neomarxisme

Apparently, Terayama Shuji helped produce this. The "Are Japanese people tragic or comic?" seems to stump everyone.

Coming home the other night, I stood in front of a Cool Biz white-collar Japanese guy in his 30s totally and utterly rocking an iPhone to listen to some tunes. Talk about conspicuous consumption! The guy was willing to pay all that for a fancy new phone that does not work as a phone in his native country.

Any other evidence that the iPhone is the it product for the IT crowd here or is this guy a lone soul, way ahead of the curve?

Like many Japanese commercials, this TV spot for the Regain energy drink reinforces product message with a playful sense of hyperbole. But note the presuppositions about labor goals inherent in the narrative. A train is delayed, so the salaryman army hauls it over land and sea and air in order to.... make it to work on time. And we know that this is the ultimate goal, because our hero checks his watch, says "Yes!" and does that fisted arm pull, which I guess has become the universal symbol for "Yes!"

Now, some bosses may have said, "I would rather you have been 15 minutes late and charged us for a cab than broken all of the windows of our meeting room," but this commercial pretty much supports the idea that being an "ideal worker" in Japan is not about attaining pragmatic goals, increasing profitability, nailing a presentation, or closing deals, but rather punctuality. When the former actions are targets, being a bit late for work isn't a problem, and hell, a more enterprising worker would have found a local wifi'd Starbucks and done his morning calls until train service starts back up. I mean, there's no way every single member of this black-suit labor army had a morning meeting. Most of them just probably felt the need to get to the office on time so that they could grab the sole copy of Nikkei's Marketing Journal and have enough time to take the normal morning's two to three cigarette breaks.

Again, we see an example of Japanese orthopraxical conceptions of identity and membership: i.e., it is less about what you do at work and more about being punctual, properly suited, showing ambition and effort through strict adherence to rules like punch-in time. I can't imagine an energy drink commercial showing a suave, rebellious salaryman wearing a light grey suit (with those orange loafers!), showing up late, flouting company policy, but then closing a huge deal to buffer his managers' chagrin. This guy can't be a hero in an orthopraxical environment: he's just an asshole. Labor excellence is all about punctuality and similar values.

Cultures are free to choose their own routes to salvation and judgment criteria on individual performance, but I do wonder how this kind of process-oriented conception of work holds up in a more globalized world. The international capitalist view of the workforce is increasingly less concerned with creating a loyal regiment of young men with shiny shoes and polished brass accouterments who properly salute and say, "Sir, yes, sir!" and more concerned with, I don't know, worker productivity and profitability. Do Japanese companies have a global advantage in promoting this sort of performance evaluation based on minor rule-adherence as the fundamental management strategy?

The other question is "work/life balance," which Japanese people claim to desire, but is never going to happen when you get bonus points for staying in the office as long as possible regardless to amount of work. How would this hypothetical TV commercial play in Japan: a guy drinks Regain and is able to do eight hours of work in five hours, thus letting him go home early, beat the commuter rush, and spend quality time with his wife and children? Seems like a stinker to me.

A lot of my favorite movies are in a category at the Shibuya chain of Tsutaya mega-rental store called Serious (シリアス).

Browsing through the Kichijoji branch of the national hipster junk-shop chain Village Vanguard, I stumbled upon a Japanese translation of Adolf Hitler's very own Mein Kampf (Parts One and Two). Heil! Heil! reads the hand-written product pitch. Cute.

Over the course of this blog, I have pointed out quite a few instances of casual antisemitism and pro-Nazi cultural artifacts in Japan. In the case of the swastika-brandishing Sid Vicious wannabees on Takeshita-doori, my former sparring partner Momus argued that Japanese youths have done us a favor by nullifying the meaning of the hideous symbol through their clueless adoption. When I pointed out an enthusiastic tome on Nazi invention and another book on why the Jews run the world's finances, the response was that I had "cherry-picked" crank titles from thousands of more moderate new releases.

The case of Mein Kampf is more straight-forward than the previous two. This is not an abstract symbol, nor a case of reinterpretation. And if there is any cherry-picking, it is all Village Vanguard. This shop is not a large-scale, chain bookstore, forced by distributors and publishers to give shelf space to new titles. The store is a select shop — somewhere between Urban Outfitters and Spencer's Gifts with the former editors of Relax at the helm (i.e., fewer products based on fart jokes and more on 60s Continentalism). We can thus assume that every single item — from bossa nova CDs to groovy sunglasses to Famicon nostalgia gadgetry — has been hand-picked under a certain retail philosophy of accessible and profitable hipness. So, my question here is not the simple outrage of, how dare they sell Mein Kampf! I think the deeper issue is, what about Mein Kampf is cool?

For those wondering, Mein Kampf does not reside in some mondo, kitschy horror section, nor surrounded by other books about World War II history. The section includes a large number of books celebrating the ethnic diversity of Okinawa. Hitler's next door neighbor is The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Other books in the section tackle Che Guevara and war photography.

The product caption gives no real disavowal of the contents or otherwise betrays ambiguous emotions towards this political bible of Nazism. Nor is there anything to indicate a kind of cynical irony in the selection of the work. At best, I imagine the book can be read as a cautionary historical document for those interested in analyzing the origin and nature of Hitler's fascist and antisemitic philosophy, but judging by the teenybopper customers, I am not sure that this particular tome is the best introduction to the hellish history behind this single individual. (I'd recommend Bullock's Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, for starts.)

In all three cases of Nazi-related products and a general impression from other instances of Nazis in Japanese culture, I think it is fair to say the underlying principle to be learned is that Nazis are kinda cool. Honestly, why can't we appreciate the neato uniforms, rad iconography, chic military maneuvers, and energetic mass rallies? Oh, right: military aggression that claimed the lives of 10s of millions and the calculated genocide of 6 million people of Jewish descent. The average Japanese citizen's unfamiliarity with the Jewish people, however, results in little natural context for comprehending the pain of the Final Solution. And moreover, the current political environment has given more credence to the idea that the Greater Japanese Empire's conquest of the Pacific was a rational, inevitable, and precedented struggle for national self-determination. As a result of that narrative, the Nazis — Axis partners battling bad Commies and duplicitous Americans on the other side of the globe — indirectly transform into slightly sympathetic brothers in struggle. I very much doubt a right-wing, Neo-Nazi (or even uyoku) conspiracy sits at the base of Nazi tolerance in Japan, but the best case scenario — that a majority lack the wisdom on WWII to muster up disgust at a retail neutrality towards Hitler — is not so commendable either.

I do not want to draw the easy conclusion that the Japanese are pro-Nazi or actively antisemitic, because I hardly think that is true. Surely, this essay ignores the many Japanese who understand the full scope of Hitler's crimes. Village Vanguard's callous book choices, however, confirm the disturbing lack of ideological stance within Japanese consumer culture. Even in places with such obvious fascination with Western counterculture and leftism, the buyers of Village Vanguard (a name attempting to summon up NY's ultra-liberal The Village Voice and the struggles of the avant-garde [or maybe, the famous jazz club "The Village Vanguard"]) refuse to make the effortless political stance of not advocating the reading of Mein Kampf. Questions of censorship play no part here. By the simple virtue of selecting the book to be on shelves, they give this two-part anti-Semitic diatribe equal endorsement as anything else in the store. I do not subscribe to a hyperbolic paranoia that kids will pick it up, tell their friends all about "the Jewish peril" at the Malt Shop, and incite pogroms after baseball practice, but the enduring coolness of Nazism and Herr Hitler in the pop landscape does not say something encouraging about the state of historical understanding and anti-fascist solidarity in Japan. And if select shop buyers lack the perspective or economic volition to say no to Hitler, who will they say no to?

Oh, young love! Famed baseball pitcher Darvish Yu — age 20 — and entertainment production company employee Saeko — age 20 — have decided to get married! In an era where youth take their pretty time to stagger aimlessly towards the responsibilities of adulthood, there is something refreshing about a couple with their whole lives ahead of them deciding to throw future possibility to the wind and settle down at such an early age. And for a professional ball player, who can have scores of different women every night, to show such adult devotion to a single woman without even taking a few years to taste the crate-loads of free fruit his athletic prowess ensures! The purity of their endeavor will surely make them role models for an entire generation.

Oh, I should also mention that Saeko is pregnant with Darvish's baby.

(I had my suspicions that he had "hit a home run" after seeing his sexy shirtless photo on cover of an•an's Sex issue last month, but their public announcement of a dekichatta kekkon ended all rampant non-speculation about his virginity.)

If the Darvish-Saeko shotgun wedding sounds like a familiar story, you are probably thinking of the post-conception marriage announcement of Morning Musume's enfant infantile Tsuji Nozomi (age 20) and some guy who dresses up in Ultraman costumes as a career (age 26). While it'd be fun to call this unplanned pregnancy rodeo a "trend," the preggers --> wedding bells narrative also explains the past marriages of stars Amuro Namie, Shiina Ringo, Tsuchiya Anna, and Ishiguro Aya (also from Morning Musume). I know Japan is a unique country — with the totally unprecedented "four distinct seasons" and all — but as in the rest of the world, unplanned pregnancy is often caused by unprotected sex. Even the most talented celebrities succumb to reproductive forces.

I certainly do not advocate drawing larger conclusions about the state of sexual attitudes in Japan from these twenty-year old stars. Without even glancing at current statistics, American teenage pregnancy rates must dwarf anything seen in Japan. (And are Britney Spears' model marriage to what's-his-name and Nicole Richie's pregnancy with the guy from that terrible band really so different?) Abortions have been decreasing in Japan. And the birth rate and frequency of sex rate are amongst the lowest in the world.

Somebody made the hilariously naïve mistake of asking Tsuji and the finance at the press-conference why they didn't think about using contraception. I guess the reporter did not know that Japan is the one of the only countries on Earth where condom use declined in the 1990s. More famously, Japan only legalized the birth control pill in 1999, despite decades of feminist protest. Although safely used in dozens of other countries since the 1960s, Japanese male lawmakers and bureaucrats knew something that others had not considered: bitches don't deserve control over their own reproductive systems, because they would just go out and prove themselves to be dirty ho's. Or maybe, it was the formidable oligopoly power of the condom lobby and the neighborhood abortionists. Whatever the case, the Gov only decided to give the Lesser Gender the Pill once the Feminazis started asking too many questions about the selfless and speedy efforts to legalize Viagra — a harmless recreational drug with mild side-effects like death.

But the bonered-up Old Patriarchs still managed to win the larger war, since the Japanese public is so massively uninformed about the Pill's safety that barely anyone uses it. According to this, 70% of Japanese women would never even consider trying oral contraceptives, and I don't blame them: if rumors are to believed, this demon medicine makes you permanently infertile, distorts your emotions, and screws up your natural cycles. Also, taking the pill is "kinda slutty" — like a giant billboard announcing the desire for daily sex that no one else can see. These arguments are neither new or unique, but they've settled in for the long run.

So no Pill and not much condom use among kids is going to lead to some babies. Any sort of criticism of dekichatta kekkon (できちゃった結婚, something like "Oops, We Conceived" Marriage) will fall automatically into worthless pronouncements on sexual morality, and in Japan, the mainstream sentiment seems to be one of snickering mockery rather than outrage. Maybe some crusty old men like Wada Akiko will go out of their way to say that Nozomi was "irresponsible," but Nozomi can just answer back, Pro-Life, y'all, in her 12-year old baby-doll demeanor. Behind the scenes, I am sure the girls' management companies are not so happy about their female stars' immediate drop in future earning potential, but serves them right for not forcing temporary sterilization as part of their indentured servitude to the media-entertainment complex.

Otherwise, what are the drawbacks of a shotgun marrying nation? Look at the cute conservatism displayed so far: "I am pregnant, so we must properly get married." Sure, most of these celebrities get properly divorced less than a year later (Shiina, Tsuchiya; Amuro actually gave it a few years), but as they say, trying and failing is better than not trying at all. And really, can you blame someone for not liking at 23 what they loved at 20? I forget the statistic, but maybe 70% of college juniors who get that awesome tattoo of a wrist watch pointing towards 4:20 regret it later in life.

Most importantly, no one in Japan is going to come out against this kind of teenage shotgun wedding spree, because the couples are serving the goals of the State. With adults waiting too long to get married, the birth rate has reached a critical low. Whether the actual marriage works out or not, these celebrities are taking up the slack to make sure someone will be around in the blazing hot future to pay for their nenkin retirement funds. The best thing that could happen to Japan right now is if 20 year-old boys from Wakkanai to Yonaguni repeatedly impregnate their 18 year-old girlfriends. Mass weddings? No problem: Prime Minister Abe can get us a great rate with the Moonies. Condoms or ovary-destroying Pills are unpatriotic, creating barriers between the forces of national replication.

So, who's irresponsible now, Wada Akiko?

My diabolically-corporate marketing and media insights blog clast is now syndicated on livedoor NEWS. (Japanese only)

Rumor has it that Japan's most beloved female singer Koda Kumi is dating Japan's most talented dance group vocalist Nakai from Japan's most lovable replacement for Hikaru Genji — SMAP.

Now this confuses me a bit, since I was operating on the gossip that Koda Kumi was determined to get married by the age of 25 and had a long-term "non-celebrity" boyfriend who manages some sort of drinking establishment. If I had set myself a date for marriage at 25 and had only a few months left to go, I would probably stick with the boyfriend of four years and not switch over to a slave to an entertainment agency that does not let any of its employees get married (unless, of course, they knock up someone famous. Retirement and death are also acceptable.)

Not to mention that the timing on the Koda-Nakai romance is suspicious when viewed from the angle of organizational relations. Here again, Avex and Johnny's Jimusho have come together to make a model romance and thrust their stars into the pages of gossip weeklies. Last time they tried this, they got seven whole years out of the relationship between Hamasaki Ayumi and TOKIO heartthrob Nagase. This ended about a month ago, so in my delusional paranoid understanding, a meeting was called, two candidates were chosen and the management companies sealed the deal with a handshake: Kuu-tan, meet your new fictional beau. Nakai, go ahead and tell your friends about this.

The great thing about these mock relationships is that they don't get in the way of real sexual priorities. Even if Nakai goes off and does what he wants, it's not like magazines would dare write a story about the girlfriends of SMAP members. If Johnny's Jimusho Youth Brigades get photographed at a wild sex party, the press will graciously black the eyes out to secure deniability. I mean, Hamasaki Ayumi didn't let her faux relationship to Nagase get in the way of her real engagement to Futura 2000's son back in 2004.

With so much of this celebrity gossip being a mix between press releases on one side and completely unreliable sensationalism on the other, I find it very difficult to tell which stories I am supposed to believe for the artist's sake and which I am supposed to ignore. A few weeks ago, I heard a second-hand story that the Friday article about Babel-babe Kikuchi Rinko dating a foreigner was based on dubious information directly from the Kikuchi camp. The "foreigner" had met her once, but was of the old school that considered meeting someone different than "dating."

Long story short, we public have no real allies in this information war. For a long time, there has been a defense of the Japanese news system that important investigative stories do come out, just not in the newspapers or on TV. Most famously, a weekly shukanshi broke the Lockheed Scandal rather than the mainstream media. So great, information cannot be completely controlled, but if I was an elite trying to keep reigns on power, I would be overjoyed that any non-approved, non-press club information could only find a home in totally unreliable magazines that mix investigative reporting, intentionally leaked stories, and pure fiction.

I guess I am going to keep believing that this Koda-Nakai thing is a total hoax, because that is equally believable as the alternative.

Bonus Topic: Did anyone ever see the MTV show about Misono — Koda Kumi's little sister? The premise was that she had gotten so fat that her management company refused to promote her music, so she went on a diet to lose weight to win her career back. Turning lemons into lemonade, that management company helped make the humiliating exercise of forced dieting into an extremely dignified reality TV show. She apparently gained all the weight back, because just maybe, she has naturally has an endomorphic body type and the weight wasn't a problem to start with. But may I suggest that she has no real hereditary claims to automatic pop success anyway? Her equivalent in the world of homicide would be the little brother of the guy who claimed he killed Jon Benet.

Today is the 23rd, and I don't have to tell you that the 23rd is the sale date for the most popular women's fashion monthlies. Oh, CanCam, your 560 pages last month could hardly hold me over for thirty-one painful days!

I went over to the JJ site to check out the contents and noticed something odd about the cover. Just a white box with the logo? I had assumed this was a temporary solution to some sort of design problem, that the proper cover image would be up in no time. But I went over to the bookstore and noticed something extraordinary: Kimura Takuya from SMAP on the cover, sandwiched between two of the normal JJ models.

So the blank image was no mistake at all! Again we see the draconian and utterly ridiculous Johnny's Jimusho policy towards images of its stars used on the internet. Yes, JJ can use Kimura Takuya on its cover, available in newsstands across the land, but no, JJ cannot use its own cover image on the internet to promote the issue. Otherwise, people on the internet may be able to figure out what Kimura Takuya looks like. Or they will be so mollified by a tiny 155 x 193 pixel jpg that they'll cease buying those 3"x5"s of Kimutaku at idol shops in Harajuku. Or Johnny's is just so controlling that they even don't let their talents hang mirrors in the company dorm lest light reflect upon a surface and portraits be viewed without proper payment.

At a decade circulation low of 175,634 copies a month, JJ needs some sort of gimmick to get back in the game, and the Faustian bargain of Johnny's involvement is a surefire way to move paper. Johnny's in return gets some nice promotion for Kimura's newest Hero film opening in September. So Kobunsha can use Kimura's image to boost JJ sales, but not show evidence of this collaboration on the internet, where evil dwells and the 21st century naturally eradicates anachronistic and feudalistic business practices propping up the current oligopoly. Johnny's Jimusho has seen the future and their genius solution is to completely avoid it.