neomarxisme

Remember MiniDisc? The little square-shaped, muddy-sounding, smooth-playing media that made your standard Target-bought Discman feel as if you were walking around town with an ancient turntable. The MiniDisc never caught on in the U.S., but the Japanese still won: companies from that one island in the East controlled the entire portable market. If you wanted to see the edge of available technology in 2000, Biccamera in Shibuya was Consumer Mecca.

Then came the iPod. And within five years, "portable audio" became something that Japanese companies were really bad at.

But even after the iPod debacle, the Japanese and Koreans had one field in which they were absolute masters: the cell phone. Americans were literally forced by Sprint to use three-year old LG models. Guys in New Jersey pulled up friends' numbers on tiny black-and-white screens while guys at the New Otani browsed a mini-version of the web in full color. Maybe the Motorola RAZR sold some phones in Japan, but c'mon: Media Skin, Marc Newson's Talby? Compared to Japan, America looked like a third-world nation in terms of cell-phone standards.

Then came the iPhone.

Now you could argue that the full menagerie of Japanese phones still destroys the American selection or that Japanese phones can do neat things like receive broadcast television signals that the iPhone can't. (Because I know you would never want to miss an episode of Waratte Ii Tomo.) Nevertheless, the iPhone - a single package - leapfrogs everything the Japanese market has to offer - especially considering the excellence of the user interface.

If we were smart, we would see this as the battle between multinational conglomerates instead of nations, but we won't: the iPhone takes a serious bite out of the Japanese gross national cred on advanced cell phones. One product changed everything.

There is a recent Docomo commercial featuring hot actor Eita and some other guy showing off the latest and greatest function on a Docomo phone - get this, better yet, sit down - a motion-detecting boxing video game. Forget watching video libraries of films and TV shows on a wide screen, a wifi-ready internet device, and a revolutionary way to browse media archives, you can play a motion-detecting boxing game on a brand new Docomo phone if you set up your phone in a quiet room and punch near the screen. To be honest, that would have looked pretty cool if the other side of the world had not suddenly erupted with semi-religious technological progress.

(Wait, Marxy, are you considering the fact that Docomo has way more celebrity spokesmen than the iPhone? Fine, I admit it: Dentsu is way better at bringing together large teams of actors and actresses than the TWBA people.)

We can argue over small questions of functionality and design, but the Hype Machine in this Battle for Global Cool isn't concerned with details. If someone asks, what's the single coolest phone in the world today, would someone point to Japan or Korea? What would it take for Japanese phones to retake the title? Motion-detection curling?

From a Fuji TV news program on the Korean pakuri ("rip off") of Japanese products. Lotte was apparently not happy about the coverage.

Forget metaphor, let's just say out loud what I know you are thinking: the defeat of Takeru Kobayashi at the 2007 Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest signals the end of Japanese global dominance.

But how unfair: American Joey Chestnut took the title away from the long-time champion only after stealing eating techniques that Kobayashi invented.

Again, we see the same pattern: the Japanese create original conceptual innovations, and the Americans appropriate these and profit from small incremental innovations upon the Japanese ideas. Kobayashi - coming out of an incredibly creative Japanese education system - invented the "Solomon technique," and now those brain-dead zombies from the United States have stolen it and used their massive advantages in thuggish physique to beat the Genius at his own game. Kobayashi must have been thinking about this when he very literally threw up a little in his own mouth.

First, hot dogs, next steel production. Will karma catch up to Americans or will they be allowed to keep profiting off the innovations of others?

I have been thinking about breasts a lot these days. No, not in a sexual way.

This all started with Hoshino Aki - a horribly annoying ex-young woman who has become a variety TV regular solely because of her enormous breasts. I wrote a whole column for OK Fred on the topic, so I don't want to explicate my tirade here. I can't be so surprised that a no talent, nobody gravia idol had a boob job (the unconvinced can check the not-so-old pictures here and here), but I am royally annoyed that her handlers make such a big deal about her "perfect" breasts and no one bats an eye.

These days, the same thing is happening with the marketing of Fukada Kyoko. In some weird twist of fate, I actually met her back in 1998 via my Kodansha internship. All I remember is that she had terrible skin as a youth, but she has grown out of this in recent years. She also, apparently, grew H-cup-sized breasts while no one was watching. Japanese gossip sites are suddenly required to describe her as "H-cup Fukada Kyoko." In the past, she had just been an actress with an insane addiction to sex. Now she is cup-coded.

Starting any day now, she will be seen each week in the subtly-titled Fuji TV drama Mountain Girl, Wall Girl 「山おんな壁おんあ」. Her mysteriously new H-sized breasts won themselves a starring role as the mountains in "mountain girl." Just in case you did not catch the metaphor, the entire plot of the manga-based series revolves around breast size. Ito Misaki plays a woman with a complex about being a surfboard. From the first two paragraphs of the show's website

Aoyanagi Emi boasts the good-looks of a Paris Collection model. But she's got one single complex: her bust is as flat as a "wall." Emi is an employee of the Marukoshi Department Store. She is in charge of the bag-sales section of the first floor that is seen as the "star of the department store."

One day on her way to work, Emi is swayed in a crowded train and feels big soft breasts against her back. She sees a girl with giant breasts through the reflection in the glass. This is the first time she meets her [Fukada Kyoko's character].

This is Fuji TV prime-time Thursday night show, mind you - not some late-night noir with unrealistic lesbian subplots. Casting this over at R. Sasakawa's Kenon must have been fun: Hey, Ito Misaki, you have tiny breasts! You'd be great in this role.

Now call me cynical, but photographic evidence (even some secret illegal onsen shots) points to Fukada recently "taking up a new set of skills" to fill this role. Either that or famous Japanese women have evolved some amazing ability to grow two or three cup sizes way after the last pangs of puberty. If they could figure out how to bottle this natural genetic power, they could make millions.

Breast augmentation surgery is so common in countries like Korea and the U.S. that the audacious claims of publicists would be a punchline akin to Paris Hilton's "I never did drugs" on Larry King. But in Japan, there is this creepy radio silence about the regularity of plastic surgery. This combines with a general media hesitancy in criticizing celebrities to create an odd situation where everyone has to play along that Fukada Kyoko's breasts are real and that she is "finally going to show us fans in the new show what she has been hiding all these years." As if, all the swimsuit shots from 1997 to 2006 had been conspiratorial work of deceit and lies - suppressing her supple curves from proper viewing.

Although Weekly Playboy-style Patriarchy may not be 100% responsible for Japanese womens' manifold breast-complexes, I am not sure it helps to have these stars secretly gain enormous breasts and then have no real public dialogue about whether such plastic surgery exists. (This reminds me of the fact that Japanese TV also seems to be the only media force uninterested in debunking Uri Geller.) Questions of bodily alterations are relegated to the ghettos of spam-financed internet sites.

Okay, okay, I am too easily outraged by the entire Japanese entertainment world, but if you are going to add bags of plastic to women, don't expect me to bow down to such plastic as miraculous gifts from God. Barry Bonds may hit regrettable home runs with his chemically-induced arm girth, but at least they don't introduce Barry Bonds as the guy with the "Huge Arms."

Reference: Previous Neomarxisme essay on Japanese breast obsession "Magazine Rack"

I did the least Japanese thing ever: I got cable TV.

Through some weird promotions and unclear machinations, I would actually save money by adding cable to my broadband package.

Back at my former residence, I enjoyed watching cable once and a while, eating breakfast over a little MTV, the occasional Shiina Ringo special on Space Shower TV, old dubbed episodes of The Monkees, observing the total deterioration in J-pop on Sony's MOTV video countdowns (no, not "Music Television" but "Music on Television.")

So this was more of a return to cable, rather than a new adventure. A sequel. Just when I thought that I was out, they pull me back in...

I click on Space Shower TV and am greeted by the new Shiina Ringo video. I remember her, but I had completely forgotten that they still make music videos.

As somebody who spent a good chunk of his youth obsessed with Japanese pop music, I have enjoyed the last few years of total and utter market decline because J-pop is now so thoroughly mediocre and bad that you can completely ignore it and not miss anything. No one else is listening, so why should you. There is no pressure to keep up. I mean, do you worry about what's going on in the Professional Bowlers Association?

In the 1990s - uh-oh, that decade again! - Japanese pop music went through a massive renaissance, and even if looking back Kahala Tomomi wasn't exactly the height of creative exploration, J-Pop mattered. Knowing the latest hits was crucial for karaoke. Melodies drifted through the streets of Shibuya. Hit songs could make hit products and vice versa.

The market for recorded music has completely tanked in Japan (much like the U.S.), but the low numbers do not reveal the full story of evaporated influence.

The best-selling star of our era is Koda Kumi - whom I pretty much loathe. But, it's not just me. Tantei File found that Ms. Koda is the celebrity the public most wants to disappear. See what is happening: J-Pop is such a total niche market at this point that the top star can have absolutely no public support and still reign as queen. An Oricon #1 right now is about as impressive as being the best backgammon player in Brevard, North Carolina.

Oddly, however, the main music TV shows - Hey! Hey! Hey! Music Champ and Music Station - still get pretty good ratings. Just no one is going out and buying the songs featured on the show. Crazy, but perhaps consumers are considering these idols and tarento as TV stars and not musicians who deserve to win their hard-earned money. I like Yamada Yu and all, but do I really want to shell out ¥3,000 for her "music."

Since almost nobody in Japan has cable and music videos get very little time on the air, the question is, why even make a music video in Japan? The question seems to only be one of propriety - i.e., because a star artist has a video. You need the clip for the 10 seconds on CDTV's countdown (they still have that show, right?), but that's it.

The music market in Japan works in a very organized way: fans faithfully buy their favorite artists' new releases. Very few songs have slow-building grassroots support or crossover appeal to a wider public. For an established artist whom the public has already made a decision on, a video is not going to attract new fans. No one is going to start listening to the Ulfuls if they aren't already. The music video has become little more than a very expensive version of a fan newsletter - sounding the clarion call for the true believers to buy the single or album out of duty.

With record budgets declining, video quality is declining. With interest in music declining, MTV and Space Shower TV are so desperate for ad sales that they let the labels dictate their programming. This makes for some very poor viewing.

But hey, the good news is that the pop music structure in Japan is so decrepit, corrupt, and meaningless that underground music feels once again... underground. My favorite bands won't ever be on TV, but what would that get them anyway?

Osaka is much nicer than I remember. I regret that I may have fallen prey to the stereotypes of gaudy excess and tacky foods. But within the gravity of the exquisite graf gallery, everything is pleasant and romantic. Although the "Osaka = Chicago" parallel always struck me as forced - basically a way of finding Osaka an American city of its own after Tokyo automatically takes NYC, LA, and DC - the strong stone buildings and patina roofs of the business area around the Tosabori River reminds me of my vague memories of the area of Chicago near the art museum.

Osaka fashion is supposed to be more "individualistic" than Tokyo, but it just seemed to be less obsessive and more subdued than what you see in Edo.

Visited a very neighborhood-y sento (public bathhouse) in Fukushima on Sunday night and was worried that perhaps there was going to be some odd resistance to my foreignness - perhaps enforced discretely in an anti-tattoo policy or something. (I do not have a tattoo. Big surprise.) I found myself, however, bathing with four enormously-fat yakuza thugs who sported massive tattoos of ghost warriors on the entire expanse of their backs. They hogged the baths. I kept clear, but once they went off to the faucets to soap it up (no, they didn't properly clean themselves before getting into the baths - see, "rules" only apply to us katagi), I finally took to the shared facilities. There was a bath with some kind of mild electric current. Unless you like the sensation of your alarm clock falling into the tub, I do not recommend it. This particular sento's proud feature was a "Radon steam bath" which I entered for a few minutes and will regret when I die of some terrible cancer in a few weeks time.

Kobe is fantastic. The "Ijinkan" foreigner district up at the top of the mountain is quite nice. There is an outstanding mosque down the hill a bit, and in its orbit, there are three or four import food stores featuring products that I had long assumed could never be smuggled into Japan. At one location, we wanted to buy a ¥100 pack of coriander, a ¥90 pack of fennel seeds, and a ¥80 pack of Juicy Fruit gum, but the store was completely abandoned for at least 10 minutes. Finally, an Arab gentleman came in and helped us complete our big purchase of the day. When we left, he too walked down the street, again abandoning the store to fate and patient customers.

Down by the river, there was some kind of festival with food stalls from around the world. Not always accurate, but delicious nonetheless. (My "tacos" contained hot dogs, and my "gyro" sandwich was at least 1/2 french fries).

Under the train tracks from Sannomiya to Kobe Station, there are hundreds of little stores and stalls selling various items. The first two or three of these arcades have street wear stores, respectable eyeglass vendors, leather shoes for men, pet stores, waffle cafes, etc. As you start hitting Arcade #3, however, things get a little more interesting: stores dedicated to old Famicon games, purveyors of ¥100 yen 邦楽 7"s, booksellers who have accumulated just enough literature in the front to justify the thousands of old pornographic magazines in the back. Arcade #5 & #6 are a descent into the debris of the 20th century - a cruel junkyard parody of commercial endeavor - tired old hags selling broken Betamaxes, ribbon-less typewriters, imperial military garb, grab bags of unloved old vinyl. Some of the last stores in this arcade can be hardly distinguished from the storage facilities of refugee communities, piles of extension cords, soiled and crumpled papers, vibrators piled up to the top. If you want to buy a full-size towel with an image of Iijima Naoko from the early 90s for ¥240, this is your place.

Nara is always fun. The deer are just so adorable. The female deer very literally bow to you, and the male deer will put you between their antlers in a slightly frightening, yet overall endearing way. Everyone tends to buy the deer senbei thinking that this is the way to deer friendship. Not the case. When you have food in your hands, you are just another mark in their con games. When you go to them sans snacks, you go on an equal level and they respect that. A nice site: a family of deer galloping away, followed by a chihuahua in hot pursuit, followed by a bumbling old Japanese man with a leash, followed by his resigned family in slow paces.

Todaiji is big and all, but we went off the beaten track to check out a kofun which just looked like a chunk of forest that the Kunaicho doesn't want you digging into.

• A wacky political party lacking even a smidgen of electablility keeps doing the Akasaka rounds with "The Hustle" as their sound-truck sound-track. They cut out the "Do the hustle!" part though. If they don't have the guts to deliver the vocal hook, they've lost my vote.

• The People's New Party (国民新党) has some trucks out for Alberto Fujimori with one of those strange kikoku shijo/American-school radio "navigator" pronunciations (my money is on Chris Peppler) where "Alberto Fujimori" somehow comes out in perfect pro-wrestling announcement English after a long chatter of native Japanese. The tagline is "Last Samurai" - which I guess now permanently means "non-Japanese guy being more Japanese than the Japanese." Thanks, Tom Cruise.

I am not sure the Fujimori candidacy really speaks well for Japanese democracy. Why the need to import dictators? Things not authoritarian enough already?! If only Robert Mugabe had some relatives in Kumamoto and the right DNA! I mean, he - like Fujimori - doesn't speak Japanese and has a last name that easily fits within the Japanese sound syllabary. And that guy is so last samurai.

This week's Shukan Bunshun (8.2.07 edition) has a story by writer Ochi Yoshiko (越智良子) called 「どこがいいの？」今どきの美女論 examining the mysterious popularity of models Ebihara Yuri ("Ebi-chan") and Oshikiri Moe, singers Koda Kumi and Hamasaki Ayumi, and Miss Universe Mori Riyo. The first article reiterates the fact that no one in Japan has anything but total antagonism towards Mori Riyo, so we can leave her out of this discussion. (Damn you, America and Donald Trump).

With the other women, however, the older generation and a great deal of Japanese men have serious problems comprehending why these particular stars are popular. Out of the remaining four, Ebi-chan is the only one with any real appeal to men, but at the end of the day, even her fame is primarily the product of female admiration. Ochi names these women 下積り美人 - something to the effect of "bottom of the barrel beauties."

Ochi comes to the conclusion that contemporary girls tend to like imperfect models who have reached physical beauty only through hard work and determination. Even the Koda Kumi fan interviewed for the piece acknowledges that Koda is not an "orthodox beauty" but has worked her ass off to become "pretty." Same goes for the CanCam girls Ebihara and Oshikiri who have shown that apparel expertise, make-up techniques, and hair curling voodoo complete the woman more than her raw material. These stars suggest that contemporary Japanese women want idols who look similar to themselves, thus creating a comfortable myth that anyone can overcome natural flaws to reach the top. Sympathy now trumps simple adoration.

Guys, on the other hand, still like the natural girl who doesn't look like she's trying so hard. This was true with Hirosue Ryoko and now explains the popularity of Nagasawa Masami. Girls may admit that Matsushima Nanako is as elegant as they come, but they are totally disinterested. She can't teach them anything about struggle. For the exact same reason, third-world despots looked to Stalin and not Kaiser Wilhelm the Second.

I find it hard not to draw some general socio-psychological conclusions from this trend. The emphasis on gambaru - doing one's best - opposed to natural talents always echoes the Japanese post-war national mythology. But in opposition to the static Confucian view of the world, Japanese women now seem to be hesitant to blindly accept their social-betters in a pre-determined hierarchy. They want style and beauty leaders who can be imagined to represent them and thus prove the possibilities of upward-beauty-mobility. If I can become Ebi-chan through effort, there is no reason why I too cannot become #1 like Ebi-chan. This seems to reflect a much more American democratic-capitalist "can-do" spirit of self-betterment through determined effort, rather than a Confucian-statist belief that low social position should be embraced and higher-ups worshiped unconditionally. Is this further proof that the onset of socioeconomic disparity has shaken faith in a static universe? Everyone is aiming for the top, and these girls are dragging down the quality of their idols to make sure they can get there themselves.