Doshiyo?

In class, I had my students read Chin Music Press’ excellent Kûhaku and other stories from Japan (2004)  paired up with watching “Hanging Garden” or Kûchû Teien (2005). Where Kûhaku gives a broad spectrum of personal narratives concerning Japan, from both native and gaijin perspectives, Kûchû Teien is kind of a Japanese “FUBU” (For Us, By Us) movie that contains a strong social commentary.

At the same time, Kûhaku is a fantastic little book.  The binding is a thick, grey canvas, embossed with color and thick, black lettering.  The inner leaves are crimson, and the pages are at least 40# weight.  The text of the book is a bit charcoal, on paper that has more of a yellowish tinge.  There are color pages, especially in the poem/graphical journey for which the book is named.  Kûhaku leaves the reader feeling uneasy, as if something is out of place.  It is akin to that jet-lagged feeling you get after step off the plane at KIX, expecting it to be early in the morning, but the sun is just getting ready to set.  Some essays deal with the Marxist superstructure/dialectic tension of a Confucian society.  Others flat out vomit up honne when you are least expecting it.  Especially engaging is David Cady’s Canned Coffee, where he chronicles the experiences he had whilst enjoying…er…imbibing various types of canned coffee.  Equally valuable are the “Floating Feeling” series; three essays that explore the plight of various Japanese housewives.  Also, Roland Kelts’ Oyaji Gari piece is most helpful, especially when dealing with the concept of きれる (kireru): losing it when you can’t take the pressure any longer.

Reading Kûhaku in conjunction with “Hanging Garden” is especially suitable for understanding Eriko’s (the main character’s) plight.  Eriko lives in a fantasy world she has created for herself because she finds her own lived experiences to be too painful to accept as “reality.”  She has schemed to build the “perfect” family where no one has any secrets, true honne, if you will, but ends up being completely false and “obsessed” with the lie she lives.  Her husband cheats on her with a variety of women.  Her daughter is trying to experiment with boys.  Her son is almost a hikikômori, or shut-in, who lives in the simulation of reality he has created for himself on his macbook.  Her mother is a bit of a free-spirit, and old baba who speaks her mind and is not afraid to make waves.  Each member of the family has some major societal disfunction; but by the end, the family realizes its pretenses and resolves their problems in a tepid way.  The movie is just claustrophobic, with an almost-happy ending; a good example of a superflat movie that deals with the postmodern social issues that some families face.  There is hope at the end, but built on what?  Trust?  Faith?  Faithfulness?  Freedom?  More like old-fashioned Confucian resolve and some phenomenological twists.  The mother is reborn after she leaves her womb of her false reality, and the family is there for her to re-engage.  But at what cost?

Some have compared it to American Beauty, and I think this is a fair assessment.  It is important to examine postmodern Japan through the lens Japanese themselves are using to understand their own context.  Instead of jumping to conclusions and saying, “All Japanese are X,” it is better to say, “These types of problems exist in society, and here is how some Japanese understand them.”  As westerners looking in, we always run the danger of fetishizing or synecdochizing Japan based on slivers of stories that make their ways to our shores.

Disturbing, endearing, and enchanting, I cannot recommend these works enough.

I’ve been investing my non-work cycles in preparing for my Japanese Popular Culture class at UMSL. We are currently discussing Roland Kelts’ Japanamerica. I know, I know…the below is still not Japanese popular culture, but I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. He Qi!  At least it’s contemporary Asian culture!

In light of the Novemberwetter, I posted this on another blog in an attempt to win a copy of a cool book, Oh! A Mystery of Mono No Aware.  While it didn’t win, I’ll probably pick up a copy from Chin Music Press, since their books are all around amazing (I am requiring my students to read Kuhaku for class next semester.)  After rereading, I kind of liked it.  Here’s what I wrote:

Today, a fall day. I dropped a pile of printouts into the rainy street after stepping in my dog’s recycled food on the way out of my house. I brushed off my raincoat. The paper, the ink, the oils from passing cars past, the dog’s lingering presence, and my recently deceased cat’s hair all merged in one wet spot on the street. My work, my dog, my dead cat, myself, and nature, all pooled in one place. I stood there and looked upward and the old oaken fingers framing the leaded sky above. The leaves, now the color of a spring forsythia, fell from the trees all around me as thick drops splatted onto my hair. Each cold drop delivered a surprise on my scalp.

Haven’t had much time to post lately; been focused on some off-line activities. I am writing an article for an issue of Asianetwork Journal on the ways we can see Confucian values at work in Shonen anime, especially Naruto and Bleach. I’ve presented on this in the past, but haven’t put it down into an article to date. This is fun! Have to say, Donald Keene, Wm. Theodore De Bary, and Tsunoda Ryusaku did some rockstar work. “Sources of Japanese Tradition” has been a great resource to get examples of Neo-Confucian writings.

I will be focusing on the 5 relationships (ruler-ruled, father-son, husband-wife, elder-younger, friend-friend,) filial piety, benevolence (Li and Ren), and loyalty.  These are key values to be found in Shonen anime.  Who says postmodern Japan is out of touch with its roots?  Check back for details, I’ll say more when the article gets released.

Poignant and explicatory as ever, Roland Kelts’ new article at 3AM magazine called “Soft Power, Hard Truths: Japan’s Music-makers in America” demonstrates how cool J-Pop music does not necessarily need the validation of American audiences to be considered great in and of its own self.  Historically there has been a reason for this need for validation, outside of popularity within the US or the West.

This reminded me of something.  Longtime Japan antropologist Joy Hendry noted that historically, much of the reason newer and more avant-garde Japanese artists had to seek validation external to their own culture was in many ways because of the rigid iemoto system:

It has been described as ‘feudal’ and artistically inhibiting, and an abundance of new forms of art and artistic cooperation have been tried out, influenced by many different countries…and many innovative Japanese artists have had to make their names abroad before they could be accepted in Japan.  These include Seiji Ozawa, film-maker Akira Kurosawa, architect Kisho Kurokawa and designer Issey Miyake, to say nothing John Lennon’s Wife, the mischevious Yoko Ono.  Like Ono, the artist Yayoi Kusama traveled to New York in the early 1960’s, wherewhe made a name for herself that later became known in Europe as well.  Now she lives in Japan, but she has setup her studio in a mental hospital.  Other Japanese artists respected abroad, such as the photorapher Nobuyoshi Araki, have experienced considerable disapproval in Japan (Hendry, Joy. Understanding Japanese Society. London: Routledge Curzon, 2003. 190)

Perhaps as the iemoto system means less to non-traditional, non-elite arts and consumers, Japan’s cool, new artists will begin a new journey of a priori self-validation?  Just a reflection.