Author: m24

From soldier to otaku: the case of different “man” in Japan – Varvara

The idea of masculinity has never been fixed in one mold in Japan. Instead, it was left to remain contestable, even if that meant, at certain times, nervously guarded, challenged and manipulated.1 Once the Japanese military held in place the authority to determine what a ‘man’ was – through tests of minimal physical requirement and strict psychological standards.2 However, what the Japanese bureaucrats and ideologues would desire – the perfect ‘state subordinate man’ – would take more than a military exam to forge as not all young men and their families take great pride in their eligibility for military service.3 Many questioned the value of being found worthy of the emperors armed forces and were generally ambivalent towards Japan’s war efforts.2The postwar constitution situation of November third, 1946, would further unsettle the long-held understandings of gender as the role of the ‘masculine’ was replaced by the white-collar, middle-class, “company man and salaryman” – the embodiment of a middle-class lifestyle.4 The salaryman retained the will of self-sacrifice of the soldier. The ‘otaku’, on the other hand, did not.

Masculinity is often judged by its economic productivity in Japanese intellectual writings. What the man has to ‘offer’ – himself, his work, his life. The ‘otaku’ can be seen as a new form of Japanese manhood. Instead of economic productivity, it is manhood through consumption. The ‘otaku’ can be argued to represent men who ‘failed’ to become salarymen. They depict the perspective of masculinity outside the dominant ideal of male success. A lack of good education, salary, loving wife and children does not make a man less of a man.5

The role of ‘otaku’ can be further explored in the argument about the future of masculinity in Japan. In the United States, the term ‘otaku’ implies a “serious anime fan”, but in Japan, it is a word used to indicate people with an obsession for “geeky” realms of knowledge and activity, such as anime, manga, and computer games.6 This image of a geeky, socially inept, obsessive nerd presents itself to be completely opposite to the image of the gregarious salaryman.6 Since the value of masculinity was grounded in productivity, action, there are examples of “bad otaku” and “good otaku” – ‘bad’ produce violence and disturbing, sexualised media; and ‘good’ produce video games, animated films.7

They key and biggest differentiation of this new ‘man’, however, is the notion of ‘moe’ that otakus introduce. Japanese men in the past upheld the standard of heterosexual, real life, in other terms, “3-D relationships”. Otaku’s, on the other hand, depicted a new reality of ‘moe’, a term meaning the affectionate longing for the 2-D characters; the internalized emotional response to something with no hope for a reciprocal response.8 Indeed, for some writers, such as Honda Toru, ‘moe’ constituted a form of “love revolution” for men. Honda sees the new man’s fascination with 2-D characters as the natural evolution of mankind, of masculinity.9 As humanity accepts technology, so too will it accept it through love as well, and that men will “give up on the analog world of real women in favor of the digital world of characters”.10

Perhaps the rejection of relationships with real women is less to do with enforced gender stereotypes of men in heterosexual relationships, the demands and pressures of being a disputed form of ‘man’, but rather a form of defence for ‘failed men’. Men who did not agree with the stipulations demanded to them by the army begat a new generation of salarymen who begat a new generation of otakus. Failed men forge new identities, but retain the notion of competition and productivity in all spheres, be it 3-D or not, they acquire.

 

 

 

Bibliography:

 

Condry, Ian, ‘Love Revolution: Anime, Masculinity, and the Future’, in Sabine Fruhstuck (ed.), Recreating Japanese Men (Oakland, CA, 2011; online edn, California Scholarship Online, 22 Mar. 2012), https://doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520267374.003.0013, accessed 1 Dec. 2024.

 

Frühstück S., Building the Nation and Modern Manhood. In: Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japan, New Approaches to Asian History. Cambridge University Press; 2022:19-46.

  1. Frühstück S., Building the Nation and Modern Manhood. In: Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japan, New Approaches to Asian History. Cambridge University Press; 2022, p. 23. [↩]
  2. Frühstück, Building the Nation and Modern Manhood, p. 24. [↩] [↩]
  3. Frühstück, Building the Nation and Modern Manhood, pp. 24-25 [↩]
  4. Frühstück, Building the Nation and Modern Manhood, pp. 33-34. [↩]
  5. Condry, Ian, ‘Love Revolution: Anime, Masculinity, and the Future’, in Sabine Fruhstuck (ed.), Recreating Japanese Men (Oakland, CA, 2011; online edn, California Scholarship Online, 22 Mar. 2012), p. 264 [↩]
  6. Condry, Ian, ‘Love Revolution: Anime, Masculinity, and the Future’, p. 264. [↩] [↩]
  7. Condry, Ian, ‘Love Revolution: Anime, Masculinity, and the Future’, p. 265. [↩]
  8. Condry, Ian, ‘Love Revolution: Anime, Masculinity, and the Future’, p. 263. [↩]
  9. Condry, Ian, ‘Love Revolution: Anime, Masculinity, and the Future’, p. 266. [↩]
  10. Condry, Ian, ‘Love Revolution: Anime, Masculinity, and the Future’, p. 269. [↩]

Mohism and Confucianism: ‘father and state’, the case of Mencius.

Mohism is the third biggest schools of China, following Confucianism and Daoism.1 The core values of Mohism, in relation to the state, is the “impartial-treated nation”[jian tian xia], which highlights on the universal love. Confucianism, on the other hand, places the “the family-governed monarchic nation” [jia tian xia] at its core, highlighting the concept of the differential and preferential love.2

A discourse over the relationship between the individual and the state is afoot. Both schools of thought offer different insights. Confucianism focuses on righteousness (yi) and looks down upon benefits (li), finding them polar opposite to one another as values.3 However, Mohism finds both righteousness and benefits to be well-integrated, highlighted together both theoretically and practically.4

Mohism, likewise, unlike Confucianism, does not stand for the fixed social ladder,or the basic social structure of “king, minster, father and sons” (jun, chen, fu, zi).5 Instead it sees a connection between freedom or autonomy of life in the universal values and individualism of man.5 Confucianism takes the priority of group value rather than the individual value in the social order. Mohism, on the other hand, Mohism takes the priority of individual value rather than group value in the society.5 Confucianism took the priority of the state with a centralized form of power – in contrast that Mohism took the priority of decentralized power and dispersive small states.5 This is all important to establish in order to understand the respective schools’ thought on state and man as it shows how Confucianism took the priority of nation integrity over the common people, the civilian, which is the complete opposite to Mohism.

Whilst both Confucian and Mohist ethics embraced both universal love, as well as love for one’s own parents, they differently configured competing values.6 They disagreed on which degree to which one was more important. Confucians did give love for one’s parents a priority comparatively higher than Mohists do, whilst Mohists gave universal love the priority comparatively higher than Confucians.7 And it was due to these different ethical schools having different configurations of values that they presented competing configured perspectives on whether to love the state more than one’s own parents.

Examples of moral values of filial piety and loyalty to the state (i. e. the emperor) although both highly valued in Confucianism, pre-Qin Confucianism would have given filial piety a higher priority than to the loyalty to the state, the emperor.8 In the example of Mencius as Chenyang Li’s article provides, Mencius’s student, Xian Qinmeng, raised a significant question. The question regarded the people who in serving the state were ‘too busy with state affairs to care for their own parents’8 – what should they do? To whom first came filial piety – the state or own parents? Mencius replied ‘the sons utmost act of filial piety is to honour his parents; the utmost act of honouring parents lies in supporting his parents with the entire country. Being the emperor’s father is the highest honour; being supported with the entire country is the utmost form of support’. The service to the country was the greatest act of filial piety in his eyes.9

 

 

 

Bibliography:

 

Song Jinzhou, Mohist Theoretic System: The Rivalry Theory of Confucianism and Interconnections With the Universal Values and Global Sustainability, in Cultural and Religious Studies, Vol. 8, No. 3, Shanghai (2020)

 

Chenyang Li, Does Confucian Ethics Integrate Care Ethics and Justice Ethics? The Case of Mencius, in Asian Philosophy, Vol. 18, No. 1, (2008).

  1. Song Jinzhou, Mohist Theoretic System: The Rivalry Theory of Confucianism and Interconnections With the Universal Values and Global Sustainability, in Cultural and Religious Studies, Vol. 8, No. 3, Shanghai (2020), p. 178 [↩]
  2. Song, Mohist Theoretic System, p. 178. [↩]
  3. Song, Mohist Theoretic System, p. 178, [↩]
  4. Song, Mohist Theoretic System, pp. 178-179. [↩]
  5. Song, Mohist Theoretic System, p. 181. [↩] [↩] [↩] [↩]
  6. Chenyang Li, Does Confucian Ethics Integrate Care Ethics and Justice Ethics? The Case of Mencius, in Asian Philosophy, Vol. 18, No. 1, (2008), p. 71. [↩]
  7. Li, Does Confucian Ethics Integrate Care Ethics and Justice Ethics?, pp. 71-72. [↩]
  8. Li, Does Confucian Ethics Integrate Care Ethics and Justice Ethics?, p. 72. [↩] [↩]
  9. Mencius 5A:4 [↩]

Leslie Pincus: review of Shuzo Kuki

Shuzo Kuki, a prominent Japanese philosopher of the early twentieth century, is best remembered for his seminal work, ‘Iki no Kozo’ (The Structure of Iki). His book was published in 1930; it explores the aesthetic concept of ‘iki’, which is a term that encompasses a sophisticated style prevalent in the late Edo urban culture of Japan. Kuki argued, that ‘iki’ embodied both ideas of cosmopolitanism and modernity, comparable to that of Western cultures.1 Furthermore, especially after the second world war, Kuki’s work would become more well known on the global scale, sparking recognition as a successful synthesis of both Western and Japanese aesthetics.

Leslie Pincus, in her work ‘Fascism and Aesthetics’, critiques the general presupposition of a favourable western interpretation of Kuki’s philosophy. Indeed, she makes the argument that there is a link between Kuki’s modern aestheticism and political fascism, believing that Kuki both admired and was antagonistic towards the West, fearing complete cultural colonization, which is why he tried to assert Japan’s cultural superiority over the West.2Pincus calls for a reevaluation of Kuki’s legacy; to reexamine the extent to which his work influenced cultural nationalism in Japan. She believes that by romanticizing the imperial rule as having ‘traditional harmony’, it led to the Japanese assertion of fascist ideologies,3 who sought to impose these ideas that perhaps never even existed in history to begin with. Pincus offer’s a critical look on Kuki’s work, relating it to still have prevalence in the discussion of Japanese nationalism, modernity, and the ongoing dialogue between the West and Japan nowadays.

 

 

 

 

  1. Koshiro, Yukiko. Review of Fascism and Aesthetics, by Leslie Pincus. The Review of Politics 59, no. 3 (1997), p. 606 [↩]
  2. Koshiro, Review of Fascism and Aesthetics, p. 606 [↩]
  3. Koshiro, Review of Fascism and Aesthetics, p. 606 [↩]

Esperanto and the Non-War Movement – Japan’s view on the globe

The first global concept of cosmopolitanism begat in classical Greece, with their view of cultural idealism that would transcend the constraints of traditional locales. But without a institutionalized organizational frame, their beliefs were just that – an ideal.1 It would only be from the mid-nineteenth century onwards that a more institutionalized frame would form, one of the cognitive orientation – the language Esperanto.2 Instead of imagining a world which transcended national boundaries like the Greeks, nineteenth century cosmopolitans envisioned a common language that would promote global citizenship. Common language would give individuals attachment to a concept of world society and rid the world of problems such as miscommunication.3

 

In the case of the use of Esperanto in Japan, it would significantly develop in particular after the Russo-Japanese war, 1904-05. When introduced, it quickly begat a trend with the Japanese annual assessment of leading trends newspaper, the ‘Asahi shinbun’, enthusiastically following, themselves proclaimed, biggest craze of 1906.4 The idea of Esperanto would spread through the studies and discussion of elites and nonelites in noninstitutional spaces such as coffee shops and rural homes.5 It would be in these out of state influence hidden pockets that individuals would start to practice their imagination of world order and peace.

 

 

 

Indeed, Esperanto would challenge the image of the foreigner [gaijin] and enemy. During the Russo-Japanese war, 1904-1905, the notion of ‘worldism’ became distinct from the nation-state centered notion of world order and international relations.5 Esperanto began to be referred as a “world language” [sekaigo] in post Russo-Japanese war.6 This change came hand-in-hand with the invention of “the people”, an imagination of “heimen”, an idea of a people without the state as the subject. Unlike the Marxist proletarian masses of class struggle, this notion was birthed from the significant Non-War movement in Japan.6 And it is this Non-War movement, with its use of Esperanto, that would challenge the vision of the dehumanized version of the enemy.

 

 

 

The Non-War movement revolved greatly around the language and imagery of ‘heimen’, with ‘hei’ meaning ‘plains/ level or horizon’ and ‘min’ – ‘people’. ‘Heimen’ became a term embracing ‘everyone’.7 Non-War supporters viewed war as representing a retrogression of human progress and civilization. Instead, with the use of ‘heimen’, the notion could serve to replace the national, social and ethnic hierarchy with a concretized notion of humanity that extended beyond the territory of the nation-state.7

 

 

 

The Russian common people, as portrayed by one of the leading Japanese papers ‘Shiikan heim’, began to be drawn as instruments of exploitative elites and the government in Russia.8 Japanese readers would now discover that the demonized enemy was, in fact, an exploited people under the social and political elites, who were too much similar to their own national Japanese.

 

 

 

For Kotoku Shusui, one of the leading figures of the Non-War movement, empathy was a naturally occurring sentiments in all human beings and thus was the most natural foundation for the conduct of international relations. ‘Sokuin dojo’ – ‘happens to you’.7 He envisioned a more ethical transnational community based on the idea of the empathetic nature of human beings.7 He saw that patriotism and nationalism, the ‘othering’ of others, artificially bound and territorialized ethics.7

 

 

 

Overall, both the Non-War movement and the rise of Esperanto in Japan led to a change in perception of the foreign world which was out to get you. Both were important to reintroduce the factor of humanity in the minds of a people who were heavily militarized and alienated from global society. The world was not the enemy – language and empathy was the new language to communicate in, to understand one another and bring an end to war and strife. If only most Japanese leadership thought so too.

 

 

 

Biblgiography:

 

KONISHI, SHO. “Translingual World Order: Language without Culture in Post-Russo-Japanese War Japan.” The Journal of Asian Studies 72, no. 1 (2013): 91–114. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23357508.

 

John Boli and George M. Thomas, Constructing World Culture, “Constructing a Global Identity: The Role of Esperanto”, Stanford University Press, California (1999)

  1. John Boli and George M. Thomas, Constructing World Culture, “Constructing a Global Identity: The Role of Esperanto”, Stanford University Press, California (1999), p. 129. [↩]
  2. Boli, Thomas, Constructing World Culture, p. 129 [↩]
  3. Boli, Thomas, Constructing World Culture, pp. 129-130 [↩]
  4. Konishi, Sho. “Translingual World Order: Language without Culture in Post-Russo-Japanese War Japan.” The Journal of Asian Studies 72, no. 1 (2013), p. 91 [↩]
  5. Sho. Translingual World Order, p. 92. [↩] [↩]
  6. Sho. Translingual World Order, p. 94. [↩] [↩]
  7. Sho. Translingual World Order, p. 96. [↩] [↩] [↩] [↩] [↩]
  8. Boli, Thomas, Constructing World Culture, pp. 130 [↩]