Friday, September 20, 2013

Week 3: はい、チーズ! (Say Cheese!)

         Chalfen and Marui’s “Print club Photography in Japan” provides an overview of the culture of purikura since its emergence (in arcades) in the 90s to its influence and popularity up to the twentieth century. It is worth noting that some of the purikura machines that Chalfen and Marui refer to are rather outdated and many new developments have been made since the 90s.  In particular, machines that enlarge the look of eyes (doe-like effect), brighten skin complexion, and give you the illusion  of  weight loss, are perhaps what girls seek  when they take a purikura (Achieving cuteness has never been so effortless!). Nowadays, you can play games on the screen while you wait for your photo stickers to develop and some machines even dispense an omake (an extra something) such as a set of false lashes!  You can even send purikura striaght to your phone and share them on FB or anyother social networking outlets.

What I find most interesting in the article is Chalfen and Marui’s discussion on the relationship between shojo culture and purikura in relation to discourses of female agency and empowerment. As Chalfen and Marui point out, “the success story of Print Club is based on adolescents adopting these ma-chines for their own uses, and, in a very real sense, re-inventing Print Club for themselves and, in turn, driving the market in their direction”  (64-65). However,  scholars such as Sharon Kinsella seem to be critical of the emergence of shojo and its association to ideas of cuteness: “Adolescent women (shojo) provide the exclusive model for cute culture ... and have been transformed into an abstract concept and a sign for consumption in the Japanese mass-media and modern intellectual discourse” (qtd in “Print club Photography in Japan” 65). Here, Kinsella draws attention to how cute culture renders shojo or girls within the realm of the abstract—shojo are not “real” girls—invoking what Simon de Beauvoir has referred to as “the myth of woman” (See Second Sex). To some degree, Kinsella suggests that shojo contribute to their own marginal stance within society by upholding patriarchal standards of femininity. She expresses her concerns for the ways in which shojo are represented as recyclable commodities that can be bought, sold, and replaced. BUT! I wonder how patriarchal definitions of femininity can be renegotiated through cute/shojo culture in ways that could possibly empower women.

David Plotz’s “Pachinko Nation” offers less of a critical response and examination of the social and cultural implications of pachinko culture.  The article begins by narrating a “very sad story” of Koji Furukawa and his gambling addiction, evoking the reader’s sympathy. And in drawing attention to the ambivalent laws about gambling in Japan, Furukawa is rendered as a victim rather than being held responsible for his own suffering. While Plotz sheds light on the paradox of gambling in Japanese society, he simplifies this issue, which I think is far more complicated (both culturally and politically) than he suggests.  His comparisons between Japanese and American systems of gambling seem to reify, however in subtle ways, an “orientalising discourse” that suggests the backwardness of Japanese politics. He is more sensitive and attentive, though, to cross-cultural religious discourses when interrogating issues of morality and gambling.
Both articles draw attention to potential problems that emerge from games at both an individual level such as in Furukawa’s case, and at a collective or social level (that is, if you only see shojo as passive consumers of a material culture).



A few words on Erik Eickhorst’s MA dissertation.
         I finally figured out how to navigate through the school library system and found the dissertation (-_-;)  Eickhorst offers a very resourceful and informative study of game centers and otaku culture and I really appreciate the extensive research that is invested in his work. In Eickhorst’s definition of game centers (See page 10) he includes pachinko machines, but there is no mention of purikura. I found this slightly striking since Chalfen and Marui discuss the pervasiveness of purikura machines in Japan and it raises the question, for me at least, to what extent are purikura  games? I really found the section on otaku culture and its influence in evolving game culture a fascinating phenomenon. Eickhorst provides several definitions of otaku (See 66 onward), but I wonder what “otaku” means for a Japanese cultural audience because it seems to me that otaku culture is more socially acceptable or embraced and even celebrated in the West than in Japan. Popular images of otaku, in Japanese anime and manga, carries with it certain social stigmas so when Eickhorst posits that “It is not much of a stretch to say that modern Japanese culture is otaku culture” (74) I wonder how many Japanese people would actually agree with this statement and identity themselves with an otaku culture?


I have attached a picture of one of many purikuras that I took while I was in Japan. This was taken in Shibuya three years ago.
 
 

 

Monday, September 16, 2013

Week 2: A Walk Through Memory Lane


Being bombarded with books, year after year, in my studies of English literature—and having nothing to do but read in my leisure time—I had forgotten how much video games was part of my childhood. As I read the “History of Nintendo” and saw images of the NES, Game boy, N64 and Game Cube, I recall having played the classic Duck Hunt with my father, and remember sneaking to the living room with my siblings, while my parents were asleep, to play Pokemon, Banjo Kazooe and the list can go on. Playing video games was in fact our favorite pastime and we learned valuable lessons such as how to share (our controllers and games) and to take turns, but also how to fist fight over who gets the next turn. Here, I draw attention to the communal aspect of game culture in response to the reaction against “violent” video games as discussed in some of the readings this week. “The History of Videogames” offers an insightful and condensed overview of the origin of video games, its trends and evolution throughout the twentieth-century. According to this article, in 1993 congress had launched an “investigation" into video game violence” (15). The Wiki article also indicates:

Nintendo of America and Nintendo of Europe went further in that games released for Nintendo consoles could not feature nudity, sexuality, profanity (including racism, sexism or slurs), blood, graphic or domestic violence, drugs, political messages or religious symbols (with the exception of widely unpracticed religions, such as the Greek Pantheon).[59] The Japanese parent company was concerned that it may be viewed as a "Japanese Invasion" by forcing Japanese community standards on North American and European children. (wiki)

If we take the idea of “Japanese Invasion” at face value, we see orientalising discourses of “othering” at work (and the problems that are associated with it), but if we read this phrase in an ironic light, then, it reveals how notions of violence, sex, and propriety are culturally and socially nuanced and that video games are not so threatening after all, but instead reveal cultural anxieties of a particular historical moment. In other words, censorship laws reveal more about its own culture and less about a culture that it is trying to protect itself from.
Do American audiences then get the “Japanese experience” from playing PG rated or altered games? And how is the idea of “Japanese Game culture” redefined if Japanese games are culturally appropriated, in different ways, across the globe?

            To further complicate the idea of Japanese Game Culture, I draw on the work of Toshiya Ueno who explores the idea of techno-orientalism in his essay “Japanimation and Techno-Orientalism” in which he specifically explores anime, but, I think, the theories and the conclusions he draws are also applicable to Game Studies. Ueno highlights to the ways in which Japanese cultural identity is fragmented—the image of Japan is never whole. He writes:

Techno-Orientalism is a kind of mirror stage or an image machine whose effect influences Japanese as well as other people. This mirror in fact is a semi-transparent or two-way mirror. It is through this mirror stage and its cultural apparatus that Western or other people misunderstand and fail to recognize an always illusory Japanese culture, but it also is the mechanism through which Japanese misunderstand themselves. Different from the Lacanian mirror stage, a complete solution for this structure of disavowal, through which a "real" Japan could be properly recognized, is impossible.

So then to what extent is the idea of Japanese Game Culture an imaginary construct reinforced by both the western fascination of Japan as a highly technological state and the Japanese embracing these stereotypes? And in a capitalist market, can we even attribute game culture to a specific national identity?  I am very fascinated with idea of techno-orientalism and I wonder in what ways Japanese video games contribute, resist, and renegotiate discursive practices of identity and culture from both an insider and outsider point of view of Japan.

Finally, to add to the list of cultural stereotypes from last class, I would say that the Japanese have a very “unique” sense of humor as evident in the interview in “Iwata Asks” that is filled with “(laughs)”.

Additional Sources

Monday, September 9, 2013

Week 1: Videogames and Cultural Stereotypes: From Geisha and Samurai to the Land of Tomorrow


Ruth Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword provides an interesting and insightful glimpse into Japanese culture through a discussion of “on,” “giri,” and the hierarchal formation of Japanese society. The most entertaining (and humorous) topic that is discussed, I think, is the Japanese love for sleep (See 180). Benedict describes sleep as “one of the most accomplished art of the Japanese” (180). To be honest, I nod in approval to this claim, as I recall witnessing tired salary men and women sleeping—standing—in a crowded train as they head to work. I guess, as a Japanese, I still need to perfect my skills in the art of sleep and being able to “rela[x] a in any position, and under circumstance  [of] sheer impossibilities” (180). All jokes aside, considering the time that The Chrysanthemum and the Sword was written, I find Benedict's writing style modest and humble as she tries rationalize and make sense of a culture and its people that is foreign to her, albeit from the comfort of her own homeland. She is conscientious of her role as the cultural outsider and draws attention to the limitations and implications of her project as well as its potentialities. (See “Assignment Japan”). Ian Buruma, writes in the Forward, “this book could not possibly offend a Japanese reader” (xii) and I partially agree with this statement. On the one hand, I can appreciate Benedict's attempt to remain politically neutral through her tone/language such as when she is comparing Japanese values to American ones (ie. Japanese notions of aggression (173), and suicide (166)) without ever privileging one culture over the other. While on the other hand, she does point out cultural differences in a way so that “Japanese-ness” is understood specifically in Western terms.  Moreover, according to Benedict, Japan is represented as a singular nation and she fails to capture the nuance of Japanese values and traditions. Also, as mentioned in the article by Sonia Ryang, Benedict’s study of Japanese culture and history is anything but complete as it omits Japan’s “role as the colonial empire” (9) which is incredibly significant!!!
 In relation to Ryang’s article, she provides a useful overview of the reception of The Chrysanthemum and the Sword in Japan and I find the critical debates that were spurred by Japanese scholars quite fascinating. Personally, I tend to agree with the Kawashima school (See section on Post War Reactions).

 
A word (or two) on the video game articles

The excerpt from Newman that was assigned was not very interesting, but useful in providing  a framework to begin interrogating (video) game culture in Japan. Like Manga Studies, (which is my area of research and interest), I feel that the study of games must also endure a process of justification in order for it to be taken with “serious, scholarly attention” (but is it really necessary?! Let us end the resistance to videogames and other forms of popular media!”) The excerpt from Prasol’s Modern Japan sheds light on the Japanese as re-inventors of things  rather than inventors of things. (Refer to 3 cycle model). Ig Noble Prize list is also amusing to read. [note to self: The significance of Adaptations]

 

Videogames and Cultural Stereotypes: From Geisha and Samurai to the Land of Tomorrow*

It has been a half a century since the publication of The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, and since then Japan as undergone significant changes: from democratization, to urbanization, to becoming a technocratic state. While cultural stereotypes of the geisha and samurai, for example,  are still commonly used, reproduced and disseminated in both Japan and  the West, in an age of global and rapid technological advancement, new cultural stereotypes emerge, rendering the Far East as exotic, but in different ways than before (Japan is not a land of robots and electronic toilets). Drawing on the work of Bell hooks, Sara Ahmed in Strange Encounters explores the notion of the exotic.  Ahmed posits

Consumer culture involves the production of the stranger as a commodity fetish through representations of difference [. . .] hooks suggests that, ‘Within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the full dish that is mainstream white culture’ (qtd in 1992: 21). In other words, ethnicity becomes constructed as ‘the exotic’ through an analogy with food: black people are spicy and different. The white consuming subject is invited to eat the other: to take it in, digest it, and shit out the waste. The exotic and strange foods are incorporated into the bodies of Western consumers as that which is different but assimilable. This incorporation allows ‘difference’ to be associated with something that simply livens up the ordinary or mainstream diet. Of course, some differences cannot be assimilated…”  (117)

 If we substitute hooks’ idea of food with videogames, then, I wonder to what extent cultural difference is assimilated through Japanese videogames. (Before you discovered that Nintendo, for example, was a Japanese product what did you “know” of Japan?”).  

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[I realise the transition to the next paragraph is not as strong as it could be... But I would like to explore ideas of nation, identity, and game culture. . .anyway **\(^o^)/**]

 

Given Japan’s history, as a powerful imperial nation suddenly subjugated by a 20th century war, it is not surprising that scholars of Japanese cultural studies have identified an inherent paradox in Japanese culture. Critics such as Jennifer Robertson, Nishihara Daisuke  and Richard Minear, are but three of those interested in examining “Japanese orientalism” which they see as different from the general definition of orientalism used in the West subsequent to Edward Said’s definition of that term given the fact that Japan can be positioned simultaneously as both a coloniser and a “colonised” nation. In the words of Robertson, Japanese orientalism deviates from Said’s orientalist thinking because Said insists upon the ways in which  the “presentation of the ‘Other’ (the non-West) [is] absolutely different from the West” (98).  Such revisionary orientalist argues that orientalism is not homogenous, but nuanced in different cultures. For example, Japan blurs the cultural boundaries between the ‘Empire’ and ‘subaltern’ because its history encompasses both. Minear argues that Japan demonstrates “Orientalist attitudes even in the absence of  a [long-standing] domination” (515), suggesting the country’s inferiority complex as a driving force to be more like the West even as it struggles to be different from it. This idea reflects Nishihara’s proposition that “[t]here is no doubt that the country (Japan) is geographically situated in what is known as the Orient, but in a political sense it has tried to  become a “Western” nation” (244). In effect, Japan’s identity is threefold, and built upon tiers of  contradictory dispositions made manifest in its conflicted identity as ‘Asian’ and ‘Western’ while trying to maintain its ‘Japanese-ness’.  (Okabe  9-10) 

Has Japan achieved equal standing as the West through its technological developments? Or has Japan found alternative ways of resurrecting and promoting its colonial enterprise by selling game consoles?  In what ways have (video) games redefined a Japanese cultural identity and how does it, if at all, affect discourses of nation and identity?  Of course, over the course of this semester I hope to explore some of these questions since they are rather broad and generic, but nonetheless, important, when conducting a cross-cultural examination of Japan’s relationship with the West.
 
*Reference to the Simpsons episode. lol.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Ahmed, Sara. Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality. London: Routledge,

2000. Print.

Benedict, Ruth. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture. Boston:

Mariner Books, 1946. Print.

Miner, Richard H. “Orientalism and the Study of Japan.” Journal of Asian Studies. 39. 3. (1980).

     JSTOR.Web. 12 June. 2012. Print.

Nishihara, Daisuke. “Said, Orientalism, and Japan.” Journal of Comparative Poetics. 25 (2005):

     241-253. JSTOR. Web. 12 June. 2012.

Okabe, Tsugumi. “From Sherlock Holmes to “Heisei” Holmes: Counter Orientalism and Post

      Modern Parody in Aoyama Gosho’s Detective Conan Manga Series” (2012) Collection of Brock University, St. Catharines.

Robertson, Jennifer. “East Asian Bouquet: Ethnicity and Gender in the Wartime Japanese Revue   

    Theater.” Internationalizing Cultural Studies an Anthology. Eds. Ackbar Abbas and John  

    Nguyet Erni. 117-31. Print.