J a p a n e s e    C u l t u r e

 

Today is International Women's day but I think it should be men's day in Japan due to the gender reversal pertaining in Japanese culture, including the culture of business suits, which exhibit Simone De Beavouir's theory of "The Second Sex" (1946) in reverse.

Simone De Beauvoir (1946) argued that, bearing mind in the teachings of Western religions, and such facts as that W ”l'homme" (man, mankind) refers to humans in general, the default, standard, archetypal, role model in Western society is male, whereas women are considered to be an inferior second or secondary sex.

In seems to me that in Japan this situation is reversed. For example, while the ratio of girls considering their role model to be their mother to their father is 2 to 1, only 30% more boys consider their role model to be their father (often a "salaryman" or salary delivery machine) than their mother.

Further, as shown in the above image, The main brand (by varieties of suit) of Aoyama one of the two the largest Japanese high street suit store (the other is Haruyama, the equivalents of Moss Bros and Burton in the UK) the majority of whose customers are men, is "Person's" for Men" where "Person's" is a brand of suit for women. The same company also sells two other (Mr. Junko think "Mr. Jane", and Yuki Torii Homme) similarly branded suits for men, whereas there are no such branded suits (XYZ for Women) in the Aoyama women suit range, nor any "XYZ for Men" in the Moss Bros or Burton suit brands.

This is probably due to the fact that Japanese women would not be seen dead in a man's suit, whereas Japanese men, respecting as they do the taste and style of women, are happy to wear a men's version of a "Person's" women's suit, because in Japan the default, model, archetypal role model, of the caring, sharing, autoscopic Jperson is a woman, as is the head of the Japanese pantheon is the Sun Goddess not the Father in Heaven.

Since the most important place in Japanese society is the home, where men generally play second fiddle, and increasingly outside of the home, women are being encouraged to take leading role as well, JMen's Day is likely to be a long time in coming.

Labels: female, feminism, japanese culture, male, nihonbunka, reversal

The lion, naked, prostrate and clearly lacking a womb, is scared. Sazae can tame anything and has tamed a sealion too, left. Like most Japanese women most of the time, Sazae appears to be on stage. She alone is fully aware of an audience. The lion is, like the Western wife perhaps, aware of the audience only through Sazae. The young chap with the ball, Katsuo I presume, is as yet oblivious. The audience constrains Sazae as it empowers her. In Japan phallogocentrism is replaced by wombimagocentrism*. When the audience watches, the women are in control, as they are controlled. Give up on the "different voice" (Gilligan, 1962) and get wombimagocentric now.

長谷川町子美術館の著作権です。おちりさげご希望でありましたら、下記のコメント欄かnihonbunka.comのメールリンクまでご連絡ください。
Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice. Harvard University Press.

Notes
* I think that this can be pronounced a bit like the Wombles, wom-bi-mago-centrism.

Addenda

What is it about logocentricism that is phallic?

Lacan mentions that mothers are often primary caregivers whereas males are fathers by virtue of their symbolic (linguistic) position in society, and often because of their work. In some societies the brothers are those which work to support sisters and their children and are treated much like fathers to those that they support.

In patriarchal societies, patriarchs may hope that their work, their significant acts, their money is rewarded on an exchange basis, with "presence" and "affection." The "philosophy of presence", where signifier are co-present with meaning in the "car-loving" mind, may be enacted in logocentric bedroom. 

Logocentrists place themselves into the imagined dialogue between their parents.

"Car-loving" is one of Derrida's puns on "auto-affection", or onanism.

Labels: autoscopy, culture, feminism, japan, japanese, manga, Nacalian, occularcentrism, self, sex, specular, 日本文化

Not withstanding the superb research by Hazel Marcus (Kitayama, Snibbe, Markus, & Suzuki, 2004; Markus, 2008; Markus & Schwartz, 2010; Savani, Markus, & Conner, 2008; Savani, Markus, Naidu, Kumar, & Berlia, 2010) on the way in which non W.E.I.R.D (White Educated Industrial Rich Democratic) (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010) persons are not so interested in making choices, it is my opinion that the cultural desire to exercise ones autonomy depends upon the medium or channel in which the choice is to be made.

"Choices" generally refer to verbal expressions, vocalised or thought. Westerners look at menus and make orders and people bring them things. Westerners like to do this. They feel that it increases their self-esteem, empowers them, and makes them feel like God, in whose image they were made, with the word.

The Japanese however often say "I'll have that too" copying the first person to order, and feel less desire to make choices as expressed in verbal orders for food. The Japanese even feel that making choices and orders to be a burden so that good service in Japan, as shown in the above video is often believed to be one in which the verbal choices are made by an expert host who serves his guests with the food that is in that season and locale, the most delicious, and it was indeed delicious and looked great.

But at the same time, the Japanese are very keen to express their autonomy in the visio-behavioural domain. For this reason it is another strong characteristic of Japanese food as served at Japanese restaurants, that it allows the patrons to make it themselves, there on the table according to their proclivities.

Making a sexist assumption, which I believe largely underpins these differences, Japanese restaurants allow and facilitate mummy-autonomy rather than daddy-autonomy. If you want to bark orders to a wife, do not come to Japan. If you want to be free to make food how you like it, then Japan is heaven. Strangely, among feminists, Japan has a bad press.

I also note that the Japanese creation myth or mix starts with what might be called celestial cooking. The first deities mix the 'oily' primal soup and make the first island by dripping salty water. Christians believe in and enjoy creation 'ex-nihilo' by vocalisation. Japanese enjoy creation ex-soup by stirring, and dripping -- a common creative trope in Shinto mythology -- and a lot of fun at the farewell party banquet table.


Notes
'ex-nihilo' is a lie, about a lie!

Bibliography
Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(2-3), 61–83. Retrieved from http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0140525X0999152X
Kitayama, S., Snibbe, A. C., Markus, H. R., & Suzuki, T. (2004). Is There Any ‘Free’ Choice? Psychological Science, 15(8), 527.
Markus, H. R. (2008). Does Choice Mean Freedom and Well-Being?. Presented at the International Society for  Cross-Cultural Psychology, Melbourne, Australia. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/651242
Markus, H. R., & Schwartz, B. (2010). Does Choice Mean Freedom and Well-Being? Journal of Consumer Research, 37(2), 344–355. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/651242
Savani, K., Markus, H. R., & Conner, A. L. (2008). Let your preference be your guide? Preferences and choices are more tightly linked for North Americans than for Indians. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(4), 861–876.
Savani, K., Markus, H. R., Naidu, N. V. R., Kumar, S., & Berlia, N. (2010). What Counts as a Choice?: U.S. Americans Are More Likely Than Indians to Construe Actions as Choices. Psychological Science, 21(3), 391–398. http://doi.org/10.1177/0956797609359908

Labels: choice, collectivism, cultural psychology, culture, feminism, hazel markus, japan, japanese culture, psychology, specular, theory, 宗教, 日本文

Over the past 20 years or so there has been a lot of talk about how Japan needs to bring more sexual equality --in the Western sense of giving women more power -- in order to increase the birth rate, reduce divorce, and increase or lower the age of marriage. It has not worked.

It seems to me however that conversely if the Japanese want to invigorate the family the Japanese would need to bring back "Dansonjouhi." Dansonjohi (男尊女卑） means, literally "respect men, abase women", which makes it sound very nasty. Nasty or not Dansonjouhi is a "benevolent sexism" (Glick and Fiske, 1996) like chivalry or  "ladies first" except in the opposite direction. In Japan, traditionally, the women put "men first". To espouse Dansonjohi is thus, to be suorlavihc, chivalrous in reverse. 

The traditional Japanese benevolent sexism was "men first," as opposed to "ladies first" because in Japan women hold the structurally dominant position. In the West "Man" means "human," and women are "the second sex" (De Beauvoir, 2010). The reverse is true in Japan. "Watashi" (in red letters in the image above) is a female first person pronoun used by everyone. When Japanese men want to refer to themselves in formal situations, they have to refer to themselves as a woman. If they use a male first person pronoun (ore, boku) they sound uncouth or infantile.

The centre and building block of Japanese society is the family (Nakane's "ba", 1967). The pre-eminent Japanese interpersonal emotion (Doi's "amae," 2001) springs from mother-child relationships. The Japanese super ego is an internalisation of the mother not the father (Kozawa, 1932; Okonogi's "Ajase complex", 1991, 2001).  The best Western theory of the Japanese self (Markus & Kitayama, 1991) was originally a theory that Hazel Markus and Susan Cross had about their own female selves (Markus & Cross, 1990). Japan's most famous psychologists, argued that the archetypal Japanese is Mother (Kawaii's bosei genri, 1989).

At the very least, at a concrete level, the sleeping arrangements (Caudill & Plath, 1966; Shweder, Jensen, & Goldstein, 2006) are designed to facilitate mothering more than the satisfaction of male desire, and Japanese women control family finances.

In return for this structural control, or cultural power, Japanese women (and Western men) used to put their partners first, in a rather matronising (patronising) way*, by carrying their bags, letting them sit down on trains, putting their clothes on for them, giving them freedom, and not nagging them.

Now however Japanese women (influenced by Western culture) want to keep their cake and eat it. They want to keep all the structural power, their centrality within the home, the power over their children, their financial control and at the same time be treated like a Western wife. This is a bit like a British guy refusing to be a gentleman (e.g. going to snacks or worse). As Stan Lee says, "With great power comes great responsibility."

Notes
* It has been shown that Western male espousal of the "Ladies First" doctrinaire correlates with a dim view of the state and abilities of women: women are put first because they are thought to be the weaker, second sex, in Western society (Glick & Fiske, 1996). This does not prove that Chivalry or Ladies First are nice, or nasty, but they refer to attitudes and behaviours that compensate for the underlying structural imbalances of power. One can argue that the structural imbalances should be taken to task and the compensatory "benevolent sexism" be reviled but, that may require a greater restructuring, or even abandonment, of the family. It has also been shown the benevolent sexism correlates with life satisfaction (Connelly & Heesacker, 2012).

Bibliography
Beauvoir, S. de. (2010). The Second Sex. (C. Borde & S. Malovany-Chevallier, Trans.) (1ST ed.). Knopf.
Caudill, W., & Plath, D. W. (1966). Who Sleeps by Whom? Parent-Child Involvement in Urban Japanese Families. Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes.
Connelly, K., & Heesacker, M. (2012). Why Is Benevolent Sexism Appealing? Associations With System Justification and Life Satisfaction. Psychology of Women Quarterly. Retrieved from http://pwq.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/08/17/0361684312456369.abstract
Glick, P., & Fiske, S. T. (1996). The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory: Differentiating hostile and benevolent sexism. Journal of personality and social psychology, 70(3), 491. Retrieved from http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/70/3/491/
Markus, H., & Cross, S. (1990). The interpersonal self.
Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review; Psychological Review, 98(2), 224. Retrieved from http://www.biu.ac.il/PS/docs/diesendruck/2.pdf
Shweder, R. A., Jensen, L. A., & Goldstein, W. M. (2006). Who sleeps by whom revisited: A method for extracting the moral goods implicit in practice. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 1995(67), 21–39. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cd.23219956705/abstract
Kawai, H. 河合隼雄. (1989). 父性原理と母性原理. 第三文明社.
Kozawa, H. 古沢平作. (2001). 罪悪感の二種類. In 小此木啓吾 & 北山修 (Eds.), 阿闍世コンプレックス. 創元社.
Okonogi, K. 小此木啓吾. (1991). エディプスと阿闍世. 青土社.
Okonogi, K.小此木啓吾, & 北山修. (2001). 阿闍世コンプレックス. 創元社.
Nakane, C. 中根千枝. (1967). タテ社会の人間関係. 講談社.
Doi, T. 土居健郎. (2001). 「甘え」の構造 [新装版] (新装.). 弘文堂.
Kitayama, O. 北山修. (2005). 共視論. 講談社.

Labels: culture, feminism, japan, japanese culture, nihonbunka, reversal, theory, ジェンダー, 日本文化

They could almost be the same girl, with a variety of hair colours. In the Edo period too, stylised pictures of "beautiful women" looked like they could have been of the same woman but now the woman's face is very different. Images of beauty have changed.

The above is the first page of google images, searching for anime face girl.

It would be interested to ask a pool of subjects whether they think the images are of the same girl by different people, or of different girls, and to compare these results with say, googles first page of impressionist beautiful women. While I do not believe that the Japanese are generally conformist (as is generally believed) I do think that views of feminine beauty are very convergent in Japan because the Japanese idealise and enhance the image more. I have argued (Leuers and Sonoda, 1999) that since Westerners idealise and enhance character traits more, their self-professed character traits are far more convergent than those of Japanese.

It is amazing that there is a photo (or two?) in there.

Copyright their respective copyright holders. please use comments or nihonbunka.com contact link to have this image removed from the net.

Labels: fashion, female, feminism, image, japan, japanese culture, Jaques Lacan, lacan, logos, male, manga, mirror, nihobunka, nihonbunka, occularcentrism, self, sex, specular, ジェンダー, 日本文化

The Japanese in the Edo period had a fairly localised view of beauty, so much so that these beautiful women look very alike to the point of appearing identical. These Traditional Japanese beauties had neither large round eyes, nor double eyelids. Their eyes were slit like and their features were generally small and angular. Pointy noses where in, but not particularly large ones. This leads me to believe that the current Japanese fondness for large round eyes, especially with creased ("double") eyelids is partly the result of the influence of Western, caucasian, images of beauty upon Japan.

Labels: fashion, female, feminism, image, japan, japanese culture, Jaques Lacan, lacan, logos, male, manga, mirror, nihobunka, nihonbunka, occularcentrism, self, sex, specular, ジェンダー, 日本文化

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

Today a Mr. Takehara failed to get elected as a major of a small Japanese town under a baner of reducing the power of public administrators.

Why is it that the Japanese are so tolerant of the power of bureaucrats, civil servants? Why is that so many young people want to become a bureaucrat, and do not feel shame about taking home a higher level of pay than their private-sector constituents, for doing less work?

Many young people (my students) are quite frank about wanting to avoid the world of private-sector, competitive work, to obtain a higher level of pay and job security (so they think at least) in the public sector, and go home earlier.

One reason is that the world of non-civil-servant, private-sector work is so hard in Japan. I guess that people can see the private sector, as being unacceptably harsh, and that it is therefore morally acceptable to go to work in the public sector where people to work acceptable hours for acceptable pay.

Another is that since the public sector is so desirable the public sector can take only the best (academic-hensachi-wise) so those that enter the public sector feel that they are the top of the heap, and therefore more deserving of a high salary.

And after all, someone has to be a bureaucrat, so 'why shouldn't it be me (especially if I have the best grades, can pass the strictest, public employee exams)?'

But more than that, there is little notion of public sector employees being "civil-*servants*;" people who exist to support the profit-making activities of the private sector. It seems to be felt that the public sector is rather the centre of society, or the centre of the economy, and the profit-making private sector is there to support those that perform the 'central role' of bureaucratic administration. I feel this to be the case in the macroscopic world of Japanese society, in the Japanese company, and in microscopic world of the Japanese family.

The (from a Western point of view) reversed view of the public and private sectors of the economy, may relate to the position of men and women, or rather their roles, in the Japanese family. The division between the public-administrative vs. private-profit-making sectors of the Japanese economy, map onto the care-giving (administrative?) vs. wage-earning roles in the Japanese family.

In the West wage earners tend to be seen as the central, respected, prime-movers of the family. Thus people, of both sexes, hanker after taking this role, whereas the caregiver is seen as merely a supporter, a servant. In Japan, I think that the situation is reversed. The caregiver, usually the mother, is the center of the Japanese family, and the wage earner is that beast of burden. If the Japanese family is a steam locomotive, the caregiver is the driver and the wage-earner is the 'fireman' who shovels the coal. Young people respect the central, administrative, rent-taking, role of their primary care giver and see the wage earner as an appendage that does that necessary, but rather tiresome and dirty, money-making-sarari-man-thing.

There is probably nothing objectively "central" about the private or public sectors, the "rent-taking" administrators, or the "profit making" labourers, each need each other, as do caregivers and wage earners. Without the latter there would be no one to pay the taxes, and without the former there would be to social structure to allow people to make a profit in the first place. In the family, there is nothing more central to being a care-giver, nor being a wage-earner. It all depends upon the cultural lens from which you look at it.

There are problems though:

First of all, of course, reversals can take some getting used to. It will take me all my life to get used to! I still try and break the rules (sorry folks!) Or perhaps I attempt to reach a compromise. Ahem.

Secondly, things can get extreme. A society can become over infatuated with the profit making side of things, and over infatuated with administration. I am not sure if that is what is happening in Japan, but the level of public debt makes me worry.

Thirdly, strange edge-effects can happen when rerversed cultures mingle, especially when one of them has a louder voice, and there is incomplete understanding of the situtations pertaining in each culture. For example, the Western feminist notion that Japanese caregivers are downtrodden, that they deserve even more, or the notion that the Japanese private sector is unduly harsh, find favour even among the elites, and may tip the balance in an unhealthy extreme directions.

Solutions? Japan may once have had a stronger Confucian-style sense of noblesse oblige amongst its central, administrators and caregivers. If I knew Confucius better I would be able to point to the sooth where Confucius recommends that leaders put their subjects welfare first. And are there still any supporters of dansonjohi(“honor men and belittle women.”)? The idea that a society should honor men and belittle women is abhorent to Western ears, because it is not understood as noblesse oblige. It is in fact no worse, nor better, nor different to "Ladies First."

Labels: bureacrats, care-givers, feminism, japanese culture, nihonbunka, reversal