Pop Culture (Dylan)

With the next blog topic including the phrase “become a fan of something,” I guess it was kind of doomed that I would write about science fiction anime.  And of course the logical choice was to pick the anime franchise that was described to me as Japan’s cultural counterpart to Star Trek, Mobile Suit Gundam.

These are a few of the series. No, really, only a few of them.

Mobile Suit Gundam is a massive science fiction anime franchise responsible for creating the “real robot” genre, taking the already-popular trope of giant robots and applying a dose of realism to the concept, moving away from the superhero-style origins of the concept.  The first series, just titled Mobile Suit Gundam, was released in 1979.  Much like the Star Trek original series it’s often compared to, it was a failure in its first run but became a huge hit in syndication, gaining a tremendously successful follow-up in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam eight years later which spawned a massive and ongoing franchise of anime about giant, human-piloted and humanoid robots being used as war machines… and how that’s a bad thing, we swear, stop looking at the cool robot fights.

And once in awhile, you get free stuff, too.

Now, at Beloit College, there’s enough dedicated nerd groups that finding fellow fans of anything nerdy and activities dedicated to them is really quite easy.  At AIU, however, there aren’t any such groups (well, until about a week ago, but it’s very much dominated by international students), and what more informal social gatherings there are amongst students tend not to be the most open to people with low Japanese proficiency, such as myself.  So that made accessing Japanese nerddom something of a challenge, at first, especially since the one class which actually advertised being about this sort of thing not fitting into my schedule.

I can offer what I observed about the Gundam – and more broadly sci-fi anime – fandom in Japan in my first month and a half hear, and then comment on the last couple of weeks, which have been a bit different.

On the surface, there really isn’t much of a difference between the more dedicated aspects of Japanese nerddom and American nerddom.  Japanese nerddom is something that’s pretty visible, but a bit cut off socially, and kind of impenetrable to outsiders, especially with a language barrier.  With the immediate setup video games are the most common outward expression, and while many students here play video games there’s a difference both in choice of games (“casual” party games versus role-playing games and shooters) and in frequency and duration of play.  But if this sounds more like a description of American nerddom five years ago than today, well, that is where things seem to be here, and I get the impression that in very recent years American nerddom has been somewhat more normalized and become much more mainstream than here in Japan.

But I also think that it’s easy to overstate this because there are, as in the U.S. and probably elsewhere, quite a few people who are part of a nerddom somewhere or another who just aren’t as obvious about it.  In the past couple weeks I’ve found that there are a larger number of students who do have nerdier interests but just don’t incorporate this into their primary, outward identity.  However, this remains more common amongst the international students (where it’s proven almost universally true) than the Japanese students (although the language barrier may be influencing this).

The other thing that’s happened in the past couple weeks is that I’ve met and gone on the tours led by the school’s resident nerd professor.  He serves both as something of a welcome committee for international students and as the current incarnation of the nerd gods.  He certainly provides an avenue for encountering more of the material side of Japanese nerddom, if not the personal side.

In the case of the Gundam fandom, the key material are the models and toys produced as tie-ins for the franchise.  Actually, they are both the primary source of income and the primary reason for existing for the franchise.  There’s a large number and great variety in them; ranging from children’s toys to models for dedicated builders.  The one pictured above is one of the antagonist robots (called Mobile Suits), the Hygogg, which is probably my favorite of the villain suits in the franchise, from Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket.  Unlike some other anime fandoms, where cosplay or just t-shirts are popular, these models provide much of the franchise’s material focal point and may be part of why there’s a notable lack of obvious fans for such a successful franchise.

No, really, there's an entire series dedicated to that point.

As a final note, I should explain why I did not use the word “otaku” in this post, even though that is a commonly-used phrase for the anime fandom as a whole.  In Japan, otaku implies an extreme form of nerddom which fits stereotypes of Dungeons and Dragons players in the U.S. as they were 15 years ago, and even has the same connotations of moral panic; it doesn’t seem to quite apply to Japanese nerddom as a whole and since I am still working out the nuances of the term I felt it better to not use it here.

I guess ultimately I’m still cut out of the actual circles of Japanese nerddom, including the Gundam fandom, and so stuck writing about this from an outsider’s perspective.  But we’re two weeks away from a Halloween cosplay parade, we’ll see what comes out of that.

Museums as Re-imagined History? (Dylan)

My usual habit when I travel is to go right for the local museums, so a blog post about one shouldn’t have been terribly difficult.  Except that they’re all in Japanese.

Old family names do not make it easier.

While I’m sure that museums in areas of Japan that see more foreign tourism probably have most things labeled in English, up in the less-travelled northern half of Tohoku, English labeling is understandably minimal.

he one mitigating factor is that some sites in the area do still get some international tourism, and in this area the main one is the village of Kakunodate, and particularly the samurai estate of the Aoyagi family.  The estate has now been transformed into a museum featuring the possessions of the Aoyagi, distributed throughout the grounds.  The organizing principle is simply to keep things where they were kept when they were in use (or so the English labels seem to say).

 

On the other hand, I admt, this does seem a strange room for an amory.

So I’m writing this based off the more limited English-language information and without the ability to comment on what might have been said in Japanese or how that might change the nature of the exhibits and what they’re conveying.

The setup of the museum isn’t really any different from other historical museums I’ve been to.  With the focus on displaying artifacts where they were kept, it maintains the same setup and provides the same information that museums of the same type I’ve visited in the U.S. and U.K. provided.  Actually, in the English, there’s less sharing of folklore than in those other museums, so it might be less interested in regional or national mythos.

Because the Aoyagi family built the estate right around the transfer from the Edo Era to the Meiji Era, the exhibits do feature a sometimes odd mixture of traditional equipment that wouldn’t even be out of place in the latter days of the Sengoku Era and equipment that was clearly introduced in the Meiji Era, including a remarkably large exhibit of phonographs.

The question posed for this blog post was to search for signs of how history is being reimagined in Japan as a part of local, regional, and national identity.  But while maybe there’s something in the Japanese exhibit explanations that I couldn’t pick up on, so far as I can tell, in this museum there was a conscious effort to not do anything of the sort, and while they certainly do take pride in having been home to such a notable family as the Aoyagi, they’re going to maintain the pursuit of historical neutrality (even if that’s futile – another story) and avoid the romanticization of the past that it’s so easy to fall into.  I could dig through everything I saw in the town until I pulled up something, but – if I wasn’t able to immediately pull out anything from this trip, if I have to work to find any evidence of history being reimagined instead of being presented as plainly as possible in the hope that that can be avoided, isn’t that, itself, notable?

In the end, the story the museum was trying to tell was the history of a local and once-notable family.  There was a fair amount of local pride in it, as one would expect.  But the exhibits were still largely treated like museum exhibits, with a handful of people (including myself) trying to read everything and everyone else mostly pursuing a photo op, the museum the sort of local landmark that everyone must visit because it’s there and well-known.  Still, it’s a good museum, and if you can read amore of the kanji than I can, I definitely recommend paying it a visit if you’re in Tohoku.

Mapping My Route (Dylan)

Akita International University’s on a fairly small, compact campus; which isn’t at all unfamiliar to me, being a Beloit College student, but it does mean that I walk almost the exactly same route to each and every one of my classes.  This does provide for getting to know what that part of campus looks like throughout the day pretty well.

To be honest, there isn’t all that much of a notable difference.  Sure, there’s a few mildly interesting trends, but nothing to really follow up with some grand insights.  There are, however, some curiosities which can serve as jumping-off-points for other interesting commentaries on bits of AIU’s culture, so maybe I can get this post a more interesting comments section that I fear it itself will be.

Let’s start with the route I take.  To get to classes, I leave through one of the several front exits of the Komachi building complex (I don’t really have a pattern for which one; even eating in the cafeteria doesn’t change it), walk in front of most or part of the complex and past the Student Hall, and into a sort of courtyard from which every class building can be accessed.

My apologies for my drawing skills

The first half of this route is, in terms of daily trends, thoroughly uninteresting; there’s generally a scattering other students walking to this place or that, nobody really hanging around, and no real shift in this pattern throughout the day.  The couple of times I’ve walked this part at night it’s been different, but only on account of a distinct lack of people.  The last part of the walk, in the area between the classroom buildings, is generally a bit more interesting.  So long as classes are going on, this area’s always more crowded, both in terms of people walking through and with some people actually standing around talking or sitting at picnic tables.  On the other hand, when classes aren’t happening, this area can become remarkably empty, although the nearby library maintains some through traffic.

This being said, I’ve not really spent a lot of time in this area personally.  Although I do think it’s pretty on sunny days, I mostly just walk through it to get where I’m going.  I have only twice stopped and spent time there, both times because I was waiting for someone who needed to run into one building or another to “get something done quick.”  But so far as I can tell, that’s true for everybody; there’s no group or even person who I recognize as “that person who’s always around the courtyard at noon”.  I do prefer to take the outdoor route because it’s nice to spend some time outside (or because I didn’t realize that hallway connected to the classroom buildings), but that hasn’t really managed to translate into spending time in the area.  I guess there isn’t a whole lot to do most of the time, when there’s often places to be, which is unfortunate, because it’s really a nice place.

The courtyard, here mostly empty due to rain.

 There are a few observations about this area that I can offer as conversation starters.  Unfortunately, this area seems to offer a demonstration of the social divide between foreign and domestic students that exists on campus.  Strangely, this divide seems to be more noticeable but less actually distinct than the divide at Beloit College.  If ones looks around at this quasi-courtyard between classroom buildings, it seems as though there’s practically no interaction; it’s hard to spot examples of interaction between domestic and foreign students, and I think that if I was an outsider who just walk around campus every day I’d conclude that interaction must be minimal.  But I can say as a student that I have many Japanese friends, that I, and most of the other foreigners I know, do regularly hang out with domestic students, and that a large number of domestic students spend times with foreigners.  I’m not sure why it so distinctly doesn’t look like it to me, but that’s the gap I am, personally, finding.

I suppose I could've skipped all of this if I'd noticed this hallway sooner. Then again, I wouldn't have had a blog post if I did.

Why Japan? (Dylan)

As I’m setting out for Japan, I’m not really sure that I’m ready to go. In fact, I’m probably not. My Japanese isn't very good, for one thing. But for some reason, and I cannot seem to tell what, I’m not really nervous at all. I suppose some of it’s the prep work that goes into international travel – there really doesn't seem to be time to be nervous when there hardly seems to be time to pack everything. And it isn't like I haven’t tried to prepare in other ways; I've read everything and talked to everyone I could find about the little cultural things I should know, the quirks, small differences, and basic assumptions that can easily trip up even nigh-fluent speakers. I doubt that will actually be enough (or that, at least in the earlier parts of the trip, I’ll remember everything) to avoid a faux pas somewhere, but at least it should indicate that I’m trying, and lay groundwork for getting better with time and experience. 

The other reason I’m not sure I’m ready to go is that I’m not really sure why I’m going to Japan in particular. I mean, I have a small set of stock reasons and answers to give, because not being able to answer is awkward and sometimes an answer is more or less mandatory, but I can’t actually come up with a full answer, even to myself. I just sort of decided to take Japanese in the Center for Language Studies (since they didn't offer German, which was actually the language I was looking to study further at the time) as opposed to Russian (the other language I considered) for vague reasons that were probably connected to my level of exposure to their respective cultures and friends with familial ties to those countries (that latter point also supplies one of my stock answers), and once I’d done so I guess I sort of felt committed, especially when I transferred to Beloit.

This isn’t to imply that I’m doing this purely out of a sense of duty; I love Japan and the Japanese language (even if I’m bad at it and kanji are at times physically painful). But it is true, and so I feel it should be included in a self-reflection essay. It’s not an issue of whether or not I like Japan, it’s that I’m less sure of why I like Japan in particular or why I picked it out from the list of countries I am fascinated by and would love to study in.

     

But, here I go.