As a long time fan, back to the days of the Néojaponisme podcast and all that, I'm enjoying the audio reads, I'm in the UK and your letter usually pops in overnight so it's great to listen in as I'm settling down for the day's work, keep it up!
I'm an audio engineer/editor/sound designer too so if you ever need any help with that side of things, hmu.
Nice point about attention economy vs outrage economy. I don’t think the apathy of Japanese young people regarding politics is new, though. I felt it even when I arrived in 1983. I was astonished to learn about the student activism in the 1970s.
Definitely. The ferocity of it threw me for a loop when I first learned about it too. (I touch on it in the manga chapter of Pure Invention.) Activism took a serious nosedive after Asama Incident, but even moreso because the economy was booming. It sure isn't anymore. Makes you wonder if people will get fed up enough to start protesting again at some point.
A lot of Japanese sources tend to miss this, but even worse than the Asama incident was the nationwide gang war between two Trotskyist and one Luxemburgite parties, which terrorized campuses throughout the 70's and the 80's. During that period, students couldn't really become an activist even if they wanted to, because these parties would often lynch non-aligned activists on sight.
Not a good look for the protest movement to be sure. I also get the sense a lot of participants were less interested in destroying the system than in getting a part of it for themselves. (It was really, really hard for a grad to land a job those days; there was a flood of eligible candidates due to the postwar baby boom.)
Great piece! I did a quick squib on this in the last edition of my newsletter, but I'm linking to this article in this week's.
BTW, for the recent Kyoto gubernatorial election, eventual winner Matsui Kouji had paid adverts all over Youtube, he just didn't mention the election directly.
Thank you for this enlightening discussion! It's my first Tokyo gubernatorial elections & I hope to educate myself on the local political climate, even if I can't vote. Jeffrey Hall seems like a good source too.
A Japanese friend expressed his deep concern to me that some election candidates might be backed by and/or have ties to China & Korea, which seems to point towards a potential Cold War with Japan as the stage. He might be exaggerating or purely speculating but have you found any evidence something like that might be going on during these elections?
I haven't heard anything like that, and to be honest, it sounds like nationalistic fear-mongering. For one thing, there are plenty of domestic interests influencing candidates (including the incumbent) in all sorts of unsavory ways. And I'd be more concerned with how much of the vote the blatantly nationalistic and anti-foreign candidates get, rattling sabers over stripping foreign workers of welfare benefits and "making Japan great again."
One of the most interesting things i've read on Substack for months! Glad to have found you Matt. Really keen to pick up your book. Can you elaborate a little on why you got so much heat from a subset of readers on the last chapter? Curious!
The book Pure Invention follows the development of what I call "fantasy-delivery devices," a specific set of products that hit big, transforming the way Westerners saw Japan, and even how all of us lived our lives. It includes made-in-Japan flights of fancy like toys, manga and anime, karaoke, the Walkman, video game systems, Hello Kitty products, virtual pets, and things like that.
Japan is a factory of dreams, but alas, not all dreams are pleasant ones. The last chapter centers on an anonymous internet bulletin board called 2channel, which paved the way for 4chan and all the chaos it ushered into American society. Both are in many ways a confluence of all the fads that came before, and this threw some readers who did not see it coming. They very much did not like seeing the things they loved linked to very unpleasant trends in society. I don't blame them. I didn't see it coming myself, until I really started delving into the research.
But to be clear, my point wasn’t that fads for karaoke or Nintendo games or anime or what have you caused this shift in and of themselves. Rather, it is a testament to how profoundly the web of fantasy-delivery devices together transformed our lifestyles, in ways obvious and not, predictable and completely unpredictable.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I think the term "fantasy-delivery devices" in and of itself is an interesting thing to think about and explore. Picked up the book this morning. Hello from Australia!
As a long time fan, back to the days of the Néojaponisme podcast and all that, I'm enjoying the audio reads, I'm in the UK and your letter usually pops in overnight so it's great to listen in as I'm settling down for the day's work, keep it up!
I'm an audio engineer/editor/sound designer too so if you ever need any help with that side of things, hmu.
Thanks! I am deliberately doing this "quick and dirty" for the moment, but always open to suggestions.
Nice point about attention economy vs outrage economy. I don’t think the apathy of Japanese young people regarding politics is new, though. I felt it even when I arrived in 1983. I was astonished to learn about the student activism in the 1970s.
Definitely. The ferocity of it threw me for a loop when I first learned about it too. (I touch on it in the manga chapter of Pure Invention.) Activism took a serious nosedive after Asama Incident, but even moreso because the economy was booming. It sure isn't anymore. Makes you wonder if people will get fed up enough to start protesting again at some point.
A lot of Japanese sources tend to miss this, but even worse than the Asama incident was the nationwide gang war between two Trotskyist and one Luxemburgite parties, which terrorized campuses throughout the 70's and the 80's. During that period, students couldn't really become an activist even if they wanted to, because these parties would often lynch non-aligned activists on sight.
Not a good look for the protest movement to be sure. I also get the sense a lot of participants were less interested in destroying the system than in getting a part of it for themselves. (It was really, really hard for a grad to land a job those days; there was a flood of eligible candidates due to the postwar baby boom.)
Great piece! I did a quick squib on this in the last edition of my newsletter, but I'm linking to this article in this week's.
BTW, for the recent Kyoto gubernatorial election, eventual winner Matsui Kouji had paid adverts all over Youtube, he just didn't mention the election directly.
Thanks for the link! I wasn't aware of the hijinks in Kyoto but they surprise me not at all.
Thank you for this enlightening discussion! It's my first Tokyo gubernatorial elections & I hope to educate myself on the local political climate, even if I can't vote. Jeffrey Hall seems like a good source too.
A Japanese friend expressed his deep concern to me that some election candidates might be backed by and/or have ties to China & Korea, which seems to point towards a potential Cold War with Japan as the stage. He might be exaggerating or purely speculating but have you found any evidence something like that might be going on during these elections?
I haven't heard anything like that, and to be honest, it sounds like nationalistic fear-mongering. For one thing, there are plenty of domestic interests influencing candidates (including the incumbent) in all sorts of unsavory ways. And I'd be more concerned with how much of the vote the blatantly nationalistic and anti-foreign candidates get, rattling sabers over stripping foreign workers of welfare benefits and "making Japan great again."
That makes sense, thank you for elaborating! Definitely too much of a nationalism trend going on, not only in Japan…
Where “like” means thanks for summarizing all this! Wow.
Wish I could say us pres nominees were trolls. I think in many ways both of them are.
One of the most interesting things i've read on Substack for months! Glad to have found you Matt. Really keen to pick up your book. Can you elaborate a little on why you got so much heat from a subset of readers on the last chapter? Curious!
The book Pure Invention follows the development of what I call "fantasy-delivery devices," a specific set of products that hit big, transforming the way Westerners saw Japan, and even how all of us lived our lives. It includes made-in-Japan flights of fancy like toys, manga and anime, karaoke, the Walkman, video game systems, Hello Kitty products, virtual pets, and things like that.
Japan is a factory of dreams, but alas, not all dreams are pleasant ones. The last chapter centers on an anonymous internet bulletin board called 2channel, which paved the way for 4chan and all the chaos it ushered into American society. Both are in many ways a confluence of all the fads that came before, and this threw some readers who did not see it coming. They very much did not like seeing the things they loved linked to very unpleasant trends in society. I don't blame them. I didn't see it coming myself, until I really started delving into the research.
But to be clear, my point wasn’t that fads for karaoke or Nintendo games or anime or what have you caused this shift in and of themselves. Rather, it is a testament to how profoundly the web of fantasy-delivery devices together transformed our lifestyles, in ways obvious and not, predictable and completely unpredictable.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I think the term "fantasy-delivery devices" in and of itself is an interesting thing to think about and explore. Picked up the book this morning. Hello from Australia!