Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
4 Yoshio Sugimoto
Japanese), which have attracted a large audience captivated by portrayals
of Japan and the Japanese as being exceptionally unique and fundamentally
different from Western societies and Westerners. The genre has produced
a number of best-selling books that variously describe Japanese culture as
essentially shame-based,
5
group-oriented,
6
founded on a vertically struc-
tured society,
7
built on a dependency-oriented personality-type,
8
focused
on interpersonal relations
9
andsoforth.
The irony of Nihonjinron is that most analysts in this area have failed
to identify who the Nihonjin, the Japanese, are – the very population that
is supposed to demonstrate the traits attributed to it. A few key exam-
ples will demonstrate the point. First, a majority of Japanese work in small
companies with fewer than 300 employees and do not possess four-year
university degrees, yet the world of large-company employees with high
education is often used as the empirical base to characterise Japanese cul-
ture.
10
Second, while the cultural differences between the residents of eastern
Japan (whose centres are Tokyo and Yokohama) and those of western Japan
(Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe) are widely acknowledged, this does not appear
to have had a significant impact on Nihonjinron. Finally, and more con-
cretely, though the promoters of Japan’s whaling activities in the Antarctic
Ocean attribute them to Japan’s food culture, one out of three Japanese
are against eating whale meat, and only about half of the population are
in favour of the practice at all.
11
This means that Japan has two competing
cultural groups, though only one is acknowledged to exist in that country.
Given that Japanese culture is what the Japanese produce and consume,
who the Japanese are ought to be spelt out prior to the examination of
the qualities of Japanese culture. The formulation of the Japanese necessar-
ily precedes that of Japanese culture. To put it technically, the definition
of the Japanese is the independent variable; that of Japanese culture the
dependent.
The criteria for judging who the Japanese are can range from citizenship,
‘biological pedigree’, language competence and cultural literacy, to sub-
jective identification.
12
We can use a restrictive and exclusive yardstick and
define the Japanese, for instance, as only those persons who possess Japanese
passports, have ‘Japanese blood’ and are native speakers of the Japanese lan-
guage. Using a more liberal and inclusive benchmark, we can designate as
Japanese those individuals possessing at least one of these attributes. It is
possible to identify a middle position between the two frameworks, where
certain attributes – for instance, citizenship and ‘pedigree’ – are seen as
indispensable criteria for someone to be classified as Japanese.
Overview 5
In a nutshell, there are two rival frameworks governing the way the rela-
tionship between the Japanese and Japanese culture is defined: the deduc-
tive approach in which Japanese culture is defined aprioriand the Japanese
are those who embody it; and the inductive approach which assumes that
there are a variety of Japanese who generate various kinds of culture, with
the demographic base of each cultural formation being a crucial factor.
Within the latter framework, on which this book is based, cultural demog-
raphy constitutes a key field of linkage between cultural agents and cultural
goods; Japan’s culture is multiple, not singular, and comprises a variety of
orientations, practices and artefacts developed by manifold demographic
groups. For example, the socioeconomic differences between older and
younger Japanese condition their cultural distinctions. The culture of com-
pany executives and that of temporary blue-collar workers differ because of
their class bases. Junko Kitagawa, author of chapter 14, is explicit in identi-
fying the demographic foundations of Japan’s music culture. In chapter 13,
Craig Norris presents the demographic underpinnings of consumers of
various types of manga cartoons.
These cultural variations suggest that no one can claim to be totally
culturally literate about Japanese culture.
13
Most assembly-line workers in
Japanese car firms are more familiar with the culture of total quality control
than upper-class ladies who enjoy playing golf and tennis.
14
Tokyoites who
cannot speak any local dialect would be less knowledgeable about Japan’s
linguistic culture than many Japanese who can handle both the so-called
standard Japanese language and their own regional vernacular, as Hugh
Clarke’s chapter 3 implies.
Since Japanese culture is a problematical construct rather than a given
reality, it should not be taken to refer to any bounded entity.
15
Instead of
a short summary of each chapter of this volume, the ensuing discussion
presents a brief schematic sketch of three dimensions: (1) a few unresolved
debates over concept and theory formation in studies of modern Japanese
culture; (2) the two dominant forces – the state and the market – that
shape the realm of Japanese culture; and (3) how various demographic
groups consume Japanese culture in response to these two constraints. In
short, this volume considers both the conceptual and theoretical issues of
Japan’s modern culture and the substantive configurations of its shapers and
consumers, recognising that modern Japanese culture is not only diverse and
hybrid but also subject to constraints that are global and internal, material
and immaterial, socioeconomic and geo-political. In this sense, we will not
move away ‘from class to culture’ but attempt to sharpen our focus on the
6 Yoshio Sugimoto
importance of broadly defined, multiple class variables in the investigation
of culture.
Dilemmas of cultural relativism
While the monocultural model has been roundly criticised in the last few
decades, such critique raises some intriguing issues. In particular, questions
about the extent to which the culture of each individual ethnic minor-
ity group within Japanese society tends to be constructed as a uniform
entity in a monocultural way. The generations of Korean residents in Japan,
for example, have attempted to defend and maintain what they regard as
Korean culture within the mainstream culture of Japan. But ‘Korean cul-
ture’ is neither uniform nor homogeneous. Which Koreans are taken here
as the demographic basis of Korean culture? Is the argument about the
preservation of the Korean tradition within Japan based on a kind of
Kankokujinron (theories on the Koreans) – a Korean counterpart of Nihon-
jinron? Similar issues arise when considering the largest minority group in
Japan, burakumin. Despite being Japanese both in terms of nationality and
race, they are discriminated against due to the widely held prejudice that
their blood is contaminated because their ancestors engaged in livestock
slaughter during the feudal period, a job regarded as filthy at the time. But
as Hideo Aoki’s contribution on buraku culture (chapter 10)elucidates,
the increasing diversification of buraku communities makes it difficult to
define a single unified buraku culture.
There is an analogous dilemma in placing Japanese culture in a global
context. Takami Kuwayama argues that Japan remains on the periphery of
the ‘academic world system’ (chapter 2) and, more widely the modern world
system of knowledge, in which the dominant centres – the United States,
the United Kingdom and other Western countries – wield overall interna-
tional cultural power. This is of course partially contested and mediated, as
demonstrated by the recent inroads of Japanese animation (see chapter 19)
and food culture (chapter 16) into the global sphere. Nonetheless, on the
whole, Hollywood, CNN and McDonalds globally define what is beau-
tiful, newsworthy and tasty. English is the lingua franca that the Japanese
have to learn. In tracing the historical transformations of Japanese hous-
ing in chapter 15, Ann Waswo shows how the culture of sitting, eating
and sleeping on the floor has been modified in line with Western housing
models to make Japanese housing look more ‘civilised’. As Morris Low
Overview 7
vividly demonstrates in his analysis of wakon y
¯
osai (Japanese spirit and
Western technology) in chapter 7, the ‘significant other’ for modern
Japanese culture has invariably been the imagined culture of the West. One
wonders what the cultural orientations of many Japanese would look like if
the centres of news media were in Latin America, the internationally presti-
gious universities were clustered in Africa and the language of international
communication were Hindi or Thai.
These considerations for cultural relativity draw attention to two types
of cultural relativism. On one hand, one has to be mindful of cultural
diversity and stratification within Japanese society: domestic multicultural
realities that are relative to each other. On the other hand, one must also
be conscious of cultural relativity between Japan and other societies and
consider the extent to which Japan is peripheral in the global cultural sys-
tem. However, these two dimensions of cultural relativism pose a thorny
dilemma. If one overemphasises intra-cultural relativism, inter-societal
cultural relativity tends to be diluted. If one underscores inter-societal cul-
tural relativism, one is often trapped in a pitfall where intra-societal diversity
is attenuated and national stereotypes are apt to prevail. There appears to
be an unavoidable negative correlation between the two types of cultural
relativism.
Social science concepts and theories produced in the West are dissemi-
nated and studied in Japanese academia, not the other way around. Little
is known outside Japan about the concepts or cultural categories that have
been developed in the Japanese context and that cannot be translated into
Western languages in a straightforward manner. One such notion, seikatsu,
illustrates this point.
Seikatsu generally means livelihood, everyday life or a wide range of life
activities.
16
The agents of seikatsu are seikatsusha, the ordinary, nameless
and common men and women who actively construct their living condi-
tions. Seikatsusha constitute the core of Japan’s civil society, independent
of powers of the state and the market. The narrow definition of seikatsu
focuses upon the world of consumption, in which seikatsusha consciously
carve their independent life activities, not simply as passive and submissive
consumers. The broad definition of seikatsu includes almost every sphere
of life, including clothing, food, housing, folk customs, language, recre-
ation and entertainment, not to mention work and consumption. In activist
usage, seikatsu denotes various autonomous areas of life culture in which
seikatsusha attempt to improve their standard of living and quality of life
8 Yoshio Sugimoto
by developing lifestyles that counter the forces of capitalist consumerism
and government regulation. Based on life culture at the grassroots and
linked with everyday usage of the term, the notion of seikatsusha tends to
be more reality-focused than the terms like shimin (citizens) and kokumin
(members of the nation). In the world of social movements, Japan has had
strong reformist organisations as the networks of seikatsu ky
¯
od
¯
o kumiai
(literally ‘everyday life cooperative associations’). In social sciences, the
discipline of seikatsu-gaku, ‘lifology’, occupies an area of inter-disciplinary
study.
The notion of seikatsu that has been developed in Japan as an ana-
lytical concept deserves attention in relation to such Western sociological
concepts as Sch
¨
utz’s ‘world of everyday life’, Habermas’s ‘life-world’ and
Dahrendorf’s ‘life chances’. In its ambiguity and inclusiveness, the concept
of seikatsu intersects and overlaps with that of culture too. Many chap-
ters of the present volume draw inspiration from the Japanese studies of
seikatsu and seikatsusha, though without explicitly referring to them. In
chapter 12, for example, Sepp Linhart refers to Japan’s recent national pol-
icy to strive to be seikatsu taikoku (a lifestyle superpower), while, in chapter
16, Naomichi Ishige derives much of his analysis of food culture from the
work he has done in the above-mentioned field of seikatsu-gaku.Further,
Okano’s chapter on school culture (chapter 5) details aspects of gakk
¯
o
seikatsu (school life). There are many other cultural categories that require
attention not only for the interpretation of Japanese culture but also as tools
of comparative analysis. In chapter 4, for instance, Anne Imamura analyses
the notion of ie (household), while in chapter 6 Ross Mouer discusses the
concept of sh
¯
ushoku (obtaining lifetime full-time employment). In chapter
8, Covell points to the disparity between the Japanese notion of sh
¯
uky
¯
o
and the English term ‘religion’ and the importance of cultural sensitivity in
comparative studies of spiritual life.
These conceptual concerns stem from Japan’s perceived duality in the
international community: as an economic centre and technological super-
power; yet as culturally peripheral and a part of Asia. With Japanese culture
viewed in relative and comparative terms, one might have to revisit the
‘convergence’ debate over the extent to which all industrial societies tend
to demonstrate analogous characteristics due to the imperatives of indus-
trialisation, not only in social structures and institutions but also in value
orientations and lifestyles. Japan has been the prime testing ground for
the debate because it is the foremost industrial power outside the Western
Overview 9
cultural framework. While discussing a number of Japan-specific styles of
leisure consumption, Linhart declares that he supports the notion that such
convergence does tend to occur in Japanese leisure consumption practices.
Mouer’s study on work culture (chapter 6) suggests that there are consid-
erable similarities in the patterns of employment and the values of workers
due to the added momentum of the globalisation of work. Yet Stephen
Covell’s chapter on Japan’s religions (chapter 8) and Miho Koishihara’s
chapter on sports culture (chapter 17) call the convergence thesis into ques-
tion, pointing to the possibility that Japan’s distinctive cultural forces may
be so robust that Japan has been taking a distinctly unique path, or that
Japan’s situation may demonstrate that the pattern of global convergence is
more complex than initially thought.
Whether postmodern or neo-modern, the Japanese culture today that
faces issues of cultural relativism, linguistic gap problems and the conver-
gence debate sensitises analysts of Japan to the ambivalence and duality that
derive from its specific historical and geo-political circumstances.
The dilemma of cultural relativism manifests itself in the ‘name order
debate’: which way should the Japanese order their surnames and given
names in Western languages? Since the early Meiji years and until recently,
most Japanese have followed the Western system of placing their given name
first and their surname second when identifying themselves in Western
languages, although the convention in the Japanese language is the other
way around – the surname first followed by the given name. More recently,
from the perspective of cultural relativism, some Japanese intellectuals have
started using the Japanese system when writing in Western languages, a
position that is gaining ground among Japan specialists in Western countries.
However, there is a strong, competing argument in favour of using the
Western system to facilitate smooth international communications and to
avoid unnecessary confusion and needless misunderstanding. This volume
reflects the controversy to the extent that each contributor chose their
preferred style in referring to Japan’s historical figures and citing Japanese
authors. We exercised no editorial control over this matter, though the
contributor’s name order at the beginning of each chapter follows the given
name–surname sequence to avoid confusion in citations. When uncertain,
readers are requested to refer to the bibliography and the index at the
end of the book. Though ostensibly trivial, this issue reflects Japan’s dual
identity in international communication media in a concrete and tangible
fashion.
10 Yoshio Sugimoto
Table 0.2 Four types of culture by the agents of
production and appreciation
Producers
Appreciators Specialists Amateurs
Specialists Elite culture Populist culture
Amateurs Mass culture Seikatsu culture
Cultural agents and culture shaping forces
Broadly defined, culture is an all-embracing and equivocal concept. It
includes all forms and processes that produce meanings to human beings.
These include categories, symbols, artefacts, practices, rituals, value ori-
entations, worldviews and even paradigms. The present volume does not
confine itself to any particular definition of culture. Aside from the con-
cerns outlined above regarding the need to avoid essentialised statements
about culture, some chapters deal primarily with the institutional contexts,
constraints and circumstances in which culture is produced and the ways in
which organisations and networks influence the meaning systems of schools
(chapter 5), work (chapter 6) and science and technology (chapter 7). Others
address textual contents focusing, for example, upon literature (chapter 11)
and visual arts (chapter 13). Still others investigate such artefacts as housing
(chapter 15) and food (chapter 16).
A typology of culture
Turning to focus upon the agents of Japanese culture and the cultural prod-
ucts they yield and consume, one can identify two categories – producers
and appreciators. These can be either specialists or amateurs in each cul-
tural field. As Table 0.2 shows, these considerations pinpoint four types of
Japanese culture.
In elite culture both producers and appreciators are specialists. Cases
in point would include Japanese tea ceremony, flower arrangements, noh
play, koto, symphonies, operas, museum exhibitions and calligraphy, in
which consumers, listeners or viewers are well versed and share the relevant
knowledge with the performers.
Mass culture represents the sort in which specialists present their prod-
ucts to an amateur audience who are not expected to have a professional
Overview 11
understanding of these products and the processes involved in their produc-
tion. Movies, animation, manga, most literature, TV shows, popular songs,
fashion and advertisements would all fall into this category.
The type of culture in which the amateur public create messages to be
received by professional cultural producers may be called populist culture.
This takes place in such outlets as popularity contests, readers’ letters, TV
ratings, street protest demonstrations and fan letters. The rise of ‘online
activism’ is expanding this area of cultural democracy, though it sometimes
turns into political demagogue. Populist culture often goes beyond com-
munications from amateurs to professionals and overlaps with the amateur-
to-amateur interactions that form the final category.
This is a realm of seikatsu culture where both producers and receivers
of culture are amateurs.
17
In this domain, laymen’s everyday life intersects
with cultural expressions in the form of meanings, symbols, values and
artefacts. Examples of seikatsu culture would include: origami, bonsai, pri-
vate gardening, bon festival dancing, graffiti art, New Year’s card writing,
kite painting, local folk songs, community festivals and tomb arrangements.
Even the ways of bowing, gesturing in conversation, chanting choruses in
street demonstrations, blogging in cyberspace, preparing meals and taking
a bath would also fall into this category.
In competition with state and market hegemony, seikatsu culture forms
a realm in which voluntary and informal groups and networks actively pur-
sue liberal and democratic principles, thereby producing innovative and
creative culture for individuals’ self-actualisation. Many cultural activi-
ties in Japan have ample elements of this momentum. Volunteer groups
and non-governmental organisations that have mushroomed around the
country since the late 20th century embody the spirit of civil society.
Japan has many voluntary hobby groups and networks formed and main-
tained by those who share interests, for instance, in bonsai, haiku, senry
¯
u
(ironical haiku), shod
¯
o (calligraphy), kanshi (Chinese poetry) and sh
¯
ogi
(Japanese chess). Those who enjoy creative writing contribute novels and
poems to small private magazines, called d
¯
ojinshi, published by a group
of like-minded people. Some local festivals and community folk practices
are also relatively shielded from the powers of the state and the market
and promote the meaning systems of voluntary groups. Feminists, ecol-
ogists, ethnic and sexual minorities, and other networks of dissenters
against state and commercial interests form distinctive cultural group-
ings that contribute to the expansion of Japan’s civil society and seikatsu
culture.
18
12 Yoshio Sugimoto
Superimposed on these cultural spheres are the influences of the state
and the market, the two dominant forces that shape the cultural orienta-
tions of the Japanese. The government machinery actively intervenes in the
cultural realm to promote national cohesion, while the business world uses
the market’s consumption of culture as major profit-making opportunities.
Meanwhile, some cultural pursuits spread without effective involvement of
the state and the market, with civil society being their major driving force.
Within this overall context, both the Japanese state and Japan’s capitalist
market are undergoing radical transformation. The state is adapting to the
increasing variations within the nation, preserving its unity while accom-
modating diversity. At the same time, the market is shifting from industrial
capitalism to cultural capitalism where knowledge, information and other
cultural goods take the centre stage.
State transition from imposing uniformity to
accommodating diversity
It is almost trite to suggest that the power of the state manifests itself not
only in governmental institutions but also in the processes of classifica-
tion and social interactions. Maps that show Japan’s national boundaries as
being made up of an archipelago of 47 prefectures are based upon categories
formulated by the Japanese state. It organises, controls and manipulates
symbols, knowledge, information and other immaterial forms, including:
defining the correct standard Japanese language (see chapter 3); describing
the traditional authentic Japanese family (chapter 4); prescribing Shinto-
ism as the indigenous national religion (chapter 8); promoting sumo as the
national sport (chapter 17); and portraying the Emperor as the embodi-
ment of national unity. The list of concrete instances would be virtually
endless.
The state machinery that engages specifically in fostering what it regards
as Japan’s national culture includes the Ministry of Education, Culture,
Sports and Science and Technology, the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the
Japan Art Academy, the National Institute for Japanese Language, the Japan
Foundation and many others. The state screens the contents of school text-
books and curricula, defines national treasures, ranks tourist spots, controls
the official Japanese language and confers decorations on eminent individu-
als every spring and autumn . . . again a comprehensive list would be almost
endless. Through a huge budget, the state manages to establish, maintain
and expand national unity and togetherness in its interests, often selec-
tively mobilising the historical memories, mythologies and symbols, which
Overview 13
are crystallised most sharply in the national anthem (Kimigayo)andthe
national flag (Hinomaru). The promotion of Japanese national culture is an
indispensable component of the Japanese national community.
The state also has a major stake in the way Japanese culture is presented
abroad, because Japan’s cultural export products – from manga to anima-
tion, from sushi to Sudoku – form a major economic and political tool
for ‘soft domination’ in worldwide competition. As these cultural goods
entertain and excite, they elevate the image of Japan, making it possible not
only for Japan’s cultural industry to achieve material gains but for Japanese
interests abroad to be seen in a favourable light. With the enactment of
the Basic Law of Intellectual Properties in 2002, the government regards
the foundation of a nation based on highly marketable cultural commodi-
ties as its strategy to enhance the nation’s position in the international
hierarchy.
The paradigm conflict in the formulation of Japanese culture, discussed
at the beginning of this overview, reflects the emerging division of the
state into two views of how Japanese culture should be defined.
19
The
first is based on Japan’s conventional political economy dominated by
the leadership and intervention of the state bureaucracy. This group repre-
sents the ancient cultural regime, so to speak, that presses for the adoration
of the nation’s unique history, the maintenance of lifetime employment and
seniority-based wage structures in the corporate world, the preservation of
gender role differences, the expansion of Japanese ‘traditional family values’,
discipline and order in school life and the extension of state-led nationhood
throughout the country.
The second view is a product of the increased globalisation of Japan’s
economy and technology and shares the values of deregulation and privati-
sation, seeking less state involvement and more private-sector initiatives in
business affairs. Those in this sector have benefited from growing inter-
nationalisation in various spheres of life and have much at stake in the
successful integration of Japanese society with the global community. An
increasing number of politicians, high-ranking bureaucrats and business
leaders either enthusiastically or reluctantly accept the possibility that it
would be more cost-effective and less conflicting to manage the nation
on the assumption that it is fraught with internal variation and class compe-
tition. The growth of this group in Japan’s political establishment indicates
that the Japanese nation state is now in the process of cultural adaptation in
the face of globalisation and other shifting circumstances, a form of defence
rather than collapse.