Sunday, October 28, 2012

Mitsuo Aida and Sony Plaza

Have you heard of Mitsuo Aida?
He was a Japanese calligrapher and poet with a distinctive writing style. And it's funny how he intentionally mispells the last "o" (お) of his name with the preposition "o" (を).


know there are a lot of consumer related things to do in Ginza.. But once you are there, it's worth experiencing something more Japanese and visit his museum in Tokyo International Forum where you can read about his poetry and art. It won't take more than an hour and it's mostly in Japanese, although really simple (as you see it's usually hiragana). My favorite thing was the fukubukuro* that included a calendar with his poetry, postcards, pens, towel, a book, cookies and other useless fun stuff that gave me something to take home and remember :)

*Fukubukuro: let's say it's a surprise goodie bag for half the price of the included items but you never know what's inside-  the full explanation of fukubukuro requires another post. There are even Tokyo urban myths of Louis Vuitton giving away fukubukuro on new years day but I've never actually known anyone who bought a fukubukuro from LV.
End of break, back to spirituality and away from consumerism ----->>>




This painting says that "happiness is something that your soul decides (to be happy or not)" or that "happiness comes from within (oneself)"


This one says: (Thank God or Thank goodness or Thankfully) "I'm well"


*I do not own any of the Mitsuo Aida images.



You can access the Museum from the Sony Building underground passage as well.
Once you're there, you might also want to visit the amazing Sony Plaza store with lots of contemporary Japanese -in the cute and colorful way, don't expect any geisha stuff- cosmetics and house items.



For example, this insanely cute blind- mouthless bunny speaker for iPods and smartphones can be found in SonyPlaza. I love it because its face is even more abstract and deductive than hello kitty. Is the bunny happy? Is it sad? Where is it looking? I can't say!

Even though I was working for 3 years in an office just across the Sony Building, I never got around to seeing the rest of it..So I can only speak about Sony Plaza and the musicnote-and-rainbow-colour producing steps that you encounter when you are exiting the store, towards the Metro entrance. I'm sure the rest of the Building has a lot of interesting Sony- related things to offer.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Sakura in Tokyo- 2008

After requests from friends, I decided that this will be more of a visual blog. Looks like my friends prefer to see pictures.. And indeed, they are always hidden in my hard drive without anyone seeing them because I'm too lazy to show them :)

So, here are some pictures of Hanami (flower viewing, literally) in various places of Tokyo, 2008.

Near Ark Hills


 Shinjuku Gyouen Park


 Ark Hills

 Nippon Budokan

 Budokan

 The Old and the New Coexist

 Dantelles of Sakura


Tokyo Ark Hills at Night

Friday, October 12, 2012

Baskin Robins in Japan

Baskin Robins is a US ice-cream company, but in Japan it has taken an extremely innovative attitude. Every season, Baskin Robins in Japan offers different sundae creations to match the traditional Japanese food, fruit and spirit of the season. In autumn, it is a custom to eat Matcha sweets. I do not why but specifically in autumn, one can find more matcha sweets that in any other season. 
There are two kinds of non- Japanese people regarding matcha attitudes: those who love it and those who can't stand it. I belong to the former so I was ecstatic to see this green haze as I was approaching the store.


The matcha sundae in the picture had matcha ice-cream (obviously), whipped cream, matcha macaron (or something like that) and matcha mochi, all sprinkled with matcha powder! One word: Heavenly!





Monday, October 8, 2012

Katsuura- shrines, beaches and Budo

Last post was about the new Japan. Traditional Japan is amazing as well.

If you want to experience old Japan (and not in a theme park) go to the Chiba Pacific shore towns and villages. My most beloved place in Japan is Katsuura, a small fishing village on the Pacific side, in Chiba. It's about 3 hours from Tokyo with the Sotobo Line (I recommend it because the train is old, picturesque and the view along the way is breathtaking, with old traditional houses and forests that you think Totoro will jump out at some point) and 1.5 hrs with a Wakashio line from Shinjuku that I've never tried because I liked the Sotobo so much. Sotobo 外房 means outer Boso line and after some stop it goes along the east coast, arriving at magnificent beaches famous for surfing or hanging out in the summer.

From Katsuura, you can go to Hebara beach, Mobara beach, Onjuku (its 5 mins train ride or 20 mins by bicycle) and Kazusa Ichinomiya, famous for its small island in a walking distance from the beachside. You can walk to that island in the water and climb up to the shrine that is built on it. Further down the Sotobo line, you can reach Tateyama. They have a nature park called "Tateyama Paradise" there, where you can see rare flowers and touch cute animals like sheep. I think it's mostly for kids, but we're all kids aren't we :)
                                      (Kazusa-ichinomiya beach- couldn't find a better picture)

On the beach of Katsuura you can also find a torii mon (tori gate) which points directly to another one deep in the water (I've never swam to it, the beach is restrained and you can't go very deep). These torii mons are supposed to be the gates for the Shinto Gods to pass through, as an old lady told me (or, are passages from the profane to the sacred thus marking the entrance to a sacred place), so that's why they are lineated and on every possible surface. Another shrine is situated on top of a long line of stairs but it does not correspond to the ones on the beach. This is Tomisaki shrine, where you can have a wonderful view of Katsuura from the top. There are other Torii mons on the mountain in Katsuura and if you are curious enough and walk a lot, you will find them. In those shrines, people leave their wishes written on small wooden pieces. I was surprised when I saw one written in Greek once.




                                                    (The torii on the Katsuura beach)

(Going up to the shrine)

                                                 (View of Katsuura from the mountain shrine)


In the streets of Katsuura you can have wonderful sushi and other Japanese food. There is a local (I think) specialty, called soyu-batta kinme which is a white fish (red outside, don't know the English name) cooked in soy sauce, butter and sugar. It's divine! After 8pm, at all the fishershops you can buy fish for reduced price, as they are not considered fresh anymore.

Because of the many students, the places are filled at night with people drinking and talking loud. It's never a dull moment at Katsuura, even if you go out to eat alone. You will find someone you know, or the shop owner or the customers will most likely speak to you and you will all be a big group of friends eating together in the end. Happened in every place and even in Tsukiji, Tokyo. The Japanese are very friendly, warm and welcoming people. They remind me of people in the Greek countryside or islands. THAT friendly.

But enough with the fun and vacation part. Katsuura is also the home of the International Budo University 国際武道大学 which is the reason that I went to Japan in the first place. International students in IBU are taught specific courses so as to be able to teach Judo or Kendo and Japanese culture in their home countries but you are required to have practiced for many years before you go there.I mean, for your own sake, you're not going to take much of it if you are a beginner. I went there because I wanted to study kendo in its birthplace and it was a good decision. Don't listen to anyone who says that in Europe "we teach it better".. Kendo (Budo) is Japanese and that's where you should study it. I mean, if you like something, at least respect its roots. I met some wonderful people while studying and our teachers were inspiring. I feel so lucky to have had that experience. I'm going to stop writing about IBU because it will take another post.

                                   ( This picture of IBU campus and Katsuura was taken by the IBU staff)


P.S. I erased by mistake ALL my pictures from Japan when I was transferring them to a new hard drive, but luckily some were saved on Facebook or Webshots and that's why I can post them here.

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Gyaru: Popular Culture, Globalization and the Reflection of a Trend


Here is the paper that I have to submit tonight. I made the references really small so that the rest is more comfortable to read. The reference list is at the end for anyone interested. 

The Japanese Gyaru:
Popular Culture, Globalization and the Reflection of a Trend

            Introduction
In recent years, it has been noted that Japanese popular culture has become very influencing worldwide. This is not only a consequence of MOFA’s Cool Japan campaign, but the result of sincere audience choices, audiences which come into contact with Japanese popular culture through the new media, ICT and by direct interaction (with travel being easily accessible).
This paper examines how globalization made fashion trends in different parts of the world become aware of and feed off each other. First, a local adaptation of US fashion styles created a Japanese young fashion. Secondly, this trend became visible to Westerners who aspired to follow the Japanese adaptation. Finally, this Western interest reflected for a third time, now back to Japan, where increased Western acceptance gave this trend added value and new media attention.

Popular Culture, Subculture or Pop Subculture?
What does the term Popular Culture mean? Storey (1996) identifies various definitions of popular culture (but suggests that none of these definitions are unproblematic): Popular culture is favoured by many people; culture that is left over after we decide what is high culture; mass produced for mass consumption; originating from the people; or a place of struggle between the dominant and the subordinate groups of society.
 A subculture then, is an act of “resistance against the dominant culture”. Subcultures mostly identify with youth cultures, but when does a subculture become pop culture? It is difficult to define the point when a subculture becomes popular and separate the two: “rap music in the United States, where, with the incorporation of youth culture into popular culture, the concept of subculture becomes difficult to delineate” because “(sub)cultural practices are co-opted and commodified by larger socioeconomic processes” (Marcelin, 2006).
In that sense, the term popular culture is accepted as an adequate term to include the contemporary Gyaru fashion and lifestyle pop (sub) cultures, since this trend cannot be included in high culture, is originating from the working class and exists in a contested place of struggle between the dominant and subordinate groups of Japanese society.

Globalization and Transnational Japanese Popular Culture
When looking at popular culture today, it is rather impossible to avoid considering the theoretical perspectives of globalization and transnationalism. Globalization was originally considered as emanating from the West (Giddens,1990; Axford; 1995; Spybey,1996 cited in Allen& Sakamoto, 2006) but media globalization also facilitates ‘the de-centering of capitalism from the West’ (Tomlinson, 1997 cited in Iwabuchi, 2002). Empowered by globalization processes, transnationalism makes people, ideas and commodities cross national boundaries and become unidentified with a single place of origin (Watson, 1997 cited in Iwabuchi, 2002).
This re-centered globalization process of the 21st century brings Japanese cultural exports such as manga and anime into the Western markets, thus making Japan a “visual superpower” (Norris, 2009 cited in Sugimoto, 2009), bringing forth a “Japanization” of the West (Iwabuchi, 2002). This includes the case of young women’s imaginative fashion styles in Japan. Already popular in Asia (Ibid), Japanese fashion has now expanded its popularity into the western youth. An earlier example is the Harajuku fashion (named after a Tokyo district which has countless clothing stores) which quickly drew western attention, books’ publications (“Fruits”), countless blogs and a popular American singer (Gwen Stefani) naming a song, a perfume line and her style after visiting this Tokyo neighbourhood.
The notion of transculturation can furthermore explain the evolution and spread of the Gyaru fashion. Transculturation is the process where the encounter and creative misuse of various cultures results in the transformation of an existing cultural commodity and the creation of a new style (Pratt, 1992 cited in Iwabuchi, 2002), hybridization (Piaterse, 2004; Thomlinson,1999 cited in Allen& Sakamoto, 2006) or stateless globalism aesthetic through stylistic sampling (Miller, 2004).

The Gyaru Fashion
A striking example of Japanese popular fashion is the Gal or Gyaru (girl) or Kogal (small girl) trend which is not simply a fashion trend but a “social type” (Suzuki& Best, 2003) with its own slang (Marx, 2012; Miller, 2004), away from the traditional Japanese feminine ideals of whiteness (Ashikari, 2005) and cuteness (McVeigh, 2000) which resulted in much controversy around the style.
There are numerous subcategories within the Gyaru term, each with particular characteristics: the ane-gal (older gal), the mama gal, the b-gal (“black” i.e. rap culture girl), the ganguro (to an Afrikan shade tanned gal), the bihaku-gal (white-skinned gal), the yamamba (mountain witch- with “negative makeup” i.e. black face, white features and silver hair), the Gyaru-o (man gyaru) and so on (Watrous, 2000 et al cited in Suzuki&Best, 2003; Marx, 2012).
Emerging in the 1980s (Marx, 2012) the Gyaru look was originally characterized by appropriation, domestication and indigenization (Iwabuchi, 2002) of various American looks discovered on TV, such as the California girl or the hip-hop look (Marx, 2012; Miller, 2004) but it finally evolved to represent a unique image of Japanese cultural identity, something that was “not seen before” (Miller, 2004), in the extreme faces of the ganguro and yamamba categories. No one might have noticed, but Japan found “its own domestic, non-designer fashion” (Marx, 2012). Invented by teens, Gyaru fashion “emphasizes fakeness and kitsch (…) appropriation of the elegant and the awful” but it is also egalitarian because girls from any economic background can acquire the look (Miller, 2004).
Because of their popularity and controversy, the Gyaru occupied a big share of media interest (Ibid; Marx, 2012) and became advertising targets, “in hopes of sparking national and even international crazes" (Watanabe 1997 cited in Suzuki&Best, 2003). Breaking into the mainstream in the 1990s, a large number of magazines in Japan address the Gyaru tastes and large shopping districts -such as Shibuya (Marx,2012; Suziki&Best, 2003) and Ikebukuro, with Shibuya’s “109” stores being the most popular - cater to their lifestyle.

The Western Gyaru Reception
Westerners who visit Japan or young people following fashion blogs are often excited with the Gyaru trend. It is indeed a brand new appearance that was never seen before and has now succeeded in being a unique part of Japanese popular culture that appeals to the West. It is worth mentioning that not only the moderate Kogal style (with medium tan and makeup) has made an impact on western youth, but the shocking Yamamba and Ganguro styles as well. Some informed western followers acknowledge the paradox of the situation and admit being “Western girls trying to be Japanese girls, trying to be Western(Robinson, 2009).
There is a big number of Western gyaru blogs who imitate the fashion and demonstrate their own versions of it. A simple Google search on “gyaru blogs” will bring up examples of non- Japanese gyaru bloggers such as http://everyday-gyaru.livejournal.com/ and http://bloggers.com/tag/gyaru. Online communities such as YouTube popularize Japanese gyaru fashion brands and cosmetics. Even western traditional media have featured cosmetics that are sold in gyaru stores such as “109” (see Panych, 2012 in Allure magazine). Kirin (2009) mentions women visiting Tokyo just to shop at “109” (spending amounts like 1800€), Japanese culture events in Barcelona that attract 60.000 people and even foreign gyaruo (men gyaru).

Back to Japan
Japanese bloggers and media, on their turn, became aware of the western gyaru appeal. For example, a show broadcasted by NHK (national television channel) in Japan featured western gyaru that were mentored by their favourite Japanese gyaru model, Aina Tanaka (Kirin, 2009).
Unlike other Japanese popular cultures (i.e. anime, J-pop) which were also regarded as social evils but were later re-evaluated and promoted as cultural exports (Linhart, 2009 cited in Sugimoto, 2009), the western popularity of the gyaru culture-  facilitated by globalization- was an authentic proof that the real cool Japan did not need to be promoted by MOFA’s ‘Cool Japan’ soft power foreign policy campaign in order to captivate the West. But indeed, responding to the western popularity, the Japanese government has “approved plans to recreate fashionable districts of Tokyo in foreign cities and it hopes to export four trillion yen worth of "Cool Japan" fashion by 2020” ( Oi, 2012).

Conclusion
This paper demonstrated how the processes of globalization made a (once controversial) Japanese fashion that was an adaptation of western images, take part in a global reflection process where the Japanese appropriation of the look became popular in the West and finally was received with renewed value (because of its western popularity) in Japan, with plans to be included in MOFA’s ‘Cool Japan’ future foreign policy campaign.

References
  • Allen M.& Sakamoto R., eds.: Popular Culture, Globalization and Japan. London: Routledge
  • Ashikari, Mikiko (2005) “Cultivating Japanese Whiteness: The “Whitening” Cosmetics Boom & the Japanese Identity”. Journal of Material Culture, 10:73.
  • Iwabuchi, Koichi (2002) Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism. London: Duke University Press
  • Kirin (2009) “Gaijin Gyaru” Tokyokawaiietc (accessed September 6, 2012) http://tokyokawaiietc.com/archives/3218
  • Marcelin, Louis Herns (2006) “Subcultures” in Birx, J.H. Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. http://knowledge.sagepub.com/view/anthropology/n840.xml?rskey=a3K37w&row=2 (accessed online September 3, 2012)
  • Marx, David W. (2012) “The History of the Gyaru” parts 1-4 http://neojaponisme.com/2012/02/28/the-history-of-the-gyaru-part-one/ (accessed October 4, 2012).
  • McVeigh, Brian J. (2000) Wearing Ideology: State, Schooling and Self- Presentation in Japan. Oxford: Berg.
  • Miller, Laura (2004) “Those Naughty Teenage Girls: Japanese Kogals, Slang, and Media Assessments”. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 14:2,225–247.
  • Oi, Mariko (2012) “Japan Harnesses Fashion Power of Gals”. Tokyo: BBC News http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19332694 (accessed September 6, 2012)
  • Panych, Sophia (2012) “Foreign Exchange” in Allure, 5: 73.
  • Robinson, Nina (2009) “Japan’s Fashion Rebellion Goes West”. London: BBC World Service. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8132726.stm
(accessed October 5, 2012).
  • Storey, John (1996) “What is Popular Culture?” in Storey, J., ed.: An Introduction to Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. Prentice Hall: London
  • Sugimoto, Yoshio, ed. (2009) The Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Suzuki, Tadashi& Best, Joel (2003) “Emergence of Trendsetters for Fashions and Fads: Kogaru in 1990s Japan”, Sociological Quarterly, 44:1, 61-79.

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Ads

I have to say that I'm very sorry for the onlinedating and asiangirls ads. I spent one hour trying to block them but they still keep popping in with different URLs.

Gyaru, Globalization and the "Cool Japan" campaign

Speaking of ways to relax from studying...

My first post is going to be a paper that I have to submit tomorrow. I'm not posting it because of my divine academic writing skills but because I think it's a very interesting subject that has not been suggested much before..
Actually since 2005 when I first went to Japan (I went there to study Japanese and Kendo, my absolutely favourite thing in Japan ) I was so intrigued by the Bihaku Gyaru, the Ganguro and Yamamba, that I even wrote in a university essay (it was Kokusai Budo Daigaku that I was attending then) that one of my favorite things about Japan was the Gyaru trend, (when asked about our favorite things, obviously). While writing this paper now, I was thinking how great it'd be if it was actually promoted by MOFA's (Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs) "Cool Japan" foreign policy campaign (the one that promoted Anime, Manga etc in various countries)and I planned on suggesting it on the conclusion but then I read on one BBC article that it is indeed scheduled to be promoted in this campaign by 2020. Anybody knows more about it? I didn't have time to look into it much further, actually.

So, before my paper, if someone wants to know more about it, this is a very good source:

http://neojaponisme.com/2012/02/28/the-history-of-the-gyaru-part-one/ (there are parts 1-4 but part 4 is still not published. Looking forward to it! Very good history of the Gyaru culture in general)

there is also a BBC documentary http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPYLUyGR7Ms and countless videos on YouTube.