Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Spot the Japanese Culture
All these things are “Japanese Culture” with a capital “C,” the sort of things that you can learn about at a “Culture Centre.” While These things are also very obvious, or visible, they are not all that common in the everyday lives of Japanese people. How often do you wear the clothes that these girls are wearing?
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Labels: japan, japanese culture, Nacalian, nihonbunka, 日本文化
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Purikura Enhanced Auto-Photography
Westerners self-enhance linguistically. I believe that the above demonstrates that, in accordance with the Nacalian position of this burogu, Japanese self-enhance (and I don't mean self-improve) in the world of the image.
Labels: japan, japanese culture, Nacalian, 日本文化
Friday, November 15, 2013
Visual Illusion of Uniqueness? After Markus and Kitayama 1991
First of all I tested that, as Markus and Kitayama predict, rare things do resemble normal/common things less than the other way around, and (as shown in the graph at the top) it was as Markus and Kitayama predict.
However, I also found that Japanese students felt themselves to resemble others less than others resemble themselves, suggesting an illusion of uniqueness as found among Americans but not Japanese in Markus and Kitayama's study.
This is probably just random because the results are grossly NON significant due to the small sample size (30 students, p=0.4!)
But it could also be because of the experimental method. I have not checked how Markus and Kitayama specified the "other" of comparison, but I am guessing that the other was some sort of abstract other or "others."
I asked my students to pick another student in the same room and have a glance at them. This would have emphasised visual similarity. I am pretty sure that Japanese students are big on visual uniqueness and hate it when for instance someone in the same class is wearing the same clothes as them (it makes them want to go home and change). This is one of the reason why Japanese students do not want to wear insignia sweat-shirts (Yuki, 2003). I hypothesise that if the other of comparison is presented visually then the Japanese will considered themselves to be unique. And perhaps the tendency of Americans, all dressed in their insignia T-shirts, to consider themselves unique will be reduced (but since the question is still a linguistic one, I doubt that there will be a reversal).
I need a bigger sample size.
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.
Labels: japan, japanese culture, Nacalian, nihonbunka, 日本文化
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Mammarian Mouse Pads Second-Hand
Why is it that the Japanese are more able and willing to produce products of this type?
The Japanese are better at visual design since they identify with their self-image to a greater extent.
The Japanese are more interested in visual designs since, following on from the above, bodies, even plastic and virtual ones are felt to be animate.
Japanese men are also less repressed about their sexuality and admiration of breasts. In Japan there is no such thing as that fantasy, 'the gentleman' who has 'transcended' his sexual desire. Japanese men believe themselves to be and are believed to be male qua male, and as such admirers of breasts.
But who wants to purchase a mammarian mouse pad second hand?
Labels: image, japan, japanese culture, nihonbunka, sex, 日本文化
Monday, November 04, 2013
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
"Terminator 2: Judgement Day" is a great movie. I saw it in a theatre in Okayama City when it came out in 1991, and felt it to be representing a conflict between Japanese and American heroes.
The American hero, a T-800 robot played by Schwarzenegger had been the antagonist in Terminator 1. In Terminator 2, however, Cameron turns Schwarzenegger's T-800 into a robot that wants to be human, a soccer dad, sent to protect a boy by himself in the future. "It" is a 'little tiny, fragile, ceramic wafer' within its own head. Rational but caring, and ultimately self-sacrificial, T-800 struck me as the logos on steroids.
But I was rather rooting for the T-1000. Much more beautiful, cat like, and in appearance feminized (and good at impersonating women) but all in all much stronger, braver, and more advanced. The T-1000 speaks little but can imitate anything, and made of some sort of reflective material: a mirror made flesh that dwelt amongst us.
Since it was an American movie, the beautiful, reflective T-1000 was made out to be the antagonist but perhaps the Japanese could remake the movie with a Japanese actor playing a nice-guy version of the T-1000. In this version the two robots would team up against a Kaiju monster.
Images copyright TriStar Pictures.
Labels: japan, japanese culture, Nacalian, nihonbunka, 日本文化
Japanese Men's Pants are Colourful, Feminized
These Gunze pants are for men and are very colourful. They were advertised with copy a "Beautiful body, Wild heart." You can see the video of beautiful men wearing colourful pants here. Matriarchy that it is, Japan converges upon femininity. While they still like to differentiate themselves here by being more "wild," there are plenty of cosmetics for men, there are even man bras .
Some commentators see this feminization of the male form as a recent phenomena (Kuon, 2011) but there is a long tradition of Japanese men dressing in what might be termed feminine clothing. Rearing red underwear recently saw a boom among both men and women, since it was claimed that doing so warmed people up and improves their health and luck (see this online retailer). Japanese men have long been inclined to wear red underwear to battle in pre-modern Japan, and to competitions recently such as when Kouji Yamamoto, the coach of the Japanese World Baseball Classic team, wore red underwear to the WBC tournament - indeed it is said that all the coaches did so (Takayama, 2013).
In Japanese mythology, Japanese heroes and gods have a tendency to cross dress. Amaterasu, the sun goddess dresses as a man, Yamatotakeru, the brave of Japan, dressed as a woman to kill one of his enemies, and Susano'o, the original warrior god, may have dressed as his bride to be (according to one, persuasive reading) to kill the Eight-Forked Serpent, Yamata-no-Orochi. It should also be noted that the Japanese are handed their reflections by the sun goddess - a woman - whose mirror is said to be in all of their minds. That the Japanese do have a mirror in their minds, or heads, has been demonstrated experimentally (Heine et al. 2009).
The feminization of the Japanese male clothing also finds expression in the way in which the soul of Yui Ikari remains in the Eva robotic suit that her son Shinji Ikari controls in the popular anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion. Evangelion explains itself by reference to Lacanian theory - "Mother is the first other," which holds that the first intra-pschic other that is an ontic necessity for the creation of self (see Boszormenyi-Nagy & Framo, 2013 p33 for an overview of similar theories), is an internalisation of mirror which is mother. This blog argues, Nacalianly, that for the Japanese, the mother/mirror is the last other, the one that they take into the world and make their mirror, suited, red-pants wearing selves with.
I don't mean to suggest that Japanese men are any more feminized than Western men, who have a different type of helper.
Boszormenyi-Nagy, I., & Framo, J. L. (2013). Intensive Family Therapy: Theoretical And Practical Aspects. Routledge. Google Books
Heine, S. J., Takemoto, T., Moskalenko, S., Lasaleta, J., & Henrich, J. (2008). Mirrors in the head: Cultural variation in objective self-awareness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(7), 879–887. Retrieved from www2.psych.ubc.ca/~heine/docs/2008Mirrors.pdf
Kuon, S. 久遠さら. (2011). なぜ今どきの男子は眉を整えるのか. 幻冬舎ルネッサンス.
高山通史. (2013, February 28). 浩二ジャパン首脳みんなで赤パン／ＷＢＣ. nikkansports.com. Retrieved 4 November 2013, from www.nikkansports.com/baseball/wbc/2013/news/p-bb-tp0-2013...
Labels: japan, japanese culture, Nacalian, 日本文化
Sunday, November 03, 2013
Who Needs Guns?
These two pronged forks are attached to the wall of Japanese schools for use in case someone where to come into the school and attempt to kill children.
Since Japan is largely gun free, and swords are likewise restricted by law, the most dangerous weapon that Japanese can get their hands upon is usually a knife. A man, with mental illness, did however break into a Japanese classroom and kill several children with a knife. Mamoru Takuma, since executed by hanging, went on the rampage in Ikeda primary school in Osaka, fatally stabbing 8 children and wounding 15 more, reportedly as a way of having himself killed and exacting revenge on a departed girlfriend.
So at least since that time, these two pronged forks, called sasumata, are kept in schools to enable the teachers to tackle knife wielders by trapping their torso in the prong.
They are especially effective if used by several people from several directions at once, and date back to the Edo Period when likewise guns and swords were illegal among the general population, and the Japanese attempted to apprehend criminals uninjured. These Edo Period sasumata were however equipped with blades or spikes at the U end of the fork to help prevent the criminal from grasping the pole (sasumata).
It is surprising that Japan is not only gun-less but fairly blade-less. Daggers, which are defined as two sided blades, are illegal longer than 5.5cm cm. Most murders are carried out using kitchen knives of which there are plenty. But despite the fact that there are no restrictions on the purchase of one sided kitchen knives, and that they can be had for 1 dollar or more, I know of very few law abiding Japanese that carry or possess blades for use a a self defence weapon. Even a 5.5cm knife would be a significant deterrent if someone came at you with a kitchen knife. The long kitchen knife wielder would win, the victim would probably die, but the attacker would be deterred and sufficiently wounded such that they would not be able to attack many more people. I think that if the victims had small self defence blades, then an attacker would be hard pressed to kill three people since after killing two he would have at least two 5cm wounds in his body.
So why don't Japanese people carry a small self defence blade? Why aren't their such blades in schools?
In line with my usual interpretation of Japan, I suggest that the reason is cultural. There has long been a taboo on blood in Japan. Wounding anyone, especially in such a way as to penetrate their skin and draw blood is an anathema to vast majority of Japanese. There are no guns, few knives, and though many Japanese are karate experts it is even far harder to get yourself beaten up. Why are the Japanese generally so non-violent? There is quite a lot of white collar crime, such as fraud, cartels and other corruption which, though there are a form of violence, are often argued to be forgiveable. I think that the difference lies, as usual, in a difference in what people are thought to be. In the West the body is something that contains the mind. A wound to the body leaves the person intact. In Japan however, as an extension of animism, I believe people identify with their bodies, particularly with their bodily image. Thus to stab someone, to penetrate another's skin, is to penetrate their person. It is a much weightier act, of far greater violence. To deceive another person is however often even a good idea (uso mo houben 嘘も方便) since, contra Westerners, the Japanese do not identify with their self-narrative and words are the mere fluff that allows bodies as people to make jokes to each other.
Labels: culture, japan, japanese culture, 日本文化
Western Mannequins Japanese Rite of Passage
Even the display advertising kimono and hakama (traditional Japanese male formal attire) uses mannequins that are are at least partly Caucasian in appearance.
This is partly because it is cool to look bi-racial, due to the economic influence of the West, and due to the universal human tendency to prefer average faces.
It is also due to the way in which Japanese do not identify with self-narratives but rather with self-images. In Japan it is even more true that "Video Ergo Sum" (Lenggenhager, et al. 2007). If therefore Japanese mannequins were Japanese in feature they would appear eerily animate to Japanese shoppers, as do the status of Buddhas and Gods in Japanese temples and shrines. The use of Caucasian mannequins adds a element of distance, of inanimateness. To the Japanese, Westerners are a little like zombies or Gundam (robotic suits) with with they can identify - possess and control.
Labels: japan, japanese culture, nihonbunka, reversal, westernisation, 日本文化
Japanese Video Game, Western Users
To entice Japanese youth to use this pirate themed Japanese shooting game, a Western couple are shown enjoying its use. Don't Japanese people find this incongurous? Apparently not, and are on the contrary more inclined to identify with caucasians than with a Japanese couple. Other than the influence of caucasian images of beauty, another possible explanation for this use of Westerners is that the Japanese are more animistic, seeing bodies, mannequins and other human effigies, and even things, such as cups of noodles, as animate. If there were Japanese mannequins in Japanese shops then the shoppers might feel inclined to greet them, or wonder who they are. The use of Western bodily images therefore may depersonalise the image to the extent that, rather than being Taro Suzuki and Hanako Tanaka, it is just a body, with which the Japanese observer can identify and inhabit.
Labels: culture, japan, japanese culture, 日本文化
The Curious Cup Noodle
A Japanese variation on basketball arcade game. Instead of throwing mini basketballs through a mini basketball hoop, players are invited to throw balls into a the mouth of a Cup Noodle pot that opens and closes with a tantalising, and rather creepy, smirk. "Ball me!" the pot seems to be imploring. Cup noodles are tasty to humans, small orange balls are tasty to Cup Noodles. The message seems to be in Japan the Cup Noodles bite back. Cup Noodles smile. They are alive. Nissin even produced a Cup Noodle robot to celebrate the 40th anniversary of their invention last year.
There is also something fundamentally strange or incongruous about pot noodle pots even to the Japanese. In a country where to be is to be visible, there is greater expectation for things to be as they appear. Cup Noodles are however, unlike most Japanese food which is eaten with the eyes, in appearances quite unappetizing: a cylinder of expanded polystyrene, industrial lettering, without even an attempted at any imagery that might stimulate the appetite. They are however fairly tasty, and extremely convenient so they have persisted and are sold in great number, all the while arousing a sense of absurdity in their Japanese consumers.
Labels: culture, japan, japanese culture, nihonbunka, 日本文化
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Faces Substantiate Emotions Too
As Watsuji Tetsuro (2011) argues, it is faces and not phonemes (or "ideas," phaf) that substantiate, give a focus or "centre of gravity" to persons, and I would argue and groups, and in doing so, perhaps, give them existence. On Japanese television faces are used to give existence to, and communicate, other ephemerals too, such as emotions. As I have noted elsewhere there are always faces peering out of Japanese television sets telling the audience how to react (see the face of a television personality smiling, top right) in what is referred to as the "wipe" (waipu).
Some people believe that 'the face in the waipu' is there because the Japanese are more conformist, and less original, so they need to be shown how to react. Yes, they are being shown how to react, but no they are not more conformist.
In the West, ephemeral things such as selves, groups, and emotions are given substance by words, phonemes and "vocal gestures". Indeed, George Herbert Mead (1934) argued that it is only the vocal gesture that can be used in this way since it is the only one to bounce back. Mead did not know about mirror neurons but the majority of Japanese, Noh practitioners such as Zeami and martial artists such as those surveyed by Yamamoto (2009), are unaware that they can see themselves too.
On Western TV the audience is told what to think using phonemes, in the form not of words, and especially "canned laughter" and "oohs and ahs." There are some oohs and ahs on Japanese television, but I can't watch British television comedy shows any more for sheer volume of intrusive - "conform or else" - canned laughter. Give me a face in a waipu any day. I can ignore that. The preferences is personal, and cultural. The mechanism is the same. The medium is different.
Mead, George Herbert.(1934) Mind, Self and Society. University of Chicago Press.: Chicago.
brocku.ca/MeadProject/Mead/pubs2/mindself/Mead_1934_09.html
Watsuji, Tetsuro. (2011) "Mask and Persona." Trans. Carl M. Johnson. Japan Studies Review. XV: 147-155.
asian.fiu.edu/projects-and-grants/japan-studies-review/jo...
Yamamoto, I. (2009) "Mental Training: Self Image in Kendo." Unpublished Gradutation Thesis, The department of Tourism Studies, Faculty of Economics, Yamaguchi University. (in Japanese) 山本一輝(2009)「メンタルトレーニング～弓道を通じた自己イメージのあり方～」未発表卒論。山口大学経済学部可能政策学科
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The important George Herbert Mead quote is as follows
p. 65
The vocal gesture, then, has an importance which no other gesture has. We cannot see ourselves when our face assumes a certain expression. If we hear ourselves speak we are more apt to pay attention. One hears himself when he is irritated using a tone that is of an irritable quality, and so catches himself. But in the facial expression of irritation the stimulus is not one that calls out an expression in the individual which it calls out in the other. One is more apt to catch himself up and control himself in the vocal gesture than in the expression of the countenance.
It is only the actor who uses bodily expressions as a means of looking as he wants others to feel. He gets a response which reveals to him how he looks by continually using a mirror. He registers anger, he registers love, he registers this, that, or the (66) other attitude, and he examines himself in a glass to see how he does so. When he later makes use of the gesture it is present as a mental image. He realizes that that particular expression does call out fright. If we exclude vocal gestures, it is only by the use of the mirror that one could reach the position where he responds to his own gestures as other people respond. But the vocal gesture is one which does give one this capacity for answering to one's own stimulus as another would answer.
Labels: japan, japanese culture, 日本文化
Friday, October 25, 2013
The World Inside Out
Image from Voy et. al 2001, pp 57-58
That the Japanese have very little positive to say about themselves, while Americans do is one of the most robust, and well documented of cultural differences (see the irrefutable work of Steven Heine).
However, as I have demonstrate in a number of studies, when it comes to images the tables are turned. Here above is more proof, that when it comes to images, the positivity of Japanese self imagery blows that of Americans out of the water. Their authors are only seven years old but already, the Japanese are showing the self confidence that they will go on to retain throughout their lives, though they will never express it in words (rikutsu, phah, humbug).
Not only are the Japanese self-drawings more detailed, but also they are twice the size! And this despite the fact that self-image drawing size has been shown to correlate with self esteem. This has been shown in self-drawings, but also in drawings of other things. As demonstrate by Bruner and Goodman's work on the size of drawings of coins by rich children (who draw coins small) and poor children who value them and draw them big, people draw things that they think are big, and unimportant small .
Looking at their linguistic self representations, such as responses to the self-esteem scale, US respondents are about 1605 more self confident, self-valuing, than Japanese. Looking at response to this self-drawing test, the Japanese are about 160% more self-valuing as US respondents (Japanese average drawing size 18.4cm, US average drawing size 11.87).
The problem with this is that, as Derrida explains, we Westerners (and perhaps the Japanese too) are keen to believe that our own form of selfing is the only way to form a self. McAdams, Dennet, Pinker are keen to reassure us that self-narrative selves are hard-wired, that humans, where-ever they are are "homonarans" "The story-telling animal." But alas, the Japanese don't give a flying futon for narratives. They are not ego involved in their narratives.
The problem with the Japanese is that they force us to become aware that there are other ways of 'selfing', that self-narrating is contingent, that we do not have to do it. We nail ourselves to our narratives, but the Japanese are living proof that we did not have to.
Bruner, J. S., & Goodman, C. C. (1947). Value and need as organizing factors in perception. The journal of abnormal and social psychology, 42(1), 33. Retrieved from psycnet.apa.org/journals/abn/42/1/33/
La Voy, S. K., Pederson, W.C., Reitz, J.M., Brauch, A.A., Luxenburg, T.M., & Nofsinger, C.C. (2001). Children’s drawings: A cross-cultural analysis from Japan and the United States. School Psychology International, 22, 53-63.
Labels: culture, japan, japanese culture, mirror, Nacalian, nihonbunka, Shinto, specular, theory, 日本文化
Japanese Style Toilet
I like some aspects of Japanese toilet culture.
Japanese toilets are free, clean and plentiful. As well as being a relief in times of need, these restroom-facts tell us some thing about Japanese culture. While the Japanese lavatory has changed dramatically, there is still something fundamentally more practical about it. Take, for example, the mixed sex toilets that one still finds in small bars and restaurants. The use of one toilet for both sexes seems so mature, space saving and liberal, but often rather disconcerting. Again, the absence of a seat may be very hygienic but I find it difficult to keep my balance when made to squat. And while, for instance, the French too used to squat, the Japanese do not insert their stool into a small round hole but leave it to lie in a trench between their knees for some kind of inspection. "Very sensible", the colour is very indicative of the state of ones health, apparently. Which brings us to ask: why are "amenities" so rude in the West? Is it not perhaps to do with their connection with sex? Perhaps for the French, the briefly dangling stool was a phallus: deft but dark and fleeting. By contrast, the Japanese have a more tolerant, maternal toilet culture. The stool, resplendent in its narrow china cot - thoughtfully padded with toilet paper - represents a pseudo-baby? In a traditional Japanese toilet, the flush must follow breathless awe in the face of mother nature's proud creation and even the direction of the squat is reversed: Westerners, face the door, as if ready to fight back other would be occupants; the more community spirited, trusting Japanese face the interior toilet wall, their buttocks bare, absorbed in meditation.
In the past ten years however, the Japanese toilet has been "advancing". Corrupted and alienated by the impact of the West, they have developed scatophobia. They too do it sitting down but with even greater hygiene and self abstention. The toilet seat, itself sometimes decadently pre-heated, can be covered with a specially provided, toroidal paper napkin. And, to the horror of unsuspecting observers, the toilets in more wealthy homes may be fitted with an electronically controlled, contractible antennae. "Foul torture! Fearsome syringe!" I thought as I wiped warm water from my eye, but, yes, it was merely a form of space saving bidet. At the touch of a button, the antenna extends and, automatically adjusted to the size of the user, fires a jet upwards into the orifice. Fiendishly clean. "Washlettes" (sic) may not have caused actual bodily harm but they might just represent a neurotic obsession with technology. (Mark my words; in years to come someone will produce a "Wipeman".)
If there is one thing that I regret, it is the complete absence of graffiti. It would be in the interests of free speech if bar owners provided a pen, attached to a string, inside the cubicles. But one might find that the customers did not know what to do with it.
I wrote the above back in 1996
A "wipeman" or portable version of the washlett has in fact been invented (and may have been back in 1996)
Labels: japan, japanese culture, nature, 日本文化, 自然
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Two for the Price of Four
I think that Japanese people feel a sort of sympathy for things themselves, and reuse paper since to do otherwise would be a very mild form of homicide. This animistic origin to the heightened sense of wastefulness, may explain the emphasis upon recycling rather than reusing in Japan. The Japanese do not believe in reincarnation or heaven but that the soul merges with the gods and is born again as other people. Pieces of paper merge with the pulp and are repressed into other pages.
As previously mentioned the grief of mottainai may also explain the relative absence of BOGOF (Buy One Get One Free) marketing in Japanese stores. It may also be a factor in the pricing in of the batteries in the above photo. This one hundred yen store's products are all 100 yen, and include packs of both 4 AA batteries, and 2 AA batteries at the same price. Admittedly, the 2 pack of batteries carry the name of a Japanese manufacturer (Hitachi), whereas the 4 pack batteries are generic "Premium Cell", but it seems to me unlikely that consumers believe that the Japanese branded batteries last twice as long as their OEM counterparts. I suggest rather than Japanese consumers purchase two batteries when they need to batteries, since to purchase four would feel mottainai. They might not use the other two. They would go to waste.
Bearing this in mind it is surprising that Westerners, even as they roll through their malls on buggies since they can no longer support their own weight, do not feel mottainai when offered a BOGOF deal. Where did our sense of "shame when you waste something" disappear? What is it about the corporeal - things, the body - that does not deserve our respect?
The 'Nacalian' theory provided by this blog provides only part of the answer. It is here argued that while verbal and visual self-representations are essential for the genesis of self, Westerners identify with the former, and Japanese with the latter. Identifying as they do with the visual, they are more sensitive to the destruction of little pieces of 'extensia' - things. But I don't think that this theory goes far enough.
It seems to me that the BOGOF buyer almost has it in for the extras pieces of corporealism that he purchases. There is a potlach of free pizza, puddings and pints of milk, and at time an almost gratuitous disrespect of the body. Take that, pizza, into the bin you go! Take that, body, another pizza for you!
This disrespect is alas I fear mirrored in the Japanese feeling towards narratives, theories and reason. They rise and fall in oblivion's host, items of fashion, soon forgotten, unlike a synthetic face. Hello Kitty is forty years old. Abenomics will be lucky if it is remembered in four years time. No-one reads Shinto mythology and comparatively very Japanese people read (non-comic) books.
There is even a word to decry reason "rikutsu." The closest English translation is perhaps humbug. Rikustu, or the phrase "Rikutsu iu na" (don't say any more humbug) is use to silence those that attempt to be too rational, or wordy than is felt necessary. Words are extraneous, faddish, and abbreviated everywhere from haiku to pasokon and sefure. Indeed, English words are often used on T-shirts, in mottos and names for products, even though or because most Japanese can not understand English. English, and still more so English, allows the Japanese to reduce words to their beloved phenomenon: sounds and above all images.
But this still isn't answering the question. What is it that we logocentrist word-lovers have against corporeality, and what is that corpo-animistic thing-loving Japanese, have against the opposite side?
What is in that word-lovers have against "narcissism" which originates and rotates about a loving self-phenomena? What is it that the Japanese hate about verbal arrogance, or even self-expression, even as they prune themselves so perfectly? I have plausible answer to this, related to my recent post on Pokemon, but I have written too much, to myself. Queasy.
You know you are crazy when you think you are trying to prevent Armageddon with your blog:-)
Mollman, S. (2001). Japanese Design Sense becomes more evident in hight tech products. J@pan Inc Magazine - The J@pan Inc Newsletter, 134. Retrieved from www.japaninc.com/jin134
Labels: japan, japanese culture, Nacalian, アニミズム, 日本文化, 自然
Wednesday, October 09, 2013
Capsule Hotel: Groupist or Individualist?
The thought of Japanese salaried employees getting into the their capsules and sleeping in air-conditioned pods like larvae in a hive may give the impression of the psychology of the herd, mindless groupism. On the other hand it may be an example of social atomism (Allison, 2006), and even individualism since, in a Western country, this scene -- like that of the ubiquitous Japanese student accommodation, "one room mansions" -- might be replaced by a that of a more friendly, communal dorm. Or the capsule hotel may be an example of social estrangement and collectivism since, like the prevalence of social withdrawal (hikikomori) and social phobia (taijinkyoufusho), it may be the result of as a result of greater social dependence (amae: See Doi, 2002), a concomitant inability to leave immediate family, (Kato et al., 2012) and as therefore demonstrating the lack of a developed, independent self.
My own feeling is that neither categorisation is particularly useful and that each are mutually dependent - the self is social - (Markus & Kitayama, 1991) but that Westerners tend to use this dichotomy due to the influence of Christianity, the main text of which is a series of vignettes where the hero ignores social and follows his conscience. The possibility that "conscience" is also social is generally refuted or ignored.
Allison, A. (2006). New-Age Fetishes, Monsters, and Friends: Pokêmon Capitalism at the Millennium. Ed. Tomiko Yoda and Harry D. Harootunian. Japan after Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present. Durham & London: Duke UP, 331–57.
Doi, T. (2002). The Anatomy of Dependence. Kodansha USA.
Kato, T. A., Tateno, M., Shinfuku, N., Fujisawa, D., Teo, A. R., Sartorius, N., … Kanba, S. (2012). Does the ‘hikikomori’ syndrome of social withdrawal exist outside Japan? A preliminary international investigation. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 47(7), 1061–1075. doi:10.1007/s00127-011-0411-7
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 www.biu.ac.il/PS/docs/diesendruck/2.pdf
Mead, G. H. (1967). Mind, self, and society: From the standpoint of a social behaviorist (Vol. 1). The University of Chicago Press.
Labels: collectivism, individualism, japan, japanese culture, nihonbunka, 個人主義, 日本文化, 集団主義
Monday, September 30, 2013
The Western and Japanese Self
Westerners think of themselves as a narrative. I think therefore I am. They also think that they are universal, "homonarrans," but they are not.
The Japanese are homo-mirrans, or homo-imaginans.
The really interesting part of this difference is the fact that each culture contains a bit of the other.
The Western narrative loop can not be completed. There is no way that I can speak myself into existence without referring to my visual image. The visual image is a mere image, a covering. It is just a stepping stone that is trodden upon only so very briefly, when I explain that my narrative is not someone else's narrative: my narrative takes place in that, my face.
For example, Dawkins (2006 p361) writes "I see the human effort to understand the universe as a model-building enterprise. Each of us builds, inside our head, a model of the world in which we find ourselves." (my emphasis) This is very true, but "our head" is also part of our model, so how can the model be in part of the model? We can believe in this possibility, that a model can be inside a model, due to a quick flash of visual self imagination.
Westerners that like their face are rather naff and "Narcissistic" - like the hero of the myth, into their image.
Japanese identify with, and are, their own imaginings. But likewise they can not loop the loop. Whose imaginings are these? The required twist in their Möbius strip requires, for a brief step, their name (Pika, Pika-!). Liking ones appearance, staying thin, wearing the right gear, having hair, behaving in the right way, posing the right pose, and looking cute, is however, as important as any American's spiel. But, in Japan, liking ones name, or ones phonemic self-representations, is as naff (or as juvenile) as liking ones visual self representations in the West. Liking ones self narrative, or rather self-spiel is naff in Japan, narcissism-Japan-style.
But both cultures step, and have to step, briefly, into the other domain to maintain the illusion of their ability to self-refer.
Dawkins, R. (2006). The God Delusion. London: Bantam.
Labels: japan, japanese culture, nihonbunka, 日本文化
Ray Honing his Totemism: Pokémon
To think, totemists use "bons a penser", Levi-Strauss quipped (Those Frenchies are fond of puns and I am too) meaning "good to think" and "goods (things) to think (with)".
It is still not clear to me whether LS thought that phonemes are not "things" (bons).
His definition of "things" (bons), slips between the fingers of my mind. For the most part, the things that LS said totemist think with are real, as real as things get, such as bulls (or sitting bulls), and ant-eaters, eagles and other animal species. It is particularly animal species that totemists are thought and found to use. But not always. There are examples of peoples using manufactured things (gourds, even modern manufactured water containers). There are also examples (as found in Pokémon) of peoples using mythical/imaginary things such as dragons to denote their names, clans, tribes. And there is geographical totemism, where peoples named themselves using, and felt a familial bond, with features of the landscape. This seems prevalent in Japan, even though few would say, few seem to realise that the Japanese were geographical totemists.
LS's point seems to have been, however much he praises the noble savages, that since they use things, totemists were constrained by the morphology of the things that they were thinking with. A bull can sit. An eagle can be bald. There are various types of ant-eater. So the thinking of totemists is constrained. If a woman wanted to have two husbands, then rather than use the infinitely malleable world of phonetic signs (Polyandry) they would need to find a thing that mirrored the new category that they would, or could not, conceive. Totemists are botchers, hotch-potchers, or "bricoleurs" that use, or attempt to use, the variance in the world to convey, express and think of innovation. Compared to us modern thinkers, they are thus impaired by their inability to use the "arbitrary" - anything goes with anything in any way - sign.
Recent linguists have found that the phoneme is not entirely arbitrary. Phonemes for big things tend to be deeper more wide mouthed than phonemes for small things which are higher pitched and small mouthed. The word for "name" has a fascinating commonality amongst disparate cultures, often beginning with "N" (Even Japanese "na(mae)"). This may originate, it is argued, in some sort of nasal pointing "NNNN" to mean that which is in front of one.
Okay, let's say that the phoneme is pretty arbitrary. But what of the things-for-thinking of totemist?
The big problem for me is that it is clear, and documented in LS's books that mythical entities such as dragons were used as clan representing signs.
And so to Pokémon. I think my children are totemists.
There is a book chapter on the heroes of Japanese children, that are colour coded, generational, multi-classified, and thematic, which suggests a link between Japanese childhood thought and totemism. My son here above is memorising the types, appearance and (yes) phonetic names of Pokémon.
The Pokémon are mythical. They do not exist in the same way that an eagle exists, but they are as real as mythic dragons.
Does he think with them? I can not report and instance where he uses Pokémon monsters to classify his surroundings but he does use the categories of Pokémon to categorize other Pokémon: those that evolve, emerge from eggs, do martial arts, resemble animals. Pokémon are organised, in tribes or clades, and he takes pleasure in remembering them.
They are also highly arbitrary. The possibilities are largely, but not entirely, unrestricted.
What is the difference between organising entities according to phonemes and organising them totemistically, or Pokémon-style?
I get the feeling that there is a ('Nacalian') reversal in the phonetic vs visual domain.
Pokémon in the plural have a plethora of visal aspects, and they also speak, but when speak they generally only speak one word; their name. Their utterance of this their name. They step, 'narcissitically' for a brief instant upon their name, and return to their visual selves. Their name is (like the western visual face) the twist in their mobius strip, that allows them to think that they are looping the visual loop, and like self-views of western faces, it is unitary, and kind of naffly self loving.
I need a knew image to explain further.
Labels: japan, japanese culture, totemism, 日本文化
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Pokémon Demonstrates the Futility
My daughter May is at the age where she has got the language bug and goes around mumbling to herself, in a perpetual monologue, often based on the theme of Pokémon, a cartoon series that she watches with her elder brother.
Pokémon are pocket monsters: little creatures with large superpowers that live in the pockets of their human trainers. The most famous pictured (poorly) above is Pikachu, a cross between a mouse (that say "chu chu" in Japanese) and a lightening flash, "pika", in Japanese onomatopoeia.
The interesting thing about these monsters is that while they speak, the only thing that they say is their name. Pikachu only ever says "Pikachu," or "Pika" for short, in various tones of voice, often by means of self-encouragement or self-comfort. Pokémon are bundles of auto-affective cuteness that use language solely to remind themselves of themselves and how cute they are.
Various theorists have argued that language is useful for communication (Dessailes, 2007), and the most famous that language must be useful for cognition (Chomsky, 2002). But the truth is Pikachu.
The mental mirror that language provides when we use it, the means, is the end. Futility!
Incidentally, the nuclear bombs were called "pika don" (flash boom) by the Japanese children upon whose cities they dropped on. Perhaps even, through Pokémon, they will have peaceful, but mind-blowing retribution. Pika!
I note that Pokémon can even dangerous to Japanese children.
Radford, B., & Bartholomew, R. (2001). Pokémon contagion: photosensitive epilepsy or mass psychogenic illness?. Southern medical journal, 94(2), 197-204.
Labels: japan, japanese culture, Jaques Lacan, Nacalian, 日本文化
Friday, August 02, 2013
Radio Excercises and the Eye in the Sky
The noh theatre actor Zeami (Yusa, 1987; Zeami, 1984) claimed in the 15th century that the practice of noh theatre - which, like radio exercises, is performed as a sequence of kata or set forms/poses - enables the aficionado to see himself from the position of their audience.
The ability of Japanese to see themselves as if they have a mirror in their head (Heine, Takemoto, Moskalenko, Lasaleta, & Henrich, 2008), even in their memories (Cohen & Gunz, 2002), and also their dreams (Masuda et al, in preparation), is found displayed most strikingly in Japanese artworks which were traditionally taken from the position of an eye in the sky (E.g. Edo artwork, image bottom). If you give a Japanese school child or university student a piece of paper and pencil and ask them to draw their sports day, or a house and a stream, then they will often draw a picture from a comparatively elevated, birds eye view perspective (Masuda, Wang, Ito, & Senzaki, 2012). Where do they get that perspective from? How is it inculcated?
Your average Japanese person does not practice noh. Some do, and some practice other martial arts that also consist in a sequence of self forms. However, all Japanese are encouraged to learn how to do radio exercises. My son has started in his first summer holiday of primary school. I am practising with him, and it is trippy.
Notice that the line of sight that the NHK chooses to present the first shots of the radio exercises is once again from the that ghostly 'land of light'. Practice radio exercises, or noh or karate or taichi, and you will learn to see yourself from the eye in the sky -- the eye of the Other -- too.
Till now these fix poses or kata have generally been argued to be opposed to creativity. I think that the are on the contrary an important set in the generation of the Japanese creative mind. They are the equivalent or reading an learning sections of the classics, or sections of the Bible, elements in the Western education designed to produce a mind which can reason, equipped with an ear of the Other, which Jefferson (Dawkins, 2008, p64) calls "reason" -- "Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion" -- but is known by a variety of other names.
Bibliography
Cohen, D., & Gunz, A. (2002). As seen by the other...: perspectives on the self in the memories and emotional perceptions of Easterners and Westerners. Psychological Science, 13(1), 55–59. Retrieved from web.missouri.edu/~ajgbp7/personal/Cohen_Gunz_2002.pdf
Dawkins, R. (2008). The God Delusion. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Heine, S. J., Takemoto, T., Moskalenko, S., Lasaleta, J., & Henrich, J. (2008). Mirrors in the head: Cultural variation in objective self-awareness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(7), 879–887. Retrieved from www2.psych.ubc.ca/~heine/docs/2008Mirrors.pdf
Masuda, T., Wang, H., Ito, K., & Senzaki, S. (2012). Culture and the Mind: Implications for Art, Design, and Advertisement. Handbook of Research on International Advertising, 109.
Yusa, M. (1987). Riken no Ken. Zeami’s Theory of Acting and Theatrical Appreciation. Monumenta Nipponica, 42(3), 331–345. Retrieved from myweb.facstaff.wwu.edu/yusa/docs/riken.pdf
Zeami. (1984). On the art of the nō drama: the major treatises of Zeami ; translated by J. Thomas Rimer, Yamazaki Masakazu. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.
Labels: japan, japanese culture, Nacalian, 日本文化
Thursday, August 01, 2013
Japanese Wide Show Mock-up
1) The faces of the commentators are seen displayed during the parts of the current affairs program that are filmed on location, so that viewers can SEE the expressions, and see the feelings that are being felt. (c.f. the face, in the top right hand corner)
2) The Japanese is given subtitles so that the viewers can *see* what is being said.
On the other hand, in the West, the viewers are provided with copious amounts of canned laughter so that so that they can know when to laugh. The principle is the same - the folks at home need to be told when to laugh - but while Japanese are stimulated by visual images, Westerners are comparatively "(logo) phonocentric" (Derrida, 1998).
In some Western News shows there are also teletypes providing extra linguistic information rather than a subtitles to what the presenters are saying. The majority of Westerners do not need to see what is being spoken, but they do like to feast upon as much linguistic information as possible.
Derrida, J. (1998). Of grammatology. JHU Press.
Labels: japan, japanese culture, Jaques Lacan, Nacalian, nihonbunka, occularcentrism, theory, 日本文化
This blog represents the opinions of the author, Timothy Takemoto, and not the opinions of his employer.