The Meaning of Japan

muser

Well-known member
Japan feels very much like it got stuck in the 80s, a very futuristic and functional 80s but still basically still there .

Kamagasaki area in Osaka has a very extreme version of this uncanny time machine effect. Everything old and dilapidated playing enka music through all the tannoys, cafes where everything has a fine layer of dust and stench of stale smoke. seedy bars with old men wearing long coats and trilby's. A really surreal redlight district lit up with red lanterns and rows of individual open shopfronts. Women sat alone like dolls in brightly lit dollhouses, fixed smiles, mountains of make-up and dressed up in different themes. grumpy old ladies sat beside trying to heckle you in. has one of the very few slum areas in Japan.
 
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version

Well-known member
When I did karate as a kid we used to have Japanese instructors visit from time to time and the adults were all in awe of them; turned into children and got really serious, tried to be really precise and impress them.
 

muser

Well-known member
I think the hikikomori culture is a bit overplayed by the West , I don't know if it's that much more pervasive than in the US for example.
 

muser

Well-known member
There's a few key spots in central Tokyo where you do see homeless with intricate cardboard homes, it is much more unusual to see than in UK. Most benches in Tokyo are designed so you can't really sleep on them.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Well tp be extremely boring and maybe disrupt the thread premise a bit, I do know there's been a huge amount of interest in the Japanese economy for years now. There was a fascination with seeing how "abenomics" played out (named after Shinzo Abe, the last PM) as he was trying to jolt the economy out of "stagflation" by increasing public works and so on. He left office last year so I don't know how he's seen in summation, if he was a success or failure.
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
Japan feels very much like it got stuck in the 80s, a very futuristic and functional 80s but still basically still there .

Kamagasaki area in Osaka is one of my favourite urban areas for a very extreme version of this uncanny time machine effect. Everything old and dilapidated playing enka music through all the tannoys, cafes where everything has a fine layer of dust and stench of stale smoke. seedy bars with old men wearing long coats and trilby's. A really surreal redlight district lit up with red lanterns and rows of individual open shopfronts. Women sat alone like dolls in brightly lit dollhouses, fixed smiles, mountains of make-up and dressed up in different themes. grumpy old ladies sat beside trying to heckle you in. has one of the very few slum areas in Japan.
80s would be the decade japan's dominant older population grew up in, no? I know Japan has a kind of crisis with its lack of young people. I believe thats why vending machines are everywhere- no younger population to work those low qualification jobs
 

luka

Well-known member
There has been but as always it's just people extracting whatever lesson they want to out of it depending on ideological loyalties
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I guess the imaginary Japan has resurfaced in musical terms in recent years with the reissuing of all that Japanese ambient stuff. "Green" by Hiroshi Yoshimura, "9 Postcards" etc. Starting to see big Japanese sections in record shops now, they never used to be there.
 

version

Well-known member
It's interesting if you go back to stuff like Die Hard and American Psycho and pay attention to how Japan's discussed -- I think at one point a character in the latter claims the Japanese will own everything by the end of the 90s. I wonder whether that future failing to materialise is partly why Americans are now so enamored with Japanese culture. They're no longer a threat.
 

luka

Well-known member
There's a section on Japan in City of Quartz. LA's fears of Japanese dominance. I think there is anyway.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
It's weird, the Japanese sections. It's all obscure City pop and 80s bands I've never heard of. Surprised there's a market for it here. I mean, maybe there isn't, and it's just the artefact of someone's trip abroad but interesting nonetheless. The mix that rekindled all that interest was "Farilights, Mallets and Bamboo" by the Visible Cloaks dude.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
The primacy of the image, ultraviolence and deviant sexuality. The same fundamentals as Italy, and yet completely different.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Roland Barthes book on Japan — Empire of Signs — is one of my favorites of his,
although it’s probably considered Orientalist now.
 

luka

Well-known member
the orientalist imagining of Japan is interesting and relevant. that was the initial premise of the thread
 

luka

Well-known member
Lost In Translation was an important moment in orientalism, infusing that alienation and loneliness, that cut adrift state, with poetic longing and Scarlett Johannson. I think a lot of Japanese music is now viewed/heard through that film
 
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