The Machiavellian Hobbesian Orwellian World: Political Sociology of Japanese Culture

As many of you know, I have been engaged with somewhat amateur debates about the recent Japanese girls only singer groups AKB48 and its cognates. You can read about what they are and how precisely I think they need to be closely monitored at my previous blog entries. Today, I am here to discuss about my political theory concerning Japanese government and its social conjuncts.

It may be beneficial here to bring up and actually quote some of the responses that I received from criticizing them, so as to enable us to talk about what the current Japanese people – young or old – desire from society and how those ‘Otaku’ (i.e. in Japan, where the word Otaku originates, the word has a sickly negative meaning – it literally means ‘someone who stays at home’, but essentially means ‘those who are sickly obsessed to the point of losing the boundaries between reality and fiction’) logic works. My criticism against AKB48 primarily consists of the following.

1. It is a sexual exploitation of young – some are preteen – girls in the name of art or pop-culture.

2. It deceives the actors and tricks them into thinking that they are doing what is good for the welfare of the majority.

3. It implants the ideas of women as essentially eye-candies for the public (men and women included) into the minds of young people and ingrains the objectification of women into the cultural roots.

4. It degrades art, women, and the participants.

5. It fuels the sick desires of those who are Otaku minded, and in turn, the Otaku fuels back the ‘ambition’ to the girls in performance, making them believe they are what everyone wants.

Those are few starting remarks as to why I am against and opposed to the AKB48 and its other related groups, which currently already employs 250 girls or so – girls of 14 years old to 25 years old. (see my blog entries for more details) Now, in response to my criticisms, I have just received a response from a dedicated fan of these girls; here is what was sent to me.

“Yeah heaven forbid women sing about sexuality. I mean, we all know that women are completely sexless creatures who should only be impregnated in the name of procreation.

And about the girls being “too young”, you clearly are very out of touch with the sexuality of young people today. I can tell you that when puberty hits, it hits, no matter what any moral or law says.

The producer of the “Heavy Rotation” music video was a woman, and she had free reigns to do whatever she wanted. She explains in an interview: «In general high school students wear sexy lingerie and show it to each other in the school. I explained my concept of how the lingerie was linked to the innocence and good of AKB48. They comfortably understood my concept and willingly accepted to wear lingerie.» Says Yasushi Akimoto, the group’s producer: «I mean, if the director were male, AKB48 might feel unpleasant and refuse to do that. AKB48 completely trusted Ms. Ninagawa, so there was no distrust. »”

As much as I feel the need to, point by point, explain how each claim this author makes is astronomically flawed and teemed with irrationality, and since I’m positively certain that my readers are able to see stupidity in this argument, if it can be called an argument, I’d like to move on, and discuss the significance of the statements like this is in thinking of reforming Otaku culture. This line of argument is what prevails in the Otaku culture in Japan. Just as we would often say ‘Never argue with an idiot or with a drunkard,’ we should add ‘Otaku’ to that list as well. (I shall assume that this author is a male, for I hardly think it possible that a female fan would refer her own gender as sexless creatures only to be impregnated – even in sarcasm -, nor would she quote the female producer about high school girls wearing lingerie as if in the third person) It is not my aim in writing this post to argue with him or to reason with this guy, which would be impossible, for he has no reason. But it is my aim to illustrate how messed up these people’s minds are in the modern Japanese culture. I have tried to formulate a way to make them see how messed up they are for a very long time since I was in junior high school. You can tell from history that changes can come only from within – the real, effective change must take place from inside the circle. I had held it to my heart this what seems to be a basic principle, however, no matter I how rationalize, I saw no exit in my strategy. It was only when after I moved overseas that I started to see the ‘real presence’ of Japanese politico-sociological structure. Changes do not occur from within in this country. Changes must occur elsewhere, and that change must somehow make enough noise that Japan would turn around and recognize its existence. Japan is like a small child – its emotion so turbulent and its rationality so blind that reason cannot come from within, but it can manifest itself to Japan as a possibility (of change) only when it is presented to it indirectly. A trend. It is a common saying in Japan that whatever happens in the US (or in the West) will happen in Japan 10 years after. I never understood its full significance, but now I see it: Japan is most vulnerable to outside influences. Whatever happens inside the country usually extinguishes itself like a frame of fire. Whatever rational proposition against the popular culture comes from within is not novelty to the people in Japan, hence they don’t care or even pay attention to it. Japan is essentially attracted to what is foreign, and its degree of curiosity is like that of a child. Once it has laid its eyes on something new, it will grab it until something else comes along. So if you want to change something about Japan, it is no use trying from within – you have to change the surrounding world first, and then make it appealing to Japan by making as much noise as possible. Sooner or later, a child turns around, and sees what’s making the noise, and then finally realizes, ‘Why did I not think of that first!?’

Philosophy as well as feminism is almost dead in Japan. I am sorry for those who are Japanese philosophers working in Japan, but this is the fact. How can you claim that philosophy is alive in Japan when you cannot even find a single book written by prominent classic (Western) philosophers at bookstores, unless you go to the biggest bookstore in the prefecture? I speak of the importance of the Western philosophers because they offer something different – the West is not one country but a congregation of many diverse races and views. Also Japan did not have prominent philosophers of its own – maybe great artists but not philosophers – until very recently. That is, until the Western thoughts came to Japan in the 19th century. (for those Japanese historians reading this forgive my broad over generalization, but please take into account that I am not writing a historical piece on Japan nor am I radically wrong in claiming that Japan had no prominent philosophers) So here I claim once again, philosophy is dead in Japan. It has long been dead. Though there were some come-backs from now and then, as you can see the sudden popularity of feminism after Simone de Beauvoir but its popularity faded in the 80’s and now her books are out of print in Japanese and no one can get them, nor does any young people nowadays know of such a person at al. Philosophy is nothing but a novelty, a trend for Japan. It is to be enjoyed for a while, and discarded. I mean you can really see it in this guy’s argument. In the country where the popularity rules rather than rational reasoning, this is the best it can bring about. How convenient for the Japanese government to convince and control its citizens must be! (though I believe it is intentionally done by the approval of the government itself) Japanese government gives its citizens as many novelties and candies to keep them occupied. Now the bulk of the otherwise able-minded Japanese young people are preoccupied and busying themselves with idols like AKB48 that they have no idea what is happening outside Japan. Since Japan is a country with rather homogeneous population, news media have no pressure to report anything outside the country either. This is why Many Japanese people believed the War on Iraq ended when then President of the United States G.W. Bush appeared on TV and announced his ‘mission accomplished,’ in less than 2 months from the invasion. This is why Japanese people have no idea there is still war going on in corners of the world, and have absolutely no idea about Sudanese genocide – they don’t even know Sudan as a country exists. Mindless fluff, Thomas Hobbes would say. The government has successfully employed Hobbes’ political philosophy on its citizens. To be fair, this happens everywhere; the US is another good example, however, what makes it worse than other countries is that Japanese people are completely oblivious and utterly disinterested in the activities outside Japan because they have new fashions and new flavours of sweets coming out every Tuesday. Their mind is fixed by a perpetual renewal of candy flavours. Japan is also a curious case in another respect that it creates enough problems within Japan to keep them occupied with their daily routine. Mostly governmental talks and discussions at the Diet – on the news too, they repeatedly show the politicians making bad arguments, making the audience feel like they know better. The exact tactic used in George Orwell’s 1984. If you don’t have problems, create problems you can solve and solve them so as to regain the credibility, Machiavelli would tell us. Though Japan has failed to succeed in this a number of times, for they have created problems they could not solve (for instance, the transport of the US military base in Okinawa to somewhere else in 2010). But still, the problems persisted, so the mind is still fixiated on the problem. It’s a curious combination of Hobbes and Orwell – commodities and making them believe they are getting smarter. It is the economically rich version of 1984, Japan is. Such that there is no need for monitoring the dissatisfied individuals. As soon as there arises some activists, the people around them are so satisfied with what they are given that they don’t care at all. Such is the reason for why Japan is weak at protesting. Protest uses the empathy as recruiting force, but you cannot raise empathy in the country where people are satisfied with what they have. They are organizationally weak.

For all these reasons, I think it imperative to wide spread this view that Japan can be changed for better only from without. It is imperative that we speak and inform about this newly formed group AKB48 now, since it has not made much appearances in the US or in the West yet – it’s relatively new in Japan, but they are making their way to overseas already. Some Koreans and Chinese people seem to be against this, but still many seem to be in favour of welcoming this sex-ploitaion of women in popular culture into their country. What we can do is vaccinate ourselves – by that, I mean get true information about the nature of this group, and judge for ourselves before even the commercial advertisements will get to us. Educate ourselves so we can defend ourselves against this anti-feministic movement obliviously current in Japan. Guard ourselves against this virus, and show them how we do not appreciate what they are doing. For I believe that is the only way we can prevent this disease from spreading, let alone cure it in the very country it originated from. It is the only way to change Japanese attitudes towards women.