J a p a n e s e    C u l t u r e

Gateball is a variation of croquet developed in Japan. It started after WWII as a sport for young people when rubber for making balls was in short supply, but soon became the quintessential sport for old people, such that "salary men", and women, are thought to morph into gateball players upon retirement.


The major differences appear to be that gateball is played with a smaller number of hoops, only three instead of 6 or nine in croquet, to facilitate the use of a smaller playing field. The smaller field means that reaching the goal pole can be achieved too easily for that to be the final object of the game, so games are timed, with the winning team being that which scores the most points in 30 minutes. While croquet is played individually or typically in pairs, gateball is more often played in teams of up to five. Perhaps due to the limited playing area again, one can hold ones own ball fixed in position when playing the bash-your-opponent's-ball-off-the-field gateball ball equivalent of the croquet shot. This can make the gateball croquet shot or "spark," even more ruthless but it is played with typical oriental equanimity. (But, click here for a photo and demonstration, with laughter, in Japanese).



Gateball Sparking, copyright World Gateball Association

The timed nature of the game, and the Japanese love of technology, results in the use of score watches, the computers that these players are wearing on their forearms, showing the number of points achieved by each of the five balls in each of the two teams.
Gateball mallets are made of carbon fibre and aluminium or titanium.

These differences make gateball a more ruthless, high-tech, high-speed, mini-croquet played by thinner players in larger teams. Like croquet, gateball is played by men and women on an equal footing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Japanese lexicon is largely made up of about 2000 building blocks, each of which can be pronounced in a couple of ways. Learning these blocks presents a large problem to Japanese school children who gain the impression that Japanese is difficult. English however has little in the way of blocks. The the simplicity of the alphabet gives the impression that learning English may be an easy task when in fact, each of the words are as unique as stones in a drystone wall. And the wall goes on and on. For fluency in English one would need to know approximately 30,000 unique words. English should be dumped as an international language and Japanese should be used as the international language instead.
And that is without considering the simplicity of the pronunciation, spelling (gohti), or regularity of the verbs.

Test: Lego Wall by keempoo
Drystone wall by Haversack
Drystone Wall copyright Codrington Gardens

Labels: japan, japanese culture, 日本文化

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now they are starting to sell "Yamaguchi University" customized goods in the Yamaguchi University shop, perhaps as a result of Westernisation (after all the goods are generally labelled in English script). There are, fortunately, no university sweatshirts or university T-shirts. Japanese students would think it too naff and embarrassing to wear them.

Social and Cultural Psychologist Masaki Yuki, after a spell at Professor Marilynn Brewer 's (presumably Ohio State) university in the US was amazed at the extent to which Americans are proud of and merge with their groups, at least to the extent to which US university students wear university sweat shirts bearing the name of their own institution, and come the day of the university American football game, half the campus would come to the match dressed in the same, university colours, chanting the team name.

As professor Brewer argues, Americans join groups to gain a desirable social identity, as a member of a of a presumed elite with which they merge. Badges and uniforms of membership that enhance the group-individual mind meld, are thus desirable, as are negative evaluations of rival groups. "We are good and/because they are baaad."

The Japanese on the other hand are far more economic in their group membership, preferring to join groups in which they can cooperate to form a unity greater than the sum of its parts. The important thing is the network of exchange relationships between the individuals who physically enhance each other's welling through the synthesis of different skills and aptitudes. Group member uniformity is thus avoided and Japanese group members do not see other groups as rivals, paying little attention to them at all.

While there is a bit of Westernisation going on at my university, and there is a mini invasion of the self-snatching, clone-ware, customised goods, Yuki's cultural psychological theory is probably my favourite (after my own) since it has something qualitative to say about the Japanese side of the cultural equation. In most of the other great cultural theories, Japan is typified by a lack or absence: lack of a internal moral standard (Benedict), lack of individuality (Hofestede), lack of illusion of individuality (Markus and Kitayama), lack of a need for positive self-regard (Heine), lack of linguistic thought (Kim), lack of focus (Masuda and Nisbett).

This post in video: the film of the burogu. Bibliography
Yuki, M. (2003). Intergroup comparison versus intragroup relationships: A cross-cultural examination of social identity theory in North American and East Asian cultural contexts. Social Psychology Quarterly, 166–183. lynx.let.hokudai.ac.jp/COE21/workingpaper/no04abstract.pdf

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

The pilots of Kaiten or manned torpedoes walked down this tunnel in Ohzushima near Shunan, before setting off on their one way trip to attempt to defend Japan from allied invasion. The pilots were picked up by large U-boat sized submarines that would take them out into the Pacific ocean, when they would transfer to 14m long mini, war-head bearing, "Kaiten" submarines. While there was an escape hatch none of the approximately 100 pilots attempted to use it. They managed to sink two or three US ships at the loss of approximately 200 US lives, so in military economic terms they were not ineffective. They probably helped to discourage an invasion of Japan. They could not have know that the US had another way of ensuring Japanese defeat - the atomic bomb. I come back to that.

The thing that strikes me about Kaiten pilots, and those that piloted so called "Kamikaze" (Tokkoutai　特攻隊) planes is their last letters. The philosophy expressed in these letters is that described by Markus and Kitayama (1991) as "interdependence," or as espoused by African Ubuntu philosophy such as expressed in the Zulu proverb, "Umuntu ngumuntu ngamantu" which means "I am a person through other people".

One such last letter, written by Matsuda Mitsuo, was on display in the Kaiten Museum. It reads
恩師先輩親親戚近所の方

皆様有難う
思えば
楽しい20年の人生
皆様の厚意を休して
笑って突っ込みます。

軍人精神
....
若桜萬乃木ノ桜

松田光雄

"To all my teachers, seniors, parents, relatives and those in my neighbourhood

Thank you all. (Lit. "Everyone, it is hard to be")

Thinking about it,
I had a fun 20 years of life
So laying to rest all your generosity
I will laugh as I launch in.

The spirit of a soldier
....
Young Cherry Blossom, Then thousand Cherry Blossom Trees
Matsuda Mitsuo"

This young man is saying in other words that he owes his life to the generosity of those to whom he addresses the letter, a generosity which has enabled to him to be and have fun and which is so great that it will amuse him to return the favour and give that beautiful, terrible, generosity permanent leave. This gives a good example perhaps of the etymological root of the Japanese word for "thank you": "arigatou" or "(your generosity is such that) it is hard to be".

It is difficult to know the circumstances of Petty Officer Mitsuo's death. He may have been crying and scared. However, in those last moments as Matsuda Mitsuo approached an enemy ship, I like to think that he was indeed amused. Mitsuo (lit "man of light") piloted his submarine into the sea near Okinawa on the 25th of April, 1945. He was 21 years old. He was not a man, he was dynamite.

I have read a lot of the last letters of Kaiten and "Kamikaze" pilots, and though they are all very similar they never fail to bring me to tears. I tried to make a video of this one but could not read it to the end. As I become aware of the similarity of the letters and suspect that pilots were schooled in this line of thinking, it does not make it any less moving and even as I grow older, it seems to become if anything even more true. As Madge (Maddona) says, "I am because we are". Realising ones interdependence upon others can facilitate great acts of sacrifice.

There are Christian mystics such as David Harding that say that they see the light, and the interdependence of the self, how it is "open to loving", but somehow they seem to keep their selves at the same time, keep it for God, or coming home to Suffolk. It seems to me that Christian mystics never let go of logos, still see themselves from a linguistic fourth person perspective, but these young men see, in Mitsuo's cherry trees for instance, a far fiercer light, that is all consuming. I am reminded of Robert Oppenheimer words when he witnessed the first atomic bomb, or so he thought...

"I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. I suppose we all thought that in one way or another."

Bibliography
Markus, Hazel R., and Shinobu Kitayama. "Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation." Psychological review 98.2 (1991): 224.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Ecce homo: how to become what you are. OUP Oxford, 2007.

Listening to
Tom Jones. Hit or Miss.

Labels: japan, japanese culture, 日本文化, 集団主義

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

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

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

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

This advert for "Miki House," a Japanese children's clothing manufacturer, contains the catch copy "As we bring you up, we are brought up by you" (君を育ちながら、君に育てられている) refering to the sentiments of us, the would-be parents of the girl in the photo.

This catch copy expresses a very Japanese sentiment, philosophy, or I would say central realisation of Japanese culture.

I am not sure of the full standard version of the proverb (will someone tell me?) but it is often said that "parents too are reared", "brought up", or "become adults" (「親も育つ」）, since it is believed that is through bringing up children that people learn about the upbringing that they have received, the trials, tribulations, and sentiment of their own parents, and learn what it is to be, and become, an adult.

This sentiment is central to Japanese culture in many ways.

It is often said that Japanese "Buddhism," (or I would say Shinto under the guise of Buddhism), involves "ancestor worship". "Ancestor worship" sounded, to my Western ears, rather grotesque; like as if the Japanese think their ancestors are god almighty. But Japanese worship, and Japanese "gods" are much more down to earth, un all-powerful entities. They are respected, even revered, but they are far removed from the pain-in-in-the-brain (to atheists at least) omniscient, super-good, perfect beings of the likes of Allah and Yaweh. Japanese ancestors and Japanese gods are respectable. They are as holy or cool as saints. The Japanese view their own ancestors as saints. Even that may sound too far fetchededly arrogant to Western ears, but.... to justify the sentiment I would need to digress too much. This was meant to be a post about a children's clothing advert, but it has so many implications. Let it be said that Japanese ancestors, and therefore to an extent Japanese parents, are deemed to be cool, like Elivis and other heroes and saints are cool, so it takes a while to get there. Being a parent is not easy. It takes being brought up to. There is a long and hard progression to becoming a hero. Heroes don't get there on their own. They need help.

Japanese parents get to their exalted position as parents thanks to their children. Japanese ancestors get to their exalted position as ancestors because they have descendants. Japanese deities get to be sacred because people worship them.

Thus far a Japanese person might agree. The following is more controversial.

Japanese culture is "womb-centric" in a similar way to which Western culture is phallocentric. The model of Western culture is the man. "Mankind," we Westerners say, as Simone De Beauviour pointed out. In Japan it is the reverse. The Japanese human is "woman kind". There is no Japanese word (afaik), that like the English "man" or French "homme" that means, in reverse, both woman and human, but the Japanese word for "I" in its many variations is female in its most general form. "I," in elementary Japanese language textbooks "Watashi," is a word for women, and for everyone. Speaking from a reverse Simone DeBeavoir perspective therefore, it is not surprising that it takes upbringing, and effort, for men at least, to become a "watashi." Men at least do not become their first person singular overnight. They learn to become homo-parentis, thanks to the love of their children.

Imagine yourself to be a full on, normal, testosteroned male. Are you, in that guise, a parent? I'd argue not; not at least you have become a father. Fathers only become fathers as a result of their culture, their experience of bringing up children.

I meant to write much more in the above post, but even if I had I would not have gone so far as to connect this 'sentiment' with the Japanese attitude towards time, which as a commenter pointed out is connected, or likewise central, to Japanese culture, including Japanese tourism to places where time can be felt, such to cherry blossom and red leave viewing sites, and "relics," such as Hiraiizumi (夏草や兵達が夢のあと) where there is little more than grass to be seen but, time can be felt, and vividly imagined.

Going even further into the abstract, Nishida the great Japanese philosopher and his acolyte Watsuji, went to Germany to study philosophy and came back astounded at the extent to which Western philosophy emphasised time as being.

So who emphasises time more? Westerners or Japanese? It seems to me that the world is turned inside out.

To Descartes, the founder of Western philosophy, the cogito or self-narrative is the self, whereas "res extensa," the extended or space, the visual world, is out there and dubitable, ephemeral, 'mere image'. Heidegger went so far as to claim that "the meaning of being (as 'discovered' by Western philosophers in the cogito) is time." Derrida argues that the reason for this adulation of time as being, human being, is due to the Western worship of language, in specie, internal self-narrative. Our (Western) words inside our heads, are felt to be ourselves, and occur in time. Time is that which Westerners believe ourselves to be-in*. Space, on the other hand, is 'out there'.

It is perhaps for this reason that Western tourism is largely about going to places where something can be seen. Westerners go to gaze, or gawp, at anything beautiful. Time does not have to be involved. In this sense, Ippei + Janine's photo-travelogue of beaches in Japan, is unusually Western in that it introduces beautiful Japanese places that are largely ignored by many Japanese relic-seeking, time-travelling tourists.

To most Japanese conversely, the self exists in and as the mirror of the mind, while time is out there. I venture to suggest that Janine looks at and loves the image of their travels as Ippei lives or is them.

How can I bring this back to self-rearing-parenthood? I know there is a way :-)

*"be-in." Ha! A philosophical joke.

Labels: japan, japanese culture, 日本文化

In perhaps an eco-friendly attempt to encourage car drivers to open their windows rather than use their air conditioners on hot but rainy days - such as exist in June especially - almost all Japanese cars are fitted with pieces of plastic along the tops of the windows to allow the windows to be opened while preventing rain, bugs and strong blasts of air from coming into the car. These bits of plastic, or window fairings, are another Japanese ecological, energy-saving innovation to compare with heated coffee tables (kotatsu), toilet cistern top hand basins, insulated kettles, and shared bath water.

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

I am republishing this due to the fact that while the article below remarks on the 9 sightings of oarfish in the early part of this year (which is more than usual), there have recently been 81 sightings (!) of deep sea fish including oarfish and ribbonfish and stomiiforms in July and August at Murotomisaki on the South Eastern tip of Kouchi, Shikoku, which is at or near the entrance to Osaka bay. Oarfish and ribbonfish are claimed to be earthquake predicting. Stomiiforms, like catfish and oarfish, have sensitive whiskers that might - I would say would - be sensitive to increases in seismically induced  static electricity. BUT, most of the deep sea fish 78 out of 81 were smalleye pigmy shark which are not associated with earthquakes.

Recently there have been reports of increased seismic activity, and sightings of 'earth-quake predicting' oarfish and ribbonfish in Japan, raising concerns that a quake may be looming. This post lists the sighting of the deep sea fish, suggests why they may be appearing and a catfish connection, and how you can test for the same environmental changes that may be predictive of earthquakes.


The local news section of our newspaper reported that a giant deep-sea, oarfish had been caught in a static net off Nagato and brought to the Museum in Hagi, Yamaguchi Prefecture, on 5th Feburary. The article also mentioned that this was not the first of these rare fish to be spotted in recent weeks.

In Japan, Oarfish are called Ryuuguunotukai (リュウグウノツカイ/竜宮の遣い）or "Messengers of the Sea God" since they are said to warn of earthquakes. In Taiwan they are known, more prosaically as "seismic fish" (地震鱼) for the same reason. Usually living in depths greater than 200m, they rarely come into coastal shallow waters. A Japanese academic theorised that oarfish come into shallow waters when tectonic plate movement generates electricity, causing electric shocks in 2 to 5 meter long bodies, which the fish come up to shallow water to avoid.

Searching for news of Oarfish sightings on Google News in Japanese, I see that there has been a spate of sightings recently as shown on the map above. The are summarised in English as as follows. Click the links for pictures of the giant fish.

In addition to the fish that was caught in Yamaguchi prefecture, on the same day, February 5th, a 2.7 meter oarfish was caught in a net trawling in the bay off Oita Airport in Oita Prefecture. It is the first such fish to be caught in that area in nine years, as reported in the Oita Press.

On January 2nd, a man caught a 3m oarfish swimming near the surface of the sea near Naoetsu and brought it into the Jouetsu City Aquarium, both in Niigata prefecture as was reported on the 14th by the Asahi Newspaper.

On January 10th, a 4.1m fish was found floating in Hansei River estuary off Obama City, in Fukui Prefecture. A local fisherman, who has fished the waters in the area for 20 years had not seen an oarfish in this time, as reported in the Fukui Newspaper. Legend has it in Fukui that if the fish is alive, as it was, then it is a good omen.

On January 18th, a 2.67m oarfish was caught in a static net on the border between Toyama and Niigata Prefecture and brought to Ozu Aquarium in Ozu City in Toyoma Precture. This is the first such fish to be caught in the region since three years ago as reported by Nichi Television News 24.

A blogger reports finding a 2.4m specimen on a Tottori beach on the 19th of January.

On February 2nd, the official blog of the Odawara fish market, in a post tagged "rare fish" (with photo) reported catching an small 1m oarfish in a static net, remarking that this is only the second such fish to be caught in Odawara in memory and that the last time was 2 months prior to the Tohoku earthquake.

On February 10th a 44 year old fisherman saw a 3m oarfish floating near the coast. It was the first time he had seen one of these fish in his life as reported in the Fukui Shinbun (newspaper).  I have not added this to the map. It is in almost the same place as the Jan 18th sighting in Ozu.

The sightings roughly follow coastline parallel to the Niigata Kobe Tectonic Zone (image above) of seismic activity, at the edge of the Eurasian (or Amurian) plate.This region of seismic activity goes through the highly populated areas of Central Japan (Osaka, Kyoto, Koube).

The last time there were increased sightings of oarfish in late 2009 early 2010, as reported in the Telegraph Newspaper in March 2010 there were no major earthquakes until the megathrust earthquake and  Tsunami on 11th March 2011 a year later. 

On the 9th, a review article in the Mainichi Newspaper, reports that while usually these fish are seen at a rate of one every few years, the fish brought into the Hagi Museum on the 5th was the 8th caught in the sea of Japan in recent weeks. This still does not match the 30 fish that were caught in late 2009 early 2010, but it is certainly a "high pace" and "remains a mystery".

On the 14th another species of earthquake predicting fish, ribbonfish, are also being sighted in comparatively large numbers too. Ribbonfish or "Sake-Gashira" are called earthquake fish (地震魚) in Japanese. These are the same characters used for both the oarfish and the ribbonfish in Taiwanese, since likewise, they are said to warn of impending earthquakes. Also like oarfish, ribbonfish have a long body often meters in length and live at depths of about 1000 meters - they are deep sea fish.


10th April 2015 156 dolphins beached just north of Tokyo.

Labels: japan, japanese culture, 日本文化

Why do Japanese tourists obsess on going to see relics, such as the remains of castles (Hiraiizumi), or the site of a famous duel (Ganryujima) or other "named places" (名所 meisho) where there is often nothing to see? Why do they also like to go and see cherry blossom and red leaves and other places that remind them of the passing of time?

Derrida "deconstructs" Western philosophy so it may fair to say, conversely, that the polemic that Western philosophers indulge in should be called the ongoing process of "reconstruction."

Western philosophers use polemical sleights of hand to convince us that all is well, and dualistic, in the world. Western philosophers draw our attention to defective signs, such as writing, "speech acts", "indicative signs," to assure us that there are good and proper signs that are dual, that come laden with, co-present with meaning, with "ideas". In so doing these nervous philosophers assure us and themselves that the act of hearing ourselves speak is not a gollum auto-crooning in the darkness, but a meaningful "expressive act."

This philosophical polemic is one example of "reconstruction," of the narrative-self. But is is not only philosophers who indulge in this sleight of hand. We are all to an extent a little perplexed by the whole speaking-to-ourselves thing. We are all a little worried about the existence of the meaning, "ideas" and the self as idea, and we all want therefore to indulge in a little self-reconstruction, to assure ourselves of our own selfiness.

Tourism is reconstruction par excellence. As Jackson's Mary-who-knows-no-red (Jackson, 1976) convinces philosophers of duality, the tourist who had never seen Breton clogs, is convinced of the existence of the idea by, in the act of discovering them. Look, there is Frenchiness (Culler)! Western tourists go to see the sights, to gaze, at that redness, that cultural icon which, hithertoo, existed for them only as an idea.

Japanese tourists, Zen though they may be, travel to indulge in reconstruction too, except they want to believe in non-duality, and the self as that place (場所, Nishida) where mind and matter meet. Just as Westerner tourists go to gaze at things for which they only had ideas and in doing so prove that the image is out there, Japanese tourist go to places where there are signs for which they only had images, where they allow their imagination to run riot in the mirror of their mind. Japanese also visit sites where they can experience the unfolding of time ("differance"), in order to return themselves to the purity of the mirror, which is the only thing that remains, un-moving, in cherry blossom viewing.

People travel to experience and expunge that which they visit and leave behind. Western tourists go to gaze (Urry) and leave the world of sight. Japanese tourists go to expunge those names, and expunging duality and time, enter the liquid world of light.

Jackson, F. (1986). What Mary didn't know. The Journal of Philosophy, 83(5), 291-295. http://118.97.161.124/perpus-fkip/Perpustakaan/Perpus%20Cero/Filsafat/Filsafat%20Modern/Materialisme%20Modern.pdf#page=199

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

Recently news agencies all over the world have been carrying the AFP news article regarding the reactions of residents of a town in Shimane Prefucture, in which someone has erected a replica of Michelangelo's David (a naked man). 17 miles away, as the crow flies, there is a Shinto place of worship, Yaegaki Shrine, to the Goddess Princess Iwanaga, at the entrance to which there are two giant phalli (nearly 2m high judging from the photo), at which local residents give votive phalli (large carved wooden erect penises) as an offering in the hope of "safe child-bearing". Such shrines are scattered all over Japan.

This apparent contradiction in attitudes towards male nakedness, may be due to the fact that the replica Michelangelo is in a park as opposed to a place of worship. Or due to the fact that the residents of Shimane have become Westernized in their sensitivities.

I suspect however that the resident's reaction is traditionally Japanese. Shinto is often described as a form of animism. Objects are thought to be imbued with spirit. And traditionally, statues were only made of Gods, and Buddhas, and were felt to come alive.

Hence when, as quoted in the AFP report, "Some people have told the town's legislators that toddlers are afraid of the statues," it is more because they feel that the statue is alive (unlike a disembodied phallus) than that the statue is showing its genitals, that is the problem in this case. Identifying as they do with their self-image rather than their self-narrative (Nacalian), the Japanese find human forms, including statues, or masks -- the important part is the face (Watsuji, 1937) -- much more alive. The idea of putting pants on the statue is nothing new. When a replica was created and displayed the Victoria and Albert museum in London, a plaster caste of a fig leaf half a meter high was made to cover the statue's genitals. Coming from a similar phallocentric, sexophobic culture, reporters from Agence France-Presse made this a sexual issue: a statue-with-a-penis issue. The issue is really an animistic reaction to a statue-with-a-face. Rather than putting pants on the statue, if the local government were to cover the statue's face it would retain its form without appearing animate, and the Japanese toddlers would no longer be scared.

Image Top
Japan town demands pants for Michelangelo's David
Picture taken by the Okuizumo town government on August 28, 2012 shows a replica of Michelangelo's David (Okuizumo government/AFP/File, Okuizumo government)
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Seishin Hakubutsukan (Museum of [Japanese] Sex-related Gods), Shimane Prefecture Page 1. Bibliography Watsuji, T. (1937) Johnson, Carl M., trans. “Mask and Persona.” Japan Studies Review (2011): p 147155. (See particularly page 150) http://asian.fiu.edu/projects-and-grants/japan-studies-review/journal-archive/2011.pdf

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

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