J a p a n e s e    C u l t u r e

About 25 percent of 71 cars in my university car park this morning had cute dolls on the dashboard. This percentage increased to 49 percent for light cars - which are often driven by women and are themselves cute - and 47 percent for those that also had a Shinto amulet on or near the dashboard of their car.

Shinto amulets are in a sense thought to be alive, containing the spirit of shrine at which they were purchased. They are for safety on the roads. It is thought that they somehow act as a "double" or "dummy" (migawari) in the sense that they draw the misfortune that the bearer would otherwise have experienced and bear that misfortune for them, a little like a material version of Jesus or Ambithaba both of whom are said to bear our sins.

It is not clear why it is those that like amulets also like dolls. Are the dolls also sacrificial? Do dolls contribute to road saftey? It would not seem to be due to an indirect effect of gender, since the amulets were found spread equally between the (more often male) non-light cars and the more often female light cars. Is it just that the those people that do not mind cluttered dashboards clutter them with dolls and amulets since it is these that are cultural favoured in Japan.

This phenomenon deserves further research.

You can see the dolls in the following photographs in my photostream.

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

"Nodo-chinko" or "throat-willy,"is the informal Japanese word for uvula, the small pink dumbell that hangs down at the back of the throat; due its resemblance to the male organ.

The medical name is "口蓋垂" Kougaisui. "Nodo-chinko" does not appear in even a large only English-Japanese dictionary. There are however more than 12,000 hits on google for the Japanese word.

Another word is "nodo-chinpo" where chinpo is wang.

Of course, both men and women have nodo-chinko.

I can't imagine a British doctor using the simile even if a patient were not able to understand uvula.

Doctor: You seem to have an infection of your uvula.
Patient: I am sorry, Doctor, but what is an uvula?
Doctor: You know, your throat-willy.
Patient: My what?!
Doctor: The little pink wang shaped thing at the back of your throat.
Patient: [Exeunt]

I think that this is another illustration of the fack that the male organ is not as taboo in Japan as it is in Europe.

This image is from Wikipedia, relased under the GNU licence and was uploaded by KLEM.

By the way, you don't need an online PHD to know what an uvula is :-)

Labels: culture, japan, japanese culture, nihonbunka, sex, tabuu, theory, 日本文化

Mukade Venom
These things can be dangerous. To be safe, I recommend you seek medical attention if you are bitten by a mukade.

The American Tarantula Society says
"Much has been alleged on the toxicity of centipede venom, but very little material on the subject has made its way into the scientific literature. As with tarantulas, this vast lack of medical reports on them more than likely indicates they are not medically significant. Like tarantulas, their perceived repulsive appearance by most people is probably the reason they are widely viewed as somehow dangerous and toxic. We do know that some of the larger centipedes, especially in tropical areas, can administer a painful stab, but none are known to be dangerous. All we can say for sure on the subject is that some can cause a painful bite, but that's absolutely all."

The English Wikipedia page says that there has only been one centipede fatality - a child was bitten on the head in a pacific island and even the Scolopendra gigantea (Giant centipedes) found in the Amazon and Trinidad, are rarely fatal, only painful according to this case study paper. They seem to suggest (by extrapolation from mice) that the fatal does in humans is 1000 venom glands. Even if there are two venom glands per centipede, this would require being bitten by 500 of them. If you did not die you would probably want to. They summarise the effects as follows

"The most common scenario includes moderate to severe local symptoms associated with mild systemic symptoms. Local symptoms include pain, erythema, edema, lymphangitis/lymphadenitis, weakness, and paresthesias. Skin necrosis may occur at the site of envenomation during the weeks following the sting, but rarely becomes extensive and heals spontaneously. Systemic symptoms may include anxiety, fever, dizziness, palpitations, and nausea. "

and conclude

"Despite the striking appearance of the offender and the significant pain associated with a sting, treatment for centipede envenomation is essentially pain control and routine wound care."

However, most of the cases being that of one of the (centipede rearing) authors and none of the centipedes were mukade. There is however, at least one paper about mukade bites which reports that they can cause Korsakoff's syndrome!

You know they mean business when, unlike any other bug, they show no fear, and walk towards you.

I was putting on my wetsuit one chilly December afternoon when I felt a movement next to my thigh, my inner thigh. I knew what it was.

And it bit me. The pain was not so great as my panic as I felt it crawl down (could have been worse!) my leg, towards where the wetsuit was tighter and I thought it would bite me more. I used a knife to slit open the wetsuit to my calf, and when it escaped my friends dispatched it.

At first I thought that it had only given me a nibble. I had experienced a mukade nibble in the past, when I awoke to find one on my upper torso. Two red bite marks were all that were left. It did not hurt all that much nor had any ill after effect (Partly perhaps because I used alkaline - ammonia - on the wound).

And neither did it hurt all that much on that day, when a mukade shared my wetsuit.

I continued to wake-board. The thrill of wake-boarding made me forget the pain. No worse than a bee sting I thought. But I was wrong.

The next day, or the day after that, my left thigh had swollen to about 1.3 times it size. This is no mean feat. I do not have thin thighs.

All the same I thought I would brave it out, and went jogging (I do this a lot). I thought I would flush the poison out with a good pump of blood with a little adrenaline. The leg around the bite became hard. By the third day I had a fever and was feeling generally weak.

I went to the doctor. They gave me antibiotics and antihistamines I think. They told me that had I come immediately after the bite I would have saved myself a lot of bother.

I was a 37 year old 70 Kg male. The mukade was not as big as the one in this picture. If your child gets bitten by one of these things, or if you get bitten on the neck, go a hospital immediately. Go to a hospital immediately anyway if you do not want to have serious swelling and general malaise. Who knows what would have happened had I not gone to the hospital at all.

I was only after I had posted the first draft of this that I realised that Todd Baker << technowannabe had kindly linked to another rendition of this story.

ASIDE
I find that insecticide does kill mukade if you douse them in it. But they do not die immediately.

This is hearsay but, I believe that a lot of insecticide uses the same active ingredient which is a nerve gas to bugs. It does something to their nerve receptors or some-such, such that they loose, or gradually loose, muscular (if that is the right word) coordination. Flies sprayed with bug spray also go berserk in a way, changing course at even more regular intervals, bumping into things, flying upwards, downards, upside down.

I seem to remember a mukade sprayed with bug spray loosing the coordination of its legs which, instead of moving in a controlled ripple, started to work all at once. The berserker mukade would probably have died. But in the meantime it went berserk.

I got good with chopsticks and developed an ability to drop them in a jar of oil. When I gave up on the oil (see the other post linked above), I just chopsticked them out of my house. Do not attempt to chopstick a mukade unless you are very confident with chopsticks.


Update A skin doctors advice from 2016
There was a mukade in my crocs one evening this May. I felt that stabbing mukade pain, and while I did not see the culprit, I knoew what species of critter had bitten me. The next morning my foot still ached and was swollen so I went to see a nearby skin specialist. He told me that mukade do not inject their venom but bite and then spray their venom onto the surrounding skin. The venom seeps in both through the puncture wound that the mukade have made, and through the skin itself. However, mukade venom breaks down at high temperatures. The doctor recommended that if bitten by a mukade then immediate wash the surrounding area in water hot even to be just bearable.

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

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

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

What is this Japanese obsession with Anpan man?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The compromise?

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

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

Anpan-man is an imaginary step in this direction.

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

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

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

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

Like a lot of women's fashion all over the world, from Kimono to coursets and at the extreem lilly feet, thick soled shoes are designed to show off and incapacitate the wearer to give her that gentile air of a valued product rather than a person. While not as painful as lilly feet, tendency to crush the feet of women in China in the past, I believe that there has been at least one fatality due to a fall from a pair of thick soled shoes.

As Suviko points out both these boots and the "ganguro" (sun tanned face to the point of being "black") style of some young girls over the past decade is going out of style. Why is this?

Perhaps it is an example of a reverse hemline rule. The hemline rule in economic theory states that the hemlines of women's skirts move up and down as the state of the economy moves from boom (hemlines up) to depression (hemlines down). This is perhaps because when the economy is good, women can afford to give away their booty, or at least a glipse of it for free, but when times are hard they must demand more dedication, more platonism, more love before they even show their knees.

The ganguro fashion was populare during the long period of depression in Japan from the late nineties to the early two thousands. On the face of it (no pun intended) having a heavily tanned, almost black face, made the fashion victims less attractive in a country that has valued the whiteness of women's skin (partly because white means that one does not have to work in the fields, partly because of a Western influence, as argued in a previous post). Thus Ganguro would seem to be making themselves *overtly* unattractive. The ganguro style was thus a very flamboyant defiance of norms of beauty, and may have been a demand for men who (as with a long hemline) are more dedicated, more loving. Perhaps also the platform shoe was an attempt to put the female form on a pedastle without excentuating sexuality that again demanded care and attention paid to the wearer.

This theory is unlikely to be popular since the long hemline is associated with a lady like purity whereas ganguro is associated with a radical lack of purity, but...this is Japan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This shows the side of a small street in Tokyo opposite an off licence (liquor store). I suspect that the corner of the road may be the private property of the shop even though it is covered in tar mac. The shop keeper is using this area as a place to keep his and his wife's scooters, and about 100 crates, each containing four empty shouchuu (see below) bottles.
I think that if someone left a large quantity of bottles on a street in London then some young men, returning from the pub would find it amusing to knock over the tower of crates and smash some of the bottles.

　Shouchuu is Japanese vodka. Containing only about 25% alcohol it is considerably weaker than Russian vodka. It is a distilled white spirit made from wheat, rice or sweet potatoes.

In the past Shouchuu was a working mans intoxicant. It was consumed with hot water for, the maximum bang per buck. More recently however the existance of a great number of provincial shouchuu distilleries with a low volume of production, has created a new market, rather that which exists for "fine wines" made up of customers who covet the distinctive flavour and aroma of the various provincial brands.

Would you be able to leave crates of bottles on a street in London?

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

According to an OECD survey Japan has the second least crime of the 22 OECD coutnries surveyed, after Northern Ireland, as measured by the percentage of the population that have been a victim of crime in the past year - in japan 15.2% in Northern Ireland 15%.

More than 30% of Japanese victims where victims of bicycle theft. This is hardly surprising because a lot of people do not even lock their bicycles up!

This is a bicycle in Northern Ireland. Note the U Lock fixing the bicycle to a bench.
www.flickr.com/photos/rosinante/44258869/

While Japan has incredibly low rates of concrete, visible crime, it comes 18th out of the 22 OECD countries in terms of corruption. I am looking for figures on copyright infringement.

I argue that this disparity is evidents of the fact that Japanese people are very much aware of the gaze of others, to the extent that they have externalised a generalised gaze. This means that they feel bad about performing visible and imaginable antisocial acts such as all the crimes listed in the first OECD victimisation ranking. Westerners on the other hand have internalised the ear of the other such that we find it painful to perform acts which are difficult to narrate in a non antisocial way. Hence crimes of corruption which often involve reprimandable linguistic acts, are more painful, more likely to arouse feelings of guilt among those from the cultures of the religion of the book - the West (and the Middle East, I am not sure why they are fighting each other).

Labels: crime, culture, image, japan, japanese culture, logos, nihonbunka, occularcentrism, reversal, theory, 日本文化

Many young, and not so young, Japanese women like to avoide ultra violet radiation and use umbrellas to shield themselves from the sun. The day on which this photograph was taken was cloudy but bright. Japanese generally believe that it is more attractive to be white skinned and have a word "bihaku" (literally "beauty-white") to express the state and colour of someone who has not been out in the sun. In the UK we call it "pasty." Some Japanese also explain that it is unhealthy to go out in the sun, since its rays produce premature aging although this is probably a secondary, long term rationale.

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

These Japanese police officers weres stopping cyclists at random, and checking that the id of the rider matched the registration of the bicycle over their walkie-talkies. In order to combat bicycle theft, bcicycle registration became a legal requirement about 8 years ago.

From a very brief survey of the people that the police were stopping and checking, it would seem that they were concentratiing on those riding the standard, cross bar-less, shopping bicycles (mama-chari - mum's bikes). This suggests to me that the majority of bicycle theft is of such bicycles for the purpose of riding them rather than for the purpose of selling them to a third party. There are quite a lot of expensive mountain bikes and road bikes parked with flimsy locks, or no locks at all. But there are even more shoppers, without locks or with easily breakable built in front wheel locks (which can be twisted so that they do not interfere with the movement of the spokes. These bicycles are about 100 USD new in Japan. They are often abandoned even by their owners and large numbers of them are seen at rubbish collection stations on those days when "large rubbish" can be thrown away. It is my perception that some Japanese people tend to see such bicycles almost as a communal resource. Some towns, such as my old town of Kurume, have organisations that provide bicycles - painted blue - at stations for free for public use.

Perhaps the OECD statistics regarding the rate of theft of bicycles and the fact that bicycle theft represents 30% of crime as experienced by Japanese.

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

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

The Sega video game, "Oshare Majou Mahou Card" (Magic Card of the Best Dressed Witch), allows Japanese girls to turn themselves into well dressed dancing caucasians in the virtual.

Oshare means "dressed up" or "well dressed" but as well see, this is a competitive game so I have rendered it as "Best Dressed"

The official site is in Japanese.

The game seems to be a combination of a virtual version of the video dance game "Dance Dance Revolution," and virtual fashion using swipe cards, in a competitive format. Players purchase clothes which their virtual personas wear before taking on the computer or a friend in a battle of who is the most "oshare," where oshare means well dressed and cooly attractive at dancing. By pressing the keys in time with the music, the young lady with the best fashion sense (I am not sure of the criteria) and best moves, wins the battle of the Best Dressed Witch. Perhaps this information is stored on the swipe card. I am not sure.

The two girls are called "Rabu and Beri-" ("Love and Berry") often being appended to "RabuBeri" or "Raberi" ("lovely"). In their cartoon form these characters are pretty Mid Pacific as are many manga characters, with features that do not define them as being part of any race or nation.

Recently two caucasian models have been used to represent Love and Berry in some magazine adverts directed at young girls.

The game is enjoying immense popularity with cues of preteen girls and their parents forming at video arcades all over Japan.

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

Perhaps these comics are young boy love, or perhaps they are Yaoi (the more pornographic version) I am not sure. Yaoi means "no mountains, no punchlines, no meaning," just gay sex. Or perhaps, following Erica Jong, "zipless" sexuality.

Yaoi comics are purchased by young women who find reading books about male-male romantic/sexual relationships, to be less embarassing and more interesting than reading about relationships between men and women. Most commentators suggest that this is because women are repressed and want to identify with males who have a slightly better, freeer, more expressive position in Japanese society. I think that this interpretation only slightly misses the mark.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, it seem that in Japan, expressions of *male* sexuality are not taboo, whereas any expression of female desire has been hidden since the beginning of time. Hence, when young girls want to read about romantic love and sexuality, they find man on man love and lust, pure and innocent and unthreatening.

There is method to this madness. I call it Japan as Lacan in the mirror.

Labels: culture, japan, japanese culture, Jaques Lacan, lacan, manga, nihonbunka, sex, taboo, tabuu, theory, 日本文化

Ruriko Temple Tower was built 600 years ago. There are more than 2000 books of Buddhist scripture ("Buddha's Bible' as per the guide) stored in the base.

This is the first time that the base of the temple has been open to the viewing public. Normally the only person to enter the temple is the priest who goes to extract one part of one volume of the scripture. For the rest of the time, all the information, all the philosophy held in this tower is treated as a holy relic. No one reads it. No one looks at it. It is just there.

Not only is Japanese Buddhist scripture "unread" I would go far as to say say that *anti-logocentrism* is a prominent feature of *Japanese* Buddhism or perhaps the Shinto-Buddhist syncretism that exists in Japan.

Zen Buddhism is quite clear about this. Zen buddhism claims (in lanaguage) to be the Buddhism outside of scripture (language). Zen Buddhists are not afraid of the liars' paradox, but slap it in the face.

And most Japanese lay Buddhists use the scripture not as something that explains why the world is as it is -- a mental structure confabulated by the minds of humans -- because to become so involved with the scripture would be to make another structure, another confabulation. Instead they *chant* thewordsthatclaimitisallaconfabulationandbydoingso...reach the empty, wordless, truth.

My bashing people over the head with Buddhist books photo set is "arguing" (by bashing) the or their authors are Cretians, right and wrong at the same time. Thus, rather than get all fussed about paradoxes, Japanese Buddhist priests just bash people over the head with the books, and be done with it.

But this is not news to Gnostics. In the beginning was the word. Before that there was the demi-urge. Or was it the Buddha?

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

"Hard Gay" is the name of a comedian or television personality who models himself on his idea of a male engaged in hard core homosexual activity. He wears a leather leotard, cap and dog-collar and dark sunglasses. His act seems to consist of demonstrating pelvic thrusts, spanking his bottom and encouraging other entertainers to do the same - sort of in the manner of an aerobics instructor- "Okay, every body, lets do some (hard gay) plevic thrusts now."

He appears to be popular among young children. This produced by TOMY is for preschool children.

The entertainer is, in real life, heterosexual. I think that it is important however that he is mimicing the sexual activities of male homosexual, since in Japan it seems, that while male sexuality are not taboo the sexuality of women is. Thus, in this and other situations, due to the absense of any female participation, portrayal of purely male sexuality, in the form of male homosexuality, is deemed fit for consumption even by children.

Since in the West, the severity of taboos upon male and female sexuality may be reversed, it is concievable that there is nothing more likely to cause offence than the portrayal of male homosexuality.

I do not think that the tolerance towards such portrayals has a lot to do with the tolerance towards real homosexuality in Japan today, at least according to small sample of gays that I have met. Today, I am told, it is not easy to be gay or come out in Japan.

****************************************************************************************
I meant to write about cultural differences, not about the reasons for negative reactions towards homosexuality in the West but I have. And since I have, I feel that I should say a bit more about what I am asserting; homosexuality in the West is doubly damned for being both homo and sexual:
1) "homo" as opposed to hetro and thus different, and just because it is different the object of prejudice
2) "sexual", in the sense of being related to sex act and thus associated with that which is often the object of taboo in the Western tradition.
But, I am sure that there are factors too, and all of them are unfortunate.

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

A car full of hello kitty dolls parked in a disabled car parking space in front of a supermarket.

In Japan there is a tremendous tabu upon the sexuality of women. This can be seen in the fact that while men pee on the streets women use "sound princess" devices to hide even the sound of their pee. Or again in the fact that women who express their desire are seen as being monsters, such as Hanya.

As argued by Foucalt and others, any desire that is repressed returns in other forms. The more a desire is repressed, the more it comes back in a modified cleansed, neutered way.

While Japanese women are not allowed to give expression to their desire directly, Japanese society is awash with expressions of de-wombed maternal love. Being cute (kawaii) is very positive and important. Perceiving things as cute (kwaiiiiiii) is likewise postive and important. And surrounding oneself with cute things, such as many "hello kitty" cat dolls is likewise a ritual expression of womb based sexuality without the womb. In this car there are babies everywhere but they are all made of polyester and nylon. There were even baby sized dolls on the back seat.

The hello kitty characters on the back seat are the size of young children. The numberplate is held on by Hello Kitty headed screws and the water jets for the windscreen are squirted from a Hello Kitty capped nozzle.

Hello Kitty is copyright the Sanrio corporation.

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

This cuddly toy stands on the counter of a general hospital in Yamaguchi. It is about 30cm (1 foot) in height and larger than average new-born infant. The toy was made by a patient who donated it to the hospital. The style is that of the extremely popular character, "Hello Kitty" (a proper noun), wearing a pink nurse's uniform. I think that it would be unusual to see a cuddly toy of this size on a British hospital reception counter. The hospital is aiming, I think, to create a certain sort of protective, sanitized, motherly atmosphere. No Japanese hospital reception counter would be complete without one.

Between its legs, by chance, is a pine cone containing stuffed, coloured cloth balls. The phone is connects to a local taxi company.

"Hello Kitty" the name and design is copyright/tm Sanrio corporation.

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

I ate them while they were living, wriggling, and looking at me. They wriggled as they went down before wriggling their last as they where burnt to death by my stomach acids.

The practice of eating small "shirao" fish live is a traditional way to celebrate the arrival of spring in Japan.

Is it cruel? Is it any more or less cruel than a beefburger?

I think that there are a lot of issues here.
1) The intelligence and ability to appreciate pain or suffering of the species that one is eating. I am not sure, but I think that there is a continuum between plants and animals. Are vegetables, viri, (yoghurt) baterial, algae, plankton, shripm, fish, sheep, cows, horses, pigs, dogs, whales, apes, okay to eat? I have probably got the order wrong and I think that some of these are of a similar level of intelligence, ability to appreciate pain or suffering. Here we are talking about a small fish. I am not sure of their level of awareness.

2) The suffering of the food. This is factored by the speed with which one kills the food, and the stress that the food suffers prior to its demise. There are laws about this in various countries that obviously relate to the criteria (1) above. Here we are talking about a fairly painful, slow, stressful method of killing.

3) Secondary impact of eating the food. Shiroibasket shoes mentions that he does not drink milk. Milk in itself probably does not suffer but the secondary impact of drinking milk is that cows or their offspring are slaughtered.

4) The reasons for eating the food. This is complex. I would like to point out two factors.
4.1) The nutritional importance to the eater. If the eater is going to starve then we are more likely, I think, to allow eating further up the food chain, even to the point where one might accept canibalism when there are three men in a boat and no food? Perhaps.
4.2) The symbolic factor. By this I mean to extent to which the food is eaten for...hmm...the significance that the food and its preparation has. There are all sorts of things going on here and I am not sure whether they are mitigating or incriminating. For example,
4.2.1) Eating steak because it is deemed manly, preditorial, strong to do so.
4.2.2) Eating dog because (perhaps) in part it is defying a tabuu, daredevil, radical, virile.
4.2.3) Eating cow that has been bleed to death due to beliefs about the purity of the food.
4.2.4) Eating these small fish for the awareness of the season and that one is an ominvore, or to return to ones nature.
4.2.4) Eating fish eggs (caviar) because they are expensive and by so doing we express our wealth.
4.2.5) Eating an animal as part of a ritual.
4.2.6) Eating a piece of bread that is believed to be a part of a human being, as in the Catholic Mass.
I do not know about how significance effects our appraisals of consumption but it is bound to depend upon whether that significance is shared. Significance is notoriously culturally determined, but perhaps there are ways appreciating the significance factor of others, by analogy from an awareness of the significance of ones own. In other words, someone that eats steak might think that eating fish live is brutal, until they become aware of the fact that their own steak eating is, like the fish eating, a symbolic act.

5) Cruelty for the sake of awareness of cruelty. (for a lack of a better way of putting it)
This is really a part of (4 - the significance) above but it interests me and I think that it bears upon the eating of these fish. First of all, I do not mean to assert the existance of universal "cruelty." Perceptions of cruetly are varied. However, I merely that there is a question in everyone's mind, "Is it okay to eat this?" Now, let us say that there are times when the answer is a mitigated "no." But one might still go ahead and do it in order to be aware of wider situation.

I think that perhaps, eating these fish live draws ones awareness to the fact that the bacon, steak, fish that one is eating are living. It draws ones attention to the horror of what one is doing. And by drawing attention to that horror, it causes the eater to be more wary and appreciative of the "cruelty" of their behaviour.

One might for example demand that all those that eat steak kill a cow with a sword every x years. Killing a cow with a sword, by ones own hand would be painful for the cow and the eater. But, it may result in a more balanced view of eating cow.

Personallly, I would like to insist that all those that eat steak and fish and any living thing, do it in the flesh every now and again.

In the extreme, it might be profitable to have people bite the cows neck, or if not bite it, then slit the throat of the cow with their own hand, or if not do that then at least whatch the cow being slaughtered. The act would brings home the reality of that which is otherwise taken for granted. Even it is an act that we might not approve of - slitting a cows throat is probably more painful for the cow than the present method of killing - but I think that if beefburger eaters were required to do this "cruetly" then they might more wary and aware of the consequences of ordering a Big Mac. And in that situation, perhaps, humans would eat animals at a more "acceptable" (this is my personal preference) rate.

So, I think that by drinking live fish the Japanese maintain an awareness of results their culinary preferences. When the Japanese stop eating live fish they may eat beefburgers as much as Britons and Americans. When this comes to pass, and we are on the way there, I think that it will be sad. So here is to cruelty for the sake of an awareness of cruelty.

Perhaps.

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

At the entrance to a Japanese mall, a group of Western looking mannequins, with French and English writing on their clothes, showing the Japanese "how we want to be".

With images like this, it is not surprising that Japanese want to undergo cosmetic surgery to make their noses more pointy. At the same time, there may be more to this practice than meets the eye. I think that if the mannequins were Japanese then they would look too lifelike, too scary, since the Japanese identify more with the body.

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