I don’t know what it is with Japan and rock, at least it’s safe to say that there’s an interesting relation between the two. Back to the cultural literacy, perhaps? Not so much this time, as I’ve found something more worthy of note: yes this time we’ll regress to reality in order to get a sense of the source from which anime inherits its xenophilia.
The music video here is rather interesting, as you can see – it’s Daybreak’s Bell by L’Arc-en-Ciel, Gundam 00’s OP.
If you don’t want to sit through the thing then skim until you notice the white girl, yes, the white girl.
Maybe rock, as now a global thing, has some strange affinity towards white chicks, I don’t know – or it could be me, forging these incorrect notions out of thin air [hahaha: you there, laugh]. Where am I getting with all this? Well, what I’m saying is that there is this tendency for Japan in all the awkwardness of its Eastern history to try and emulate the West in all the Orientalist discourse it produced and perhaps propagates. The East emulates the West? Perhaps, perhaps not; but that is where Japan’s awkward position comes in. From the Far East, historically, now ascended to superpowerdom it, ironically, produces the machines by which the West proper perpetuates the very notion of “Western.” Instinctly, I would not say that Japan is Western, geographically mostly, although the prime meridian is the only imaginary line that dictates the 2 dimensional maps we are so familiar with.
Well the first thing I notice is that none of them have black hair – probably the (excuse my biology) dominant allele for hair color in Asia (insofar as hair doesn’t follow the rule of polygenic inheritance [amongst other confusing things] – it probably does, hence the minority of Japanese with naturally brown hair). I googled, I kid you not, “do Japanese people have naturally brown hair?” and came up with this article, written in 1996, however, nevertheless it is a good, short read. One key quote:
“Behind the fashion, there is I think a deep-rooted inferiority complex toward Westerners, which may make people think that black hair is uncool,” a reader wrote in a letter to the editor of the Asahi Shimbun, a major national newspaper. “I hope that they value their identity as Japanese and Asians.” (Kristof, Nicholas D., 1996: The New York Times)
Ah, hit the jackpot. Inferiority complex? In a comparative sense, that rings perhaps true in the case of Beck, as our elusive, Caucasian guitarist, Eddie, was exoticized and transformed into what we may call God [of guitar] of that specific microcosm. Similarly, Harold Sakushi, the author of the manga said that, according to Wiki, Ryûsuke is based on Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, a center icon of [if not the icon] British rock.
So Japan, and anime, one of its mediums for autoethnography, has that so very alleged tendency to always try and reverse the “spectaclization” of the West: while the East is viewed as the exotic and fantastic thing, Japan assumes the position of Orientalist, thereby representing the Westerner as the Other. It’s not exactly Reverse-Orientalism, but just switching the authorial stances behind the discourse.
Going back to Daybreak’s Bell music video, this last image can pretty much confirm, metaphorically (blatantly) at that, the “utopian” position of Japan: the white girl watches the Rising Sun – the West watches the East. In any case, I suppose sunrises are a big part of Japanese culture to retain and upkeep a sense of nationalistic identity and autonomy amongst “Western” superpowers. This reminds me of the infamous, triple-crossing Kirihara Taizou: (1) employ rock to cater to the imagined West [like giving a man his favorite full-course meal], (2) deploy Japanese metaphors to declare the inherent Japaneseness of the thing with which to cater, (3) set the general, real audience to your homeland thereby distilling its culture and cultural effects, unaffected by the absence of anything American due to language barriers etc. (go fansubs), this music video can be taken as “For Us, By Us.” It’s only when a meddling foreigner happens to take an interest into something extranational that this whole thing gets messed up.
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WOOT HOT JAP GUYS!
Something similar is happening between Asian teens and Japan. A sort of awesomeness is associated with Japan because it’s where all the anime comes from (or in the gamers’ case, games).
blissmo: yeah.
ritchan: Asian teens? “Asian teens where?” is probably more significant, as any generalized “American,” regardless of ethnicity is not really “Asian” “at heart.”
It’s quite ironic. Japan is among Asia’s richest cultures, yet they turn against this culture of theirs in order to embrace the West. We admire their ability to animate, their technological creativity, but it’s very sad that they themselves can’t see the beauty of their own nation and race.
However, wouldn’t you think this adoption of Western culture is some sort of cultural defense mechanism? Japan’s past, especially in the Second World War, was barbaric, uncouth, and inhumane. They were, after all, part of the Axis forces that have terrorized the world.
Don’t you think it’s some sort of cultural defense mechanism? In effacing their own past and adopting that of the ‘heroes,’ they also slowly erase the blame from their own selves. Take it as some sort of anti-colonial colonial mentality. They are against their own past as colonizers, so they adopt another colonizer’s identity.
We Filipinos are also known for our colonial mentality, but ours is inextricably linked with our own history.
Good post. :)
Mike: I think they can see the beauty of their own race, and this is the problem with me talking about them, for how am I ever to really understand what does on in their heads? However, this is not such much talking about Japan per se as it is the West, as Said put it:
So talking about “the Japanese” this way holds true and valid insofar as Japan’s hegemonic cultural productions are self-orientalizing: that is to say that they insert themselves into the global hegemony of the West, thus they strive to be perceived as Western or better than the West (Occidental), yet inherently and inextricably Japanese, hence the strange and complex paradox.
Axis of Evil, eh? Didn’t they conduct some sort of gruesome scientific experiments? The Nazis as well? Perhaps people could argue that the atomic bombs were much worse…I think every country has their own dark times, but the point is that the colonial underdogs of the world were [are?] turned into scapegoats because they didn’t have the influential power to say otherwise – an ant yelling at an elephant.
That is pretty interesting, how Japan was a colonizer, didn’t they colonize Korea, or was that so long ago as to not really count as being in the “colonial era,” the scramble for Africa, etc.? I think that does contribute to the double consciousness of the modern Japanese.
The “cultural defense mechanism” is twofold: (1) you’re saying that it’s a way of historical atonement? (2) But more importantly, it’s saying that it’s a product of certain, global socio-economic conditions. Perhaps another interesting example of this is the show Code Lyoko, and if you’ve ever seen the show it features a Japanese girl, Yumi, living in France (the show’s made by a French company), and this one episode she brings in her ancestral samurai armor. Coincidentally, the armor gets possessed by a computer virus (that’s the premise of the show) and tries to kill everything. I wonder what that says about France’s global position relative to Japan’s and its history? But I digress…anyway I was trying to say that with influence, power and economy comes a certain degree of cultural hegemony that is entwined with their cultural productions, especially one their mass medias. But the hegemony is, again, twofold: (1) the producers of culture are under a global, perhaps ideological hegemony insofar as they strive to emulate the cultural processes of a greater nation – it is self-subjecting, all the more submissive (2) The subjects of culture are always blindly entwined within this cultural power.
This certainly isn’t a law of culture as there are probably exceptions, like I’ve never seen Finnish mass media. This is why anime is a particularly intriguing art form and cultural medium.
You’re DAMN RIGHT I’m saying it’s a way of historical atonement! :)
I can agree with you on the second point. The Japanese needed to adapt, and they did so with American culture. But this action effaced their own culture, and indeed, made the more submissive to another cultural power. Hence the anti-colonial (self) colonial (American) mentality. :)
LOL @ blissmo
interesting and ironic. While the East wants to “emulate” the West, you have the West wanting to “emulate” the East.
People who love anime and dramas and all that similar stuffs tend to love Japan. And don’t forget the “emos”. I’ve heard many people say that emo hair has originated in the East > the side bangs, the messy hair… maybe even the dyed black of their hair? I don’t know.
:P Then again, I can’t complain. My hair’s been bleached blonde… but wait, I’m not Japanes-
Hoshi: All these cross-cultural things get kind of confusing in accordance to how many times it’s “pinged”. It’s like, you can never see anything “truthfully”, only through the constructed lens of something else. Thus, over time, with all the global influence, there are so many lenses and mirrors in place we’ve entered a mirror house that has a tendency to make us second guess what we’re really trying to look at.
I didn’t know about the “emo” thing, although I’m very skeptical of that notion, that side bands and messy hair originated in the East.