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The Genealogy of Japanese Immaturity J. Keith Vincent Published in Japanese in Azuma Hiroki, ed. Nihon-teki sōzōryoku no mirai: Kūru japonorojii no kanōsei [The Future of the Japanese Imagination: The Potential of Cool Japanology]. Tokyo: NHK Books, 2010. 15-46. People seem to agree that there is so...

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The Genealogy of Japanese Immaturity J. Keith Vincent

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The Genealogy of Japanese Immaturity J. Keith Vincent

Published in Japanese in Azuma Hiroki, ed. Nihon-teki sōzōryoku no mirai: Kūru japonorojii no kanōsei [The Future of the Japanese Imagination: The Potential of Cool Japanology]. Tokyo: NHK Books, 2010. 15-46.

People seem to agree that there is something "immature" or "infantile" about Japan. This is true, it would seem, from perspectives both inside Japan and outside it. As I am sure you all know, the Japanese government has decided to embrace the image of Japanese immaturity--making Hello Kitty Japan's minister of tourism in 2008, and promoting "cuteness" as one of Japan's most lucrative cultural exports. The image of Japan as a perpetual adolescent has long been prevalent in the political realm, although now that the Japan Democratic Party has taken control of the government and asserted some autonomy vis a vis the U.S., journalists are asking if Japan is "finally going to grow up and go its own way."1 As I was Googling around for other examples of this sort of rhetoric, I found a store in San Diego selling Japanese manga and anime and other otaku goods called "Grow Up Japan." I could cite many more examples but I think by this point the association of Japan and "immaturity" has almost become cliche, so I will spare you. I am perhaps more aware of this than most Americans since I have taught Japanese literature for more than a decade now in the U.S. so I see what it is that brings American college students to the study of Japan. Unlike in the 1980s during years of the "bubble" there are very few students these days who study Japanese because they think it will be good for a business career. Students with such grown-up motivations are all studying Chinese. But luckily for me and my colleagues, the numbers of students interested in Japan has not declined that much despite the terrible state of the Japanese economy. There are of course always a few who have been inspired to study Japanese by reading the Tale of Genji or Natsume Soseki, but the vast majority come because they are fans of Japanese popular culture, which usually means anime and manga. And for many of these students, Japanese popular culture is associated above all with a sort of refusal of the very distinction between childhood and adulthood. In some ways it is the very "immaturity" of Japanese culture that makes them want to study it. It is perhaps for this reason that students interested in Japan seem so different from students who want to study, say , French or Chinese. When I interview students or read applications for study abroad programs to Japan, for example, students will of course talk about specific things about Japan that they like (the food, the fashion, popular                                                          See, for example, Masaru Tamamoto, "Will Japan Ever Grow Up?" Far Eastern Economic Review, July 10, 2009. http://www.feer.com/essays/2009/july/will-japan-evergrow-up. 1

culture, etc.) but they almost always also talk about their 'love' for Japan as such. Often they mention how this love for "Japan" has been with them ever since their childhood. Of course it is important to love what you study--in fact it is necessary to be passionate about any foreign language in order to truly master it. But still, there is something obsessive and otaku-like about the way these kids "love Japan." Japan to them is not just another country. It is another world that seems to promise something that nowhere else has. While students of Chinese tend to be "fascinated" by Chinese economic growth and students of Russian to be "intrigued" by Dostoyevsky, students of Japan are head over heels "in love" with "Japan." The strange intensity of this love may have to do with the fact that they associate Japanese culture with their childhoods. While American students of Chinese or Russian or French tend to have discovered these cultures and languages as adults, some of my students' earliest childhood memories are associated with Japan via Pokemon and Sailor Moon. So while American French majors harbor very "adult" fantasies of living in Paris, drinking wine, and reading Camus in cafes on the Left Bank, many Japanese majors seem to imagine on some unconscious level that studying in Japan will allow them to relive their childhoods. This would explain why their attachment to Japan is so powerful and, in some ways, so irrational. Of course I consider it part of my job to disabuse them of these fantasies and to get them to think about Japan and Japanese culture in more critical, not to say "grownup," ways. My focus is on modern literature so I have them read lots of Soseki and Karatani Kojin, and this usually helps a little. The ultimate goal is to get them to stop thinking about "Japan" per se and start thinking about the people who live there and the books they have written and how these might both relate to their own lives and stimulate them intellectually. I suppose in a way you could say that I am trying to get them to "outgrow" the Japan of their childhood. But at the same time I want them to hold on to their memories of an "infantile" Japan and think about where this image might have come from historically. So rather than just "outgrowing" their fascination with Japan I hope they will use the image of an infantile Japan to think through how our understandings of childhood and "growing up" have themselves taken on powerful ideological meanings in the modern world. I would even say that one of the best reasons there is to study Japanese literature is the opportunity it provides for us to re-examine our assumptions about what constitutes maturity and childishness. Why is this? Because the notions of maturation and development that underlie Japanese modernity have for so long been not only naive goals but also critical questions on the Japanese intellectual and cultural landscape. Saitô Tamaki has argued, for example that the process of henshin ("transformation") that is so ubiquitous in manga and anime is a metaphor for accelerated maturation--and reflects the child's desire to grow up.2 It may also allude to a larger social preoccupation with the process of growth and development that can be traced back to the Meiji period. Japan's experience of accelerated modernization from the Meiji period onwards was, after all, a sort of collective henshin. In some respects the sheer speed of this transformation proved traumatic, but it also contributed to a heightened critical awareness of the ideologies attached to notions such as progress, maturation, and "civilization." As Karatani Kôjin                                                          2 Sentô bishôjo chapter 5

put it, writing about the Meiji period, "We Japanese witnessed with our own eyes and within a limited period of time the occurrence in condensed form of a process which, because it had extended over many centuries, had been repressed from memory in the West (Karatani 36)." Of course for Karatani it was really only Sôseki who was able to turn this experience into a form of critical or theoretical awareness. But it remains true that no student of modern Japanese history and literature can ignore the ideological, rhetorical, psychological and other ramifications of the felt imperative to "grow up," to "modernize," to become a "first-class country" (ittô koku) in Meiji or, more recently, a "normal nation." While it is possible, then, to trace a concern with "Japanese immaturity" back to the Meiji period (Soseki rued the "immaturity" of Japanese literature already in 1905) it was during the U.S. Occupation and the postwar period of high economic growth that the notion of an infantile Japan truly took hold. One can trace two consistent and intertwining discourses that sought to "explain" the phenomenon of Japanese immaturity. One was the notion that Japan's defeat in the war and subsequent occupation had somehow "castrated" the Japanese and left them both impotent and infantilized. The other, often complimentary, idea was that Japan had become a so-called "maternal society" (bosei shakai). In this scenario, as the country's fathers toiled away creating the "Japanese economic miracle" its mothers remained in the domestic space, burdening and even suffocating their sons with desires unmet by their husbands. As you will have noted, "Japan" in both of these scenarios is allegorically represented as a male and both models rely primarily on psychoanalytic models. Infantilization by Castration/Homosexualization Douglas MacArthur's infamous statement in 1946 that Japan was like a "12-year old boy" is often quoted as epitomizing the fate of Japanese masculinity after the war. Writers like Oe Kenzaburô, Nosaka Akiyuki, and Kojima Nobuo3 responded with novels that portrayed Japanese men as groaning under the humiliation of the Occupation and continued dependency on the U.S. Oe's early works are particularly good examples of this trend. His protagonists are invariably young males unable to "grow up" in the suffocating atmosphere of postwar Japan, often in thrall to older, maternal prostitutes who tend to be simultaneously involved with American GIs. His 1958 novella "Kuroi kawa omoi kai" is a case in point. The sexual immaturity of this novel's protagonist is a typical example of the "castration" theory of Japanese immaturity. The following passage is from early on in the novel. "He sat on the bed completely naked with his head bowed. This pose made him feel effeminate and utterly defenseless. His penis was like a meek little bird huddled in a nest. A motionless little bird which could only chirp softly.."4                                                          American Hijiki, Warera no jidai, Miru mae ni tobe, Hôyô no kazoku, etc. 4 彼 ベッ 腰 下 床 そ え 踵 膝 う ささえ そ 肩 あい 頭 自 腿 セクス 3

Next door to the unnamed protagonist lives a Japanese prostitute, or panpan, with her African American GI boyfriend. By the end of the story the boy will be sadistically seduced by the woman, partly with threats about the boyfriend's violent behavior. The boy's bird-like penis stands as a pitiable symbol of the reduced state of postwar Japanese masculinity. And as if this emasculating and infantilizing description were not enough, the text further emphasizes his passivity by implying that it derives from an undercurrent of homosexual libido. “Perhaps, as he sat like this, he would be set upon by a hairy-chested man and forcibly violated. He felt his pulse begin to beat violently. This was a favorite and frequently repeated fantasy of his. Whenever he fantasized like this, he worried that one day he might become a homosexual.”5 Maternalism The discourse of maternalism takes a different tack, but one equally dependent on fairly conservative, binarized understandings of gender and sexuality. Yoda Tomiko has discussed how the notion of the maternal society functions in two influential texts from Shôwa 40s: Etô Jun's 1967 Maturity and Loss ("Seijuku to sôshitsu) and Doi Takeo's 1971 The Structure of Dependence (Amae no Kôzô). As Yoda points out, both of these extremely influential texts were premised on the notion that a natural "balance" between the genders had once existed in Japan but that modernity had somehow brought about an unnatural dominance of the feminine and the maternal. In "Seijuku to sôshitsu" Etô discussed a number of postwar novels that he claimed were symptomatic of a disruption of the "natural balance" between the feminine and the masculine principles. The result was an excessive attachment to the mother on the part of the male protagonists. Both in the novels and in society at large this had led to the infantilization of Japanese men. Eto's solution to this problem was for Japanese men to "... 'grow up’: mature into a true individual by giving up the nostalgia for the mother and remember[ing]/recogniz[ing] the lack of the father." Doi, for his part, described Japan as a society dominated by "amae" or dependency, a concept that was modeled on the infant's dependence on maternal love. While part of Doi's point was to valorize the kind of subjectivity that resulted from the continuation of this dependence into adulthood, and even to hold it up as a legitimate Japanese alternative to what he portrayed as the Western obsession with an autonomous                                                                                                                                                                       セクス 汗 静 光 巣 う く い い 仔鳥 う 身動 出来 い チュッ チュッ 啼い い 仔鳥 "Kurai Kawa, Omoi kai" Oe Zensakuhin vol. 2, 7-8. 5 そ 姿勢 全く弱々 く絶望的 無防禦 感 そう い 剛い胸毛 え 男 そわ う いわ 凌辱さ う 動 悸 く 感 そ いく び く えさ 彼 気 入 空想 そ そう空想 び 自 男色家 い 疑 い  

self, he also considered it a potentially pathological and infantilizing force. 6 As Yoda writes, Doi's text was "arguably the book that had the greatest influence in inspiring the widespread perception of Japan as a society dominated by the infantile yearning to depend on maternal love and nurturing."7 If we accept the premise of "Japanese immaturity," there may be some truth to both of these explanations of what has caused it. The trauma of defeat in war and the suffocating influence of an overweening mother might very well stunt one's growth. But I would like to suggest that rather than asking whether the "the Japanese" are or are not "immature," we ask instead what kind of ideological work gets done when we claim that they are. For one thing, panicking about "growing up" and "separating from the mother" invariably privileges a phallic, and usually heteronormative masculine subject. We saw this in Oe's story where the boy's infantilism is associated with homosexuality--making it very hard not to read the text as suggesting that aggressive heterosexuality would be more "grown up." Doi Takeo also made the stakes here very explicit. In Amae no Kôzô he wrote, "the essence of homosexual feelings is amae."8 But calling homosexuals "amae" and blaming mothers for Japan's alleged immaturity are just ways to deflect attention from structural issues such as the postwar rise of the nuclear family, lack of familial involvement by fathers and the extraction of free labor from "professional housewives." And whatever one might say about this question on the level of the individual psyche or family dynamics, to apply this sort of psychoanalytic reasoning to an entire culture is deeply problematic. In fact, I would argue that rehearsing the narrative of "Japanese immaturity" has the effect of consolidating the Japanese nation around a collective trauma and thereby repressing our awareness that different people experience history differently. If there is hope for a nation to truly "mature" it lies in the affirmation and cultivation of this diversity and the recognition of more than just a single narrative of the postwar. This means recognizing that the nation--or any given generation--does not move forward in a single lockstep and that "maturity" can take many forms. It also means addressing what has been called the "modernizationist" understanding of culture-- the idea that there is some universal timeline of progress, with the "infantile" or "primitive" on one end and the "mature" or "civilized" at the other. In the modernizationist way of thinking, particular cultures or individuals are imagined as existing at some point on this timeline and thus being either "behind" or "ahead" or perhaps coeval with others. It is surprisingly hard to avoid this way of thinking even today, when some people would say that we ought to have moved beyond such a linear, modern way of thinking.

                                                         6 Doi also explicitly linked amae to homosexuality. "The essence of homosexual feelings," he wrote, "is amae."  7 Yoda, Tomiko. “The Rise and Fall of Maternal Society: Gender, Labor, and Capital in Contemporary Japan.” South Atlantic Quarterly 99.4 (2000): 865-902. 870. 8同性愛的感情

本体

甘え

あ

chap. 4, 192. 

I believe Murakami-san's art and Kurosawa-san's films both intervene in productive ways in this highly ideological discourse and it is to a discussion of their work that I now turn.

Murakami's Intervention: The question of "Japanese immaturity" has been an abiding concern in Murakami-san's work and he seems quite certain about what has caused it. For Murakami, writing in the catalogue for the 2006 exhibition, "Little Boy," the infantilism of Japanese popular culture is the lingering effect of the trauma of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined with Japan's subsequent postwar dependence on the United States. As he put it in 2001, "...behind the flashy titillation of anime lies the shadow of Japan's trauma after the defeat of the Pacific War. The world of anime is a world of impotence." 58 And later, in the catalogue for the 2006 "Little Boy" exhibition he wrote, "Regardless of winning or losing the war, the bottom line is that for the past sixty years, Japan has been a testing ground for an American-style capitalist economy, protected in a greenhouse, nurtured and bloated to the point of explosion. The results are so bizarre, they're perfect. Whatever true intentions underlie 'Little Boy' the nickname for Hiroshima's atomic bomb, we Japanese are truly, deeply pampered children. And as pampered children we throw constant tantrums while enthralled by our own cuteness."9 In his critical writings, then, Murakami would seem to subscribe quite enthusiastically to the "castration" or "trauma" theory of Japanese immaturity, much like the early Oe. One look at his art, however, suggests that his strategy there is not direct critique but oblique appropriation and resignification. In other words, instead of criticizing what he sees as the infantile nature of Japanese popular culture, he revels in it and turns it into a resource with which, as one critic put it "to turn the tables against modern Western cultural authority (Matsui, 96)." Ashis Nandy, writing about the British colonization of India, has argued that while infantilization of the colonized was a common strategy of colonialism, it was also complicated by a deep fear of childhood as "a persistent, living, irrepressible criticism of our 'rational', 'normal', 'adult' visions of desirable societies."10Murakami's work can be said to activate that fear.

I feel a little strange talking about Murakami-san's work right in front of him and I am painfully aware of the fact that whatever I say can only address a miniscule fraction of his                                                          9 戦争 勝 う 負 う メリカ型資本主義経済 温室 大事 育 膨 実験場 ６０年間 日本 実態 そ そ 見事 奇妙 物 育 広島原爆 愛称 Little Boy 真意 う あ 我々 見事 自 わいさ 生 来 141. 10 Nandy 58. 

enormous output. But let us just look at two of his better known pieces, "My Lonesome Cowboy," (1998) and "Hiropon," from 1997. **SHOW "MLC"** One can't help but smile when one sees "My Lonesome Cowboy." This spunky lad is not exactly MacArthur's 12 year-old boy. And he provides quite a contrast to Oe's protagonist with the bird-like penis. The contrast is surely also deliberate and places the work very much in dialogue with the discourse of Japanese immaturity. Instead of a timid boy vulnerable to the predations of prostitutes and GI's, "My Lonesome Cowboy" has a stance like Elvis and seems ready to lasso a stallion with his semen. The expression on his face is cocksure and exuberant. He seems utterly in control and ready to take on the world--but also narcissistically self-sufficient. Ayelet Zohar has discussed "My Lonesome Cowboy" in relation to Freud's famous comment about the Ego and the Id: "Thus in relation to the Id, the Ego is like a man on horseback, who has to hold in check the superior strength of th...