Japanese Pop Culture

You may have heard the term kawaii screamed out by a group of teenage girls walking down the street or by a pair of mother and daughter shopping at Kiddyland for school supplies. Kawaii is not just a term used by Japanese people to describe tiny, cute things. As explained by Laura Tiffany, who published an article examining the effect of kawaii on Japanese pop culture on MSNB online, the term kawaii has evolved into a concept that permeates almost every aspect of Japanese culture. Adopted by companies in the entertainment, dessert, and gaming industries, the concept of kawaii has helped drawn large numbers of Japanese customers to these businesses. As I have observed in the few months that I have been in Japan, everywhere I go, everything I do, kawaii has been the ultimate idea and tool used to draw the attention of passerby like myself to a company's product. I noticed on one of my trips to Kyoto that even in a historical site like this former capital city, kawaii is used by local shop owners to draw tourist businesses. One of my first encounter with kawaii was during this Kyoto visit. The colorful umbrellas drew my attention and I immediately stopped to admire to delicate looking umbrellas that didn't look like they would be able to withstand the beating of a mediocre rainstorm. But that doesn't matter to Japanese shoppers. The bright colors and unique patterns were part of the kawaii scheme. Cuteness is all that matters.




The insanity of consumers over this idea of owning something cute has played a big part in driving the economy of Japan. I never understood this idea of kawaii when Japanese students studying in America tried to explain it to me. On my recent trip to Kiddyland, I noticed a new sign outside the door with images of kawaii cartoon characters, such as Hello Kitty, beckoning customers to come in and shop their spring products. Of course this sort of advertisement appeals more to the younger generations and their parents who are shopping to prepare for the students' return to school.



Of course, I, too, got lured in by the cute sign and ended up buying a kawaii hand towel and eraser (pictured below).




Here is a link to a website where you can shop for all things kawaii: http://www.shopkawaii.com/.
Click here to be linked to Laura Tiffany's article on Japanese pop culture and the concept of kawaii.

Japanese People

Most of us have probably encountered this problem at one point or another starting with our very first interaction with people of other cultures. We must have met and will continue to meet thousands of people during our existence on this planet, but our perception of these people relies mostly on the well learned system of observation and categorization of people in our brain. Our recognition of a person of different cultural or ethnic background is dependent on physical appearance and the depth of our cultural understanding. To ask someone to describe a group of people from one culture in a couple of sentences is difficult, to request that this description be in pictures and that these few pictures capture the various types of people of one culture is impossible. The backbone work of this week's post is an incorporation of my independent work, i.e. pictures that I shot of local Japanese people of the Osaka area, and images borrowed from the internet community. This post is my attempt to capture some aspects and characteristics of Japanese people.

To classify Japanese people of the Japan today, we do not look just at the way the local people dress, but we have to also examine the activities in which they are engaged. Below, a picture of a local band, consisted of young Japanese males, is one representative of Japanese people. This image more or less describes one of the many popular activities in which Japanese youth like to do during their past times. The second image clues us in on an activity of the middle aged group, consisted of a couple and their family. Family life, while is slowly being replaced by career oriented lifestyles chosen by Japanese women, still plays an important role in Japanese society. Here, a family is partaking in a cultural activity that is part of Japanese culture preservation and history learning. The third image provides a shot of various types of Japanese people mingling together, making up the complete view of Japanese population with which some of us come to associate. The last image is of Japanese women in kimonos. Needless to say, this is the typical image of traditional Japanese females. All these pictures were taken within 1 mile of Kyobashi station.

The presence of the women in kimonos adds to our collection of images of Japanese people. Most foreigners would expect to find women and men in Japanese traditional clothes to be the ultimate representation of Japan, but in fact, Japan, an industrialized nation, is characterized by various types of Japanese people.

There are, however, other, less known, groups of Japanese people who have not been introduced above. The other two groups of Japanese people that foreigners may often not come to associate as Japanese are the Ainu people of Hokkaido Island and the Japanese buraku community.

(This image of an Ainu couple was obtained from the University of Minnesota Duluth's website. http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/troufs/anth1095/Ainu.html)

(This is an image of a homeless person taking a rest in the park. It has been obtained from Black Tokyo's web page at http://www.blacktokyo.com/2009/01/27/japan%E2%80%99s-outcasts-revisited/.)

It is of course impossible to capture the essence of the Japanese people in a couple of shots. On my recent visit to Osakajo Castle on one weekend I've taken some pictures of people in the park near the castle. These snapshots are probably decent representatives of the Japanese population within the Kansai region. Almost every weekend, Japanese people of all ages and interests gather in the park near the castle to see performances or to give them. Japanese youth gather to hang out, put on a free show, or advertise their band to an audience of passerby. Couples also bring their families to Osakajo Castle to visit the historical site and relive a cultural experience. The park is brought alive every weekend by visitors of all ages, ethnicities, and interests.

Here is a link to a recorded report on the Ainu community in Hokkaido. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYEhubSOtcI. The report was made by ABC Australia.
Factual information regarding the Ainu people can be found at
http://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpress.com/2008/03/18/the-jomon-of-japan-13000-bc-to-300-bc/ and http://www.cwis.org/fwj/22/ainusupp.htm.