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The Antiprostitution Law of 1957 did not exactly kill the Japanese sex business. Most brothels and girly bars just decided to “re-conceptualize” and take their activities underground. Law enforcement tacitly tolerated the existence of “Turkish baths” and “massage parlors” for the next twenty-five years, as long as these businesses did not become too brazen or make a conspicuous move into mainstream society.

In the 1980s, however, the sex business went overground for the first time in the post-war era, becoming a significant part of the pop cultural zeitgeist. Not only did the greater media attention make more men into sex busness patrons, the news about high salaries paid to sex workers ended up attracting a large number of young women into the field.

As with all Japanese pop-cultural historiography, the changes and fads in the sex industry can be charted almost perfectly by year. The following timeline of the 1980s sex business development is translated from one of the greatest analytical works on Japanese pop cultural history: 『サブカルチャー神話解体：少女・音楽・マンガ・性の３０年とコミュニケーションの現在』 (Subcultural Myth Busting: Thirty Years and the Current State of Girls, Music, Manga, and Sex). Originally published by PARCO in 1993, the book contains post-modern critique on the development of Japanese pop culture from authors Miyadai Shinji, Ishihara Hideki, and Ootsuka Meiko. (A newer version came out in paperback last year.)

Note: the main form of prostitution before the early 1980s sex boom was the “Turkish bath” (トルコ風呂). In Japanese, “Turkish” is toruko, and many new forms of prostitution took the “toru” as a suffix. In 1984, all Turkish baths officially were renamed “soapland” after complaints from the Turkish embassy.

1981 will eternally be recorded as the year of the “Big Bang” in the sex industry. The 1980 opening of the very first “no-panties tearoom” (ノーパン喫茶) in Kyoto launched a huge boom in Osaka at the beginning of 1981, and later, the sparks spread to Tokyo. In the later half of 1981, however, you already started to see the decline of the no-panties tearoom. The excitement shifted to the first-ever “peep room” (のぞき部屋) that opened in Shibuya. At the end of the year, mantoru [”mansion Turkish Bath,” underground apartment-based prostitution] grew rapidly, inviting a crackdown by the authorities. By the next year, however, the service changed to hotetoru [call girls who come to patrons’ hotel rooms] and “date tearooms.” The “girls of the new sex industry” produced by the sex boom became the core customers of “host clubs,” which rapidly opened one after the other and ushered in a “Gigolo Boom.” As sex businesses rapidly spread in Kabukicho, adult shops also concentrated in the area, which turned into the “binibon (books/magazines rapped in plastic) boom.” After that, urabon and ura-bideo (uncensored and illegal pornographic books and videos) started to be distributed and (porn actress) Aizome Kyōko became popular.

1982 was the year of “individual rooms” and “full service” (本番). After the no-panties tearoom boom ended, there was an influx of the “new sex business girls” into the newly-emerging businesses “fashion massage” and “private-room nudes.” Hotetoru was born out of the strict regulation on mantoru, even to a point of creating “delivery prostitute boys” (出張トルコボーイ). The crackdown on mantoru ended up flaming the fires, causing the appearance of date tearooms even in residential areas. During this era, there existed an incredible segregation in the staffing of the services: the girls who worked at fashion massage were trade school students (専門校学生), the girls at date tearooms were Asian immigrants, and the girls at mantoru and hotetoru were college students and OLs who did not want their faces known.

In 1983, the “new sex biz” reaches its peak. According to the “White Paper on the Sex Business” from the same year, the number of sex businesses doubled from the previous year to a total of 1,406 establishments. Mantoru went from 145 to 234 locations, private-room massage went from 146 to 279, date tearooms went from 61 to 153, and date clubs went from 182 to 379. There was also a new arrival on the scene: the “mistress bank” [clubs that brought together men who wanted mistresses and women who wanted money], with 106 locations. The sex business entered a new period of intense competition. Ideas became the make or break for companies. New “pornography buildings” 5 Doors and Wanderer opened in Kabukicho. Inside the building was Tokyo Lucky Hole — which later became the name of a photo-book from Araki Nobuyoshi. The building also had what can be said to be the precursor to terekura [telephone clubs]: “phone play” (電話遊び). That year, sex biz gals who did not care at all about revealing their faces started to appear on TV, shifting the “co-ed hooker boom” to a “hooker idol boom.” 1983 saw the debut of “no-panties queen Eve” as a mainstream celebrity. The opening of mistress bank “Evening Tribe” (夕ぐれ族) became talk of the town and led to openings of like-minded establishments all over the country.

In 1984, as the “New Sex Business Law” brought stronger regulation, the sex sector started to bifurcate in an environment of increased competition. On January 30, National Police Agency announced a large-scale revision to the Entertainment Business Control Law. On February 1, they established the Department to Promote Clean-Up of the Fuzoku Environment. Later on the 20th of that month, they fired the first shot of a heavy barrage. Merchants worried about possible crackdown went ahead and self-censored. Customers stopped being interested as the general amateurism lost its charm. This lead to an emphasis on service and quality, and also, the bifurcation of remaining businesses: businesses that could be proud of rich, professional services and those that were strong in showmanship. Private-room nudes completely died out, but the kyabakura [cabaret-club, cheaper version of hostess club] was born. In August, the “New Sex Business Law” was enacted. In September, the city of Tokyo cracked down on 50 businesses in a mass sweep. Meanwhile everyone gossiped about the existence of a date tearoom where a bunch of 16 year-old Takenokozoku girls would hang out. The Diet saw legislators started to bash magazines Popteen and Girls Life.

1985 was the year that gave birth to terekura [telephone clubs], a drop in customers following the enactment of the New Sex Business Law, and a vicious circle of rip-off joints. The explanation for that first item has been insufficient. “Telephone clubs” — abbreviated, terekura — quickly spread as a way to deal with the New Sex Business Law. The “telephone sex services” that grew out of terekura dragged in low teens. The NTT Message Dial and Q2 Two Shot boom [party lines where men would pay ¥100 a minute to talk to girls, who talked for free] led to today’s “underground two” (裏ツー) [underground party lines], pre-paid two-shot, Q2 message, and sexy message faxes.

作者:nj@neojaponisme.com

更新日:2008年11月27日 3時0分

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Unearthed outside of the city of Sano in Tochigi-ken, this portrait photography series documents Japan as it engaged with modernization and commercial photography in the Meiji and Taishō Periods.

The Meeting Modernity series of found photographs is the focus of Néojaponisme’s first traveling exhibition. Recently discovered outside of the city of Sano in Tochigi-ken, this series of pictures documents Japan as it engaged with modernization and commercial photography in the Meiji and Taishō Periods. The series is comprised of portrait photography in particular.

作者:nj@neojaponisme.com

更新日:2008年11月25日 18時15分

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Even the best translators are guilty of occasional mistakes, but few have been called out quite so publicly as Dimitry Kovalenin was at the workshop “The Joy of Murakami’s Works: From the Perspective of Translation” (「翻訳の現場から見る村上ワールドの魅力」), which took place in March 2006 as a part of a symposium entitled A Wild Haruki Chase: How the World is Reading and Translating Haruki Murakami 『世界は村上春樹をどう読むか』. The symposium — part of the motivation for which may have been to boost Murakami’s Nobel chances, as discussed previously — included workshops and speeches involving the collaborative efforts of over a dozen different Murakami translators from Western and Central Europe, North and South America, and of course, all over Asia. Kovalenin was there in his capacity as Murakami’s first Russian translator.

In June 2006, Bungakukai 『文学界』published two symposium workshop transcripts. The workshop in question centered around two stories from Yoru no kumozaru 『夜のくもざる』 (”Night of the Spider Monkey”), a collection of 2-to-3-page super-short stories (超短編小説). The title story is about a writer who is interrupted by a spider monkey that repeats everything he says. The story is a challenge to translate; Murakami makes full and creative use of all the Japanese scripts: the monkey imitates the writer “in katakana” but then is foiled when the writer switches back to speaking “in hiragana.”

During the workshop, Kovalenin mentioned how pleased he was with his own creative translation of the term kumozaru, “spider monkey”:

Dimitry Kovalenin: […] When I was translating “Yoru no kumozaru,” I was staying at a friend’s house, and I thought up a pretty clever translation with the family’s twelve-year-old kid. Basically, I decided just to leave it up to him (laughs). I asked the kid, “What kind of animal do you get when you combine a spider and a monkey?” So I had him write up a list of different types of spiders and monkeys and give me what he thought was the funniest combination. The result we thought best was obezyana (обезьяна) for the monkey and tarantul (тарантул) for the spider. Put them together and you get obezyantul (обезьянтул). The kid laughed whenever I said it, so I thought that was probably okay (laughs). (154)

The Japanese moderators Shibata Motoyuki and Numano Mitsuyoshi, both University of Tokyo professors, smoothly transitioned to the topic of wordplay in translation, but Czech translator Tomas Jurkovic returned to the issue soon after, and Malaysian translator Ye Hui was equipped with photographic evidence:

Tomas Jurkovic: […] I wanted to ask Mr. Kovalenin something. You chose to create an entirely different name despite the fact that spider monkeys actually exist and have a Russian name — why is that?

Kovalenin: What? Spider monkeys really exist? I thought it was imaginary, like the Sheep Man.

Ye Hui: No, they exist. I can show you proof. (Opens a magazine with a picture of a spider monkey.)

Numano Mitsuyoshi: If you look in Kōjien, this is what it says. “Mammals of the capuchin group. There are several species. Inhabit forests from Central America to northern South America.” Mr. Jurkovic has an important point here; do you use the official name of the actual animal, or do you use an invented word to bring out the humorous tone of it?

Kovalenin: How many people are there here in the audience today who knew that spider monkeys actually existed? Hardly any at all, right? I think Murakami used the word with that in mind.

Shibata Motoyuki: The Japanese version of Yoru no kumozaru has a drawing of a spider monkey in it by Anzai Mizumaru. It looks quite similar to the picture that Ms. Ye just showed us (laughs). (155-156)

Kovelenin is undoubtedly an impressive translator. He put a translation of Wild Sheep Chase online in 1996 before getting the money to publish it in 1998. During that two-year period it developed a notable readership. You can read a short article about his experience translating Murakami here. As they say in Japan, even monkeys fall from trees: Murakami’s long history of using the fantastic in his fiction, especially when it comes to animals, may invite a creative reading of kumozaru, but unfortunately they are real animals.

Murakami, on the other hand, knows how to take advantage of mistranslation. He made use of the legendary mistranslation of the Beatles song “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown).” The album Rubber Soul was released in Japan in 1966 and translated the second track as “Noruuei no mori” (ノルウェイの森) — the translator believing that the “wood” meant “forest” opposed to “lumber.” (According to Wikipedia, “‘Norwegian Wood’ refers to the cheap pinewood that often finished the interiors of working class British flats.) Japanese Wikipedia desperately makes the case that either interpretation of “wood” is possible (“This bird has flown…from the forest.”) but ends by noting that the original translator admitted he/she misunderstood the meaning. Murakami himself knew it was mistaken, but utilized the original translation as a metaphor for a dark, encapsulated psychological cavity — one of his pet images.

In the supplementary commentary to the Norwegian Wood volume of his Complete Works 1979–1989, he admitted to knowing about the possibility of another translation but also emphasized that he preferred the mistranslation, calling it true to the original song:

Even reading the original lyrics, I think that the words NORWEGIAN WOOD themselves have tendency to sort of expand naturally. They’re quiet and melancholy and even feel a little high. Of course I know there are several interpretations, but when you change it into Japanese, I feel like『ノルウェイの森』 is closest to the flavor of the original language. I once heard from a Norwegian that in Norwegian, the words “Norwegian Forest” mean something along the lines of that mood. I wonder if Lennon and McCartney knew that? (XII)

Odds are they didn’t, but poetic license acquits this extrapolation of a classic mistranslation.

Thanks to Languagehat for help with the Russian in this piece.

作者:nj@neojaponisme.com

更新日:2008年11月25日 3時0分

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Hosono Haruomi, Takahashi Yukihiro, and Sakamoto Ryuichi’s Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) have been one of the few Japanese bands to receive superstar status both in Japan and abroad. Their self-titled debut offered the world a self-Orientalizing synth paradise, something like a high-tech disco upgrade on Chinese restaurant muzak. By 1980’s X∞Multiplies, however, YMO were creating a unique propulsive techno-rock that augured the bright promises of ’80s culture and set the template for every Konami game soundtrack.

Be warned: the Japanese version of X∞Multiplies is not your standard LP: the songs are broken up with long skits from Japanese alternative comedy legends Snakeman Show. Snakeman Show featured three comedians Masato Eve (伊武雅刀), Katsuya Kobayashi (小林克也), and Moichi Kuwahara (桑原茂一), with Kobayashi being “Snakeman” in a name inspired by famed American DJ Wolfman Jack. They hosted a popular radio show in Osaka, but their appearance on X∞Multiplies would transform them into national comedy heroes. (More English information here.)

Although some of the skits on X∞Multiplies are nominally in English (including the wicked “I love Japan”), the American release of the album wisely banished the comedy, bringing in the musical highlights from YMO’s previous album Solid State Survivor to fill the gaps. Thanks to modern technology, however, the original Japanese version of X∞Multiplies is now available to millions as free illegal download on Rapidshare and Megaupload — oh, and of course, Amazon Japan import. Many non-Japanese YMO fans now have a greater chance to finally hear these “lost” Snakeman Show skits. (Purists, I know you collected these long ago.)

As I listened to X∞Multiplies recently, one skit struck me as particularly illuminating in regards to Japanese attitudes towards popular culture during the 1980s. So I translated the entire transcript of Track 11, simply entitled “Snakeman Show.” The skit involves a mock radio talk show with three young music critics “arguing” about the state of rock music in the 1980s. The argument is between Critic 1 and Critic 2 , with Critic 3 only droning on about YMO and being ignored. A few notes follow.

For reference, an MP3 of the track in question.

(Classical music plays)

Radio Announcer: Good evening, everyone. It’s now time for the program “Young Echo.” Tonight we are joined by young music critics, who will give us their opinion on the topic of discussion: the rock scene of the 1980s. Everyone, welcome to the show.

Critics: (all) Hello. Thank you for having us.

Critic 1: (takes a drag on his cigarette) We’ll start from me. See, for me, I order a lot of records from overseas. So with rock right now — what would you say? — there’s some good stuff but also some bad stuff.

Critic 2: I’m a bit different from you on that. I have a lot of musician friends in New York and L.A. who always send me records. And when I listen to those, there’s some good stuff and also some bad stuff.

Critic 3: I think Y.M.O. is the best —

Critic 1: No, but listen, I have a lot of opportunities to go abroad and see concerts. I just got back from going around London and New York. The thing I felt most when I was there is that there’s some good stuff but also some bad stuff.

Announcer: I see.

Critic 2: I have a different view on this than you! I understand English. I am always being asked to be on shows overseas, but I have to turn them down. The more I listen the more I see that there’s some good stuff and also some bad stuff.

Critic 3: But Y.M.O. —

Critic 1: Wait, no, there’s something strange about what you are saying. It’s not like that. You have to understand that I live my life listening to rock eight hours a day. If you did that, you would understand there’s some good stuff but also some bad stuff.

Critic 2: No, no. This is not about the amount of time spent listening to music. I own 50,000 records. I own 50,000. My LPs are all rock records. You listen to those and you’ll realize there’s some good stuff and also some bad stuff.

Critic 3: But really, Y.M.O. is —

Critic 1: You are totally wrong! If we are talking number of records, I own 80,000. All rock. If you listen to all of those, clearly, there’s some good stuff but also some bad stuff.

Critic 2: I feel a bit different from you on this. I do interviews over international long distance, and we really talk about rock. If you listen to that you’ll know that there’s some good stuff and also some bad stuff.

Critic 3: Can I say something? I absolutely think that Y.M.O. is —

Critic 1: You are so wrong. What you are saying is so off. Can I explain? In order to understand rock, you can’t remove the fashion. Are you listening? I am wearing silver London boots, right? Look. It’s not a big deal. I own ten pairs of London boots. If you think about rock while living this rock lifestyle, you would say that there’s some good stuff but also some bad stuff.

Critic 2: Wait a second there. When foreign artists come over to Japan, I hang out with them. I take them to tempura, shabu shabu. I have to take care of them. And we get a chance to communicate. So with rock, there’s some good stuff and also some bad stuff.

Critic 3: If we are talking about fashion, it’s all about the Mao suit.

Critic 1: Are you crazy? You are contradicting yourself. You are totally contradicting yourself. I host ten radio shows. I am going to host a rock show on UHF soon. Since I live in that kind of world, I can state clearly that I am the first person to really understand rock. So when you say it like that, I think there’s some good stuff but also some bad stuff.

Critic 2: No, no. I see this a bit different than you. I am about to produce a record! What’s more, a New Wave record! If you actually tried to make rock yourself, you would realize that there’s some good stuff and also some bad stuff.

(awkward pause)

Critic 1: (angrily) Listen, buddy! I don’t know anything about New Wave or whatever. But I am here right now as a guy who is trying to figure out whether to take Y.M.O. up on their invitation to play with them at the Budokan. There will be 10,000 people there….

(descends into argument) (more…)

作者:nj@neojaponisme.com

更新日:2008年11月21日 6時0分

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Volume Two in this podcast series devoted to digging up punk and punk-derived music from Japan. This episode hops all over the nation and is a bit more stylistically eclectic in scope than Volume One. Bands from Hokkaido (Tranquilizer), Sendai (G-Spot), and Toyama (Z, Chaos C.H.) are represented, as well as the usual glut of folks from Tokyo and Osaka.

Abraham Cross, Slaver, and Disclose all feature straight-ahead, speedy numbers that are sure to make folks bop along. The standout oddball track is Ghoul’s gem “Jerusalem”, culled from an old Pusmort compilation (Pushead’s old label which did a lot to bring Japanese hardcore and metal fare to U.S. collectors). It features a weird snoozer of a piano concerto which drops into a sludgy HC/metal number, followed up by questionable mega-riffage that brings to mind early D.C. bands like Kingface (not that Kingface was questionable, mind you…). It’s just a weird song– epic for its time.

Best song name probably goes to The Execute for “Inside of Human Outside of Human,” though Chaos C.H.’s “Boycott the Suck History” gives it a run for its money.

In all, Volume Two features 22 tracks and runs for 36 minutes and 27 seconds.

File: m4a
Feed: .rss feed for iTunes etc.

Volume One available here.

Track List:
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作者:nj@neojaponisme.com

更新日:2008年11月20日 1時0分

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After winning the grand prize at the Montreal World Film Festival and the bid to become Japan’s submission to the best foreign film category in the Oscars, Okuribito (『おくりびと』, English title: Departures) is fulfilling the promises of its ad copy to become the best film of the year. A sweeping fish-out-of-water tale depicting the esoteric practices of the Japanese nōkanshi (納棺士) — an undertaker who places bodies into coffins at funeral ceremonies — the film’s warmhearted depiction of death may have appealed strongly to older audiences, who no doubt helped the film’s box-office figures surge past ¥2.7 in sales (as of Nov. 2). But while director Takita Yojiro’s Okuribito may be Shochiku’s nod to the popularity of the nostalgic weepie — previously revived by the Always: Sunset On Third Street franchise — the former can be argued to be an escapist, fantasy picture geared towards disenchanted, young Japanese urbanites. As the effects of the country’s aging population and declining birthrate manifest more sharply in Japan’s rural areas, Okuribito makes a pretty convincing case that young aspirants may want to head for the countryside in search of love, comfort, and even dignity.

Okuribito’s hero, Kobayashi Daigo (Motoki Masahiro), begins as a professional cellist, the kind of passion-over-practicality man-child that epitomizes the post-Bubble generation. His dream is shuttered when his orchestra disintegrates due to financial problems. With no way to continue living in the city, let alone pay off the substantial loan he has foolishly racked up for a cello he cannot afford, Daigo sells his beloved instrument and packs up his post in Tokyo with his wife Mika (Hirosue Ryoko). Yet what awaits them in Daigo’s home city of Sakata, Yamagata Prefecture is far from disillusionment and resentment. Daigo and Mika fall into the loving embrace of the lush Shonai plains, and neighbors welcome the arrival of the young couple, doling out comical idiosyncrasies and words of wisdom like delicate morsels of food. Although Daigo is oblivious to the real destination of the “departures” when he answers a want-ad for a “travel” agency, he ends up finding himself a life-affirming career ushering people to the afterlife.

In the film Daigo and Mika fit the mien of modern-day married couples in their late twenties to early thirties. Mika, introduced as a web designer can work from anywhere, keeps up her job in Yamagata, now punctuated by breaks in her front yard where she breathes in the fresh air wafting from the snow-capped mountains. Daigo, though seemingly bothered by a dream cut short, is emblematic of his generation in that he knows how to temper his ambition so as not to let it distract from his wish to go with the flow of life. The peculiarity of Okuribito is found in the couple’s smooth transition to the countryside — not one complaint about a lack of city-like convenience or stalled Wi-Fi installation. Plenty of films in the past have espoused the regenerative effects of small-town warmth and humility. Western films in the vein of Lonesome Jim, Elizabethtown, or Garden State often include young men defeated by big cities, whose resistance to their hometowns is slowly chiseled away until the day they are rejuvenated enough to head back. Yet Daigo and Mika are unique in their willingness to surrender and to settle. In a scene where Daigo parts with his cello in a store in Tokyo, he admits in a voice-over: “As soon as I sold off my cello, I felt as if a weight had been lifted.”

Okay, Okuribito may be a fantasy, further evidenced by the kind of environment, people, and careers the film showcases as the bounties of rural life. The home that Daigo and Mika inhabit is not an old-fashioned nagaya row house but a jazz café-turned-izakaya owned by his late mother, where choice LP records and exposed wood beams create a stylish atmosphere. During the location scout, director Takita and his crew scavenged the Yamagata prefecture for “things that will eventually pass on,” and the result is a film with strategically placed anachronisms like old bathhouses. When Daigo finds his worn, kids-size cello in the house and starts playing it against the sprawling mountainscape of Yamagata, one becomes convinced that the Joe Hisaishi’s scoring has never sounded better.
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作者:nj@neojaponisme.com

更新日:2008年11月19日 0時30分

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In the early 1930s, the prostitution abolition movement — led by women’s, Christian, and socialist groups — strongly petitioned the Home Ministry to abandon the “license system” that essentially legalized the world’s oldest profession in Japan. After mounting domestic and international pressure to stop condoning the practice, the Home Ministry announced in 1934 an intention to abolish Japan’s system of licensed prostitution.

Prostitution, however, stayed legal in Japan until 1958. What got in the way of bureaucratic action?

The pimps.

Their official lobby — National Federation of the Brothel Trade — sponsored and mobilized a large group of Diet members to fight against any government moves to outlaw licensed prostitution. In his excellent book on “moral suasion” campaigns in early 20th century Japan Molding Japanese Minds, Sheldon Garon recalls the following anecdote related to the pimp-politician pushback (bold mine):

Brothel owners made large contributions to the political parties, and they were not shy about offering free favors to the many politicians who frequented the quarters.

Nor were the friends of the brothels within the Diet shy about defending one of Japan’s “beautiful customs.” Their unabashed support of the license system sharply contrasts with the relucatance of late nineteenth-century French parliamentarians to discuss the question of prostitution openly. When Purity Society (純潔会) members in 1931 introduced a bill in the Lower House that would abolish licensed prostitution, Yamazaki Dennosuke responded with a speech laced with obscenities and graphic language. Since lust was absolute, he argued, to try to repress it would only bring on masturbation, the chief cause of respiratory problems. (105)

Faced with this tripartite argument on the grounds of business, culture, and public health, the government had no choice but to back down, and johns everywhere breathed a collective sigh of relief with their healthy, healthy lungs.

作者:nj@neojaponisme.com

更新日:2008年11月17日 1時15分

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The latest in a series of visual excerpts from the out-of-print book 和英文字レタリング (Japanese and English Lettering) by Tsunetoshi Hurusawa (古沢恒敏), a collection of assorted lettering styles culled from history.

Originally published in 1978, the book is a great study of the types of lettering used by typical “fancy”/ファンシー businesses (many cafes, snacks, cake shops, and assorted post-WWII through pre-1990s service-oriented businesses). A number of the lettering styles within are the blueprints for these types of businesses’ lettering.

和英文字レタリング helps explain much of the Tokyo letterscape of recent history.

作者:nj@neojaponisme.com

更新日:2008年11月13日 5時0分

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In this article, we present a translation of the second installment in a series of blog entries about the recent WaiWai controversy, posted by freelance journalist Sasaki Toshinao in early August at CNET Japan (see Adam Richards’s translation of Part 1). In the August 14th post, Sasaki describes a meeting he had with senior management at the Mainichi Shimbun, goes into more depth about the conflict between pro and anti-regulation factions within the newspaper, and responds to fears about “throwing fuel on the fire” by arguing that Mainichi’s enemies are not a bunch of trolls, but actually real ordinary people.

For those who are interested, I also interviewed Sasaki as part of a separate article at Japan Inc. about the use of streaming video in the June 8th Akihabara massacre. Many of the points he makes in this translation are echoed in comments there.

The articles are translated with permission from the author.

Original Japanese articles available here: Part 1, Part 2

Posted: August 11, 2008 14:38 PM, Author: Toshinao Sasaki

I met and talked with senior management at Mainichi

On July 20th, just before the Mainichi Shimbun published an examination of the sleazy articles, I had an opportunity to meet and talk with senior management of the company. At that meeting, I made the following points:

• Behind the conflict between mass media and the internet lies a generational conflict between, on the one hand, middle-aged and elderly people including the baby boomer generation, and on the other, the youth demographic consisting mainly of thirty-something members of the “Lost Generation” [people who came of age in the economic stagnation of the 1990s]. The conflict began to simmer in 2004 with the emergence of blogs as an arena for criticism and came to the forefront during the 2005 general elections. Contrary to the mass media, who repeatedly criticized former Prime Minister Koizumi, public opinion on the net supported Koizumi. Koizumi’s overwhelming victory brought the net world its first taste of victory, demonstrating that “public opinion on the net was more accurate than the mass media.” After this, however, no situation presented itself to bring this conflict back into the open. This became a sort of irritation, giving rise to the pessimistic view that “public opinion in blogs isn’t having any influence on the real world” and talk of the “limitations of blogs,” stirring up heated debate among blogging circles toward the end of 2007.

• Staff and managing editors working at the Mainichi Shimbun hail from the baby boomer generation, and it is for the generation of baby boomers, as well as older generations, that the traditional mass media was created. This situation has done absolutely nothing in terms of creating a space for discussion that is persuasive to young people. The mainstream media’s repetition of baseless criticisms about the internet, moreover, is seen as little more more than a reflection of the older generation’s sense of crisis over the younger generation.

• It was in the context of this simmering conflict that Mainichi — a mass media company that symbolizes the baby boomer generation — triggered a scandal of almost unimaginable proportions. This is not a simple localized dispute, but rather a war of confrontation between the net and the mass media, and between one generation and another. Mainichi’s sleazy articles were precisely the trigger that started this war.

• Whether in blogs or on 2-Channel, there are two elements regarded most highly in the discussion space of the net: visibility and logic. In other words, there is a demand that the processes by which things are done be properly disclosed, and moreover, that arguments be reasonable and built firmly on logic. While Mainichi’s response to its discovery of the articles may have been acceptable among fellow mass media companies, it proved entirely inadequate as a response to an internet world that today has grown incredibly large. The reason that many people are so irritated is that Mainichi’s stance has revealed nothing behind the company’s formal comments as to what employees are actually thinking, nor anything about how the company is trying to deal with the net.

After I explained these points, they asked me, “Open our thoughts to the net world — how are we supposed to do that?” I answered, “There are a number of ways, but generally speaking what they want is for you to talk, in your own words and based on your true intentions, about this succession of turmoil.” Unfortunately, however, Mainichi has yet to formally issue any such declaration.

Long interview with a manager at Mainichi

At the time, actually, I conducted a long-form interview with a manager at the digital media department of the paper, after gaining Mainichi Shimbun’s approval of the subject matter, with the arrangement that the results would be published in a different medium. In this interview, the manager spoke very frankly and honestly with me about the background of this incident and about how it had been handled internally. However — and this is terribly unfortunate — I am not presently able to release the details of this interview. The subject matter is amazingly fascinating — a manager speaking in his own words about the true internal situation at Mainichi — and it is something that I think absolutely needs to be made public, but ultimately I was never given the green light to release this interview. I will explain the reasons for this later.
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作者:nj@neojaponisme.com

更新日:2008年11月12日 1時0分

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We can divide obsolete Japanese vocabulary into two categories: kogo 古語, “old words,” and shigo 死語, “dead words.” Kogo held respectable careers in pre-modern Japan but retired quietly at some point before the Meiji restoration. Shigo are more recent and violent casualties — many began as conscious neologisms in response to the same accelerating social change that would later render them irrelevant. All shigo once rubbed shoulders with the surviving portion of modern Japanese. Kogo haunt the language with dignity, like ghosts in an ancestral mansion; shigo lie unquiet in shallow graves out back. There is a reason that shigo are also known as haigo 廃語: “abandoned words.”

Naui 「ナウい」was a mayfly of a word, declared dead almost as soon as it was born, reviled as a desperate attempt to squeeze a few more youth dollars out of an already-uncool borrowed English lexeme (”now”). As a word in its own right, nau had already demonstrated a tenacity rivaling Madeline Usher’s, but naui was fated to surpass its progenitor in every respect. It became a lexicographic Cartaphilus ― cursed to wander the sentences of Japanese forever, scorned and reviled but never granted the peace of oblivion. Its unforgivable sin? To once have both been and meant “fashionable.”

According to Takahashi Nobuo’s dictionary of Showa buzzwords (「昭和世相流行語辞典―ことば昭和史 WORD&WORDS」), naui’s story begins in 1972 — the year that nau entered the language as a bona-fide loan word, written in kana and used as a na adjective. This was a logical development, Takahashi notes, from the popularity of English NOW (in Roman characters) used in similar contexts the previous year.

Nau collocates closely with yangu (”young”), as in nau na yangu (”the groovy youth of today”). Nau and nau na yangu even share an entry in the first volume of Kobayashi Nobuhiko’s Contemporary Shigo Notebook (『現代「死語」ノート』). Kobayashi deems nau “a shigo among shigo,” one that is “just plain embarrassing.” He also claims that even back then, it was used “less by actual young people than by adults pandering to them,” and that it died almost immediately.

Naui itself, then, is an -i adjective derived from the same English root. It seems to have turned up at the end of the seventies in what Kobayashi, in the second volume of his Notebook (『現代“死語”ノート〈2〉1977‐1999』), calls a “shigo counteroffensive.” The online Dictionary of Japanese Slang also places the birth of naui in 1979.

Back then, naui wasn’t without competition. For example, imai 「今い」, was a roughly contemporaneous and structurally identical synonym based on the Japanese word for “now” instead of the English one. But naui bested all contenders on sheer charisma. The precise image it invokes of an awkward middle-aged man finger-quote “rapping” with the finger-quote “kids” kept it in the vocabulary of both middle-aged men oblivious to their own awkwardness and all those embarrassed by and for same. (This blog entry traces the survival of naui in literature and the media through the Famicom age and beyond, even expressing doubts as to whether naui deserves its shigo status at all.)

One interesting recent appearance of naui was in the straight-to-convenience-store Cyclopedia of Messed-Up Heisei Words (『図解 平成ぶっこわれコトバ事典』) of 2005. This grave and scholarly work records naui yatsu as an ironic term applied to people who are insufficiently fashionable. In some cases, then, naui has come to mean its own opposite: to be called naui is to be mocked for insufficient, well, now-ness.

If indeed naui is to be deprived even of the right to mean what it means, perhaps the correct metaphor is not Wandering ‘Djective but Struldbrug: “looked on as dead in law” but nightmarishly alive, imprisoned in an increasingly ridiculous and pitiful form and reduced to begging for whatever scraps of favor it can get.

作者:nj@neojaponisme.com

更新日:2008年11月10日 0時30分

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