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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

Labels: female, gender, male, religion, reversal, sex, Shinto, ジェンダー, 宗教, 日本文化

The climax of the chorus of the recent chart topping song by teenage girl-band, 'idol group' NMB48 is "steel panties," refering to their collective intention not to take them off for their boyfriend until they are 20 years of age. The song's title, "Junjou U19" means "Pure (i.e. non sexual) emotion or affection, and the "U19" may mean under or equal to 19, since the lyrics mention adulthood which is considered to be from 20. The boyfriends are going to have a long wait in some instances because at least one of the members is 13 years old. Yes, indeed, only 13 years old.

Having seen the video, it seems that it has been created with the intention to include as many ways as possible of allowing the viewers to feel that they can or will see the "steel panties" refered to the in the lyrics, with low camera angles, miniskirts, rotating girls, somersaulting girls, girls lying down, hanging from wires, rolling over balls, on tightropes, a trapeze, podia, and finally fired from a circus cannon. I think it is very inventive, but not to my taste.

Japan is bursting at its creative seams. Donald Richie's "The Image Factory: Fads and fashions in Japan," details the many ways in which Japan is a powerhouse of creative image making. Alas, the myriad images that Japan makes are different, and often not popular among those with Western sensitivities.

A big problem for human society, perhaps the biggest, is encouraging men and women to cooperate. There are two extremely effective ways of doing this. 1) Persuade all members of society that they are neutred men. 2) Persuade all members of society that they are wombless, bloodless women. The West takes the former route, Japan the latter. In each case it is imperative that the unattractive parts of the idealised sex are banished: their desire in each case is taboo. Jesus was a man in his ability to lead, be righteous, brave, and strong but there was no one iota of lewdness about him. The idealised woman in Japan is similarly, self-sacrificing and supposedly berift of desire. The Western "gentle" man, and Japanese "idol" stop at the waist, they are castrated, spayed, anaemic, and perfect.

This repression however, gives rise to even greater desire for its disolution, for (in the West) a gentleman who is also an ape man; Tarzan/Earl Greystoke a combination of pure male sex and complete gentrified repression. I think that NMB48 are the Japanese equivalent of Tarzan/Greystoke, pure sex, and pure chasity rolled (often literally) into one steel pantie.

The idealized synthesis of purity and sexuality (Ranger, 2011) is also found to an extent in the British lady, such as portrayed by Audredy Hepburn (who was tremendously popular in Japan) in the naivity of the characters played by Marylyn Munroe (though she was a little too sexy, and not quite pure enough for Japanese taste) and the disembodied chamellion Lady Gaga who almost seems a little Japanese. However, In Japan there is a desire for a more extreme synthesis which is why we see thirteen year old chidren, in miniskirts, singing about sex, wearing "steel panties".

Other examples of Tarzan, that the Japanese need to import if they are to enjoy, include the macho heroes such portrayed by Arnold Schwarnegger, and Sylvester Stallone, who are an idealised synthesis of testosterone and righteousness.

NMB48 poster by MadAdminSkilz copyright Kyoraku Yoshimoto Holdings Co., Ltd.
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Labels: fashion, female, gender, male, nihobunka, nihonbunka, taboo, tabuu, 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

Japanese infants, especially young Japanese boys, love Anpan-man. Anpan-man is a male cartoon character whose face is made of "Anpan," meaning bread (pan) filled with sweet, brown bean-paste (an). Anpan-man is a generally nice guy and a superhero in the sense that he can fly, punch mightily, and if the people he is helping are hungry, he can feed them his face, as shown in the illustration (right).

Japanese boys can become quite Anpan-man obsessed. There is a boy in my son's kindergarden that refers to himself as Anpan-man when asked his name. I knew a boy that repeated an "Anpanman" chant in an obsessive complusive fashion when he was nervous, perhaps.

What is this Japanese obsession with Anpan man?

Is there some connection with caniblaism, sacrifice, or self-sacrifice? Possibly Anpan-man has connections with all these things, even with the transubstantiation of the body of Christ, the Eucharist and Mass. After all, Anpan-man is made of a Western import, bread, and not rice.

However, I would like to suggest that the popularity of Anpan-man in Japan may have something to with Japanese boys wishing to identify with their mother. I suggest that Japanese infants want to symbolically suckle (give breast milk to) others. I got the idea for this because a certain Japanese male infant that I know wants to give his (non existant) breast milk to his father. This behaviour is not so strange in itself since young children tend to wish to copy their significant others. The boy in question likes to spoon feed his parents, brush his parents' teeth, and carry a briefcase, all in imitation of his parents.

All the same, the affection for Anpan-man among Japanese males is often obsessive. I suggest that Anpan-man provides the male infant with a imaginary means of identifying with his mother, even after he becomes aware of the fact that his own nipples do not give milk. He can imagine that, in some sense he is, like his mother, in some sense edible. By this manouvre, the Japanese infant manages to identify with his own corporeal objectification as body and image.

Jacques Lacan, the post-Freudian psychoanalyst, argues that infants tend to have two sorts of self-concept: "imaginary" and "symbolic". While it may be doing some injustice to Lacan, I understand these as being visual (imaginable) and linguistic. That is to say that infants come to identify with images that they have of them selves, and and also with the linguistic referent to which they refer to themselves: "I", or their own name. Lacan further argues that the latter type of identification is preferable and normal in Western culture - that we should grow up from identifying with our self-image to indentifying with our self narration. A great number of other "narrative psychologists" working independently, claim that it is intrinsically human to narrate oneself into existance, as the imagined hero of a novel of ones own self telling.

Lacan futher argues that this movement from imaginary to symbolic self identification is motivated in part by the social dynamic of the (Western) family. Mother is the imaginary, the visible parent, the parent with which the child identifies (before perhaps even with his own image in the mirror) visually. Father is the symbolic parent. Father is often absent, but somehow very important. Father is the parent that is narrated into existance for the child, through such statements as "this is your father." [In some societies is its an uncle that takes the role or position of the father. The father is a narrated existance. The "name of the father", his hallowed name, is what makes him a father.]

In the West, in the oediple triangel, the father wins. Lacan argues that children would like to maintain a strong relationship with their mother (to the point of merging even) but fortunately for their development, the father gets in the way of this relationship. The child finds himself repeatedly alone at night, left with only his mother's statement, "I am going to, I have to sleep with daddy." Or "I am daddy's".

The name of the father "daddy," becomse the name or prohibition of the father ("Nom or Non de Pere" -- Lacan makes a cheesy pun on "Nom" - "name" - and "Non" "no!" of the father) in that the arrivale of an awaress of daddy, also signifies an arrival of an awareness that baby will never be what mother really wants, the object of her desire. Instead, daddy, father is a signifier that refers to something that mother really wants, and reason why the infant can not have his or her mother.

After fretting around for a while, the Western infant gives up on trying to be a baby, gives up on trying to be bundle of cuteness that might almost have been the "phallus," the apple of his mother's eye, and instead, identifies with the winner in the triangle of love, daddy, the signified, daddy the linguistic entity. The child starts to identify with his or her name and the first person pronoun in the hope that this signifier also refers to an entity which has, or will one day have, that special something that can make mummy (or a surrogate mummy, a future wife) "mine".

In the West, that special something that daddy has is sexual. While insiting that it is not a real male sex organ , Lacan calls daddy's special something a "phallus". And it is the subject of taboo. I am not sure about Lacanian theory but in reality it seems to me that if the male sex organ were not taboo in Christendom, they would not be raised to the status of the ultimately desirable, and frightening object, that attracts mothers so effectively.

The above may (or may not) be useful when trying to understant out why Westerners identify with their self speech, or why sexual love is held in such high esteem, and yet taboo at the same time, in Western Culture.

Further, Freud and Lacan tell us that the child is "castrated," through the awareness that
1) Mother does not have a phallus
2) Neither does the child have a phallus now
3) That dad has a phallus
The child comes to think that the object of the mother's desire is elsewhere, hidden, daddy's. The phallus, that thing that will enable the child to be loved, is something that even a male child does not yet have. The child looks to the future and dreams of a time when he or she will have a partner, when he or she will have romantic love. Dreams of a time when he will have or she will be given, a phallus, that thing that (hell, why else would she be sleeping elsewhere?) mother seems to lack.

Freudo-Lacanian theory may be incorrect even regard to Western culture. Personally, I am rather persuaded by the Lacanian version. In Freudian theory humans (both adults and infants) are essentially sexual beings. In the Lacanian version it is the upbringing that results in the oh-so-very-high valuation of sex. The child is ejected from the mother's bed, left alone, and told to wait, to wait until one day it will have an opposite sex partner of its own. In the West is thought normal to rear (torture?) young children in this way. Young Western children cry themselves to sleep at night, but stop crying with the dream that one day, they too will have someone, in a sexual relationship of their own, to hug.

While I can see how this theory applies to the West, in my opinion it does not apply to Japan. Japanese parents sleep with their children! This fact needs repeating. Japanese parents let their children sleep in the parental bed until they are about 4 to 11 years old. Where do they have sex? Presumably, sometimes in front of their children! Sometimes, and I know Japanese that have testified to this, the children have watched. This watching is something that Freud claims is enough to drive children mad. But not, obviously, in Japan.

For reasons that I will not go into in this post, in my opinion (or theory of Japanese culture) the Japanese identify with visual self-representations, with the imaginary rather than the symbolic. Again, as argued in other blog posts, the Japanese place taboo on female sexuality, childbirth, rather than upon male sexuality, coitus, and upon the visual (think Sadako) rather than the symbolic. A reversal is going on.

It occurs to me that the awareness, among Japanese children, that the child does not have breasts, that work, that can feed others may represent a sort of castration, or rather mastectomy. This mastectomy does not result in an alienation from identification with the *object* of the mother's desire, but it results in an alienation from identification with the *subject*: mother.

Lacan stresses the child's desire to be the *object* of the mother's desire. A child in a Japanese family could continue to feel, and bearing in mind the love and affection that is lavished upon Japanese children, may often continue to feel, that they are still the prime *object* of their mothers desire. They can continue to feel that they are the "phallus"

However the Japanese child may feel alienated from direct identification with the mother as desiring *subject*. Love is not only about being loved. Love, as in Wuthering Heights for example, is also about identification with the other. "I am my Heathcliff" said Cathy in one of the most famous statements of the essence of love. Being the object of love is important. Being the subject, being the same as, merging with, feeling close, inseperable, bonded with the subject is also important.

For the Japanese child, the realisation of his or her own mastectomy (inability to breast feed), forces the Japanese child to realise that he or she is not the mother, distanced, other. "I can not feed," "I have no breasts". "I am not my/a mother"

Much as the child may attempt to identify with, , and succeed in being the object of his mother's love, he or she wil realise that the love relationship he or she has with mother is not satisfying. Mother loves the child, but is distant. Who wants to be a love object? Being loved is great. But think of being the object of lewd and lavcious love! Being a love object is also rejection.

At this point, for the female infant (as for the male infant in Western society) can dream of a time when she can be a mother, subjectively indentify, identify as subject, and sleep with her own children. For the male infant, however, the father may emphasise this seperation and offer a compromise.

In Japan, as far as seperating mother and infant goes, the role of the father is weak. The child sleeps between mother and father in "the river character" (the Japanese ideogram for river is three verticle lines with the shortest in the middle,), so if anything the child represents a rupture in the relationship between father and mother rather than the other way around. However, the father is not completely without a rupturing function, and the Japanese family is not entirely without "oedipus." The Japanese father reiterates the subjective-alienation of the child from mother, that is to say the father emphasise the fact that the child is not the same type of subject (a feeding subject) as his mother or father.

While basking in the love of, that is being the object of mothers and father's love, the child will also become aware that those two people (mummy and daddy) are parents, whereas I am not. By forming a even visual category ("parents," the-large-bodied) to which the child does not fit, the father serves to emphasise the fact that mother and child are not the same. The father proves that the child is a child, a subjectively alienated other.

The compromise?

According to Lacan, the compromise that the Western child reaches is to believe that he or she one day may have *or* get the "phallus", the object of mother's desire.

The compromise that the Japanese child may reach is to believe that they may eventually be the subject, subjectively united with mother by eventually being able to be edible, eventually being able to feed, or create. As Japanese children grow up they gradually become aware that parents are both in a sense edible, both parents are in a sense mothers. Mothers breast feed and fathers produce food through work.

Anpan-man is an imaginary step in this direction.

As an aside, the Japanese obsession with cooking programs, such as the Iron Chef is perhaps all part of the same compensation for the infantile mastecomy: "one day I will be able to feed people".

Labels: culture, female, japan, japanese culture, Jaques Lacan, lacan, logos, male, nihonbunka, theory, 日本文化

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

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

Hounen Tsukioka, The Ghost with Open Arms (1882), in the National Musemu of Japanese History.

Maruyama Oukyo was a Japanese painter known for realism and occasionally painting ghosts. The painter is rumoured to be the originator of representations of ghosts with no legs but I suspect that the tradition is far older. Ths shows the artist being shocked as a female ghost appears out of one of his own paintings, with the image coming to life.

I have two theories about Japanese culture
1) The internalised other of the Japanese self looks rather than listens - it is the imaginary other, an eye in the sky rather than the symbolic ear of the Other. Hence, the Japanese self is in the visual, rather than linguistic plane.
2) The tabu (and perhaps the tabooed other) of Japanese culture is upon the feminine rather than the masculine. Hence Japanese horror focuses upon horrible women, while Western horror largely focuses upon horrible men.

This photo, "The Ghost with Open Arms" links the two theories together.

It shows a horrible woman coming out of the imaginary plane, female horror coming out the image. This theme is surprisingly popular in Japanese horror.

Ringu, probably the most famous Japanese horror film of recent years features Sadako, a ghost or monster that emerges from the screen of a television set when playing a particular, haunted video tape.

Izakayayurei ("Ghost Pub", 1994) is the story of a publican who promises his dying wife never to remarry, and then when he does his first wife returns as a ghost. In an attempt to have the first wife's ghost return to the other world, they are entrusted with a traditional Japanese scroll drawing of a ghost (as is being drawn in the picture above can be viewed here) which is said to be a portal to the other world.

I think that there are a lot of ways that this might be explained. Freud, Mead and others claim that we must internalise the view of another in order to have self at all. The other of the self has to be hidden, for the self to be the object of identification. It is enevitable therefore that something needs to be hidded in the plane, domain, or medium of self-identification, but what? A hidden eye or ear? I don't think that there is any need for an image of the other but I am not sure.

I think that the tabu bears upon the medium, image or language, itself.

In order for there to be a human self, we identify with a self-represenation. But if we were aware that the self is only a representation, then we would not be able to identify. Hence, we must forget that it is only a representation. We achieve this by a tabuu on the medium of self represenation, pretendind that our favoured medium is essence in itself.

Hence Westerners are inclined to claim that self is the dialogue that the self holds with itself, that ideas (not words) exist in minds, that words cut nature at the joints, and that grammar can not be doubted (e.g. "I think therefore I am" is indubitable).

I wonder if Japanese people are similarly unaware of "the veil of perception." To what extent is everything that we see merely ourselves? This is a knotty question, and I don't think that there is a right answer. But those that see essence as idea, are inclined to believe that the world of vision ("res extensio") is a internal sensation and not "the thing in itself." Similarly in Japan perhaps, the word is seen as that chit-chat, and perhaps (a hypothesis) the image is seen to be out there and shared.

Thus the return of the medium, the return of the image in Japan, and the return of the phoneme in Western culture, might be felt ot be horrible. The Japanese are not afraid of images as entities, but of the return of the image as veneer or the horrible "tain of the mirror".

Does this form of horror also exist in Western culture, in the linguistic field?

Recently I watched the American horror film, Emily Rose about a woman possesed by demons. It bears a strong resemblance to "The Excorcist." However I did notice that a central feature of the excorcism ritual was the attempt to find out the names of the entities that were possesing the woman. They were all men of course. But what was the significance of finding out their names? Till then they had been voices. Perhaps by finding out their names, perhaps, the horrible voice (phoneme) can be returned to the realm of language. This naming of the beast, theme can also be seen in the animation of the Wizard of Earth Sea.

Perhaps there are also a prevalence of proffecies (language) coming true, horribly, in Western horror?

The Shining is a good example of the horror of words in the Western tradition. I was truly horrified to find that Jack's book was simply made up of "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" written over and over again. I think that the repitition of the single phrase made the medium (the ink, the paper) return, allowing us to see it for what it is: a medium and not idea. And similarly at the climax, just before Jack says "Wendy, I'm home," his sun writes r3drum on the wall in blood, which is murder written backwards. This "redrum" may in a sense be the equivalent of Sadako in the ring, at first only "noise" a pattern of sound and images, becomes real...enter Jack with his axe.

The word God (some prefer to write G_d) is often tabuu, and that the ancient Jews wrote it without any vowels YWH (Yaweh) so as to make it more difficult to pronounce. Some people write G_d, to thise day. Do not use the lords name in vain, for fear that you may realise that he is but a name? And then of course there is John, dear John.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God....And the word became flesh and dwelt amongst us, says John. But this was far from horrible. Perhaps the realisation that Jesus is the word e.g. Jesus as myth hypothesis, is this sort of horror.

Labels: culture, female, horror, image, japan, japanese culture, lacan, logos, male, nihonbunka, ring, ringu, shining, tabuu, theory, 日本文化