony! You're on Warner! Humbug!
Ryo-Z: I'll take that as permission granted. (High-fives Pes and winks at Ilmari.)

Rip Slyme exits.

President: I certainly don't think our computer sales will be helped by having such ruffians shill it so crassly upon the television box.
Secretary: I don't know. Maybe I'm crazy, but part of me thinks that this may actually be a good idea. Kids are different now. And maybe for the music business itself to succeed, Rip Slyme need to show their audience that they are up with trends and down with the "hood" - as they are wont to say.
President: You sound like my grandson. Fine. Let them go and use the Vaio. Just know that I am blaming you when our shareholders find out!

I am not sure if you noticed, but I created a bibliography for Néomarxisme on LibraryThing. Now thanks to the joys of social cataloging, you can discover the books I have read that brought me to my current perspectives on Japanese popular culture. I only included books that I have actually read, so now you also know which titles to recommend for me to peruse. Please note that I just now realized how to add Japanese books (the search wasn't working, so you have to use ISBNs), so I will update that list over the next week.

I have briefly described all the books in the memo section and given them a star rating. This gets a bit silly with some of these priceless works of literature and scholarship, but you can use the rating as a way to gauge my overall enthusiasm for the work.

Shukan Gendai has an article this week called "(Super-popular 21st Century Agnes Lum Has a Surprising Secret) Leah Dizon is Actually Fluent in Japanese!?" (人気沸騰“２１世紀のアグネス・ラム”に意外なヒミツ■リア・ディゾン　実は日本語ペラペラ!?)

At first I wanted to write about this as an example of the weekly magazines being a totally unreliable vehicle for news (Leah Dizon is fluent? Yeah, right), but in classic shukanshi style, the headline kind of oversells the actual meat of the article. The writer never claims that Dizon is "fluent" fluent, but does point out a disparity between her on-air Japanese - described as "カタコト" (stilted, talking like a baby) - and her off-the-job Japanese, which apparently is not so bad. In other words, Leah Dizon is intentionally being pushed (by her management?) to bring down her Japanese level in public.

The writer implies there is a need to appear adorable for her legion of otaku fans, and she appeases them through saying things like "オナカスイタ！" (Very, very liberally, "Oh, me so hungry.") Ever since foreigners starting showing up in Japan, many Japanese have been fascinated with the idea of non-Japanese Japanese speakers. Apparently, Tokugawa Ieyasu got a big kick out of making British wash-up William Adams repeat Japanese phrases. Even when the barbarians put in an effort, the locals did not always respond positively. John Nathan claims in his book Japan Unbound that in the early 60s he would speak to people on the street in relatively fluent Japanese and they would ask for a translator.

These days, society seems more accepting and comfortable with foreign speakers of the language, and Leah Dizon's allegedly-fake katakoto seems less to be about the threat of fluent foreigners and more about constructing an infantile linguistic image to go along with her cleaned-up visual package. This is very similar to Bobby whose ridiculously-complicated, fake "dumb mistakes" helped paint him as the big, jolly African oaf. This latest charge about Dizon fits with this strangely-progressive 21st century conspiracy theme: the media forces foreigners (who are not white men) to speak mangled Japanese for the delight of the public. The underlying criticism seems to suggest that a certain sector wants a naturalization in feelings about foreign speakers of the language. Or maybe it's just a larger extension of the paranoia about TV constantly lying to us (i.e., yarase).

I think that if Leah Dizon gradually starts getting better at the language before our very eyes, that probably wouldn't necessarily damage her persona, but for whatever reason, her handlers are erring on the side of feigned incompetency. Is this some strange form of orientalization - where the (otaku) Japanese male desires the subservient American female who is sexily mute due to language inadequacy? Or do the handlers still think her audience fears the fluent alien? You would think that she would be better at connecting with fans through able use of the local language, but for whatever reason, they are making her play out a different role using a more limited script.

Thanks to the valiant crate-diggers located here¹, there will be hundreds of blog posts around the world exactly the same as this one.² I had always assumed the Daft Punk boys liked to steal little sounds from other records to bring into their amazingly-arranged 21st century pop productions, but I never imagined they were taking entire phrases from other songs. Palms Out Sounds' treasure trove of history destroys a lot of the myths I had unconsciously constructed around the artistry of DP.

Music Related's Trevor exclaims to me, "This is almost as good as them finding Jesus' tomb. That might be more awesome, but this is good too."

I had once believed that their last album was a delicious hoax and poked fun at the repetitiveness of "Robot Rock", but I said to myself, hey, at least that synth sounds amazing. Nice production work, Robots, even if you forgot to add a song. Turns out we have Breakwater and their song "Release the Beast" to thank for the squelchy keytar lines, not Daft Punk. DP just took their song and edited the song out of it (which to be honest, may have been justified.)

Now we can get into a long, boring discussion about the "art" of sampling, but the problem is not the sampling itself, but the fact that most everyone out there believed Daft Punk to be the geniuses behind the arrangements and the genesis of the sounds themselves. Regardless of biting the killer riff of another track, "Harder Better Faster Stronger" does add the world's greatest vocoder arpeggios. They are not hacks. But Santa turned out to be Mom & Dad, and once you know that the DJ is just tweaking EQs with those knobs, you stop giving him credit for the dynamic changes in the music. These superhuman musicians just turned out to be humans after all. (Curtain descends, a smattering of applause and boos.)

My dream scenario, however, is that these songs are actually secret Daft Punk tracks released to create a fictional sampling scandal. I mean "Breakwater" sounds like a great name for a fake band. You could just hide behind post-modernism in your commerce or you could twist it around and play with it new ways. How boring just to sample songs! Daft Punk should make their own songs from scratch, take phrases from those songs, create old-sounding songs by sampling their own phrases, and then feed those hoax tracks to armies of mp3 bloggers hungry for meat. Anything else would be a waste of my time.

¹ - Who read the liner notes to Discovery while the rest of us were dancing.
² - These guys sum it all up with the power of YouTube.