J a p a n e s e    C u l t u r e

All sorts of people from Plato to Mead and beyond, have pointed out that self-speech is important to the Western self. Then Derrida came along and derided (his pun) our experience of "hearing ourselves speak." Why do we do it? What could we ever tell ourselves that we do not already know? One needs a difference for communication to take place, so how can self-speach make any sense?

Derrida noted that self-speech makes sense in the form of a memo. "Buy eggs." We can write memos, and postcards, to ourselves in the future. And that is he said what we are always doing, as we listen to ourselves speak, we are differing, putting something off, waiting for something. To coin Roy orbison, in différance I talk to me.

Crossing Derrida with Lacan and the Oedipus complex, the birth of the self in the Oedipus complex takes place as a promise, or defferal. We realise that we will not get mother, that she sleeps elsewhere, but we enter the Oedipus waiting room because we are promised love in the future.

From the Japanese point of view the Western family is a bit like fagging. Adult men brutalise their children, making them sleep alone, but the children stop crying, and learn to love big daddy and the system, because they are promised that they can do the same in future.

The Japanese are doing something similar in reverse. They sleep with the children in between mother and father. Japanese men sleep in this way because that is how they grew up. There is a great nostalgia, a collective recollection going on in Japan. They are promised nothing but recollect everything.

And, as mentioned in recent posts on combining toys, the Japanese recollect themselves. They create themselves out of the scrap book of images, in mirrors, in photos, in other people's eyes. And when they do so, just as we can only speak to ourselves in différance, a self-image brought to mind is always a re-collection of oneself in the past.

Left, the cover of Keikgo Okonogi's "Edipusu to Ajase" (Oedipus and Ajase)
Top right Derrida by speedypete312

Labels: culture, image, japan, japanese culture, Jaques Lacan, lacan, nihobunka, nihonbunka, self, specular, 日本文化

Nowhere do posters go as wild as on "2 channel," the massive Japanese anonymous online forum. The mascot of the forum is the cat (shown above) called "Mona," or fully "Omae Mona" which, as well as being a proper noun, means "same to you too." But posters do not stop at that. Normally polite Japanese become frank. They occasionally engage in extremely hostile interaction called "flaming," even telling each other to "die" (the nastiest thing you can say in Japanese).

Flaming occurs all over the world but nowhere with such abandon as in the anonymous forums serving the Japanese. The "festivities" sometimes reach a such a peak that numerous contributors will act in unison to do something like...vote a child pornographer one of Time magazine's most influence people of the decade. But users of 2ch by no means necessarily act in unison. At times everyone will be disagreeing with everyone else, sometimes, as noted above, to the point of gross insult.

So why is it that hostile interaction occurs with such vigor in Japan? Is it because the Japanese are usually so repressed that given the chance to lash out, they do so with all the more force?

Research on self disclosure (Matheson & Zanna,1988 see Sugimoto,2009) in online communication has suggested that the reason for greater self-disclosure on internet forums is due to a decrease in public self awareness (less awareness of the censure of others) and a greater private self awareness. Joinson (2001, again in Sugimoto, 2009) found that only when private self-awareness was high did anonymity, lack of public self-awareness, lack of censure result in increased self disclosure. In other words it is not enough to be be free to insult people. People have to be encouraged to feel their own attitudes and emotions more strongly for them to want to lash out.

So returning to the question, why do the Japanese especially go wild on internet forums? As per the previous research I think that it is because not only does the anonymity free them from the eyes of others, but also because the experience of typing on an Internet forum is especially likely to encourage them to have increased private self awareness, of their attitudes, values and feelings on a particular topic.

In Joinson's research above, private self awareness of the American subjects had to be manipulated visually. Those in a high private self awareness condition were presented with a picture of themselves. Since of course the Japanese are not sitting infront of pictures of themselves at their computers (and my research has shown that they are always in front of a mirror, because they have simulated a mirror in their heads), it must be the experience of typing their thoughts that increases their private self-awareness. Posting to 2ch is like standing in front of a linguistic mirror, a big sound box where ones thoughts echo around and bounce back to you. It is in this situation, combined with the anonymity, that the Japanese really go dylan, off the wall, and radical because usually they do not have a linguistic mirror in their head (unlike the Other found in most anglophones).

Incidentellly, the method used to decrease private self-awareness was to display a cartoon character on the screen. Perhaps this is why Japanese people are so fond of carrying chartoon characters around with themselves -- to decrease their private self awareness. I think that the "same to you too" cat of 2ch may have a calming (private-self-awareness decreasing) influence upon its viewers. Let us look upon Mona and feel calm:-)

The above thanks to Goto Hayabusa's graduation thesis (2011) and the research of Sugitani (2009) as referenced below in Japanese.
杉谷陽子（2009）「インターネットにおける自己呈示、自己開示（第3章）」三浦麻子・森尾博昭・川浦康至編「インターネット心理学フロンティア」誠信書房, Pp.59-85.

Jurat by Toyda is a kind of Lego for morphing robot makers.

I am not sure why Japanese children especially, and anyone who likes the movie series Transformers, are keen on transforming or morphing.

There is often a morph between something inanimate and something animate, between a something used, a tool or vechicle and a using thing living robot.

The above is a scorpion which morphs from/into a sword made by my son from Jurat morphin lego by Toyda.

I would like to suggest that Japanese children (and anyone fond of Transformers, which is most children everyhwere) but especially Japanese children because they remain in a "mirror stage," may be more aware of the Lacanian dictum that the ego or self, which originates in the self-image, is external, dead, a mere tool, and yet at the same time the only self we have. We see, we are, dead people: at best robots, at worst inanimate tools.

This dual nature of the self, (1) as a mere tool or representation to grasp a centre-less consiciousness, and (2) as the best -- though "robotic" or prosthetic -- self that we have, may be being played out in the morphining animation movies, and toys such as the one above.

Labels: Bandai, go-onger, henshin, japanese culture, Jaques Lacan, lacan, morph, nihobunka, nihonbunka, occularcentrism, self, specular, Super-Sentai, superhero, theory, 合体, 変形, 変身, 日本文化

Mugenbine, which means "infinite combination", is type of building block set wherein the pieces are made of robots and parts of robots: extension arms and legs, wheels and weapons of robots. It is like other building block toys for children except that it is specifically designed to create robots, and each of the pieces, or many of them, are themselves robots.

Children who play with Mugenbine make giant robots out of a selection of smaller robots and robot parts. The robots have faces. They are felt to be alive. Mugenbine is Lego for animists.



My son started out having a fascination for combinatory toys such as the combining power rangers toys where two to 12 robots combine to make a larger "Mega Zord." He has moved on towards a preference for infinite combination but remains fascinated with the same trope: animate parts combining to make a giant animate whole.

Jacques Lacan says that young humans generally gain an idea of themselves in two ways. Firstly by looking at themselves directly and in mirrors and secondly by talking about themselves to themselves. He argues that the former, visual representations of self are more primitive. Lacan refers to the self as representated visually as "hommelette" which is on homme (man) with a diminutive ending meaning "little (as in primitive) man" and omelette with homme merged as a prefex suggesting "man-ommlette:" all jumbled up generally a mess like an ommlette.

Lacan argues that the visual self is something that we must grow out of because it made up of a jumble of things without any cohesion. Our self views are still external and worse, incomplete, views of this and that hand. The view of ourselves that we see in the mirror presents a whole body but it is out there in the mirror. Added to that we have many views of self, a scrapbook of self views, that never add up to any sort of coherent unity, unless we can call an omlette coherent, and Lacan suggests that we can't.

As my son makes more and more combinatory toys of made of parts which are like mirror fragments of the whole, mini-robots combining to make a bigger robot, I wonder if this play helps him to combine his self-views each semi-animate part-him, part-robotic, into a coherent self a mega robot that has more coherence and more humanity than an omlette.

Labels: Bandai, culture, japanese culture, Jaques Lacan, lacan, mirror, nihobunka, nihonbunka, specular, Super-Sentai, theory, スパー戦隊", 変身, 日本文化

It has been made illegal, by green regional ordinance, to give away free plastic bags at supermarket cash registers.

Anyone who has taught English in Japan knows how difficult it is to get Japanese students to speak. Is it because they are ashamed of their poor English, or suffer from "evaluation anxiety" (Cultrone, 2009)? No, it appears not. Communication research (McCroskey, Gundykunst, Nishida, 1985) has found that Japanese are just as anxious speaking in Japanese as they are in English. In other words the Japanese suffer from a fundamental Language-Communication-Anxiety, rather than any Foreign Language Communication Anxiety, or classroom Evaluation Anxiety.

The Japanese tendency to wish to avoid linguistic communication is shown in their propensity to wish to avoid having to speaking to the staff at supermarket cash registers. Rather than saying "and two polythene bags please" they put two of these green cardboard symbols into their shopping basket to indicate the same thing. The Japanese are happy to communicate with symbols such as these. Perhaps they'd be good at English sign language. I find it works quite well to take a whiteboard to class and have learners translate my Japanese writing into English speech.

So far research (e.g. Kondo, Ying-Ling, 2004) has failed to find the reason for, or strategies to prevent, Japanese communication apprehension. I theorise that it is equivalent to Objective Self Awareness in the linguistic dimension. Westerners feel uncomfortable if they are put infront of mirrors and required to see their visual self representations. Japanese feel uncomfortable if they are required to hear their linguistic self representations. There is no need for any physical mirror, or sound box, forto be reflected to its speaker, but I guess that speech for the speakers sake (as spoken in a conversation class), rather than the listeners sake, is likely to be more 'reflective'.

Ruth Benedict's Chrysanthemum and the Sword is probably still the most famous book about Japan. The theory that Japan is a shame culture, whereas Western countries have a culture of shame is still the most widely used framework for understanding the Japanese. Shame, it is argued, is a non-moral ethic where people behave in such a way as to conform with the expecations and evaluations of their peers. This is precisely the opposite of the definition of a moral man as given for example by Plato in The Republic (someone who appears bad but does good), or as exemplified in the life of Jesus who was crucified amongst thieves. Guilt, we are told, on the other hand is a moral sentiment that derives from within the person, from internal standards, from personally held and idenfifiable notions of good and bad. The theory that Westerners have such things inside them, whereas Japanese are only concerend with keeping up appearances, maintaining face, pleases Westerners and is continued in cultural psychological theories to this day.

It is clear that the Japanese feel a lot of shame. I think that the shame-culture, guilt-culture framework is meaningful, but that Benedict misrepresented Japanese shame. Japanese have private shame (Sakuta, 1967). "But," you may point out, that "if shame too is private then it is indistinguisable from guilt." I claim that the difference is in the medium. Guilt is when ones internal self-narrative sounds bad. Shame is when ones internal self-cinema looks awful.

It is easy to self narrate, and when we do we hear the words that speak or think. Self-speach has a built in mirror. Sound bounced back and around in the sound box of the mind.

That the Japanese can gaze at themselves, on the other hand, is a more remarkable feat. Like most westerners, I can't do it unless I have a mirror. Mead claimed it is impossible to see oneselve without a mirror. Some performers, such as Zeami and Nijinsky, claimed to be able to see themselves from the point of view of their audience. And my research it may be argued that the average Japanese man and woman in the street have a mirror in their head.

Herbert Morris (1976) "On guilt and innocence: essays in legal philosophy and moral psychology" p 62

"In guilt the "voice of conscience" speaks and we forumulate in words what is do be done and not to be done, words that are spoken and heard. With shame, the disposition is to hide, to vanish; with shame we want to sink into the ground, we cannot stand the *sight* of ourselves. With guilt the urge is to communicate, to be listened to, to confess."

It seems to be a minor change but, transposing the shame guilt divide from external-internal to vision-voice means that Japan ceases to be a lack, a nothing, a collective. Japan becomes something. It because something that is qualitively different. The Japanese moral behaviour, and self is not just lost, submerged, controlled, colletivistic but *a different kind of self*.

This Japanese subway train is encouraging passengers to mind their manners and not stand or sit in front of the doors, by telling that "Everyone is watching." The fear of being seen doing something ill-mannered is real and motivating to Japanese.

Kitayama, Snibbe, Markus & Suzuki (2004) demonstrate that Japanese need only to be confronted with a poster showing various approving or disapproving gazes (inste top) to change their behaviour.

The change observed in Kitayama's experiment was however, to become more self-enhancing, as measured by a spread of alternatives pre and post being given something. In front of the poster, Japanese (like Westerners with or without poster) became more inclined to up their rating of something that they now posses.

The strange thing about this result is that the standards theory of Japanese manners is that Japanese should be self-deprocating rather than self serving.

So why do the Japanese self-enhance (brag) in when made aware of an evaluating gaze?

I argue that Kitayama's poster encourages self-evaluation, and that in the visual domain, Japanese do have a need for positive self-regard, hence the extreme positivity, and posing, found in Japanese autophotography (puri-kura, peace symbols, etc.)

Many or most Japanese festivals feature "O'Mikoshi," but there are few theories as to why the Japanese (and not only the Japanese) are into carrying their gods around on stretchers. The theories I have seen, and agree with, stress unity, solidarity and cohesion (Takezawa, 1998) and prestige (there is a pecking order in who gets to carry the god, before whom: see Kalland, 1995). I respect both theories but here is my take, with thanks to my trainspotting son.
Normally the geographical fixed-ness of the Shinto sacred anchors the word view and society (c.f. theories that Japanese society is spacially organised: Bachnik & Quinn, 1994, Pilgrim 1995, and Nakane, 1970), so when the sacred starts to move on its mikoshi (beir, litter or palanquin) this signals the arrival of a topsy turvy, "liminality" (Turner, 1967) big-time. I suggest in this video that the mikoshi have the same attraction as trains. My son used to really love trains. Trains, with their moving frames of reference, teach us that movement is relative, nothing is stationary, unless something is sacred.

Labels: japanese culture, nihobunka, nihonbunka, religion, Shinto, 宗教, 日本文化, 神道

Partly as a result of wondering how it is that Japanese can see their relationships with others, including the world, as being internal to themselves, I asked 20 Japanese to rate the extent to which certain things and phenomena are so much you that "If it were changed you would cease to be yourself," and "Not public, or anyone else's." I am not sure if I asked the right questions but I was trying to get to what my subjects thought themselves to be.
I was particularly interested in whether they would deem their view / visual sense percepi as being themselves or out there in the world, as well as the relative selfness (?) of body, self, speech and voice.

I had predicted a greater importance afforded voice since it always seems that in shows featuring suited representations of Japanese cartoon and maskted tokusatsu characters, they have to mime to the voice of the standards voice actor for them to be felt to be the real thing.

The results, shown above, show that Japanese identify most strongly with their head, foollwed by theif feelings, internal self speech, dreams, body, voice, and finally vision. Vision was felt to be way down the list, below the mid point of the scale (1-5) where 5 meant entirely essential and private, whereas 1 meant inessential and public. All the same they were half way to avowing that their vision might be private and that the wold they see might not be shared with anyone else.

I should have included some other, but less, self phenomena such as clothes, name, possessions, home, self-facts (such as being from Saga obviously a 1 on the "not public" part of the scale, but perhaps important to ones identity.)

I think that I should also make the scale a little longer 1-7 perhaps to allow for more variation between the top (head?) and bottom (possessions?) of the scale.

Perhaps the most interesting thing in the above graph is the reversal of the relative heights of the blue and red lines for the three items on the right. It is clear that my two questions are different. In the case of dreams for instance, one might imagine oneself continuing to exist as oneself without dreaming, and yet feel it very strange if anyone else saw, or could see ones dreams. It was interesting however that both voice and vision should be evaluated in the same way. Would I be more surprised if I suddenly had another voice, or if someone else had the same voice as me? I (incorrectly) feel that I have quite a neutral accent, so I am not sure I would be all that surprised to meet someone with my voice.

Finally, I am tempted to think that other people see the same colours as I do, and share the same visual field as I, but I would find it very strange if my experience went dark, if I were to become a philosophical Zombie. Perhaps my subjects' lack of surprise refered to the possibility that they should go blind.

I just read Kasulis' chapter on Zen and Japanese Artistry in "The Self as Image in Asian Theory and Practice."

Kasulis argues that the essence of Zen artistry can be found in the Shinto tradition. He points to three things. First he suggests that contra other forms of Buddhism, the plain, undecorated, inornate nature of Zen artistry is shared with Shinto. More boldly he claims that the "ordinariness" of Zen, which not only shuns being fettered by Buddhist scripture, but sees the philosophy of the Buddha written in all things, mirrors Shinto animism. Finally he argues that Shinto purity of heart (magogoro) is closely related to the state of mind, or no-mind, attained in Zen.

I am one of those people that thinks everything Japanese is Shinto, even if it claims to be Buddhist, I look forward to reading Kasulis' book "Shinto: The way home."

In his introduction to the Japanese section of the book, Kasulis talks about "interior and external relationship" using this diagram above. Kasulis' diagram could be argued to be a detail from Markus and Kitayama's famous diagram which itself has precident in Kimura Bin, Eshun Hamaguchi and Wasuji Tetsuro among others.

Keeping his eye on the relationships however, Kasuli argues that in the West they are seen as being exterior to the person, something that each of the related can objectify, whereas in Japan they are seen as being interior to each and both of the related, consituting them. This means that, he argues, while a Japanese garden may appear "unnatural" in the way that it is cut and pruned into a "surnatural" shape, the gardner is part of nature and nature would loose something of its naturalness if its relationship with the gardner were to be removed.

The interiority of Japanese relationships is part of the cultural psychological cannon (I wonder if cultural psych has become a religion for me) that I ascribe to, and I do not doubt it at all. I can't doubt it because I ask my students, "do you see your relationships as occuring within you", "do you think that in a way others occur within yourself?" and they say "yes." "Other people are inside you?!" I ask them to confirm, and as they nod, I have trouble understanding their reply.

Do they mean that they are simulating intra-psychic others - co called imaginary friends? They may feel very real, as Cathy says, "I am my Heathcliff,"and Celine Dion says "You're here in my heart."

But, I was wondering yesterday whether, if having a mirror in ones head means that one is more inclined to affirm "the veil of perception." The veil of perception is the notion that all that we percieve is internal, our own perceptions, upon a mental screen, no the real world so, as Nietzche quips, we can only ever point to ourselves.

While I am susceptible to this view, generally speaking I do not look at the world in that way and generally feel I am looking at the world and not myself. When I asked my (Japanese) wife, she was quick to affirm the veil of perception, so I wonder if this is part of the origin of the feeling of interiority. Maybe I will be able to do a survey. I have been meaning to for a while but I used to think that the veil would be on us not them.

Heine, S. J., Takemoto, T., *Moskalenko, S., *Lasaleta, J., & Henrich, J. (2008). Mirrors in the head: Cultural variation in objective self-awareness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 879-887.
Kasulis (1998) "The Self as Image in Asian Theory and Practice" p 338.
Markus. H. & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the Self: Implications for cognition, emotion and motivation. Psychological Review, 98, 224-253. Downloaded from http://www.biu.ac.il/PS/docs/diesendruck/2.pdf on 2011/11/11

Richard Nisbett's opus, "The Geography of Thought" is already a classic in the field of Cultural Psychology.

Backed up with lot of experimental data, such as the fact when shown a picture of a fish tank Japanese are more likely to talk about the tank than the fish in it, Professor Nisbett demonstrates that Americans analyze the central features of their environment, whereas East Asians are more likely to see the world wholistically, taking in the context.

This tendency to emphasise context among East Asians is, Nisbett argues, due to differences in Argricultural system. Wet rice farming in East Asia encouraged East Asians to cooperate in irrigation systems, and being dependent upon social systems themselves, see the world as being composed of things also dependent upon their environment. Westerners were however able to do argiculture which did not require such high levels of cooperation and cosequently saw themselves and their environment as composed of discrete, independent monads.

The work in the differences in conception is being continued by Takahiro Masuda and the data is now so extensive as to make cognitive difference irrefutable.

I have two problems with the explanation of the origins of the difference that Nisbett provides. Firstly, I don't think that it is true that rice farming is more cooperative than the cows wheat fallow rotation system used in Europe. According to Bray's "The Rice Economies," wet rice farmers, who often use small private ponds for irrigation, were able to be more independent of their peers than wheat farmers who, due to the requirement for cooperation with cattle farming, developed specialisations, and being less isolated and less intensive achieved economies of scale. Secondly, while I agree that agricultural systems do have had some impact on psychology, this explanation is too one-sidely Asian and contextual for me. Such explanations (Watsuji's Monsoon Rice Farming Culture, Tamaki's The Philosophy of Water etc) are tremendously populare in Japan, precisely because Nisbett is right to point out that East Asians see behaviour as a result of contextual factors. The Japanese love environmental interpretaions of cultura and human behaviour. Perhaps Professor Nisbett will one day write another book called, "The Thought of Geography."

Just as post-war Japanese admire Western looks, they also attempt to import Western psychology. As a result, Japanese today consider themselves ugly if they have traditional Japanese looks(Knowner, 2004). The results of importing Western popular psychology, without the religio-cultural framework, may be even more disasterous.

"Put all negative thoughts out of your mind" the author urges. What of the beauty of reflecting upon ones mistakes (hansei) in order to achieve self improvement (kaizen)? "Praise yourself when you achieve your goals", he says. In the traditional view of things in Japan, the important praise is the gratitude that one gets from others, and self-praise is just "self-satisfaction" (jikomanzoku, a derogatory term). "Setting your goals too high will result in loss of self image" he says. Indeed Westerners are inclined to give up at things that they fail at, and seek tasks that suit their 'individual' aptitudes, wereas Japanese are more inclined to believe that human potential has no limits (Heine et al, 2001).

Sadly, the Japanese feel that they need more confidence, so the book has sold 110,000 copies. Perhaps this book is the intellectual equivalent of hair dye, or eyelid glue. If I were Japanese I would read it with a pinch of Soy Sauce.

Image copyright Hitoshi Aoki (2009)"Jishin no Tsukurikata (How to make self-Confidence)"

Labels: culture, japan, japanese culture, nihobunka, nihonbunka, theory, 日本文化

Fraudsters in Japan phone up old people, and not so old people, and persuade them to wire them money.

Fraudesters targetting people in the USA and the UK, also attempt to have their victims wire them money. They often attempt to do this by telling us anglophones that we are very lucky and can come into a massive fortune if we just pay a few thousand dollars/pounds to smooth over the paper work.

Japanese "Furikomi" fraudsterson the other hand, phone up saying "its me, I have had a car crash, please help." The fraudster waits till the person on the other end of the line guesses a name ("Is that you Ichirou?"), says yes, says that he needs some money urgently and to go the bank to wire it straight away. Hence the warnings on Japanese automatically telling machines warning the user against"Its me, me" Fraud.

There in Japan the fraudesters are playing on the assumption that the victims think that they or their relatives are unlucky and that other people depend upon them.

Westerners over estimate their luckiness, chosen-ness, uniqueness, where as Japanese over estimate the extent to which they are embedded in their social networks and that other people depend upon them.

The Japanese are into "3rd person toys," such as dolls, rather than 1st person toys, such as suits and guns (with exceptions).

This is Majinga-Z was a Japanese manga and anime super-hero created in 1972. Majinga-Z was the first giant robot into which the human gets in and controls, a style subsequently followed by most Super-Sentai (power rangers) Series, as well as the robot suit series, Gundam and Evangelion. Majinga-Z was preceded by Tetsujin 28Gou where a young boy remote controls a robot which debuted in 1956. These Japanese human controlled robots were preceded however by my schoolboy favourite, General Jumbo, a comic strip which appeared in the UK weekly, the Beano from 1953. Bearing in mind the timing, it may be that Tetsujin 28 Gou was based upon General Jumbo.

Difference between the two genres may be interpretted to centre on the relative importance of the robot and human controller. The "hero" of "General Jumbo," after which the series is named, is the human controller, whereas the hero of the eponimous Japanese series are the robots, Majinga-Z, Tetsujin 28, Gundam. In the English comic General Jumbo controlls a plurality of nameless robots, whereas in early Super Sentai series, and at least potentially in Gundam, a plurality of humans did, or could, control a single named robot. Finally General Jumbo is "Jumbo" in name only, because he controls an army of miniature remote control robots, whereas the robots that are controlled in Japanese manga and animation are almost universally enourmous, mega-robots.

Even if the Japanese did get their idea from the UK, they developed the idea, making it bigger and better. General Jumbo can not compare in complexity, human psychology or art to even one of the subsequent Japanese series such as Gundam.

The main exception to the Japanese preference for 3rd person toys, such as dolls and "figures", is the transformation belt (henshin Beruto) which enables its wearer to transform into a suit, into a third person figure in a sense.

My interpretation of the difference in emphasis revealed in English and Japanese human/robot series relates to a difference in emphasis upon the self as narrative or image. Westerners identify with their self-narrative that seems to control the body. Japanese identify with their bodies. If this results in a paradox, regarding how the Japanese could feel that their control is not their own, out of their control, then this may be resolved by consideration of appraisals of control and autonomy, its boundedness and even reality.

The term "third person" is not correct.

Our son Ray was named, in part, after the hero of Gundam, Amuro Ray.

This picture shows a large Japanese cram school or juku in which school students spend their evenings cramming facts that they anticipate will be asked in examinations, particularly university entrance examinations. The catch copy of this particular cram school is "doryoku ha minoru" or "perseverance pays."

The Japanese are incremental theorists (Dweck, 1999) believing that individual potential is limited only by how much one tries (Heine et al. 2001). The Japanese are therefore very much into persevering. While Westerners try hard too, they also tend to be entity theorists believing that the self is not infinately maleable so rather than banging ones head against a brick wall (or cram school), people are advised to find their forte, the area of human endeavour that matches their inate potential, in which they will be able to excell without out excessive perseverance.

Sur-naturalism is the Japanese tendency to attempt to make nature even more natural than nature itself. Here the branches of trees in our garden have been pruned in such a way as to make them more wiggly, by cutting off the main branch and allowing the branch to continue to grow along alternating sub-branches.

The same tendency to reduce the "human" "geometrical" and increase the persceived, natural majesty of plants may be present in the art of Bonsai and the way that garden conifers are cut into bobbly pagodas. In each case a smaller plant is made to emulate a larger one. Garden layouts also deliberate eschew lines and pursue "sur-random" pairings of plants and rocks.

Ruth Benedict pointed out this tendency to attempt to arrange nature to conform with human notions of what nature should be. Quoting from a "A Duahgter of the Samurai" Benedict writes, “every morning Jiya wiped off the stepping stones, and after sweeping beneath the pine trees, carefully scattered fresh pine needles gathered from the forest." (Benedict, 1946) Lummis (2007) points out that it was sur-naturalism that Benedict assumed the Japanese would be glad to be free of. Benedict could not have known how beautiful the Japanese thought it.

Labels: nature, nihobunka, nihonbunka, 日本文化, 自然

Via Flickr:
Another Japanese monster comes out of the image from here. For others click on ringu.

I believe that Japanese are identified with their bodies, or self image from the perspective of their universalised eye of the other (e.g. secularly "Seken no me" or religiously, the sungoddess' mirror). Images of people are therefore, as well as being anthropomorphised to a far greater extent (consider Japanese virtual idols, such as Hajime Miku), inherently problematic in that they give the lie to the imaginary Japanese self. When in a horror morive an image becomes real, it promotes the realisation that the viewer is also an image, and "already dead" (Lacan, and Sixth Sense:-).

How quickly can I explain my understand of Lacan and Japanese culture?!

The internalisation of an other is essential for self. Humans gain their sense of self by internalising the perspectives of others, first their parents, and then more generally and learning to see themselves, and identify with these internalised-external perspectives. These "selves" give individuality just as they take it away. Self is gained at the price of internalising others, or the other. Self is gained at the price of morality.

Most Western theorists, such as George Herbert Mead, argue that the internalisation of the other is fully or effectively achieved only in Language. They assume this to be the case based on the fact that phonetic speech *only needs to be said to be heard*, it bends around, it does not need a mirror, they point out. The self therefore is found in the experience of hearing oneself speak (Derrida's s'entred parle?).

What these Western theorist fail to note is that
1) As a mental experience, self representations in language are no more inherently reflected than self-representations in images. One only needs to think "I" as to experience the thought, true. But one only needs to imagine oneself as to experience that imagining.
2) There is no necessity entailed in speech, vocal or mental, that requires the vocaliser or thinker to identify with self speach. This identification is cultural. We Westerners are taught to identify with ourselves as meanings. And people can be taught to identify with themselves as imaginings, as I argue they are in Japan.

In either case there needs to be cultural encouragement to agregate and care about the aggregation of either linguistic or imagined views upon self.

Lacan was a obscurantist, and I understand little of what he had to say but he says things that (alas!) I can't find in any other author.

1) That both linguistic and imagined self-representations are possible.
2) That the self is believed in due to the percieved intersection of these two forms of self-representation.

We ignore the fact that sound never comes from vision, that there is no essential difference between speech and miming (see the tragedy of those watching mimed songs in David Lynch's Blue Velvet and Mullholland Drive).

Even so, Lacan, like other Western theorists, decry the imagined. Lacan says that the imaginary world lacks the possibility of universalisation.

A person that lives in the imaginary is always trapped in binary relationships between themselves and a viewer. He is right in a way, but he did not take into account the skill with which Japanese people layer so many different imaginary self perspectives, so many eyes, to achieve as much autonomy, or almost as much autonomy, as those that aggregate the ear of the other.

In both Japanese and Western culture there is a drive towards purifying the self of either the linguistic or imaginary. Westerners "should" be purely worded. Japanese should be purely un-worded and imagined.

But in both cultures, the absence of the other-style of self-recognition is self-destroying; both are needed to maintain the illusion of self.

The Japanese are far happier with the realisation of truth. Their greatest and finest look the void in the eye. But for the rank and file, for anyone, loss of self is terrifying. To realise that ones self is only a self-represtantion, a dead thing, an externality, is both liberating, and the
greatest horror.

And here, in the above image, is that horror. The image comes to life, and tells us that the, our image, is only an image.

When the words stop, when the telephone is just a recording (chakushin ari), or noise (ringu), and the image comes to life (above), one is faced with the lie and the terrifying truth.



Another cool thing about Lacan is that he associated the visual with the motherly and language with the fatherly. We live in our mothers eye, and our father's ear. "Fathers" are a social linguistic construct and "mothers" are the people that looked at us, reared us. It is for that reason that the superego is dad, and the Lacanian Other is the topos of name of the father, and that the monsters that come out of the image in Japanese horror are women. I think that this ghost, in the above image, is a woman.

Labels: horror, nihobunka, nihonbunka, specular, taboo, tabuu, theory, 日本文化

Via Flickr:
This is a book intending to encourage university graduates to go into the "thing-making, " manufacturing industry, introducing the mindset of those in the industry. Manufacturing as a profession is popular in Japan, not considered back stage and a little dirty as it may be in the UK.

Japanese people that work in manufacturing are proud to wear their manufacturing workers uniforms, as shown on the image on this cover. Those that take pride in expressing themselves, their apititutes, their creations, and their affiliations visually, as the Japanese do, are good at making-things as the Japanese are.

While I love Brian McVeigh's book "Wearing Ideology" it tends to over-emphasise the external source and oppressiveness of the "ideology," (though he does talk about negotiation) rather than "wearing" as authentic, creative self-expression. If an American Lawyer or Computer programer were to say "I am (proud of being) a computer programmer," then this would be seen as an autonomous belief rather than a engendered ideology, because we logocentricists see words as spring from the mind. Images too spring from the mind, and find expression in Japanese manufactured goods, and uniforms.

This cover image is copyright of Recruit a Japanese recruiting company that edited and published this book.

Via Flickr:
Noh Master Zeami points out that to master the art of Noh drama one must, through repeated attention to mimicry and form, cultivate a "Riken no Ken" (離見の見, see Yusa, 1987), a sort of out of body experience of Self.

Miayamoto Musashi in The Book of Five Rings (五輪書）says that the swordsman must learn to become and thus see himself from the point of view of his enemy (敵になると云ハ、我身を敵になり替りておもふべきと云所也).

And in kyuudo (the Japanese art of archery), as demostrated by my seminar Student Ikki Yamamoto (2009) in this graduation thesis, nothing is more correlated with kyuudo performance than the ability to see oneself from the outside.

To achieve this end practioners of kyuudo practice form incessently, in front of mirros, using a sort of catapult device before they are even allowed to pick up a bow, and with a sort of brace to ensure that their feet are in the right position.

Through minute attention to form, and repeated mimicry of set positions, they gradually become so aware of their form　that they are able to see it from what might be called a "third person perspective," or equally, an externalised self gaze. This ability to see oneself from what Mc Veigh aptly calls the poisition of an "invisible spook" (Wearing Ideaology, 2000) correlates most highly - more than frequency of psychical training or psychological skills and traits such as power of concentration, or desire to succeed, with the ability to do, and win at kyuudo.

I liken the Japanese martial, and Noh, "Path" (michi, 道, dou, do) to a 'different kind of trancendental dialetic." There are those such as Hegel, Plato and Lacan in the Western tradition that one can discourse ones way to a sort of higher plane. By stepping further and further back from the subjective position, one can, they claim, achieve a depersonalised, truer, transcendental. A similar thing may be going on in the Japanese martial arts.

Yamamoto, I. (2009) "Mental Training: Self Image in kyuudo." Unpublished Gradutation Thesis, The department of Tourism Studies, Faculty of Economics, Yamaguchi University.
山本一輝(2009)「メンタルトレーニング～弓道を通じた自己イメージのあり方～」未発表卒論。山口大学経済学部可能政策学科

Labels: image, japan, japanese culture, logos, martial art, nihobunka, nihonbunka, specular, theory, 宗教, 日本文化, 武道

Harsh sports philosophy from the country of "Hansei." There is no word for hansei (or "kaizen", other than "kaizen") in English. This T-shirt entitled "The Mind Set of Victors" encourages its wears to face up to their failings because it is only by facing up to them that one can improve.

Weiner, an American social psychologists on the other hand, encouraged people to pass the buck and believe that defeat was bad luck (or someone else's) fault. Martin Seligman's "Positive Psychology" encourages those that fail to blame someoone else, to pass the buck. The more that one learns to pass the buck, the more pumped and full of it one will feel, and the more that one can maintain self-esteem in the face of failiure. The more self-esteem one has the more motivated one will be, to try harded to win and improve.

The Japanese sportsman however, blames himself for his failings and thinks about how he can improve himself so that he can win next time. The most important thing is not how he sees himself (otherwise blaming himself would be painful) but winning itself, and perhaps the accolation that the winner receives from others.

These days (or perhaps for some time, for instance in the case of Naoko Takahashi's couch Koide), it is become more and more fashionable to use praise, and buck passing in Japan too. The new youth of today are not encouraged to think about their faults but are lavished with praise.

It seems to me that Japanese Educational theorists are washing Japanese culture down the toilet.

失敗の原因は常に自分の中にあると認識するべし
Shippai no genin ha tsune-ni jibun no naka ni aru to ninshiki suru beshi