The Love of Japan Entirely There are We! America loves Britain. We love the tea, we love the accent, but most of all we love their constant disdain for us "Yanks". We like to see each other as allies. While Barbados and India still chafe under the banner of post-colonialism, the original rebelling colony has moved on. We're a country of free-spirits and independent thinkers- we don't hold a grudge against Great Britain, at all. Bollacks, I say. Even cultures have a subconscious. America reveres Great Britain. We have emulated its traditions ever since we managed to spank them off the Continent like an abused child longing for the lash. It continues to this day: The New Yorker reported last week that Britain's famous black cabs may be coming to New York as an upscale alternative to our own, yank-yellow taxis. We revere the British as the last bastion of true culture, and see ourselves as the trashy loudmouth cousins of a more refined, tea- swilling branch of the Familia Anglica. Which brings us to the Akihabara district of Tokyo. Nicknamed "Otaku Town", Akihabara is a maze of neon, internet rooms and shopping malls dedicated to Japan's "geek culture". Fifty-eight years ago, the U.S. dropped two nuclear bombs onto the Land of The Rising Sun, and after a post-war rebuild by the U.S., a new generation of Japanese have become obsessed with all things American. Pepsi in garish neon, game shows with insane propositions, Levi's, Jordache and Catholic schoolgirls have all been Sinofied into brilliant, glossy life. As Americans, we can't but help but looked on in bemused horror. Welcome to the Funhouse of Mirrors known as globalization, where every culture is a reflection of someone else's. Of course, the mirror bounces back. It is unlikely Great Britain will ever find itself in the throes of U.S.-mania, but, almost so improbably that it's inevitable, the 21st Century Empire is finding itself in the thrall of its first great colony. America is going Japan-Crazy!!! In Rockefeller Center, Takashi Murakami's Reversed Double Helix was just one more assault by the superflat artist on the American psyche. His glorious mutated eyeballs have been spotted on everything from gallery walls, Grand Central Station and Louis Vuitton handbags. The "Andy Warhol of Japan" is the hottest artist in America. The two most critically acclaimed films of the Fall season are Lost in Translation, Sophia Coppola's tale about two lost Americans spending a week inside a Tokyo hotel and Kill Bill, Quentin Tarrantino's ode to chop-socky films and the warrior code. In Lost in Translation, this tale of romance, not only introduces America to the cultural mash that is modern Japan, but also introduces them to a storyline that seems to mirror the style of Japan's top novelist (and America lover) Haruki Murakami (no relation to Takashi). The final scene, in particular, seems to echo a motif of Murakami's: A girl running away through a shop market, pursued by her lover. Kill Bill, for all its gore and violence, actually, because of all its gore and violence, it clearly reflects the great tradition of samurai myths. The anti-hero, an American invention, is nowhere in evidence in Tarantino's slick, iconic masterpiece of storytelling. Instead, Uma Thurman's character, known only as The Bride, has more to do with Zen tales of heroism, in which action is all and overthinking is a good way to get your arms lopped off. The latest trend in sportscar driving is "drifting", which involves skidding the car so that it rides side first up or down a hill. The trends origin and home of the first semi-professional league? Japan. There has always been "The Japan kids", Americans obsessed with Japan, but the cultures seem to be spilling into each other- a potent signal that the America of tomorrow has less to do with tea and crumpets and more to do with sake and otaku. From 1786-1793, Thomas and William Daniells traveled extensively through India, then under the direct control of Britain through the East India Company. They brought back to the mother country a huge number of watercolored drawings of the Indian subcontinent, now on view at the Yale Center for British Art. The vast majority of these drawings consisted of two types: beautiful traditional shrines and tombs and images of the newly erected British neoclassical government buildings. How the British must have marveled to see their own graceful architecture amid palm fronds, elephants and rickshaws. How exotic the temples and palaces must have seemed. There is nothing more alluring than seeing ourselves as the exotic; for the master to delude himself into thinking he is the outsider. The result can be fatal, not just to empire's now gone, but also empire's that are just beginning.

posted by Japhy at 10/14/2003 04:07:00 PM || #