J a p a n e s e    C u l t u r e

Recently Japanese ladies have been having fake crooked incisors ("yaeba") inserted by clinics in Tokyo. These teeth look a little like fangs, though not so prominent as those sported by the fashion poster girl in the above photo.

What is the attraction of crooked teeth and fangs? The attraction of crooked teeth is in part a gesture at natural rustic charm, such as gypsy look cosmetics, or stone washed, pre-ripped jeans. By their imperfection they give the impression of honesty. But why incisors? Why women? And why fangs?

I think that the logic goes something like this.

Subconsciously the Japanese know that their women are at base, from time immemorial (think Izanami), just plain scary. They are taught, or preprogrammed to believe that babies are their prime objective and to rear them they'll turn you into a "salary man," or basically eat you alive.

Japanese women are required therefore, to go to great lengths to hide their 'true nature'. If they are to be perceived as attractive they must never grow up. Above all they are required to be cute, or rather wallow in cute. But they'd be even scarier if they hid their desires completely. So, when their scariness is showing a little bit, then they are even more cute.

Cute Japanese women with fangs are like Western gentlemen with a bit of chest hair or stubble showing (or like a handsome werewolf with a thick beard, inset bottom right) in all cases they hint that in fact they do still have bite.

Labels: horror, japan, japanese culture, 日本文化

Japanese cakes are characterised by the sweet bean paste that they generally contain (or in rare cases that they are covered in). The bean paste is dark brown and of similar consistency to overcooked baked beans. It is quite sweet, sweet enough to be disgusting to those that are used to eating beans as a main meal, but not nearly as sweet as Western confectionery. This means that if you can get over your qualms about eating sweet, as opposed to tomato flavoured, beans then Japanese cakes are considerably more healthy being higher in protein and fibre and lower in calories.

The bean paste is generally covered in flour based sponge cake such as in the round sweet bean sponge-cake sandwich (dorayaki) favoured by the iconic robotic cat, Doraemon, and the maple leaf shaped baked bean fritter (momiji manjuu) made on Itsukushima Island near the famous sea gate. More traditionallly, the bean paste is encased in a slightly gooey layer of rice such as in "great prosperity" (daifuku) rice cakes and this rice may also be wrapped in leaf, of an oak tree (kashiwa mochi) or of a cherry tree (sakura mochi). The outer layer of pink stained rice in the latter (sakura mochi) has been salted, to produce from an untrained Western point of view, something truly grotesque.  The salting of the outer layer of rice creates a contrast with the slightly sweet bean paste, to make it seem almost as sweet as chocolate. 

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

In this video my son Ray demonstrates the use of a Japanese toy called a "Mojibake" which means a transforming or morphing letter. The toy transforms from being a Sino-Japanese ideograph (kanji) meaning tiger into a little plastic model of a tiger.

Japanese toys and superheroes are always transforming by means of a symbol. Masked riders put symbols to their belts, inject USB drives into their blood stream, or are bitten by cosmic bats. Power ranges manipulate symbols, including Kanji (Shinkenja-) that also allow them to transform in to super beings.

This use of symbols to produce living entities is similar to the way in which people in totemistic societies (such as Native Americans) received totem badges containing ancestral spirit to become their own soul.

While there are some that claim that Kanji only mean things via phonemes - that they need to be pronounced in order to have meaning, Chad Hansen (1993) a scholar of Chinese philosophy claims that Kanji not only mean but that they mean things not ideas. The Western signification system is triparite: words mean ideas which mean things. The Chinese system is dual: characters mean things.

If this is the case, then from a radical social constructivist or Sapir-Warphian perspective, the existence of the character provides a symbolic tool for the cognition, and perhaps existence of the lion. In the far East, in the beginning was the kanji.

Since Ray was about three years old he has spent countless hours symbolically transforming things into other things. I think that he has managed to become Japanese without my help.

Hansen, C. (1993). Chinese Ideographs and Western Ideas. The Journal of Asian Studies, 52(02), 373–399. doi:10.2307/2059652

Labels: Bokenger, culture, Gao-Ranger, go-onger, henshin, japan, japanese culture, Masked Riders, totemism, 日本文化

Takaaki Yoshimoto's famous book (pictured above) "Theory of Communal Fantasy" (1969) was very disappointing to me when I picked it up about 20 years ago, because I had not the foggiest what he was on about.

The Wikipedia page on the book claims that it is not only a difficult book but also that it is like a Rorschach inkblot test in that different people read into it different things.

Yesterday I read it again and found it in a way of describing that which replace Oedipal, sexual fantasies in Japan.

In the preface Yoshimoto introduces "communal fantasy" (共同幻想) as fantasies or psychological constructs shared by a society. He later uses the example of mythology. Under this interpretation "communal fantasy" is close to Jungs' collective unconscious and the culture of cultural psychology: "shared understandings."

However in the first chapter "communal fantasy" emerges from a discussion of taboo in Freud, as an alternative class of taboo.

Yoshimoto notes that taboo is associated with ambivalence. Those things that taboo are not only rejected and hated but also loved and wanted at the same time. Then as an alternative to the "pair fantasies" manifest in incest taboos - the fantasy of incestual sex - "Communal fantasies" are introduced to describe initially the ambivalence towards kings and chiefs. (Yoshimoto does not need, or can not, mention the emperor since certainly the emperor of Japan is taboo subject in Japan).

Thus, the word "fantasy" (幻想) is used not only to describe psychological contents but also aspiration: fantasy in the sense of what people fantasise about, what they want, what they desire (even if they hate it as the same time).

Secondly, when he talks of sexual fantasies as "pair fantasies," (対なる幻想) the meaning of "pair" is transformed from a subject to an object or objective. Incestual sexual fantasies as "pair-fantasies" are not, necessarily at least, fantasies held by pairs, but fantasies about pairing. I don't think that Freud argues anywhere that Oedipal fantasies are necessarily, or even often, held equally on the part of mothers and fathers - the fantasies are held largely or exclusively on the part of children. Equally, , as a parallel concept, "communal fantasies" are not simply or even necessarily fantasies held by communities so much as fantasies of communing, of merging, melding, being one. And this fantasy may also be taboo, as there may also be taboos associated with the commity represented in the person of a king, or emperor*, for example.

As previously discussed, bearing in mind the bedroom arrangements in Japanese homes, the way that nakedness, communal bathing, touching and sleeping together are all everyday events that are not the subject of taboo, it seems clear that sexual incest taboos are not a prime mover in Japanese development. Children already get to sleep with their mothers. Their fathers do not step in with their paternal prohibition, but rather on the far side of their children, sandwiching their children closer to their mother. So how could the Japanese bow be tightened? How could, how do the Japanese ever grow up?

Cynics might say that the Japanese do not grow up, but it seems to me, with all the studying and almost religious ascetic practising of sports, and martial arts, that the Japanese child's trajectory into Japanese adulthood is no less motivated, the Japanese bow is no less taught. So, to coin a war poem, what made fatuous Japanese toil to break out of mummies bed at all?

My answer is that rather than incestual "pairing fantasies", the Japanese are propelled into the world by "communal fantasies", they desire communitas, they want to merge (合体), with mother, with father, with the community of parents, progenitors, ancestors and even eventually the gods.

Considerations such as the above may also related to the previously discussed way in which images and mothers in the West, and fathers and symbols in Japan, are to blame for, or catalytic in propelling the infant in a quest for something else something more.

The father in Japan, even as he says, go on sleep next to your mother is living symbolic proof - "father" - that the child is not a parent. A child of my acquaintance fantasised that a sibling was that child's own child. But the presence of the father and mother, the fact that they come as a set, presents a different type of prohibition, a parental prohibition that says to the child "No! You are not one of us. You are not a parent too!" And so all that toil, and study, and waiting and sweating and longing begins.

Notes
天皇は、日本國の象徴であり、日本国民の総合の象徴であって、その地位は日本国民の至高の総意に基づく。The emperor is the symbol of Japan and the symbol of the will of the Japanese people, and this status is based in the highest will of the Japanese people.

吉本隆明. (1982). 共同幻想論 (1982年) (改訂新.). 角川書店.

Labels: japan, japanese culture, Jaques Lacan, lacan, sex, 合体, 日本文化

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Japanese services may be of no service to Westerners? While in general I love Japanese service, and find it easy to avoid the services that I do not need, the following 60 services may be of little use to Western customers, except as examples of Japanese cultural alterity, which tourists tend to enjoy.

1. Sales staff talking one octave higher than they would otherwise.
   I don't want people to demean themselves to the extent of talking in a falsetto voice.
2. Petrol Station (Gas stand) attendants. Fortunately these are now seen less and less, due to changes in the law which now allow drivers to fill their own tanks. Having someone do it for you, while you wait in the car watching them do it, adds unnecessarily to the cost of petrol. Like the people waving flags on each approach of roadworks compulsory gas station attendants may have been a way of ensuring full employment.
3. Sales staff putting out their hand to allow you to deposit refuse into it (pass me a bin please)
4. The cries of "someone has ordered XYZ" (XYZ icchou), or "someone wants an extra serving ("okaidama") in Japanese restaurants and otherwise announcing what you have ordered to the rest of the restaurant),
5. Snack hostesses and other providers of conversation that one must pay for.
6. Photo-me machine booths (purikura) everywhere with the ability to add annotations and to make ones eyes bigger (more Caucasian?).
7. Surgery to add a crease to upper eyelids or make ones nose longer. 
8. Traditional Japanese hotel (ryokan) waitresses (nakaisan) that tell me how, and in what order, and which sauce to eat my food, and even when to go to bed.
9. Supermarket workers that escort you to produce you ask the whereabouts of rather than tell you what isle the produce is sold in, because I usually want to weave my way through the store rather than be escorted to the far side of the shop.
10. All the till receipts even when your hands are full of shopping and change (which is generally used as a paper weight)
11. Wrapping and more wrapping (some convenience store workers seem to find it difficult to put a niku-man on my hand, perhaps they fear I will be burned),
12. The attempts at English even when I am speaking in Japanese,
13. Offers of disposable chopsticks (which are supposed to be easier to use than regular ones)
14. The instance upon providing (and requiring me to bring) a card particular to each hospital or clinic
15. New years cards from various service industries
16. Taxi doors (I have to remember not to annoy drivers by shutting my door and hitting them with their handle)
17. Tiny indoor slippers that I can't get my feet into
18. A little bit of food, called tsukedashi, that I have to eat and pay for to drink a beer
19. Phones that don't accept or allow me to change SIM Cards
20. Banks and post offices that insist upon providing receipts (if you try to do a runner, they run after you)
21. All the advertisements inside my newspaper
22. The wrapping for the newspaper on rainy days though our postbox is a box and under our porch
23. Book covers and book "belts"
24. Toothpicks
25. Being thanked by vending machines,
26. Ice in bar urinals,
27. Purposefully adding extra froth on my beer,
28. Bits of plastic fairing around the windows of cars,
29. Mammoth exhaust pipes on cars, the whole car "meiku" (in the sense of make up, or cosmetics) after-parts industry,
30. Umbrella condoms when an umbrella rack would do fine since umbrellas are so cheap they are almost free and the Japanese do not steal things anyway
31. Surprise packs of things I do not need sold on New Years Day by department stores,
32. Department stores or shops that are able to sell things at inflated prices due to the fact that they are prestigious shoppers and can provide wrapping that indicates their prestigiousness.
33. Being greeted with a bow if I am one of the first customers arriving in the morning.
34. The ceaseless announcements of things that are utterly obvious ("do not bring dangerous things onto the train"),
35. Car park attendants that wave me in directions that I already knew I wanted to go in,
36. Public service sirens to call me home to lunch and dinner,
37. Cardboard toilet paper tubes with printing thanking me for having finished the toilet paper,
38. Toilet seats that blow dry my posterior,
39. Free muck brown tea in canteens that tastes like it was produced by a goat,
40. Politicians with no policy just a loud Tannoys.
41. Individually wrapped fruit,
42. Square water melon,
43. The opportunity to taste sausages in supermarkets (unless this is an opportunity for free food, which it is not. It is an attempt to make customers to feel obligation or giri to return the favour).
44. Horrible looping background music in shops such Yamada Denki and Mr Max
45. Sales staff that ask me to sit down.  I would often rather stand and when I want to sit down, since I am not a dog, I do not need to be asked to sit down.
46. Noise producing devices to hide the sound of my excrement falling into toilet bowls. Admittedly these are only generally provided only to women.
47. Supermarket cash register staff that repack shopping into baskets as opposed to into bags to take home as in the UK. They carefully position the heaviest items at the bottom of the basket making putting the same items at the bottom of ones bag difficult.
48. Being asked to confirm the brand of cigarettes that I order from behind the counter in convenience stores two or three times.
49. The little piece of plastic grass in bento lunch boxes.
50. Theme parks replicating areas of foreign countries such as Huis Ten Bosch, Parke Espana, and Shakespeare Country Park.
51. Restaurants and hotels which could easily provide a view but do not, such as Sea Mart in Hagi, which is almost beside the sea but provides a view of the back of some warehouses obscuring the sea front.
    
52. Tourist attractions which are places where something once happened, but are now only an empty field with a commemorative stone to mark the spot.
53. Being able to see the car or person I am controlling in Japanese video games such as MarioKart.
54. Female staff who clean the gents while I am using them.
55. Sales staff,  such as at DVD rental stores that pass things to me in their scripted order, rather than putting them on the counter requiring me to keep standing their proffering a bag of DVDs or to accept all the things the are passing before I have put the other things away.
56. Telephone service staff that use all sorts of polite padding and take ages to get to the point.
57. Telephone service staff that insist upon putting me through to the appropriate staff member when my question is so simple as to be answerable by anyone and therefore forcing me to ask my question again.
58. In spite of, or as exemplified by performing various demeaning services that I do not ask for, the general patronising superciliousness of service staff who stick to their scripts and praxes rather than submitting to being my willing servant.
59. The general tendency of service staff to attempt to provide what is required as indicated by non-verbal communication rather than listening to my commands, which I find myself repeating, like the brand of my cigarettes, two or three times.  
60. Elevator girls that press the buttons of elevators in departments stores and announce what is available on each floor. Now largely a service of the past.
    
 

Bearing the fact that tourists of all nationalities travel in part for the sake of cultural alterity, there is a case to be made on the contrary for Japanese services providers to ham up all the above services providing them in lavish extravagance (e.g. even more wrapping, even higher sales voices), so as to provide a stimulating, weird cultural experience to visiting Westerners.
日本語版

Labels: japan, japanese culture, tourism, 日本文化

As Watsuji argues the Japanese self "persona" (originally meaning "mask" in Greek) centres upon the face or mask.

To each of these costume masks there is attached in the top corner a a pose, similar to those poses performed by power rangers and masked rangers when they transform (henshin) into their super form.

As I have argued before, you, or the Japanese, don't get to have a mask, or even a face, unless you can strike poses.

Westerners can't perform poses (Kata) and as Duval and Wicklund pointed out, they can not see their faces unless they are in front of mirrors. They do not identify with that which can be seen, nor point at their noses to indicate themselves.

Western psychologists and philosophers claim that is only through language that one can see oneself from the point of view of a generalised other, as opposed to the other which one faces, and that a generalised other is a precondition of having an individual self (Professor Cohen rather misunderstands Mead on this point I fear:-).

However, at the same time, Judith Bulter, using Derrida points out that repetitive "iterate-able" actions turn the body into a sign. One need not go as far as post modernism however. The father of social psychology George Herbert Mead argues that signs, including gestures, are understood from the point of view of others.

This is not to suggest that Japanese are always signing with their bodies, but the act of signing with their bodies acts as a catalyst or transitional "stage" in the assumption of an "imaginary" identity. The mirror stage, and the Western super heroes suit, allows him to transform into his super identity - his ego, his words, his signs. Conversely, the poses or signs that Japanese superheroes perform allow them to transform into their suits, into their masks.

Hence, all this posing (and Kata) that Japanese perform allows them to *see themselves* have an autoscopic gaze and in so doing have, and identify with their face.


[I am just repeating myself now. It is finished! I need to move on to my next project :-) I am pretty old so perhaps i can retire now that I have written this blog. I am interested in why exactly it is that these two types of self concept my be antagonistic towards each other. ]

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

There are many phenomena demonstrating the prevalence attraction towards young girls in Japan, such as the following: AK48 and all the other idol bands and their average professional longevity, the nature of the dances that these idols are made to do such as almost showing their underwear, plastic "figures" - sold to both children and adults - depicting minors in various stages of undress, the provision of high school uniforms for "cos-play" in Japanese "love" (sex) hotels, the age of pornography actresses and the type of passive and naive role that they are required to perform, the depictions of minors (now to an extent self-regulated or illegal) in Japanese pornographic comics, the existence, prevalence and acceptability of the word and trait "Loli-con," the notion that a daughter may be her father's "last girlfriend," the perceived equivalence between cuteness and female attractiveness, the way in which adult Japanese women are encouraged to behave (even more so than elsewhere) and appear younger than their years, negative perceptions of older women, the fascination with and sales of high school girl's uniforms, sportswear and their used underwear (including online), the theft of the same, the prevalence and existence of the word of "upskirt" peeping and photography often towards, the saying that even devils look good at 18 (鬼も十八番茶も出花), the suggestion that young women are attractive in pop lyrics ("Sweet, Sweet 19 blues," "Watashi can Obasan ni Nattara" containing the lyric "女盛りは１９ "a woman's prime is at 19"), the use of the word "daughter" to refer to an attractive women (Morning- / kanban-), the division of the lifetime into stages or eras, the requirement that sales staff use high pitched voices, the lolicon boom in the early 1980's, and conversely the fear and taboo surrounding adult female desire which is forbidden even in the Japanese creation myth."

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

Martial arts, such as Judo, Kendo and Karate (in order of popularity) are back on the middle school compulsory curriculum in Japan, thanks to education reforms brought into place the last time Abe was in power, with the stated objective of familiarizing youth with the traditional culture of Japan.

I argue on this blog that it is in part the practicing of "kata" in these martial arts that encourages their performers to feel the gaze of the Other via the simulation of an autoscopic gaze. Even if Japanese do not practice martial arts however, they tend to practice kata in other sports and dance. I was a member of a Japanese tennis club once briefly and about three quarters of the tennis club time was spend on practicing tennis "kata," such a drop shot followed by lob, often without a ball.

Labels: japan, japanese culture, nihonbunka, 日本文化, 武道

Zeami's Mirror Held to the Flower (1492), remains, six hundred years later, a classic must-read for students of noh drama and the Japanese arts. In it, Zeami explains how noh practitioners must, through the rigorous practice of kata (precisely choreographed dance forms) learn to see themselves with spiritual eyes. The following section is so important that I am quoting it in its entirety, from the translation by J. Thomas Rimer and Yamazaki Masakazu (the original is on order)

As concerns the dance, it is say that "the eyes look ahead and the spirit looks behind." This expression means that the actor looks in front of him with this physical eyes, but his inner concentration must be directed to the appearance of his movements from behind [think Super Mario, rather than Call of Duty (Masuda, 2010)]. This is a crucial element in the creation of what I have referred to above as the movement beyond consciousness. The appearance of the actor, seen from the spectator in the seating area, produces a different image than the actor can have of himself. What the spectators sees is the outer image of the actor. What an actor sees, on the other hand, forms his own internal image of himself. He must make still another effort in order to grasp his own internalized outer image, a step possible only through assiduous training [Kyari's dance routines may look easy but she too has done assiduous training.] Once he obtains this, the actor and the spectator can share the same image. Only then can it actually be said that an actor has truly grasped the nature his appearance. For an actor to grasp his true appearance implies that he has under his control the space to the left and to the right of him, and to the front and to the rear of him. In many cases, however, an average actor looks only to the front and to the side, and so never sees what he actually looks like from behind. If the actor can not somehow come to a sense of how he looks from behind, he will not be able to become conscious of any possible vulgarities in his performance. Therefore, an actor must look at himself using his internalised outer image, come to share the same view as the audience, examine his appearance with his spiritual eyes (see image above), and so maintain a graceful appearance with his entire body. Such an action truly represents "the eyes of the spirit looking behind." (p. 81)

Beautiful stuff! The genius, but more pedestrian, George Herbert Mead (1967), lacking the information that we now have regarding mirror neurons, claims that what Zeami proposes above is impossible (the below quoted from "Mind, Self and Society":

It is only the actor who uses bodily expressions as a means of looking as he wants others to feel. He gets a response which reveals to him how he looks by continually using a mirror. He registers anger, he registers love, he registers this that or the other attitude and he examines himself in a glass to see how he does so. (Mead, 1967, pp. 66-67)
and hence Mead argues that the creation of the self, can only be done in language.
"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)
"What is peculiar to the latter is that the individual responds to his own stimulus in the same way as the other person responds." p67 "It is only the vocal gesture that is fitted for this fort of communication, because it is only the vocal gesture to which one responds or tends to respond as another person tends to respond to it." p67 "The critical importance of language in the development of human experience lies in this fact, that the stimulus is one that can react upon the speaking individual as it reacts upon the other. " p69

Mead did not know that there are those who have a mirror in their heads (Heine et al. 2008), who are spacemen (間人, Nishida⇒Watsuji; see Hamaguchi, 1982), "res extensa."

Image top A Necessary Man by raichovak, on Flickr
Image centre, Kyari Pamyu Pamyu singing Pon Pon Pon copyright Kyari Pamyu Pamyu (きゃりーぱみゅぱみゅ) the director Jun Tajima, Masuda Sebastianone, and Warner Music Japan.
Image bottom, Mario playing Call of Duty (see Masuda, 2010)

Hamaguchi 浜口恵俊. (1982). 間人主義の社会日本. 東洋経済新報社.
Masuda 増田貴彦. (2010). ボスだけを見る欧米人 みんなの顔まで見る日本人. 講談社.
Mead, G. H. (1967). Mind, self, and society: From the standpoint of a social behaviorist (Vol. 1). The University of Chicago Press.
Zeami. (1984). On the art of the nō drama: the major treatises of Zeami ; translated by J. Thomas Rimer, Yamazaki Masakazu. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.

Labels: culture, japan, occularcentrism, reversal, Shinto, specular, 日本文化

The above image top (Wu & Keysar, 2007) shows the view of some shelves from the front (left) and rear (right). An "instructor" on the rear (right) side of the shelves tells a subject to "move the block one square up."

Subjects, looking at the front (left) of the shelves is faced with a choice (A) of moving the block on the left up, or (B) the block on the right up. But if they think about it, they should be aware that the "instructor" can not see the darker block on their right, and must therefore mean the block on the left. American (and no doubt British) subjects are often too dumb to work this out!

Chinese are not so dumb. They almost never move the wrong block because they look at the shelves from the point of view of the "instructor." In other words, the researcher point out, the Chinese are good at "perspective taking". They are able to see things from an auto-focused or autoscopic perspective. The Chinese, like Kyari Pamyu Pamyu and Japanese martial artists, can look at themselves from the position of the world, as if they have extra eyes pointed inwards towards themselves.

Scholars such as Iacoboni (2009) and Metzinger (2009) show us that all humans can see themselves, take out of body perspectives (Blanke & Metzinger, 2009) but from the above research it is clear some cultures can see themselves more clearly.

This ability to see from autoscopic perspectives pointed towards oneself, as if equipped with a freely positionable mental mirror (Heine, Takemoto, Moskalenko, Lasaleta, & Henrich, 2008) is the defining characteristic of Japanese culture. It represents a different type of "perspective taking" to that refereed to by Mead (1967) since it is not carried out in language. It does, like Meadian linguistic perspective taking result in a sense of self and it may be encouraged by choreographed, repetitive (see Butler, 1993), set-behaviours (kata and dance routines) that through their performance turn the body into a sign and encourages the performer to see these signs from the point of view of the other, and to establish an auto-focused gaze.

This culture of the eye of the other, is due in part to the influence of the Shinto religion, the primary deity of which sees herself as, refers to herself as, and is represented as, a mirror. This mirror is said, by at least one Japanese religious leader (Kurozumi, 2000), to be in the heart of the Japanese.

The experimental evidence points to it being found in the hearts of Chinese too. The first mirrors that were treated with reverence in Japan were imported from China so it is probably fair to say that this ability, to take external auto-focused perspectives, is as Chinese as it is Japanese. I have no doubt that it is engendered as much by Taichi (太極拳) as it is by Karate, or Kyari's dancing. The Chinese and Japanese need to realise their similarities and learn to be friends.

Lower image copyright Kyari Pamyu Pamyu (きゃりーぱみゅぱみゅ) the director Jun Tajima, and Warner Music Japan.

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, J. (1993). Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex. Routledge.
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. (2009). Imitation, Empathy, and Mirror Neurons. Annual Review of Psychology, 60(1), 653–670. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.60.110707.163604
Kurozumi, M. (2000). The Living Way: Stories of Kurozumi Munetada, a Shinto Founder. (W. Stoesz & S. Kamiya, Trans.). Altamira Pr.
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.
Wu, S., & Keysar, B. (2007). The effect of culture on perspective taking. Psychological science, 18(7), 600–606. Retrieved from pss.sagepub.com/content/18/7/600.short

Labels: autoscopy, eye, image, individualism, japan, japanese culture, mirror, Nacalian, nihonbunka, occularcentrism, Shinto, specular, 日本文化, 神道, 自己視

The haiku poet, Buson is full of tricks. Here is another of his most famous haiku.

月天心 貧しき町 通りけり
Tsuki tennshin, Mazushiki machi, Toorikeri
The Moon mid-sky,
A miserable town,
Passed

I feel sure that wry old Buson is playing with us.

Two things are happening. One is that a big bright moon has passed over a poor town. The other is that Buson has passed through a town of people who were too poor, and I think he hints *too mean*, to let him stay for the night.

The word "mid" in the first phrase, written with the character for "heart" is the centre and key to understanding the poem.

It is pronounced "shin", so is a little too long for the standard Haiku form. By Japanese reckoning, since "n"s are felt to be voiced syllables, "Tsu ki te n shi n" is six syllables as opposed to the standard five.

Similarly, the next phrase "Ma zu shi ki ma chi" meaning (at first glance) "poor town", has only six syllables too, one less than the standard seven, so the "mid"/"heart" character hangs, or vibrates between the two phrases, when with the second hinting at another meaning.

Phonetically it is far to long to fit into the haiku structure, but any Japanese reader will surely feel, consciously or not, the possibility of putting the "heart" character in the second phrase to produce "心貧しい町" (pronounced "kokoro mazushii") meaning "mean-spirited town". I have translated the "poor town" as "miserable town" to hint at the mean-spirited meaning as well.

The moon is very important too. Judging by the high regard and poetic attention placed upon in it the Manyoushuu, the moon is, even more than the sun, the poetic equivalent of the poet's heart. And it is to the moon that the poet, his heart, and the character for heart return.

After looking at the moon, Buson takes us away to the town, to his feeling of rejection, and eventually passing out of it, the poor town, the mean people and the travelling poet's reaction have all "passed". We are left with the image of the full moon which, like the poet's heart, remains as big and round as it ever was.

Buson, who was a fan of Bashou's, uses more devices, such as the double meaning here above, but under my interpretation, the intention is same as a ritual purification at Japanese shrine. Symbolic interpretations are 'swept' away, to return us to a big round, pure mirror: the purity of experience that Nishida refers to as the meeting point between the self and the world.

The Buson haiku that sticks in my mind more than any other is
五月雨や　大河を前　に家二軒
Samidare ya, Ookawa o mae, Ni ei ni ken

A May shower 'n,
A big river prior,
To two houses.

At first this haiku may seem intractable to Dconstruction* and a straightforward description of a scene. The poet is just standing in the rain looking a a couple of houses on the far bank of a large river. Yes that is what the poet is doing.

But, also, on further inspection this three phrase poem is managing to do what almost no other haiku achieves - to feed the viewer not one but two interpretation tainted, symbolically produced images, before taking them both away to leave only the emotion and the truth of the image: the terrible purity of the experience.

The first trick in this poem is that the poet makes us think that he is talking about seeing rain. The second is that the "ya" in the first phrase usually means "lo" "look" or "!" Ordinarily, the first line would mean "Lo, it's a May shower," but here it doesn't. Panning poetic exclamations, Buson is just telling it as it is.

As noted the previous post, Basho sets up a poem with "May shower" before telling us that he is talking about the rainwater in the river. Echoing that poem both in subject and style, the immeasurably laconic Buson manages to trick us twice.

By the time we get to the second phrase, we start to realise that the "ya" in the first was not "lo and behold" but simply "and," echoing, more prosaically, the way in which Basho's "quick" turns out to mean the speed of the river, not that of collection.

It is difficult to find a word in English that can mean both "look" and "and" but I have gone with what may sound like a meditative "nnn," which turns into the "'n" of "fish 'n chips." 

In any event, by the time we get to the end of the second phrase (o mae)  "prior," the penny really starts to drop. Buson wasn't even looking at the river!

The poet wasn't looking at a May shower at all (which are generally invisible, like jumping frogs) or even at a river, but at two houses. We realise that once upon a time a soaking wet poet stood in the rain near a big river looking with longing at the two houses on the far side. He did not see the May shower. There is a good chance he did not even see the big river, though his mind was full of negative thoughts regarding both of them. He was probably wet through. The sound of the shower and the roar of the river were probably amplifying the cold.

All he actually saw, or at least all that he was actually looking at, was two houses. And when we see that pair of houses with Buson, the "May shower" and the "big river", dissolve like raindrops in his boundless, longing gaze.

The use of "ni" (two and to) twice in the final line emphasises the solitariness of the poet and the warm welcoming communion of the houses he wishes he could reach.

*Dconstruction a Nacalian transformation of Derridean Deconstruction, wherein instead of showing how a text uses image tainted signs to purify the sign, shows how sign tainted images are are used to purify the image.

Labels: japan, japanese culture, Jaques Lacan, Nacalian, nature, nihonbunka, 日本文化

Whether or not Japanese culture is really "occularcentric" or not remains to be proved but, while often difficult to explain, it is often very interesting to look at. On flickr I recommend my Japanese Culture set in which all photos can be used in education and all non-commercial uses, Japanology 日本文化論 in which the photos have brief explanations, Japan-o-phillia, Japanese Lovers, Japan Images, We Love Japan and Only in Japan.

Labels: japan, nihonbunka, 日本文化

While agreeing with the layering "vortex" of images in Ezra Pound's interpretation of haiku, I go further to propose a deliberate subversion of interpretation by the use of layered optical or aural images to produce an "interpretive illusion" from which the reader is freed. In haiku poetry, the reader is fed three images, one of which is shown to have been a product of interpretation - the dreaded sign - and thus the reader is returned to the veracity of the image and the purity of the experience. Haiku, in their own small way, encourage us to experience this purity - a minuscule satori, enlightenment - by suddenly divesting us of the misinterpretation that they encouraged in the first place.

Here are some specific examples from the first few in this net selection of 100 famous Haiku (in Japanese).

As already discussed possibly the most famous Haiku is
古池や蛙飛び込む水の音
Furuikeya, Kawazu tobikomu, Mizu no oto
An old pond, frogs jump in, the sound of the water.
We are presented with a view of an old, and presumably over-grown, murky pond. The poet then assumes that a frog, or many frogs, have (probably) jumped into the water. This second phrase - frogs jump in - is pure interpretation. In the third phrase we are reminded, in quite shocking fashion, the grounds for second assumption: the sound of the water. The poet had provided an interpretation - that frogs had jumped in - and then shown it for what it was. All that has occurred in truth, in the immediate purity of the experience, was a view of a pond, and the sound of the water. From the image, the frogs -- dread signs that they were -- completely disappear, for they were never there in the first place. Plop!

In the poem
さみだれを集めて早し最上川,
May rain, Collected quick Mogami River,
is quite straightforward in telling us that there may not be any rain at all, only the river which has collected the rain and is running rapidly. The way in which the "quick" falls between the second and third phrase, at first appearing adverbial (to mean fast collection) but finally we realise is probably adjectival referring to the fast river, adds to the switchback, satorific, "vortex" of the poem. Bashou was looking at the river all along, but took us to an interpretation, which while in part true, was not the reality of his experience: a view of a river. As a Buddhist Bashou would not have needed Heraclitus to remind him that a river is all we are ever looking it, though we see so many things collected in it.

閑さや岩にしみ入る蝉の声
Shizukesaya, Iwa ni shimi-iru, Semi no koe
Silence Soaks into the Rocks Sound (or, rather, voice) of Cicadas,
Here it is all too clear that the initial "silence" is not silence at all. It is an interpretation of the monotonous summer sound-scape, the deafening (you need to listen to this if you have not lived in Japan) truth of which we are returned to in the last phrase.

Looking at a field of summer grass, at the site of a once great military castle in Hiraizumi, Bashou writes
夏草や　兵共が　夢の跡
Natsukusaya, Tsuwamono-domo ga, Yume no ato
Summer Grass 　Soldiers(') Remains of dreams
The usual interpretation is that the summer grass is all that is left of the the once lofty aspirations of the soldiers. I think that this interpretation is correct, but there is also another. The "ga" (が) or apostrophe (') in my translation can be read as linking word meaning that the dreams are of or possessed by the soldiers. But it also can be read as a subject marker, which is not used in English, hence the apostrophe is in brackets. Taking the "ga" to be a subject marker the final clause comes as a shock because instead of the soldiers being active subjects, or there present, we see that only their field of dreams remain. Further, almost as if the solders have been killed in the middle of the poem, it seems to me, gazing at the field, Bashou himself let his imagination run free, so the "dreams" are not only those of the soldiers but also the dreams Bashou himself who imagined (dreamt) the soldiers. Indeed the summer grass itself may have looked like legions of soldiers. In strong support of this hypothesis is the fact that Bashou wrote the word "kusa" or grass with the non-standard (even for Bashou, even in the same book) ideogram "艸" (Matuso, 1997, pX) which looks a little like soldiers standing in a line. I.e. Bashou realises, and makes us realise, that he has dreamed up solders from his image of the grass, to the truth of which he returns us. Like all the best haiku however, the poem has no incontrovertible interpretation. Basho could be talking about the dreams of the soldiers, or his own dream of soldiers, but we do know, all he sees is a field of grass. Bearing in mind the fact that Basho deliberately edits his poems for poetic effect, I would not be surprised if he thought this one up well before arriving in "the deep north." In any event, it was well worth the journey.

The usual interpretation of
荒海や佐渡に横たふ天の川
Araumiya, Sado ni Yokotau, Amanogawa
Routh Sea, Lies down in Sado, The milky way.
is that Basho is seeing the milky way above the rough waters around the island of Sado but to me the first phrase "荒海" is an optical illusion. First of all, from the historic record, and the fact that Bashou uses the word "milky way" this poem was written on the night of the festival of the Weaver stars who are said to cross the milky way to meat each other on 7th of July. This is the first hint to me that something is amiss. Despite adding this "season word," it would be a a little unseasonal for the sea to be rough on a summer night (though an early typhoon is not an impossibility). Secondly, while there are various interpretations of "lies down," taking a straight forward one, it suggests that rather being over the sea, the milky way is on the surface of the water. The natural explanation for this would be that the mily way is being reflected in the sea, a beautiful image appropriate for the romantic festival night. This would further suggest that the sea was flat, for the starts to be reflected, and therefore that the "rough sea" was an optical illusion created by the white light of the stars brilliantly reflected in the water's surface. What initially Bashou saw as white waves, turned out to be the light of stars lying on the water. Again we are fed a plausible misinterpretation to be returned to the truth of the image.

明けぼのやしら魚しろきこと一寸　
Akebonoya, Shiraushirokikotoisun
Dawn! white fish, its whiteness one inch (or very briefly)
This poem was originally "雪薄し”or thin snow which Bashou changed to dawn, in my view because the optical illusion of seeing thin snow as a white fish was a bit too obvious. In other words the poem started out as an optical illusion where the poet claimed/thought he saw snow before realising it was the flash of a white fish in the water, to the optical illusion of thinking one has seen the first rays of sun on the sea, which turned out to be the flash of white fish. In either case the reader is taken from a misinterpretation to the purity of the image. The substitution of "dawn" for "thin snow" - which both might produce flashes of light - shows the deliberate way in which Bashou sets the reader up. What a trickster.

The excellent poem (which I read now for the first time)
この道や行く人なしに秋の暮
Konomichi Ikuhitonashini Akinokure
This road, no one goes along it, late autumn,
was written shortly before Bashou's death at an inn, when he had already fallen terminally ill. The road in question is thought to refer to the poetic path that Bashou had walked throughout his life. The lack of a road goer or goers is usually interpreted to refer to the solitude of the poetic path, but it may also refer to the breakdown of the ultimate illusion: the poets own absence as realised near death, "late autumn." If so then it is more upbeat than usually interpreted, as it implies a lack of fear of death, since Bashou feels himself absent from his own "road" already. Bashou is so cool.

Skipping the two poems related to death, and moving on to Buson
菜の花や月は東に日は西に
Nanoyanaya Tsukihahigashini, Hiha nishi ni
Field mustard (flowers), The moon is in the East, The sun in the West
This poem at first confused me since it could so easily have created an obvious interpretive illusion and return to the truth of the image (the pure experience), by reversing the order of the last two lines. Let me explain. Since the moon is unlikely to produce an affect on Buson's field of vision when behind him, I presume Buson is looking East at the moon over a field of mustard flowers, that are illuminated by the setting sun behind him in the West. In other words it would seem that the poem proceed towards interpretation rather than towards the pure image; The poet sees flowers, sees the moon, and interprets that the sun must be behind him.

Had Buson written instead
菜の花や日は西に月は東に
Field mustard (flowers), Sun in the West, Moon in the East
Then the second line would have created in the reader the impression that the poet was watching the setting sun, but with the final line the reader would be returned to the pure experience, with the realisation that the poet is in fact looking at the moon, and the second line regarding the sun was an interpretation of the setting sunlight falling on the flowers.

However, upon reflection and thinking more deeply regarding the direction that Buson was looking, it is important to ask whether he was looking at the son or the moon. Googling images related to this poem shows views facing both the moon and the setting sun. We are told that this poem was written on Mount Maya in the Rokkou range of mountains overlooking the Koube bay. The field mustard flowers were presumably on the bay (rather than mountainous) side. Since the Koube bay lies to the West of Mount Maya, this suggests that Buson was looking West at the setting sun. In other words, the second line regarding the moon, was an interpretation, based upon the time of day: sunset. The poem does indeed proceeds from image (the flowers) to interpretation, 'the moon (must be) in the East' to the return to purity of the experience, the setting sun in the West.

Reconsidering once again, however, since there is a plain to the East of [the very appropriately named, and conceivably deliberately chosen] Mt Maya, this poem is, like many of those above, left in interpretive abeyance. We know that Buson was looking at a something big and bright above a field of flowers. We know that he can not have been looking at towards both the East and the West, but we do not know in which direction he is looking. No definitive, incontrovertible interpretation is possible. We are left only with the visual experience: the sphere of light above a yellow field. Wow. Buson is very cool too.

Bibliography
Matsuo, 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: buddhism, japan, japanese culture, Nacalian, nature, nihonbunka, occularcentrism, specular, 日本文化, 自然

Derrida shows how Western philosophers present us with sullied signs such as foot prints (Husserl), speech acts (Austin), and writing (Plato), and then once making it clear how these 'pharmacon' are signs sullied with the image, the Western philosophers then claim that there are pure signs: those of the inner voice of the soul, unsullied by the visual world, which are present to the ideas that they represent. Derrida argues that we do this to preserve our sense of self as signed by our 'self-narration,' which to Derrida is really a sort of 'auto-affection:' "listening to ourselves speak".

The same deconstruction may perhaps be applied to Western feelings towards dolphins and whales. Their "song" is another imperfect language, a pharmacon, that serves to purify our own. Perhaps Hitler is used in a similar way. Hitler is human. But Hitler was evil. Therefore there are good humans. But these real world examples are just an aside. Is there a Japanese cultural equivalent of deconstruction?

It seems to me that the Japanese, like their super heroes, want go in the opposite direction. Performing a Nacalian inversion of Derridean deconstruction, I propose that Japanese artists present to the viewer images that are sullied with signs, that is to say images that invite, come complete with, misinterpretation. Japanese artists show us gravel gardens that look like inland seas. Or drawings of rocks that turn out to be mountains. Or ink drawings that are so sparse that though we provided the interpretation ("that is a branch") we are brought back to the reality of the ink and paper. They show us room interiors that again, play with our sense of scale. And finally Haiku poetry never tires of presenting an image (such as an old lake) with a interpretation (that a frog has jumped in) that turns out to be no more than interpretation - whammy - all there was was the sound of the water. There are no end of haiku that show us images tainted with (mis)interpretations: snowflakes that turn out to be cherry blossom, or cherry blossoms that turns out to be snowflakes. Even Ezra Pound seemed to be aware of the trick, when in "In a Station of the Metro," he confounds petals with his apparition of faces. To achieve the Japanese image-purifying affect however, he need to title his haiku "A walk in the woods." In all cases the Japanese artists shows us tainted, sullied, images, in order to purify the image or place which, according to Nishida, is both self and world. This is Japan Dconstructed.


Western philosophers present their readers with signs sullied with the image, to purify the sacred sign: the holy living logos. Japanese artists, who are also philosophers, present their viewers with images sullied by signs, to purify the sacred image, its space or place: the mirror in their minds.

Image bottom left: Japanese house traditional style interior design / 和室(わしつ)の内装(ないそう) by TANAKA Juuyoh (田中十洋

Labels: culture, japan, japanese culture, superhero, theory, 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

All these great and erudite scholars will tell you that the logos the narrative is alive, and universally so: that humans narrate themselves into temporal existence. Humans are, they tell us, their words, not their faces, nor what they see. These Western scholars are to themselves at least, to coin an ideogram, 人言 ningen people-words.

Fortunately, Hejung Kim (Kim, 2002; Kim & Sherman, 2007) has already demonstrated that East Asians do not narrate themselves unless asked to do so, and then they find it a chore. It should be noted however, that professor Kim does not believe that East Asians think using their imagination. Personally, I think that that is because the medium of our selves is the water in which we swim, and as Bruner argues "the fish will, indeed, be the last to discover water unless he gets a metaphysical assist" (Bruner, 1987, p31-32).

Kyari Pamyu Pamyu shows how life can be lived almost without a linguistic narrative at all (her song is at least partly "weah" and "pop" repeated over and over again), splendidly, with zest, in the visio-imaginary.

But then, finally, if Clifford Geertz (Geertz, 1977, p448) can call a cockfight a narrative, then Kyari Pamyu Pamyu's mind may be said to be narrating, just in a different way, in apples, turtles, dinosaurs, sculls, sharks and masks. Contral the majority of Homo Narrans theorists however, Pamyu Pamyu's narrative is not temporal, however but takes place (Nishida).

Bibliography
Bruner, J. (1987). Life as narrative. Social research, 11–32. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/40970444
Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning.
Geertz, C. (1977). The interpretation of cultures (Vol. 5019). Basic books.
Gottschall, J. (2012). The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Kerby, A. P. (1991). Narrative and the Self. Indiana University Press. (Kerby gave up philosophy and became a musician)
Kim, H. (2002). We talk, therefore we think? A cultural analysis of the effect of talking on thinking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Kim, H. S., & Sherman, D. K. (2007). “ Express Yourself”: Culture and the Effect of Self-Expression on Choice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(1), 1.
MacIntyre, A. (1997). After Virtue (New.). Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd.
Niles, J. D. (2010). Homo Narrans: The Poetics and Anthropology of Oral Literature. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Plummer, D. K. (1995). Telling Sexual Stories: Power, Change, and Social Worlds. Psychology Press.
Ricoeur, P., & Blamey, K. (1990). Time and Narrative (Reprint.). Univ of Chicago Pr (T).

Some sooths from the homo narrans.
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

(Rudd, 2009)
For a narrative is not just something I tell retrospectively; it is something that I am acting out as I live my life. Insofar as I am not in a zombie-like state of automatism, I am aware of myself (even if only implicitly) as acting in a certain way in order to bring about certain results, which I want because they fit in with certain plans or ambitions that I have. Insofar as I, the world around me, and the other people I interact with, make sense to me at all, it is because I can (and at least implicitly do) locate them in such a narrative. [My emphasis. Mind your mouth, Professor Rudd!]

(Plummer, 1995)
The ceaseless nature of story telling in all its forms in all societies has come to be increasingly recognised. We are, it seems, homo narrans: humankind the narrators and story tellers. Society itself may be seen as a textured but seamless web of stories emerging everywhere through interaction: holding people together, pulling people apart, making societies work.

(Geertz, 1977)
448 What sets the cockfight apart from the ordinary course of life...Its function, if you want to call it that, is interpretive: it is a Balinese reading of Balinese experience, a story they tell themselves about themselves.
452 The culture of a people is an ensemble of texts, themselves ensembles, which the anthropologist strains to read over the shoulders of those to whom they properly belong.

(Ricoeur & Blamey, 1990, p52)
between the activity of narrating a story and the temporal character of human experience exists a correlation that is not merely accidental but that presents a trans-cultural form of necessity.

(Niles, 2010)
"The point that human time is created through narrative is a key one in the work of the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, who has articulated it in his three volume study Time and Narrative (1984-1988). By the end of that work Ricoeur arrives at the conclusion that identity, whether it be of an individual person or of a historical community, is acquired through the mediation of narrative and thus is a function of fiction.

(MacIntyre, 1997, p212)
It is because we all live out narratives in our lives and because we understand our own lives in terms of the narratives that we live out that the form of narrative is appropriate to understanding human action. Stories are lived before they are told - except in the case of fiction.

Addenda

1)The ideogram(s), 人言(pronounced "ningen", in the same way as human　人間) may be a good way of expressing Japanese humanity since it is a graphically/visually/imaginary meaningful representation of a phonetic word, and is a bit like Derrida's "différance" a word that means, something other than the usual difference, only in the visual domain, by virtue of it being spelt (graphed, written, visually represented) incorrectly.

2) The big question. Are the Japanese just plain visual, or are they visually symbolic? In my posts about Jane Bachnik's indexes, and Kyari Pamyu Pamyu's kata, I have been opting for the Japanese being visually symbolic.

It is very clear to me that the Japanese are into symbols. This is especially clear when considering their super-heros that transform by virtue of having a symbol. One of the earliest, Mirror-Man, transformed by holding an amulet (symbol) in front of a mirror.

Accepting that the Japanese use visually symbolism then:

2.1) Is visual symbolism of the Japanese just simply symbolic in another media? Are the Japanese, as Clifford Geertz would argue, telling stories with their bodies? This might make homo narrans theorist happy-ish. We'd all be able to agree that narrative is essential, it is just that some (Westerners) speak in phonemes while others (Japanese) in ideograms and bodily movements.

2.2) Or is the visual-symbolism of the Japanese -- their "kata," Kyari Pamyu Pamyu's corregraphed dance, which ends up being able to speak -- a means, or stepping stone, to an a-symbolic visuallity? Lacan's (Westerner's) "mirror stage" is a stepping stone on the path towards symbolic existence. Is Japanese visual *symbolism*, similarly a stepping stone, towards visual-imaginary-ism?

I go for 2.2. When learning a path (karate, tea ceremony, archery, what have you) the "kata" or visual symbols are to be learnt and then surpassed. My take is that the visual symbolism of the Japanese is a symbol-stage (the converse of a mirror stage) in the path towards visio-imaginary-ness. While I can't stand (and don't understand) Lacan, what I like about him is his insistence upon a "borromean knot", or a need for two (incomplete) feedback paths. We can not really cognise ourselves in either plane/world "imaginary" or "symbolic" (=linguistic. Lacan's word 'symbolic' is fraught since that we can imagine can symbolise too as noted above in 2.1), but because we have both incomplete feedback loops we can play a sort of shell game ("which cup is the shell hidden under" game) which convinces us that our favourite feedback loop is complete. I can not say myself, enunciate the enuciated. I can not imagine myself, the imaginer. But with both of these ways of cognising myself I dream that I can do one or the other.

Oh boy....The above all sounds(!) like(?) bullshit. I write when I have something visual to describe, that I have created visually. When I have to talk to the silence, to the super-addressee, to the Other (that I want to dissolve), then it hurts. Hence I write on flickr, describing my photos first. I empathise with ex-philosopher, Mr. A. P. Kerby who became a musician. His music is beyond the logodome.

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

It seems to me that in the future people may look back at books such as announced in the above left newspaper advertisement, noting that the Japanese lost a world war and were invaded, but maintained a leadership that was pro-Western, and submitted to wave upon wave of Western cultural influence, will say that, and so it was with the best intentions in the world that the Japanese destroyed their own culture.

The above left newspaper advertisement (from today's Asahi newspaper) is for a book (Ogiue, 2012) that argues that Japanese should stop looking to find, reject and improve failing (dame-dashi) but instead, to think positively, and come up with positive ideas (poji-dashi), because the former is "enough already" (mou), "critical" (hihan) "character attacking" (jinkaku-kougeki), and "bashing"　(basshingu).

I just read the book,(『僕らはいつまで「ダメ出し社会」を続けるのか...』) which was an interesting read and nothing at all like I thought. Instead of arguing that Japanese give up on getting rid of the bad, the book even had a section recommending "dame-dashi" except under a different name. In the section "Finding Social Bugs" （社会のバグを見つけ出す）(p 156) the author recommends that readers  "get rid of the bugs (problems) in front of your eyes" 「目の前に存在するバグを潰していく」(ibid) and says that if we do that, society will become a better place. The author also says that this "bug squashing" is at the very basis of his thinking*. My guess is that the editor, in an attempt to make the book sell well with disenfranchised youth, put an anti-establishment title on the book which in fact promotes realism over idealism, more than anything else, a stance which is a Japanese tradition.

There are other books however that do recommend that Japanese stop looking for bugs, however.

One of the most surprising experimental results in the field of cultural psychology is that of (Heine, et al. 2001: above right) which showed that Japanese put more effort into tasks in which they were told they had failed. Japanese and Americans subjects were given a simple task and divided into two groups. Half of the subjects were told (irrespective of the truth) that they had done well compared to their peers, half of the subjects were told that they had done badly (again irrespective of the truth) compared to their peers. The Americans, who want to bolster their self esteem, were less likely to continue with a task that they were told that they performed badly at. The Japanese on the other hand were more likely to continue pursuing a task in which they thought that they had performed badly. Heine and colleagues went on to demonstrate that this difference was related to the extent to which subjects in each culture believed the abilities to be innate and in-transient, or dependent upon effort. American subjects that believe that their performance is a result of innate and unchangeable characteristics felt that tasks at which they had performed badly were damaging to their self esteem and their results were not something that they could do anything about. Japanese subjects, who believed that results are largely a product of effort, felt that tasks at which they performed badly were tractable to effort. They believed that in the face of negative self awareness (hansei) if they did the task again and tried harder they could improve (kaizen) their performance. The Japanese felt their selves to be radically malleable (mugendai).

This ability to take criticism, to see it as an opportunity (hansei no tane) to improve (kaizen) is a defining characteristic of Japanese culture. For millennia, or at least a millennia and a half, the Japanese have assimilated external cultural influences, put them in the cooking pot of the Japanese creative mind, and by mixing and choosing that mixture which they prefer, actively produced a superior (at least to the Japanese) hybrid. There are many examples of such behaviour. Japanese, and Western, commentators regularly reference this ability to assimilate and improve. This ability is argued, by thinkers such as Watsuji and Nishida, to grow out of the Japanese view of self as being inseparable from the world. As argued here on this blog, the Japanese self is the field, or mirror upon which the "mixing" is played out, as opposed to any that-isn't-me/this-is-me characteristic within the field.

The richest man in Japan, the chairman of the Uniqlo group of clothing stores, Tadashi Yanai (63yrs) recommends that Japanese continue to forget their successes and concentrate on their failings so as to keep improving themselves. Alas however, as recent research by Norasakkunit and Uchida (2011) has shown that disenfranchised Japanese youth are loosing this ability to take criticism and see it as an opportunity for self-improvement. It may be that they have taken to seeing such "imperfection-removing" ("dame dashi") criticism as being an "attack on their character" (as the author of the book advertised top left argues). So alas, social critics, presumably influenced by Western self-asserting (egoist, arrogant) culture write popular books recommending that the Japanese stop thinking about their failings.

And so also it is that there is a self-contradiction implied in the Japanese path. The Japanese have imported and improved, and imported more and improve again. But now, the Japanese are importing Western philosophy that rejects the whole import and improve process. In my humble opinion the Japanese are, with the best intentions in the world, destroying their own culture.

Notes
* 「...社会制度設計上の「穴」「バッグ」を発見し、改善するという活動をし続ける。そのことで、社会の不幸の数を減らすことができれば、「今よりもマシ」な社会に近づけることはできる。僕の根本思想には、そういう発送が染み付いています。」p157

Bibliography
Ogiue 荻上 チキ(2012)『僕らはいつまで「ダメ出し社会」を続けるのか 絶望から抜け出す「ポジ出し」の思想』幻冬舎 (拝読していません）
S.J. Heine, S. Kitayama, D.R. Lehman, T. Takata, E. Ide, C. Leung, H. Matsumoto (2001), "Divergent consequences of success and failure in Japan and North America: An investigation of self-improving motivations and malleable selves", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 81 pp.599 - 615. www.psych.ubc.ca/~heine/docs/persist.rtf
Norasakkunkit, V., & Uchida, Y. (2011). Psychological consequences of postindustrial anomie on self and motivation among Japanese youth. Journal of Social Issues, 67(4), 774-786.

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

Better or more beautiful is a matter of taste but Japanese mannequins are one step beyond. Recent Japanese mannequins demostrate the power of the Japanese creative imagination, and present a new model of beauty, influenced by both Western (big eyes, blonde hair) and Japanese (thin ness, small features), but different from and going beyond both.

Japanese aesthetics have largely rejected blue eyes (or blue contact lenses), large lips (or extensive lipstick), and white faces (although a traditional aesthetic) in favour of a full on appeal to cuteness as seen charactured in these mannequinns and expressed in the faces "characterised" Japanese GALs (ギャル） as shown in my previous blog entry.

Labels: japan, japanese culture, 日本文化