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Posted 2002-03-11
" . . . in spite of a ten-year recession, consuming is a crucial part of the national identity."
"'It's kind of like the image of the capitalist economy—the more desired it is, the more expensive it is . . . It cannot be accounted for rationally.' . . . 'In Japanese families, the ascendance of the father is the usual phenomenon, but after the bubble burst fathers lost their rights and respect . . . Fathers had to appease their children by giving them lots of gifts and money.'"
"The crucial element that is being sold . . . is scarcity. . . . They want to be seen wearing an item that hardly anyone else owns but that everyone will recognize as exclusive. . . . 'There is a word here, otaku, which is about being focussed and almost obsessed with something you like' . . . The word is now used to describe someone with a fanatical interest in computers or fashion. . . . 'They give Japanese youth a sense of self-confidence, and they represent something that doesn't have to apologize for the past.'"
"Japanese concepts of female sexiness: . . . men find kawaii girls sexy because they're pretty and decorative and unthreatening, but a girl can't be too committed to the kawaii [cute] aesthetic because men will think she's a freak. . . . Confusingly enough, the bodikon [body-conscious] look, which is all skimpy skirts and plunging necklines and high-heeled boots and other signifiers of hooker wear, is also understood to be an assertion of female independence. "Body-consciousness" is associated in the Japanese imagination with black women; and black culture is, among Japanese youth, taken to represent a kind of strength and sexuality . . . In Japan . . . feminism is still a new idea. . . . 'Almost all Japanese men suffer from a Lolita complex' . . . Girls capitulated to boys by choosing cuteness over beauty . . . 'Beauty indicates a distance which is not reachable, whereas something cute is something that is accessible.'"
"The Japanese tendency to detach style from content . . . the fact that Japan is essentially a classless society means that young people have no way to distinguish themselves . . . except by adopting Western-derived tribal identities—surfer, skater, biker, punk, raver— . . . an expression of an authentic Japanese experience: that of belonging to a society that until recently was extremely ordered and disciplined, but which, over the past decade, has grown more uncertain and unpredictable. . . . young Japanese people are increasingly becoming what are known as furita, people who work part-time and without job security . . . "
"Pacifist appropriations of militaristic chic were everywhere in Tokyo this fall . . . widespread Japanese unease with the American war in Afghanistan. . . . 'The message is antiwar' . . . "
"'Generally, Japanese people can't make up their own minds and have to have an example to follow.'" ... [more]
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