drowning in the why, starving for the how

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.

adventures in japanese literature–the flower of sublimation

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 ….

from Sad Toys

ymo discommunicates on Soul Train

I’m still on something of a YMO tear. Here they are in a 1980 shoot of Soul Train, showing and telling one of my favorite Japanese words, discommunication. It’s not miscommunication, which often results in wounded egos and trade frictions. The ‘dis’ is not the same ‘dis’ of dis-respect, it just means that whatever came out of your mouth or pen or vocoder completely bypasses where it’s supposed to hit. The utterance goes off into outer space, and sender and receiver both go their separate ways. One example I like is what Faulkner said, in a 1955 visit sponsored by the State Department, aka his anti-Communist tour: talking to his hosts was like two people running at top speed on opposite sides of a plate glass window. You get that feeling, more or less, in this clip.

Here Don Cornelius leads in to the q-and-a by admitting to no notion of geography. I’m not sure where I would look to find YMO on a map, myself, given their penchant for city songs (T-O-K-Y-O), as well as chinoiserie (Tong Poo) and more chinoiserie with goofy breathy French dubbing (La femme chinoise). But I think his point was that YMO seemed like they were from really far away, and that if he had at least read the Encyclopedia Britannica memo, he might have had a better take on the mystical whatever of their five-piece combo form.

DC actually gives a really good example of techno-orientalism in this exchange. Throwing up his hands (metaphorically) in bemusement at the discommunication, he horses around with drummer Takahashi Yukihiro–a famous glam rocker who used to be in a Yoko Ono parody band that turned real, called the Sadistic Mika Band. After the band intros, he asks Takahashi to explain “Einstein’s theory of relativity.” This is 2 years after the Walkman debuted, and the portrait of Japanese man-on-the-street as the next-door neighbor of rocket science is well on its way.

I have to say that I found YMO’s plant in the audience, the guy designed to break the fourth wall between the stage and the dance floor (“Japanese gentlemen please stand up!”), to be a bit odd. A guy in a 3-piece grey flannel-ish suit does not seem to help their own purported cause much—the de-mystification of exoticism (yellow magic, fetishism), and its postwar Occupation stereotypes.

The customizing of lyrics, in the Archie Bell song they perform, “Tighten Up,” is kind of great, though–the narration is provided by a pretty famous Japanese radio guy, Kobayashi “Snakeman” (in homage to “Wolfman” Jack) Katsuya. The plant gets so into the actual show, as the band performs, that he keeps dancing and forgets his lines, which is also kind of cool, so I guess the whole image does get a bit unhinged. The keyboardist, Aki’s, buoyant hopping is pretty great, too.

archaic YMO c. 1978

Some interesting interview footage with the three + members of YMO (Yellow Magic Orchestra). The venue is the studio in which Solid State Survivor, the second album, was put together.

I say “+” because usually they have “fourth man,” the synth programmer MATSUTAKE Hideki on deck, but I’m not sure how many people are in the shadows here, in and among the gadgets.

Around 1:10 is a funny sequence where SAKAMOTO Ryûichi shows-and-tells how hard it is for a human to manipulate the piano keys fast enough to get the tempo he wants (it’s in Japanese, but you can see/hear clearly what is going on by watching the demo).

ruin(ed) tourism in Japan

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.

the melancholy of the tennis boy–more facts only a ‘Japanologist’ could love

Continuing with last week’s Murakami Ryû obsession, I came across something you don’t see often enough with US authors–cocktails named after their works! Something to strive for with the next great American novel. The conceit here is that Murakami’s late night TV blab-show, “Ryû’s Bar,” generated the drinks. Above, we have the Almost Transparent Blue.

Fair enough, very drinky sounding. Let’s see what’s in it: 15 ml eau de vie de framboise, 1 t of green mint, 60 ml of champagne. Seems a bit classy for all those orgy scenes, but maybe Ryû is just a cooler customer than I, and lord knows blue is not a naturally-occurring food color. (Here I’m not getting bent out of shape about orgies, but referring to the clichéd, un-humanish style of Murakami’s prose with the ‘unnatural label. And let’s not even ask about the draft version of this drink, shall we, as I mentioned here.)

What’s next? Well, cutting to the chase, a gin drink, the “melancholy of the Tennis Boy.” I guess the tennis boy is an old-school rummy. Also, this is the cougar drink of choice, say the jodhpurs below, when shaken, not stirred. Why not help him out by setting him up with some drinky stripes. His other ingredients include 1 t of green mint (liqueur, I am beginning to surmise), 10 ml of Pernod, 60 ml of soda.

And lastly–skipping, sadly over such drinky marvels as the “69″ and the “War on the Other Side of the Ocean,” we will truly know when we have bought the fascist farm when we all drink three squares of this, the “Love and Illusion in a Time of Fascism.” Mind you, this is a two-volume novel about survivalist high tech operators in the Arctic Circle in the time of millennial hunter and gatherers, that reads like the dry parts of the Economist. No psychology whatsoevah.

In case you are wondering, after the apocalypse, we will be drinking single malt Laphroaig Scotch and dark beer combos, 30 and 45 ml, respectively.