It’s been a while since I’ve posted on this site. I opened it up when I started writing my “tenure” book. Which is now–cross your fingers–finished, and on fairly stable legs in the sea of the publishing process. This winter, I turned attention full-tilt to my book, and to day-job type writing, and put this blog on ice. I’m happily shocked, though, to see that there has been a lot of traffic lately, especially to the Captain Beefheart and the “parakeet of justice” posts.
Besides finishing the book, the parallel world that spun off this site, one further reason for shutting down–killing off this character, so to speak–is that I moved, so the small postage stamp of Atwater I used to write about is no longer my home. I moved just across the ‘5, to Silver Lake, in the hills, plausibly close to public transportation, and near cafés that stay open late at night–just like ‘real’ cities. !.
In any case, I”m re-starting a new blog, called Sengo, which I will post details on soon. Those of you who speak Japanese or know me from my day job know that this word means postwar (戦後) as well as, in the spoken vernacular, a thousand words (千語). I, along with some collaborators, will be posting 1000-word essays and translations–adorned by a single picture, worth 1000 words, naturally–mostly on Japanese pop culture, or things that connect current events in Japanese pop culture to more broad/deep/blurred swaths of history. I wanted to do something different than writing for purely scholarly audiences, and provide an alternative to the limited playbook of pieces from big news outlets on wacky/kooky Japan. This image is an example of such a group of 1000 words, yet to be written…
This is a feeling I often have when teaching my “modernology” class–which is about how people in Japan have developed ways to understand and get to being modern. Modern in a myriad of ways–from sitting on street-corners and drawing people in kimonos and putting them in bar graphs compared to people wearing “western” clothing, to measuring the GNP, to listening to insects to hear if they still sound like they “did” in 11th c. imperial manuals of poetry, to tracking who practices inter-racial international marriage with whom.
The “5 Ws and an H” stuff is hard to come by, and I can understand why, given the focus on stereotype that drives what seem to be the same 5 stories about Japan, written in the rapidly dwindling number of papers that have foreign bureaus.
Students–I mean undergrads here–are often remarkably stubborn about releasing their a priori judgements. Many if not most of which come from ideas derived from wartime and Occupation-era military anthropology–all those “shame” versus “guilt” studies, the mandatory kissing in movies to show democracy, and on and on. So this statement, in a book I’ve been reading about the Free Software and Open Source software movements, rang true, recommended by my friend J. This is from Chris Kelty’s Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software.
It would be interesting to apply this to, say, cell-phone novels, or video-game music like Katamari Fortissimo Damacy, whose plot is driven by a breakway incident of binge-drinking…
… it is in Free Software and its history that the is-
sues raised—from intellectual property and piracy to online po-
litical advocacy and “social” software—were first figured out and confronted. Free Software’s roots stretch back to the 1970s and crisscross the histories of the personal computer and the Internet, the peaks and troughs of the information-technology and software industries, the transformation of intellectual property law, the innovation of organizations and “virtual” collaboration, and the rise of networked social movements. Free Software does not explain why these various changes have occurred, but rather how individuals and groups are responding: by creating new things, new practices, and new forms of life. It is these practices and forms of life—not the software itself—that are most significant, and they have in turn served as templates that others can use and transform:
practices of sharing source code, conceptualizing openness, writing copyright (and copyleft) licenses, coordinating collaboration, and proselytizing for all of the above. There are explanations aplenty for why things are the way they are: it’s globalization, it’s the network society, it’s an ideology of transparency, it’s the virtualization of work, it’s the new flat earth, it’s Empire. We are drowning in the why, both popular and scholarly, but starving for the how.
I stumbled onto this very fun installation on the way to a very serious concert at the Redcat by Yasunao Tone, an electronic musician, art writer and all-around charming fellow. Part of the charm is that although it is supposed to be kind of miniature–extracting 1 feature out of an idealized California house, in the manner of the postwar Case Study houses–it takes 2 attendants to get it going, kind of palanquin-like.
It’s kind of like a lazy-person’s seesaw. Or a 2-lazy-people’s seesaw, really, as you really need another bum on the other hammock to make the weights work. The attendants remove some sandbag weights, and depending on your respective balances, they move them around, to make it roughly balanced. Then you can push-me and pull-you, tho it is a straight up and down motion, not the arc of a seesaw. Still, it made me laugh like crazy and was immensely fun, especially in such a ’serious’ space.
The installation, by the architecture/space firm Atelier Bow-wow, has 2 other components, which are even more silly/wonderful. One is an area that is like a porch w/stadium seating, filled with some barbecues. The other is a large reclining pit, with pillows, from which you watch (a video projection of) a sunset.
The ABW gets its name, I think, because of its interest in “pet architecture,” which is to say, the built equivalent of pocket parks, “charming, small and humorous,” like pets, as one of their books says.
From Ishida Rokurô's depth psychology analysis of Ishikawa Takuboku
A book of lit-crit from Japan in the 1970s- is not complete without a chart of either a baffling and cryptic variety, or a soothingly grid-like abstraction or a nenpyô, or lengthy chronology featuring a year-by-year account that resolves such questions as “what color was Soseki’s dog, purchased in 1911?” or “when did Hayashi Fumiko leave her sixth elementary school?” Meet Exhibit A, of the former variety–the flower of sublimation.
Sure, the Lacanians had their equations and formulae, but left much to the imagination. This illustration breaks down the psychic topography of ISHIKAWA Takuboku, one of Japan’s most noted early 20th century poets. He is typically known for his socialist fervor, living passionately and dying young like many Meiji-era poets, of tuberculosis; also, for writing many tanka, or short poems (commonly, if sort of wrongly, known in English as haiku). But Ishida, a psychoanalyst medical doctor, gives insight to what drove all of Takuboku’s (we are allowed to call him by his first name because he is beloved) artistic endeavours–not politics, but doomed love. Here is how it blossoms.
The upshot of depth psychology, as Ishida practices it, is you use literary materials and texts to gather a portrait of an artist’s psyche. Character and persona and narrator and author end up being inter-changeable, and life and work inter-mingle. Basically, the volumetric space that is someone’s inner mind is the source of all meaning, and that person rarely if ever grasps his or her own contents or traumas, though that 3-D space compels him/her to act in a consistent manner all through life.
Above ground is conscioueness; the fertilizer-looking underground part is the unconscious. Each petal represents a result–an aesthetic product, or character trait–of sublimation, routed through the “complex,” as indicated in the text box at the bottom. These are comprised of (from the top, clockwise) unrequited love, religious philosophy, Socialism, longing, furusato/hometown, and new-style education. And the “complex,” in turn breaks down into individual, society, nature, and child-spirited-ness.
When I say,
I believe that a new morning will come,
I do not lie, but ….
Is there anything more poignant than a theme restaurant gone to ruin? Two theme restaurants gone to ruin?… Here, the Restaurant Chateau. This is a shot from a blog I have been reading, entirely devoted to photography of the ruin–more precisely, walking tours of ruins documented in photograph.
One of my students, Y, had told me about the photo “boom” last year, but I had no idea that the walking tour was following in the hallowed footsteps of the “soundscape” tour, and any of a number of other walking tours very popular in Japan. There is, these days, even a blog called “Haikyo walker,” modeled on the popular walk-and-buy guides like Tokyo Walker, which give you tons of info about showings, new stuff to buy, date spots, and on and on, for about 450 yen–about 5 bucks at the sad exchange rate of today (90 to the dollar). This, in turn, has sprouted Yokohama Walker, Kansai Walker, Chiba Walker.
And when you get to Tochigi Walker, there is no magazine, only this, the ruin of a “highclass soapland.” (Soapland is a classy word for what used to be called a “Turk,” or “Turkish bath.” A high-end happy-ending type massage parlor.)
In the 1980’s, tourism was government-endorsed and built on the urban planning idea of “machi-tzukuri,” or town-making. After the bubble burst, tourism became also taken up in very DIY ways that were still linked to older practices–like the pilgrimage and the literary walk. Most of these photos are placed in the countryside, places that have been “hollowed out,” or made Wasilla-like as they are unlocalized at the same time as they are linked to multiple scales of other places, some of which are very far away. (I don’t like the sneering potshot tone of this video, the typical provinciality of the meteropole guiding with very restricted vision. But it makes some good connections…).
It’s a fascinating look, also, at how a country sees itself in decline (ok, a few people), after the bubble bursts. A former empire, no less. And what they choose to do with those ruins.
A new wave of surveillance has been directed at homeless persons near the Shibuya station area, perhaps more known for the sheer volume of people who move through the crossings of the youth-culture-and-touts district. Lately police have stepped up the evictions. The backstory, according to Irregular Asylum, links to privatization and development of one of the few public spots in the vicinity, Miyashita Park. The park was just bought by Nike.
In the past, homeless persons were seen by police officers as “criminals-to-be” and thus commonly subjected to fingerprinting and photographs. However, facing growing resistance against such treatment as voiced by homeless individuals and various NGOs, as well as public criticism for rights violations, they had not recently been visibly engaged in fingerprinting or photographing homeless individuals, even in the Shibuya area. The fact that district police have returned to past discriminatory tactics in recent weeks indicates a revisiting to former hard-line security measures that “profile” homeless individuals as potential criminals. Moreover, it is absurd to insist that this incident is unrelated to increasing evictions and property removals practiced against homeless persons in the Shibuya area over the past year.
In October of 2007, a citizen’s group was pulling strings for evictions of persons from under National Highway 246 by Shibuya station, in December the Tokyu Corporation was responsible for evictions carried out by subway guards that resulted in one death, and in July of this year persons were forcibly removed from the Tokyu Department Store by overly-eager G8 Summit guards. In addition, prior to this month’s incident, enhanced tactical use of evictions as a security measure within Shibuya subway stations has been noticeable, despite previous calm in subway corridors. Regardless, as it is a matter of survival, homeless persons in these areas continue to defend themselves from expulsion from Shibuya station.
Then, in the midst of all this, it was discovered this past May that the sports apparel and accessories maker, Nike Corporation, is backing a large-scale renovation of Miyashita Park. Nike’s plan is to invest millions into building a skateboard park and open café and buy the naming rights to the public space so as to re-name it Nike Park. Should this plan be realized, over 30 homeless persons from the park would be left without a place to stay and Nojiren would no longer be able to hold the winter and summer events it has thrown in Miyashita Park for over 10 years. Furthermore, the park itself – a public space – would be transformed into a corporate space meaning that Shibuya residents and visitors would no longer have a place to sit back, relax, snack or chat outdoors and NGOs would no longer be able to use the open area for gatherings or demonstrations. The agreement with Nike was passed without ever being put up for a vote in the Shibuya ward council, and to protest the injustice of the top-down manner of making official arrangements, Nojiren formed “The Coalition to Protect Miyashita Park from Becoming Nike Park” in June. In July, we hosted a protest before Nike headquarters in time with demonstrations at the Hokkaido G8 Summit. In August we held a summer festival at the park aiming to see that it wouldn’t be out last. In September and October we held gatherings and demonstrations. At this point, there is no question that both Nike and Shibuya Ward can sense that they are cornered.
Continuing evictions of homeless persons in the Shibuya regions are clearly being coordinated with the new addition of the Fukutoshin subway line in June of this year and extensive plans for development centering on Shibuya as the Toyoko line will be brought underground. The current harassment of homeless persons by Shibuya officers is nothing other than another way of applying pressure to persons “in the way” of city plans.
Sharon and I wrote about the park in 2005, when it was the site of “rave demos,” demos that used reggae systems to bounce sounds and DJ sets against the concrete/screen set of Shibuya spaces to rail against sending Japanese troops and money to support the US war in Iraq. You can see the multimedia version of our piece here.
In preparation for the start of the jury system–and jury duty–in Japan in 2009, the Ministry of Justice has been doing a little grass-roots campaigning. Given that Japan is a country where every one-horse town, product and movement has a character symbol, and even the “weak” (緩い) and the lame characters are embraced, the ministry thought it a good idea to secure the cooperation of its very own leader, the Minister of Justice, in spreading the word. Here is Hatayama Kunio strutting the Saiban-inko (サイバンインコ) costume, cutting edge-wear in participatory democracy. “Saiban” is trial, and “saiban-in” is a jury member. “Inko” is a parakeet:
In keeping with the pleasure principal of popular culture, I would like to suggest a few new pairings of characters with the jobs we have found them to cozy into, warm and fuzzy-like.
Vice-President Dick Cheney as King of Ghidorah
Sporting two legs, three heads, and bat-wings, this monster is known for its ability to withstand nearly anything, due to armored scales. The 3 heads allow for easy multi-tasking, as each emits a different shriek. Known to be easily mind-controlled, his wing lightning, developed in-house and field tested in desert conditions (see below), is especially useful for ‘enhanced interrogation.’
You’re not really big in Japan until Godzilla stomps you. All the smog and particulate of this week’s fires has put me in a rather kaijû state of mind.
The 1954 version is one of my all-time favorites, a one-size-fits-all pirate crate of postwar Japan. From the opening eyeball (from a later film in the series, actually), it’s looking right at you, all bloodshot and googly, saying “well, now what?” A procession of puzzled answers emerges. It’s got curmudgeonly old men who grumble about losing tradition and issue dire warnings about human hubris, angry housewives (the chief instigators of the real-life peace movement, after the Bikini Atoll bombings and the Lucky Dragon incident, in which fishermen were nuked by ash fallout from US testing) demanding their right to know, mustachio’d scientists giving testimony with gadgets and footprint measurer, and nosy reporters from the mainland snooping around southern islands to report back to mainland news organizations. Also, Emiko, an ingénue with a heart of gold who is the daughter of an élite scientist, as well as the mad crush of a certain mad scientist with an eyepatch, though she will later run off with a lowly garbage-man, on her own romp wreaking postwar havoc, with class-crossing true love as her means of destruction. The scientist with a murky R&D background of wartime research, Serizawa, invents a device, the oxygen destroyer. This gadget is reputed to be the last hope for saving Japan from the wrath of the radioactive one. At the fatal hour on the high seas, poised to let loose with the destroyer in scuba gear, a broken-hearted Serizawa dives underwater and commits mad-scientist harakiri–he cuts his lifeline and sacrifices himself for the good even greater than true love, doing in the monster and saving the country’s skin.
The last (and only) roar you hear after the BOC song is one sample of the musique concrète style of Ikufube Akira’s amazing tape score for the film.
An afternoon of science with gleaming glasses and suited-up scientists.
Top / Scientist profiles / Cafe-Sci forum
This is a screen shot from an art-education project, Café Scifi-tique, organized in Tokyo by famous sci-fi critics, who also happen to be degreed in science (the person who sent it to me is a very well-known writer who was a pharmacist in a past life.). It’s a kind of feminist retort to the maid cafés, where geeky guys are waited on by cute girls in frilly dress. Patrick Macias investigates how dreams come true here. (It is quite amazing how well the double entendres are enunciated on NHK’s “English conversation TV…”) Maid cafés have now half-morphed to LA, tho the fetishism is of a slightly different order–more about the commodity, and less about the poured-in love of the server…
In Café Scifi-tique, science geekiness is something to be flaunted, and the whole roster is devoted to making science entertaining and accessible. The September 29 salon, for example, featured a talk by a manga artist, whose most recent work, Science Boy (Rikei-kun), is about a literary girl fated to fall for science guys. Kind of shôjo manga-ish in plot, but less doormat-y. A list of very cute profiles is attached, listing the “doctors’” favorite gadgets (gas chromatograph), their favorite cult scientist movies (The Man Who Stole The Sun), their specialties, etc.
This little narrative said it all to me: succinct, hopeful, yet with a soupçon of pending doom. Eric Muller is a law prof who writes a really great blog on civil rights and research on racial classification in the US. It was his recent book, American Inquisition, that clarified to me that there were (was?) not one, the War Relocation Authority, but several separate agencies in charge of interning Japanese Americans during WW2. Anyway, remember the Elizabeth Kübler-Ross cycle of grief, from the ’70s? It is supposed to describe the steps you go through in dealing with a terminal illness, or a big change. I remember reading her big book as a kid, because we had that kind of thing laying around the house. Also, because I have a fatal curiosity for “step”-psychology and anything involving a bubble test, preferably in the context of perfume and cosmetics (“if so, you are a floral, if not, a woodsy…”).
Posted by thesecretingredientiswater 
Posted by thesecretingredientiswater 
Posted by thesecretingredientiswater 
