J a p a n e s e    C u l t u r e

There is a strong tendency even among psychologists, to believe that the visual is presentational and external and therefore not really pyschological in the same way as linguistic thought.

There is no denying that the visual is external. The environment in which we were raised (Mori's fields and mountains), our faces or mask (Watsuji) are on our outsides as well. To say that the visual is psychological is not to deny its exteriority, but to assert the following:

1) One can imagine oneself and world of vision in ones psyche. This is obvious
2) In order to imagine oneself one needs the viewpoint of an Other who is physically external but simulated within the psyche.
3) Language likewise requires an other interluctor, who is external (or should be!) simulated within the self.

I think that the horror that (3) entails - that they are sharing their heads with someone, something else - is so great for atheisits at least, it tends to be rejected, or concealed behind claims of a metaphysical presence of "ideas," or "meanings."

Once one can accept these three assumptions however, it is clear that visual expressions are equally psychological and of self. In this video I introduce the dolls made by my wifes mother to express her aspirations for her granddaughters - things like health, wealth, happiness and a happy marriage - throught the use of graven images. In Japan I believe that these expressions are felt to be "paired-images" (guuzou,偶像) or like words, authenticopies of the aspirations which they represent. These are not worshipped in the same way as a Catholic worships Yahweh, but regarded fondly, important, and sincere. As such I think that they fall under the definition of graven image as defined by the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/2113.htm

Labels: autoscopy, cultural psychology, culture, cute, family, japan, japanese culture, kawaii, 日本文化, 自己, 自己視

The ubiquitous short stay hotel, affectionately know as love hotels or in abbreviated Japanese rabuho, with prices by the hour or two, and by the night if you come after about 10pm. They are usually situated at the outskirts of town, sometimes in a hotel complex (there are two affilated hotels in this photo) often, in rural areas for privacy, and near motorway interchanges for easier access. They are, of course, hotels primarily designed for the purpose of having sex.

Two condoms usually in a little basket, are invariably provided at the head of the bed, and sometimes there are vending machines selling sex toys.

The rooms are often themed, with such varieties as: classic four-poster-bed style, slightly Japanese style, mirrored ceiling, gymnasium style, wild west style, cute-pink and pastel shades style, disneyland style, or simply various styles of interiour decoration. The style of interiour decoration will be displayed on a poster outside the room or in the front lobby.

The rooms often have jaccuzzi baths, and one room or "cottage" in this complex has a sort of swimming pool bath with flowing water so that one can swim without going forward - the swimming equivalent of a jogging machine/treadmill.

Typical prices are about 60-70 dollars for 2 hours and (after 10 pm) 100 dollars till the next morning. Users are typicallly young couples that live at home, parents and couples that live in three generation households who do not have a sufficiently private space in their homes, those having extra marrital affairs, and occasionally men who are accompanied by or who order prostitutes (or "delivery" "health" masseuse) to the rooms.

I am not aware of the existance of short stay hotels in the UK. In the USA there are short stay hotels but they generally serve only the latter type of customer, so I am told.

Love hotels are often fullly booked on Christmas Eve when it is traditional to take ones girlfriend out for a bonk, such is the Japanese idea of the spirit of Christmas.

"Love" (appropriately pronounced "rub") Hotels are usually set up in such a way so that the occupants of the rooms do not need to meet the hotel proprietors. As one enters the room the door is automatically locked so that one can not leave (except in emergency) without depositing money in a vending machine. Alternatively the front desk of the hotel in an urban situation may be a kiosk with a small window such the desk clerk and the customers can not see each other. Before the advent of vending machines controlling door locks, there were sometimes systems of pipes that allowed customers to send payment in canisters sucked or blown down a network of pneumatic pipes.

The rooms are often very spacious, with living room areas, large (often glass walled) bathrooms, and king sized beds. The rooms of the hotel in this photograph are semidetached masionettes, with a living room and bathroom area on the ground floor, and a bedroom on the upper floor.

From a British point of view, their is a definate strangeness, which seems to lie in the difficulty of visiting (with a partner) a space whose purpose is so overt.

British couples take each other back to their respective apartments with the tacit assumption that sex may be on the cards, but at the same time with possibility that they may just watch TV, drink tea, or fall asleep in various degrees of proximity ("I'll take the couch").

When taking someone to a love hotel on the other hand, there is presumably an overt assumption, that one is going there for the purpose of copulation. Not withstanding the euphamistic name, "love hotels" are a space designed and designated for purpose of sex acts. An invitation to a love hotel is thus, not just "lets go back to my/your place for a bonk," but "lets go to a sex gymnasium," or "lets rent a room for ****ing in."

Having said that, some Japanese couples do just go to enjoy the themes and luxury of the love hotel environmment. And they are luxurious, and a nice place to stay even if you do not use them in the way that their designers had in mind.

Unfortunately, love hotels sometimes do not welcome single customers, or groups (such as groups of backpackers).

Labels: family, feminism, japanese culture, nihobunka, nihonbunka, religion, sex, taboo, tabuu, 日本文化

Japanese mothers tend to be even more dedicated to the cleanliness of their children, bathing *with* them, cutting their nails, cleaning out their ears at a frequency that suggests that these acts go beyond a concern purely for physical hygene, pointing to a culture of hygene and motherly pruning to achieve it. One aspect of this mothering, is in the way that Japanese mother's remove their children's nasal mucus.

Devices to remove nasal mucus from the noses of babies with colds do exist in Europe and the USA, such as "Nosefrida The Snotsucker Nasal Aspirator" "the "Bulb Syringe Aspirator" which uses a bulb rather than oral sucking and the "Graco Nasal Clear Nasal Aspirator" which uses a battery powered vacuum pump. They are more likely to be powered by means other than oral aspiration - sucking -and those that do use the suck to clear the nasal mucus may be called "bizarre" by commentators in the US for instance. Bodily secretions, especially faeces but nasal mucus as well I believe, tend to be more taboo in the West, compared to Japan, as previously noted.

Please note that the snot does not go into the mouth of the mother but into a vial which can be washed out. In the old days, however, I am informed that Japanese mothers used to suck their baby's snot directly into their mouths.

Many animals engage in social grooming as a way of reinforcing social bonds. The grooming that is lavished upon Japanese children reminds me of the affectionate pruning that Western mothers may give to their husbands. Some Western mothers have a tendency to clean and scrape their husbands hands, nails and feet. It seems to me that in parallel with Richard Schweder's observations regarding "Who Sleeps by Whom," the recipient of maternal grooming is generally children in Japan, and more likely to be romantic partners, particularly male partners in romantic relationships in the West.

Refs
Schweder, R. (1995) "Who Sleeps by Whom Revisited: A Method for Extracting the Moral Goods Implicit in Practice."
Nelson and Geher (2007) "Mutual Grooming in Human Dyadic Relationships: An Ethological Perspective." URL

Labels: care-givers, family, female, feminism, gender, japanese culture, nihobunka, nihonbunka, reversal, sex, taboo, tabuu, ジェンダー, 日本文化

There is a Japanese saying to the effect that "Children are Staples," ("ko wa kasugai" 子はカスガイ・鎹）.

My son here is seen above holding a staple or "kasugai," shown in close up in photo bottom left, which is used to hold two pieces of wood together, see photo bottom right.

In Japanese culture, the love between men and women is seen as being beautiful and natural, but like most things in nature, not particularly permanent. Love, between women and men does not last forever. There is no bridge across forever, no soulmate, no happy end. Japanese love stories tend, or tended, to end in double suicide: the most romantic outcome that one can hope for, at least far more so than domestic bliss.

The love or at least the relationship between parents and children, between ancestors and their descendants is however seen as being eternal. Parents and offspring are considered to be indivisible. No one is born again. This goes for the relationship between children and both mothers and fathers.

So when a couple have a child, while their own emotions for each other may wax and wane, they will be irretrievable linked forever in the flesh of their flesh, their child.

Hence, just as a staple can be used to join two pieces of wood together, so a children are considered to be like staples that join their parents together forever.

Westerners on the other hand are more likely to believe in the possibility of enduring love between men and women, through the transcendence of sexual difference. This hope, that there can be a bridge across forever, is perhaps dependent upon the repression of sex (much less festivals which celebrate sex), which is taboo, repressed, something to be sublimated into a unisex, shareable, idealised "love". I don't think that I need to refer to any particular cultural phenomenon to persuade Anglophones that Western culture is awash dreams of love. Oh, love.

While the Japanese believe that their view is natural, it may be dependent upon the repression of childbirth (seeing it, the desire for it, expressions of child birth, much less festivals which celebrate childbirth), which is taboo, repressed, and sublimated into a unisex, shareable and idealised "parent-child-love". While ancestor worship, or ancestor veneration, is carried out behind closed doors, the clearest expression of the cult of parent child love in Japan, is in the "monstrous" hegemony of cute found in Japan.

Related there are
Children are the shackles of this world and the next (ko ha sankai no kubikase 子は三界の首枷, こはさんかいのくびかせ) which refers to pretty much the same thing.

Labels: family, gender, nihobunka, nihonbunka, sex, Shinto, 宗教, 日本文化

According to most sources, including the wikipedia article this photo was taken the morning of John Lennon's death. While I am a wikipedia fan,“taken in 1980 the morning before Lennon’s death,”doesn't sound quite right. I think that the interview for Rolling Stone may have been the day of his assasination, but was the photo?
I doubt the wikipedia assertion only because I also think that John Lennon commented on the photograph saying that it was great because summed up his relationship with Ono perfectly.
So unless Lebowitz also took a instant polariod too it is difficult to see how Lennon could have commented on the photo if it were taken on the morning of his death because the photograph would have not yet been processed (unless he was just commenting on the pose).
The pose says a lot. Lennon is like a foetus or at least a infant, stuck to, almost suckling, and anyway dependent upon Ono. Ono has her arms raised above her head - almost blase' of Lennon's affection - and her eyes slightly open (I think) while Lennon's are shut. This suggest something along the lines of rather absolute trust on the part of Lennon, and "looking out for us both" on the part of Ono.
Lennon was parted from his mother at an early age and raised by his maternal aunt. His mother lived not so far away but Lennon did not know that at first, presuming that the infrequency of her visits was because his mother lived a long way away.
In fact, after the disappearance of Lennon's father (a 'listless' sailor) his mother found another man, and just did not feel able to keep a child from a previous marriage with her new man.
I think that Lennon became aware of this truth (that his mother had chosen a relationship with a new man over himself) before his mother's death.
I think perhaps that Lennon's mother died in sight of Lennon in a automotive accident (hit by a bus??) as she left after one of her visits.
These circumstances, it seems to me, may have produced in Lennon a far bigger than usual oedipus complex in the Lacanian sense.
Freud argued that male children naturally want to have sex with their mothers. This seems silly to me, living as I do in Japan where children share the parental bed. (My son does not try to hump his mother.)
Lacan (an obscurantist twerp at times I think, but also brilliant) argued that (Western) upbringing results in the formation of the oedipus complex. That is to say that because (Western) mothers reject their infants and (mixing in Richard Schweder's "Who sleeps by whom") go and sleep in another room, infants gain the impression that the 'thing that daddy can do' must be wonderful, and wish that they could do it too. This, Lacan argued, results in the oedipal/sexual desire.
In the 'normal' Western household this is predominantly a result of bedroom arrangements, but in Lennon's case his mother opted for a sexual relationship to the extent of not just another bedroom but living completely apart, even to the point of death.
It is no wonder then that early Lennon was super Western and, echoing the pan-sexual-theorist Freud, was fond of saying "It's all dick (according to the movie "Back Beat" at least)."
Indeed, the Beatles, with their songs of sexual love, chanted the Western mantra big-time. "All you need is love." Or perhaps, all you need is a, or many, coital relationships.
But then John Lennon found Yoko Ono who, Japanese as she is, did not idolise sexual love. Even after all the bed-ins and the Ono arranged affair still loved him. This was the mother he always wanted. She was his rock, she looked out for the both of them, his trust was eyes wide shut.
Personally, I thin that Ono was a smidgeon upwardly mobile and don't believe in pure love myself. But I can appreciate Lennon's point of view.
Here is love. A beautiful photo.

Labels: culture, family, female, japan, japanese culture, male, nihonbunka, 日本文化