Images of Techno(logy) Culture in Japan. Revised version

（http://www.meijigakuin.ac.jp/~ascj/2008/ASCJ_abstracts_2008.pdf)　

Yoshiji AWATANI

　 This presentation argues about the representation of techno(logy) culture in Japan. Especially I will focus on some aspects of image in Japanese pop and media culture.

Technology and Techno Orientalism

　Recent image about Japanese pop culture relates to the "technology". This image like Otaku, Animation, or Akihabara (Akiba kei) arises 1990's after post industrial information society era.

And a part of post war Japanese thought is concerning the technology. David Morley and Kevin Robins argued about Japan as a problem for West and West's Other[1].West has represented Japan as the exotic other and now West fears Japanese technological innovation. Are Japanese West's common enemy? They argue.

Morley and Robins also said that high-technology has become to associate with "Japaneseness". Of course Japaneseness is not merely appointed, and it is built by representation.

　　Morley and Robins referred to Japan as techno-orientalism[2],

“The Japanese are unfeeling aliens; they are cyborgs and replicants”(Space of identity,p.170)

　However, technology exceeds this kind of stereotype to Japan, it infiltrates into the society and cultural expression.

　　 In fact, making to broadband is advanced to the electronic environment of Japan. The aspect of broadband progresses rapidly, saying that "E-Japan strategy" and "U-Japan policy" of the government. This is the strategy of the broadband internet environment.

" e-Japan strategy" , "u-Japan policy", Akihabara Crossfield

　 　Recently high technology is reflected in the policy of Japan. That is "E-Japan strategy" or "U-Japan policy" of the government[3].

E- Japan strategy promoted the spread of high speed and ultra high-speed Internet as IT national strategy.After "E-Japan strategy" the Ministry of Internal　Affair and Communications announced U Japan policy for the ubiquitous net society in July 2004. It realized by the proposal of Taro Aso who was the Minister for the Ministry of Internal Affair and Communications of the second Koizumi Cabinet.

While E-Japan is IT strategy, U-Japan added to "Communication" and it insists on the construction of ICT (information-communication technology). U-Japan discusses and is examined by three directions. "Ubiquitous network maintenance", "Upgrade of ICT profit use" and "the maintenance of safe use environment".

With "E-Japan strategy" or "U-Japan policy" of the government, Japanese Internet environment becomes the broadband system[4].

And other example, Akihabara Crossfield constructs the image of Akihabara (and Japan) as the state of the highest information technology[5]. Akihabara Crossfield is the area that was planned to become the global base of IT, and two buildings called Akihabara Dai Building, Akihabara UDX are built. The concept of this area consists of following four functions; co-operation, gathering space, information network, and office space.

DVD Nippon no genba Akihabara、Eigo de Syabera Night

Space of Keitai(mobile phone)

　　Mobile phone culture in Japan is also accomplishing peculiar development.

We take up the technology and the body in media culture.

There are ipod and Keitai phone as mobile technology for cooperating with Internet. Apple is putting iPhone that attaches the telephone function etc. on the market. In his book “Smart mobs”, Howard Rheingold describes that the young person in Tokyo Shibuya doesn't speak with Keitai but the message is exchanged as it peeping into the screen. Keitai is extension of the body by the technology.

The history of the mobile phone in Japan starts from the service of the mobile car telephone in 1979.It was an original function that it could do conversation while moving. However, some functions of Keitai (like E-mail, Internet connection, and digital camera, etc.) added to the mobile phone have devolved in strange shape by being limited to the form of media from the telephone (For instance, E-mail of Keitai has to be input with only 12 keys that basically relate to the telephone dial). The mobile phone exists exactly as media of the meta level.

How has Keitai evolved from the telephone? Otaruyama Kenichi[6] has mentioned the function added to Keitai in his book.

Terminal single function

Net work service function

Media

Access function

These functions added to Keitai are not it as mobile telephone anymore.

And communications in such Keitai are analyzed by the theory of Canadian media scholar Marshall McLuhan who had considered the problem of media and the technology.

McLuhan, Keitai and technology of mediated body

　　McLuhan told that transforming the human senses by the development of media technology.

According to McLuhan, our body and senses are expanded by media. The sense ratio was fundamentally transformed by converting media. For example, the telephone is extension of the voice and the ear, and the television extended the interaction to the sense of touch.

　 　McLuhan pays attention to the role of "Media". In other words, Media is "a message" of the transformation of sense[7]

McLuhan regards "technology" as media, and the "content" of media is a secondary, negative evaluation.

However, McLuhan's media theory is criticized as so-called "technological determinism". Raymond Williams who was the one of theoretical regencies of British Cultural Studies criticized thought of media of McLuhan in his book titled "Television". The point of the criticism of Williams is to lack the history in McLuhan’s theory, and is interpreting media in functionally and formalism not to consider various social practices. Moreover, if the technology is as a definite factor like McLuhan’s theory, the dynamics of power in media cannot be adequately thinking.

However, when we are thinking about Keitai, the way that takes up media from the technology like McLuhan is useful.

For instance, media of Keitai is able to be said enhancing the body that become harmonious not only the function of the telephone but also functions such as the televisions and typewriters. Keitai invents strange use of the body to input the message of E-mail to push the dial (keyboard) by the thumb.

The technology functions as media that transform the body and the sense in daily life.

We think about Keitai with technology, the communication of Keitai which is technology to extend the body makes the possibility to spread by access to Internet as network and it becomes popular media with the possibility to exceed the digital divide.

Next, we take up relations of representation about the pop culture and the technology.

Media Culture and body

　　When thinking about the relation between the technology and the body, the Jazz in “the machine age” might be famous as an art in the modernism that Theodore Adorno and Le Corbusier also referred to. The relation between the machine and human was not compatible and alienation was closed up in those days. It is remarkable for a movie such as 'Modern Times'. 'Modern Times' is the firm that just treats alienation by man and machines in the 1930’s modernism. Evaluation was divided from those days about the machine age[8]. Adorno( of Frankfurt School sociologist) was negative[9].

Rey Chow was analyzing it about Chaplin. Here, the process of mechanization is made the body of the worker to whom the body is automated, and it called “Automatons”[10].

The machine and the body fuse at the level of the expression in the current pop culture. For example, the physical expression of Perfume(a latest techno pop idol in Japan) seems to imitate the humanoid robot of "Metropolis” and C3PO of "the Star Wars" (Video of “Computer City"). The awkwardness of body movement is like the robot. Or,” Polyrhythm" is expressed the mechanical repetition of techno music at the level of the body when they repeat a word called "polyrhythm" many times (Video of “Polyrhythm"). It might be thought that the situation in which the technology has infiltrated the human body is symbolized as for the body expression like Perfume.

This is also seen in the expression of animation like Neon Genesis Evangelion[11]. For example, a body and a machine seem to synchronize in the scene where Shinji (he is a main character) rides Eve by the opening of the story. And if synchronizing (a synchronized rate) between Shinji and Eva is low, Shinji’s body is damaged and he is screaming. Or the expression that Ayanami Rei to harmonize with Eva is damaged her body to attack from “Shito”(Angel).

DVD　Perfume, Video of “Computer City" “Polyrhythm", Neo Genesis Evangerion

Technology, Battle, and Representation of Tokyo

Representation of the technology appears remarkably in the battle scene of animation. As we know the war is the space to which the latest technology is turned on.

Although the name such as battleships in World War II is used for Eva's characters' name, this is empty signifiers and the point of reference for characters' name is made sign as a simulacra. Therefore, this is not to admire for the war and to be talked as nostalgic.

Recently, the war symbolized in the animation is certainly different from 60’s manga or firms like “Hadashi no Gen”[12]. However, this is not the animations praise the war, and it is similar when Oshii Mamoru talked about the war[13].he never admire for the war. It is necessary to think about the war expression in the animation itself should be another matter (there is the reciprocation)[14].

In Evangelion and the works of Oshii, "Tokyo" appears as field of the battle. In the case of Evangelion, “Tokyo” is "the Third New Tokyo City" organized in Kanagawa; (the second new Tokyo city", Nagano). " The Third New Tokyo city " is a city for battles made in substitution for destroyed Tokyo by war after "the second impact" that is a meteorite fall in the earth. "The Third New Tokyo City" is a fortress where technology was accumulated. For example, in ”Pax Japonica”, Oshii was written a plan to do a fortification of "Tokyo"[15].

"Tokyo", the field of the battle, intersects technology is represented as Japan. And it is a fortress. French Semiologist Roland Barthes[16] once stated that Japan was an empty sign and Tokyo has a center that is an empty. It is disguised as a fortress "Tokyo" is an empty sign that has nothing in a center for Evangelion[17]. Historically, Tokyo is a city that makes it politically from Edo in the Meiji era, but problem is the dynamics that an empty sign called "Tokyo" articulates technology and politics.

Technology and space of play

　　Finally it is a problem of alienation and repetition by the technology (machine).

Adorno criticized repetition of sound and rhythm in Jazz[18]. The rhythm is a symbol of "machine age" and "alienation". However, Walter Benjamin who was a friend of Adorno considered the space in leisure to be able to do it by using the machine in his "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility "[19]. In addition, Benjamin mentioned "Spielraum" that means the space of play. The machine has equilibrium relations with the human being in this space. Benjamin surely delivers Fourier who considered the problem of the machine in "the passage work". The technology of the machine is used for "repetition" by the music, but it does not always work as alienating human being. The Jazz became the one of the elements to articulation of identity of "the Black Power" for dancing at the time of civil rights movement. 　

We can regard the image of human being to synchronize as technology by paying attention to attitude toward technology of Benjamin. He once referred to Mickey Mouse[20], the movie of Mickey Mouse may say to represent "speed" and "the tempo"[21] that assumed technology mediation. This is seen in the performance of Perfume and the expression of animations well as Evangerion and Oshii’s works. Here we may see that synchronize human being and technology. Such image becomes possible if the person takes the "Camera" as play. In other words, by the musical metaphor, it might be important to use technology for rhythm to synchronize the body. Of course, it might be difficult in some cases. However, in "the space of play ", it is likely to be able to think about the possibility of the relation between human and technology.

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[1] Morley and Robins, Space of Identity,Routledge.1995

[2] See also, Toshiya Ueno, “Japanimation and Tecno-Orientalism” http://t0.or.at/ueno/japan.htm

[3] The following descriptions summarized Wikipedia Japan, ”U-Japan”, ”E-Japan”

[4] According to white paper 2007 of Ministry of Internal Affair and Communications, population diffusion of Internet in 2006 was estimated about 68% and the use population are 8754 million people (2.6% increase compared with the between last year).

[5] http://www.akiba-cross.jp/top.php

[6] Otaruyama Kenichi,Keitai Shinka ron, NTT Shuppan.2005

[7] ‘The electric light escapes attention as a communication medium just because it has no “content”’ Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, Routldge&Keganpaul,p.9

[8] To praise technology was also seen in Futurism and the avant-garde.

[9] Adorno, "On popular music" Essays on Music, University of California Press,2002

[10] Rey Chow, Writing Diaspora, Indiana University Press,1993

[11] The story of Neon Genesis Evangelion is that Evangelion as android fights against creatures called “Shito, Angel”. One boy(Ikari Shinji) and two girls(Ayanami Rei and Soryu Asuka Langley) bodies synchronize android technology by riding Eva.

[12] A story is about the Japanese situation after the atom bomb throwing down.

[13] Uneno Toshiya ’Tenkai no media Metal Suits’ Shingenzitu, Oshii Mamoru, Okabe Isaku Sensou no Riaru Enterbrain,2008

[14] Tomino Yoshiyuki et al. Sensou to Heiwa, Tokuma Syoten.2002

[15] Oshii Mamoru, Pax Japonica ; rolling thunder, Enterbrain.2006

[16] Roland Barthes, Empire of Signs, Jonathan Kape,1983

[17] However the story of Eva almost failed in the TV version.

[18] Adolno "On Popular music"

[19] Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility and Other Writings on Media, Belknap Harvard UP,2008

[20] Benjamin said that Mickey Mouse is a figure of a collective dream, and Disney movie and the American grotesquerie movie are to have an effect of the psychotherapy to blow up an unconscious thing.

[21] Benjamin said that firm of Mickey Mouse can rule all of the audience rhythmically.

See Benjamin, GS�U-3,p.962.

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