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AnonymousI watched the Millenium Actress clips at home last night, but without the assistance of Professor McKnight I would never have been able to make the connection to Setsuko Hara and the films of Ozu. I loved Tokyo Story and Late Spring when I first was exposed to them, but it was not until today that I understood the cultural significance of the actress and her roles as "the eternal girl." Very interesting stuff!
AnonymousIn case anyone is interested, here's a review I wrote recently about the Perseverance exhibition of photographs of Japanese tattooing.
http://www.independent.com/news/2014/jun/11/review-perseverance-japanese-american-national/
AnonymousDid the U.S. play a big role in the development of the Japanese Amendments to their constitution in 1947 (limiting their military strength and extending equal rights to women)? As always, a look at context when evaluating the evolution of a constitution and the political pressures that exist at the time are very important to the study of history.
AnonymousI agree with mmartin's connection with The Big Bang Theory, and it's interesting how this idea of being otaku/nerdy is cool in society today.
Kstiles comparison with Comic Con shows how this is "cool" now to be a fan of genres that in the past would seem uncool. Suddenly dressing up and sitting for hours to wait in line to see TV show actors/actresses as well as new cartoon/comic products is the "in" thing to do.
It is not surprising then that our students today find it "cool" to be uncool, and like rylynne's students, I get about 40 students on a daily basis at lunch that watch animes, play Magic/Pokemon cards, and talk about manga. Halloween was a time to cosplay, and many would wear their outfits on Thursday, which was Anime Club day. They do not want to be the stereotype of what is cool in traditional society. They don't want to be in sports or cheer, and I love the fact that they can be proud and do not care of it's high or low culture.
Professor McKnight's lecture sparked some great teaching ideas to incorporate the ideas of Japanese popular culture into my lessons. I plan to use excerpts from Pink Globalization to show that literature, media, and culture are global rather and maybe our literature and studies need to be supplemented in order to see how "America" encompasses more than just what is produced in America.
AnonymousJust fabulous and inspiring on many levels! Astroboy is a treasure that I hope to somehow include in my classroom. The issue of translation as a process, where perhaps the semantics is not the same but can capture the imagination of millions of people in every corner of the globe. I've spent the evening contacting Anime buff in Argentina and Spain--hoping to get a dubbed version of the original Astroboy. In that search, I've read first hand accounts of views from numerous countries and generations, all fascinated with the themes explored by the series. Great art transcends time, culture, and language.
AnonymousThis relates to Kevin's earlier post about violence, as well as Professor McKnight's comment about how the "professional criminal" industry in Japan keeps the "amateur crime" down. I remember seeing some statistics about gun homicides in different countries (usually in the context of the horrific rate of firearm deaths in the U.S.), and Japan always ranked pretty low. Upon further inspection, "pretty low" is putting it mildly: Japan saw 11 gun homicides in 2008, per gunpolicy.org, and plenty of articles laud the mind-blowingly low gun violence rate. On the surface, it sounds like Japan has figured out what the U.S. can't, and certainly the statistics are shocking, but I do wonder what happens on the flip side, that is, what kind of non-gun violence the professional criminals of the yakuza perpetrate - anyone want to help me delve into bizarre crimes?
AnonymousI loved the discussion about manga and anime by Prof. McKnight thi morning. It gave me an idea to have students create a story board using their own manga characters to illustrate historical events that we will cover about Asian culture in the 7th grade curriculum. The students can use manga to illustrate samurai society and what it means to be a samurai.
AnonymousAs we were passing around the text that Professor McKnight brought into class, I found a passage on the censorship that took place after world war two. I am very interested in the constant balance that must be struck between liberty and security in any society that would aspire to be democratic and I think it would be a very interesting notion and starting point for discussion to bring up censorship during the US occupation of Japan. The fact that, even though freedom of speech was written into the post-war constitution of Japan, in reality speech was highly censored including anything critical of the US occupation or even the victorious Allies is shocking to me and probably would be to my students and certainly make them think more critically about their own freedom of speech. When I bring this up in class I plan to slow play my students and only mention that it was clandestine censorship (much of the public did not know it was taking place and no media was allowed to report on the policy or broadcast that any of their media had been altered by government censors i.e. publishing the original copy of a story with "X's" over censored words) and I hope this really gets them worked up and illustrates the importance of a free and vigorous press as well as a critically thinking citizenry to consume information.
AnonymousI found Prof. McKnight's assertion that there didn't seem to be a correlation between violence and crime rates in Japan with the the graphic violence that is depicted in manga and anime to be troubling. The statistics on Japanese crime rates and violent acts may support McKnight's assertion, but I wonder about their accuracy. There is certainly an incentive for the Japanese authorities to suppress or manipulate the data to avoid making Japanese society seem as violent or more violent than those in America or Europe. The groping of women and girls on Japanese subways and buses became so serious that special buses and railway cars were created to only carry female passengers. So while the incidents of groping are now down, little or nothing was done to punish or stop the behavior of the men who committed these acts. Severe restrictions on firearm ownership may be the reason for the lower incidents of gun violence in Japan. While I have not researched this topic extensively, I feel that any society that uses the portrayal or depiction of violent acts, particularly those directed towards other human beings, as a form of entertainment, is unhealthy. Violence is also used for entertainment in America, but we have higher rates of gun violence. This may be due to the freer access to guns in our country. I wonder if incidents of gun violence would increase if the Japanese had access to guns the same way Americans do.
Japan also has a very high suicide rate. While the government officially outlaws the practice, not much seems to be done to prevent it. Unofficially, suicide may function as a "safety valve" for Japanese society, providing those who cannot conform to their society's norms or expectations a way to check themselves out of society. Suicide is also a violent act, but it is not included in crime statistics.
AnonymousI thought it would be a fun to create an assignment in which my students researched examples of pop culture that originated in East Asian countries that gained popularity in America. As part of the research, students would have to find out how their examples were first introduced to American audiences and the factors that contributed to their popularity. They would also have to research the duration of its popularity and the factors that caused its decline in popularity. It would also be interesting for them to do the same type of research, but looking for examples of American or European pop culture that have gained popularity in East Asian countries and any changes that occurred when they were adopted. For example, teens and young adults in East Asian countries like Japan, and more recently, Thailand, have embraced the attire and culture of the Mexican-American cholos. http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2014/03/young-thai-men-emulate-mexican-cholos.html http://fusion.net/culture/story/japanese-cholos-east-la-east-asia-616711 I found it fascinating that a subculture that developed in East Los Angeles would get transplanted to Japan and Thailand, but it is just another example of the global cross-pollination of cultures and customs.
edited by ghom on 7/31/2014
edited by ghom on 7/31/2014
AnonymousIn reflecting on our discussion of Manga and how they convey the cultural traditions and moral guidelines of the Japanese culture, I wonder if as a History class, the students can analyze the cultural traditions of say Ancient Greece and create a Manga storyboard for a title character that reflects these moral guidelines and historical contributions.
AnonymousMMARTIN SAID: When discussing the term "otaku" this morning with Professor McKnight all I could think of was The Big Bang Theory. LOL! That's the connection I made and it gave me a better perspective of how others view these super-fans. In the reading it talks about how otakus are not very well accepted because they are not like the "cool kids." I just think they ARE cool for doing things out of labors of love and not simply for fitting in.
I totally agree! I think, though, that on some level the idea of the "nerd" or the "uncool" or "super fan" is changing. They are no longer alone or isolated, in most cases. Look at Comicon and now the Hello Kitty Con?! Every summer people converge on Downtown LA to participate in some CON. How cool would it be to challenge your students to find the "otaku" of your subject (history, English) and how their love for the subject is expressed. Could you imagine creating an "interview panel" with the "otaku", so that your students play the audience and the expert (or super fan) in that particular field? OK, I'm rambling, but I feel like there's the beginning of an idea in there somewhere. 🙂
AnonymousOne of my thoughts: If I were in Los Angeles at the age of 15 and I witnessed firsthand the firebombing of L.A., and watched it be incinerated to the ground, and not long after, heard the news about the nuclear annihilation of the cities of San Diego and San Francisco, I, too, would age to be an elderly man who'd be unashamed to proudly support the Hello Kitty culture. There is no irony in an elderly man encouraging young girls to find joy and happiness in a kitten--a baby animal--that only expresses a pure and innocent reflection of that joy and happiness when you consider the historical of what those men lived through. Professor McKnight was puzzled at the idea of irony in that. 9/11 was a big wake up call, but it pales in comparison to the destruction wrought on the Japanese. The exceptionalism of America through the lens of a cynical frame reaches for adulterated relationships where there is none. Hello Kitty is the preciousness of life writ large that, say, a father can express to his daughter in ways that maybe words cannot. It's funny, because I was just doing that for my own daughter--she's four-years-old. As I buckled her in in her mother's car for transportation to day care, I would give her a note in which I would color and write a little note--the paper I would use, was cut-outs from a Hello Kitty coloring book that I bought for just that express purpose.
I love how Professor McKnight has re-ignited in me a passion for trying to uncover deeper meanings, symbolisms, motifs, themes in different works. Throughout my life I have been mocked for looking at deeper meanings or symbolism of work. It would be great to analyze anime film with the students or other works to search for hidden creative meanings. But it's not easy pushing up against a fairly substantial wall of anti-intellectualism in our country.
AnonymousSaturday morning- sitting with my brother and sister-in-law visiting from Pennsylvania and my husband, Peace Corp 76-68 (Korea), we discovered that we had viewed a number of the movies that Professor Hwang talked about, not only that but my brother had purchased the laser disc for at least three of the movies! So the class has led to an interesting family discussion. Now we are debating the quality of Chinese films vs. Korean films and the influence upon the African-American communities.
The lectures were so rich, I am glad that they were videotaped, and I hope that we will have access to the videotapes.
Thanks for providing such food for thought.
AnonymousI didn't see anyone mention this yet but I was watching TV, and there is a new Disney game called Tsum Tsum (means "stack stack" in Japanese) that is building popularity here. You can buy the little stuff animals that you can actually stack, and they made all the characters look like Disney characters (Goofy, Minnie, etc). It looks like the newest piece of popular culture coming over the the US.