J-Pop Shop Talk: Beyond The Cult Of Cute

Join the Tokidoki family tonight! Via.

FIT 's exhibit Japan Fashion Now, on through January 8, is a visual study of Japanese pop fashion. It explores the utilitarianism, avant-garde underpinnings, subculture gestures and touches of kawaii (cuteness). According to FIT, Japan's contemporary fashion combines "the cute and the scary, the beautiful and the ugly, the animate and the inanimate, the strange and the strangely beautiful."

This is also true of Japan's distinct popular design, J-pop, which has long been making a splash on Western shores. In 2004, BusinessWeek asked "Is Japanese Style Taking  Over The World?" Japanese culturalist Roland Kelts told Entrepreneurship.com he noticed the invasion in the form of Pikachu upstaging Snoopy in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.

"That was just the tip of the iceberg," says Kelts, a University of Tokyo professor and author of Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S. "I mean, [look at] the fact that sushi is available in mainstream supermarkets around the country; the fact that Japanese style, design and architecture are appearing in major cities around the country; [and] the popularity of manga and anime in bookstores and Wal-Mart and Target."

Japan Society looks at the phenomenon at tonight's discussion The J-pop Influence: A Western Obsession from a complete insider's perspective. Two of the world's top pop designers, Tokodoki's Simone Legno and Nooka’s Matthew Waldman share their love of J-Pop and their thoughts on how it affects our Western designers and consumers today. Discover the nouveau cult of cute from the people in the know!

S.H.

Do you have the time... for tonight's lecture? Via.

By These Powers Combined: New York City's Largest Pop Culture Convention To Date

Despite great peril, we survived the 2009 conventions. Image via.

The New York Comic Con and NY Anime Festival join forces, storming the Javits Center October 8-10 in what will undoubtedly be the greatest otaku show on Earth!

The hybrid monster convention features three days of East and West pop culture luminaries, virtuosos of ink and pen in the flesh, the unabashed selling and trading of precious goods, cult actors and VIPS dangled precariously before their devotees, and music, music and more music (and even some discussions about music).

For the third straight year, Japan Society joins hundreds of events and participants to give revelers a broader sample of the joys of Japanese culture (check out our vid from 2009).

Stop by the booth Friday to take part in an insane scavenger hunt with prizes from Kidrobot. We host a cosplay costume competition on Saturday (recruiting for our first-ever Halloween party in late October)—best costumes receive prizes from Kinokuniya Book Store. All weekend we'll be handing out free passes for our current exhibit of pop-y Zen Buddhist art from the 18th century, and there will be give-aways of our past exhibition catalogues, classic film screenings (currently focusing on the interplay of Buddhism and violence), and lectures ranging from Japan's influence on Western design  to Japan's inimitable vegetarian cuisine. We'll also be running around snagging choice interviews for our new Nihon New York video series (watch episodes 1 and 2) .

If you're at New York Comic Con or the NY Anime Fest this weekend, stop by the booth and say konnichiwa!

Konnichiwa Comic Con! Via.

S.H., S.J.

"Mad" Chrysanthemum Swords

A colleague informed me that our friends at Asia Society got the "Mad Men" bump this week (so jealous!) in an episode in which the protagonist advertising firm woos a Japanese client. (Full disclosure: I don't watch the show, because really, it's the story of my life, but there's a surprising amount of recaps out there, from mainstream distilling at Entertainment Weekly and Huffington Post to The Awl's veritable meltdown.)

As The New York Times recalls, "Every stereotype of Japanese corporate culture is hammed up here — the ritualized greetings, the essential exchange of gifts, the general obsession with protocol." To prepare for their conquest, the "Mad Men" office reads Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, and decides it's best to shame the competition to win the account. Continues The Times: "Shame as a kind of cultural practice is discussed at length in Benedict’s book and the theme of shame runs through the entire episode."

Since its 1946 publication, Benedict's Chrysanthemum is considered either a seminal and influential work of Japan Studies, or a notoriously contrived exercise in pseudo anthropology. According to the average Amazon reader's review, it is deemed a modern classic. The academic reaction is just as varied: it's a clash of civilizations experience, "an example of the politicization of anthropology", a museum piece, and/or merely one more book to read preparing for Japan fieldwork.

Chrysanthemum was based on a study commissioned by the U.S. during World War II to understand the "Japanese enemy." Because of constraints, Benedict did not conduct the appropriate fieldwork and based her report entitled "Japanese Behavior Patterns" on translated novels, movies, propaganda, and interviews with Japanese-Americans in U.S. interment camps. Expanded after the war, the resulting book was popular in the U.S. and, once translated, in Japan as well.

One fan was C. Douglas Lummis. When planning a move to Japan in the early 60s (the same time period as "Mad Men"), he picked up the book and was "corrupted by the myth":

"I walked around Japan like a miniature Benedict, seeing 'patterns' everywhere, and thinking it was wonderfully clever to be able to 'analyze' the behavior of the people around me, including even invitations to dialogue and expressions of friendship … [this attitude was] rampant within the community of Westerners in Japan, and especially among the Americans, so many of whom saw themselves not only as miniature Benedicts, but also as miniature MacArthurs. After some time I realized that I would never be able to live in a decent relationship with the people of that country unless I could drive this book, and its politely arrogant world view, out of my head."

Taking his cues from some of the negative reactions in Japan to the "deeply flawed" book, he penned his sprawling, fascinating, titularly telling essay "Ruth Benedict's Obituary for Japanese Culture" (recently updated). The essay is as much a must-read as Chrysanthemum or any focused critique of contemporary Japanese culture. Of course, context and purpose of the work is an important factor when reading for the complexity of U.S.-Japan relations.

Which leads me to wonder: was the use of Chrysanthemum part of the "Mad Men" writers' punch line in their comedy of cultural errors? One would assume so since the episode takes place shortly after the 65th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Japan and the end of WWII. I'm also curious how many people rushed out to buy the book after watching the episode. At the time of writing, it's fluctuating dramatically in Amazon's top 20 History/Asia/Japan bestsellers.

S.J.

News Blast

Japan's response to its ageing crisis

An ageing population, coupled with a declining birth rate, is an unprecedented challenge for Japanese policymakers. The issues created by this situation can be readily identified in the administration of Japan's pension system. It is widely recognised that record management for Japanese pensions has been, moderately speaking, incomplete, and more strictly speaking, defective. On the occasion of the introduction of the basic pension identification number, the Social Insurance Agency identified some 250 million numbers out of 300 million and consolidated them into 100 million basic pension identification numbers. As a consequence, 50 million pension numbers still remain to be identified.

Ministry unveils strategy to boost 'Cool Japan'

The government has drawn up a list of strategies aimed at boosting Japan's pop culture industry, thereby making Japan and its contemporary culture more competitive internationally. Japan's pop culture--namely its anime, games, food and fashion--is believed to have great potential for improving Japan's image and making its products more competitive in Asia, Europe and North America, where it is popular and being promoted under the name "Cool Japan."

New party set to be launched this week

Former Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano, who is set to leave the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party after severely criticizing the party leadership, and former trade minister Takeo Hiranuma confirmed Monday evening their plans to launch a new party by the end of the week.

Sumo: Fans hope 15-year-old Japanese prodigy can rise to the top

A 15-year-old boy, who has joined the Takadagawa sumo stable, has drawn attention as a possible future star. Despite his young age, Ryoya Tatsu, who is 193 centimeters tall and weighs 145 kilograms, is almost equal in size to Yokozuna Hakuho, who is 192 centimeters tall and 152 kilograms. Tatsu was among the newcomers who were introduced to the audience during the Spring Grand Sumo Tournament held in Osaka in March. The spring tournament, which coincides with the school graduation season, is also dubbed the "job placement tournament."

Japanese carriers to end mobile phone locks?

Japan's regulators decided to end restrictions on mobile phone users switching operators or changing the SIM card in their phones. The communications ministry and the country's four major carriers reached the agreement and will set up new guidelines for the plan, Jiji Press reported. At the moment, Japan's major mobile networks sell handsets that accept only their respective SIM cards only, and cannot work with handsets bought from other carriers. In other words, they sell network-locked devices.