J a p a n e s e    C u l t u r e

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The sound princes or oto-hime is a device for hiding the sound of ones excretions, which emits the sound of running water. It is made by the Japanese manufacturer Toto. Usually only available in women's toilets (hence my inability to take this photo so far) this one was in the disabled persons toilet. The sound continues, it says, for 25 seconds during which time the user would hope to finish their 'ablutions,' which, disguised by the sounds of running water emitted from this device might not have existed at all.

Since the beginning of time, according to Japanese mythology, the Japanese have endeavoured to hide the desire, sexuality, and nature of women so as to raise the feminine (or castrated feminine) to the level of 'social principle' (Kawai, 1982) or role model.

An as a result all the Japanese to a man, aspire to be a nice kind harmonious watashi a first person pronoun used by men and women, originally only indicating, the woman.

To this day the desire, sexuality, and nature of women is so taboo, so off limits, in Japan that Japanese women: read pornography only about men having sex with men; do not use tampons, use toilets hidden further than those of the gents, laugh behind their hands, wrap themselves in layers layers and of underwear, never suffer from flatulence, almost only use the back-channel in mixed-sex conversation, only moan "no," and use electronic sound-emission devices, such as that shown above to disguise and hide the terrible tinkle or splash.

And I mean terrible. When Japanese women show their true nature, they can often wither Japanese men with a glance.

The noise of the sound princess, and many of the other important meaningless noises emitted by Japanese culture (politician's crooning, sports-persons' shouts, Buddhist chants, pachinko cacophony, mid-day and evening come home Tannoy's, supermarket endless tapes, and New Year's temple bells) may have structural similarities with the Biblical fig leaf and the veil. The sound of the sound princess is a audio cover of female desire, as opposed to a visual cover of male desire.

Click here for YouTube Videos with the sound of the sound princess.

Kawai, H. 河合隼雄. (1982). 中空構造日本の深層. 中央公論社.

Labels: horror, japanese culture, matriarchy, nihonbunka, reversal, ring, ringu, tabuu, ホラー, 日本文化

Doutak bells are a quite mystery to me.

They are found dating from the Yayoi period when, I believe the previous, indigenous Japanese Joumon ("rope pattern") Japanese culture that had existed in Japan for millennia was invaded by horse mounted invaders from the continent. These bells were probably originally horse-bells, to allow horse mounted warriors to know where their horses are in the dark for instance. They started out being about the size of the bell that Ray is holding in the above photo, but were gradually made in larger and larger sizes.

My guess is that these larger and larger bells were in part to prove regal (or invader) hereditary, "My father or (great great..) grandfather was a horse mounted warrior." And with each passing generation the bells were made in larger sizes, perhaps.

The Japanese themselves have a tendency to believe that there was no "invasion" and that the Joumon people evolved into Yayoi people, and subsequently Kofun people, due to the arrival of "technology" from the continent rather than due to subjugation. The Japanese tend to believe, traditionally at least, imho, that their culture is continuous or contiguous from the year dot. And they may be right.

The genetic record however seems to point to a considerable differences (in height for instance) with at the same time much overlap, so at least there was interbreeding between an indigenous and arriving race. On the other hand, I suppose that genes might also be described as a "technology," and Japanese culture may have survived changes to the gene pool. I think it very likely.

I imagine Yayoi warriors arriving and breeding (no offence intended) with the indigenous Joumon people, and then later a second wave of invaders (related to the first) arriving in the Kofun (ancient burial mound) period. This two wave hypothesis is suggested by some (Korean) historical interpretations of Japanese mythology. After the latter wave vast tombs were created. The creation of vast tombs, all around Japan, makes me think that there was great stratification within society. I imagine that those that were related to the invaders rounded up and forced vast numbers of indigenous and mulatto stock Japanese and had them build tombs the size of the Egyptian pyramids for their new masters. But this is all my imagination. Korean and Western historians tend to present a sort of "Japan was invaded" type of history, whereas, as I say, the Japanese tend to portray their history as one of continuous evolution with changes in society being attributed to the arrival of new technologies such as for rice farming. I guess that the difference in historical outlook is one of degree. The Japanese are, and their culture is, great at maintaining continuity, of which a great deal remains. This post is about the possibility of continuity between doutaku (as held by my son Ray) and dogu (pictured above right).

Returning to the dotaku bells, they have peculiar characteristics. They appear to have been kept, while not in use, buried in the ground, being unearthed at specific occasions. One theory has it that they were buried in order to soak up and be replenished with the spirit of the earth. The bells often have pictorial inscriptions that may be rebuses, punning on that which they represent. They seem to have a lot of water related imagery and a preponderance of images of deer.

Ah yes, I remember now (I make the same observations over and over again): it seems to me that these doutaku bells may be the origin of the temple bells that are used to ring in the new year in Japan in the "joya no kane" (除夜の鐘) ritual, which are even more massive than the largest doutak. They look similar. They are likewise inscribed. These "joya no kane" bells are now associated with Buddhist ritual to purify the ringers of sins, of which there are said to be 108.

The "rope pattern", Joumon culture indigenous Japanese, who existed for millennia, seem to have created first person body view (McDermott, 1996) figurines or dogū (土偶) which have similarities with the Venus figurines found all over the palaeolithic world. These figurines in Japan were often destroyed. I wonder if they were destroyed (and perhaps buried) in an attempt to exorcise their owners from the mother that occupied their, and perhaps all our, minds.

If so then, by a vast leap of conjecture, it might be argued that the practice of making first person body view figurines and then breaking and burying them, may have evolved into the practice of making vast bells and ringing then (at first) burying them.

This conjecture parallels the hypothesis of Lacanian (and Freudian but less explicitly) psychology which has it that the self evolves by first being represented visually as a body view, then narrativally in phonemes.

In each stage the self is paired with an other-of-the-self that witnesses the self representation.

Lacanian psychology seems to lack reference to self-person body views. The visual or "mirror-stage" is purported to be one in which the the mirror self, or third person body image such as represented in mirrors, and the form of other children with whom infants identify, is seen from the perspective of real others and is therefore groupist, and interpersonal, rather than intra-psychic (in the mind).

It is only, according to Lacan and Mead, with the arrival of language that humans internalise an imaginary friend or Other or ear (of the Other). In Lacan and Mead, and Western philosophers in general, ears are argued to be internalisable but eyes are not. They claim that one can speak, whisper and eventually "think" in words to "oneself," or rather that hidden friend, a generalised other, super ego, super addressee. Eyes are always, interpersonal, groupist, social, out there in the world.

Till the discovery of mirror neurons, our paper on Mirrors in the Head, McDermott's first person, Nishida's Mephistopheles in 'active direct vision', and the lyrics of David Bowie ("Your Eyes" in Blackstar) it was not realised that people can create a watcher within their minds.

Western theorists seem to have missed out on autoscopic potential of the mirror neuron, or McDermottian possibility that eyes are just as internalisable.

Until recently I had thought that the "eye of the Other" was internalised in an abstract, ineffable way. Japanese pictorial art is often represented from the perspective of "an eye apart," typically looking down, from the sky such as one can experience when playing Mariokart, Final Fantasy or other third person view Japanese video games (Masuda, et al., in preparation).

At the same time however, it also seems possible to model an eye within the self in a more concrete way, as the the first person view of self, such as may be represented by dogū, and the first person view that we have of their own brow nose and limbs. When I look at myself in the mirror I can see the noses and brow of the person on this side of the mirror. I can hold out my hand and caresses the surface of the mirror. Narcissus is portrayed attempting to scoop up his image from the surface of water, using his this-side-of-the-mirror hands.

In a sense perhaps the phonic equivalent of the nose and brow is the voice. I can narrate myself and when I do, when I call myself names, such as "Tim" or "I," the in that situation, there is likewise a "this side of the mirror" in the voice that expresses these names. Mead, and Derrida, rightly point out that hearing oneself speak (s'entendre parler in Derrida) introduces a believable duality. But I think that Nishida is right to point out (at least I think he is pointing out) that a similarly believable, or en-actable (kouiteki) duality exists in seeing. Since we can see our brow, and our nose(s), and often our hands, we see ourselves see. We do not even need a mirror to do so.

So, aware of the fact that self always presupposes and entails a self loving drama (with [less than/not?] one actor and two personae), in an attempt to rid themselves of their self-loving sin, the Japanese may have moved from destroying images of the self-person view in the act of destroying and burying dogū figurines, to destroying the phoneme in the act of a DONNGG, of a doutaku or joya no kane bell.

One can hear the sound of a bell on the Japanese joya no kane wikipedia page and in this Youtube Video.

Bibliography
McDermott, L. R. (1996). Self-representation in Upper Paleolithic female figurines. Current Anthropology, 37(2), 227–275. websites.rcc.edu/herrera/files/2011/04/PREHISTORIC-Self-R...

I have also argued that Japanese attempted to destroy inner ears (converting them to external ones) by snapping their earrings. The more you love others the less you love yourself, and vice versa.

Labels: autoscopy, cultural psychology, image, japanese culture, Jaques Lacan, nihonbunka, psychology, religion, reversal, 宗教, 日本文化

Most analyses of Japan behaviour argue that there are quantitative differences due to the lack of individualism or greater collectivism of the Japanese. Thus, I feel sure that the the risk aversion of Japanese has been explained in terms of their desire not to stand out because, as we are always being told, "the nail that stands out gets hit."

It seems to me rather that Japanese differ little from Westerners in terms of their desire for and achievement of individuality, but rather it is the modality in which they express it that is different. The Japanese express themselves visually since they have internalised and hidden a helper who sees (the mirror of the Sun Goddess) whereas Westerners tend to prefer to love themselves linguistically since they have internalised and hidden a helper or paraclete (Eve or Jesus) who hears.

When it comes to "risk taking behaviour," this usually refers to behaviours which result in physical harm to the body. Since the Japanese identify with their self-image, damaging their bodies is something that they are very averse to doing. The risky behaviours highlighted by Guzman and Pohlman (2014) : "Self-Injurious Behaviours, Violence, and Suicide, Substance Use, Risky Sexual Behaviour, and Behaviours Related to Obesity and Unhealthy Dieting," are all of this type. The Japanese avoid all of these risks.

Indeed the very definition of taking risk (doing dangerous things) usually relates to the lack of aversion to bodily harm so perhaps it is the case that the Japanese are generally less risk averse.

Fortunately there is a category of risks which the Japanese are prepared to take: those that relate to spiritual harm. According to Freese (2004, p88) "A clever and intriguing hypothesis in the sociology of religion is the idea that irreligiousness is analogous to other forms of risk-taking, and so variations in risk preferences play an important role in understanding variations in religiousness."

And at least according to Pascal, being religious can be considered to be a sort of insurance for ones soul. In this instance, the Japanese are found to be second only to the the Chinese is in their irreligiousity with 31% of Japanese claiming to be atheists. The Japanese take great care of their bodies, because they can be seen, but a large proportion of them care very much less about their soul since, at least on a naive view, it can't.

Again it should be noted that the Japanese claim to be atheists but involve themselves in a wide range of religio-cultural practices, such as shrine visiting and hiding their thumbs. In other words the Japanese are fairly happy to take risks when it comes to their lack of a linguistic avowal of some sort of creed or religion because no one is listening. But they are risk averse (as I found out with a survey) when it comes to skipping out on a shrine visit to praying for the health of their three, five, and seven year old children. Japanese behaviour thus appears to be paradoxical until one realises that what matters is how things appear, not what people say.

There should be many other linguistic risks that the Japanese take, at least if only by omission.

Image based on data from the Global Index of Religion and Atheism.

Labels: japanese culture, Nacalian, nihonbunka, occularcentrism, psychology, religion, reversal, Shinto, 日本文化

A recent video showing the extent to which Japanese children return wallets moved me to tears.


In the USA when a child found some money (admittedly not inside a wallet) he was lauded for giving it to someone else.

Handing the money into lost property did not seem to cross anyone's mind in the USA.

Western commentators since the Edo period have marvelled at Japanese honesty with regard to personal possessions and the absence of theft. They also marvelled at the sexual mores (nakedness and the prevalence of prostitution), and speech crime (e.g. flattery, deceit, and creative accounting). That said I believe the Japanese to be the most moral nation on earth.

"The Lost Letter Technique" made famous by Milligram et. al. (1965) found that 70% of personally address letters but only 25 of Nazi/Communist party addressed "lost letters" were returned. Earlier research by Merritt and Fowler (1948: see Liggett, Blair, & Kennison, 2010) found that 85% of letters, but only 54% of letters presumed to contain money were returned.

And yes, there is comparative Lost Letter Technique research. West (2003) dropped phones and wallets containing cash in Tokyo and New York and the results were T 95% vs NY 77% for phones and T 85% vs NY30% for cash. That makes Tokyoites about three times more honest when it comes to returning wallets. Near Tokyo rates of return were obtained outside a Japanese supermarket in New York, so this is not something geographical. The Japanese are extremely honest when it comes to personal property.


In Japan stealing is almost absent, but creative accounting and linguistic obfuscation is reported to be prevalent. In the historical record numerous commentators report the low level of stealing (Bird, 1880; Cocks & Thompson, 2010; Coleridge, 1872; Golovnin, Rīkord, & Shishkov, 1824) and the strict way in which it is dealt with. At the same time, visitors have noted that linguistic misdemeanour's such as flattery, deceit, and "the squeeze" (taking a kickback of up to 100% to 200% of cost: see Bird 1880).

I claim, as always, that the amazing way in which the Japanese do not steal things but are at the same time able to "squeeze" double or triple the expenses from their employer relates to the nature of the Other (and horror) in Japanese culture.

Westerners have a horrible other that listens. This encourages us to be fairly honest, if very self-serving, in our self-narrative. Our narratives are self-enhancing but are constrained by the need for them to be palatable to another imagined human being. On the other hand, we feel no one is watching, so how we look, however, is far less fraught, ego-involved. We can get very fat, or even justify theft as redistribution of wealth (Robin Hood), since "property is [or can be argued, narrated to be] theft." We are good at promises and institutions of linguistic trust (such as insurance, and financial products) since we want to be heard to be, narrated to be, good.

The Japanese, on the other hand, have an Other (that is almost as horrifying) that looks, concealed not in the head but amongst the crowd. This encourages them to be fairly upstanding, if very self-serving, in their posture (sekentei). Their self-imaginings are self-enhancing but are constrained by the need for them to be palatable to another imagined human being. So the Japanese abhor crimes and misdemeanour's that can be seen, such as theft and physical violence. When it comes to linguistic malfeasance such as "the squeeze" or kick-back however, this can be seen as just a way of doing business involving no visual injury. The Japanese are good at creating things (monozukiri) since they want to be seen, imagined to be, good.

This modal -- language vs vision -- difference highlights one aspect of the origin of the myths of individualism and collectivism. It is not in fact the case that the Japanese are any more or less individualistic or collectivist, nor Westerners likewise. Both Japanese and Westerners care to an extent about real others and care more about their horrible intra psychic familiars, but in each case the horror of the familiar must be hidden.

It is only because our familiars, our imaginary friends, are horrible that they can remain hidden and continue to be familiar. Identity is a contradiction that depends upon horror, or sin, on a split that must be felt to be, but not be cognised as being. Identity or self is impossible (nothing can see or say itself) but the dream of its possibility is maintained by desire for, and abhorrence -- and resultant obfuscation -- of the duality required.

In the Western case the necessary, horrible imaginary friend is hidden *inside* the person as an interlocutor that, as inside the person, can only therefore be denied by being claimed to be part of, and one with the self. Eve, that gross "knowing" helper we have, is hidden by virtue of being thought of as just another me (see Levinas vs Derrida and "altrui"). She disappears because, as Adam Smith says, we are just splitting ourselves into two of ourselves. If there is just me and me, then there appears to be nothing disgusting going on. Westerners think, "I think to myself."

But if on the other hand the Other is external, as is required by any visual (self) cognition, there is little way of claiming that the Other is me. Spatial dualism, or rather distance, eye and surface, as required by visual cognition, becomes apparent, and undeniable. So the Japanese claim that all they are doing is being collectivist. The Japanese horrible Other is just another person, one of many other people. The Japanese hide the horror, their familiar, their imaginary friend, in the crowd.

Individualism and collectivism are myths by which means we hide Eve/Amaterasu, a part of our souls, our "helpmeets"or "paraclete" (John's term for Jesus). 

In a similar way to paradox of Japanese morality in which Japanese will not steal your wallet even if you leave it on a table at a restaurant and walk out, but may (or did) charge a kickback doubling or tripling the price, the British will be utterly polite, honest and even humorous as they sell you narcotics and destroy your country, as we did to China for 150 years. Some estimate that the enforced import of opium into China resulted in the deaths of 100 million Chinese, but at least one British academic makes jokes about it .

Paraphrasing Isaiah, those that worship the logos have a tendency to smear over their eyes so that they cannot see, and those that worship idols have a tendency to smear over their hearts so they cannot comprehend.

Bibliography (all available online)
Bird, I. L. (1880). Unbeaten Tracks in Japan: An Account of Travels in the Interior Including Visits to the Aborigines of Yezo and the Shrines of Nikkô and Isé. J. Murray.
Cocks, R., & Thompson, E. M. (2010). Diary of Richard Cocks, Cape-Merchant in the English Factory in Japan, 1615–1622: With Correspondence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Coleridge, H. J. (1872). The life and letters of St. Francis Xavier : in two volumes. Asian Educational Services.
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.
Liggett, L., Blair, C., & Kennison, S. (2010). Measuring gender differences in attitudes using the lost-letter technique. Journal of Scientific Psychology, 16–24. Retrieved from http://www.psyencelab.com/images/Measuring_Gender_Differences_in_Attitudes_Using_the_Lost-Letter_Technique.pdf
Milgram, S., Mann, L., & Harter, S. (n.d.). The lost-letter technique: A tool of social research. Retrieved from http://www.communicationcache.com/uploads/1/0/8/8/10887248/the_lost-letter_technique-_a_tool_of_social_research.pdf
West, M. D. (2003). Losers: recovering lost property in Japan and the United States. Law & Society Review, 37(2), 369–424. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1540-5893.3702007/full

Labels: autoscopy, collectivism, individualism, japanese, japanese culture, Nacalian, nihonbunka, reversal, sex, 日本文化

The "Me versus Others Scale" (Campbell, et al., 2004) shown above (without permission) is a non-verbal measure of self-importance which is found to correlate positively with entitlement and narcissism. More than one paper on narcissim, that uses the scale on US subjects does not however mention the median score on the scale.

In fact among US subjects, which contain a lot of Western style  - I would say verbal/linguistic - narcissists (Twenge & Campbell, 2009), the mean score is only 4.15 (Piff, 2014) just a fraction higher than the fourth picture, in which the self is shown to be the same size as others. How can this be?

Japaense usually rate themselves at a similar just-above-the-middle point in linguistic scales of self-worth such as the Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale (Heine, et. al. 1999). I predict that if given this test, the Japanese will rate themselves at approximately where Americans rate themselves on verbal scales, at the boundary of the upper 4th quartile, at about the 6 on this scale.

Please try it on your Japanese friends and family. My informant scored a six.

Campbell, W. K., Bonacci, A. M., Shelton, J., Exline, J. J., & Bushman, B. J. (2004). Psychological entitlement: Interpersonal consequences and validation of a self-report measure. Journal of personality assessment, 83(1), 29-45. 
www.researchgate.net/profile/Brad_Bushman/publication/527...
Piff, P. K. (2014). Wealth and the Inflated Self Class, Entitlement, and Narcissism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40(1), 34-43.
bathtubbulletin.ning.com/profiles/blogs/4569347:BlogPost:...
Twenge, J.M. &  Campbell K. W.(2009) The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement,  Free Press.

Labels: japan, japanese culture, psychology, reversal, 日本文化

I wrote recently about the creation myth of Guam. To recap, it goes like this.

Human souls were all slaves in hell but due to a conflagration, one soul managed to escape to Guam where he made a human child out of soften rock and gave it a soul made of the sun. When the king of hell came looking for his lost soul he thought it must be that of the child and tried to bring him back down to hell, but hard as he tried, he could take the child to hell, because its soul was made from the sun.

The creation myth of Guam is almost a paraphrase of that of the Japanese in the Kojiki where it relates that soul of the Japanese is also made from the sun -- the mirror of the sun -- and that the creator of this sun-mirror-soul went to hell - or the underworld - and came back.

Indeed, the deities and heroes of Japanese mythology are always going somewhere rather under-worldly. Susano'o visits the Sun who hides in a cave with hellish consequences. Yamasachi HIko goes down to the kingdom in the sea. But they always manage to come back. And their soul remains, according Heisig's reading of Nishida, visual, self-seeing, in the light, made of the sun. How did the Japanese achieve this?

Consider first the alternative. What is hell or "the underworld." Having at last worked out what Derrida means by "mourning," and what Freud was hinting at by his "acoustic cap," I now realize that hell is that which was nearest and dearest to me, and where in large part I live. Hell is a place where there are dead people. I don't see them, I talk to them. I talk principally to a dead woman, a woman who was never really alive, or even a woman, in my head. This is the essence of the narrative self. Mead calls it a Generalized other, Bakhtin a "super-addressee," Freud the super ego, Lacan (m)other, Adam Smith "the impartial spectator" and I think that the Bible refers to it at first as "Eve." A dead woman to keep you company, for you to get to know, and have relations with. Hell indeed. (There is a Christian solution, that involves replacing the internal interlocutor, with another "of Adam" and, quite understandably, hating on sex.)

So how did the Japanese manage to avoid talking to the dead woman? There are various scenes in the mythology. Izanagi runs throwing down garments which change into food (this chase with dropped objects turning into things that slow down ones attacker is repeated all over the world. I have no idea what it means). And in the next myth cycle, as mentioned recently, the proto-Japanese get the woman to come out of her cave with a sexy dance, a laugh, a mirror and a some zizag pieces of paper to stop her going back in again. In this post I concentrate on the last two, shown in the images above.

The mirror was for her to look at her self. She became convinced it was her self and told the Japanese to worship it as if it was her, which they had done every since, eating her mirror every New Year, until quite recently.
The zigzag pieces of paper have two functions. One in purification rituals where I think they are used to soak up words since the woes of humans are in large part the names given to those woes (e.g. of the proliferation of mental illnesses). As blank pieces of paper are waved over Japanese heads a priest may also chant a prayer about how impurities were written onto little pieces of wood which are used to take all them back to the underworld where they belong.

The other use of zigzag strips is that they can also be used for all the sacred stamped pieces of paper which are used to symbolize identity in Japan, and to encourage the Japanese to realise that words are things in the world - not things that should be in your head. And until recently (Kim, 2002) the Japanese managed to keep the words out of their mirror soul.


But alas it seems to me that the Gates of Hell are opening and the children of the sun are in danger of being sucked back in. How might this be achieved?

The following is the beginning of a recent Japanese journal article (Iwanaga, Kashiwagi, Arayama, Fujioka & Hashimoto, 2013) in my translation (the original is appended below) which, intentionally or not, aims to import Western psychology into Japan.

"As typified by the way in which the phrase "dropouts" (ochikobore) was reported in Japanese newspapers and became a social problem initiated by the report from the national educational research association in 1971, the remaining years of the 1970's saw the symbolic emergence of a variety of educational problems. Thereafter there was an increase in problems such as juvenile delinquency (shounen hikou), school violence (kounaibouryoku), vandalism (kibutsuhason), academic slacking (taigaku), the 1980s saw the arrival of problems such as the increasingly atrocious nature of adolescent crimes including the murder of parents with a metal baseball bat (kinzokubatto ni yoru ryoushin satugaijiken) and the attack and murder of homeless people in Yokohama (furoushashuugekijiken), domestic violence, and bullying, and then in the 1990's the seriousness of educational problems such as the dramatic increase in delinquency (futoukou), dropping out of high school (koukou chuutai), and a series of murders by adolescents steadily increased. "(Iwanaga, Kashiwagi, Arayama, Fujioka & Hashimoto, 2013, p.101)

As you can see the writers are partially aware that all the "problems" that have assailed Japan since the 1970's are in part an "emblematic emergence" or impurities. While some of these problem have worsened in fact, many of them are simply the sort of thing that should be tractable to purification. The Japanese are not for instance assailed by an increase in adolescent crime which as Youro (2003) in his book "the Wall of Foolishness" points out, has decreased and become less violent post war in Japan.

The Japanese are assailed by a variety of emblems - names of problems - which nonetheless cause real suffering.

If it were only this plague of names of social ailments swarming out of hell, then I think that the Japanese would be
fairly safe. The problem is that the above paper, Japanese Education Department, and a great many Japanese clinical psychologists and educators, are offering the Japanese the infernal equivalent of the mirror: self-esteem, a dialogue with the dead woman that allows one to enjoy "mourning," telling oneself for instance, that one is beautiful as one stuffs one's face. The title of the paper (Iwanaga, Kashiwagi, Arayama, Fujioka & Hashimoto, 2013) is "Research on the Determining Factors of the Present State of Childrens' Self-esteem," in which the authors blame the lack of Japanese self-esteem -- the Japanese hardly sext themselves at all-- on the emergence of all the social ailments. What fiendish genius: the cause is being represented as a cure! The Japanese may indeed be dragged back in.

Note Opening paragraph of (Iwanaga, Kashiwagi, Arayama, Fujioka & Hashimoto, 2013) in the original
1971年に出された全国教育研究所連盟の報告書(1を契機として，「落ちこぼれ」という言葉が新聞で報道され，社会問題化したことに象徴的に現れているように，1970年代以降，わが国においては教育問題が顕在化することになる．その後，少年非行，校内暴力，器物破損，怠学へと問題は拡散し，80年代には金属バットによる両親殺害事件，浮浪者襲撃事件など青少年犯罪の凶悪化が問題視され，家庭内暴力，いじめ問題が，そして90年代にはいると不登校の急増，高校の中途退学問題，連続的に起こった青少年の殺人事件など，教育問題は深刻さを増していく

Bibliography
Iwanaga, S., Kashiwagi, T., Arayama, A., Fujioka Y., & Hashimoto, H. 岩永定, 柏木智子, 芝山明義, 藤岡泰子, & 橋本洋治. (2013). 子どもの自己肯定意識の実態とその規定要因に関する研究. Retrieved from reposit.lib.kumamoto-
Yourou T. 養老孟司. (2003). バカの壁. 新潮社. Retrieved from 218.219.153.210/jsk02/jsk03_toshin_v1.pdf

Image bottom
お祓い串 by Una Pan, on Flickr

Labels: autoscopy, japan, japanese culture, nihonbunka, psychology, religion, reversal, self, sex, Shinto, specular, 宗教, 日本文化, 自己, 自己視

Labels: blogger, choice, cultural psychology, Flickr, game, Nacalian, nihonbunka, reversal, theory, 日本文化

Is cultural psychology at last taking a visual turn? Yes, and at the same time, not quite. There is the 'theory of Dov Cohen' which integrated the notion of the visual other into the main "collectivist" interpretation of Japanese culture based upon, imho, a misunderstanding of the consequences of a generalised other.

The highly interesting and thorough research of Uskul and Kikutani (2014) appears to follow this Co-hen-ian ;-; trend demonstrating that taking a third person perspective on ones self is related to public self awarenes, motivating actions that are social but not those that are private.

And yet, mirrors -- the easiest way of promoting a third person perspective on self -- are found to promote private self awareness, and the tendency to reject social expectations. Mirrors provide another type of generalised other, and another type of individuality not heightened collectivism.

Who is right? This research (Uskul & Kikutani, 2014) presents hard data, demonstrating the connection between third person perspectives and motivation to conform to social expecations.

Perhaps the problem is the "person." In my opinion, the Japanese do not have a third person perspective, but see themselves from eye of their god (generalised other, super ego, Other, (m)other, superadressee, impartial spectator). The generalised, impartial, super, unconscious, de-personalised nature of the Other (verbal or visual) is the key to making a "god", and commcomitant (verbal or visual) self.

But basically I am all washed up. Kind professor Steven Heine already gave me some work. Perhaps, in the words of the late great Satoshi Kon, when I am starving I can ask for some more work, but by then they may ask "he was a Co(-author w)hen?"

Sorry.

写真お取り下げご希望でありましたら、ご連絡ください。Please contact me if you would like me to remove your photos, taken from your homepages via the comments or email link at nihonbunka.com


Uskul, A. K., & Kikutani, M. (2014). Concerns about losing face moderate the effect of visual perspective on health-related intentions and behaviors. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. works.bepress.com/ayse_uskul/31

Labels: collectivism, individualism, japanese culture, Jaques Lacan, Nacalian, nihonbunka, reversal, specular, theory, 日本文化, 集団主義

In this all too Japanese ukiyoe - picture of the floating world - admonishing "kogaeshi" (lit. "returning ones child) or the practice of infanticide, a Japanese mother is shown in the act of killing her unwanted child even as she thinks, pictorially, of her judgement by Enma, the Japanese St. Peter, at the gates of hell (rather than heaven), who will look in his book (enmachou) as St. Peter also does, and then show her deed in his mirror-come-DVD or her whole life, which St. Peter does not do.


In the DVD come mirror of her conscience the woman's face is transformed into that of an ogre.


The Japanese have a visual, rather than linguistic conscience, and their self esteem is stored and cognised largely in their self-appraisal (generalised other's/impartial spectator's/ superego's appraisal) of their own face.

Labels: autoscopy, crime, culture, japan, japanese culture, Jaques Lacan, mirror, Nacalian, occularcentrism, religion, reversal, specular, 日本文化, 自己視

Self-awareness occurs in different modalities. Sometimes people engage in self-touching when feeling shy (Edelmann et al., 1989), and drink copious amounts of fluids thus becoming pneumatically aware of their digestive tract when suffering from psychosis (see: de Leon, Verghese, Tracy, Josiassen, & Simpson, 1994)*. But generally speaking, human self-awareness takes places in two channels or modalities: through language and though vision.

Typically, in Western literature the former, linguistic self awareness is privileged. Mead, the father of social psychology, argues that speech necessarily demands of speakers to hear themselves from the point of view of their listeners (plural), giving rise to the 'generalized other' (Mead, 1967), 'super-addressee' (Bakhtin,1986), 'Other' (Lacan, 2007), and 'impartial spectator' (Smith, 1812). Typically Western theorists argue, by application of common sense I presume, that in order to see oneself however, one needs a mirror. Mead writes "If we exclude vocal gestures, it is only by the use of the mirror that one could reach the position where he responds to his own gestures as other people respond" (Mead, 1967, p.66).

However, the recent discovery of 'mirror neurons' (Iacoboni, 2009a, 2009b) , the concomitant neural capability of 'autoscopy' (Blanke & Metzinger, 2009; Metzinger, 2009) and our own work demonstrating that the Japanese, but not North Americans, have "mirrors in their heads," (Heine, Takemoto, Moskalenko, Lasaleta, & Henrich, 2008) demonstrates that Mead's common sense assumptions about human inability to see themselves without a mirror is incorrect. Humans, especially if properly trained through the Japanese arts (Zeami; see Yusa, 1987; Ozawa, 2006) can activate their mirror neurons and hone their ability to learn to see themselves, just as Westerners can and do develop their debating skills and hone their ability to hear themselves from others' and then, importantly, the Other's objective point of view.

Cultures differ in the predominance of each type of self awareness. As we have seen, the Japanese have an ability and proclivity to be aware of themselves visually. This is demonstrated likewise by the tremendously positive way in which they portray themselves visually with their poses, fashion, and automatically corrected "puri-kura." That Americans are predominantly aware of themselves in the linguistic domain is, even if one does not believe theorists such as Mead (1967), Bruner, Lacan (2007), Hermans and Kempen (1993), Ricoeur (1990), Derrida(2011), McAdams, Bakhtin (1986)** to name but a few, adequately demonstrated by the way in which they have a strong and robust desire for positive linguistic self regard. All the studies showing positive self regard on the part of North Americans and and equivalent lack on the part of Japanese, for instance, are linguistic. The only studies to demonstrate a greater or equivalent positivity among Asians are visual: auto-photography (Leuers = Takémoto see Mukoyama, 2010, Ch.1), collage (Leuers = Takémoto & Sonoda, 2000), briefly presented flash cards (Yamaguchi et al., 2007), and positivity in recollection of photos.

What happens when the non-culturally preferred medium of self-awareness is promoted?

Among Westerners it has long been known that, unless they are feeling in a good mood, Mirrors tend to promote a novel mode of self-awareness making them aware of failure to meet social norms (Heine, Takemoto, Moskalenko, Lasaleta, & Henrich, 2008; Sedikides, 1992). The negative impact of mirrors is all the more pronounced when Westerners are in a state of negative affect. It is hardly surprising therefore that, as demonstrated by recent research (Selimbegović & Chatard, 2013), mirrors increases thoughts of suicide among Westerners. And, yet, mirrors are used as a means of preventing suicide in Japan (Oshimi, 1992).

After more than two decades of economic stagnation, the level of suicide in Japan has reached historic highs. One way in which Japanese railway authorities have found effective in reducing the level of suicide by jumping in front of passing trains is to install mirrors on platforms. Mirrors are the culturally familiar mode of self-awareness in which the Japanese have learnt to self enhance. To see themselves as loved, lovable, even cute. Remembering the internalised gazes of their loved ones, the Japanese look at the mirror, see the side of themselves that they still love, don't do it and go home.

The equivalent stimulus for increasing positive self regard among Westerners has long been known - provide them with a telephone, a listening ear, and an opportunity to narrate themselves. Hearing ones self speak is enough to put your average Western, but not East Asians (Butler, Lee, & Gross, 2007, 2009; Butler, 2012), in a better, not a worse, mood.

As recent research (Selimbegović & Chatard, 2013) indicates, increase in the incidence of suicide might arise however if mirrors were situated on the Golden Gate Bridge, or I suggest, if suicidal Japanese were encouraged to narrate themselves***. This last possibility does not seem to be one which Japanese medical health professionals, even Mukoyama (2010), seem to have considered.

The image above is from the Wikipedia page on Infamous Suicide Spots, showing the suicide prevention mirror on the the platform of Ogikubo Station's Central Line, and a "Crisis Councelling" telephone on Sanfransisco's Golden Gate Bridge.
Inspired in the first instance by (Selimbegović & Chatard, 2013)

Bibliography
Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. (V. W. McGee, Trans., C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Eds.) (Second Printing.). University of Texas Press.
Blanke, O., & Metzinger, T. (2009). Full-body illusions and minimal phenomenal selfhood. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13(1), 7–13. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2008.10.003
Butler, E. A. (2012). Emotion Regulation in Cultural Context: Implications for Wellness and Illness. In S. Barnow & N. Balkir (Eds.), Cultural Variations in Psychopathology: From Research to Practice. Hogrefe & Huber Pub. Retrieved from www.hogrefe.com/program/media/flyingbooks/600434/files/as...
Butler, E. A., Lee, T. L., & Gross, J. J. (2007). Emotion regulation and culture: Are the social consequences of emotion suppression culture-specific? Emotion, 7(1), 30.
Butler, E. A., Lee, T. L., & Gross, J. J. (2009). Does Expressing Your Emotions Raise or Lower Your Blood Pressure?: The Answer Depends on Cultural Context. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 40(3), 510–517. doi:10.1177/0022022109332845
Derrida, J. (2011). Voice and Phenomenon: Introduction to the Problem of the Sign in Husserl’s Phenomenology. Northwestern Univ Pr.
Hermans, H. J. M., & Kempen, H. J. G. (1993). The Dialogical Self: Meaning as Movement. Academic 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. Retrieved from www2.psych.ubc.ca/~heine/docs/2008Mirrors.pdf
Iacoboni, M. (2009a). Imitation, Empathy, and Mirror Neurons. Annual Review of Psychology, 60(1), 653–670. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.60.110707.163604
Iacoboni, M. (2009b). Mirroring people: the science of empathy and how we connect with others. New York, N.Y.: Picador.
Lacan, J. (2007). Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English. (B. Fink, Trans.) (1st ed.). W W Norton & Co Inc.
Leuers = Takémoto, T. R. S., & Sonoda, N. (2000, November). 心像的自己に関する比較文化的研究（6） －メディア（言語とイメージ）の違いと日米比較― Cross Cultural Research on the Specular Self: Differences in Media (Language and Image) and comparison between Japan and America. Oral Presentation口頭発表 presented at the The 64th Annual Convention of the Japanese Psychologiocal Association English日本心理学第64回大会, Kyoto University. Retrieved from nihonbunka.com/docs/shinzoutekijiko6.docx
Mead, G. H. (1967). Mind, self, and society: From the standpoint of a social behaviorist (Vol. 1). The University of Chicago Press.Metzinger, T. (2009). The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self (1st ed.). Basic Books.
Mukuyama, Y. 向山泰代. (2010). 自叙写真法による自己認知の測定に関する研究. ナカニシヤ出版.
Oshimi, T. 押見輝男. (1992). 自分を見つめる自分: 自己フォーカスの社会心理学.
Ozawa, T. 小沢隆. (2006). 武道の心理学入門: 武道教育と無意識の世界. 東京: BABジャパン出版局.
Sedikides, C. (1992). Attentional effects on mood are moderated by chronic self-conception valence. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 18(5), 580–584. Retrieved from psp.sagepub.com/content/18/5/580.short
Ricoeur, P. (1990). Time and Narrative. (K. Blamey, Trans.) (Reprint.). Univ of Chicago Pr (T). Selimbegović, L., & Chatard, A. (2013). The mirror effect: Self-awareness alone increases suicide thought accessibility. Consciousness and cognition, 22(3), 756-764.
Smith, A. (1812). The theory of moral sentiments. Retrieved from books.google.co.jp/books?hl=en&lr=&id=d-UUAAAAQAA...
Yamaguchi, S., Greenwald, A. G., Banaji, M. R., Murakami, F., Chen, D., Shiomura, K., … Krendl, A. (2007). Apparent universality of positive implicit self-esteem. Psychological Science, 18(6), 498.
Yusa, M. (1987). Riken no Ken. Zeami’s Theory of Acting and Theatrical Appreciation. Monumenta Nipponica, 42(3), 331–345. Retrieved from myweb.facstaff.wwu.edu/yusa/docs/riken.pdf

Notes
* This is the way I (and perhaps Derrida) see self speech, as a sort of self touching, self-comforting, auto 'hostipitality.'
**I know that I am ignoring Cooley and Goffman. It seems to me that the latter, and those that base there analyses on Goffman's approach such as McVeigh (Wearing Ideology) come closest to the position that this blog espouses but, in Goffman's and McVeigh's case at least it seems to me that their dramatological, 'looking glass self" is 'presentational.' That is to say that the Goffman and McVeigh (if not the Cooley)  'looking glass self" is an image of me for you, for another specific other. And this is the nub of the matter. The Japanese too hear their self speech from the ear of otherS but they lack the "generalized" (Mead, 1967), "super" (Bakhtin, 1986) Other (Lacan, 2006) and they have, and we lack, a generalized gaze of the world.
*** Based on Western practice, the Japanese have taken to situating telephones at suicide spots. It seems possible to me that a telephone to the Japanese is a bit like a mirror to Westerners. A telephone encourages people to narrate themselves, and in Japan that, among those that have debt, interpersonal problems, encourages them to narrate themselves negatively in the absence of Eve, a generalized other, super-addressee, or ear that loves them. I know that there is some (though very little) OSA research that uses voice, but I suggest that a telephone is a Nacalianly transformed mirror.

Labels: individualism, japan, japanese culture, Nacalian, nihonbunka, occularcentrism, reversal, 日本文化

Even the display advertising kimono and hakama (traditional Japanese male formal attire) uses mannequins that are are at least partly Caucasian in appearance.

This is partly because it is cool to look bi-racial, due to the economic influence of the West, and due to the universal human tendency to prefer average faces.

It is also due to the way in which Japanese do not identify with self-narratives but rather with self-images. In Japan it is even more true that "Video Ergo Sum" (Lenggenhager, et al. ‎2007). If therefore Japanese mannequins were Japanese in feature they would appear eerily animate to Japanese shoppers, as do the status of Buddhas and Gods in Japanese temples and shrines. The use of Caucasian mannequins adds a element of distance, of inanimateness. To the Japanese, Westerners are a little like zombies or Gundam (robotic suits) with with they can identify - possess and control.

I do not mean to suggest that the Japanese are always more "animistic" though. Westerners (or Westernised Japanese like Prof. Nakajima) are more likely to feel that phonemes are animate, and expect voices to be accompany by a person. A realistic mannequin is as creepy to a Japanese, as a person-less voice coming out of a Japanese bus, vending machine or ATM. Nakajima, Y. 中島, 義道. (1999). うるさい日本の私. 新潮社. 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, nihonbunka, reversal, westernisation, 日本文化

Many Japanese commentators have objected to Ruth Benedict's opus on Japanese culture "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword" either because they deny the existence of the morality based upon a non-social moral standard, or because they believe that the Japanese have a non-social moral standard too. One of the latter is Sakuta Keiichi who wrote that there are two types of shame: public shame (公恥) caused by the censure of others and private caused by the self's censure of the self. What he failed to do however is explain how "private shame" (私恥） differs from guilt. Readers of the blog will be aware that I claim that private shame is visual - resulting from the internalisation of a mirror or generalised other, whereas guilt results from the silent approbation felt towards the voice of conscience when we attempt to justify that which we feel guilty about. Those that have internalised a generalised other can not hide from guilt.

This difference can be seen in the way in which Westerners express both shame and guilt as something from which one can hide, whereas Japanese hide when they are embarrassed but since Japanese shame is always private shame, they have no place to hide when they feel it.

Pictures of Westerners Feeling Embarrassment


Pictures of Westerners Hiding in Shame


Pictures of Japanese Feeling Embarrassment


Pictures of Japanese Feeling Shame on Google.Very few are hiding, but there is some self touching.

Labels: japan, japanese culture, Nacalian, reversal, specular, 日本文化