When US President George W. Bush looks around on his visit to Japan¹, it may look like the same old country it has been since the reconstruction following the second world war. But in many ways it is a country in the midst of the most profound changes since that time.
Most Westerners, at least of the older generations, probably still have a mental image of modern Japan as the mass producer of cheap plastic gadgets made by interchangeable Asian worker bees. And though that was once largely true, and in some quarters still is, they would be overlooking deep sociological and demographic changes that has brought Japan more than ever in line with the Western countries.
One of those changes is that not only has the population growth slowed, it is on the cusp of a decline. This is a development with far-reaching implications, and the sort of thing that can radically change a society. It is also a development Japan shares with most European countries. And as most Western countries have found, a modern industrialised economy, where both parents generally need to participate in the workforce, leads to greater economic independence and by and by to greater equality of the sexes.
As the Chinese have discovered, due to their one child policy, when parents have fewer children they tend to indulge the ones they’ve got all the more. Indeed in China there are grumbles that especially parents with the (still) coveted son are raising a generation of spoiled brat princes. It’s hardly that way in Japan. But it was inevitable that as living standards rose, and was then followed by a decline in the number of children, the young would crave and be granted greater freedom than they had traditionally been afforded.
The paradoxical effect is that in a time when the young are an ever shrinking segment of the population, Japanese youth culture is probably more visible and vibrant than it’s ever been.
Another change that has been underway for some time has to do with how the country makes a living. Japan, being poor in natural resources on the home islands, never had a typical developing country phase of an economy based on resource extraction, no major coal and mineral mining and export or lumber industry to speak of.
No, when forced to open up to the outside world after centuries of medieval isolation, under gunpoint by Commodore Perry and his black ship in 1854, the Japanese, with mind-boggling speed, skipped straight from Feudalism to industrialism. Unequaled social cohesion, discipline and a large and growing workforce enabled the country to leap-frog into the club of major industrial powers by the time of their decisive naval victory over the Russian Empire at Tsushima in 1905.
Rapid and successful industrialisation, the setback of the second world war notwithstanding, has been the narrative thread running through the country’s modern history. That is, it was, until around 1989, when over-investment, competition from other developing nations on the low end of the manufacturing scale, and the first tremors of the aging population, popped the grossly inflated property bubble in Tokyo. It was followed by stubborn deflation, where prices keep falling, so people spend less and save more, preferring to hold on for better bargains tomorrow, which slows down the economy. It was what has been called “The Lost Decade”, which actually has lasted 15 years, and is only now showing signs of drawing to a close.
Other Asian “Tigers”, and lately and most importantly China, have come along, putting the lessons from the Japanese to use, and sporting lower labour costs than the now well salaried Japanese workers, and have been steadily nibbling away at the market for low end manufacturing. Japan largely successful counter-move was to move up market. They were able to leave plastic doodads behind an apply their know-how in mass-production and automation to luxury items, which is almost a contradiction in terms.
But in the new millennium it is increasingly entertainment, fashion and cultural products which are taking up the slack left by outsourced manufacturing. This is of course not a unique situation for a maturing economic power. Examples can be found as far back as the Renaissance city states of northern Italy, like Florence, whose cultural influence was at its peak long after their manufacturing and trade dominance had weakened.
And it is the youngsters who’re in the vanguard of, and driving, this new lifestyle industry, as can be seen in the Tokyo district of Harajuku where the coolest of the cool kids hang out in often unearthly creations, which are then recycled by the growing Japanese fashion industry. Fashion houses and trend setters in the West are jumping on the train.
It isn’t just that Japanese fashion is blooming like cherry blossoms, from singer Gwen Stefani’s Harajuku Lovers T-shirt line to geisha-glam wares inspired by the film Memoirs of a Geisha, which opens in December.
At every turn, Japanese styles are making their way here as Westerners travel to Asia to soak up a fashion culture that is as much about simplicity and plainness (termed wabi-sabi in Japanese) as about nonconformity and the avant-garde.
There is undeniably a Western affinity for everything Japanese — sushi, karaoke, animé, Hello Kitty and Harajuku. Fashion is no exception.
For fall, Italian designer Emanuel Ungaro sent down the runway an unstructured jacket with a kimono-bustle sash that tied around front resembling an haori, a thigh-length coat worn by Japanese women on special occasions. Christian Lacroix incorporated cherry blossoms, often found on kimonos, into his skirt designs, and Imitation of Christ played on the traditional kimono with a minidress designed with wide sleeves and an obi sash belt.
A whole generation of children in other parts of the world has grown up with Pokemon, Japanese video games and the Japanese comics called “Manga”². A visual and narrative language that may seem foreign indeed to their parents is second nature to them. As some of them are now entering, or well into, adulthood, they are becoming a considerable market segment to be catered to even by newspapers.
Charlie Brown, Garfield and other long-time favorite cartoon stars will soon be sharing space in North American newspapers with doe-eyed women in frilly outfits, effeminate long-haired heroes and cute fuzzy animals.
Come January, “manga” comics — one of Japan’s most successful exports — will start appearing in the Sunday funnies section in several major papers in the U.S. and Canada.
The reason? Newspaper editors want to attract more young readers. A study released earlier this year by the Carnegie Corporation put the average age of U.S. newspaper readers at 53 and climbing — hardly a recipe for circulation growth.
“We thought if teens and young kids are reading manga, then why don’t we get something in the paper that teens want to read?” said John Glynn, vice president at Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes comics and columns globally to newspapers. “Newspapers are being seen as their parents’ medium.”
The U.S. newspaper debut is a bit of a landmark for manga _ a product of Japanese pop culture that has never been quite mainstream in the United States, although it’s long been a hit with the younger generation that grew up on Pokemon, Hello Kitty and Japanese animation movies — or “anime” for short.
Strange as it might seem, during the height of the bubble years in the 80s, when Japanese businesses, flush with cash were buying up US landmarks and major companies, and stacks of tomes were being written with dire predictions of the US being eclipsed by Japan a few years hence, the Japanese themselves, at least in the cultural arena, were suffering something of an inferiority complex. Like nouveau riche everywhere they were splurging on name brand Western art and dying to own a piece of Hollywood, and paying silly money for both. Indeed there are those who say the lean years that followed were actually a blessing in disguise for Japanese art, high and low.
At the height of the bubble, the Japanese art world spent its time loudly snapping up overpriced Van Goghs and Monets (which were then quietly sold off during the lost decade). But in the main tower of Roppongi Hills, the Mori art museum provides clues as to how the cultural scene has shifted since then. The museum is showing an anything but traditional exhibition by Hiroshi Sugimoto, which mixes photographs of museum displays with theatre and architecture. “The bursting of the bubble was the best thing that happened to contemporary art in Japan,” says the director, David Elliott, who is English – the first non-Japanese director of an art museum in Japan. “It got rid of a lot of nonsense and arrogance. And it brought in a new generation of artists and a new language that was more critical.
And instead of buying culture, they’re now in the business of selling it. In the end nothing can take the place of a solid manufacturing base in a healthy economy, something the Japanese are not likely to forget, but some Western nations, and in particular The United States, might need to be reminded of. But the content and entertainment industry isn’t too shabby a place to be either. Ask Hollywood.
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² Though the comic books called “manga”, and it’s animated variant “anime”, has deep historical roots in Japanese illustrative art, its modern form was heavily influenced by American comic books brought in after the war. So in a way, like the British Beatles and Rolling Stones did with music, the Japanese are repackaging American pop-culture and selling it back to them.
