Neutralizing Sushi
Interesting article out in The Japan Times today, by writer Roger Pulvers. He notes, as many of us have many times on Japundit, the growing popularity of manga, anime, sushi and karaoke which he proposes to refer to by the simplified acronym MASK. He starts by pointing out how even government officials like Koizumi are well aware of the global appeal of these cultural forms. Then, he breaks out his basic thesis.
As proud as many Japanese are of their newly discovered universal culture, my belief is that the MASK bandwagon is, as taken up overseas, ethnically neutral. This culture represents a kind of pop vocabulary — in pictures, design, cuisine and technology — that has been borrowed, assimilated and localized by the foreign world. As such, its propagation is a great example of cultural marketing, and that is why politicians, who are first and foremost market followers, are attracted to them.
Basically, Pulvers is saying that the whole fascination with all things MASK (see how handy that reference is?) isn’t really an obsession with all things Japanese. Once sushi goes overseas, for example, it is neutralized. I mean, most sushi places here in NYC aren’t even made by Japanese (not that New Yorkers can acutally tell the difference unless, as it’s been noted, they have a Japanese or half-Japanese girlfriend).
I grew up in Los Angeles in the 1950s, and once a week my parents took me and my brother to one of several Chinese restaurants — all of them run by Chinese people and with menus written in Chinese and English. We had at the time, however, no interest whatsoever in China, nor did we ever find anything out about the people working at the restaurants or their culture. Eating Chinese food was an essential American ritual. Even my old kosher cookbook has a recipe for sweet-and-sour chicken (sorry, no pork). The mass phenomenon of Chinese food in America was totally divorced from anything to do with Chinese cultural influence, and I suspect the same is true today.
It’s an interesting theory, and on the face of it, resembles numerous discussions we’ve had here on Japundit; an obsession with anime and manga doesn’t necessarily mean that someone is interested in the “true” Japan (whatever that is). But I don’t agree. Yes, I get the analogy he is making with Chinese food, but I don’t think it’s a clean parallel; where in the 1950s, for example, were the Barnes and Nobles making more and more shelf space for the Chinese equivalent of manga books? Where were the ASK parts of the Chinese MASK?
I don’t have the resources to set up a full sociological study to test out my feelings, but my sense is that by eating sushi, singing karaoke, watching anime and reading manga (and practicing martial arts, and absorbing so-called Asian inspired home decor), people (and here is the important part) think they are adding a dash of Asian spice to their lives. That’s the whole point of buying bamboo printed bed-spreads to add feng shui into your life and eating in a restaurant with red Chinese paper lanterns (that one might make the mistake of thinking are Japanese). The cultural association with Japan (and the rest of Asia) that sushi and celadon colored plates make is important to the purchaser. For you Japanophiles (whoops, bad word) out there, you’ve probably had the experience a million times where someone says to you; “I love Japanese food! I love sushi!” And then you have to explain that Japanese food is much more than just sushi.
You would need to spend considerable time here in the States watching shopping trends and merchandising decisions and listening to party gossip to see this first hand. (The popularity of yoga and its ability to impart “Eastern” healing to the Western body is another example of how perception does go a long way to contributing to a trend).
Here is perhaps an even better analogy. Hip-hop is a cultural trend which originated in one country (the US) and has now gone global. I regularly take hip-hop class with a pretty well-known instructor; he was there when the movement started and is loads of fun to talk to about how it has spread around the world. Recently, he returned from a teaching trip to Siberia (the guy goes everywhere, yes, even Japan). He often laments to me that hip-hop is no longer a form of expression limited to Black youth and in many ways he feels it has been neutralized; but the perception among kids who love hip hop is that they are associating themselves with the origins of the movement, ie. Black and Latino kids in the Bronx. Is Siberian hip-hop the same as it is in da Bronx? Uh, nyet. But the Siberian kids still identify with it and feel as though they are expressing something which originated north of Manhattan. Does this mean that hip hop has changed and been appropriated? Absolutely. But neutralized? I think that’s in the eye of the beholder.
I go back to a point I made last week; I still hope that this interest in perceived things Japanese does lead more and more people to discover aspects of the culture which are more traditional and deeply rooted in history. Perhaps this is an idealist’s hope, but I’m sticking with it.
One final note: Pulvers makes this incredibly interesting concluding note that I will expand on in a later post; the Japanese government is trying hard to capitlize on the world’s interest in MASK. He points out that the last time in history the Japanese government tried to capitlize on a similar cultural outpouring, things didn’t end so well.
The Meiji Era (1868-1912) and the decade succeeding it saw a grand outpouring of Japanese culture, with the unique Japanese sense of design, color and form — in the woodblock print, in the kimono and in every variety of craft — having immense influence on the arts and cultures of the East and West. People around the world at that time knew where that culture originated, and they held its creators in the highest regard. It wasn’t until Japanese militarists manipulated and later destroyed their contemporary indigenous culture that the world, as a result, lost its enthusiasm for its rich gifts.
Yikes.
Poor Mari….she’s my favorite. If I ever become a j-pop singer and part of the...
Shes definitely at the top of my hot list.
perfeckt 10:10
MASK: that’s an interesting term, I wonder if it will catch on, it’s certainly is convenient, in a convenient kind of way, or is it just a one column wonder coined by that writer? Whatever, I like it!
I don’t know, though, about all of this, though. Eating French food and wearing French fashions did not turn Americans into lovers of France or French people, did it? Same with Italian movies (remember Fellini and Cinema Paradiso?) and pasta and pizza and chianti and Sophia Loren. Same goes for Swedish furniture and smorgasbords, German models or Czech supermodels, or Mexican food or anything else.
I wonder if you are taking all of this way too seriously? Japan is just a country. Foreigners are never going to really get to know it unless they go live there, and really live there, for a long long time. And even then, they are still not going to get it, or understand it, or even like it. MASK are just products, commercialized and easily digested: food is food, everyone loves food; manga is just comics, everyone loves comics; anime is just cartoons, everone loves cartoons; and karaoke, hell, Americans just sing Beatles songs and Hotel California, that doesn’t bring them any closer to Japan.
Just like using a German-made car doesn’t bring you any closer to Germany.
Until Japan’s undergoes major political reform and major textbook changes, and huge mindset transformations, it’s not going to catch on with the rest of the world. Why would anyone want it to? Japan is wonderful just the way it is, why change things?
I think that maybe you might be reading way too much into that Japan Times article. Those who love Japan and the Japanese know why they do so. And those who don’t really like Japan and its group mindset are never going to like Japan.
You sound like you are a saleswoman who wants to sell Japan to the rest of the world! Why, in God’s name, why?
Japan: let it be.
I want to say, “you think too much,” but I hate it when people say that, so I won’t say it here. You don’t think too much. You are thinking very well and your posts are interesting.
But what is it you are selling, or want to sell? A Japan that is embraced as a paradise by the rest of the world, like Lake Woebegone, where eveyone is perfect and wonderful and has the best food and manga around? It sounds very Americannish, the way you thinking.
Relax, I say. No, I shouldn’t say that either. Maybe you should start your own blog devoted to these ideas you are advocating… it would make an interesting read! Really.
April 10th, 2006 at 8:31 pmAfter reading his article at the Japan Times website, I looked up his profile and some details about him. He seems to understand Japan very well.
Roger Pulvers: is an author, playwright and theatre director, was born in 1944. Educated at UCLA undergrad and Harvard grad school [M.A. in Russian Studies], he came to Japan in 1967. He settled in Kyoto, teaching Russian and Polish until 1972 when he moved to Australia to teach Japanese language and literature at the Australian National University in Canberra.
In 1976, he became an Australian citizen.
In 1982, after acting as assistant director on the film “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence”, Roger returned to Japan to write and direct. He has published 18 books in Japanese and English and is currently a professor at the Kyoto University of Art and Design.
That seems to explain alot about his recent oped piece in the Times, which was labeled COUNTERPOINT, for some editorial reason.
What was his commentary in counterpoint to? Did someone else write an earlier oped piece that said Japan is so cool and cool is taking over the world? Where is that article?
April 10th, 2006 at 8:41 pmphoto
April 10th, 2006 at 8:44 pmProvocative thesis but I am with you on this one, Marie.
Yes, the MASK gang are all from Japan, but we can start by tossing out karaoke. It’s just a machine, and probably does nothing to pique anyone’s interest in Japan.
Manga and anime are cultural exports, though, and cultural exports are usually accompanied by interest in the culture. They are not so neutralized that people no longer resalize they are from Japan.
Food, though, is not a cultural export in the same way. But, still, the Chinese food comparison is weak even if we just apply it to sushi without the MAK. Chinese food in America, along with Mexican food, falls into the gruel for the masses category. This is grossly unfair, particularly given the rich heritage of Chinese cuisine, but it’s an unfortunate fact. Chinese food in the West is cheap stuff that comes in boxes from people who pronounce things funny. Hardly the kind of thing to inspire cultural awe.
Sushi on the other hand, has replaced French cuisine in snob-appeal. High prices, fawning reverence and massive ignorance make for an intimidating dining venture. Of course people want to know more about Japanese ultrarefined culture – remember how a few words of French used to convey cultural superiority.
In the years I have been here, I have seen a huge change in interest from the people back home.
April 10th, 2006 at 8:50 pmYou sound like you are a saleswoman who wants to sell Japan to the rest of the world! Why, in God’s name, why?
Not sure I follow your logic or your conclusions here. Where on earth is the sales pitch in what I wrote?
I want to say, “you think too much,” but I hate it when people say that, so I won’t say it here.
You wouldn’t be the first person to say that to me!
April 10th, 2006 at 9:17 pmIn the years I have been here, I have seen a huge change in interest from the people back home.
That’s my sense too. There are also just so many more foreigners traveling too Japan, and so much more people who enthusiastically want to go. I don’t have numbers, but I’m pretty sure a JTB report of some kind would bear this out.
April 10th, 2006 at 9:19 pmIt’s true, Japan is the new France. Young college grads now make a beeline for Tokyo and Kyoto, the way they used to go to Paris or Berlin. But so what? Has anything really changed?
Many people are heading to Beijing and Shanghai, too. And Prague and Rome.
I think that what is really happening is that Japan has become a part of the modern world, finally, after a long long time. And that’s cool!
But after everything is finally said and done: so what? Nothing much has changed anywhere. War in Iraq, genocide in Rwanda, Afghan car bombings, immigration woes on US border, terrorists in our midsts.
I think I need my hot sake right now!
April 10th, 2006 at 9:31 pmI think I need my hot sake right now.
I did. Perfect!
Now, since you opened up this interesting discussion about Roger Pulvers’ take on Japan, he seems to really understand Japan well and would be a good source of commentary anywhere, not only the Japan Times but the New York Times, too.
It turns out, a Google search reveals, that:
Since coming to Japan in 1967, Pulvers has been super-active, from writing fiction to stage directing. Fluent in Japanese and a connoisseur of Japanese food, he was once the object of intense study and scrutiny by a fellow customer in a sushi restaurant who was dumbfounded by Mr. Pulvers’s expert choice of sushi. From such experiences he gave students a most witty talk about what makes Japanese culture, what it is and what the future holds for it.
Japanese Culture Is Like an Oyako Donburi.
Basically the bowl is filled with steamed white rice (Yamato culture represented by Kyoto and Nara) with an overlay of some of the basic features of the Continental (Chinese) culture, adapted, scrutinized and purified. The half-cooked egg on it represents sui, the “chic” Edo culture, all to be savored together like the oyako-donburi (chicken/eggs/over rice).
Five Components of Japanese Culture
Mr. Pulvers maintains that there are altogether five cultures in Japan, including the well recognized Yamato and Edo cultures: Okinawan culture with its unique sounds and colors, where cherry-blossoms don’t have the special significance they do on the mainland; Kyushu culture, heavily influenced by Korea; and Tohoku culture, which is the most “natural”, indigenous form. Of the last, he finds Miyazawa Kenji and Sakaguchi Ango, its native sons, most attractive.
After the “Bubble”
The 1980’s and 1990’s were the period when people were light-hearted (“run-run,” pronounced “roon-roon,” and “feeling” were the buzz words). “Mindfulness” and “seriousness” were shunned, and everyone had easy access to anything and everything. The “Bubble” having burst, the Japanese people need to rid themselves of the residues and the stains of the period. Instead of Fukoku Kyohei (Wealthy Nation, Strong Military), the slogan of the Meiji Era, the goal should now be “Fukoku Kyogei,” a nation of wealth and ARTS. The audience was deeply impressed by the guest speaker’s urging that they should look to the future with hope and renewed appreciation of their Japanese culture.
Prof. Pulvers Website
April 10th, 2006 at 9:47 pmI think it all boils down to an individual’s feeling regarding what they experience while being exposed to various aspects of a culture. If it’s a pure novelty to them, chances are they won’t gain much true interest in a culture from reading a publication, or eating food that originated there. Others may think more deeply about it may realize that publications, forms of entertainment and such hint at something deeper and may reflect certain aspects of the culture that created it, and they may become interested in learning more. I don’t think it’s so much what happens when something from one culture gets exposure in another and is somewhat “neutralized”, as what a person might take away from experiencing it that’s important. One person might read manga and think “ooh, look at the pretty pictures”, another might read it and discover a few things about a culture they never knew before.
April 10th, 2006 at 10:51 pmWell put, FifthDream. One man’s manga is another’s man’s Pretty Pictures. One man’s sushi is another man’s raw fish. One man’s karaoke is another man’s screaming microphone. One man’s anime is another man’s Cartoon Network.
What we all need is enlightenment. Where? Where?
April 10th, 2006 at 11:30 pmI think Mr. Pulvers is making waaay too broad a generalization here. I agree that karaoke and supermarket sushi don’t have a lot of Japanese cultural significance, but his argument fails when it comes to manga and anime.
One of the attractions of manga is its Japanese-ness, and most manga companies now preserve that as much as possible. That is less true of the anime on TV, I because the company that imports most of it, Funimation, deliberately strips out any Japanese content. But there is a large base of anime and manga consumers who are constantly seeking a more authentic experience. I am astonished at the number of people who learn Japanese so they can read original manga and watch undubbed anime.
For those people, anime and manga are indeed a portal to Japan. Even my 11 year old daughter, a big manga fan, has studied kana and kanji and knows a few Japanese words; I think she’ll eventually learn the language. She is an avid consumer of pop culture, visiting the San-X website regularly to see the latest antics of Tarepanda and Kogepan. She loves sushi and Pocky but also is curious about other Japanese foods, and we visit a Japanese supermarket near us to get noodles and an pan. And from reading manga, she picks up a lot of background information about Japan—what the neighborhoods and living rooms look like, what the schools are like, what people really eat. What she’s learning about is not the “culture” of the Meiji era or kimono painting but rather the culture of everyday life and attitudes, the sort of thing you pick up by osmosis by living in a place. Of course, it’s filtered through the lens of fiction, but I still think it’s as good a picture as, say, a Japanese person might get of American life by watching our TV shows. And I think it would be very natural for this familiarity to lead to a stronger interest in Japanese history and literature as she gets older.
April 11th, 2006 at 12:36 amWell said, Brigid. There was a discussion on Japundit last month about whether or not anime and manga are a legitimate jumping-off point for Japanese culture studies, and you just gave one more argument for it. Anime, manga, J-pop/rock definitely qualify as massive cultural magnets for the kiddies (me too!), whereas karaoke might have been seen as uniquely Japanese in the 60’s, but since then it really has gotten neutralized just like the man says.
As to food, I wonder how many of us writing in this thread realize the Chinese food we eat in the States isn’t really Chinese at all but almost entirely Chinese-American? (Same goes for Mexican – TexMex.) Lets face it, food isn’t going to make you want to drop your life and move to Asia unless you’ve been entertaining the idea of becoming a chef. We eat it because we like variety and it makes us feel like we’re participating in something exotic without having to go anywhere. Looks like MASK kinda fails as far as being an all-encompassing acronym – parts of it hit but he fails on the others.
April 11th, 2006 at 7:38 amwill you be my girlfriend
April 11th, 2006 at 10:46 pm[...] Japundit does a nice job of dissecting this. Writer Marie Mockett says that people who read manga, eat sushi, or buy things that look Asian believe they are incorporating something Asian into their lives. They aren’t taking away its Japanese-ness, they are celebrating it, even if it loses something in the translation. She has a hilarious anecdote about Siberian teenagers learning hip-hop dancing to make her point: Is Siberian hip-hop the same as it is in da Bronx? Uh, nyet. But the Siberian kids still identify with it and feel as though they are expressing something which originated north of Manhattan. Does this mean that hip hop has changed and been appropriated? Absolutely. But neutralized? I think that’s in the eye of the beholder. [...]
April 12th, 2006 at 12:55 am[...] The article also touches on the whole is-manga-an-accurate-representation-of-Japan debate. Skeptics here say Japan’s pursuit of cute is a sign of an infantile mentality and worry that Japanese culture _ historically praised for exquisite understatement as sparse rock gardens and ukiyoe woodblock prints _ may be headed toward doom. [...]
June 16th, 2006 at 11:19 pm