J a p a n e s e    C u l t u r e

Linguistic self-enhancement has generally been considered to be rather disgusting in Japan, or at least something that the Japanese have avoided. In my experience, and in historical accounts of Western impressions of Japan, boastfulness is almost completely, and notably, absent.

One of the few accounts of Japanese boastfulness is that of a highly Westernised scholar of things Western (rangakusha). After several months in captivity in Japan, the Russian spy Vasiliĭ Mikhaĭlovich Golovin remarked in 1811 that the Japanese geometrician and astronomer, Mamia Rinso (Mamiya Rinzo) "manifested his pride, however, by constant boasting of the deeds he had performed, and the labours he had endured." (Golovin, 1824, p284) but further that, "I must here remark, that this was the first Japanese ventured, in our presence, to swagger and assume // importance on account of his military skill, and his vapouring made not only us but even his own countrymen sometimes laugh at him. " (Golovin, 1824, pp. 285-286). In other words, the only Japanese person to boast, in Golovin's experience, was one who had been influenced by Western culture.

I have found two other records of instances of boastfulness in Japan in the pre-twentieth century historical record and both of them relate to sex.

"One old couple, who kept one of these shops, we were on intimate terms with; that is to say, we seldom passed without a few words to them. One day, seeing the old woman by herself, we asked her wherever husband was, and were told that she supposed 'he was after the girls', after which she laughed, as if delighted at the idea of having such a gay old dog for a spouse...
The next time we visited the shop, we rallied the old fellow on being such a gay Lothario; be he did not seem as proud of the reputation as his wife was, and indignantly declared the aspersion cast on him to be totally without foundation. We were half inclined to believe him, and even now think that the old woman's statement may have only been a vainglorious boast"(Cortazzi, 2013,, p67)

Edward de Fonblanque writes, in 1860, of another rare instance Japanese boastfulness, which is also sexual.

"Nor were business wants alone consulted, for the Government had considerately provide a magnificent building, all lacquer and caving and delicate painting, in which the Tojin [Foreigner] might pass their leisure hours in the company of painted musume [literally daughter, but the meaning her is girl], dressed in gorgeous robes, and coifées in the most wonderful manner.
I visited the Gankiro, taking the precaution to go there in broad day, and for my character's sake, in good company, and was a little startled at the systematic way in which the authorities conduct this establishment. Two officers showed us over the building, and pointed out its beauties which as much pride as if they were exhibiting an ancient temple sacred to their dearest gods. This was the court-yard; that was to be a fish-pond with fountains (the building was still incomplete at this time); in this room refreshments might be procured -that was the theatre; those little nooks into which you entered by a slide panel in the wall were dormitories, encumbered with no unnecessary furniture, there, affixed to the walls, was the tariff of charges, which I leave to the imagination; and in that house, across the court, seated in rows on the verandah, were the moosmes themselves. We were invited to step over for its was only under male escort that they might enter the main building? My curiosity had, however, been sufficiently gratified and I departed, quite ready to believe in anything that might hear as to the morals of the Japanese. (Cortazzi, 2013, p274.)

The Japanese are perhaps similarly reserved towards boastfulness and sexuality. Japanese humour, unlike that of the British, rarely revolves around innuendo. But in my experience (and research on the latter), both sexuality and boastfulness do appear when the Japanese have been drinking.

For example when attending a party with some Japanese sports persons, I found myself invited to drink at a table of similarly inebriated Japanese. It was late in the day, we had all had a few glasses of sake. One gentleman asked mischievously "So you are English? (omitting the subject and particles) England has Big Ben doesn't it? / You have a big ben don't you?" （イギリス人ですか。*ビッグ・ベン*はありますよね？）. I think my host repeat "big ben", nodding in a conspiratorial way for emphasis. This was a very rare case of innuendo and inviting the opportunity to boast, once again on a sexual topic, which from a Japanese perspective may regarded, with some disdain - but at times enjoyment - to be of similar ilk.

Is there any inherent connection between linguistic self-enhancement and sex? Or on the contrary between visual self-enhancement and the storge appreciation of cuteness? Some theoreticians of language, its origins and merits suggest that it may have something do with peacocking. Derrida argues that linguistic thought, as self addressed love letter, is like onanism. One of the characteristics of linguistic as opposed to visual self-enhancement is that it takes places inside rather than outside the head. While linguistic self love becomes silent, ashamed, and interior (see Vigotsky on self-speech and the way it becomes hidden) visual self-love always presupposes an exterior, viewer. Does the interiority of self-serving interior dialogue, knowing oneself via ones self-narrative, imply or promote a sexual "autoaffection"? I tend to think so.

I think I told my hosts that I had not seen Big Ben. Lame!

Image of Big Ben from Wikimedia
Cortazzi, H. (2013). Victorians in Japan: In and around the Treaty Ports. A&C Black.
Golovnin, V. M., Rīkord, P. Ī., & Shishkov, A. S. (1824). Memoirs of a Captivity in Japan, During the Years 1811, 1812, and 1813: With Observations on the Country and the People. H. Colburn and Company.

Labels: japanese, japanese culture, logos, occularcentrism, sex, 日本文化, 自己視

In general the Japanese do not tend to assert themselves linguistically, being in general very self-effacing. There is one exception to this. Japanese people, and pocket monsters, take great pride in their names, and will put their names to themselves and their positive acts. Despite being so self-effacing, when it comes to their names, they are very in your face.

For example individual names appear on houses (where Britons have only numbers), stating the name of the patriarch who provided for it, at Shinto shrines the names of companies and individuals that donate lanterns and other stonework will be carved into the same, Japanese sometimes stick labels with their names onto temples and shrines in the "senja fuda" tradition, Japanese school-rooms are often bristling with student names, they take great pride in their business cards, and in this photo, they and I write their name in a chart detailing who has cleaned what part of the changing room when. I have left only my name showing. "Take Take, Takemoto (said in the style of Pikachuu)!"

I think that the Japanese name may be the equivalent of the Western smile. In general Westerners do not assert ourselves visually, with our bodies, poses and posture. To do so would be considered vain. On the other hand we are allowed to smile. The smile -- being the shape of the mouth and source of language - the most linguistic of visual expressions, the written name is the most visual mark in language, the point of intersection between the worlds of language and vision, the tip of the brush pen.

Labels: japan, japanese culture, logos, Nacalian, nihonbunka, 日本文化

The image above, adapted from Yuki (2003, p172) , shows how Americans and Japanese conceive of groups. Westerners concentrate on the name and set of central attributes of that group and all members feel themselves to share that attribute with all other members, in comparison with outgroups and their members who do not share the same attributes. These can be quite simple such as soccer fans may see membership of their teams fan base as derived from their belief that they "Want Chelse/Liverpool to win." They may chant "Chelsea, Chelsea," or "Liverpool, Liverpool," and they may mind merge with the social identity of their group becoming an outgroup hating herd animal. They do this to achieve vicarious self-enhancement through identification with the presumed superiority of their group. Their team wins, and the fans bask in reflected glory. Even if they loose they can believe that the fans are the most "loyal." And either way they can engage in an ego trip believing their group and/equals themselves to be superiority to others. Western group members therefore indulge in intergroup comparison, to enhance beliefs of the form "we are better than them" and "they are worse than us." This herd-like comparative group cognition is illustrated in the top diagram (a).

Japanese on the other hand pay attention to the many and various relationships and the network of relationships *within* their group. They have no interest in making downward comparison to the detriment of other groups. Their groups do not need a scapegoat, an other, to form at all. They are bonded by mutual cooperation, by "give and take" (a loan-expression from English into Japanese), obligation (giri) and ninjou (empathy) towards ingroup members. Rather than compare, they concentrate on maintaining ingroup harmony. Since the name of Japanese group game is cooperation, the individuality of the group members, their many and various talents that they can bring to the mix, are valued rather than ignored. So there is no moronic mind-merge, no hooligan herd, for the Japanese it would seem.

I love this theory and there is a lot of evidence to support it. Westerners are more likely to positively evaluate and be chummy with those that they are similar to (Heine, Foster, & Spina, 2009; Schug, Yuki, Horikawa, & Takemura, 2009), and more likely to remember information regarding inter-group rather than intra-group relationships (Takemura, Yuki, & Ohtsubo, 2010), whereas are more likely to trust someone in the same relationship network as themselves, rather than merely due to the fact of belonging to some nominal group (Yuki, Maddux, Brewer, & Takemura, 2005).

And as I have written before the emphasis for me is upon "nominal." Westerners like myself tend to conceive of others, their groups and themselves linguistically - in the latter case as having some shared characteristics. Whereas Japanese tend to conceive of groups in their imagination which results (as Lacan argues) in groups being conceived in terms of a network of binary relationships.

However, it occurred to me this morning, based upon the above argument, the group of "Americans" should also be that much more mind-merged, herdlike and amalgamous people - believing in common shared characteristics* - whereas the Japanese as a group, should, in so far as they understand themselves as a group at all, be bristling with individuals all cooperating together for the sake of synergy but never, for the sake of the same synergy, becoming the same. The motto of the Japanese group is, the words of Confuscious "harmonise not herd!" (和して同せず）.

Thus in a culture with so great a respect for individuality, such as Japan under Yuki's theory, it is not surprising that "harmony" should be heralded and aspired towards. Likewise in a culture with so much mind-mulching, herdery, it is not surprising that individualism be that towards which its members are encouraged to aspire.

Does that satisfy? I think that I have gone a little too far and suggest a slight amendment to diagram (b) above. Yuki probably only drew the relationships as external to the group members in order to draw attention to them. He makes it entirely clear that intra-group attention is based upon the Interdependent model (Markus and Kitayama, 1991, diagram page 226) or in Kasulis (2010, diagram p 225) which provides philosophic, the relationships are shown interior to the selves. Implied by Yuki's analysis, I suggest therefore diagram (c) as a modification to diagram (b). Under this conception, the Japanese cease to be so radically individual, as compared to Americans, since they are aware that their individuality is fostered, created and maintained by virtue of their relationships with others which are self-forming and interpenetrate and overlap with the self.

How is this even possible? How can other person really be part of oneself? If that other person and your relationship is conceived in the visio-imaginary, then as Nishida (see Heisig, 2010) and Mach (1897), argue, it takes place in a place which is, paradoxically, both oneself and the world.


*The American Mantra: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Heine, S. J., Foster, J.-A. B., & Spina, R. (2009). Do birds of a feather universally flock together? Cultural variation in the similarity-attraction effect. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 12(4), 247–258. Retrieved from onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-839X.2009.0128...
Heisig, J. W. (2010). Nishida’s Deodorized Basho and the Scent of Zeami’s Flower. In Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy 7: Classical Japanese Philosophy (pp. 247–73). Nagoya: Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture. Retrieved from nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/staff/jheisig/pdf/Nishida%20and%20Zea...
Kasulis, T. P. (2010). Helping Western Readers Understand Japanese Philosophy. Dialogue, (34). Retrieved from nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/nfile/2124
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 www.biu.ac.il/PS/docs/diesendruck/2.pdf
Schug, J., Yuki, M., Horikawa, H., & Takemura, K. (2009). Similarity attraction and actually selecting similar others: How cross-societal differences in relational mobility affect interpersonal similarity in Japan and the USA. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 12(2), 95–103.
Takemura, K., Yuki, M., & Ohtsubo, Y. (2010). Attending inside or outside: A Japanese–US comparison of spontaneous memory of group information. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 13(4), 303–307. doi:10.1111/j.1467-839X.2010.01327.x
Yuki, M. (2003). Intergroup comparison versus intragroup relationships: A cross-cultural examination of social identity theory in North American and East Asian cultural contexts. Social Psychology Quarterly, 166–183. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1519846.pdf
Yuki, Masaki, Maddux, W. W., Brewer, M. B., & Takemura, K. (2005). Cross-cultural differences in relationship-and group-based trust. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31(1), 48–62. Retrieved from psp.sagepub.com/content/31/1/48.short

Labels: collectivism, culture, image, individualism, japan, japanese culture, logos, Nacalian, 個人主義, 日本文化, 集団主義

When Japanese play sports they make meaningless noises, most famously the kiai shout of karate. Various meaningless shouts and calls are used by Japanese sports persons of all types, from tennis to (in this video) little league baseball. Sports persons are taught to throw out their voice (koe wo dasu) in order that they concentrate. Why?

Heejun Kim (2005) has demonstrated that while Westerners perform marginally better at task when they are required to vocalise their thoughts, when East Asians are required to "vocalise their thoughts" they perform significantly worse because Japanese thoughts are not in language. Conversely, when Westerners are required to make meaningless vocalisations they become significantly worse at a task since it prevents their thoughts, whereas it negatively impacts upon East Asians very little.

It seems clear that making meaningless vocalisations can in fact improve performance among Japanese, such as those playing baseball in this video, since (I argue) these meaningless vocalisations clear the mind of linguistic thought and allows the players to concentrate upon their Japanese-style-thoughts, which I argue are visual.

The throwing out of the voice or destruction of the logos is a common theme in Japanese culture especially Buddhism where people chant the name of the Buddha, count breathes, or simply and directly attempt to silence the mind. I argue that the central ritual act performed at Japanese Shinto Shrines, that of "harai" literally sweeping away, or purification by waving zigzag strips of pure white paper overy people's heads, is also intended to exorcise the mind of the dreaded logos.

Bibliography
Kim, H. S. (2005). We talk, therefore we think? A cultural analysis of the effect of talking on thinking. Social Cognition: Key Readings, 63.http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/labs/kim/kim_2002.pdf

Labels: buddhism, culture, japan, japanese culture, logos, Nacalian, nihonbunka, Shinto, 日本文化, 神道, 自己視

It is nothing new. Japanese people who have been abroad marvel at the extent to which Europeans debate, hold dialogue about everything, with everything, even with themselves. And some of them, , such as the authors of this book (Kitagawa and Hirata, 2008) wish to re-import this love of language back to Japan. They lament (in an almost direct emulation of Nakajima) that "Japan has no Dialogue."

Heejun Kim demonstrates however, that language actually gets in the way of East Asian's thought. When encouraged to think and talk Americans perform better. When encouraged to think and talk Asians perform worse. This suggests that Asians are not thinking in language.

When encouraged to think and talk nonsense (e.g. "a, b, c, a, b, c"), and suppress linguistic thought, Japanese are not so put out. They can automatise speech, put it on the back burner. When Americans suppress linguistic thought they almost find it difficult to walk. Western thinking is in language. Japanese thinking is not. It is elsewhere.

But the Japanese, with their endless love of things foreign, attempt to get all that chin wagging brought here. When they succeed, the Japanese will be a pale imitation of the great white whisperers. You are doing it aren't you? Whispering to yourself.

Don't do it Japan! Believe Kim (2002) and repent.

Kim, H. (2002). We talk, therefore we think? A cultural analysis of the effect of talking on thinking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. www.psych.ucsb.edu/labs/kim/kim_2002.pdf
Kitagawa, T & HIrata, O. 北川達夫, & 平田オリザ. (2008). ニッポンには対話がない―学びとコミュニケーションの再生. 三省堂.
Nakajima, Y. 中島, 義道. (1997). 「対話」のない社会―思いやりと優しさが圧殺するもの. PHP研究所.

Labels: japan, japanese culture, lacan, logos, theory, 日本文化

There is no plastic food in showcases at British restaurants. There are rarely even any images in their menus. Even if there are images, these may be just to set the atmosphere rather than be images of the food that one can purchase.

But, especially having lived so long In Japan where there are often visual aids to choosing food at restaurants, and copious photographs in all Japanese cook books, I was surprised to find that this British recipe book should have no images inside its pages at all. The only image is the one that adorns its over and it is not made clear which of the 262 recipes therein contained the image depicts. Even assuming that it is in the small print, the decision as to whether to cook and eat the any of the soups and stews described has to be based on the name, the instructions and the ingredients. This maybe testimony to the power of the British imagination but I think not. I think that rather it shows that the British, compared to the Japanese, do not really care what their food looks like so long as it tastes good and is healthy. This morning we had a yoghurt and broccoli soup which, as you can imagine, looked not unlike some bodily fluid or other, but tasted quite delicious.

I am informed that this recipe book is also quite good for those that wish to learn English.

Labels: image, japan, japanese culture, logos, 日本文化

Clark Kent changes into superman in front of the mirror. He was superman all along. Superman is inside him. Superman's suit, a super imago (Lacan, 2002), is no more than a covering, a mask, something that 'envelops' the real (Baudrillard, 1995, p.2). The suit is essential, but only as a stage, a means, to conceal his identity. What is that super identity? Could it be the hard-boiled narrative that Western super heroes are always mumbling to themselves and the readers? Thoughts can fly.

Eschewing telephone boxes and toilets, Japanese superheroes transform in front of everyone with great aplomb, sometimes on stage. They use symbols to transform. And they also have, and sometimes become, suits. Often what the Japanese Clark Kenta changes into is a super suit. Their super form that -- vectored by the symbol -- possess them is often a sort of exoskeleton. They have bug eyes, but no mouths. Speaking, even mumbling, is quite out of the question. Ultramen are pure body, pure light.

Both types of super hero use the image and the symbol but in different directions, with reversed means and ends. The Western suit is the *means* to conceal and continue the objective: the super identity that the hero always was. The Japanese transformatory symbol, and Kyari Pamyu Pamyu's choreographed "Kata," are a means to transforming into ones super suit, or assuming the visual three-eyed* identity that Kyari represents.

*Kyari has two eyes on her face and another, that looks at her sometimes a "riken no ken" (Zeami). Zeami emphasised too that the Kata, the ritualised symbolic movements, are a means. One learns the kata, one manipulates the symbols, to go beyond them. The Japanese stop narrating themselves almost as soon as they started, but hey are not zombies (Rudd, 2009).

Image top left: Superman frente al espejo by Greenog, bottom right HG 00 Gundam by Chag

Baudrillard, J. (1995). Simulcra and Simulation. (S. F. Glaser, Trans.). Univ of Michigan Pr.
Lacan, J. (2002). The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience. In B. Fink (Trans.), Ecrits (pp. 75–81). WW Norton & Company.
Rudd, A. (2009). In defence of narrative. European Journal of Philosophy, 17(1), 60–75. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0378.2007.00272.x/full

Labels: autoscopy, culture, eye, henshin, image, japan, japanese culture, Jaques Lacan, lacan, logos, Masked Riders, morph, occularcentrism, reversal, specular, superhero, 仮面ライダー, 変形, 自己視

Don't get me wrong. I don't think that "collectivism" does not exist as an "ism" in Japan or that individualism is not prevalent as an "ism" in the USA. Nothing could be further from the truth. The name of Japan is sometimes "Wa" or "harmony," the Japanese call themselves "The Harmonious." And Westerners are always calling themselves individualists. Jeremy Paxman, possibly the most famous British television jouralist described the London Olympics opening ceremony in the following way:

"Whatever nit-picking worries anyone has about the Opening Ceremony (for me, it was the almost total absence of the golden thread of British history, the fight for personal liberty), it set a tone that was amplified throughout the games. Could a nation of cussed individualists ever bring off an opening show to rival the spectacular we saw in Beijing?" [my emphasis] (Paxman, 2012)

There can be no doubt that at the level of linguistic philosophy, the Japanese espouse harmony and cooperation, whereas Westerners espouse personal liberty and individualism.

How about in the real world? I find the Japanese to as individual as the English. The excellent review paper by Beth Morling (Morling & Lamoreaux, 2008), "Culture outside the head," however reaches the opposite conclusion, so I thought I had better see what it had to say.

The first paper reviewed paper I could download, claimed that since Japnaese adverts used more imagery and were less likely to mention the product directly, they were therefore colectivistic; trying to build up a relationship with the purchaser (Javalgi, Cutler, & Malhotra, 1995). I thought that this analysis was unfair. Readers of this blog (?!) would know that it is my opinion that Japanese use imagery because they identify with images and have a God (or generalised other) that looks rather than listens (Leuers & Sonoda, 1999b).

While clicking around on analysises of print media, however, I cam up with a result that made me pleased. Wang (2006) noted that Taiwanese magazines are Westernised and that collectivist messages (table page 73) and individualist messages (table page 68） are aboult equal at the linguistic level in adverts in Taiwanese and American magazines. Let us assume that this result is due to Westernisation.

However, Wang also noted that when it comes to photographs, Taiwanese magazines are more likely to show individuals (Taiwan 73.1%, US 59%) and correspondingly far less likely to show groups (Taiwa 26.9%, US 41%) (see table page 65). This is not at all unusual. Japanese magazines are lonely (or narcissistic). Their protagonists are displayed on their own.

This result mirrors that found in my research on autophotography (Leuers & Sonoda, 1999b: see Heine 2007, p213). Japanese autophotography displays not only more positivity, but more pictures of self, whereas American photos show more pictures of other people.

Having a look at some Japanese and American fashion magazines, it seems that the same pattern is repeated. American women want to be kissed and appear with men in US Cosmopolitan. Japanese women are more self-reliant and rarely show men in their magazines (or collages) because men's demands for affection are rather annoying (uzai).

Westerners are linguistically individualist since they consider themselves to be linguistic entities (narratives) and try to differentiate their narratives from those of others (largely unsuccessfully, see Leuers & Sonoda, 1999a). Japanese see themselves as their self-images, first and foremost their face (Watsui), and as seperate embodied existances they yearn for communitas and harmony which they express in their "let's make friends" philosophy of harmony (Yamagishi, 2002).

In any event, I do feel that at a personal level the Japanese are extremely self~possessed, self-reliant and difficult to push around. Anyone married to a Japanese woman should know that, but despite the fact that some famous cultural psychologists are, they do not reach the same conclusion. I guess that they presume that they have married an unusual Japanese. (You know who I am thinking of...Fat chance that he reads my blog).

Bibliography
Heine, S. J. (2007). Cultural Psychology (First ed.). W. W. Norton & Company.
Javalgi, R. G., Cutler, B. D., & Malhotra, N. K. (1995). Print advertising at the component level: A cross-cultural comparison of the United States and Japan. Journal of Business Research, 34(2), 117–124. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/014829639400116V
Leuers, T. R. S., & Sonoda, N. (1999a). Independent self bias. Progress in asian social psychology, 3, 87–104. Retrieved from httyp://www.nihonbunka.com/docs/independent_self.rtf
Leuers, T., & Sonoda, N. (1999a). The eye of the other and the independent self of the Japanese. Symposium presentation at the 3rd Conference of the Asian Association of Social Psychology, Taipei, Taiwan. Retrieved from http://nihonbunka.com/docs/aasp99.htm
Morling, B., & Lamoreaux, M. (2008). Measuring culture outside the head: A meta-analysis of individualism—collectivism in cultural products. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 12(3), 199–221.
Paxman, J. (2012, August 12). London 2012 Olympics: Who thinks Britain is rubbish now? Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/9469017/London-2012-Olympics-Who-thinks-Britain-is-rubbish-now.html
Wang, I. C. (2006). I‘ or’ WE"? A comparative analysis of individualism in Taiwanese and US print advertisements. Retrieved from http://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0728106-154652
山岸俊男. (2002). 心でっかちな日本人―集団主義文化という幻想. 日本経済新聞社.

Labels: collectivism, image, individualism, japan, japanese culture, logos, Nacalian, nihonbunka, reversal, theory, 個人主義, 日本文化, 集団主義

The reference to Japanese culture is not till towards the end.

According to Lacan the real, imaginary and symbolic are related in like manner to the rings of a borromean knot (see this page) in which no one of the the three rings passes through the others, but the three rings are held together. Cutting any of the rings causes the knot to fall apart.

I have interpreted this to mean that we experience, or believe in ourselves (and the world) at the presumed intersection between the imaginary (that which we can see and imagine) and the symbolic (that which we can say). The borromean knot illustrates this "presumption" in the fact that the rings do not in fact intersect.

I have also related this presumption, and the failure to maintain it, to the anguish of characters in two scenes in David Lynch's movies: the scene in "Blue Velvet" (1986) were Ben (played by Dean Stockwell) mimes "In dreams" and the "Club Silencio" scene in "Mulholland Dr." (2001) where, Frank in the former, and Diane and Camilla in the later become visibly distraught to realise that the performer they are watching is lip-synching. I also read that Australia has outlawed lip-synching at "live concerts" (specifically those of Britney Spears) unless the tickets come with a disclaimer. Why should lip-synching be so distressing?

At the phenomenological level however, it can be claimed that (I have a reference for this claim somewhere, thanks to one of my seminar students) that sound can not come from vision and that experientially we are always, as it were, aligning an audio track with a visual track, and in a sense all performers are lip-synchers or ventriloquists, though in some situations we deem their voices and their images to be coming from the same place.

At the level of the "symbolic" and the "imaginary", however, I did not have any clear understanding of what Lacan was referring to.

Rather than being a "card holding Lacanian," I just find the most basic level interpretation of theories useful for interpreting Japanese culture, and rightly or wrongly, I tend to think that he the man, Lacan himself, was a ranting obscurantist! Even worse than me perhaps.

But I have been thinking about this knot a little more, while reading the Edgar Allen Poe short story that Lacan so recommends (The Purloined Letter). While I find Lacan's interpretation of this detective story almost impossibly opaque, the detective story itself is very instructive. Notably there are persona in the story who appear to be able to see and not be seen, and others to manipulate signs but not see, and an independence and interaction among these persona, which leads me to the following vague hypothesis, which may well have been what Lacan was saying all along.

Perhaps the faculties of speaking and imagining can only appreciate themselves in their opposite? Like an invisible ghost that can see a blind man that can only speak of ghosts? This reminds me of "The Sixth Sense" and all those imaginary friends I wrote about on an earlier post.

I am not sure how to make this any more clear but perhaps it can be unpacked in to the following 4 assertions
A) Imagination can not imagine itself (c.f. Nietzsche's remarks on eyes not being able to see themselves)
B) Imagine only reaches a self perception via language (those trasformatory symbols that Jpanese collect)
C) Speech can not say itself c.f. Emile Benveniste's papers on the subject of utterance and the subject of enunciation. One of the two crucial papers by Benveniste can be found online.
D) The speaking subject of "utterance" can only represent itself by taking a detour via the image (as body visible)

I am not sure how to make the these four claims more persuasive but I find myself rather taken by the idea. The above would suggest a more divided self.

Random thoughts

1) People who have had their inter-hemispheric neural highway, the corpus callosum, cut cease to dream, and their right and left arms sometimes even fight each other. As per the last photo, Poe has considerable hemispherical asymmetry

2) Images in my dreams seem often to be rebuses as if my dream images are trying desperately to speak.

Finally relating this to Japanese culture

3) Proposition (A) above might be more unacceptable to Japanese who feel that they can imagine themselves without loss of fidelity, and proposition (C) more unacceptable to Westerners who, according to many (Bruner, Benveniste, MacAdams etc) narrate themselves into existence.

4) Lacan argued (see the aforemented page) the Western ego exists at the intersection between the symbolic and the real. Transposing Nacalianly, the Japanese self exists at the intersection between the (visio) imaginary and the real, as Nishida (see Heisig, 2004) argues.

[The above borromean knot is probably drawn from a Western perspective with the symbolic rather than the imaginary above the real].

Bibliography
Heisig, J. W. (2004). Nishida’s medieval bent. Japanese journal of religious studies, 55–72. Retrieved from nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/staff/jheisig/pdf/Nishida%20Medieval%...

Labels: autoscopy, image, japan, japanese culture, Jaques Lacan, lacan, logos, nihobunka, nihonbunka, occularcentrism, reversal, self, theory, 日本文化

Since the wands are pieces of paper, and the pieces of paper are sometimes used (I believe) to write words, and sometimes one writes one desires and leaves at shrines I think that the purpose of the sweeping purification may be to wipe the words, or symbols out of ones mind.

If you are able to get the words out of your head, then Shrines and the world looks more like the mirror. When words are reduced to the externalities that they are, used for communication, for transmission between one place and another, as they are in Shinto, such as when one moves the spirit of a deity from a shrine to a home, vectored by a "Shinpu" or sacred stamped piece of paper, then science becomes the mass of hypotheses that it is, and the "real world" as obscure and irrelevant as Nietzsche believed. On the other hand, if the mirror is sacred, and you are taught to believe that there is always someone, a neighbour, an ancestor, something looking, then unlike Nietzsche, you will not have abolished the "apparent world" too.

Nietzsche, F. (2007). Twilight of the Idols. Wordsworth Classics.

Labels: Jaques Lacan, logos, nihobunka, nihonbunka, Shinto, 日本文化

In order to understand Japanese culture, without having to read my blog, all you have to do, when you see something that is striking in Western or Japanese culture, is to apply a Nacalian transformation, transposing symbol for image, or vice versa.

I call these "Nacalian transformations" because Jacques Lacan ("Nacal") backwards famously claimed that infants identify first with their mirror images and secondly and more effectively with the first person of their self narrative. I don't think that the temporal relationship is important (indeed Lacan denied it himself) but the power relationship and cultural preference appears to be reversed. Japanese grow up to identify with their images rather than their words. The reason for this is in both cases the same. In each culture one or other of these types of self representation are scattered among binary relationships (first person pronouns in Japan, and visual images in Japan), whereas the other type of self-representation are felt to be consolidated and objective by virtue of the presence of an all powerful, insuring, caring and horrific, intra-psychic Other.

Before giving some examples I should admit that the understanding achieved by applying a Nacalian transformation will not satisfy those wishing to find a philosophers' stone. It will not answer the question "So why are they different?" in a way which will satisfy either Westerners or Japanese. We would all like to find explanations that root themselves in our core beliefs, of the individualism of Westerners, or the geo-climatic environmental dependency of Japanese. In order to gain anything from a Nacalian transformation, one must first put explanations of the form "It is because they are collectivists" and "It is because we are an island nation" in abeyance.

Now for some examples, of (1) theories that have a Western and Japanese component, or better (2) theories that have a Western or Japanese component but not both or better still (3) phenomenon that look weird in one or the other culture.

(1) Theories that have a Japanese and Western component such as that of Benedict (1946) the most famous theory of Japanese and Western culture, and Yuki () one of my favourites.

Benedict alleged that Japan has a shame culture and that the West has a guilt culture. She was right. However being a Westerner she founded this theory upon the usual individualism vs collectivism stereotype. Unsatisfying as maybe, applying a Nacalian transformation we get guilt is to shame as language is to image, and vice versa. In other words, shame is felt when we see our behaviour and do not like what we see, and guilt is that feeling we get when we can not narrate our behaviour in anything but an unpalatable way. Lots more could be said but please refer to the excellent book by Gabriele Taylor(1985) for an explication of guilt and shame in these terms.

Yuki points out that Westerners join groups that share conceptual similarities whereas Japanese join networks of one to one relations. A Nacalian transformation would show that Western groups are conceived linguistically in terms of the concepts shared by the members, whereas Japanese groups are conceived "in the imaginary" which Lacan says, are always in one to one relations. (I need to find the quote but Lacan's imaginary field is bedevilled by one to one realtionships). This transformation, however, requires that one goes beyond the framework provided by Lacan since he was not able to conceive of a imaginary universal, a third person *view* (in literal terms). Nacalian transformation demand that one transform even assymetrical terms withinn Lacan who affords only the "Other" of language a capital letter. Bachnik (who may be even brainier than Yuki and certainly far brainier than me) provides, via Nishida perhaps, the geo-visual place or field, that is shared by Japanese group members (Bachnik & Quinn, 1994) that implies, for my money, the eye of the Other.

(2) Theories that are about only one culture. Two good theories of this type are that of Heine () regarding Western Self-Enhancement, and that of Nakashima Yoshimichi (1999) (perhaps the best theory of the Japanese not to be translated into English.

Heine points out that the Japanese do not "self-enhance" a technical term which means "brag, even to themselves." He is right, the Japanese do not brag even to themselves. They are even self-deprecating. Applying a Nacalian transformation however, reveals parallel behaviour of Japanese in the visio-imaginary plane. When the Japanese take photos of themselves (my research) or when they draw manga of themselves (e.g. Kobayashi Yoshinori's self representations), or in general in their visual self-representations, they make sure that they look very genki, cool, young, slim, and visually excellent.

Nakajima's superb observations regarding the way in which Japan has so many personless voices and announcements, or allows public but not private speech. Yes, Japan is really weird in that way to any Westerner, or a Westernized Japanese (like Professor Nakajima). We westerners find personless voices disconcerting. I used to stop in Japanese supermarkets in front of the endless tapes of people advertising the shops wares. I used to find buses that announced the that they are reversing ("bakku shimasu, bakkus shimasu"), or bullet trains that asked their boarders not to bring on board bombs, etc. very disconcerting. To me the voice and language should be (co-) present with a living idea. And what is the problem with speaking out individually, in class, in a train? In Japan students are silent, and people that talk on their phones are pariah. Performing a Nacalian transformation, provides a sort of understanding. Japanese when they come to the UK find the statues that adorn our streets, pretty peculiar (bukimi). A visual human form should be accompanied by person-hood, even if it is only an playful one. Japanese do not put photos of their family on their desk at work, because (like a disembodied voice) they would feel that they that person is present. And just as public speech is, as public (speech is seen as out there, public, other) repressed in Japan so is visual self representation in the West, where clothing, architecture is so repressed as to be clone.

(3) Phenomena.
Everyone can do Japanology. Everyone can provide explanation of the weirdness of the West and the Japanese. Just perform a Nacalian Transformation, and you will find an equivalent behaviour in the other culture.

Off the cuff.
The Japanese are so vague - Westerners are lacking in visual style.
The Japanese do not care about invisible health riskt such as that of smoking - Westerners get incredibly fat.
Westerners like to create theories (like this blog) - Japanese like to create visual corporeal things.
And the topic of a forthcoming blog post: Japanese copy things visually assuming they are authentic (from gaikoku mura = foreign villages, to the Ise shrine) whereas Westerners copy signs assuming each one to be authentic, the same.

So the cat is out of the bag?

I wish Mary would come out of her room.

Labels: collectivism, individualism, japan, japanese culture, Jaques Lacan, logos, mirror, Nacalian, nihonbunka, occularcentrism, reversal, self, 個人主義, 日本文化, 集団主義

If I were given a penny for every time a Japanese person explained Japanese behaviour as being a result of the Japanese being an island nation (a geo-climatic explanation) I would be rich. If I recieved a penny every time Westerner explained to me that the Japanese are collectivists (a socio-historical theory), then I would be richer still.

But then, I have a socio-historic theory of my own. It seems to me that Japan is Nacalian. Nacal is Lacan backwards, and Nacalian refers to the theory that Lacan's theory of the human explains Japanese behaviour quite well if it is turned upside down or back to front.

Lacan (2002, [1949]) argued that the human self is created as an external identification with the image, before later, as a result of being unable to demand their mothers affection, they identify with their symbolic parent - their father - and so we go on to narrate ourselves into existance. The advantage of this is is, Western theorist claim, the visual self representation is locked in binary relationships with real external others or mirrors, whereas language provides us with the means to hear ourselves speak, understand ourselves from the point of view of others (plural) and also finally, from the point of view of the Other (Lacan, 2002), the "generalised other," (Mead, 1967) the "superadressee" (Bakhtin, 1986).

Lacan's theory explains the Japanese self too, if topologically reversed. The Japanese self orginiates in an external identification with the symbol, before later, as a result of being unable to demand 'assimilation with their mother'*, Japanese identify with the their visual parent, and imagine, or animate, themselves into existence. The advantage of this is that while self-imagary requires that one visualise oneself from the outside, it is not as external as language which is external in both the spatial and social sense. As Wittenstien (1973) famously argued there can not be a private language, and meaning is realised in "language games" - that is to say communicative encounters that require not only an outside, but also other people**.

Whille there is no linguistic third person perspective (Mori, 1999) or even narrative (Kim, 2002) in the mind of the Japanese, a sort of capitalised/generalised Other, or super-addressee is also present in Japan: the Japanese simulate a mirror in their heads (Heine, Takemoto, Moskalenko, Lasaleta, & Henrich, 2008; Takemoto, 2002).

The universality of visio-imaginary self-apprehension may be more fractal, but it is no less objective. In addition to the temporal ephemerality of the linguistic sign (Derrida, 1998), it is the relative ease with which the noiseless ear, compared to the visible eye, can be merged and hidden that conceals the fact that it is no more easy to gain a universalised linguistic aprehension of oneself (through dialetic perhaps) than it is to gain a universalised apprehension of oneself through self imagination. At the very least as communication theorists (Mehrabian, 2007) and common knowledge teach us, a picture speaks... or signifies, at least as well as, words.

Though the best Western philosophers blithely assert that language provides, apriori, a means of perceiving oneself from the point of view of others, in fact to understand oneself from another persons' lnguistic point of view requires a simulation, of comparable complexity to that required by the act of simulating the literal, visual view of an other.

And so it is that Westerners narrate themselves into existance based around their "Je", whereas Japanese have a collage of self ways, a geography of self, not limited to, but centering on their face.

Convinced as I am of the limited power of language, the existence of my own cultural baggage, and the prevalence of contradiction in the world, the fact that Nacalianism is to some extent contradictory is to be expected. And one of the many applications of Nacalianism is as a metatheory that applies to, and to an extent contradicts, itself.

Due to their heighted powers of visual imagination, and their self indentificiation with their own image, the Japanese are inclined to open their eyes and look about them when they want to explain human behaviour. As a result, the Japanese, including Japanese academics, have a great love of theories of climaticity. Here climate refers to the visual environment including the weater and seasons. It is also translated as "environment", and "milleue." The originator of the term and the most famous examplar of which is that of Watsuji Tetsuro who argued that culture can be explained by the geo-climatic conditions of its origin, seperating cultures into desert cultures, monsoon cultures etc (Watsuji, 1961).

Other examples geo-climatic theories of human society include the following.

Tamaki's explanation of regional variations in Japanese culture by the geographically induced varieties of irrigation (Tamaki, 1979), such as collectivism and harmony among flatplain canal irrigationists, to individualism among those in more mountainous regions that use individual lakes to flood their rice fields.

Various scholars -- and the Japanese general public -- use Watsuji's divisions of people's into 'agriculturalists (The japanese) vs hunter gathers (the British!?)', or 'agriculturalists vs. herders.'

These geo-climatic theory of culture too sometimes touch on similarly self-contradictory meta-theories of theory. In the introduction to Tamaki's work in which he describes climatic theories as being Japanese. The geo-climatic theory of Aida (1990) below, also attempts to explain the origin of climaticity (which he refers to as attention to area).

"This tendency of Japanese (to think interms of areas as opposed to points and lines) originates in the Japanese geo-climatic environment and the characteristics of the type of agriculture theirin employed. Compared to Europe, Japanese land is clearly more fertile, and as a result the special Japanese agricultural style gave birth to a belief in the mysterious creative power in the land [the area] itself.
In European agriculture however, herding is always required [for crop rotation]. Europeans hardly ever believe in the mysterious creative power of the land. Herders are always like this. The supremacy of herders gives rise to [a philosophy of] points and lines, and not areas." (Aida, 1990,p 199, my rough translation, with omissions and [additions]).

The hightly influential Laurel Forest Culture theory proposed Sasaki Koumei (佐々木, 2007) and Nakao Sasuke's (Nakao, 2006) proposes that the form of forest found in places like Japan and Taiwan have resulted in considerable cultural similarity.

Yuki's use of the frontier mentality in the USA to explain behaviour in Hokkaidou, and generally to explain social beahviour by social mobility (how much people move around) and by implication I feel, the existance of space in which they are free to do so (e.g. Schug, Yuki, Horikawa, & Takemura, 2009). This theory too (and that of Nisbett below), uses space to explain valuations of space -- spatially defined relationships, or holistic thought patterns -- is as self-applicable and self-contradictory as my own theory, it seems to me.  

Climatic theories are of course not absent in the West. Two of note are those of Richard Nisbett (2004) and Francesa Bray(1994), each coming to the opposite conclusion regarding the effect of rice agriculture upon culture. Nisbett argued that rice agriculture encouraged cooperation, whereas Bray argues that it encouraged independence, lack of cooperation and the late arrival of the industrial revolution in Japan.

To these climatic theories I would like to add my own, only partly toungue in cheek. In geographies which are fairly flat, and the horizon is low, humans can generally only see the sky, ground, and the immediate social environment, and as such tend to interpret the world in terms of sociological tendencies. In geographies where there are steep mountains, such as in the above photo, humans are always able to see nature, the movement of the seasons, and can but be aware of its impact upon their lives. Thus the Japanese are more inclined to interpret human behaviour in terms of geo-climatic theories. I am serious. Living in Japan, and always made forcefully aware of the presence of nature by being surrounded by sheer mountains, does make me more "area," spacially focused.

Westerner that I am, I prefer a social, historical theory -- Nacalianism -- to explain the prevalence of geo-visual theories of human behaviour in Japan, although I recognise the contradiction, and believe in that human behaviour can be explained in more than one way.

Notes
*I have struggled for a long time to explain why, in the absense of oedipal conflict, the Japanese bother to grow up at all. It seems to me that the Lacanian emphasis on possesion ones mother misses another, more Western (Schug, Yuki, Horikawa, & Takemura, 2009) aspect of love towards ones primary caregiver: the desire for similarity. Yes, in the Western family children are denied possession of the mother, especially by being ejected from the family bed. In Japan the children often possess, or monopolize the attention of their mother but, they are not able to identify with her, be similar to her. In Japan the apparent lack of conflict between the children and the father, combined with focus of both parents in the Japanese family towards the children, presents to the children the appearance of their having exaclty that two parents (even two mothers). This parentalism heightens the sense of dis-similarity between parents and children, and the generation gap, makes the family more "verticle" (Nakane) even as it makes it more peaceful. If Western children grow up because they want to possess their mothers, Japanese children grow up because they want to be them, become mothers/parents themselves.

**:Come to think of it, the logic here is flawed. Both Language and vision require simulation of other people in order to approach an objective general view of the self. I have engaged in a bit of polemic because I find it so difficult to get anglophones to realise that language is from outside the self.

Bibliography
Aida, Y. (1990). Nihonjin no ishiki. Tokyo: Kodansha.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. (V. W. McGee, Trans.) (Second Printing.). University of Texas Press.
Bray, F. (1994). The Rice Economies: Technology and Development in Asian Societies. University of California Press.
Nisbett, R. (2004). The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why. Free Press.
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(7), 879–887.Lacan, J. (2002 [1949]). The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience. In B. Fink (Trans.), Ecrits (pp. 75–81). WW Norton & Company.
Mead, G. H. (1967). Mind, self, and society: From the standpoint of a social behaviorist (Vol. 1). The University of Chicago Press.
Mehrabian, A. (2007). Nonverbal communication. Aldine.
Mori, 森有正. (1999). 森有正エッセー集成〈5〉. 筑摩書房.
Nakao, S. 中尾佐助. (2006). 中尾佐助著作集〈第6巻〉照葉樹林文化論. 北海道大学出版会.
Takemoto, T. (2002). 鏡の前の日本人. ニッポンは面白いか (講談社選書メチエ. 講談社.

Tamaki 玉城哲. (1979). 水の思想(A Philosophy of Water). 論創社.
Watsuji, T. (1961). A climate: a philosophical study. Print. Bureau, Japanese Govt.
Sasaki, K. 佐々木高明. (2007). 照葉樹林文化とは何か―東アジアの森が生み出した文明. 中央公論新社.
Schug, J., Yuki, M., Horikawa, H., & Takemura, K. (2009). Similarity attraction and actually selecting similar others: How cross-societal differences in relational mobility affect interpersonal similarity in Japan and the USA. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 12(2), 95–103.

Labels: japan, japanese culture, Jaques Lacan, lacan, logos, Nacalian, nihobunka, nihonbunka, occularcentrism, reversal, self, specular, 日本文化

A variety of authors (Ashkenazi, 2001; Askew, 2007; Gerster, 2006; Rea, 2000; Robertson, 1988) suggest that the Japanese love of historical tourism, be it for Japan related history or histories of pre-modern ideals, is due to the modernisation of Japan. According to these authors, Japanese are seeking a nostalgic return to pre-modern, pre-Western self.

I claim that the the Japanese love of historical theme parks, such as Furusato (home-towns/villages), Heide in Switzerland, Beatrix Potter in the UK, Anne of Green Gables in Prince Edward Island Canada, is indeed because the Japanese are attracted to nostalgia. But I believe the Japanese always have been wallowing in nostalgia because nostalgia is just pandemic in Japan. In the UK nostalgia is for old folks like myself, but in Japan even young people - e.g. my students - like to proclaim that something is "natsukashii!" (nostalgic). Things do not need to be all that old to be nostalgic. Indeed it helps if they are not so that young people can remember them.


The Japanese love of nostalgia has nothing to do with the West.

The point I want to make is that the Japanese interest in nostalgia has little to do with a yearning for a pre-modernised, pre-Westernised Japan. The Japanese have been into nostalgia for a long time, well before anything that might be described as modern or western and an impact upon Japanese society. Nostalgia lies on the same emotional seam as wabi, sabi and aware, the wet, masochistic love of the unfolding of time, as manifested in solitude and decay, and the Japanese were into this aesthetic since the dawn of recorded history.

In one of the earliest travelogues (Zouki, c975) and the earliest poetic diary describing a pilgrimage the author visits places significant in Japanese mythology, and reminisces about the time of the gods all the while typically Japanese aesthetic enjoying the impermanence of things.
ねがはくはわれ、春は花を見、秋はもみぢを見るとも、にほひにふれ色にめでつる心なく、朝の露夕の月をみるとも、せけんのはかなきことををしへ給へ。
If possible I would like watch flowers in spring, and the red leaves in autumn, smelling nature and yet without a wish to make any of these my prize, look upon the dew at dawn and the moon in the evenings sky and from them learn of the impermanence of the world.


Seven hundred years later, in 1689, the post travelling poet, Matsuo Basho waxes lyrical about ancient "ruins" (see Hudson, 1999, p1-2) as mentioned in a previous post. Basho visits sites where there is nothing to see but grass, and is moved to weeping by a sense of nostalgic impermanence.

At a stone commemorating a castle long since destroyed, Basho writes, "Time passes and the world changes. The remains of the past are shrouded in uncertainty. And yet, here before my eyes was a monument which none would deny had lasted a thousand years. I felt as if I were looking into the minds of the men of old...I forgot the weariness of my journey and was moved to tears of Joy." (Keene, 1955, p366 in Hudson, 1999, p1) .

And in one of his most famous poems composed at site of a once famous samurai family, where now only summer grass remains, he writes (Basho, 1997):

夏艸や兵どもが夢の跡 Summer Grass, Warriors, Trace of their dreams

Donald Keene (1999) claims that Basho was so into nostalgia, or at least reliving literary precedent, that he only commented on scenes that had been mentioned by previous poets.

"He (Basho) had absolutely no desire to be the first ever to set foot atop a mountain peak or to notice some site that earlier poets had ignored. On the contrary, no matter how spectacular a landscape might be, unless it had attracted the attention of his predecessors, the lack of poetic overtones deprived it of charm for Basho. When, for example, he travelled along a stretch of the sear of Japan coast that inspired no important poems, he did not mention the scenery" (Keene, 1999, p 311 in Watkins, 2008, p101).

Another 250 years later a cultured traveller Kikushi Tamiko (1821) set off "in a cultural quest for the locations and events made famous by the texts that she had read"(Nenzi, 2004, p). Once again, her criteria of selection "in terms of  its presence  (or  absence) in  the pages of  classical  literature," (Ibid, p291). The innate beauty of the destination did not matter because, according to Nenzi (ibid), "For culture travellers, the essence of the experience of meisho [named-places] was to recover "the idea behind" rather than to delve into the present substance of the sight."

Basho was clearly not alone, but part of an immense tradition that he helped to perpetuate. When a lowly warrior was sent from Kurume City (my old town) to Tokyo, then Edo, in 1839 as part of the alternate attendance/hostage system (Sankinkoutai), he wrote in his diary "While in Edo, we may also go to see the places where Basho visited, and this brings on great nostalgia."(Aoki, 2005, in Vaporis, 1996, p296)

At about the same period, more than a decade before the opening of Japan to the Wet, the Suma Diary (Kagawa, 1847) details a trip to Sumaura in what is now Hyougo Prefecture, to the ruins of the palace of one of the poets whose poem was featured in the famous collection of 100 poets used on Japanese playing cards, originally from the second most famous old book of poetry (Saeki, 1981).

Here below is the excerpt from the travel diary above, translated with a little help from my Japanese wife, and with my attempt at a modern Japanese, non poetic version in brackets.

願ひし須磨の浦につく。 (願った行き先である須磨の浦に到着しました。）
I arrive at Suma Bay, the place I had been yearning to reach.
先ここよりの見渡し。海上のけしき。（この先からの見渡しは海上の景色）
The view from here is out over the sea.
更に類なし。只あはれあわれと見るのみ。（類がないほど、ただ哀れみな光景だけを見る）
There is nothing like it. Just a wilderness of water.
中々に事の葉に。言続けむも。今更びたり。（書き続けてもなかなか言葉になりません。）
It is not easy to put into words, even if I go on talking. And even now??
家毎に。かの竹簾かげ下ろして。故ありげに住みなしたる。(家ごとにその竹のすだれが下ろされて、理由があるかのように住み。。。。？）
At each house the bamboo blinds are down. As if they have a reason for (not) living here?? (Maybe suggesting that they are waiting).
いかでかゝげ寄らまほしきまで。なつかし。（さっぱり分かりません。懐かしい！）
???? Nostalgic.
案内の翁を雇ひ出たり。先にたして行く行く語らく。あれ見給へ。かの小さき山こそ。（おじいさんの案内者を雇って出発しました。語りながら先に進んでいった。あれ見てよ。この小さい山こそ！
I hired an old man guide. We went on together talking. Look at that. At that little mountain there.
中納言行平の君。この浦に汐くみしておはせし時。（中納言行平という昔の偉い詩人がこの浦から汐をくみにきたとき）
When Lord Yukihira Chunagon went to get water from the bay.
立帰りいなばの山のと。（（百人一首にでる）「立ち別れの因幡の山」のことですよ！）
This is the Inaba Mountain in the poem (one of the 100 that are told at new year).
ながめ給し濱にて侍れ。（眺めて、濱においで？？）
Stare and go (come?) from/to the beach.
いでとく書きとめ給へなどを。？えもあらぬくさぐさの事をいふなむ。（？？）
?????
中々興ある。さるあひだ。（中々興味深い。？？？）
Very interesting! ???
須磨寺を始め。内裏の跡。一の谷。（須磨というお寺を始め、中納言の宮殿の奥の部分の跡。一の谷？）
Starting with Suma Temple, the ruins of the palace, and the Ichinotani battlefield.
上の秋草をさへ。かぞへ見廻りて。（その跡の上に生える草をさえ数えるかように見回っていた）
I even started to count the autumn grass above (the ruins) with my eyes.
海ばたの松陰なる。（海辺の松影になるように）
Becoming like the shadow of a pine (this may be another reference to the woman in the aforemented poem who was told to wait like a pine tree for her lord to come back to her.)
敦盛りぬしの塚を拝む。（あつもりの塚を拝む）
I prayed at the burial mound of Taira no Atsumori.
たえず浪風の音。ひヾき通ひて。（浪と風の音がたえず響き通って）
And all the while, the sounds of the wind and waves, runs through me.
昔のおもかげ。目の前に浮かびつ。（昔の面影が目の前に浮かびうがってきた）
And the memory of you, (my lord) rises before my eyes.
たちよれば君を忍ぶの草おひてあらぬ露さへおきそはりけり　（たちよったら中納言の君を忍ぶ草にあった露さえ落ち添わった。）
Having paid my visit, even the dew on the grass that remembers you has increased.
(This is a reference to another ancient poem --kokinshuu, 545 -- and suggests that the author is crying and thus increasing the dew)
見る處なつかしかるぬはなし。（見るところ、光景は懐かしく思わずにいられない。）
I can't but be nostalgic about the place I am seeing.

(Corrections gratefully received!)

In other words, the author, went to some lonely spot on the coast of Japan in what is now Hyougo Prefecture, to the site of the residence of one of the poets who had been famous almost one thousand years years previously, and then, staring at sea and grass, he felt an image of that lonely, ancient, love-struck poet spring to mind. And imagining the ancient poet, this tourist wept, mega-nostalgically. Contra Urry (2002), in this most quintessentially Japanese touristic experience, there was nothing to be seen. There was only grass, only sea. There was nothing that the tourist or traveller could not have seen in many other places far nearer to home. But at the same time, the author did see, did experience nostalgia and the pity of things (mono no aware), because the traveller called images to mind.

Japanese "site-seeing" (thing seeing: kenbutsu, 見物) is about seeing but not of sights, not of external visual images, but rather of visions: physical absence juxtaposed with images in the heart.

Afterword
   In order to bring the observations above back to a theory of the visual-imaginary (Takemoto, 2002), or "lococentrism" (Lebra, 2004) of the Japanese self, I might perhaps go via "phallocentrism"(Spivak, 1976). The narratival, linguistic self is that which is accompanies identification with the symbolic parent.  whereas the visual-imaginary self is that which accompanies identification with the primary care giver (Lacan, 1949). I could then link nostalgia with "pay-forward" and pay-back families as I did in my last post. In order to link nostalgia with lococentrism directly, would have to create a deconstruction of the theory of place (Nishida, 1987)!
  Western theorists (Mead, 1967; Lacan, 1949) insist that visual self-identification can only take place in the presence of a real other (mirror or person) and that the subject is thus never free to develop or simulate an objective, generalised view on self. While the visual is decried in this way language is seen to provide a "generalised" (Mead, 1967), capitalised (Other, Lacan, 1998), "super" (Bakhtin, 1986) objective 'perspective' on self a priori. Above all, visual self-views are almost always considered to be external (e.g. Cohen & Gunz, 2002), whereas linguistic representations of self are seen to be somehow inherently private or at least internalisable (for exceptions see Duranti, 1986; Koster, 2009; Wittgenstein, 1973, and to an extent Derrida).
   Derrida sees nostalgia (Derrida, 1998, p240) as a desire for time before language, "[The] Dream of a mute society, of a society before the origin of languages, that is to say, strictly speaking, a society before society." From a position within the logocentric tradition that he is critiquing, Derrida, sees this nostalgic longing for self presence, or authenticity, as a longing for self before self.  This critique is founded in the impossibility of non-linguistic self-reference (or even non-referential self-reference).
   Accepting this contradiction, Nishida (1987) argues that a phenomenological -- and I would say viso-imaginary -- self-experience can be achieved even as, or especially once, language is expunged. Once language is externalised, it is possible to experience an "absolutely contradictory self indentity:" self as the immediate environment, self as place. Japanese tourists aim to achieve this kind of pre-symbolic authenticity, by visiting the symbolic sites, sights which have themselves become markers, deliciously, from a Japanese viewpoint, "encrusted with renown" (Culler, 1988, p8 in the online version).

   Words do always result in "differance" (Derrida, 1998), but images are not "timed"(contra Fenollosa & Pound, 1936). Whereas words are always differed, mean something in the future, images are always of something recalled, already in the past.  The Japanese tourist is not loving any image real or imagined, but the place in which it appears. 
    Hmm, really riffing here...Derrida says that the phoneme results in differance. But while phonemes do exist in time they only point forwards in time under the assumption of a static presence or place. If he insists on any before and after then Derrida is as nostalgic as Rousseau, or our tourist. It is the admixture of place that makes the phoneme forward speaking. Conversely it is the removal of temporally differing language that makes the place, the mirror shine brightest in recollection of the past.
    Incidentally, the opposite of nostalgia is hope and we, Westerners, are awash with it. I am hoping I make sense one day:-)

Bibliography
Ashkenazi, M. (2001). Omiyage: Constructed Memories and Reconstructed Travel in Japan. In H. Walker (Ed.), Food and the Memory: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cooking, 2000 (p. 31). Oxford Symposium.
Aoki, N. 青木直己. (2005). 幕末単身赴任 下級武士の食日記. 日本放送出版協会.
Askew, R. K. (2007). The politics of nostalgia: museum representations of Lafcadio Hearn in Japan. museum and society, 5(3), 131–147.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. (V. W. McGee, Trans.) (Second Printing.). University of Texas Press.
Cohen, D., & Gunz, A. (2002). As seen by the other...: perspectives on the self in the memories and emotional perceptions of Easterners and Westerners. Psychological Science, 13(1), 55–59. Retrieved from http://web.missouri.edu/~ajgbp7/personal/Cohen_Gunz_2002.pdf
Culler, J. D. (1988). The Semiotics of Tourism. Framing the sign. Univ. of Oklahoma Pr.
Derrida, J. (1998). Of Grammatology. JHU Press.
Hudson, M. (1999). Ruins of identity: ethnogenesis in the Japanese Islands. University of Hawaii Press.
Fenollosa, E., & Pound, E. (1936). The Chinese written character as a medium for poetry: a critical edition. Fordham University Press.
Gerster, R. (2006). The past as a foreign country: nostalgia and nationalism in contemporary Japanese tourism. Tourism Review International, 9(3), 293–301.
Keene, D. (1999). Travelers of a Hundred Ages. Columbia University Press.
Koster, J. (n.d.). Meaning and the extended mind. 2009. Retrieved from http://www.let.rug.nl/koster/papers/extended%20mind.pdf

Lacan, J. (1949). The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. A Reader, 287–292.
Mead, G. H. (1967). Mind, self, and society: From the standpoint of a social behaviorist (Vol. 1). The University of Chicago Press.
Nishida, K. 西田幾多郎 (1987). 場所. in 上田閑照編 西田幾多郎哲学論集〈1〉場所・私と汝 他六篇. 岩波書店.
Nenzi, L. (2004). Cultured Travelers and Consumer Tourists in Edo-Period Sagami. Monumenta Nipponica, 59(3), 285–319.


Rea, M. H. (2000). A Furusato Away from Home. Annals of tourism research, 27(3), 638–660.
Robertson, J. (1988). Furusato Japan: the culture and politics of nostalgia. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 1(4), 494–518.
Saeki, U. 佐伯梅友. (1981). 古今和歌集. 岩波書店.
Spivak, G. C. (1976). Translator’s preface. Of Grammatology, 9–38.
Takemoto, T. (2002). 鏡の前の日本人. ニッポンは面白いか (講談社選書メチエ. 講談社.
Vaporis, C. N. (1996). A Tour of Duty: Kurume hanshi Edo kinban nagaya emaki. Monumenta Nipponica, 51(3), 279–307.
Urry, J. (2002). The Tourist Gaze. SAGE.
Watkins, L. (2008). Japanese Travel Culture: An Investigation of the Links between Early Japanese Pilgrimage and Modern Japanese Travel Behaviour. New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, 10(2), 93–110.

Diary and Poems
Kagawa, K. 香川景周. (1847). 須磨日記 (Suma Diary my trans). In 岸上質賢 (Ed.) "續紀行文集". Retrieved from books.google.co.jp/books?id=qKk9as-h84kC&printsec=fro...
【百人一首講座】立ち別れいなばの山の峰に生ふる まつとしきかば今かへり来む─中納言行平　京都せんべい おかき専門店【長岡京小倉山荘】. (n.d.). Retrieved April 24, 2012, from www.ogurasansou.co.jp/site/hyakunin/016.html
Kokinshuu 古今和歌集の部屋. (n.d.). Retrieved April 25, 2012, from http://www.milord-club.com/Kokin/uta0545.htm
Matuso, B. 松尾 芭蕉. (1997). 芭蕉自筆奥の細道. (上野 洋三 & 桜井 武次郎, Eds.). 岩波書店.

Labels: image, japan, japanese culture, Jaques Lacan, lacan, logos, mirror, nihobunka, nihonbunka, occularcentrism, specular, westernisation, 日本文化

The attached video shows a Mr. Mikami demonstrate how to change the netting in a Amido (網戸） or net window. Note that when Mr. Mikami introduces himself in answer to my question at 5;15, he starts with his affiliation as polite Japanese gentlemen do (Nakane, 1970, p2-3, in, Hasegawa & Hirose, 2005, p222).

Here is the quote from Nakane (1970) describing Mr. Mikami's self introduction perfectly.
"This ready tendency of the Japanese to stress situational position in a particular frame, rather than universal attribute can be seen in the following example; when a Japanese ' faces the outside' (confronts another person) and affixes some position to himself socially he is inclined to give precedence to institution over kind of occupation. Rather than saying, "I am a type-setter' or 'I am a filing clerk,' he is likely to say, 'I am from B Publishing Group' or 'I belong to S Company'. p2-3

The great part about this quote is that (although she does backtrack somewhat in rest of the same paragraph) both the "attribute" and the "institution" (which Nakane has earlier defined as a "frame" or "ba") are both described as being "social" "positions". Nakane is spot on. Westerners can loose track of the fact that they are defining themselves socially when they use "universal attributes" because it can seem as if they are not expressing membership of a group but rather something specific to themselves.

Other than Nakane's opinion that both are social positions, how should one decide? One way would be to examine the commonality of these self definitions. If one picked 100 Japanese and 100 Americans and asked them for self-definitions, who would give the more overlapping self-definitions, the "frame" mentioning Japanese or the "attribute" mentioning Americans? This is exactly what I examined in one of my few social psychology papers (Takemoto ne Leuers & Sonoda, 1999). The results showed that the self descriptions of Americans overlap more than those of Japanese, and are therefore, though attributional, more social.

Bibliography created using Zotero
Hasegawa, Y., & Hirose, Y. (2005). What the Japanese Language Tells Us about the Alleged Japanese Relational Self. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 25(2), 219–251. doi:10.1080/07268600500233019 Retrieved 2012/4/12 from http://hasegawa.berkeley.edu/Papers/Self.pdf
Leuers, T. R. S., & Sonoda, N. (1999). Independent self bias. Progress in asian social psychology, 3, 87–104. Retrieved 2012/4/13 from http://www.nihonbunka.com/docs/independent_self.rtf
Nakane, C. (1972). Japanese Society (1st pb ed.). University of California Press.

Labels: collectivism, individualism, japan, japanese culture, logos, nihobunka, nihonbunka, 個人主義, 日本文化, 集団主義

The Japan Today article, Things that foreigners find annoying about life in Japan ‹ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion has received a lot of comments which reflect Western, Anglophone attitude towards language. Westerners identify with their self narrative and the monologue they have with themselves, hence,
1) Loud noises (Nakashima, 1999), especially linguistic noises (announcements, "welcome" etc) are very difficult for Westerners to cope with since it disturbs their self speech, or"selfing" (McAdams, 2006). Japanese do not think in language (Kim, 2002).
2) Not giving reasons (, i.e. some words) for things, or doing or not doing things without a (linguistic) reason pisses Westerners off since they live by their reasons. God forbid that anyone should attempt to point out the obvious fact that something is done simply because a tradition because this does not give a reason for the merit of something, even though so many things (such as driving on the right) are justifiable only only the basis of tradition. Demanding reasons is also fundamentalism.
3) Non semantic utterances ("eee," "nnn" high pitched voices) and facial expressions (e.g. the boxes showing the faces on TV) upset Westerners who can't or don't want to read these communications because they want meaning to be in a linguistic form.
4) Lack of a certain linguistic focused attitude towards individual problem solving (aka "critical thinking"), group problem solving (i.e. debate see Nakashima, 1997), politics (speeches are politics), and wit (god forbid that anything but repartee be funny). 5) Lies, are of course beyond the Cretan pale. How could lies be good? It would be paradoxical!

Western annoyance with second hand smoke is also not independent of a different attitude towards language. Humans are aware of the harm of smoking from statistical, linguistic facts since the harm is largely unseen. On the other hand, smoking keeps people thin, and Japanese people reflect upon their lives visually judging their health by appearances, which is something that obese Westerners often fail to do.

Kim, H. (2002). We talk, therefore we think? A cultural analysis of the effect of talking on thinking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Retrieved from http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/labs/kim/Site/Publicationsfiles/Kim2002.pdf
McAdams, D. P. (2006). The role of narrative in personality psychology today. Narrative Inquiry, 16(1), 11–18. Retrieved from http://www.sesp.northwestern.edu/docs/publications/1049432884490a09930cdc3.pdf
Nakashima, Y. 中島義道. (1997). 「対話」のない社会―思いやりと優しさが圧殺するもの [A society without dialogue: The things that sensitivity and kindness obliterate. my trans]. PHP研究所.
Nakashima, Y. 中島義道. (1999). うるさい日本の私[Urusai Nihon no Watashi, Loud Japanese that I am]. 新潮社.

Labels: japan, japanese culture, logos, nihobunka, nihonbunka, occularcentrism

Via Flickr:
Bean-Bread-Man (Anpanman, e.g. Yanase, 1975) is, according to repeated surveys by myself and Bandai (see Nishikawa, 2010), the most popular Japanese hero, and has a detachable, replaceable, edible face. Both my children show an almost religious reverence for this flying, edible hero.

While the creator claims that he chose name and composition of the titular character from his experience of dreaming of eating a sweat bean filled bun or bean-bread (anpan) while facing starvation during the Second World War, I propose a variety of alternative subconscious significance for his use of bean bread.

The combination of the traditional Japanese sweet bean filling and the Western "bread" face, suggests to me that he may be (in somewhat offensive race terminology, Urban Dictionary def. 3.) akin to an "egg," in being of mixed racial origin. Bean-Bread-Man is white, or rather made of a Western food on the outside, and yellow, or rather made of a traditional Japanese food, on the inside.

The use of bread to symbolise Westerners is perhaps evident from the character of Sliced-Bread-Man in the same series, who is idolised by Bean-Bread-Man's enemy's wife (Dokin-chan), and always looks a bit too gentlemanly for his own good. And the Rice-Ball-Man (Omusubi man, who has a series of his own) and Tempura-Bowl-Man (Tendon man) both animate Japanese foods, are given Japanese style clothing and arguably a Japanese style character.

Bean-Bread Man started as a cartoon in 1973 and was first broadcast as a TV series, in 1988 when the Westernisation of Japan had long been in full swing. Furthermore, Bean-Bread-Man shares certain characteristics with Jesus: he is extremely concerned with justice, while he has tree friends and a family he is a bit of an individualist (compared to the groups of Super Sentai/Power Rangers) and he is edible, being eaten by those in need of sustenance. Jesus sustains his followers by being eaten in body, or symbolically, in Christian places of worship.

Eating, and by eating internalising, deities is far from unique to Christianity; it is shared by Shinto. In the most important Shinto festival, that of the New Year, Japanese enshrine "mirror rice cakes" (see later) in the home and eat them early in the new year, thus symbolically imbuing the spirit of the rice, the mirror and the Sun Goddess. This yearly Shinto mass is considered to be a rebirth and the spirit therein imbibed to be constitutive of self. According to the Shinto Sect-Kurozumi-Kyo, the self of the Japanese is that part of the Sun Goddess mirror that they have taken inside them. Thus not only the purity of the mirror but also as pointed out by Ohnuki-Tierney in "Rice as Self" (1993, p8), the purity of the white rice itself is seen to symbolise the purity of the Japanese self. Having a mind made of food, like Bean-Bread-Man, is thus nothing new.

Bean-Bread-Man's face, consisting of three red circles, is in itself appealing to young infants. My daughter was attracted to Bean-Bread-Man on sight. It seems to me that Bean-Bread-Man also resembles as breast, in being edible, and in appearance, he looks like an attempt to focus two breasts as one.

Bean-Bread-Man's face is both central to his character and super-powers. In every episode his face gets dirty or wet causing him to loose his strength, when his adopted mother, Butter-girl, throws a new bean bread face, baked with by his adoptive father, containing magic from a star, onto his shoulders which spins and sets, and enables him to be strong again. His face is thus both external (something made for him) and the centre of his psyche, in line with Lacanian theories of self (Lacan, 2007), and perhaps Watsuji's theory of "persona.&quot (Wasuji, 2007);

Watsuji Testuro, one of the most famous Japanese thinkers, proposed that the Japanese self, or the Japanese version of what in Westerners is a self, is a "persona" which he describes using the metaphor of a noh mask. noh Masks, like Bean-Bread-Man's face, are central to their characters and are thought to be imbued with the power or spirit of that character. Noh actors (like Bean-Bread-Man immediately prior to receiving a new face) are nothing without their masks. The stare at them for a while in order that they become possessed by the character as contained in the spirit of the mask. Again, the character is invested and centred in the detachable, external face, just as Lacan's infant in the mirror stage misconceives himself to be his appearance in the mirror, which though external she takes to be (and in a sense becomes) the centre of her psyche.

In Japan there are a plethora of animate faces, faces which contain the character, the spirit of the individual. They are often oversized, and sometimes detachable. These include Noh, Kagura and Shishi masks, Sanrio and SanX characters such as "Hello Kitty," Masked Riders whose faces are sometimes bought and displayed in lieu of figurines, and the way that the faces of television personalities (tarento) are used to adorn Japanese products (for examples of all of these see slideshow).

I should also be noted that Japanese point to their face when they mean to point to themselves, and like Bean-Bread-Man, metaphorically at least, place a great deal of effort in an on going attempt to prevent (Hamamura & Heine, 2006) their face from being sullied, and "not to loose face," a phrase originating in Chinese (Heine & Lehman, 1999). "Face" in this sense (kao, mentsu) is not merely metaphorical, it is I believe related to the central, defining, focal aspect of the human form and the nexus of the visual representations of the person.

The centrality of mask and face to the Japanese persona, is I argue (Takemoto,2002; Takemoto, 2003) because the Japanese internalised generalised other (Mead, 1967) is, literally, a mirror (Amaterasu), a mirror with the ability to record the whole life of the person, (Enma Daiou) or an entity that watches from on high as do representations of the Buddha in Japanese Art (Low, 2004). Westerners can hear themselves from the point of view of a generalised other, from the point of view of language, from the point of view of a linguistic deity. Japanese can really see themselves, as if they have a mirror in their heads (Heine, Takemoto, Moskalenko, Lasaleta & Henrich, 2008), as if they are flying over their own heads (Masuda, Gonzalez, Kwan & Nisbett, 2008), from the point of view of a visual generalised other, 'the eyes of the world' (seken no me, Satou, 2001), from the point of view of, not a logo-centric, but a a visual, ocular, specular deity.

Bibliography thanks to Zotero!
Low, M. (2004). The Lens within the Heart: The Western Scientific Gaze and Popular Imagery in Later Edo Japan (review). The Journal of Japanese Studies, 30(1), 163–166. doi:10.1353/jjs.2004.0023
Lacan, J. (2007). Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English (1st ed.). W W Norton & Co Inc.

Masuda, T., Gonzalez, R., Kwan, L., & Nisbett, R. E. (2008). Culture and aesthetic preference: comparing the attention to context of East Asians and Americans. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(9), 1260–1275.
Heine, S., Lehman, D., Markus, H., & Kitayama, S. (1999). Is there a universal need for positive self-regard?. Psychological review.
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(7), 879–887. http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/Website/Papers/Mirrors-pspb4%5B1%5D.pdf
Mead, G. H. (1967). Mind, self, and society: From the standpoint of a social behaviorist (Vol. 1). The University of Chicago Press.rel="nofollow">www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=egg
Nishikawa, H. 西川ひろ子. (2010). 乳幼児のキャラクター志向に関する研究. 安田女子大学紀要, 38, 147.
Ohnuki-Tierney, E. (1993). Rice as self: Japanese identities through time. Princeton Univ Pr.
Satou, N. 佐藤直樹. (2001). 「世間」の現象学. 青弓社.
Takemoto, T. (2002). 鏡の前の日本人. ニッポンは面白いか (講談社選書メチエ. 講談社.
Takemoto, T. (2003). 言語の文化心理学―心の中のことばと映像(The Cultural Psychology of Language: Language and Image in the Heart). あなたと私のことばと文化―共生する私たち―. 五絃舎.
Urban Dictionary.(n.d.). "egg." 3. Urban Dictionary. Retrieved March 7, 2012, from <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=egg"
Watsuji, T. 哲郎和辻. (2007). 偶像再興・面とペルソナ 和辻哲郎感想集. 講談社.
Yanase, T. たかしやなせ. (1975). それいけ!アンパンマン (フレーベルのえほん. フレーベル館.
Hamamura, T., & Heine, S. J. (2006). Self-Regulation Across Cultures: New Perspective on Culture and Cognition Research. International Conference of the Cognitive Science, Vancouver, BC.

Labels: Bandai, buddhism, eye, image, japan, japanese culture, Jaques Lacan, lacan, logos, Masked Riders, mirror, nihobunka, nihonbunka, 日本文化

The Japanese are good at making some things and not at others.

According to my understanding, the Japanese are ego-involved in the image, the imaginable, res-extensa, space and place. Westerners are ego-involved in language.

So generally speaking Westerners are good at making linguistic things, such as retail systems, financial services, institutions, laws, theories, drug formulas, and above all software, except heavily image-dependent game software.

And generally speaking the Japanese and East Asians are good at making things - pretty much all things, especially those which capture and display images, but also cars, robots, lights, bicycle frames, motor bikes, trains, bridges, dams, architecture and computers other than the logical/linguist microprocessor "architectures".

But there are exceptions, especially relating to cultural taboos.

To the Japanese, nature is something rather special, sacred and to a degree taboo. Nature is beautiful and a little scary; not something that until recently, they felt able to go traipsing around in as a leisure activity, enjoying "outdoors". This is why many "outdoor" (they use the English word) goods, such as tents, rucksacks, raincoats, and climbing gear may be branded, if not made, outside of Japan.

Another thing that the Japanese have not been very good at, and continue to import, is shoes. Britain imports very little to Japan but one product that can be purchased in any town are British shoes, made by Doctor Martens for instance. I presume that this may be due to the taboo associated with leather industry. Due to the Buddhism related prohibitions on the killing of animals (or at least land animals, with hair) the leather industry was traditionally considered impure and those that worked in it it likewise. This may have served to dampen the development of Japanese footwear. Who wants to wear wooden clogs (geta) anyone?

But then again, the Japanese are excellent at making footwear for appearances such as those pictured above. They may not last all long, in terms of comfort, grip and walking speed, they may not compete, but they look...well anyway that the customer wants them to look, with heels, patters, toe extenders, and straps galore.

Japanese footwear brings my attention to another aspect of Japanese products: the sometimes place form over function. When it comes to what they do, other than look really cool, they are not always the best. Japanese cars for instance, may look good but they are often not 'drivers cars' because the qualities such as "responsiveness", or "handling" ar,e in so far as they can be communicated or represented, notional, ideational, arguably linguistic, and at least not something that Japanese designers can see or imagine and become ego-involved in.

What about the car I drive, a Subaru Impreza WRX? It is the epitome of functionality over appearance. I can only surmise that there are exceptions to everything and point out that "Scoobies", as they are known and loved in the UK, are not very popular in Japan, and those that drive them are thought to be rather strange, "Subarists." Sadly, from my British point of view, Subaru seems to be in the process of being taken over by Toyota and seem to have given upon on their function above form philosophy.

Labels: athletes foot, image, japan, japanese culture, logos, nature, nihobunka, nihonbunka, taboo, tabuu, theory