Shin Nen Kai

Though often late, or
Rarely on-time, a bus should
Never be early.

---

Nick,

There is no doubt that you know that Japan's two most important holidays are 1) 正月, and 2) 大晦日, which happen to be "New Years Day" and "New Years Eve," respectively.

But one of the most exciting part about New Years in Japan is that television receives a much overdue production bump: a paint job for "Sweeps" season, if you will. This is when every game show and variety program gets a two hour special and every big televised anime debuts (or re-runs) a new "movie."

For a month, producers and writers pull out all the stops to catch the vacationing eye. Regardless of how vapid or interchangeable their preceding (and following) seasons have been (or will be), this is their opportunity to win over viewers and set their programming marks.


For all the chatter about how bad Japanese TV is--and it can be--the six-week period around New Years makes it all worth it. After all, this is the where we get amazing shows like the bunraku extravaganza 全日本仮大賞, or the reality show to top all reality shows, はじめてのおつかい

¹ Which is pretty much my new favorite TV show of all time.

¹. Pretty much any of those clips of Japanese shows venerated on YouTube comes from one "冬スペシャル" or another.

Yesterday, however, I came across a two-hour special that left me feeling slightly perturbed. The angle of this particular variety show special was more or less an "Extreme Makeover," where they would tell the woe-begotten tale of a person in need and reward their tenacity with a much needed makeover. Usually there is some medical impairment or requirement that renders the "makeover" justifiable and, therefore, palatable. At the very least, not quite as vapid.

This show, in particular, was the exploitation of a story of a rising Korean pop-artist who, early into her career, contracted a disease that attacked her face with some form of elephantiasis that was surgically reduced but left her severely disfigured.

I have been struggling to define what about this show bothered

² And, perhaps, "bother" is too strong of a word: maybe something more demure like "disquieted," or "unsettled."

² me. Now I have no problem with television "exploitation." I mean, I had publicly declared that my new favorite TV show of all time was はじめてのおつかい, which is basically a show that exploits four year old children by sending them out into the streets "alone" on their first errand. Ah the sweet, life-giving tears of innocent children!


In contemplating this the entire day, I think that what I had a problem with was that they picked a South Korean woman, focused on the depth of her despair and squalor (and near abject rejection) in Korea, and contrasted this with the open arms of Japan and its copious medical resources. From dank and gray with it's minor-chord soundtrack overlay, to bright and clean, endearing and hopeful.

Now, I don't mean to speak out of turn, in as much as I have no clue about this particular show's geopolitical perspective or its historiography. I don't know if they regularly travel throughout Japan offering medically necessary surgery to domestic economically underprivileged residents (unlikely) and happened upon a "great find" that--whoops!--just happened to be from Korea. What struck me as peculiar was that 1) there wasn't a viable Japanese candidate for this exploitation, and 2) the obvious deep seated tensions between Japan and Korea

³ This includes the lengthy and brutal occupation of Korea in the late 19th and early parts of the 20th century during the "日本統治時代の朝鮮" colonial period, which includes current conflicts over issues such as "comfort women" (forced prostitution) and political visits to the Yasukuni Shrine to honor/celebrate the soldiers who fought in WWII: both issues that remain hotly contested in contemporary Japan-Korea relations today and are especially relevant to the Zainichi (diasporic) Koreans who continue to live in Japan without political rights or representation. All the while there persists a grass-roots resentment over the growing prevalence of Korean presence in Japan, with minor "protests" as recent as August 2011 over the amount of Korean programming that was being broadcasted on Japanese television.

³.

Even still, I want to be very aware of my 外国人 sensibilities. That is, in addition to needing to take into account standard melodramatic TV tropes, I need to recognize my own geopolitical assumptions and avoid reading into what I think are inter-cultural necessities, especially as an "outsider," but even more so as an ignorant observer.

I find myself having to ask what my intercultural expectations are. What do I assume are normative and normal interactions between Japan and Korea on a macro- and micro- level? Then what sort of legitimate privileges do I have as an "outsider" to see these conflicts, condescensions and concessions, and then what are the inherent limitations that come with my American-level of sensitivity and sensibility? Am I, as a sensitized outsider, privileged to read of a situation cultural bias, or am I, as an over-sensitized outsider, privileged to read into a situation cultural bias based on my expectations of subtext? Granted, it's hard to think otherwise, with Japan's historically less-than-apologetic regard to normalizing relations, and persistence in believing everyone should just move past diversity issues

⁴ One only has to look either north or south to the way that Japan has dealt with either the Ryukyuan people of Okinawa or the Ainu people of Hokkaido. You know it's bad when there's a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to the Ethnic Minority issues of Japan. Most relevant, however, are the Burakumin, who are ethnically identical to other "Japanese" people, but are discriminated against as a "social" minority group. Particularly telling is that the title "Buraku" was created because the government, in attempts to lessen the prejudice and stigma surrounding these so called "untouchable peoples," banned the use of the terms "Eta" and "Hinin." Generally, the approach is to discourage discourse and encourage the problem to disappear with time. Which, apparently, if you live outside of Kansai, is the case with the "Buraku problem" [especially as the problem is more or less left unaddressed by Japanese discrimination laws since the Burakumin are not a "specific race" (Degawa, Racism Without Race)]. Then again, apparently the Burakumin make up 70% of Japan's largest Yakuza syndicate, so "effectiveness" is up for debate.

⁴.

I suppose it's the general lack of social and societal institutions that exist to create dialog about the way Japan's history--based out of a strong sense of ethno-/national-centrism--lends itself to a persistent "othering" (or exo-grouping) which, in turn, affects the way the world responds to it. More often than not, when it comes to the topic of diversity (or the lack of integrative diversity), it's safer just not to talk about it, almost as if putting those words to air breathes life into the embers of crisis.

But I just don't know, Nick. I mean, on the one hand, the obviousness of the Korea-Japan contrast bothers me, which is a no-brainer. But that I lack the resources (culturally and linguistic) to even begin to ask the right questions confounds me. I mean, one of the things I loved most about Critical Theory was that "interpretation" was the belief that by figuring out the "right" questions to ask we could impose an organizing framework onto complex ideas.

In most cases the first step is "locating yourself in the ongoing dialog." Basically this means whipping open a text book or firing up Wikipedia, retracing what work has already been done over the last 50 or 50,000 years in the field, and then settling into a philosophical niche that works best for your mood. But this just seems to not be the case here: there's as little discussion about race and diversity in Japan as there possibly could be, so there's no real ideological springboard to work off or tap into. Even casual conversation about race and race relations is met with hesitance and embarrassment. Despite the historical presence of Japan internationally and the rapid growth of a foreign presence within Japan itself, there is very little discussion about the way the Japanese interact with exo-groups (even indigenous exo-groups), rather just a myriad of disparate questions floating around: is it possible to redefine "Japanese-ness" around it's core principles of homogeny and submissive/self-sacrificial unity without resorting to exclusion, or is it necessarily exclusive? Is "awareness" the first appropriate step? Should dialog be conducted at a grass-roots level or can questions be asked by "outsiders" through the educational system?


I realize that Japanese history is one of the more important subjects at Ichikashi and, seemingly, most high schools in Japan. The amount of historical facts our kids are required to learn--re: regurgitate--is staggering. Emperors, shogunates, wars, you name it. But it's all of a particular history. As late as 2007, the central government (which is in charge of pedagogical decisions) was found to be instructing high school textbooks to "downplay the military's role in ordering mass civilian suicides" of Okinawans during WWII. Julian Dierkes' 2010 expose on post-war history education in Japan pinpoints bureaucratic foot dragging as the key to maintaining this status-quo, preventing modern historical analysis and critiques, stunting critical thinking regarding Japan's jingoistic past.

However, this should not be surprising from a country that, in 2005, erected a monument to Justice Radha Binod Pal for his dissenting view

⁵ And yet even this issue is not rife with complexities. Pal, a purported Japanophile who considered the Japanese defendants proponents of Asian liberation from Western influence (Bix, 2001), seemingly agreed to sit on the tribunal with the intent to decry the legitimacy of the trial, never once engaging with the reality of the war crimes charged. However, Pal was right to point out the hypocrisy of "victor's justice" in play, as the firebombing and nuclear attacks of Hiroshima and Nagasaki upon civilians would never be tried in court, arguing that the Japanese on trial should be declared innocent based on the injustice of the indictment. Though, on first blush, and in persistent cursory interpretation of his dissent, Pal will continue to be lionized as purporting complete Japanese innocence, Ushimura Kei (2007) argues that a finer reading of Pal's judgment is one of procedure not of morality.

⁵ in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, arguing that all military personnel should be cleared of all responsibility for Japanese war crimes committed during World War II (such as those committed at Nanking), dismissing the legitimacy of the IMTFE's claims to justice.

So, maybe, then asking these sorts of questions in public spaces is the place to start, especially at a progressive school like Ichikashi. As a 外国人, I am in a ironically privileged place, afforded copious amounts of grace for not being Japanese enough to know/understand the morays of polite Japanese customs of silence. Just as we use "外国人-ness" to intentionally "get away" with eating while walking and sneaking the last chocolate out of the お土産 box, I am in a unique position to ask those difficult questions because I just don't know enough to know not to ask those kinds of questions.

If only I knew the right questions to ask.