In July of 2005, when I was living in New Brunswick, NJ, finishing up my studies at Rutgers University, the apartment shared by my friend Ted and his then-wife Janice (they have since divorced for unrelated reasons) in neighboring town Highland Park was raided by a SWAT team of the FBI and New Jersey Joint Terrorism Taskforce, which took a wide variety of their property including any computers or related material, as well as their BBQ. Ted himself was never charged with a crime, and in fact was not even being investigated or targeted, but Janice had been targeted for her animal rights protest activities, which naturally included a lot of relatively harmless shouting at people who did not want to be shouted at, and in places where they did not want outsiders to enter. The actual charges against Janice were, in fact, the real offenses of trespassing and criminal mischief (i.e. spray painting graffiti on the fence of an executive of a company responsible for animal testing), but the police response to these minor offences was grotesquely out of proportion.
Category: Ranting
Ranting
Surprise! you are now a part of the “Metabolic Syndrome Market”
Thomas Jefferson famously said, “The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” As cliche as it’s become, the quote still rings very true to me as an avid newspaper and online news consumer.
Even today, it is very easy for those following the news to get caught up in the story of the day and completely miss the big picture. Part of the reason for this is that a news story is quite often the end result of months and months of researching, campaigning, planning, cost-benefit analyzing, focus grouping, intra-group wrangling, or any combination of the above. Therefore, when the average reader sees an announcement, whether it’s for a new hamburger at Wendy’s or the Barack Obama Speech About Race, we are forced to accept the basic premise and set of facts presented, and prevented by our own ignorance as outsiders, and the immediacy of reading information on the Internet, from seeing different parts of the story. The only possible response from the consumer is a sort of tit-for-tat reaction to the new information.
With that in mind, I want to talk about “Metabolic syndrome,” a set of symptoms, including overweight and high blood pressure, that puts one at risk of “lifestyle diseases” such as diabetes. In many cases it is indistinguishable from obesity (and in modern Japanese the terms are used somewhat interchangeably), but it is apparently useful as a medical definition.
The term became especially popular in Japan in 2007, as popular TV shows, infomercials, newspapers, and even the government played up the disease as a growing danger for Japanese people as they live increasingly sedentary lifestyles and consume ever-greater quantities of greasy Western snacks.
The English-language news media has noticed this phenomenon. The Japan Times, a local Japanese English-language newspaper aimed at the expat population, notes:
These days, not a single day goes by, it seems, without there being a fitness-club flier, a beverage ad or a new recipe that contains some mention of metabo, short for “metabolic syndrome.”
In contrast to the massive hype over the increasing problem of metabolic syndrome, the introduction of “specified medical examinations” at the beginning of this month has received much less fanfare. Under this system, all insured persons aged 40-74 will be required to undergo a yearly health check up, followed up by mandatory “guidance” if they are diagnosed with certain conditions. Metabolic syndrome is perhaps the most controversial, as people diagnosed with the condition may have to go through “active guidance” if they are particularly fat.
Coinciding with the introduction of this program is a series of article in the Nikkei Shimbun by a major corporate research group (I think Nomura) titled “the Emerging Metabolic Syndrome Market.” The series is ongoing, but some of its main points can be summed up as follows:
1) The specified examination system will result in thousands, if not millions, of people being officially diagnosed with “metabolic” syndrome.
2) The current medical establishment does not have the capacity to handle all these new “patients” so the mandatory follow-up care will be left in the hands of outsourcers.
3) The program, part of a Koizumi-era medical reform plan (also featuring increased premiums and patient contributions), is intended to make people healthier, which will reduce Japan’s total medical bill. However, actual cost savings will probably take at least 25 years to emerge, and in the short term the government will be dishing out massive largess to whoever can fill this current legally-mandated demand.
The Japan Development Bank has estimated that this metabolic syndrome market will grow to 280 billion yen, a “chance for medical institutions facing harsh business conditions [due to a drop in government payments in the national insurance scheme] to improve their revenue.” 45% of the 9.45 million targets of the system are expected to be judged as metabolic cases or in danger of becoming so, resulting in extra medical expenditures of 73-141 billion yen per year.
This specified exam system has been in the planning stages for years. In the meantime, the media has fanned popular worry over an obesity epidemic, couched in the convenient, one-word slogan “metabo.” And now doctors, or their counterparts in third-party examination centers, have the correct mindset and the legal authority to start diagnosing the problem and mandating treatment. The media, over the past two years or so, has featured the problem of metabolic syndrome in perhaps dozens of creative segments, ranging from features on anti-metabolic syndrome products, to informative explanations of the waist size/internal organ fat conditions for the diagnosis, to wackier efforts by Health Ministry officials to document their efforts to lose weight.
While the term metabolic syndrome is not new and is not a Japanese invention, the intense media campaign has injected the word “metabo” as synonymous with obesity in the Japanese language, with the added twist of hipness (new, trendy words are always a topic of small talk in Japan) and the specificity that comes with “metabolic syndrome” being the name of an actual disease rather than a mere physical attribute.
Without this propaganda campaign and the re-definition of the word obesity, it is unlikely that a vibrant market for anti-metabolic syndrome products would develop as effectively. But taken together, public awareness of the issue is so high that a diagnosis of metabolic syndrome will make much more sense to people and may make them more receptive to attempts to influence their behavior in a healthier direction.
I see two ways to view this major awareness campaign to alert everyday Japanese to the dangers of obesity – either Japan’s medical establishment has come up with an ingenious method for preventive care that will ensure that the life expectancy for Japanese people extends well into the 90s, or government, industry, and the media are conspiring once again to manufacture demand to solve a non-existent problem.
True, it seems like there is a real obesity problem here and a comprehensive plan focused on preventive care (i.e., fighting unhealthy habits will help prevent more serious ailments such as diabetes and heart disease) is a great idea. On the other hand, a massive, mandatory treatment program might be overdoing it, especially if it is taxpayer funded. The system does sound like it might be effective in addressing a real problem, to the extent that it encourages healthy behavior, and could lead to better quality of life for a lot of people. And as with the intention of many Koizumi-era reforms, the creation of new markets through smart regulation may be just what Japan needs to enliven its economy and, through the health benefits, help keep its working population on the job for the extra years that will be required in an aging society.
But my more cynical side tells me that the medical industry may not have Japan’s best interests at heart. If in fact, the expenses are not justified (and hundreds of millions of dollars in extra health burden with no promised overall benefits for a generation seems a little fishy to me) then the government could merely be entrapping its people into a handout scheme for the medical and health product industries.
Only 3% of Japan’s population is considered obese by body mass index standards, compared to ten times that ratio in the US. The figure has risen significantly for Japan over the past few decades, no doubt a result of the often mentioned higher living standards and Westernized diets. But as any prolonged contact with Japanese people will tell you, the demand for health supplements, beauty products, spa treatments, exercise machines, and all manner of health-related products is enormous. I wouldn’t be surprised if the market scale rivaled the US.
However, metabolic syndrome is a substantial redefinition of obesity (not that that is necessarily a bad thing — it seems to correspond much more closely to health problems than BMI, at least from a comparison of Wikipedia articles). Even if people are not fat in the traditional sense, they are much more likely to have the required body measurements for metabolic syndrome. And sure enough, media fanfare over this syndrome dovetails nicely with the ever-growing numbers of products offered to help fight it. And as any quick look at the Japanese mass media will tell you, there is no shortage of such products (today on NHK I saw a full-on infomercial for boxer briefs that force men to take larger strides when they walk, which will help them burn more calories during the day).
From my own observation of the Japanese user-generated media (which consists of a few favored blogs, a 2ch news aggregator, and the diary posting of my mixi friends), the reaction to the metabolic syndrome hype has been quite shallow, with perhaps zero discussion of this upcoming mandatory treatment system (until now, since it came into effect). Indeed, according to a survey translated at What Japan Thinks, almost two thirds of people are unaware that the specified examination system even exists. That, I think, is understandable since the coverage of this issue has tended to be in the form of corporate press releases quoted verbatim, statistics from medical establishment publications on the growing problem.
Honestly, I am no medical expert, and I do not intend to attempt a comprehensive assessment of the relative benefits of mandatory health exams for the middle aged, or of the real dangers of metabolic syndrome. But personally, I have been disappointed in myself for not giving this issue much thought until I ran across that series of articles in the Nikkei. Like many people, probably 75% of the reading I do in a given day consists of news articles, the paper newspaper, and blog posts. They are all quite entertaining to read and keep me informed of what’s going on in the world on a day to day basis, but the net effect of reading superficial day to day coverage is that I end up being completely in the dark about what sort of plans are being hatched behind the scenes.
The Japanese press has asked some of the right questions, and for someone more engaged the information is out there. A Yomiuri Shimbun report from last year cites experts who wonder why the waist size requirements are slimmer than those of other countries (a detail that can have massive implications on how many are singled out for mandatory “guidance” and whether that will affect people who are actually healthy), but in the end the hype has drowned out skepticism and a “metabolic syndrome market” is already fast being built without the knowledge of the vast majority of people. Residents of Japan may be getting fleeced in the deal in terms of increased insurance costs and dubious products intended to solve a problem that for many won’t really exist.
Fun Fact – Sazae-san is a better indicator of Japanese stock performance than the US
In my new job I deal a lot with the stock market. Here is one fun fact I learned at work:
Sazae-san is a better indicator of Japanese stock performance than the US
Sazae-san (episodic story of a quirky but happy Japanese family, sort of like the Simpsons but more like Leave it to Beaver in the execution) has been the top-rated animated TV show in Japan for almost 40 years. A Daiwa Institute of Research study showed that there is a 0.86 correlation coefficient between Sazae-san viewership and TOPIX movements. This is even higher than the correlation between TOPIX and the NYSE composite index, even though the US markets are supposed to be one of the main drivers of Tokyo trading.
The explanation for this phenomenon is that people tend to go out on Sundays when the stock market is booming and people have money to spend and stay home to watch Sazae-san when it’s slumping and everyone is broke. Platforms like Spreadex, which offer trading and financial services, might analyze such trends to better understand market behavior as noted in the Spreadex Review.
Now, just because there is a correlation, that doesn’t mean that you should break into Video Research (the Japanese ratings house) on Sunday night to plan your Monday morning trades. At any rate, if you want to read this theory in detail it is available in paperback.
Gang fight in Ayase
Tonight I had the privilege to witness my first major police incident around my home station Ayase, an area somewhat notorious for its gang activity, general slumminess, and proximity to Tokyo Detention Center, where the majority of Japan’s high-profile and death row inmates are held.
The incident tonight occurred as I was returning from a trip in search of imported food (the trip was successful and I’ll be having my highly authentic Xmas dinner (hummus) tomorrow). Just outside the station, Mrs. Adamu and I noticed a convoy of firefighters and police standing at the ready outside the local KFC. Around them a circle of rubberneckers had formed, but we weren’t initially sure what they were witnessing at first. Upon closer inspection, it hit us – the police were sort of referreeing a fight between what was either two yakuza members or one yakuza and one unlucky drunk civilian.
When we arrived on the scene, there were two men – one, a late-30s chimpira in a dragon-decaled letterman jacket, was stomping around screaming at the row of police, while another, a drunk, small man, was being held back by other yakuza in plain clothes. At some point before we showed up, the two had gotten into a scuffle. The scene was very confusing because the police were doing nothing to intervene save for standing and watching. After a while, the situation became clear – the drunk and the dragon-jacket guy had gotten into a fight, and some other yakuza were holding the smaller man back to keep the fight from escalating. The dragon-jacket guy was shrieking “don’t you fucking touch me” to the cops, who seemed only happy to reply. After about 10 minutes, dragon-jacket calmed down and walked away with his wife at his side. The drunken smaller man was similarly allowed to walk away with the men who had been keeping him away from dragon-jacket. The situation apparently ended without arrest (surprising considering the considerable public disturbance and mobilization of public law enforcement manpower) Let me repeat that about 10 firefighters and about half as many police did nothing to stand in the way of the fight as it played out (though when we showed up no blows were drawn and it consisted more of dragon-jacket shouting epithets at everyone).
I am no expert on law enforcement here, but through my experience with Aum Shinrikyo (reading books and seeing movies) I am aware that the police are basically not supposed to touch you unless they are ready to take you away on suspicion of a crime. They might be able to get away with pushing average citizens around, but anti-social groups like the yakuza and Aum know their rights and can basically mouth off to police as long as the cops have no actual proof of a crime and there is someone there to record the proceedings (a younger trainee on the scene tonight seemed to be taking video on his camera-phone).
The scene served as a reminder of one of the main reasons the streets of Ayase are peppered with petty criminals – ineffectual police. I have noticed young (non-tattooed) thugs mouthing off to unsuspecting convenience store customers and seen more traditional gangster types threatening people who failed to stay out of their walking trajectory. The strangest incident occurred one night when I was walking with Mrs. Adamu to check out the restaurants in the area. A man on a bicycle careened very awkwardly toward us and then crashed into the nearby bushes. The too-convenient path of his fall convinced us that he was attempting to score in an atariya (fake accident) scheme. This behavior thrives due to the hands-off police stance that I witnessed tonight. Perhaps a less intrusive police presence is what allows for the peaceful Japan that most foreign residents are used to, but areas such as this one the increased gang presence certainly dent the image of Japan as a safe country and personally make me worry what powers the police actually have.
In America, it would have been a far different story. Leave aside the fact that both sides would likely face assault charges in an incident that warranted the amount of manpower I saw tonight. The most significant difference is that anyone mouthing off to the police would be on his or her face in handcuffs immediately and no complaints would be filed. The police essentially are granted the power to immobilize people they deem a disturbance. For better or worse, even gangsters in the US know they are playing with fire if they decide to talk disrespectfully to the police (and pacing around, as the dragon-jacket guy was doing, would certainly get you shot).
Of course, it may be (as it so often is even on COPS) that the police heard what happened and concluded it was too minor to be worth the paperwork. And as usual I will leave grand conclusions of the two cultures aside and hopefully let my 10 minutes of voyeurism stand as a casual witness to Japan’s uneasy relationship with its easily identifiable and halfway tolerated underworld.
The Internet vs. the Media in Japan – now it’s personal
Last week, awards were handed out for the “word of the year,” one of the biggest year-end wrap-up media events in Japan. The recent prizes have been split between the most trivial “ippatsuya” (one trick ponies) and Koizumi-related political drama. This year the top prize was shared between comedian/Miyazaki Prefecture Governor Sonomanma Higashi for his “something’s got to be done about Miyazaki”, and “prince of the cheese-eating grin” (usually translated as “bashful prince” but just look at him). Higashi’s questionably popular declaration indicates his ingenious plan to promote his prefecture by completely and utterly over-exposing himself in the media until his welcome wears out. The Prince, meanwhile, is a talented young golfer who was unwittingly dragged into intense media spotlight after winning a few tournaments. Here’s a quick listing of the runners up:
◆ Disappearing pension records (消えた）年金
◆ “That doesn’t matter” そんなの関係ねぇ a one-liner uttered by a half-naked one-trick-pony that’s not even funny the first time.
◆ Dondake- どんだけぇ～ (The beginning of a line intended to tease someone who’s over-enthusiastic)… see above, except it’s said by a cross-dresser and originated in Shinjuku-nichome gay slang.
◆”The power of insensitivity” 鈍感力 – the title of a best-selling book advising readers not to be “too sensitive”
◆ Fraudulent food (labeling) 食品偽装 Food companies got raked over the coals by regulators late this year for fudging on expiration dates that they knew were too short to begin with. This could also refer to the Made in China food scandals that (mostly) hit the US but were well-reported in Japan.
◆ Internet cafe refugees ネットカフェ難民 – the term for the semi-homeless who spend nights in Internet cafes
◆ Big eater 大食い – Not sure if this is in reference to the recently dethroned hot dog king Shigeru Kobayashi or those TV shows where the young woman eats plate after plate of sushi
◆ Very hot days 猛暑日 – after the hot summer
The list, arbitrarily selected by a committee from a list of reader submissions, seems to only have a memory going back around 6 months, and a highly selective one at that.
But though I understand that this award pays tribute to the spectacles that best gloss over the sadness, cruelty, and frustration of everyday life in this country, I must say the selections this year (save for the “disappearing pension records”) seem to almost willfully ignore the really big developments of this year, even in the realm of media events.
Even in terms of political sideshows, there was no mention of the stupendous problems in the government (Matsuoka’s suicide, the sudden and shocking resignation of Abe, the massive corruption in the Defense Ministry, for starters), nor even the Asashoryu or Kameda scandals despite reams of coverage and massive condemnation (and public interest) in both cases. Judging from the fragile state of all three institutions, one can understand why judges might have wanted to focus attention away from them and more toward fun or at least less testy topics.
In the same vein, the judges decided not to force the media-consuming audience to think back to January, when another vulnerable group was subjected to a major scandal. If we were to truly wrap up the year’s events, it would go without saying that the “Aru Aru Daijiten II” natto scandal would rank way higher than even “that doesn’t matter” in people’s memories… When people learned that the TV lied to them about the health benefits of natto (sticky beans), it may not have convinced them to drop all their food-related superstition-based health consciousness, but for a large group of people it marked a major loss of faith in the media.
Aru Aru, which was gratuitously dishonest and sloppy, may have been the most flagrant single example of media wrongdoing, but it was preceded and has been followed other incidents – more fakery, a misleading statement by morning show host Mino Monta during the Fujiya food scandal, and even reporters’ notoriously bad attitudes (caught on camera screaming at marathon fans, parking illegally, talking trash to commoners).
Though the editors of the Word of the Year decided that this fomenting animosity toward the media wasn’t worth mentioning, I expect such criticism of and animosity toward the news media to further intensify in 2008 (as the media will never fail to provide rage-inducing content). And as a reader of both, it will be increasingly harder to pick sides – what is worse, media institutions that lull the population into a stupor while passing off salivating coverage of the triple murder in Kagawa as a valid news story for a solid week, or the righteous masses of angry Internet users who will turn any slight offense into a target for attack?
WP on Japanese blogs: total mischaracterisation, some crucial details left out
Despite efforts to gather expert opinions (such as Joi Ito) and connect with Japanese bloggers, the recent Washington Post article on the Japanese blogosphere “Japan’s Bloggers: Humble Giants of the Web” contains serious mis-characterisations and inaccuracies. It seems the author falls into the trap of starting with a dazzling premise and getting carried away without bothering to step back and wonder if he’s starting from the right premise or back up his statements (or even read the day’s news before submitting his story).
The article aims to give an overview of the Japanese blogosphere, which is supposedly relevant since it is apparently the most active blogging language on earth (more on that later). The overview is essentially a series of variations on the theme “Unlike Americans, who often times blog to stand out, the Japanese blog to fit in.” A quick look at the beginning:
Compared to the English-speaking world, the Japanese have gone blog wild. They write Web logs at per capita rates that are off the global charts.
Although English speakers outnumber Japanese speakers by more than 5-1, slightly more blog postings are written in Japanese than in English, according to Technorati, the Internet search engine that monitors the blogosphere.
By some estimates, as much as 40 percent of Japanese blogging is done on mobile phones, often by commuters staring cross-eyed at tiny screens for hours as they ride the world’s most extensive network of subways and commuter trains.
Blogging in Japan, though, is a far tamer beast than in the United States and the rest of the English-speaking world. Japan’s conformist culture has embraced a technology that Americans often use for abrasive self-promotion and refashioned it as a soothingly nonconfrontational medium for getting along.
Bloggers here shy away from politics and barbed language. They rarely trumpet their expertise. While Americans blog to stand out, the Japanese do it to fit in, blogging about small stuff: cats and flowers, bicycles and breakfast, gadgets and TV stars. Compared with Americans, they write at less length, they write anonymously, and they write a whole lot more often.
First and foremost, it should be self-evident that this dichotomy of Japan as meek navel gazers and Americans as gung-ho self-branding showoffs is totally false. Has he ever heard of something called Livejournal? Case closed! Anyone who thinks about it for two seconds and spends any amount of time on the Internet should realize how strikingly personal and specific US blogs can be.
The next issue that the author simply gets wrong is the characterization of blogging as a “tame beast” – some kind of dainty, “nonconfrontational” extension of summer diaries. I barely know where to begin addressing this, but the author could have at least taken a look at the news on Japan:
1. Some part-timers at Yoshinoya were suspended after posting a video of themselves set to the Megaman music making a phony “terra-donburi” to compete against Sukiya’s “Mega-don.” The reason they were suspended was because the video generated massive negative comments from anonymous commenters, an example of “enjo” or Net bullying that is extremely common here and a phenomenon that I have documented here and there before.
2. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications has announced once again that it plans to submit legislation that will massively change the regulatory foundation of the Internet by treating it as a broadcast medium no different from TV stations. Why the need for such an overhaul? All the malicious, anonymous posting!
Just from those two examples alone, you can see that the bigger picture is nowhere near as clear-cut as the Post would have you believe.
What has been crucially left out of this article is the vast amount of Internet activity in Japan that goes on outside of what can be defined as “blogging” – message boards such as 2-channel are rampant, social networking sites such as Mixi are all the rage, Youtube is huge. And as with any country that has embraced the Internet (it’s got to be just about all of them by now I guess), there’s a diverse array of content. Additionally, there’s little talk of the development of an actual blog culture that’s much different from journaling – alpha bloggers, celebrity bloggers, etc.
It is almost insulting to the thousands of Amazon reviewers and cynical 2channelers for the WP to claim with no basis whatsoever that there is no critical content on Japanese blogs (and by implication the rest of the Japanese Internet). As for the idea that blog posts tend to be shorter, I wish he’d look at Kikko’s blog, probably one of the most popular around (though it’s dropped to the 40s in Technorati rankings). Kikko’s posts are always long and take a while to get to the point, but that hardly deters the readers.
Finally, let’s look at the statistics mentioned. That Technorati figure about Japanese as the dominant blog language got a lot of attention when it was released in April, and it’s clearly gotten the WP writer’s attention. Nevertheless, declaring Japanese the dominant blog language is likely difficuly, and the survey is less than conclusive in its tallying. Someone took a good critical look at the figures, but I can’t find it now. The best I can do is this look at Japanese bloggers’ reactions. Basically, the report counted the number of submissions, so dead blogs don’t count, and since it is Technorati, I am sure lots of spam blogs ended up being counted (seriously, go try a blog search on Technorati Japan right now!).
The PR executive mentioned in the story backs up the claim that Japanese blogs are apolitical and “conformist” by claiming that Japanese bloggers are far less likely to “act” as a result of their blog reading. In the accompanying video, he notes that in the survey his company conducted, Japanese bloggers were “less likely to sign a petition or attend a meeting” as a result of blogging or blog reading. In the Japanese context, those two activities don’t strike me as representative of the nature of Japanese online activism. Without leaving their homes (or their seat in the train), people in Japan can engage in enjo when they’re angered by what they see, and as in the case of Yoshinoya it can provoke a reaction.
Another example in which online protesting resulted in changes in the policy of the target was the PSE Law scandal – when the Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry attempted to ban the sale of most used electronics in a misguided attempt at consumer safety that originated in a bad interpretation of a sloppily written law. Yellow Magic Orchestra legend Ryuichi Sakamoto led an online campaign to stop it, and in the end a series of stopgap measures were put into place to help the ministry save face while keeping the used goods dealers in business and the used electronics on the shelves (though the change did end up hurting sales).
Why does this story get it so wrong? Perhaps it is always troublesome to write about Internet culture as it is constantly changing. I am not even caught up on it myself since I am not interested in a lot of the new technology (Twitter and Digg seem like wastes of time!). Maybe the author fell into the trap of going too far in trying to compare Japan and the US, another common mistake that I am occasionally guilty of myself (I’ve heard the “Japanese children are better behaved” line from more than one visiting Westerner, even though it’s not true at all).
Why the fixation on blogs? To examine the Japanese language version of the Internet, it might have been more insightful to see a treatment of other issues that might provide some better comparison between the US and Japan – why is anonymity so much more prevalent on the Japanese web? What is inspiring the Internet bullying phenomenon? Where are all the Japanese Internet superstars? Who’s getting rich off the growing online ad market? More than blogs, I feel like a good place to start would be 2-channel and the enigmatic Hiroyuki.
I can appreciate that this “Tokyo Stories” feature is an attempt to provide easy-to-understand vignettes about Japanese culture for an American audience. There is a lot of misunderstanding about Japan, so for readers and visitors to the Washington Post to take an interest in what’s going on on the other side of the world is extremely important. Unfortunately, the blanket generalizations and shallow analysis in this piece undermine that mission.
Gaijin in the spotlight
I could have sworn that the “Westerner’s Fear of Neonsigns” blog was written by Marxy on a gaijin-baiting stint, but apparently that’s not the case. Whoever writes it, however, is amazing and I especially love his post “How’s your Japan blog?”
1. Japan is unintentionally hilarious – in particular, misuse of English – or Engrish – is so funny that I devote considerable time to documenting and disseminating it. To avoid a similar fate, I will not be blogging in Japanese.
2. Japan is barbaric – it fails to treat sacred Western food with due decorum (bread in a can) and celebrates Christian festivals all wrong (Kentucky Fried Chicken on Christmas Eve). Check my blog for further examples.
3. Japan is sexually deviant – society operates in the tacit knowledge that Japanese men are paedophiles by default. Look at all the photographic evidence I have amassed to prove it. They just don’t know how to treat a woman properly. That I do is the underlying message I want you to receive from my blog.
4. Japan is a visual paradise (1) – all Japanese have a heightened visual sensibility; they spend their coffee breaks contemplating tiny design modifications to plastic cups and bathe in the juice of fonts come evening. Not actually living in Japan, I can safely say that they never drive ugly white minivans or fill their tatami rooms with tat.
5. Japan is a visual paradise (2) – the thing I love about Japan is how it allows me to me indulge in the objectification of women without guilt or reproach. The pornography here is just fantastic. Oh, of course, this will be known as The Great Unmentioned in my blog.
6. Japan is spineless and work-addicted – people will do any job rather than lose esteem by not working. Look at this old man waving past cars with a pair of red wands – you wouldn’t catch me stooping to do such a demeaning and unnecessary job. Oh, excuse me, I’m late for my English conversation school class.
7. Japan is childish – public announcements are only heeded when they are delivered by curtseying cartoon characters. To prove it, I will photograph them all. Even though the large incidence of such messages is obvious, I will continue to treat each one as a fantastic novelty.
8. I am childish – only in Japan can I indulge my secret love of toys and games while presenting it as sociological research. I never miss an opportunity to make the sweeping observation that Japan is populated by inadequate geeks. I visit Akihabara every weekend in search of corroborating evidence, but it’s purely research you understand.
9. Japan loves me – it’s always saying how tall I am, how handsome I am, how intelligent I am (admit it, I am pretty hot at producing those L/R sounds), how good I am at sports, how amazing it is that I am a man and yet I cook for myself. Nobody said anything in my home country except: “So, are you finally going to get laid in Japan?” Deeper awareness of Japanese social etiquette would have saved me the trouble of believing any of this.
10. Japan is mine – I am the Alpha Gaijin. If Japan can be said to exist at all, it is only because I have brought it to life with my intellectual efforts. Other foreigners intruding on my turf better be able to withstand the fire of my comments. Japan will thank me for everything I have accomplished once it knows who I am. Until then, I have an immersion experience more impressive than yours to attend to.
I feel like I was the opposite of other Japan bloggers, at least by this person’s definition – I was more into blogging about Japan when I wasn’t here. Now that I live here it is all so uninspiring.
This analysis of Japan blogs is as spot-on as it has been curiously absent in unfiltered form. Still, in defense of Japan blogs I will say that it is often a lot of fun to post and discuss the interesting and weird stuff in a foreign land, whether that’s Japan or elsewhere. It is definitely shrill-sounding when people make their experiences out to be more than they are (god, there are thousands of expats just in Asia, you’re not that special), but really the antidote to Japan blog fatigue is to just tune them out.
The truth is I am sad we weren’t even mentioned (though in a separate post he calls translation one of the “brilliant arts” so maybe I don’t get called on my own cultural imperialism. Or maybe I just didn’t get noticed by not posting when the blog launched…)
Speaking of cautionary tales and immersion experiences, I took no less than 4 friends on a wild goose chase the other day to see what was supposedly an exhibit of Nazified kimonos celebrating the tripartite alliance in the WW2 era. This is all we found next to a display of books on wartime Japan:
Meanwhile, today’s Asahi (I read the print edition now, screw the crap online version!) ran a feature on a sweet sounding historical fiction “Tokyo Year Zero” about a double murder in early postwar Japan. The author, David Peace, grew interested in postwar Japan after teaching English here in the early 90s and reading Seidenstecker’s Tokyo Rising. He later returned to his native England and became an award-winning mystery writer on non-Japan related subject matter. His new book is enjoying a simultaneous bilingual release and a major PR push from the Japanese publisher Bungei Shunju.
Just goes to show, if you’re willing to shed a little baggage and be friendly to the like-minded (most of the research for his new book was apparently provided by the in-house Bungei Shunju translator after the two hit it off during negotiations for translation rights to an earlier Peace book), you too can have success and avoid the stench of “slow-burning underachievement” that apparently afflicts the expat population in Japan.
Al Gore, Nobel Peace Prize Winner
Congratulations, Mr. Gore. I have one message for you: announce your bid for the presidency NOW. You will have the support of me and the rest of the world.
Short update: Two upcoming changes in Japan that will rock your world
1. The end of eikaiwa: Along with some of the minor players in the industry, former industry leader NOVA seems to be in its death throes (more info here). While the details of just how many people are getting screwed over are interesting and all, I just want to take a minute to ponder the implications of what is going on: massive change in the ESL market and, perhaps more importantly, the death of NOVA. It is hard to underestimate the presence that those four letters have become in the mind of the expat, especially those not involved directly in teaching English. Basically, in the gaijin hierarchy, NOVA teachers have been regarded with just a little less disdain than the African club promoters in Kabuki-cho. NOVA finds the most gullible young partiers eager for an easy first job out of college (or increasingly a fun place to work during a working-holiday) who then proceed to come to Japan and live as if they were still in college. It’s one thing for students and professionals to look down on NOVA teachers, but even other eikaiwa teachers hated on NOVA. There is really no better way to sound mature and like you are really interested in Japan than to cluck your tongue at a faceless mass that stays in a gaijin bubble and terrorizes the local population.
But without NOVA, who will the uppity gaijin have to kick around? None of the other schools have the nationwide presence or annoying mascot (though NOVA had the status way before the rabbit came around), so just what will the shorthand be to let other gaijin know you’re not ‘one of them’? And what will it mean if the eikaiwa industry (which was long supported by lax regulation of shady sales practices) can no longer maintain its appeal, especially now that the honeymoon is over and headlines of school closings and unfulfilled class contracts, not to mention successful lawsuits by unhappy customers, are constantly weakening the appeal of the product to the customers? The demand for English is unlikely to go away, but the shrinking of this private market (along with the decline of the JET program) is likely to erode the situation of ‘one foreigner in every village’ or (assuming that actual schools continue to hire foreigners for their English curricula) will more likely lessen it from 3 foreigners in each village to just one or two. And with the opportunities for easy employment cut off, what will become of the ‘Japanese dream’ of easy employment and Charisma Man status for young adventurous Westerners? Has this not been a major factor fueling the interest in Japan in recent decades? And will this loss constitute a truly missed opportunity for Japanese educators who feel that the best way for Japanese people to learn English is to be around native English voices?
2. Japanese mobile advancement to hit a wall in favor of better prices? Cell phone regulations are going to change in a big way – the Nikkei recently ran a story (Sept 19) detailing the report of a Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication study group that recommends ending the practice by cell phone carriers of providing “free” cell phones to customers as early as next spring. These offers of free phones are deceptive because the phone companies reimburse their distributors for the phones and then charge customers a higher rate for their plans (hence the ridiculous 20 yen per minute talking fees). But with little upfront costs, the provision of the phones has been a major (perhaps deciding) factor in attracting customers to one company or another, which has spurred the insanely high technological levels of Japanese mobiles. Perhaps in a few years Japanese phones will more closely resemble those in other countries, where users get a minimum level of features but enough of what they need for a reasonable price. I mean really, do we need to watch TV on the train?
Macias vs Kerr
The recent opening of Neojaponisme and its ambitious manifesto has my mind swimming with conflict over the role of Western expats in Japan.
So I feel this was the perfect timing for me to have come across Patrick Macias’ 2nd most recent podcast entitled “Akihabara Wars.” (MP3)
Initially I thought the general theme was “Patrick takes a walk around Akihabara and meets with some of the Westerners who consider it a second home.” There’s an interesting (if really unnerving) talk with an Italian bishojo magazine publisher at an event promoting a minor idol and a brief chat with an American college student whose side job is giving tours of Akihabara while wearing a Dragonball Z costume (I remember him from his interview in Cyzo!). Finally Macias talks with someone who insists with complete self-satisfaction that the entertainment in Akihabara is a direct equivalent to Japan’s culture of “ritualized entertainment” as found in the tea ceremony and sees absolutely “nothing to worry about” regarding the mass commercialization of otaku culture and overdevelopment of the Akihabara area because “it will go somewhere else.”
The arguments and attitude sounded somewhat familiar, but it was not until I actually checked Macias’ “Mind of Godzilla” blog for more info (I subscribe to the podcast via a fairly low-tech podcast aggregator) that I found the nerdy voice belonged to none other than longtime Japan commentator Alex Kerr.
As is usual for Macias, he mixes light material with a more serious look at his subject matter. He has turned off comments for this post, which I understand as comments like the one I want to offer would be a major buzzkill to his main audience. But I will offer it anyway because the meeting has insights not just on Kerr’s or Macias’ views or even Akihabara but on the differences among expat commentators on Japan.
I’d love to transcribe what I heard, but it is difficult for me to really get any free time these days. Please please go listen for yourself.
Reactions:
- He sounds like a completely different person in English – Despite having met Kerr before and listening to him speak in Japanese for more than an hour, I did not even recognize it was Kerr being interviewed until I checked Macias’ site As I wrote before, in Japanese he has the mannerisms of Pvt. Charles Jenkins. But in English he sounds a lot like a nerdy college student (which is who I thought Macias was talking to until I checked).
- When speaking on the fly and not from his prepared Dogs and Demons speech, Kerr’s views on Japan seem amazingly half-formed, almost as if he can barely be bothered except for the areas of Japan that he is he says he is actually worried about “saving.” When Macias offers up the arguments that otaku culture a) was originally a niche market for Japan’s true outcasts but has now been adopted by the cool people (media aimed at the mainstream and even the Japanese government) for their own ends; and b) The intense passion otaku have for their hobbies can partly be explained as an outlet for dissatisfaction with the status quo, Kerr seems unwilling to really consider them and basically repeats his interpretation of maid cafes and other otaku culture as “ritualized” entertainment. I don’t think he really understands otaku culture and hasn’t really thought about how it fits in with his view of Japan except to dismiss it as part of the unhealthy condition of the Japanese soul.
- In Kerr’s mind, the fact that the streets of Akihabara do not look all that different from a typical street in Japan seem to disqualify it from any meaningful recognition. If it doesn’t look like a row of machiya then why bother?
- What is it that allows people like Macias to so easily connect with Japanese people and culture on a human level, and what makes that same feat equally difficult for people like Kerr? Ironically, Kerr is fluent in Japanese while Macias is only decent. This problem I suspect is partly generational – much like Steven Segal who railed against uncouth young yakuza in his Into the Sun – Kerr is probably just stuck in his ways and while he might be somewhat hostile to otaku culture he seemed totally at ease and genuinely concerned when I saw him condemn concrete rivers to a crowd of obasan in Bangkok. I’ll probably be like that when I get older too – I already think Pokemon is far inferior to Power Rangers.
As I mentioned, listening to them talk was fascinating not just for the issues they discussed but because of who they are – both of them are making their livings as interpreters of Japanese culture but have gone about it in wildly different ways. Kerr presents himself as someone completely immersed in Japanese culture, a “more Japanese than the Japanese” campaigner for a return to traditional aesthetics. On the other hand, Macias keeps a lot of cultural distance because he works on reaching an American audience. The discussion makes me wonder if the two extremes I see in these people – get to close to the culture and it changes you, keep too much distance and you miss the details – are really mutually exclusive.