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Comments
Is that just a term for Japanese analysts/philosophers/etc. writing about Japan and Japanese cultural history or does it have a more specific meaning or connotation than that?
It's probably just Japanese exceptionalism. Meh.
Yeah,
AmericanU.S. exceptionalism is definitely a thing, and frequently an annoying thing too.As for the thread title and the OP again:
I don't think that, in mainstream U.S. media, Japan is portrayed in an unusually positive light. They're generally regarded as the land of high tech companies, Toyotas and Hondas, sushi, and (if you have a younger audience) videogames. It's only a specific subgroup of a subculture that has an unusually positive opinion of Japan.
And that subgroup does that because Japan dominated the videogame market for years and is also the source for animations and graphic novels that are not aimed at young children. They are not mainstream in the U.S., but their appeal to adults is not lost. There are relatively few non-U.S. non-Japan major media producers, and even fewer of them are east-Asian.
So katanas are pretty cool I guess.
@Formaldehyde: There's also me.
We all know how you really feel about them though. ~stern eye~
eh is folded million times and doesnt afraid of anything?
You know, the one thing I don't get about katanas is their hand guards.
Alright, so curved blades aren't my thing, but I get why they're a thing. The brittleness is a bit of a crapshoot, but that comes from the hardness of the steel, which is what allows them to maintain such sharp edges. So if you really need to cut a baka gaijin, fair call.
But those hand guards.
The following is just based on my own former experience, living in Japan for a year, so don't take it as authoritative. Generalisations will ensue.
Hideaki Anno just sounds kind of bitter. That is not to say that there is no truth in what he says, things like burikko (basically women purposefully acting cutesy/childish in order to attract guys. It rarely works and most Japanese people just find it annoying. ) exist after all. I will say that Japanese people can sometimes come off as "childish" to more western sensibilities, however most of the time "childish" is a bad word, "immediate" is a better description. That is, they may cry in public when overwhelmed by emotion, they may react almost childishly happy when winning a game etc. All of this by the way is completely against the usual stereotypes of Japanese people, which I had heard before coming to Japan. Of course it depends on context, because at other times the formality which is generally associated with Japan asserts itself. I can't say that Japanese people in general are childish, they are pretty much like people everywhere. I can however say that they are pretty apolitical (or rather doesn't seem to think they can influence politics and so they don't care), which almost certainly has to do with the end of WWII and how democracy was introduced to the country.
Most Japanese people I have spoken with about Japanese actions during WWII (admittedly not that many, it's not a subject I would just bring up with random people) were aware that they did bad shit, but they basically don't want to talk or think too much about it (which is definitely a problem, though not quite the same as denial). I did talk with a few people who were downright offended by the existence the Yasukuni Shrine though, so some people care more than others. That said, Japan have very scary fringe nationalist right-wing groups, they are the kind of people whom if they were in power I have no doubt would try to re-enact WWII policies.
Japan in general does seem to have a somewhat ambiguous relationship with nationalism as a country, ever since the bakumatsu period they have suffered from both a sort of inferiority complex towards western culture and nationalism as a reaction to said complex (again, just my own bullshit, I'm no historian, though it is generally accepted that one of the driving forces of the Meiji government was nationalism, in the sense of the famous slogan "Enrich the country, strengthen the military"). But it is not something which I really saw much evidence of on an individual level while I was there.
As for the original topic, I'm not sure there really is a general western idealisation of Japan, at least I haven't seen it. Obviously there are some anime fans, mostly people who are new to anime in my experience, who do idolise "Japan", though rarely do they actually care about any part of Japan aside from anime. Those people are annoying, but I don't believe it's that big of a group. Honestly I see way more negativity directed at Japan on the internet, especially in geek circles. If we look away from these sort of niche environments, I do think that sometimes there is a fascination with Japanese culture (perhaps somewhat more than with other asian cultures, due to more exposure), but that it is often mixed with a certain amount of condescension. IE, it's interesting, but only in the sense that it is different from European culture which is after all the standard of what a culture should be. I wrote a long post on TVTropes once, detailing what I personally found to be good, bad and surprising about living in Japan, so I might as well link to it.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13564809220A70280100&page=1#16
I should warn you that it's really long though.
My godmother was a Nagasaki survivor, and this was I think pretty much her view on the matter. Though, again, she was a Nagasaki survivor, so she didn't really like to think about WWII in general. I think she did have a book about the Rape of Nanking on her bookshelf, though, now that I think about it.
Though she was pretty Westernized, so I couldn't consider her representative of Japanese culture as a whole.
You left out "incestuous" and "monster truck TV shows".
Don't forget the cowboy hats.
Or scootmobiles because 2fat2walk.
And the Bible-thumping and degradation of minorities.
Technically, the language that we're to converse with is English.
England's English, from the warm seat apparatus of their throne.
I believe that was the joke
Technically, the language of native americans exists, do you want me to spit on their graves as well?
or perhaps I could dig up their corpse and wrap it up in a pox-ridden blanket.
Go for it.
none of us speaks native american languages i don't think
Well, at least take solace that Native American is a racial identity.
You can be native to america, but not native american. unless of course you're a naive american, in which you might be thinking of yourself as a native american, until your ignorance is lessened and you can realize you are not a native american, only native to america.
native native native.
What in the world are you talking about?
Counterclock.
There's your answer.
Mathias,
I enjoyed reading your take on Japan (including the TVT long post). I thought it was nice to see the perspective of someone who had lived there for a considerable amount time on this issue, though I understand that you obviously were not claiming to know everything about Japanese society and culture.
Your comments definitely seemed a lot more balanced than some of the things I have heard said by non-natives who have lived in Japan, which tended to be a bit more negative. I do not want to judge those critics too harshly, but it could be that they did not engage in much of the give and take you mentioned and/or had unfortunate experiences that had more to do with their individual circumstances than the country as a whole.
On a somewhat related note, I guess Japan in the 1980s used to be thought of like how China is today because of its economic boom at the time, with people talking about it becoming the next dominant superpower and the whole "Japan takes over the world" trope. That being said, that perception may be a bit different from what Eelektross was talking about, as I am not sure how many people in the U.S. and similar countries really fetishize China today.
nerevarine
You could arguably say that Japan's been fetishising Western culture for the past ~80 years or so.
Hell, the main reason they started industrializing so heavily prior to World War II was because they saw Europe and America's industrialization efforts and said "hey, we should try that."
This is even true of anime. The whole anime art style of having really big eyes was inspired by Looney Tunes characters.
Betty Boop actually.
^^More like, "If we don't try that whole industrialization thing, we're going to end up like India or China".
In the beginning the introduction of western technology in Japan was almost entirely for the sake of creating an army and navy equal to those of the west, in order that they may "stand on equal terms" with the countries of the west, by whom they felt humiliated by "unequal treaties" and the like. Then it turned out that this also required quite heavy industrialization. In fact, many of the nationalists who had unrealistically demanded that all foreigners be expelled during the bakumatsu period realised that the only way to stand a chance against the west was by learning from them.
Of course, at some point some reformers in the Meiji government (mostly people who had been to Europe and did view the West with a certain admiration) tried to institute reforms, which were more specifically meant to imitate European-style institutions. But it was almost always done with an eye for preserving Japanese society and the nation as a whole, that is it was more practical than ideological, at least for the majority of the Meiji government, who were pragmatists above all else.
I like this quote, by Fukuzawa Yukichi , who is considered a great liberal reformist and one of the founders of modern Japan;
"The one object of my life is to extend Japan's national power. Compared with considerations of the country's strength, the matter of internal government and into whose hands it falls is of no importance at all. Even if the government be autocratic in name and form, I shall be satisfied with it if it is strong enough to strengthen the country."
To be fair, that is not entirely indicative of his policies in general.
LouieW: Well, I'm glad someone enjoyed my ramblings.
Actually Tezuka was inspired by Scrooge McDuck.