Skip to main content

Response Paper: " Mr. Ito's Dance Party" (1987) by James McClain

James McClain’s written article, “Mr. Ito’s Dance Party” (1987) depicts the societal values and changes during the Meiji Restoration of Japan, wherein by opening the piece with a glance of the event that would take place in the Prime Minister’s house– an event associated by Western fascinations, the elites and foreigners who seek to recreate a sort of european renaissance. Going towards the middle of the piece, perspectives are taken into consideration and the argument of the piece finally comes to light– the Japanese identity. McClain pieces out the origin of the drastic westernisation of Japan: from the arrival of the “black ships”, the study of european inventions and western philosophy, to Japan’s decision of borrowing western templates for their own government and industry. It is here, then, that critics of the move for a new cultural awareness became prominent, often than not shaming the way Japanese aristocrats and bureaucrats so desperately try to become like their western counterparts. The piece ends with a recounting of the adaptation of the game “baseball” as a national sports, through which the Japanese played against the local Yokohama American team and surprisingly won against them. This, according to McClain, was a feat that depicted the nation’s victory over the westerners in their own game, thus giving them true equality. The Meiji Restoration period has seen many literature and visual culture representations over the years, of which a few of the more successful pieces would be the Rurouni Kenshin series and pre-modern literatures particularly of Natsume Soseki. There is no doubt that recreating this period in Japan history has a Victorian-like veil that aims to promote bureaucracy, non-samurai, westernisation of the country. From clothes to culture, etiquette and social class, there is a clear difference from the Pre-Meiji era. I personally agree that such changes would not have taken place had there been no change from Japan’s isolation from the rest of the world, but looking further back into the past, the points of drastic changes within the nation is often brought about by foreign ideologies and the need to adapt. In this case, McClain was successful in piecing out the precursors of the fascination for westernisation of the country, and while foreign culture and etiquette may seem a convincing reason, one cannot deny that a primary reason may also be the realisation of an impending war and thus their need to associate with new technologies of the western world in order to stand as equals. In that sense, I think the Japanese consciousness of that time may have yet to advance from the mindset of the Edo period, where natural security determines the social consciousness and national spirit.

(April 16, 2016)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bibliography: " Game Design as Narrative Architecture" (2004) by Henry Jenkins

Jenkins, Henry. 2004. “Game Design as Narrative Architecture.” In First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game , edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan, 118–30. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. In this article, Jenkins examines games less as stories than as spaces ripe with narrative possibility. He list downs the characteristics of games as defined by current Ludology versus Narratology debates such as: (1) not all games tell stories but they do have narrative aspirations, follows genre entertainment and previous narrative experiences; (2) narrative analysis need not be prescriptive; (3) games should not be reduced to the experience of a story; and (4) if games tell stories, they are unlikely to tell them in the same ways that other media tell stories for games as a medium, specifically, is what distinguishes them from other narrative traditions. He also lists down the problems and limitations within the current game study discourses, often pointing out how ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Precis + Critical Response Paper: " The Imaginary" (2006) Chapter 1 part 1 by Claudia Strauss

Reevaluating Scholarships (October 17, 2019) In Claudia Strauss’s article “The Imaginary” (2006), she gives a detailed discussion and analysis of the major scholarships in cultural studies regarding the matter of the Imaginaries, such as the works of Castoriadis, Lacan, Anderson, and Taylor, in order to map out the essential arguments that are more popularly being used/cited in cultural studies research, before she examines how Ivy uses these concepts with regard to the national-imaginaries with the Japanese socio-cultural sphere. In summary, Strauss explains that Castoriadis was concerned with "concepts of cultural abstraction, reification and homogenization, while Lacan used the concept of the imaginary to explain fantasies, and Anderson and Taylor used the concept for explaining cultural models as potentially valuable when used with person-centered ethnographic methods to study real rather than abstract cultural subjects” (323). Despite the summation of the the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Precis: "The Invention of the Martial Arts: Kano Jigoro and Kodokan Judo" (1998) by Inoue Shun

In Inoue Shun’s “The Invention of the Martial Arts: Kano Jigoro and Kodokan Judo” (1998), Inoue explores the modern invention, and subsequent reinvention, of the Japanese martial arts by an examination of Kodokan judo (163). This is done through a detailed discussion of Kano’s decision and active participation of creating the new martial arts such as: conception, process of modernization through scientification of the martial arts, promotions and competitions, institutionalizations and adoptions into various agencies (government institutions, universities, etc.), establishment of the Kodokan Cultural Association (promotion of the basic principles of Kodokan judo as well as serving as a legitimate infrastructure and governing body that actively promotes the new martial arts ideology), its inevitable re-invention post-Kano years by the Dai Nihon Butokukai (leading to an ultranationalistic role), and finally, a return to the sportification of budo post-WW2 in order to escape censorship wh...
Post a Comment
Read more