I’ve been watching a lot of Dr Who recently, and I noticed the current writers have a knack for adding cheesy characters you would expect from a 60s or 70s sci-fi show. One of the more prominent ones is the Face of Boe, who is repeatedly called a traveler. So, I decided to chronicle some of his adventures, particularly the last 24 years of his life.
I got scolded for not posting anything so I will do the old stand-by and post a paper I am not completely shamed by (although I do not really remember what I wrote, so maybe that does not mean anything?) This one was based on that lovely woman, Ueno Chizuko. Tell me if you’ve actually heard of her before — some of those articles I used are online and free to read, so I can give you a link or something.
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Ueno Chizuko is an amazing scholar. A prolific writer and feminist, Ueno has explored all sorts of possibilities of “gender studies,” then, by writing from this gendered perspective, helped feminists world wide to expand the field of gender studies. This is a woman who is in every way a modern feminist, and clearly on the cutting edge of gendered thought. Yet, even more fascinating about her is the fact that she from Japan, a country with an almost hidden history of feminism. In fact, if you do not know what to look for in the society it is near impossible to tell there was a feminist movement in Japan.
Studying Ueno would be fascinating solely for the rarity of a living and active Japanese feminist. However, Ueno is much more than some novelty writer – she is a serious scholar, with goals relevant to nearly anyone who reads her works. Ueno is a thinker and writer that accomplishes more than most scholars, she is an active bridge between diverse audiences. What I mean by this is that Ueno manages to, through her writings, provide a common ground for multiple audiences, often audiences in some way opposite each other, to come together and understand the other side’s point of view. Ueno does this for a variety of groups, from the old bushi families and the modern Japanese middle class, to prostitutes, comfort women, and teenaged Japanese girls that practice “compensated dating.” It is this style of writing, and perhaps, this ability of her writing that makes Ueno an important scholar. This importance most powerfully demonstrates itself with the two groups that she manages to bring together in her book “Nationalism and Gender” – Japanese, or more generally East Asian feminist thinkers, and Western feminist thinkers.
This does not mean that Ueno created a bridge between two groups with no prior connections to each other, or even where those connections are not recognized before she writes about them. The example of Japanese and Western feminist thinkers is a great example of this fact because a lot of Japan’s early feminists were openly heavily inspired by Western feminist thinkers. Two great stars of Japanese feminist though in the early 1900s, Hiratsuka Raicho and Noe Ito, have always openly been called the Ellen Key and Emma Goldman of Japan, respectively. This fact is one that Ueno directly brings up and talks about – Ueno talks in detail about the relationship between Raicho and Key (Nationalism and Gender 26-27). Ueno brings up this connection primarily to argue against the commonly perceived notion that Japanese feminism was more than heavily influenced by the West, that it was “imported” rather than developed in Japan (Nationalism and Gender 27). For Ueno, feminism is a direct response to problems particular to those that are or would become feminists – any seeming “imports” from elsewhere are influenced primarily by the thinkers that bring them over, with those problems and their own personal bias and opinions in mind.
The fact that this sort of argument could even exist, where scholars and thinkers feel they can reject the notion of Western and Japanese feminism being separate proves the openness of the preexisting relationship between these two regions and modes of thoughts. The value of Ueno’s writing does not come from the exposition of such a relationship, but in fleshing it out and putting both sides on equal terms with each other. In Ueno’s writings, and specifically Nationalism and Gender, Ueno accomplishes this feat in a few particular ways: making her writings accessible to Japanese thinkers, by making her writings accessible to Western thinkers, and by relating all of her arguments to aspects common to both regions histories, particularly modernism and its various aspects.
The fact that Ueno’s writings are accessible to Japanese thinkers is rather obvious, but nonetheless the methods she employs to accomplish this should not be ignored. There are four primary reasons for this accessibility. First and foremost is the plain fact that the book is written in Japanese. This is perhaps the simplest and most effective way of making a work accessible to Japanese people. The second way is that Ueno’s beliefs that Japanese feminism derives directly in response to Japanese problems. By arguing in this way, Ueno creates a view of Japanese feminism as primarily Japanese – ironically appealing to the nationalism and modernity Ueno is critical of throughout her book. This argument is that while feminism was developing in Japan, Western thinkers that agreed with that feminism were translated, or “imported,” in a censored way that supported and reinforced the ideas of the Japanese feminists at the time. This kind of argument appears to be similar to the Hegelian view of the history of Japan, such as the view developed by Okakura Tenshin, in that it argues for a sort of evolution of feminism in Japan as a mixture of Eastern and Western thinkers, combined and cultivated in Japan. However, it differs in that there is no talk of superiority, as the developments are more or less simple responses to issues at the time.
This facet leads directly into the next reason – Ueno was influenced by Japanese thinkers. In this way, as with the Okakura example, her readers can follow her trains of thought as intellectual dialogues with Japanese thinkers. In this way, even though there are clear Western influences and discussions of Western concepts in her writings, Ueno leaves something for Japanese readers to follow, something already known to them. Ueno puts a lot of effort to make this apparent by listening off various schools of historical thought, specifically dealing with Japanese history, the Discontinuity School, the Continuity School and the Neo-Continuity School, as well as feminist methods of escaping lower status when compared to men, Segregationist and Integrationist, then connects them directly to Japanese thinkers – Oguma Eiji, Yamanouchi Yasushi, Kasai Sakai, Hiratsuka Raicho, and Ichikawa Fusae, respectively (Nationalism and Gender 6-9, 22). The value in explaining all of this is that Ueno makes a rather large list of Japanese thinkers and placed herself amongst them. This gives credence to not only everyone Ueno names, but also herself and the general idea of her concepts. This is evidenced in her consistent critiques of those the Continuity School and the Discontinuity School throughout the book – she clearly associates herself with the Neo-Continuity School, making it easy for the reader to place Ueno at the end of a line of debate over these schools. Thereby, not only do we have a place for Ueno in the debate, but we also see her position as the most contemporary and up-to-date point of that debate, at once giving her credence amongst her peers, and at the same time showing that her view is somewhat better as it is the result of long debate. By grouping all of these people together, the image of a completely Japanese intellectual historical debate and ongoing conversation is formed, which gives further respectability or credence to all that are listed, and allows the Japanese readers to feel a sense of pride in the accomplishment of a total Japanese line of thought throughout history. It is through this sense of pride that the work becomes accessible to the Japanese readers.
This point is directly connected to the third reason for accessibility to the Japanese – the fact that Ueno is fairly unbiased in her logic. Although Ueno is not fully unbiased, and in fact argues the biases of a feminist help combat the underlying biases of national and patriarchal histories, she is also not overly critical of thinker in particular (Nationalism and Gender 123-126). For Ueno, both the narrator of history and the audience of the narrator are about equally important in revealing historical realities, of which there are many (Nationalism and Gender 123-130). Due to this it is hard to discredit entirely any historical evidence, and also leaves room for a mode of analysis which cannot really criticize other thinkers on the empirical evidence of their arguments (that is, if any is used) – as that evidence reflects a different, entirely legitimate reality. This sort of mode of analysis leaves the credibility of those Ueno discusses more or less intact, even if she disagrees with them. In this way, she remains accessible by not alienating any readers with dissenting opinions. Further, in the cases where she does critique various theories or people, she tends to do so by citing a speaker in the line of debate – and then exploring this critique. In this way, Ueno is distanced from this critique, while still being able to make it. A respect is shown to the person being critiqued, as she is not the lone dissenter, and more names are added to the history of the debate Ueno is presenting. The few exceptions of this come when Ueno is speaking directly of her feminist and gender studies theories – particularly, the post-modernity is the aspect Ueno is adding and therefore she adds it herself, using her own voice. This is clearly evidenced throughout “Nationalism and Gender” every time Ueno explains the trap of feminism in terms of Segregationist and Integrationist schools – as Ueno is choosing a path not really explained historically, she needs to do so herself, in a respectful way. Essentially – it is alright that people like Raicho did not have Ueno’s solution, because modernism was not intellectually or historically fully developed. Ueno’s conclusions are therefore based on history and data these previous thinkers simply did not have access to, as it did not yet exist.
Thereby, Ueno’s works remain accessible to the Japanese by appealing to pride on an individualistic and nationalistic level. Connections are made on a national level, through use of language, creation of a national history via means of national problems and thinkers, and an exploitation of the pride all of these points raise. This pride is than kept intact on an individual level as she does not try to attack it by any direct means. That is not to say she does not attack this sense of pride, specifically nationally pride as quite the opposite is true. It is simply that she transports this pride from a national level, which connects the reader and Ueno as Japanese, and into an individualist level. Simply put, by not attacking any of the thinkers personally, Ueno demonstrates a level of respect for these thinkers – after all, they helped form the original model of historical analysis and gender analysis which Ueno is working within.
The connections to Western thinkers may be less obvious, and less plentiful, but no less powerful. There are really two main methods for achieving this sense of accessibility with Western audiences: Ueno’s knowledge of Western thinkers, and Ueno’s post-modern aspects. The first aspect is rather straight-forward and is similar to the idea of using Japanese thinkers. By having knowledge of Western thinkers, and by naming them, even if sporadically, Ueno reminds Western readers that Japanese feminism and modern works did borrow a lot of Western ideas, and that they still both use those ideas, and borrow newer ones (or come up with similar concepts, to stay closer to Ueno’s mode of thought). This certainly appeals to a more general sense of pride of Western readers than the Japanese, and perhaps a weaker call-out to pride, but should not be overlooked.
Conversely, Ueno’s post-modernity is much less easy to understand or explore, but plays a prominent role in being accessible to Western audiences. First of all, it must be understood what I mean when I call Ueno Chizuko a postmodernist, especially since she never uses the term to describe herself. Throughout the book, “Nationalism and Gender,” Ueno makes constant references to both modernism and nationalism – claiming that the nation-state is a creation of modernity. In this same way, Ueno also claims, with no fear of redundancy, that gender and feminism itself are creations of this modernity. When viewed in this manner, modernism can be viewed both as an epoch brought on by a particular manner of thinking, as well as that manner of thinking itself. Explaining in greater detail what exactly that mode of thinking has consistently proven elusive, as it changes from thinker to thinker, but for Ueno it seems rather clearly that modernity is a mode of thought that categorizes people. More particularly, modernism is an attempt to place people into groups and classifications so as interactions can be in someway monitored, analyzed, and thereby controlled and exploited. Now, this is a process that has pretty much always been done, so the exact distinction is rather hazy, but is primarily in relation to the fall of feudalism and therefore the feudal system of distinctions. With this fall, new modes of categorization became necessary to understand society in ways comparable to past ways of understanding society. Whether or not this was successful is not the point, but rather the creation of many more, often overlapping, categorizations of people. These categories are what defines the modern mode of thought within Ueno’s works.
For Ueno, nationalism is the modern construction of grouping people in accordance to the state they live under. It is not only that the people of a nation can be identified from the outside as a member of the state that worries Ueno, but the fact that this identification is internalized by the citizens of that nation. This is most strongly evidenced in two stories that Ueno brings up near the end of her book about the comfort women issue. One is of a man who cries for what “we” did, by which he means the state of Japan and by extension him and all fellow citizens, and of a teacher demanding the Japanese students in a course apologize to a Korean girl, for what “they,” the Japanese, did to “her,” the Korean comfort women - despite the fact that none of those involved in these examples were at all involved in the comfort women issue (Nationalism and Gender 142). These stories are extremely shocking and disturbing to Ueno, as they demonstrate both aspects of the categorization of modern nationality – the crying man representing the internalization of the problem, the teacher representing the external labeling derived from this modern need to categorize. What is meant by post-modernity is any sort of deconstruction and escape of these categories. This takes on a particular mode for Ueno – who wants to see feminism transcend the nation, and therefore any categories of nationalization and citizenship, and also, through the removal of patriarchal and oppressive gender categories, the eventual end of feminism itself. For Ueno, feminist’s very formation based on the oppressive category of gender, formed with a bias in favor of masculinity, causes it to be a flawed philosophy, any sort of equality between these two categories can only be achieved by destruction of the category (Nationalism and Gender).
Yet, Ueno does not only focus on female of victims of modern gender, she also sees men as victims of gendered nationality. This is evidenced in both the earlier stories, but also more clearly in her comparison between human rights violations of rape with military service. For Ueno, any system that forces men into military service, the service of violence and killing and therefore the service of committing crimes in the name of the state, if equally oppressive and criminal (Nationalism and Gender 146).
In these ways we see the first evidence of Ueno’s works as a bridge of thought – as a post-modernist, her thoughts transcend modern categories and by their very nature attempt to appeal to larger and broader groups of people. Her arguments attempt to transcend both of the modern categories for which her book is named – gender and nationality, and therefore appeals to people of all genders, and people of all nationalities.
Modernity is the central point of Ueno’s book, “Nationalism and Gender,” a pillar holding up oppressive systems she wishes to take down. This pillar is the oppressive categories created by modernity, which post-modernity aims to eliminate. This is accessible to Westerners because modernity and post-modernity are important and contemporary issues for the West. In this way, Ueno’s works are cutting edge for Western audiences and therefore relevant to their interests.
Yet, it is also true that modernity has played a huge role in Japan and Japanese history. Much of Meiji and post-Meiji history has included debates over modernization, how it should occur and if it should occur. In this way, modernity is just as important and dynamic an issue in Japan as it is in the West. In this way, the very act of discussing modernity – not even necessarily disagreeing with it, appeals to both the East and the West and makes Ueno accessible to both. Yet these are all just examples based on one of Ueno’s works, there is certainly more to Ueno that makes her so dynamic as an intellectual bridge.
Underlying all of Ueno’s arguments and this methodology which bridges these two specific schools of thought, as well as many others, is the underlying philosophical principals upon which Ueno operates. Of primary importance is the actual viewpoint that Ueno takes in viewing history and the world in general – that of multiple, equally true, realities (Nationalism and Gender 123-127). This kind of thinking provides a very particular set of acceptable actions. Since there are more than reality that are correct, the goal is not to discredit one, but to find all of the realities that are hidden – as it is this hiding of realities that denies victims as victims, that is really oppressive (Nationalism and Gender 128-130). By thinking in this way, once various realities are uncovered, what else is there to do but to bridge the gap between dissenting realities? Since they are all aspects of truth, fully destroying the reality of any side is equally reprehensible.
Therefore, while it is clear from this why Ueno and feminists under her line of thought are so interested in acting as a bridge between ideas and realities, as that is the only possibility, that is not their primary function. In fact, the bridging aspect is secondary to their main concern – the uncovering of viable realities, of realities where victims are so repressed that they cannot even recognize themselves as victims. In “Nationalism and Gender” Ueno focuses on the comfort women – whose realities until the ’90s did not include they were criminals of massive state crime, until their voices were allowed to be heard. What is more, due to conceptions by the modern audience many of these comfort women are not accepted as being victims if they do not fall into particular categories of victim – such as being physically coerced or forced into the career, of being chaste before such abduction, etc – in other words a model victim (Nationalism and Gender 130). In this way, the main problem in uncovering realities is the separation of power. For Ueno, the status quo is powerful and the victim is weak. The powerful is so powerful that the weak cannot even put words to their experience, as there is no audience that could understand the dilemma – the reality of the strong is too wide spread and believed. For this reason, the weak must be supported by an audience capable and willing to listen, so that their realities can be formed. In this way, truth and history is constructed based on experience, but the process is difficult
Yet, this fundamental occupation of uncovering hidden realities is even more general an issue. This impulse is what caused Ueno to pour herself into gender studies, and is what continuously broadens what exactly gender studies entails. It is this interest in the powerful and the weak that causes an unending search to see where other possible victims may lie. For this there are two other prominent examples (that have been translated into English) by Ueno: the (pre-Meiji) history of Japanese women in both community and household living conditions, and in the modern issue of teenage girls that practice “compensated dating,” essentially childhood prostitution.
In the first example, Ueno explores the arrival of the modern, housewife from a historical standpoint. It is rather apparent that the modern Japanese (primarily urban) housewife, at least throughout the 1900s, appeared to have a rather limited role in household life, so Ueno wanted to see how this repressed state came to be. In the terms brought about in “Nationalism and Gender,” what allowed women to be placed in this sort of situation where, where they themselves often did not recognize themselves as victims? Through exploring this question, Ueno discovered both that there were two types of villages, pre-Meiji and that the one that would evolve into the modern situation is derived from the “bushi,” or upper-class samurai families’ households – as naturally it is the lower class that would want to abandon their lower class standing and rise up to upper class standards and structures, not the other way around (Current Anthropology S78-S79). Simply stated, it the housewife used to have control over the entire interior of the village household, but when families moved to the cities that household was reduced – and so was the housewife’s responsibilities and controls (Current Anthropology S79). What is more, the urbanization of the family resulted in a reduction of women’s community life, as they were all separated to their individual households (Current Anthropology S80). In this way, the change took place in such a way that the technical responsibilities and freedoms of the women were not changed, but rather the rules were transplanted into a society in which they were inapplicable. In this way there was not sure way for women to even recognize their oppressed roles, as the roles were not so impressive in their original context. In this way, their victimization is so impressive in that it was so subtle – as the women still had a technical control over the household and the children, what lack can she complain about, exactly?
The example of “compensated dating” is perhaps a more shocking subject, and not only because of its sexual nature. In this article, Ueno extrapolates on why teenage girls are so willing to prostitute themselves, why they are so highly valued in this activity, and what about the buyers causes them to choose these young women. According to Ueno it is the repressive social condition of girls possessing a body which is in-turn possessed by t heir father who demands chastity of the girl (Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 321). The fact that they are banned from using their bodies increases demand for these girls, due the stigma of being taboo (Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 318). Then, on the other side, men in their 30s actively seek these women due to their youth – these are girls that cannot threaten their weak sense of masculinity, and therefore are somewhat safe targets of their sexual aggression or lust (Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 322). Essentially, Ueno argues that these girls use their bodies for sex in order to fight the patriarchal system in which their fathers own their bodies, but in so doing feed back into the system by providing themselves as objects for male sexuality, rather than any sort of self-actualized people (Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 322-323). Rather disturbing, this sort of system sets up young girls as victims of patriarchy and male sexuality in such a way that the only way the girls feel they can escape leads to a continuation of the system. In this way the problem is primarily that the patriarchal system does victimize these girls, and then harasses those girls who try to escape this victimization, rather than the perpetrators. The issue is that of misappropriated concern for a problem, that makes a bad situation even worse.
Yet, despite all of these horrifying problems and technical debate, there is one thing that truly shines about Ueno – one aspect that really makes her so universally acceptable. People are always at the forefront of her mind. It is always about the experiences of victims, about helping them, that causes Ueno to write what she does, and think as she does. It is this general concern for human well-being that makes her so accessible, and gives her words such a powerful voice. Really, it is this power that makes her such an important thinker, that help her transcend the boundaries of her nation.
Works Cited
Ueno, Chizuko. Nationalism and gender. Melbourne, Vic: Trans Pacific, Distributed in the USA by International Specialized Book, 2004. Print.
Ueno, Chizuko. “Self-determination on sexuality? Commercialization of sex among teenage girls in Japan 1.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 4.2 (2003): 317-24.Informaworld. Web. 29 Jan. 2010.
Ueno, Chizuko. “The Position of Japanese Women Reconsidered.” Current Anthropology Supplement: An Anthropological Profile of Japan 28.4 (1987): S75-84.JSTOR. The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Web. 29 Jan. 2010
Taking Seratoninronin’s apt criticisms to heart on my first post in this series, I took a break in order to both catch up on my collegiate studies (still lagging pretty far behind, damn you Japanese I) and to rethink my approach in regard to it. I take his silence in the comments section as a victory; there was nothing so obviously off there as to prompt an attack. So I’m returning to the series.
In the meantime I read a good number of pieces from the John Hanhardt edited reader Video Culture: A Critical Investigation. While the reader is a quite handy and thorough collection of pieces on the topic, from “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” onward. McLuhan is wrongly represented in essay after essay as the herald of some sort of electronic utopia, which makes me wonder how deeply any of the various essayists researched their topics before pontificating. While some good points were made and interesting concepts brought up in each essay, the vast majority tended to fall into Marxist analysis. The further from the source each Marxist critique got, the more the essays started sounding like Rand worshipping objectivist critiques. “This person’s idea doesn’t work because Marx/Rand said so. Utopia will be achieved once class equality/completely unrestricted markets are instated.” It got to the point of being like eating sand, and I imagine several of the writers here would’ve been thoroughly annoying in conversation.
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Another banjo composition for all the legions of fans who delighted at the previous one, “The Great British Petroleum Oil Slick.”
Going over a stack of books from my college library regarding the history of television and communications theory has turned up, one or two very useful books, and a couple books of completely misguided or worthless nonsense. Communication studies, or media theory as its sometimes referred to, is a strange field in that it doesn’t really have any single parent discipline, or any single discipline which it would claim its predominantly a subset of (like psychology, which I would argue is as much related to literary/social criticism as it is to any scientific tradition.) It borrows freely from literary criticism, anthropology, sociology, architectural criticism, and science history (especially Thomas Kuhn) in equal doses. As such, the usefulness of any work done within the field is mostly a measure of the imaginative and perceptive qualities of the writer. I’m going to throw in a quick overview of one of these books with each of these short probes.
Hal Himmelstein’s 1981 survey of television/video criticism On the Small Screen was of limited use-he points out the basic problems of establishing a body of television criticism similar to the current body of literary criticism-television mostly ignores boundaries of careful aesthetic construction, and its voluminous output makes surveying it in its entirety or anything close nearly impossible. Issues of artistic worth are mostly besides the point in television, so a new critical language less based on evaluation of merit and more based on reading into motifs and distribution (the form of the medium as opposed to its content) must be established. Himmelstein goes over all of this in his introduction and then goes over a number of middling critics. McLuhan could and did say what Himmelstein says here in the space of a paragraph. Himmelstein also spends far too much time on the high-low culture debate, something which ceased to be useful with the advent of mass media besides as a way to keep young students from wasting all their time on post-modernist wallowing. This book was of limited use to say the least.
For today’s mass media product, I’m going to look at the front page of the popular news aggregation website Reddit. (more…)
Having finished a particularly fruitful rereading of Marshall McLuhan’s first published work, The Mechanical Bride, I felt compelled to test out some of the ideas he put forward in this work. For those unfamiliar, the book is a compendium of short one or two page essays based on print advertisements and comic strips from the early 1950s. The essays are acidic, caustic commentaries, and reading even one of them would dispell the absurd notion that McLuhan was heralding some electronic utopia; his notion of the “global village” wasn’t one of utopian togetherness but of the rolling back of individual identity and critical thought/sophistication in the era of mass communications. In order to ‘retribalize’ as McLuhan frequently called it, a certain amount of civilization must be rolled back and diminished. In an age of absolute media saturation such as the one in which we are currently entrenched, full sober awareness of the implications and roots of all cultural products we’re confronted with is simply an impossibility, and isn’t especially appealing-the most comfortable position in the retribalized culture is one of a shared and simplified opinions. We go from cliche to archetype. Art vacillates between two extremes; the art of the extremely personal and almost confessional in nature, which gives us a portrait of the artist, and the art of the purposely depersonalized which instead gives an abstract portrait of its intended audience. It is this latter type of art which I hope to explore here.
So in the spirit of Mechanical Bride, I’m going to try to do a critical dissection of a different piece of mass produced culture from recent times each day for the next month, in hopes of eventually coming to some more full understanding of what America consists of.
For my first mass media art object I chose to observe the music video for the song “OMG” by Usher, video directed by Anthony Mandler. (more…)
I did a post earlier about this collaborative fictional story project I have been working on for a long time. To learn more about it, follow this link:
http://procrast-nation.com/?p=129
Anyway, the following is a brief travelers guide to help navigate this monstrosity.