Sports in Japan

On 4/15 I went to Koshien stadium in Nishinomiya (close to Kobe) to watch the Hanshin Tigers, Osaka's local baseball team, play the Chunichi Dragons. Despite the fact that the Tigers lost 9-2, which was a pretty big disappointment (although they did beat the Dragons the following day…), the experience was packed with Visual Anthropological richness.
Comparing what I witnessed at the Tigers match with an ordinary baseball game in the states, several differences popped out at me. One was the overwhelming group mentality that seemed to prevail throughout the stadium, even more so than one would find in a professional sports match in the US (hard to imagine right?). It seemed as though everyone, and I mean EVERYONE (including fragile-looking old ladies, babies, and even pets outside of the stadium), were completely decked out from head to toe in Tiger's paraphernalia. The costumes could be quite elaborate, like the man featured in the photograph below (and yes, it is a man...). This unspoken dress code seemed to be very carefully followed by everyone.

Related to this group mentality aspect, something I found to be very interesting was that there was an entire section in the stadium that was filled with a sea of all blue: the Dragons fans .In the US it is not uncommon for fans of the non-home team to show up at games, but I think in general they sit dispersed throughout the crowd: never have I seen an entire group occupying an entire seating section together. It must of taken massive amounts of coordination for something like that to be achieved I think.

Probably the biggest display of group effort and coordination I saw at the match was the tradition of releasing around 50,000 balloons during the 7th inning stretch – it was truly a sight to be seen. I actually did a little test regarding this: I decided to release my balloons a little bit early in order to see if it would have a chain-reaction effect throughout the crowd, but after all the Japanese fans were way too accustomed to this tradition to be fooled: the only people who released there balloons right after me were other foreigners who came in our group of 40 or so (I know, it’s kind of an evil experiment…). In the end, the group dynamic of coordination prevailed.
All in all the experience was truly an amazing one. It demonstrated to me the large interplay between group dynamics/mentality and sports, both of which play a large role in Japanese culture.

Links:

http://hanshintigers.jp/ Hanshin Tiger's official website (in Japanese)

Links to other student's blog posts about the Tigers:

http://impossiblejapan.blogspot.com/2009/04/sports-in-japan.html

http://heicheldoginjapan.blogspot.com/2009/04/ichinisan-strikes-your-out.html

http://whatputstheoinosaka.blogspot.com/2009/04/sports-in-japan.html

http://intheeyewiththekampai-ceh.blogspot.com/2009/04/sports-in-japan.html

http://kaizybar.blogspot.com/2009/04/sport-in-japan.html

http://orangeberri07.blogspot.com/2009/04/murder-of-colonel-sanders.html

Gender in Japan: Homosexuality

For this week's post about gender in Japan, I decided to take a look at homosexuality in Japan. One of my conceptions about Japan is that gender roles are generally conservatively defined, and so therefore being gay in Japan would fall outside of the box, and hence not be easily accepted. To look into this matter, I decided to interview my gay friend Yuki-chan (I find it interesting that he likes people to use the female suffix "-chan" after saying his name, rather than the male "-san" or "-kun" traditionally used) in order to gain an insider's perspective on the issue.

Yuki said that he thinks Japanese people's point of view regarding gay people is very narrow, probably stemming from the fact that Japan is a very isolated country both geographically and culturally, and that there is a considerable amount of discrimination. He said that he has never personally never really been discriminated against in any direct way, however he knows other gay friends who have. However I asked him if his family knew he was gay, and he said no, that no one in his hometown (Eihimeken on Shikoku) knows he is gay, not even his best friends. I asked him why, and he said he just didn't want them to know because he doesn't think they would be able to accept him.
He spent a considerable amount of time talking about how there are no real appropriate words in the Japanese language for gay people - the only word that actually originated in Japan is お釜 (okama, which literally translates as honorable tea pot...weird right?), which carries a considerable amount of negative connotation in its use. Other than お釜, almost all the other words in Japanese for gay like レズ (lesbian) and ゲイ (gay) are foreign loan words, making it almost seem like homosexuality is a result of foreign influence, and that it is not endogenous to Japan, which Yuki thinks contributes to the negative stereotypes perpetrated against gay people in Japan.
Yuki said that the other major negative influence perpetrating negative or false stereotypes against gay people in Japan is from the media. He talked about Razor Ramon Hard Gay, a Japanese comedian and professional wrestler who is heterosexual but plays a flamboyantly homosexual man who exhibits almost every negative stereotype about gay men, who is apparently extremely popular in Japan. Yuki said it is negative stereotypes like this that contribute to the bad reputations attached to homosexuals in Japan.


Yuki intentionally posing in a stereotypical flamboyantly gay pose as a joke, poking fun at the stereotype of all gay people being flamboyant.

If you hadn't seen the above picture first, and you looked at this picture, would you be able to tell that one of these two individuals is gay and the other is not? If you knew one of them was gay, but didn't know which it was, who would you guess? Yuki said that people often look at his appearance and misjudge him to be straight. He said that on more than one occasion a girl has asked him if he was single, and he said sorry I'm actually gay, at which point the girl would say "物体ない,” translating a "wasteful" or "what a waste!", seeming to imply that he is too attractive to be gay. I find this to be pretty interesting.

Links:
"Queer Japan" - Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context. Great website providing a wealth about anything and everything regarding being Gay in japan:
http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue12_contents.html
Razor Ramon Hard Gay's website: http://www.hard-gay.org/
link to an archive of his video clips: http://www.thejapanesearecrazy.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=4&id=14&Itemid=27

Religion in Japan:

Religion in Japan can be said to be characterized by the blending of various elements from various thought, belief, and spiritual systems. For example, the majority of Japanese people "practice" a form of spiritual/religion worship which combines aspects of Buddhism, Shintoism, and local customs. Buddhism and Shintoism are thought of as not being mutually-exclusive, but rather mutually-compatible and beneficial, a trend which started in the Heian period with the emergence of Ryobu Shintoism (両部神道), which is the tradition of blending Buddhist and Shinto practices (from Professor Halawatch’s Japanese History course's lecture notes).

However, this blending of styles isn’t purely limited within the context of the blending of different religious systems. There are also many examples in Japan where a religion incorporates other, often unexpected, aspects. This week I went on a field trip with Professor Kenny’s Shinoism class, and we visited two very interesting Shinto Shrines in Yawatashi, which is about five stops away from Hirakata, right before the Yodo stop on the Keihan line. Visiting these two shrines made me realize just how unconventional religion in Japan can really be sometimes!

A picture taken at the Iwashimizuhachimangu Shinto shrine atop Otokoyama in Yawatashi. Can you read who this memorial is for? Thomas Edison!!! Apparently even Thomas Edison can be honored in the Japanese schema of Shinto rituals.

Can you read this sign? It's the sign for Hikojinja! Do you know what means? Airplane Shrine! Pretty wierd right? Keep reading.

The traditional Shinto-style plaque proudly displays that this is the Airplane Shrine. Even airplanes should have respects paid to them right?

As you can see, there is the tori (gate) in the background of this picture, strategically placed where it should be in the traditional layout of a Shinto shrine. However, note that the tori is actually made out of metal, rather than wood which is traditionally used. Also note the airplane propeller placed right in front of it!
Here we have on the left hand side one of the traditional kami houses which are a traditional characteristic of Shinto shrines, juxtaposed with a large propeller on the right. The traditional and the untraditional placed together in some kind of weird harmony.

Generally, when people think about Shintoism, the images that usually pop into one's mind are those of different animistic gods and nature. Looking at these pictures though obviously prove that Shintoism can be much broader than that. It is a prime example of how religion in Japan evolves in order to keep up with the times.

Websites about the airplane shrine (in Japanese)

http://www.kiis.or.jp/kansaida/yawata/yawata07.html

http://www.rurubu.com/sight/sightdetail.asp?BookID=A3705440

http://homepage1.nifty.com/hon/2/2-023/2-023.html\

http://www.flickr.com/photos/qtvr_master/481098485/ (in English)

http://www.geocities.jp/general_sasaki/hiko-shrine.html )(in English)

Websites about Iwashimizuhachimangu (in Japanese)

http://www.iwashimizu.or.jp/index/toppageh2002.htm

http://www.y-morimoto.com/jinja22/hachiman.html

The Japanese Version

Today's topic is globalization in Japan. For this topic, I have decided to focus on on the Japanese glocalized version of hip-hop, not specifically just the music, but also the lifestyle and culture associated with it. Hip-hop is extremely popular in Japan, with its roots beginning around the early 1990's. This popularity can be seen all around, weather it's people practicing hip-hop dance in front of a window's reflection (which is extremely common, at least here in Hirakata), someone with a New Era baseball hat tilted to the side, or graffiti art on the side of a building. All of these things can be said to be associated with the culture and lifestyle of hip-hop. Something I find extremely interesting about the Japanese version of hip-hop is the fact that real hip-hop originates from the ghettos of America, with hip-hop being an outlet for disenchanted minorities to express their daily life struggles, and yet there is no real ghettos in Japan (Japan is by-and-large a majority middle-class society), and there really is no minorities relatively speaking considering Japan is a 98.5% homogenized society. (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ja.html). What do people rap about in America generally speaking? Generally speaking, selling drugs, guns, and going to jail, (it is a generalization, but if you were to take any random sampling of hip-hop being played on the radio, you would find this to be a very realistic generalization). In Japan, drugs, guns, and rappers going to jail are virtually nonexistent, especially in comparison to the United States. Therefore, in many respects the very roots and foundations of hip-hop have been wiped away, and the entire concept of hip-hop itself has been Japanized in a way that allows it to have its own major popular culture niche. It takes away the ghetto lifestyle that is associated with the American version and replaces it with an emphasis and prioritization of the fashion and dance elements associated with hip-hop.
Fames, Japan's most famous baseball hat store, in Harujuku, Tokyo. As you can see in the picture, the store is necessarily about just selling baseball hats, but also other hats associated with hip-hop. Take for example the Run DMC hat in the lower left hand corner of the advertisement sign. Hats, and in particular New Era 59 brand hats, play an extremely important hip-hop fashion - practically every rapper in America and Japan too wears one at any given time. So, these baseball hats have gained much popularity in Japan, generally not because of enthusiasm for American Baseball (the stores generally don't sell Japanese Baseball team's hats), but rather because of the connection between them and the hip-hop fashion.

A hip-hop store in Hiroshima, called "Hip-Hop Style Be Cool"

A graffiti (or can it really actually even be called graffiti considering it was done on a board for an advertisement?) advertisement for Zero's -Kansai Gaidai's largest club on campus, with about 6-10 subgroups within the main group representing each of the various hip-hop styles of dance (e.g. break dance, house, anime, west coast, etc.) - dance competition during the Culture Festival at Nakamiya campus earlier this year.

As the 2 photos below demonstrate, another element of the American hip-hop scene which Japan has imported is the car scene. Rappers in America love old "gangster" cars like the 60's Impalas featured below.

They had these babies spit shine clean, and even had them rigged up with hydrologics and the whole real deal like you would see in the inner-city of a major city in the United States. It's pretty funny to think about. One the one hand, American cars have virtually no popularity in Japan, with over 90-95% of the Japanese car market being absolutely dominated by the Japanese auto companies, and yet here you have a straight old school American cars right smack dab in the middle of Osaka. I wonder how much these cars cost? Based on my knowledge of cars, considering that this looks to be about a '63-'65 Impala (I forgot to ask him unfortunately), this car goes for about a minimum of $20,000 back in the US. Both of the cars also had fully rigged hydrologic systems in them, which is another minimum of $5000 or so. So that’s simply $25,000, BEFORE even calculating how much money it cost them to import them. I would say that it would probably make the price skyrocket, maybe to the point of even doubling the cost. Either way, the point is these guys paid a butt-load of money for some old school American gangster cars. These owners obviously aren’t some run-of-the-block salary man who randomly decided he wanted an American classic muscle car, it is obvious that these people own these cars because of the influence hip-hop has had on their life. Very interesting to say the least!

Since I have been Japan, I have had at least 15 Japanese people look at me, notice I am wearing an LA hat, and then throw up the Westside hand sign, as demonstrated in the picture above (also notice his 80's Cadillac on spoke rim wheels with hydraulics!!!). I find this extremely interesting, and honestly hilarious, considering,
1) They have most likely never even been to the West Coast of America
2) They probably don't realize the implications of the gesture being associated with the Bloods faction gang in the West Coast of America, and
3) Even if they were to try and Japanize this hand gesture, where is the "West Side" of Japan? Anywhere west of Tokyo? How about the Kansai area? or I guess Kyushu since it's the most west of all the islands if you don't include Okinawa? This just goes to show that it's "cool" to them because they probably saw in a magazine or a music video somewhere, and decided that it was a cool thing to do.

Background Readings:
History of hip-hop dance scene in Japan
https://www.msu.edu/~okumurak/japan/history.html
Globalization and Japanese Creativity: Adaptions of Japanese Language to Rap
http://macsem.org/pantaleonipaper.htm