Globalisation in Japan

This week's topic is "Globalisation", and since my everyday adventures in Japan this week included a (free) trip to Universal Studios Japan, in thinking about this topic I was really struck by how popular Halloween is here in Japan. There are few people in "the West" (for example, America, Canada, Europe, or Australia) who have not heard of Halloween as the institutionalised festival it has become or indeed otherwise; however, I had no idea that it was so "big" in Japan!

This week at Kansai Gaidai there has been a large-scale celebration for Halloween including all kinds of parades and parties and a costume contest. It strikes me as a little odd that this Pagan festival from Britain, commercialised by America has shipped to Japan as a kind of Western oddity of a festival with such strange traditions as carving pumpkins and bobbing for apples. Not only that, but that it receives a better turn-out than the celebration of the laying of the foundation stone of the university - an event celebrated by no-one coming to university that day.



Here we have Rilakkuma (a popular Japanese media character) saying 「はろうぃんですね」 - "it's Halloween!". So, similar to the US and Britain, Halloween is being imported as a generally commercial "holiday".

When I went to Universal Studios Japan, the whole place was covered in Halloween-style decorations, with pumpkins and skeletons everywhere. For some reason it gave me a funny kind of feeling, which reminded me of jet-lag, only it felt a bit more like culture-lag.



There's no real reason I should have felt this way, anyway. I am well-aware that the Japanese love to dress up - simply look at the variety of fashions on show at any given time, or Cosplay for an extreme example. Not to mention that last year back in Leeds, at the Japanese Society Halloween party, they really went all-out!

According to this blog, however, whose owner has been living in Japan for 10 years, he's watched Halloween permeate public consciousness from nearly nothing to now being a phenomenon. Just goes to show that with the advent of the internet and with more, well, American media being imported, what kind of effect it has on Japanese culture.

Sports and Recreation in Japan

This first bit isn't about sports and recreation to Japan, this is really more of an echo to last week, my post about Takarazuka. I just wanted to put on here that I found a video-trailer for the performance I went to see, and I was so pleased I wanted to show it to you all:



In all honesty, I enjoy sparkly, fabulous drag kings much more than sports - but this post is about sports and recreation, so that's what I'll write about now. Although I have to admit, although this is technically irrelevant to this post and to this assignment, I really don't like sports that much: I don't like watching them; I don't like participating in them. Not in the UK, not in Japan. What this has meant is that I think my eye avoids sport - that is to say, although sport is obviously going on all the time, I kind of miss it, or block it out, because I'm not too bothered about it. That said...I ganbaru'd a little bit, in order to actually notice some sport happening, and I've come up with a couple of pictures. I don't pretend that this is a "Two-Frame Story" as it should be...



I took this picture in one of my first weeks here at Kansai Gaidai. I was on my way to get my bike from the bike parking lot, and I heard this enthusiastic screaming. Coming upon the tennis courts, there was a crowd of Japanese guys crowded round the net. I couldn't see the action (nor did I particularly care to) but it was clear that each time someone scored a point there was celebratory chaos, with much back-slapping and whooping. It was very interesting, like watching a group mentality in action. There was a lot of support there, and a lot of passion, even though it looked like it was just a casual game of tennis.



This picture was taken at Osaka-jo park, where there was some kind of sports meeting going on - baseball, it seemed. I couldn't see any banners proclaiming what was going on, and although I attempted to find out (from the people in the photo) what exactly was going on, my Japanese isn't such that I understood.

I like this photograph. A simple scene. A father and son, enjoying a game of catch. Is there really any simpler, deeper pleasure? It transcends country and culture.

Japanese Pop Culture and Entertainment

Haha. Just my little joke, gentle readers. When thinking about what on Earth I was going to include in my "Japanese pop culture and entertainment", the first thing that popped into my brain was "well, it's really bloody expensive". But it's okay, they're "hammering down the prices"! No, really what I want to speak about in this post is 宝塚歌劇団 - that is, Takarazuka Revue. Takarazuka Revue is an all-female troupe of actresses who produce the most wonderful, sparkling shows. From what I have researched, and from the experience of seeing one of their performances recently, they are a veritable phenomenon in Japan, mainly among women. According to this article from the Japan Times, the Takarazuka Revue theatres sell two million tickets per year, with an astounding 95% attendance rate. This drives home to me the point that Takarazuka Revue really is something special in Japan. As you can see in the picture below...



...the theatre is amazing in itself. Walking from the front gate to your seat can take 10-15 minutes, such is the theatre's size. It's all a part of the Takarazuka Revue experience! People crowd for pictures against the most iconic features - the self-playing piano, the photos on the wall of the stars of each troupe (there are five: Flower, Moon, Snow, Star and Cosmos), and of course the grand, red-carpeted staircase.



I was glad I could capture this moment. This girl was looking up to her idol (Sei Matobu, the provocative, sexy otokoyaku - that is, she was playing a male character) while her mother took a picture on her cellphone. I did ask for permission after I took the picture. There does seem to be a lot of idolisation amongst Takarazuka fans - who themselves are many and passionate. There have been discussions (here, for instance) in which it's mused that Takarazuka Revue is, for many woman, an escape from the male-dominated society of Japan; that it's a place and a time where they can be who they want to be and in way, through the characters on stage, explore their own sexuality more than is allowed within the boundaries of Japanese gender relations.

Reading this blog, it's interesting that when Takarazuka exploded into the Japanese cultural mind in the early 19th-century, it wasn't originally intended to be such a blatant and flagrant sexually-charged and gender-role-challenging group, but anti-homosexual propaganda was rife at this time, and "Takarazuka became a huge site for female-female desire, both onstage and off".

However, as the site notes, "the shows are threatening in many ways, and this seems to be the tension that has kept Takarazuka a live wire for over 90 years". So maybe it's this frivolous frisson of taboo (amid all the fabulous, glitsy, cross-dressing showbiz that I so immensely enjoyed) that gives Takarazuka Revue the popularity it enjoys today.