ABSTRACT
In the contemporary generations the globalization promotes the acceleration of population movements and the cyber space communities among different countries and cultures, creates the standardization through the international economic transportation (Erisken, 2007). However even under the giant mixing power of Globalization, Japan still maintains its unique and distinctive society and culture in the hybrid global village. As a typical homogeneous society in the world, Japanese culture shows a strong power of unity and culture identity to resist against the culture hybridity effect brought by the Globalization. In an attempt to promote the typical British style drama series “Doctor Who” to Japanese, it is necessary to analyze the causation of Japanese homogeneity and modify the background settings and story patterns of the regenerated Doctor Who in order to satisfy the local audience in Japan. The subsequent essay will research on history of Japanese homogeneousness and analyze the contemporary popular culture in Japan in order to find out the reason of the uniqueness of Japanese culture.
In the contemporary generations the globalization promotes the acceleration of population movements and the cyber space communities among different countries and cultures, creates the standardization through the international economic transportation (Erisken, 2007). However even under the giant mixing power of Globalization, Japan still maintains its unique and distinctive society and culture in the hybrid global village. As a typical homogeneous society in the world, Japanese culture shows a strong power of unity and culture identity to resist against the culture hybridity effect brought by the Globalization. In an attempt to promote the typical British style drama series “Doctor Who” to Japanese, it is necessary to analyze the causation of Japanese homogeneity and modify the background settings and story patterns of the regenerated Doctor Who in order to satisfy the local audience in Japan. The subsequent essay will research on history of Japanese homogeneousness and analyze the contemporary popular culture in Japan in order to find out the reason of the uniqueness of Japanese culture.
1.The History of Homogeneousness and Japanese Nationalism
Japan was used to be a closed-gate island country for the long time from 1635 to 1867. The whole country was locked because of the “Sasoku” policy promoted by local government at that time. Under the effect of this policy, the outside immigrations and economic trades was significantly forced in order to prevent the foreigner invasions and protect the domestic agriculture development. This restriction of the western colonialism created the racial homogeneity in Japan. On the other hand, because of the fear towards outside world, the Japanese united together and generated the strong spirit of Nationalism which is called the “Nihonjinron”. The Nihonjinron emphasize the responsibility of being a Japanese, in other word, it demonstrated “how Japanese society should be, how the Japanese should behave” (Befu, 2001, p. 78-79). In the November of 1867, the Meiji Restoration liberate the country-lock strategy and released the limited condition of trading. During this period, the Japanese received great benefit from the advanced Western technologies, but on the other hand, the communication with Western countries brought a big cultural shock towards people in Japan. Under the big difference between Japanese and non-Japanese, the Nihonjinron as a defensive behavior was becoming stronger. This Japanese construction of self-image caused they preferred to absorb and transform the Western culture than replace their original culture (Befu, 2001, p. 3). It is surprising to see that the Japanese culture showed the dominant power against the strong western colonialism in 19th century. One example is the clothing style at that time combined the elements from the West but still maintain the strong Japanese style. The fashion in Taisho Period (1912~1926) were mainly the combination of traditional kimonos with western shirts, coats and boots. (see the picture example 1.1,1.2 and 1.3)
Japan was used to be a closed-gate island country for the long time from 1635 to 1867. The whole country was locked because of the “Sasoku” policy promoted by local government at that time. Under the effect of this policy, the outside immigrations and economic trades was significantly forced in order to prevent the foreigner invasions and protect the domestic agriculture development. This restriction of the western colonialism created the racial homogeneity in Japan. On the other hand, because of the fear towards outside world, the Japanese united together and generated the strong spirit of Nationalism which is called the “Nihonjinron”. The Nihonjinron emphasize the responsibility of being a Japanese, in other word, it demonstrated “how Japanese society should be, how the Japanese should behave” (Befu, 2001, p. 78-79). In the November of 1867, the Meiji Restoration liberate the country-lock strategy and released the limited condition of trading. During this period, the Japanese received great benefit from the advanced Western technologies, but on the other hand, the communication with Western countries brought a big cultural shock towards people in Japan. Under the big difference between Japanese and non-Japanese, the Nihonjinron as a defensive behavior was becoming stronger. This Japanese construction of self-image caused they preferred to absorb and transform the Western culture than replace their original culture (Befu, 2001, p. 3). It is surprising to see that the Japanese culture showed the dominant power against the strong western colonialism in 19th century. One example is the clothing style at that time combined the elements from the West but still maintain the strong Japanese style. The fashion in Taisho Period (1912~1926) were mainly the combination of traditional kimonos with western shirts, coats and boots. (see the picture example 1.1,1.2 and 1.3)
The Japanese language system also improved a lot by importing big amount of foreign words. In order to transform the foreign words into local accent, the Japanese created the Katanaka word system to translate the western words. Such examples likeアイスクリーム (aisu kurīmu) as ice-cream, アニメ(anime) as animation, サービス(sābisu) as service from English origin, アベック(abekku) as avec (means couple) from French origin, アルバイ(arubaito) as Arbeit (means part-time job) from German origin. Moreover, for the better absorption and compatibility, Japanese create big amount of words that are the combinations of Japanese and foreign words. For example, ビー玉 (bīdama, means marble in English) is the root “vi(dro)” from Portuguese origin which means glass with the local word “dama” (means ball). These katanaka words has become the indispensable part in daily life in Japan now. This strong absorption from the Western culture didn’t fluctuate the base of Japanese culture, oppositely, it improve the Nationalism in Japan. When the Japanese facing the problem of “how to become modern while simultaneously shedding the objective category of Oriental and yet not lose an identity’’ (Tanaka, 1993, p. 3), they using the absorption to develop and strengthen their culture, reinforced its unique Japanese Image to separate themselves from the Orientalism image on Asia and the western simulations (Kawai, 2009, p. 21).
With the strong notion of nationalism the Japanese culture demonstrate the high uniqueness and homogeneousness which is hard to be abrupt from the outside dominant culture. Even underneath the high-speed developed information capitalism and globalization during the contemporary period, the high-efficient absorption trait of the Japanese culture made the Japan society westernized for better construction on the modernized hierarchy for global market without fluctuating the spirit core of Nihonjinron. The Japanese style of Christmas is an appropriate example to the Japanese styled westernization under the Globalization. As the Christmas a typical western Christian Holiday for family meeting together, it formed a completely different type in Japanese culture that “there has never been a strong Christian component to Christmas” and “the Christian basis for the holiday does not even enter the consciousness of most Japanese celebrating Christmas” (Kimura & Belk, 2005, p. 325). In 2011’s Christmas a hot music video named “クリスマス?なにそれ?美味しいの?” (Christmas? What the hell? Is that something delicious?) was popular on the website that the content of the video complained about the poor single life during the Christmas from Japan.
With the strong notion of nationalism the Japanese culture demonstrate the high uniqueness and homogeneousness which is hard to be abrupt from the outside dominant culture. Even underneath the high-speed developed information capitalism and globalization during the contemporary period, the high-efficient absorption trait of the Japanese culture made the Japan society westernized for better construction on the modernized hierarchy for global market without fluctuating the spirit core of Nihonjinron. The Japanese style of Christmas is an appropriate example to the Japanese styled westernization under the Globalization. As the Christmas a typical western Christian Holiday for family meeting together, it formed a completely different type in Japanese culture that “there has never been a strong Christian component to Christmas” and “the Christian basis for the holiday does not even enter the consciousness of most Japanese celebrating Christmas” (Kimura & Belk, 2005, p. 325). In 2011’s Christmas a hot music video named “クリスマス?なにそれ?美味しいの?” (Christmas? What the hell? Is that something delicious?) was popular on the website that the content of the video complained about the poor single life during the Christmas from Japan.
In this funny music video it showed that the Christmas in Japan is especially celebrated by lovers. Furthermore, the lovers especially young couples love “exchanging expensive Christmas gifts and staying in an expensive hotel” to spend their Christmas holiday.” “Those who book too late to get into the better hotels, can be found queuing up at by-the-hour “love hotels” on Christmas Eve.” (Kimura & Belk, 2005, p. 325). Similar example like Valentine’s Day in Japan is also very unique and the Japanese created the sub-festival named “White Valentine” that the lovers exchanging self-hand-made chocolate with each other. These highly local-adapted western festivals are the creatures under western culture absorption and its existence is a new Japanese styled culture born from the hybridity under the globalization.
Except the market for the imported festivals, the local production industry like animation and gaming also have the tendency of creating the non-Japanese characters to attract the local audience. One example is that the prevalent image of Chinese girls are usually wearing Qipao and making their hair as “ox horns”, like Chun-Li in Street Fighter fighting game, Kagura in animation Gintama and WangLiuMei in animation Gundam-00. These examples are all from the most popular animations and games and from the character design pictures we could see these Chinese girls look very similar. These Chinese girls’ exotic dressing has big difference with the original Chinese Qipao dressing. The Japanese recreate and re-design these typical Chinese clothes to form a Japanese-styled Chinese image, and add some typical Japanese element into these characters like天然ボケ (cute born-diot), 喰いしん坊 (eat a lot), カンフーの使い手 (good at Kung-fu) and love to speak some strange phrases at the end of the dialogue like “アル” and “ネ” (中華娘, 2015). In other words, these Chinese female characters are highly localized and their exotic looking (especially their sexy Qipao dressing) could satisfy the audience’s curiousness and enjoyment, motivate the relevant consumption like sales of anime BD-rays and DVDs, character toys and fan-arts, and enhance the differences between the image of Japanese and Chinese as well.
These localized foreign image impulse the relevant industry consumption and their “commercialization is its key mode of entry” (Kimura & Belk, 2005, p. 326) that these imported commondities create new market for local public. The non-Japanese look of these goods “keep the exotic exotic” (Kimura & Belk, 2005, p. 326) in order to attract the consumers. In fact, these exotic commodities has already been altered from the origin country and adapted into Japanese culture.
It could be concluded that the Japanese Nationalism is not the pure rejection to the other culture. In fact, the Japanese formed a clear and strong self-image to distinct themselves from the non-Japanese. Moreover, the Japanese has a high sense of learning and absorbing new ideology and technology from other culture, and without replacing the original Japanese spirit, they have the ability to transform these outside culture into Japanese style, which improve and deepen the Japanese’ unique self-image and secure the national identity from western colonialism. Therefore if the Doctor Who series would like to open its own market in Japan, it is not necessary to create a Japanese Doctor. The exotic look of the British Doctor could be a popular element for the Japanese audience. The new doctor could wear the typical British suits with British hat, or dress like Sherlock Holmes to satisfy the local audiences’ British image. However it’s necessary to change the Doctor’s statements and actions to make him acting like a Japanese. To create a suitable Japan styled Doctor, we could choose some typical Japanese characteristics in Japan drama or animations like ツンデレ (pride and not straightforward), むくち (not talkative) or 方向音痴 (lack of sense in directions) etc.
It could be concluded that the Japanese Nationalism is not the pure rejection to the other culture. In fact, the Japanese formed a clear and strong self-image to distinct themselves from the non-Japanese. Moreover, the Japanese has a high sense of learning and absorbing new ideology and technology from other culture, and without replacing the original Japanese spirit, they have the ability to transform these outside culture into Japanese style, which improve and deepen the Japanese’ unique self-image and secure the national identity from western colonialism. Therefore if the Doctor Who series would like to open its own market in Japan, it is not necessary to create a Japanese Doctor. The exotic look of the British Doctor could be a popular element for the Japanese audience. The new doctor could wear the typical British suits with British hat, or dress like Sherlock Holmes to satisfy the local audiences’ British image. However it’s necessary to change the Doctor’s statements and actions to make him acting like a Japanese. To create a suitable Japan styled Doctor, we could choose some typical Japanese characteristics in Japan drama or animations like ツンデレ (pride and not straightforward), むくち (not talkative) or 方向音痴 (lack of sense in directions) etc.
2. Otherness: Foreigner Artists in Japan
Through Edward Said’s Orientalism, he explained that the Orientalism is a sort of Otherness that demonstrates the “mythic discourse” from the West to the East. It is interesting that the Japanese Nationalism formed since the Meiji Restoration also use the “mythic discourse” as a method to symbolize the West and the rest of Asia. ).” The Meiji Restoration brought the first contact with the “whites” by importing the films and images from the west, and the great culture shock created was the impulse of the impressive image formation inside the public notion. As the result of this self-identity defense, the fixed image of “outside” strengthens the borderline between the Japanese “Self” and the foreign “Other”. Because of the long-period isolation and the sudden culture shock, the Japanese were confused to identify the real “self”. They could only construct a clear self-image when they enhance the uniqueness of themselves and abstract the exotic others. Therefore the Japanese kept simulating the Japanese “Self” to create the uniqueness and homogeneity till today. The Japanese Otherness could be divided into two parts: one is to use the media as the “myth-making tool” (Kaori, 2008, p62); another is the collectiveness inside the Japanese society that it standardized the citizens for maintaining the uniqueness.
The explosive development of new media development brought by the globalization resulted the foreigners’ frequent appearance on Japanese’ screen. However the outside culture brought by these foreigner artists has been controlled. Simulation and localization happened on foreigner artists are the one of the results caused by the dominant Japanese culture. Super Junior and Tong Vfang Xien Qi are two Korean-pop music groups, which are popular throughout Asia. In China, these two K-pop bands prompt a crazy enthusiasm for Korean learning in young generations in China. Moreover, the fans in China were so crazy that they change their dressing style and manner of speaking in order to imitating their idols’ Korean lifestyle. On the contrary, after enter Japan these two bands both starting to write songs in Japanese language, mix more Japan pop elements into their songs, learn to sing these Japanese songs in their concerts, they even write considerable amount of OST for for Japanese dramas. Similarly, the non-Japanese manga artists in Japan also showed a tendency of localization. One example is “奥さま Guten Tag! “ from German artist Carolin Eckhardt, its aesthetic style used plenty of shiny effect in the background, frequent appearance of cute faces, big amount of close shot in character's faces, and its character design used the simplified lines to illustrate human face, emphasize the big and shiny eyes, which is much flatter than the faces in western comics. These unique ways of drawing is much more similar to the Japanese Shoujo Manga than western comics. Another example is “Heroman”, written by American writer Stan Lee and illustrated by Tamon Ohta, also used the flat drawing to tell this typical western hero story.
Through Edward Said’s Orientalism, he explained that the Orientalism is a sort of Otherness that demonstrates the “mythic discourse” from the West to the East. It is interesting that the Japanese Nationalism formed since the Meiji Restoration also use the “mythic discourse” as a method to symbolize the West and the rest of Asia. ).” The Meiji Restoration brought the first contact with the “whites” by importing the films and images from the west, and the great culture shock created was the impulse of the impressive image formation inside the public notion. As the result of this self-identity defense, the fixed image of “outside” strengthens the borderline between the Japanese “Self” and the foreign “Other”. Because of the long-period isolation and the sudden culture shock, the Japanese were confused to identify the real “self”. They could only construct a clear self-image when they enhance the uniqueness of themselves and abstract the exotic others. Therefore the Japanese kept simulating the Japanese “Self” to create the uniqueness and homogeneity till today. The Japanese Otherness could be divided into two parts: one is to use the media as the “myth-making tool” (Kaori, 2008, p62); another is the collectiveness inside the Japanese society that it standardized the citizens for maintaining the uniqueness.
The explosive development of new media development brought by the globalization resulted the foreigners’ frequent appearance on Japanese’ screen. However the outside culture brought by these foreigner artists has been controlled. Simulation and localization happened on foreigner artists are the one of the results caused by the dominant Japanese culture. Super Junior and Tong Vfang Xien Qi are two Korean-pop music groups, which are popular throughout Asia. In China, these two K-pop bands prompt a crazy enthusiasm for Korean learning in young generations in China. Moreover, the fans in China were so crazy that they change their dressing style and manner of speaking in order to imitating their idols’ Korean lifestyle. On the contrary, after enter Japan these two bands both starting to write songs in Japanese language, mix more Japan pop elements into their songs, learn to sing these Japanese songs in their concerts, they even write considerable amount of OST for for Japanese dramas. Similarly, the non-Japanese manga artists in Japan also showed a tendency of localization. One example is “奥さま Guten Tag! “ from German artist Carolin Eckhardt, its aesthetic style used plenty of shiny effect in the background, frequent appearance of cute faces, big amount of close shot in character's faces, and its character design used the simplified lines to illustrate human face, emphasize the big and shiny eyes, which is much flatter than the faces in western comics. These unique ways of drawing is much more similar to the Japanese Shoujo Manga than western comics. Another example is “Heroman”, written by American writer Stan Lee and illustrated by Tamon Ohta, also used the flat drawing to tell this typical western hero story.
奥さま Guten Tag! | Japanese shojo manga |
The powerful culture identity in Japan uses its powerful absorption and simulation as the self-defense of the unique identity; moreover, it also created and controlled the fixed image of other cultures to draw the clear borderline between the unique Japanese “self” and the outside “others”. The foreigner artists in Japan, especially the interracial Japanese with non-Japanese look, played the important role of constructing the imaginary others on public screen. The famous Enka (a traditional Japanese music genre) artist Jero was born in an interracial family. His Africa-American appearance was traced back to his grandfather and he was grown up in the pure Japanese background. His great interest on Enka was generated from his Japanese grandmother’s influence. However the entertainment company surfaced him with the Americanized hip-hop appearance even he is a native Japanese speaker. In his music videos, his dressing has big differences with traditional enka singer. Without wearing the kimono or any make-up, his excellent enka performance with antipathetic Western Street wearing created a big success in Japanese entertainment industry. His first single “海雪” received the reward of No.4 in the Oricon ranking chart in Japan, and he was selected to 59th NHK New Year’s Eve musical spectacular (Jero, 2015). Similarly like Anna Tsuchiya the famous actress, Olivia Lufkin and Chris Hart the popular J-pop singer, and much other examples of these foreigners or interracial Japanese that they all shared same properties that “they hold stereotypical East-West qualities especially for their foreign looks and Japanese culture including native Japanese language skills (Kenji, 2010, p.110).” Their success deepens their western image on screen, and their impressive western face and dressing also symbolized them as imaginary pieces of the West in the Japanese audiences’ mind. On the other word, their exotic appearances are the “myth making tool” for securing the Japanese nationalism.
From the examples in Japanese entertainment industry before, it could concluded that the new Doctor Who series need to use Japanese as its official language in order to own the market in Japan. Moreover, the exotic appearance of the new Doctor should be simplified into several symbolized elements in order to let the audience formed an impressive image of British.
3.Collectivism and Individualism
The strong nationalism in Japan caused the strong dominant power when facing the outside culture, but in other hand, in order to maintain its uniqueness, the nationalism also use the unique culture to standardize the Japanese. Collectivism is the result of the high pressure created by the standardization. In Japan, the ‘‘tendency to regard the harmony of the institutions to which one belongs as paramount’’ (CJGTC, 2000d, p. 7) has been locked deeply in Japanese’s subconscious. They preferred to overemphasize the collectivism and reduce the individuality as much as they could. This also appear inside the Japanese language, for example, the subject is always been omitted in Japanese. In daily dialogues, the Japanese preferred to present themselves like “アナです。カナダがらきました。いぬがすきです。” If we translate this to English directly then it will turn into “Anna. Came from Canada. Love dog.” We could see there’s no “I” in the sentences. Moreover, the individual in Japan are more like the parts of a big machine. Any actions over the standard is a “shame” for the whole group, therefore the Japanese always apologize for their mistakes, because this is “out of the group”. In the recent ISIS case, two Japanese had been kidnapped by the terrorist. One of the victim Yukawa Haruna was an “unusual” man that he had a history of suicide and transgender. After Haruna been murdered by ISIS, his parents made an apology to public that “国民に迷惑を掛け申し訳ない。政府や関係者の方々のご尽力に深く感謝している” (Sorry to bring trouble to the everyone in Japan. I really appreciate that the government had done their best trying to save my son.) Through their announcement they didn’t show any sadness but only shame, because they didn’t treat themselves and their son as individual. They think they belongs to the “group” of the Japanese. Therefore their son’s abnormal action is the betrayal to the standardized group and they are shame for his “non-Japanese” behavior.
In a long time the Japanese insist to distinct the Japanese and non-Japanese in order to secure themselves from the culture colonialism. This also create a high pressure to the Japanese themselves. Personal individuality could be the causality of otherness from the rest of the group, and the Japanese showed a strong tendency of over-caring about self-image in public gaze. The doubt of the self-definition is one of the main theme in many Japan dramas and anime. In Neon Genesis Evangelion, which is one of the famous anime work in Japan since 1995 till now, described an introverted boy Ikari Shinji as main character. In the story, the author demonstrate the fear towards other’s expectation, the difference between self and other and isolation brought by other’s abandon through Ikari Shinji’s behavior, and the story provoked a great resonance through the young generations in Japan in 20th century. On the other hand, the fear of isolation in the high homogeneity also create the violence. “Ijime”, also known as bullying, is a serious phenomenon that it cannot be ignored. From the survey in 2010, there are about 32.7 percent in boys and 28.1 percent in girls that they admitted they have done bullying on other student (Akiba, 2010). Through many videos, dramas, anime and manga in Japan, when the leader initiate the bullying, the rest of the students tend to participate into the bullying behavior, or ignore the bullying instead of reporting it to teacher. This phenomenon is also a kind of Otherness. Because the high standardization caused by the collectivism, it is hard to identify “self” when facing so much similar people with similar personality. Therefore these children need to choose someone as the “Other” in order to create the borderline between self and other, then they could create the self-image by controlling and bullying the chosen student. This also explained that why those victims in bullying usually choose to keep silent and endure the violence: these victims are still desiring to back to the group, so they trying to undertake the violence and pleased the group.
The collectivism in Japan is quite monstrous. The otherness in the Japanese nationalism caused the collectivism, and the collectivism caused the violence towards people been isolated, In Japan, considerable unnatural death of single people are increasing these years and this has become a social issue called “無縁社会”. These bachelors’ bodies usually been found alone after they died several months even years and their death causes are usually suicide or sudden-illness. “Memories of Matsuko” is the film which tell the story of this kind of people. In the film, the main character Matsuko is a girl who loves fantasies. However during her journey of dream catching, the reality gave her a succession of defeat. At the end of the film, she felt she completely betrayed the expectation of family, friends and lovers. She moved far away from her friends, undertake the despised gaze from neighbors and died alone with despair. In the film, Matsuko said “生まれてきて、すみません” (I’m so sorry for being such a useless person) at the end. Her words showed the shame and regret of being outside the group, and the pressure from the public killed her individuality, and caused her tragedy death.
In contemporary Japan, though the strong culture identity kept simulating the outside culture, the globalization more or less brought the homogeneous society new ideologies. The young generations in Japan, which living under the fast communication technology development, have the free right to touch the outside culture. Even under the high pressure of collectivism, the young generations are still trying to form their own individualities. The street fashion is an example. Since the beginning of 21st century, the street fashion in Japan reveals an explosive and attractive flourish. The numerous types of wearing are born from the conflictions among different cultures even historical cultures and quite amount of young generations demonstrated their vivid and extraordinary personalities by wearing these creative and distinctive fashion styles. The Japan street fashion, especially the young generation’s street fashion, could be divided into numbers of fashion tribes and each fashion tribe have its own specialty rule of dressing in order to distinct itself from common wearing and other fashion tribes. For instance, the Ganguros color the hair into bright colors like light pink, brown, silver and tan their skins into dark sun-burned colors and using white make ups around their eyes and nose to form a Japanese demon look in order to contrast against the traditional Asian aesthetic standard of white-skin beauty with long black hair. Another fashion style Shironuri is in entirely different idea that they prefer to paint their face into pure white and wearing fairy-tale looked clothes with delicate decorations. The inventor of Shironuri named Monori claimed that “To us, white is a holy color that represents God" and “white can symbolize a state of nothingness, of emptiness and vacancy. Humans are also a part of nature. To remember this, we have to go back, to return there."(Mary-Ann, 2014) These surprising look fashion tribe shares one similarity that is they were all invented to seek special individuality against the common culture. Moreover, these fashion tribes prefers the notion of invention and creation better than mere wearing the same as traditional clothes or imitate other culture’s wearing.
Underneath the effect of globalization and development of communication technologies, the young generation’s pursuance towards the self-interest and individual freedom formed individualities against the homogeneousness in Japan. Moreover, the young generation’s rebel spirit against the old and fixed public notion of standardized social people stimulate their individualism more polarized. The Gunguro girls darken their skins to fight against the traditional standard of beauty. The Shinonuri tribe use the pure white as their characteristic to represent the nature and distinguish themselves from the busy city. The Decora tribes use plenty layers of colorful and vivid decorations to show their cuteness against the general plain colored wearing. The Lolita preferred the old Victorian-era clothing and relaxing tea parties when they walking on the street in the modern and organized cities. The fashion tribes are creations of the Self Identity and represent the young generation’s polarized oppositions against the “common picture of reality” (Grossberg et al., 1998, p. 21) and “parent culture or mainstream popular culture” (Toshiya, 1999, p.96) from the traditional Japanese nationalism. As it was so “difficult to set out visible markers for distinguishing and discriminating between others” under the monoculture society with “no physical differences of skin color, hair, eyes” in racial status, the young generations are absorbing the information from the outside world through the effect of Globalization, mixing and combining the other cultures, inventing new cultures in order to create a culture hybridity under the homogeneousness society which they could built up the Other and differences as a mirror helping them to see a clear “Self”.
The strong nationalism in Japan caused the strong dominant power when facing the outside culture, but in other hand, in order to maintain its uniqueness, the nationalism also use the unique culture to standardize the Japanese. Collectivism is the result of the high pressure created by the standardization. In Japan, the ‘‘tendency to regard the harmony of the institutions to which one belongs as paramount’’ (CJGTC, 2000d, p. 7) has been locked deeply in Japanese’s subconscious. They preferred to overemphasize the collectivism and reduce the individuality as much as they could. This also appear inside the Japanese language, for example, the subject is always been omitted in Japanese. In daily dialogues, the Japanese preferred to present themselves like “アナです。カナダがらきました。いぬがすきです。” If we translate this to English directly then it will turn into “Anna. Came from Canada. Love dog.” We could see there’s no “I” in the sentences. Moreover, the individual in Japan are more like the parts of a big machine. Any actions over the standard is a “shame” for the whole group, therefore the Japanese always apologize for their mistakes, because this is “out of the group”. In the recent ISIS case, two Japanese had been kidnapped by the terrorist. One of the victim Yukawa Haruna was an “unusual” man that he had a history of suicide and transgender. After Haruna been murdered by ISIS, his parents made an apology to public that “国民に迷惑を掛け申し訳ない。政府や関係者の方々のご尽力に深く感謝している” (Sorry to bring trouble to the everyone in Japan. I really appreciate that the government had done their best trying to save my son.) Through their announcement they didn’t show any sadness but only shame, because they didn’t treat themselves and their son as individual. They think they belongs to the “group” of the Japanese. Therefore their son’s abnormal action is the betrayal to the standardized group and they are shame for his “non-Japanese” behavior.
In a long time the Japanese insist to distinct the Japanese and non-Japanese in order to secure themselves from the culture colonialism. This also create a high pressure to the Japanese themselves. Personal individuality could be the causality of otherness from the rest of the group, and the Japanese showed a strong tendency of over-caring about self-image in public gaze. The doubt of the self-definition is one of the main theme in many Japan dramas and anime. In Neon Genesis Evangelion, which is one of the famous anime work in Japan since 1995 till now, described an introverted boy Ikari Shinji as main character. In the story, the author demonstrate the fear towards other’s expectation, the difference between self and other and isolation brought by other’s abandon through Ikari Shinji’s behavior, and the story provoked a great resonance through the young generations in Japan in 20th century. On the other hand, the fear of isolation in the high homogeneity also create the violence. “Ijime”, also known as bullying, is a serious phenomenon that it cannot be ignored. From the survey in 2010, there are about 32.7 percent in boys and 28.1 percent in girls that they admitted they have done bullying on other student (Akiba, 2010). Through many videos, dramas, anime and manga in Japan, when the leader initiate the bullying, the rest of the students tend to participate into the bullying behavior, or ignore the bullying instead of reporting it to teacher. This phenomenon is also a kind of Otherness. Because the high standardization caused by the collectivism, it is hard to identify “self” when facing so much similar people with similar personality. Therefore these children need to choose someone as the “Other” in order to create the borderline between self and other, then they could create the self-image by controlling and bullying the chosen student. This also explained that why those victims in bullying usually choose to keep silent and endure the violence: these victims are still desiring to back to the group, so they trying to undertake the violence and pleased the group.
The collectivism in Japan is quite monstrous. The otherness in the Japanese nationalism caused the collectivism, and the collectivism caused the violence towards people been isolated, In Japan, considerable unnatural death of single people are increasing these years and this has become a social issue called “無縁社会”. These bachelors’ bodies usually been found alone after they died several months even years and their death causes are usually suicide or sudden-illness. “Memories of Matsuko” is the film which tell the story of this kind of people. In the film, the main character Matsuko is a girl who loves fantasies. However during her journey of dream catching, the reality gave her a succession of defeat. At the end of the film, she felt she completely betrayed the expectation of family, friends and lovers. She moved far away from her friends, undertake the despised gaze from neighbors and died alone with despair. In the film, Matsuko said “生まれてきて、すみません” (I’m so sorry for being such a useless person) at the end. Her words showed the shame and regret of being outside the group, and the pressure from the public killed her individuality, and caused her tragedy death.
In contemporary Japan, though the strong culture identity kept simulating the outside culture, the globalization more or less brought the homogeneous society new ideologies. The young generations in Japan, which living under the fast communication technology development, have the free right to touch the outside culture. Even under the high pressure of collectivism, the young generations are still trying to form their own individualities. The street fashion is an example. Since the beginning of 21st century, the street fashion in Japan reveals an explosive and attractive flourish. The numerous types of wearing are born from the conflictions among different cultures even historical cultures and quite amount of young generations demonstrated their vivid and extraordinary personalities by wearing these creative and distinctive fashion styles. The Japan street fashion, especially the young generation’s street fashion, could be divided into numbers of fashion tribes and each fashion tribe have its own specialty rule of dressing in order to distinct itself from common wearing and other fashion tribes. For instance, the Ganguros color the hair into bright colors like light pink, brown, silver and tan their skins into dark sun-burned colors and using white make ups around their eyes and nose to form a Japanese demon look in order to contrast against the traditional Asian aesthetic standard of white-skin beauty with long black hair. Another fashion style Shironuri is in entirely different idea that they prefer to paint their face into pure white and wearing fairy-tale looked clothes with delicate decorations. The inventor of Shironuri named Monori claimed that “To us, white is a holy color that represents God" and “white can symbolize a state of nothingness, of emptiness and vacancy. Humans are also a part of nature. To remember this, we have to go back, to return there."(Mary-Ann, 2014) These surprising look fashion tribe shares one similarity that is they were all invented to seek special individuality against the common culture. Moreover, these fashion tribes prefers the notion of invention and creation better than mere wearing the same as traditional clothes or imitate other culture’s wearing.
Underneath the effect of globalization and development of communication technologies, the young generation’s pursuance towards the self-interest and individual freedom formed individualities against the homogeneousness in Japan. Moreover, the young generation’s rebel spirit against the old and fixed public notion of standardized social people stimulate their individualism more polarized. The Gunguro girls darken their skins to fight against the traditional standard of beauty. The Shinonuri tribe use the pure white as their characteristic to represent the nature and distinguish themselves from the busy city. The Decora tribes use plenty layers of colorful and vivid decorations to show their cuteness against the general plain colored wearing. The Lolita preferred the old Victorian-era clothing and relaxing tea parties when they walking on the street in the modern and organized cities. The fashion tribes are creations of the Self Identity and represent the young generation’s polarized oppositions against the “common picture of reality” (Grossberg et al., 1998, p. 21) and “parent culture or mainstream popular culture” (Toshiya, 1999, p.96) from the traditional Japanese nationalism. As it was so “difficult to set out visible markers for distinguishing and discriminating between others” under the monoculture society with “no physical differences of skin color, hair, eyes” in racial status, the young generations are absorbing the information from the outside world through the effect of Globalization, mixing and combining the other cultures, inventing new cultures in order to create a culture hybridity under the homogeneousness society which they could built up the Other and differences as a mirror helping them to see a clear “Self”.
To satisfy the desire of Self Identity and Neoliberalism from the Japanese young generations, the main Hero in Doctor Who series should not regenerate into a tradition styled Japanese directly. To attract these teenagers and young adults, the new Doctor Who should show a strong impression of instinct personality especially on what he wears with a mixture look of different fashions. For instance, as the previous doctors in recent series dressed in British gentleman style, the new Doctor could be recreated with some unusual hair colors like silver, light red and orange, or the combination of multiple colors. He could wear Gakuran (a school uniform style in 19th century Japan) as his coat with British styled vest inside with some punk styled belt, hat or earrings that demonstrate the conflict and mixture of Japan culture and western culture.
References
Befu, H. (2001). Hegemony of homogeneity: An anthropological analysis of nihonjinron. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press.
Commission on Japan’s Goals in the Twenty-first Century. (CJGTC). (2000d). Overview. Retrieved May 11, 2003, from http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/21century/report/pdfs/3chap1.pdf
Eriksen, T. H. (2007). Globalization : The Key Concepts. Oxford, GBR: Berg Publishers. Retrieved from http://www.ebrary.com
Grossberg, L., Wartella, E., & Whitney, D. C. (1998). Media making: Mass media in a popular culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Kenji, K. (2010). Constructing Japanese Nationalism on Television: The Japanese Image of Multicultural Society.
Ryszard, K. (2008). The Other.
Tanaka, S. (1993). Japan’s Orient: Rendering pasts into history. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Toshiya, U. (1999). Techno Orientalism and media tribalism: On Japanese animation and rave culture, Third Text, 13:47, 95-106, DOI: 10.1080/09528829908576801
Kawai, Y. (2009). Neoliberalism, Nationalism, and Intercultural Communication: A Critical Analysis of a Japan's Neoliberal Nationalism Discourse under Globalization. Journal Of International & Intercultural Communication, 2(1), 16-43.
Kimura, J., & Belk, R. W. (2005). Christmas in Japan: Globalization Versus Localization. Consumption, Markets & Culture, 8(3), 325-338. doi:10.1080/10253860500160361
Meet Minori: The Shironuri Fashionista Making Waves on the Streets of Tokyo
中華娘. (n.d.). Retrieved April 20, 2015, from http://dic.pixiv.net/a/中華娘
Befu, H. (2001). Hegemony of homogeneity: An anthropological analysis of nihonjinron. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press.
Commission on Japan’s Goals in the Twenty-first Century. (CJGTC). (2000d). Overview. Retrieved May 11, 2003, from http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/21century/report/pdfs/3chap1.pdf
Eriksen, T. H. (2007). Globalization : The Key Concepts. Oxford, GBR: Berg Publishers. Retrieved from http://www.ebrary.com
Grossberg, L., Wartella, E., & Whitney, D. C. (1998). Media making: Mass media in a popular culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Kenji, K. (2010). Constructing Japanese Nationalism on Television: The Japanese Image of Multicultural Society.
Ryszard, K. (2008). The Other.
Tanaka, S. (1993). Japan’s Orient: Rendering pasts into history. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Toshiya, U. (1999). Techno Orientalism and media tribalism: On Japanese animation and rave culture, Third Text, 13:47, 95-106, DOI: 10.1080/09528829908576801
Kawai, Y. (2009). Neoliberalism, Nationalism, and Intercultural Communication: A Critical Analysis of a Japan's Neoliberal Nationalism Discourse under Globalization. Journal Of International & Intercultural Communication, 2(1), 16-43.
Kimura, J., & Belk, R. W. (2005). Christmas in Japan: Globalization Versus Localization. Consumption, Markets & Culture, 8(3), 325-338. doi:10.1080/10253860500160361
Meet Minori: The Shironuri Fashionista Making Waves on the Streets of Tokyo
中華娘. (n.d.). Retrieved April 20, 2015, from http://dic.pixiv.net/a/中華娘