More than a century ago, the West had little contact with Japan. The fabled Asia, distant and strange to Westerners, was a land of mystical stories, of elixirs of immortality, and lands where gods were found everywhere. It was civilized and pagan, advanced and locked in time. Japan had just begun to open to the West after the golden isolation of the Tokugawa Period, a period of cultural flowering, of geisha and ukiyo-e, of hedonistic kabuki actors and honorable, stoic samurai. Japan rushed headlong into a rapid industrialization that wiped out much of the old ways while early Westerner accounts like those of Lafcadio Hearn and Basil Chamberlain still enthralled Victorians with Japan’s sakura aesthetics. This was a world in reverse, of surnames coming before first names and of honorifics folded together to show respect.
And now, a century and three score later, Japan is humdrum.
What struck the Victorians as exciting and different, such as honorifics and the importance of surnames, is just another normalcy. Much of Japonisme, the Victorian obsession with anything Japanese, Chinese, and Korean which collapsed into “Asian,” came from marketing. Early visitors would write books about their stays and cultures they encountered. Hearn and Chamberlain, among others, grew to love the cultures they encountered. Hearn lamented how the culture he came to love was disappearing into Western-like industrialization as he watched. As Japan and China opened over the 1900s, as the World Wars ravaged the planet, culture flattened. Familiarity and trade worked their magic, shaving off the rough edges of American and Japanese culture had in particular. American and Japanese culture would eventually be packaged and sold throughout the world. With the US, it would be fast food, Hollywood, Microsoft Windows, Google, Disney, and so on. With Japan it would be sushi, anime, manga, J-pop, and video games. Japan’s exports, pushed in part by the government initiative called Cool Japan, would help flatten and familiarize Japanese culture.
One day, I was deep in Amish country, as I call the area of Ohio where the Amish dominate. The Amish, if you aren’t familiar with them, are an insular ethno-religious group. They belong to the Anabaptist branch of Christianity and askew aspects of modern life that they consider damaging to faith and family. They use horse and carriage to travel because cars tend to break families apart with the fast-travel they provide. Electric bicycles are fine because they offer more safety among the English, as they call everyone who isn’t Amish. The Amish divide into various sects with the Old Amish being the poorest and most insular and the Mennonite being the most “English” with the ability to drive cars and have electricity in their homes. Anyway, I was deep in the Old Amish area visiting a thrift store. These thrift stores are great places to find books. Amish, since they can’t have TV or Internet at home, devour books. Another thing to understand about the Amish is their craftiness. Amish women quilt and sew. Amish men work metal and wood. While this is a stereotype, it holds true. In this thrift store, which was far from the tourist trap areas, I came across a surprise: a yukata. Well, the store had it tagged as a kimono, but the fact the Amish would sell kimono, which I would later find in the same store, and yukata (even if it was for quilting fabric truth be told) flabbergasted me. After that find, I started watching for other Japanese things at these Amish-aimed thrift stores. And, indeed, I found a surprising number of Japanese objects. I would find Lafcadio Hearn books, paper fans, tea cups, and other objects related to Japan, if not made in Japan. Cool Japan had even reached into the most rural Amish areas.
Recently, I’ve been sucked into the Persona games. I’m an old JRPG player, all the way back to the 1980s with Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest or Dragon Warrior as it was titled back then. Persona games embrace their Japaneseness, including honorifics, bowing, and other references to Japanese culture. In 2023, the developer of the series, Atlus, announced Persona 5 across its variations had sold over 10 million copies (Reynolds, 2023). Even pieces of Japanese culture which are obscure for Westerners, such as honorifics, have become flattened by entertainment such as Persona. While people may not understand all the nuances of their use, -kun, -san, and so on aren’t exotic. Most of the “normie” Americans I know, those who don’t play much beyond Call of Duty or only remember those “Japan-Disney” cartoon movies, have seen or heard Japanese honorifics. Some understand the gist. A few smile and say something like “I love those Japanese pancake things” (okonomiyaki). And these are rural people and farmers who have never left the area. Cool Japan, for better or worse, has a long reach.
Now for those of us who swim in Japanese media, none of this is all that surprising. But I’m speaking of people who haven’t and do not seek out J-pop, anime, manga, and so on. But now, thanks in part to Netflix, even these people watch anime and Japanese dramas. Chinese culture is even more prominent than Japanese culture. Korean culture is also becoming more a part of the humdrum with Korean food appearing more often in stores like Walmart than Japanese food does. Outside of ramen, anyway. Finding a yukata in a scratch-and-dent Amish store amazed me. Persona 5 was like playing through an anime. And anime itself is now mainstream. When I was still at the library, several 70-year-old men spoke with me about finding Dragon Ball Z “on their Roku.” They were excited to find something they hadn’t seen in decades. “Those Japanese cartoons are a better watch than most of our shows now.” One of the gentlemen told me he even found “that show my grandson likes to watch with the boy ninja who grows up. It’s better than I thought!” Naruto. And “that show about the white-haired dog guy and the weird demon things.” Inuyasha.
Japan’s cultural exports have become an invisible part of many people’s everyday lives. Few Americans haven’t seen at least photos of geisha or of samurai. What was once exotic during the Victorian period is ho-hum. This isn’t a bad thing. As people come to understand each other better, it becomes harder to hate each other. Dislike, sure, but hating someone you know well is more difficult. You see shared similarities. It’s easier to hate a dehumanized abstraction such as “illegal immigrant,” “Jap,” or “towel-head.” So while the flattening of cultures has hurt some of the uniqueness of world cultures, to the detriment of the world’s richness, it has also provided more peace and access to those cultures.
The humdrum of Japanese cultural elements makes it easier to appreciate them compared to the fervor of the Victorian era’s Japonisme. When you can find a yukata in an Amish second-hand store out in the sticks of nowhere, you know Japan has lost its exoticism. When you read about the reaction surrounding Japonisme and Lafcadio’s writings in particular, the excitement and wonder many felt lacks a modern parallel. Japan, Korea, and China are better known today even by those who don’t know much about them, than during the Victorian period. Exoticism has many problems with how it objectifies, misunderstands, and stereotypes, but with it comes excitement, wonder, and curiosity. On the whole, the humdrum of Japan’s exported cultural elements has been good. But remember that cultural exports are not the entirety of the culture. Bollywood is a sliver of Indian culture. Anime is a sliver of Japanese culture. Hollywood doesn’t represent the variety that is American culture. The US and the rest of the world is richer for access to Japan’s folklore, stories, video games, and other cultural exports. The fact honorifics, Shinto, and other unique cultural elements commonly appear in popular video games is a boon for even those who aren’t interested in Japan. They offer new ideas and perspectives and stories. Humdrum is exceptional when you dig into it.
References
Reynolds, Ollie (2023) The Persona 5 Series Has Shifted Over 10 Million Copies Worldwide. Nintendo Life https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/12/the-persona-5-series-has-shifted-over-10-million-copies-worldwide.
