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Japan through American pop culture eyes

maushan3

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1 Feb 2007
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In the recent months or in a year probably, I have heard and seen many references about Japan, whether it be movies, music lyrics, or videos targeted to teenagers.

I can name some examples that come to mind: Fast and Furious movie, The Killers new video, and many more references in Hip-Hop music like Snoop Dogg talking about him being bilingual and international and saying things like 'moshi moshi' in his lyrics or Justin Timberlake, T.I., Timbaland, or an amateur rapper stating his obsession about 'buying Bathing Apes in Tokyo' among many other pop musicians saying 'cool' things about Japan.

Is it just me or what? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Mauricio
 
I forgot to add the most common example of this: Gwen Steffani and her Harajuku Girls on tour.
 
Absolutely and 100% not cool whatsoever... Nigo, a sellout before he took his brand to America, basically handed it over to a group of people, Commercial Hip Hop Artists, who have whored the brand out like no one else previously...

The brand was already diluted in Japan before this, so it made sense for Nigo--- cash driven, to bring his brand to the united states, but I've seen more Baby Milo Animal Farm hoodies than I can possibly imagine existing, being that they are all limited... read, the brand is being bootlegged massively, or rather, there is an entirely new market for the existing bootleggers, which dilutes the brand, and makes owning the brand purposeless if some punter down the block can go buy a $40 dollar knock-off on Ebay.

Gwen Stefani is almost akin to a slave-trader, she's a white, Californian girl, who sudenly LIEK OMG BISHIES KAWAIIII!~DESU YO~! GLORP... decided that Japan was just like so cool, and has inspired a mass of minions who lockstep with her thinking that Japanese girls all run around wearing kneepads and act like gangster girls...

All the women that Gwen surrounded herself with were in fact, from california, they may be able to speak Japanese, if you watch the videos of them on Gwen's clothing site, you'll hear an even moreso hideous "ME SO SOLLY" voice over which tries to make a stereotype of even the way Japanese speak English... She's a brand label *****, with enough money to pay Japanese Americans to pretend not to know English, and follow her around like her posse... she's an utter fraud and a complete shame.

A Bathing Ape... one Ape in Warm water, and the rest will follow... that is exactly perfect for Nigo, because this is what happens all of the time in Hip Hop culture... sooner or later it will die out, that's for certain, like all trends do... but, all of this casual, oh, fashionable cause celebrite' of Japan really doesn't matter, it doesn't dilute Japan, or the Japanese for anyone who knows anything about it... it misinforms and generally confuses the people who know nothing about it, and again it creates a legion of idiotic, blind, ignorant followers.

Fast & The Furious... a movie which was filmed with virtually NO Japanese actors whatsoever, which took place in Japan for absolutely NO reason whatsoever... whatever, its a pop culture film, its not meant to be great--- but it doesn't represent Japan... but it creates again, this legion of people, "omg liek uh what is para para! I want to uh para para, zomg like now ^_^!!!!1"... It creates more confusion than it elucidates, so its damaging to people who don't know anything about Japan.

This is in no way at all a solvable problem. Education? Impossible... it's a dichotomy that will always exist, and has always existed... Those who live in anime-land where ninjas roam freely and the RZA drops mad beats because he scored the ed: Afro Samurai... (what RZA, really?? are you serious with this...?)... and then there are educated people whom the former will always ignore because liek they just don't understand how Bou & Gackt and liek bishies are teh love.

End of Rant.

ps. I'll just state as well, that there is also this dichotomy between the way that Japanese popular culture, anime, manga, yaoi, yuri, hentai, ecchi, shounen-ai, bishounen, shotacon, lolicon, moe, (what we might label paraphilias) etcetera etcetera etcetera are interpreted by non-Japanese versus how they are interpreted by the Japanese themselves... again, it's unsolvable. The two parties will always exist--- some may grow up out of it, but others will always be content to process this information as they see fit, in order to satisfy their own needs.
 
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It's been interesting for me to watch this trend over the years. I remember in the 90's getting annoyed that anime was starting to find its way over to American shores. I witnessed the rap artists slowly start to incorperate asian-inspired things into their lyrics. The internet seemed to really put Japanese pop culture on the fast-track to America. I guess I have some blame in that, since in the late 90's I had a fairly popular Japanese pop culture website.

The Gwen Stephani thing is what makes me the most angry. I used to really like her in her ska-girl days. I never figured she'd become an awkward middle aged woman who would suddenly grasp onto Harajuku as if it were her little plaything, all the while dragging around 4 Japanese girls.
 
Americans know as much about Japan and have just as many stupid misconceptions about Japan as the Japanese have about Americans. I mean, yeah, I am interested in firearms and my Dad owns a bunch of them (he's a sportsman), that doesn't mean I walk through metal detectors and they explode because I pack more heat than a Class A star.
 
It all started with the introduction of anime. The second something begins to hypnotise kids/teens (Sailor Moon, Pokemon, Dragon Ball Z ect) it begins snowballing from there because they, ultimately, are the ones who decided what's hot and what's not, so to speak and everyone wants a slice of that market.

So of course the big wigs, eager to cash in on whatevers hot at the moment will latch on to it and begin throwing it around everywhere in an attempt to make it more marketable to the tween audience. Setting movies in Tokyo for example, because that's basically the only japanese city tweens know of, try selling Fast and the Furious: Osaka Drift or whatever, not gonna happen.

Then cartoons change from the old marvel, disney or stylized brands to clones (and crappy clones at that) of anime. Have you noticed the surge of american 'anime' which has little to do with actual anime save that it's sort of drawn the same way in the hopes that the gullible little tweens won't recognize the difference and watch it anyways. It might as well be regurgitated spam for all the substance and effort put into it.

Then it begins to seep into the music, from Hilary Duff and the Killers to the infamous Gwen Sefani (all hugely popular with, you guessed it, the tween audience) and you basically just have one big marketing scheme to slap anything japanese on something so it sells more.

Watch it fade in the next...I'll give it 5 years. It's about reached it's peak now and will probably start sliding from popularity from there, it will still be around but it wont be nearly as 'cool' or as marketable.
 
Gwen Stefani is almost akin to a slave-trader, she's a white, Californian girl, who sudenly LIEK OMG BISHIES KAWAIIII!~DESU YO~! GLORP... decided that Japan was just like so cool, and has inspired a mass of minions who lockstep with her thinking that Japanese girls all run around wearing kneepads and act like gangster girls...

All the women that Gwen surrounded herself with were in fact, from california, they may be able to speak Japanese, if you watch the videos of them on Gwen's clothing site, you'll hear an even moreso hideous "ME SO SOLLY" voice over which tries to make a stereotype of even the way Japanese speak English... She's a brand label *****, with enough money to pay Japanese Americans to pretend not to know English, and follow her around like her posse... she's an utter fraud and a complete shame.
A slave trader? Body everyone is calling innocent things by extreme words nowadays. It's like the soup guy on Seinfeld being reffered to as a "soup nazi".
I think you're being a bit harsh on Gwen.
And so what if the girls aren't actually Japanese and it's a fraud. The whole thing might get a few people interested in harajuku fashion or other fashion from Japan, which is good enough for me.
 
i think all those american (no offence to american people here !!!) but the other americans or other people are really stupid, they think if they visit japan a lot that they may be very proud and speaking or rapping about japan. my god there are millions and millions of people who can't even say Moshi moshi properly they say , muchi muchi..

like the sporters of the Osaka games, (im referring now to the belgian sporters like: Gevaert Kim, she said in english that japan reminds her of a robot land, she said also: im getting crazy of the metro subway, all those rare signs, this country is nice but im only here for my job, but i can't deny the country is good for his sake..)

well you allready could guess what i tought of her, to hell with you!
people talking like that are dumb, the same with those american pop artists etc...

well its their life, but i would explore a bit of the country before saying something like that. and no wonder you can't read it, you never read it.

but because she is an athletic i can understand her situation but still.....
 
Beverly Hills Ninja was really funny! I know it's old (1997) but I just watched it last night, and laughed a lot. :) I know that it's not based in reality, but that's not why I watch movies anyway.
 
I heard Gwen Stefani pays her Japansese looking friends to speak nothing but Japanese when around her.
They don't call it Hollyweird for nothing.

Even if it were her intention to try to "make it cool to get interested in another culture", with the the Japanese looking women paid to pretend broken English (now that's just f'd up), it seems almost obvious this doing more harm than good.


Ever since I heard her old band "No Doubt fired their horn section (before they were apparently a ska band) so they could make it big...that was pretty sad. Hollyweird ain't where you're going to find real music, just a bunch of commercials.
 
A slave trader? Body everyone is calling innocent things by extreme words nowadays. It's like the soup guy on Seinfeld being reffered to as a "soup nazi".
I think you're being a bit harsh on Gwen.
And so what if the girls aren't actually Japanese and it's a fraud. The whole thing might get a few people interested in harajuku fashion or other fashion from Japan, which is good enough for me.

Well you know something that isn't authentic is umm... a lie? I am neutral towards pop culture, i don't hate it, nor do i like it, i simply don't pay attention, i don't even know who this Gwen person is, but a lie is a lie.
And this rubbish is probably spreading falsehood, and your everyday US, EU citizen will believe that most people in japan are prancing around behind retarded stars. Do you remember the Borat case? Well its similar, the only difference is that Sacha Cohen got a bit carried away.
 
Watch it fade in the next...I'll give it 5 years. It's about reached it's peak now and will probably start sliding from popularity from there, it will still be around but it wont be nearly as 'cool' or as marketable.
i am not nearly as optimistic as you are. Google Trends
Its been many years and its been pretty stable.
I honest to god hope it goes away soon but i doubt it. Right now America is into the far east and its going to stay that way until Americans decide to demystify the far east and look at it in more realistic simple terms. Of course that would make the far east unprofitable so most companies are probably trying to prevent that but we true fans can only hope. And pop culture is not a real indicator of its own host country so i can't even imagine what its doing with japans image.
 
I wouldn't worry about Mango that much, I don't really consider that pop culture because you'd have to be a fan of it not just simply like Janpanese stuff because it's kawai or whatever. It's the stuff in hip-hop, Gwen, urban clothing that I think is real watered down pop culture that I think has reached its peak and like Madame said will hopefully die out soon. But things like true Manga etc will stay popular for a long time.
 
This is not an unusual trend to see in many societies. If you read Said's Orientalism, you'll see how this trend has permeated Western culture (specifically Mid-Eastern in his book, though). The trend of Orientalism nevertheless survives in American society through a fascination of Japanese and other Far Eastern cultures and societies, while remaining largely ignorant of the vast bulk of these culture's history and inner workings. In other words, it is mostly a fascination with that society's material culture and other immediately visible manifestations of their society.

Essentially, Japanese stuff is cool, but Japanese people aren't, necessarily.

The same goes for America in Japan. In this case, I'd argue that it is Orientalism reversed ("Occidentalism" if you prefer). So, Gwen Stefani hanging out with these "Harajuku Girls" is no different from random bad English on the cover of a Japanese porno movie, which is no different from a late 18th century French woman's costume imitating supposed Eastern styles, are all the same, essentially.
 
Said's Orientalism is something of quite long ago. And not applicable to fascination with Japan of today really.
There are similarities but it's a different thing.

The difference between what Gwen is doing now and a French woman imitating eastern styles is that both eastern and western culture are different from what we used to be. Heck, at one point in time in human history eastern and western culture were the same.
 
Said's Orientalism is something of quite long ago. And not applicable to fascination with Japan of today really.
There are similarities but it's a different thing.
I'd argue some of the motivations are different--some. And the result is slightly different, but I still see them as being part of the same phenomenon, though. It just crops up at different times and in different cultures. Said simply deals mostly with Europe and the Middle East. If you apply his methodology to the current fads in America towards Japan (and vice-versa) you'll find a lot of the impetus is similar, but the ethnocentrism isn't quite there in the same manner. That, and there is more of a bridge than a chasm being formed between the two cultures (or at least a one-way road from Japan to the U.S.).

The difference between what Gwen is doing now and a French woman imitating eastern styles is that both eastern and western culture are different from what we used to be. Heck, at one point in time in human history eastern and western culture were the same.
I'm not sure why the difference in time makes Said's argument/methodology inapplicable.

And as for east being the same as west, well, they've been separate ever since the end of the Bronze Age, at least.
 
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