J-PopCon in Copenhagen

J-popcon is a Danish Japanese pop culture convention that started back in 2000 and has been happening since 2003 non stop. As I hear, every year it becomes bigger and better.

This year it takes place March 28-30, so there's still time to visit this weekend! For the official site and program, visit http://www.j-popcon.dk/en/

J-popcon has a big focus on cosplay, with shows, competitions etc and as such it attracts a quite young group of people. However, its variety of events and themes turn it into a full celebration of Japanese pop culture! I was very surprised to see so much Japanese pop culture in Denmark. At the convention one can try kendo, karate, calligraphy, Japanese tea ceremony, learn about J-kei and K-pop or Japanese fashion subcultures, eat Japanese food provided by Japanese restaurants in Denmark (even sweets such as kakigori and taiyaki), read in the manga cafe, visit the maid cafe, watch Japanese animation and films in the two cinema rooms, and much much more. This year they also had the Swedish Yohio in concert.

In the dealer room, you can buy anything from cosplay costume clothes to bento boxes, Japanese snacks, gyaru accessories, kigurumi, character goods, kawaii bags and all those awesomely beautiful and cute Japanese thingies that we all love to find in Japan.

 

The dealer room, above. 

 

 For your gyaru, lolita etc needs

New kawaii characters. I love the bunny on the right bottom corner.

 The Japanese omatsuri style tent where you can eat your bento, taiyaki or Japanese curry.

Some cosplayers preparing

Besides finding matcha chocolate and my favorite character stickers

what I enjoyed most was the handmade items being sold by young artists. So much creativity, I wish I could buy from each one of them so as to support them all! Handmade jewellery, manga art, paintings, and small handmade gifts. Here are some links and addresses of the ones I really loved:

sw-13.deviantart.com

winter-lark.dk

theluckyangel  

Notebook decorated with hand sketch painting

Sagoslottet Creations makes this Dekoden art.  Decoden means decoration for electronic devices, such as smartphones and iPods.  

Visit the pages and support these kids :) Again, I'm not advertising anyone and these kids don't even know me, I just love art and I think that these talented young artists have great aesthetic sense and taste. 

Harajuku is a Tokyo neighborhood that gave and gives birth to many visual and fashion styles for the world. If you spot a trend in Harajuku, six months to a year later you'll probably see it in European and American fashion magazines and young brands such as Berska, Topshop etc. "Western" magazine editorials often feature unique accessories that are obviously bought from the countless stores of Harajuku.

So on the way back from J-PopCon, I felt like I'm walking for the last train home from Harajuku: girls in full Japanese uniform were dragging their little suitcases in a total Harajuku style (for those who've been there, you know what kind of suitcases I mean). From behind I couldn't guess if they're Japanese or Danish. Japanese culture is becoming seriously popular and mainstream abroad. This year, J-PopCon counts approx. 3000 visitors.

Seeing so much demand for Japanese culture makes me very proud and happy, as in my heart I feel a part Japanese. Not only because I spent a long time as a resident there, but also because I was there young, I grew up in Japan and the culture shaped me as a person as much as my birth culture did. I don't say "home" culture, because that, I consider Japan to be "a home away from home" as well. The fact that the Japanese made me feel like family also adds to my affection.

And Japanese culture is so powerful visually and so rich in context, aesthetics and meaning, that of course it was a matter of time (and digital communication) before it was transferred and localised abroad. Go Japan!
And congratulations to the J-PopCon organizers, of course, for managing this convention!

Japanese Whiteness and Ideal Femininity

In my forthcoming participation in the panel discussion organised by the National Museum of Denmark (see here ), I am going to discuss Japanese beauty ideals, based on the research findings of my Master's thesis.

The original thesis, complete with the interviewed women's profiles, methodology, interview quotes and analysis can be downloaded from the Lund University archive:  http://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/o.o.i.s?id=24923&postid=3990921 . Beware, its 66 pages!

And here is an abstract:

"The purpose of this thesis was to explore gender norms, beauty ideals and social
practices and the way these become ‘visible’ on the Japanese female body as
(re)producing the ideal Japanese femininity and skin color in particular. In order to
achieve that, I investigate and identify these norms, the mechanisms that implement
them on the body and the attitudes and expression of resistance against them. The
concept of biopower is used to explain the above process and findings. The research
used both secondary and primary data that was retrieved through eleven deep
interviews and participant observation, during two months of fieldwork in Japan in
2013. As the effects of power on the gendered body become central in this research,
gender and Foucauldian theoretical perspectives were used to analyse the data. During
the analysis I found patterns in the women’s opinions, enabling me to answer my
research questions. The study found the main norms to maintain that Japanese women
have a unique Japanese skin that should be baby soft, ‘white’ and fair, should have
natural beauty, look young and innocent, behave in a cute way, avoid conflict or
standing out and be subservient to men. The mechanism of implementation of these
norms is self-surveillance, based on the forbidding and producing character of
biopower. Women supervise themselves to conform to the norms, fearing that their
lack of conformity will lead to social sanctions such as loneliness and social
exclusion. While they have positive attitudes towards resisting biopower and are
willing to resist some norms, in the end they find it difficult to overcome all the
disciplinary norms they are subjected to".

Feel free to contact me for more information.