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Japan: Changing Impressions.

2009-12-09T15:03:00.005+09:00

For this final, reflective post I have decided, for my first picture, to include another portrait, because that's what we started with, and I thought it only fitting to end with one. It is a picture of me, taken in Umeda, in Osaka. I feel it is symbolic of several things. First of all, there is the road sign in the background displaying Japanese kanji, which drive the point home that I am really in Japan (both for you and for me). Secondly, there is a hotel in the background called "Hotel Il Monte" - this, for me, represents the "internationalisation" of Japan, and how both English and other foreign languages and cultures are so popularised here in their re-interpreted Japanese forms. This is something you can see every day when you walk down the street - you can see shops with French signs in their windows; English/Engrish on every corner; Chinese and Korean restaurants; Thai massage parlours. You can find it all here. And finally - the ubiquitous Coca-Cola logo, as profound a symbol of the globalisation of Japan, if there ever was one.

Why does this photograph represent my changed impressions of Japan? Well, before I came here, I was under the impression that Japan was still very much concerned with its own history and traditions, and the mainenances and proliferation thereof. And while Japan still remembers its cultural roots (visible in temples, shrines, household customs, geishas in the street and many other features of Japanese everyday life), it seems to me to be a country which has merged its identity in many ways with that of other countries and cultures. The commplex result is the marvellous, multifaceted mélange that has so quickly become commonplace to my eye, yet never fails to charm me.

This final picture is very possibly my favourite that I have taken in Japan. For me, it very much represents my changed impression of Japan. When I used to think of this country, I used to think of towering skyscrapers, bright, flashing lights, fast-paced lifestyle and cutting-edge technology. Certainly, all those things can be found there. However, between myself and that front, I found houses and little gardens and those Japanese dogs that everyone has, and boxy little cars, and just people, regular people. That's the thing about Japan. Everything you see, you could pretend was really in your own country, but it looks subtly different somehow, subtly foreign, though you can't pinpoint why. Despite this, the important thing to remember is, this isn't another planet; we are not living on the Moon. These people are just people, like you and I.

Politics and Conflict in Japan

2009-12-02T12:27:00.000+09:00

I have been accused of pettiness for this, but in all honesty, the aspect of Japanese society that I have had the most difficulty adjusting to is the public attitude to smoking. A lot of people I know, when they heard this, didn't believe me, or thought it was a stupid thing to get hung up about, but it's just absolutely disgusting. I hate it. I hate that in restaurants you're eating your food and all you can smell and taste is tobacco smoke. I hate that I can't go to an izakaya, a restaurant, even some trains, and not come out with my clothes smelling the same way as when I went in.

As you can see, non-smoking areas ARE available in many restaurants, but the unfortunate fact is that as much as you can get a non-smoking table, quite often there is simply no partition between smoking and non-smoking areas, so it doesn't even matter which section you're sitting in, you're still getting a lungful of toxic chemicals with every bite of your meal.

Given the fact that in Britain there is in fact a law against advertising or endorsing tobacco products in any kind of way, I was shocked to find that in Japan these kinds of advertisements are very common. See the pictures below:

I have to admit, the first time I saw advertisements like this I was very shocked. To see something so harmful and antisocial, touted in such a way, making it seem "cool"
, "elegant" or "sophisticated", seems so old-fashioned and counter-intuitive to my mind. Then I did some research.

According to this website, in 1995 50% of men and 10% of women smoked ,and in 2007 the figures has changed to 43% for men and 13% for women, according to this source. And whereas any smoking-related PSAs, television commercials or billboards are mainly to do with trying to get people to stop smoking, the only similarities I have been able to see in Japan are these kinds of advertisements, which do not focus on helping people to stop smoking, but only on how to be better to the environment and "smoking etiquette" when it comes to others. There was also a survey done in Japan, the results of which I found quite confusing: smokers seem to either not smoke at all, or smoke every day, not just sometimes; although 54.8% of those surveyed find other people smoking annoying, 35.8% don't feel any particular unpleasantness due to smokers; and with 51.4% of smokers not willing to try nicotine-based medications in order to try and quit, it looks like this situation is not one due to end any time soon...

Finally, according to this site, Japan's Minister of Finance owns a 66% share of tobacco profits in Japan; there's a town which hosts a 「たばこ祭」 (tobacco festival) every year (complete with "Miss Tobacco Festival" contest!); and there are many images of the ridiculously prevelant tobacco advertising boldly displayed for all - including impressionable children and teenagers - to see. Shocking...

Engrish in Japan

2009-11-25T21:45:00.000+09:00

With the freedom that this week allows us, I have decided to investigate...Engrish! I love Engrish. On a very superficial level, it is obviously amusing. However, I was interested to look at the English language from a Japanese perspective. Again, I apologise for the number of photos in this entry - hardly a "Two-Frame Story", but I just can't help myself. There's just too much good Engrish out there.

(A restaurant in near the Aquarium, Osaka)

First of all I had to ask, why use English at all? Why does it hold such popularity? Certainly, it's taught in schools from a very young age until you leave High School, but similarly, in the UK you learn French or German from a very young age and we haven't developed any kind of similar trend.

(A café in Kobe.)

I am so intrigued by this phenomenon. Not only is so much English used in advertising, usually, it's totally incorrect, either in spelling or grammar.

(A restaurant in Osaka.)

This really made me laugh. Much of the time it seems that they've simply put a Japanese phrase into a second-rate online translator and used the output, whatever or however incorrect it may be. This seems so strange to me, when Japan seems to be a country of English learners, that incorrect English is so rife. Maybe I am expecting too much - it's not like I don't make hundreds of mistakes while speaking Japanese every day, but at the same time, I don't think I'd have a Japanese slogan printed on menus and advertising and even the main sign of my shop, if I wasn't 100% sure that it was correct.

I asked one of my Japanese friends, "why are there so many signs in English? Why are so many shop names in English? Why are they not in Japanese?". Her answer was, "because English is cool". I had to ask, though, "Can Japanese people read them? Often the signs come without katakana, so can people read it?". "Not always", she said, though this didn't seem to faze her. I continued "However, if a person, say, bought a really nice shirt from a certain shop which had an English name, and wanted to recommend it to a friend - if that shop didn't have a katakana transcription, and the person couldn't read it, how could they recommend it?". She thought about that for a long time, then said with amusement, "I don't know".

I guess we might never know, but there's no doubt that it's never going to stop, and the Engrish is just going to keep getting funnier.

At what?!

Religion and Tradition in Japan.

2009-11-17T23:56:00.009+09:00

The type of comment I hear most often from foreigners living in Japan usually has to do with, in a positive or negative way, "kawaii" - that is, the intrinsic cuteness of Japanese things. I find it very interesting that this same "kawaii"ness echoes not only through time back to Japan's early history, but although though institutions such as religion and cultural tradition. In this post I will specifically be focusing on Japanese religious and traditional statues and figures.

Take the humble tanuki, for instance. Tanuki, as you can see, are mythical, magical raccoon-dogs, typically depicted wearing a hat, carrying a bottle of sake (the Tanuki is a renowned lush!). Moreover, they are almost always shown to have huge testicles. According to this site, this is more as a symbol of good luck, and perhaps that of excess and gluttony, than for overtly sexual reasons. Most often you can see statues of tanuki in or near the entrances of restaurants and izakaya, welcoming you in with their kind of creepy smiles and, well, massive balls. They are kind of like guardian spirits of this kind of establishment. The picture above, however, I took on a trip to Arashiyama, where they were lurking cheerily in the undergrowth.

Another kind of statue or figure you can often see in Japan are the Nio Protectors of Buddhist temples. According to this site these figures were originally adopted from Hindu mythology, at least in appearance. In the pictures I've taken, the green figure is called agyō, and as his mouth is open he is said to be saying "ah" (the first sound in the Japanese hiragana alphabet) which is said to be the sound of the birth of the universe, and the green one is called ungyō, who is saying "un" (the last sound in the Japanese hiragana alphabet), which is said to be the sound of the death of the universe. These cosmic sounds are said to represent "all possible outcomes...in the cosmic dance of existence". According to tradition, Nio Protectors are the guardians of the temple, keeping bad spirits, demons and even thieves out of the temple grounds.

In some temples they are replaced with the Shishi, Chinese lion-dog statues, the premise of which was most definitely imported from China (according to this site), with the same pattern - one mouth open, one mouth closed.

However, what these pictures show is that these statues don't always have to be guarding a temple - they can guard any holy place.

To finish off - a question. I have been looking online to try and find the meaning of these little figures, seen in Arashiyama by the roadside, but as yet I've been unable to find any explanation for them, who or what they're meant to represent. Does anyone know? They're very kawaii!

Gender in Japan.

2009-11-04T23:03:00.002+09:00

The role of the woman in Japanese society is highly complex. It is multi-faceted, in that there are different sub-roles as women that women can take. On the one hand, it seems to my foreign eyes that women are viewed superficially as beautiful, delicate creatures who are to be protected and valued at any cost; on the other, it seems that they are viewed as property, to be used, abused or altered to the (usually, male) owner. This can be a confusing dichotomy, but in both ways the female is objectified.

For instance, let's have a look at this image. It was taken at Kyobashi station, and shows a woman in traditional Japanese kimono, waiting for a train. She's texting on her mobile phone here, but shortly after this picture was taken, she made a phone call to her husband, apologising for her late running, and promising to be home soon. As a woman who seemed as if she was happy to be returning from a nice day out in traditional dress, I was surprised at her subservient way of speaking.

This picture was taken of the side of a Purikura machine (go here to read about what Purikura is) in Kyoto. The text means "your beauty to God-level!". I can't help but look at the photograph of the girl attached, with her "kawaii!" clothing, pale skin and HUGE eyes. I have to wonder how this is affecting young girls' judgement of what the "ideal" woman looks like, with this unattainable image. I also have to wonder who designed it that way - and what gender THEY were.

Similar, but less damaging (in my opinion) is this picture on the side of a beauty salon in Miyanosaka. Again, we see this beautiful image of a Japanese woman, pale skin, large eyes. At least the image shown in this picture is attainable. And again, I have to wonder, how are these images formed? Is it as a reaction to what women want for themselves, or to what they believe men to want, or is it quite simply what men want?

In a different way, this is a more blatant example of the exploitation and objectifcation of women in Japanese society. The text reads:

"Don't look away. Don't pretend. Let your voice be heard. Don't allow perverts. Big courage."

I feel this to be quite telling. Perverts are a nuisance and a danger on trains, on train platforms and more generally. It has become so much of an issue that Japan's trains often have a "women-only" carriage running at peak times to avoid that thing. Also, for some time now, you cannot take a photograph on a Japanese mobile phone without it making some kind of loud sound effect. This is mainly to deter perverts who could take pictures of girls on trains without their knowing about it. In a society that relies so much on its women, they sure are objectified, sometimes to the point of perversion.

Staying on that end of this unfair scale, we have a sign for "Erotic Teacher XXX Yuka" in Kyoto. Again, I find that suspicious. Did Yuka decide to become this person out of a want to liberate her own self and her beliefs and values, or has she been somewhat forced into doing it by the many demands, both social and (apparently) sexual, made by the dominating Japanese man?

Globalisation in Japan

2009-10-28T23:54:00.001+09:00

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

2009-10-15T12:36:00.007+09:00

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

2009-10-07T15:21:00.008+09:00

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.

Neighbourhood Kuzuha

2009-09-23T16:34:00.001+09:00

This week's theme is "Neighbourhood", and the aim was to produce photos relating to the area in which we now live, here in Japan. I, myself, live in a homestay situation very near Kuzuha station, so I guess my neighbourhood is Kuzuha. However, a problem that I've found with Kuzuha is that…whenever I'm out and about, either on my way to university, or on my way out to meet friends, or whatever…nothing really seems to be happening. More often than not, the little area of Kuzuha in which I live (Nishifunabashi) is entirely deserted. Therefore, this week, despite my best efforts, I feel this is going to come off a little weakly. Nevertheless, here are my observations.

One morning I got up very early to go to university, and as I was walking to the railway station, I came across these confusing blue things at every intersection in Nishifunabashi.

Confounded by the early hour, I had to get a lot closer to ascertain that they were not egg sacs dropped by an immense blue alien during the night, but in fact blue nets full of rubbish. This was quite interesting to me. In the UK, there is no such community cooperation. The bin-men come round once a week and the most people will do (if they do anything at all) is to put their bin bags by the front door or front gate. However, here in Japan there is this common banding-together of rubbish. Additionally, although I didn't get close enough to the refuse to say for sure, I'd bet my bottom dollar that most of that rubbish in there was either plastic, or paper, or burnable rubbish – that is, separated. I was (and still am) quite surprised at how much of an effort Japan seems to be making to recycle as much rubbish as it possibly can. I found an interesting article while researching about Japan's "rubbish culture", behold: How Do Japanese Dump Trash? Let Us Count the Myriad Ways

Another thing I've observed while wandering Kuzuha – and indeed, anywhere in Japan, really:

Wires. Wires everywhere. I have to say, it took me a while to notice them. I mean, I saw them, but I didn't really appreciate their absolute ubiquity until a few days after I arrived. Once I did, I couldn't help but start to think of them as an eyesore. Everywhere I've gone, they've spoiled views of fabulous temples and marred beautiful countryside vistas. However, as I'm now noticing them all the time, I accept them as a kind of natural part of Japan, and in some ways even a part of its essential beauty. Sure, they wouldn't have been here in the time of the samurai, but now they're a part of everyday adventure in Japan, and as such they no longer present as an eyesore to me in my photography.

While researching I found here, looks like they're wanting to put high-speed internet into Japanese homes over these lines. Maybe I'll stay in Japan a little longer…

Early Impressions of Japan

2009-09-17T12:04:00.002+09:00

My first two weeks in Japan have yielded some interesting experiences, and not always the experiences I thought I would have. Certainly, I have seen cute characters on otherwise severe street signs; amusing Engrish; Japanese people have laughed at me and stared at me and bowed at me and I, standing at my lofty 1.90m, have received a lot of 「わぁぁ！背が高いねぇぇ！」 ("Whoa, you're so tall!"). Thus far it has been - as I really ought to have been able to predict - a bewildering, oftentimes tiring, charming and fascinating experience. I am so excited about this opportunity to start bringing my experiences in and observations of Japanese people and culture to life and to light with my photography.

Each week I am to submit two photographs for the class, upon a given theme. The theme for this week was "Early Impressions of Japan". A couple of apologies before I go on - never a great start: firstly, I have three pictures this week, not the required two. This is mainly as I love these three pictures so much that I couldn't choose. Secondly, as this is only the second week of this semester, and as such we have neither read much nor had very much time to research, the comments I'm about to make are mainly my own thoughts and observations. On that note...

I am so pleased that I managed to capture this moment. I was standing at Kuzuha station, waiting for a train to Kyoto, this train happened to stop, the door opened in front of me and there stood three Japanese people in traditional dress: two men in hakama and one woman in a kimono. I had my camera out anyway so I snapped this shot.

This photograph, I feel, is quite representative of my early impressions of Japan. As someone who has never been to Japan before, has only studied Japan from afar and as such can only have based my expectations of Japan on my studies and what I had seen in the media. What I expected, and what I see here, is a country which constantly mixes its past, present and (in a way) future. Here, we see three people dressing in the costumes of their past, travelling in the clean, fast and extremely efficient public transport of their present - perhaps with the man on the right holding the future in his little pink bag? To me, this is a true clash of the ancient and the current.

This picture was also taken at Kuzuha station, while waiting for my train to Kyoto. The platform was now clear, most people having filed on to the previous train, and alone on the platform were myself, and this other man, standing near me. I jumped at the chance to take this picture.

This picture, for me, confirmed my expectations that Japan is a place of beauty amongst the ugliness - and vice versa. Allow me to explain. From the pictures and videos I had seen of Japan, the (natural) scenery is beautiful and dramatic, flat plains of rice paddies and fields, leading to hills and mountains swathed in green trees. Amongst all this, pylons and powerlines and concrete jungles haphazardly mar the otherwise striking landscape. This is what I see in this picture. And in front of it all, this man, standing alone, in silhouette. I still can't decide whether this picture is beautiful or lonely. Maybe it is both. Despite the fact that (at least now, so early on) living in Japan can sometimes feel like you're living on a different planet, amongst so many crowding people, loneliness exists here, too.

Finally, a photograph I took on a street in Namba, Osaka. Japanese people hurry by in the foreground, while a taxi waits patiently in the middle distance, and in the background, the bright neon lights that are so inextricably associated with Japan. They speak of new technology, cloying advertising and a whole lot of electricity consumption. I almost feel as if that green light is beckoning me to go, onwards, into the experiences I am yet to have. So that's exactly what I shall do.

写真、撮っていい？

2009-09-14T15:03:00.003+09:00

Good afternoon!

My name's Jerrard, I'm 23, and from now until mid-December I'm undertaking study on the Asian Studies program at Kansai Gaidai university in Hirakata, Osaka, Japan. In my programme of study I'm taking a module called "Visual Anthropology of Japan", and for this class I have the opportunity to keep a photo blog for the course, to include pictures which depict cultural and anthropological themes, each week. It is here that I intend to do this.

As such this blog is for educational purposes only. All photos posted here are taken by myself unless otherwise noted. If any problem with the posting of a particular photo is brought to my attention, I will earnestly review the problem and remove the photo if necessary.

With that said, let the blogging commence!

Portrait taken by Becca Toop. Thanks, Becca!

PS: If you're reading this, and you can't read the Japanese name of my blog, it says "Shashin, totte ii?" which means "Can I take a picture?". :]