Thanks for taking a shot at another one of these tired bystander takes on "how to fix Japan". It's become quite common to use the worldwide birth rate issue as a conservative talking point.
If you'd be open to more lighthearted and timely topics, I'd be curious to hear about the history and spread of Christmas (the consumer holiday) in Japan.
Good read and analysis. I have been here more than 20 years. Wrote a book about my foibles and deeply rooted cultural biases and in the process uprooting them and seeing the world and Japan in a very different light.
Anyone who thinks they understand Japan and Japanese people after a visit or even a few years simply does not.
This is wonderful, Matt. Thank you for having one of the few sane takes I've seen on this. When I moved to Japan I was warned early on by a fellow American that we Americans tend to project whatever we want onto the country, and I'm still very grateful to have been told that so directly. I've seen a number of far-right and -left folks over the years apply their cultural blinders to Japan and come away with whatever it was they wanted to come away with.
Agreed, it is definitely not limited to any political leaning! And it has been happening since the first moments after Japan re-opened its ports to the world.
Interesting analysis, Matt. I haven’t been following this news story very intensely and missed the information about the suspect’s visit to Japan. After 42 years in Japan I am used to reading and hearing of distorted takes on Japan. Many you just quickly forget, but I find the screenshot of his ‘explanation’ of what he thinks is wrong with Japan frightening.
Very stimulating, thought-provocative post, Mister Matt Alt! Thankyou for it.
I have but one possible 'quibble'. Are maid cafés really just tourist traps? Then please tell me why, in all my visits to Japan, you think i have never seen one single tourist engaging with a maid café tout? Ever?
Am i to understand then that whoever we say typifies the cafés' clientele, it must be those who somehow make beelines to the cafés bypassing the touts altogether, all of them having sussed out the terrirory in advance?
When I was there, in Akihabara, I poked my head in one and took a bemused look at it, along with all the other silly sex stuff around there, but it all seemed so depressing and cringey to me, I immediately left.
"All the other silly sex stuff" you say? That's what you get for glancing off the surface, prepacked disdain comfortably intact. A different sort of attitude could well take you much further, into a labyrinthine world as ever verticallly stacked, and packed with surprises. Surely you must know by now the comfort zone is for touristical losers? TBH, i'm not seeing that you're much different from Mr Mangione!
Lol it wasn’t disdain, more like sad observation of amusement. I admire many things about Japanese culture, (and was doing so before Mr Mangione was born), but it’s pretty apparent a large swath of people in a place like Tokyo are deeply alienated and lonely, that’s why these industries exist.
I’ll make sure to leer awkwardly next time for a few hours as I get drunk and grope a few people on trains, then I’ll be living more like a local salaryman.
I have yet to see an "awkwardly leering" Japanese person and i've been to Japan seven times, for extended stays. You realize you've just implied what Matt Alt denied, that it is "salarymen" not tourists that comprise café clientele?
But heh, in which really big metropolis in which country are heaps of people NOT alienated and lonely? Can you point to even one?
Indeed, I agree, mega cities are dehumanizing, but Tokyo seemed especially bad in this regards, and Japan as a whole. Yeah actually I can—Mexico City—gigantic city where people are still smiling, laughing, having fun, walking around with their families at night in the squares. I think Japan is overrated and Mexico is underrated.
Sounds like things have changed rapidly in Japan since when I visited way back in 2012, with the over touristification crush; honestly, I heard as much French as English when I was there. There’s a lot more similarity and mutual appreciation between French and Japanese aesthetics than Japanese and Anglo ones.
Like your deft deployment of the semi-colon there! Touristification has indeed reached an appalling level, and we may never be able to see 'Japan itself' again - even tho that is supposedly the very reason people now head there *en masse*. My own ambivalence towards the nation remains at peak strength; solemn truth be told, i go there principally as an act of thanks, for what certain Japanese cultural product has done to alleviate personal alienation from my own natve soil - that being the (ahem) grim little Pacific outpost known as NZ!
So what brings you to Matt Alt's substack, i'm wondering? An abiding, yet to be sated curiosity regards the land of old Zipang?
Because most are located in sub-prime locations that aren't easy to stumble upon, and need touts to guide the marks to them. There was a time, back in the Aughts, when maid cafes first emerged and served a subculture of local otaku, but that hasn't been the case for a long time now.
Just seems weird that you could have a "tourist trap" within a milieu whose operatives as a rule barely speak a non-Japanese word? Haha now i am more curious than ever as to how those places manage to survive, let alone thrive...i mean, those poor lonesome, uniformly ignored tout gals!
Thanks for taking a shot at another one of these tired bystander takes on "how to fix Japan". It's become quite common to use the worldwide birth rate issue as a conservative talking point.
If you'd be open to more lighthearted and timely topics, I'd be curious to hear about the history and spread of Christmas (the consumer holiday) in Japan.
Good read and analysis. I have been here more than 20 years. Wrote a book about my foibles and deeply rooted cultural biases and in the process uprooting them and seeing the world and Japan in a very different light.
Anyone who thinks they understand Japan and Japanese people after a visit or even a few years simply does not.
This is wonderful, Matt. Thank you for having one of the few sane takes I've seen on this. When I moved to Japan I was warned early on by a fellow American that we Americans tend to project whatever we want onto the country, and I'm still very grateful to have been told that so directly. I've seen a number of far-right and -left folks over the years apply their cultural blinders to Japan and come away with whatever it was they wanted to come away with.
Agreed, it is definitely not limited to any political leaning! And it has been happening since the first moments after Japan re-opened its ports to the world.
If ever there was an article that hit a bullseye dead-center it is this one. Thanks for a balanced and informed take.
Solid stuff señor, thanks for putting it together 🙌
Interesting analysis, Matt. I haven’t been following this news story very intensely and missed the information about the suspect’s visit to Japan. After 42 years in Japan I am used to reading and hearing of distorted takes on Japan. Many you just quickly forget, but I find the screenshot of his ‘explanation’ of what he thinks is wrong with Japan frightening.
Very stimulating, thought-provocative post, Mister Matt Alt! Thankyou for it.
I have but one possible 'quibble'. Are maid cafés really just tourist traps? Then please tell me why, in all my visits to Japan, you think i have never seen one single tourist engaging with a maid café tout? Ever?
Am i to understand then that whoever we say typifies the cafés' clientele, it must be those who somehow make beelines to the cafés bypassing the touts altogether, all of them having sussed out the terrirory in advance?
When I was there, in Akihabara, I poked my head in one and took a bemused look at it, along with all the other silly sex stuff around there, but it all seemed so depressing and cringey to me, I immediately left.
"All the other silly sex stuff" you say? That's what you get for glancing off the surface, prepacked disdain comfortably intact. A different sort of attitude could well take you much further, into a labyrinthine world as ever verticallly stacked, and packed with surprises. Surely you must know by now the comfort zone is for touristical losers? TBH, i'm not seeing that you're much different from Mr Mangione!
Lol it wasn’t disdain, more like sad observation of amusement. I admire many things about Japanese culture, (and was doing so before Mr Mangione was born), but it’s pretty apparent a large swath of people in a place like Tokyo are deeply alienated and lonely, that’s why these industries exist.
I’ll make sure to leer awkwardly next time for a few hours as I get drunk and grope a few people on trains, then I’ll be living more like a local salaryman.
I have yet to see an "awkwardly leering" Japanese person and i've been to Japan seven times, for extended stays. You realize you've just implied what Matt Alt denied, that it is "salarymen" not tourists that comprise café clientele?
But heh, in which really big metropolis in which country are heaps of people NOT alienated and lonely? Can you point to even one?
Indeed, I agree, mega cities are dehumanizing, but Tokyo seemed especially bad in this regards, and Japan as a whole. Yeah actually I can—Mexico City—gigantic city where people are still smiling, laughing, having fun, walking around with their families at night in the squares. I think Japan is overrated and Mexico is underrated.
Sounds like things have changed rapidly in Japan since when I visited way back in 2012, with the over touristification crush; honestly, I heard as much French as English when I was there. There’s a lot more similarity and mutual appreciation between French and Japanese aesthetics than Japanese and Anglo ones.
Like your deft deployment of the semi-colon there! Touristification has indeed reached an appalling level, and we may never be able to see 'Japan itself' again - even tho that is supposedly the very reason people now head there *en masse*. My own ambivalence towards the nation remains at peak strength; solemn truth be told, i go there principally as an act of thanks, for what certain Japanese cultural product has done to alleviate personal alienation from my own natve soil - that being the (ahem) grim little Pacific outpost known as NZ!
So what brings you to Matt Alt's substack, i'm wondering? An abiding, yet to be sated curiosity regards the land of old Zipang?
So i guess i'm asking how can these be traps (= for the unwary) if everyone who goes there has no need of trappers (= touts)?
Because most are located in sub-prime locations that aren't easy to stumble upon, and need touts to guide the marks to them. There was a time, back in the Aughts, when maid cafes first emerged and served a subculture of local otaku, but that hasn't been the case for a long time now.
Just seems weird that you could have a "tourist trap" within a milieu whose operatives as a rule barely speak a non-Japanese word? Haha now i am more curious than ever as to how those places manage to survive, let alone thrive...i mean, those poor lonesome, uniformly ignored tout gals!
No idea why, but you've somehow managed to bypass, no elude, the whole thrust of my enquiry there, Matt!
I did NOT ask *why have* touts?