This is a Penn

Happy New Year and other belated stuff

noreply@blogger.com (NayNay) — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 14:13:00 +0000

It's been a while.

I hope to be blogging again this semester, but I had to take a break for the last month or so to attend to school work that was driving me mad.

Today's just a test:

I think most of you will find this completely useless, as you have no need for simultaneously searching multiple Japanese dictionaries and reference sources. But for me, it's part of my ongoing interest in customizing my search experience to make it more relevant and efficient.

（もうすでに新しくもない）新春のお喜びをぬけぬけと申し上げます。
遅くなりまして、申し訳のしようもありません。する気持ちもそもそもありませんし。な～んてね。
本当にスイマセンです。

上記の検索バーで、複数のオンライン辞典・参考資料を同時に調べられます。これからも改良を重ねていきますが、まぁ、とりあえずお試しあれ。

The biodiesel of academia

noreply@blogger.com (NayNay) — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 16:01:00 +0000

Rant alert...

I've written about this a little before, but I'm more and more convinced that cultural studies is the biodiesel of academia.

Biodiesel is, simply put, a wolf in sheep's clothing. Though it purports to be an environmentally friendly, homegrown alternative to Middle East oil, it's nothing more than a plot to burn food to support agribusiness and keep the world starving. The point is not "environmentally friendly," it's "homegrown." America is the world's largest food exporter, and produces so much surplus of food that there needn't be a single starving person on this planet. To decide that we should use that most precious of resources to line the pockets of oversubsidized corporate farming is so offensive it makes me ill just to think of it.

So, what about cultural studies? In the guise of a thoroughgoing left-liberal project to examine power relationships and problematize hegemonies by studying lived culture, cultural studies distracts us from the problems of economic injustice and the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of inherently totalitarian transnationals and other nodes of private power.

Pluralism is about recognition, not redistribution (Nancy Fraser). And even redistribution is not restructuring or revolution—it doesn't necessarily reject out of hand the immanent injustices of capitalism. The reason pluralism (recognition) has advanced in the US over the past several decades is that it is the unimportant debate. Who cares whether we problematize the exclusion of minorities from history, so long as we (or at least most of us) submit to increasing economic injustice, the strengthening of the nanny state, and isolation and control by consumerist technologies? Who cares? Well, clearly not the folks at the top. If they did, we'd be talking about something else.

Cultural studies may be right in many of the things it claims, but it's still got it all wrong. Morons who can't see that removing both class and a polemical political element from discourse on power relations are just capitalist fanboys. The irruption of class into academic discourse got too close to the problems of truly lived cultures (real economic and political conditions), so it's been slowly erased.

Not to say that class is what it's all about. Class is an element of the problem, but certainly not the whole issue at stake. What's at stake is "the fact...that mass culture has won; there is nothing else." (Denning, in Modernity and Mass Culture, 257) Or, more pointedly, that a cultural studies scholar like Denning can offhandedly make that statement and miss its significance entirely in the rest of his article. He fails to see that mass culture itself is the ideology of the ruling class, and does so to our detriment and the rulers' great benefit. Subsuming everyone, including most of the wealthy and powerful, in a system of mass culture modalities that foreclose the imagination of a non-capitalist, non-consumerist society is the goal of contemporary mass culture.

Naturalizing capitalism, naturalizing a dysfunctional political system, naturalizing consumerism, etc. while simultaneously precluding the imagination of anything else.

Penetrating deeper and deeper through technologies of mass production and mass dissemination.

Witness television and advertising for infants, conscious of indoctrination from the day of birth. If they could wire the womb for inculcation, they would.

Cultural studies glorifies oppositional and resitant readings of social texts, but doesn't understand that the problem is the texts themselves. The power is not the message of the text. The power is the text. The production of the text, the proliferation and distribution of the text, and the ability of the text to be replaced endlessly by a litany of other recycled and recyclable texts that all delineate meaningless message. The success of message is no longer in its content, but in its omnipresence. In its form. In its production.

License to Ill

noreply@blogger.com (NayNay) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 01:03:00 +0000

Tomomi's international driver's permit finally arrived in the mail yesterday!
So she's a free woman!

Free to take Noah to and from daycare!
Free to run errands!
Free to shuttle the kids to and from the library!
Free to load them into the car and head to the park!
Free as a bird!

Yay?

永らくお待ち申し上げておりました妻の国際免許たるもの、昨日無事到着した次第。国際免許万歳！誠に喜ばしき出来事じゃ。

早川友美、自由の國にきて早2年。やっと自由なり。

めでたし、めでたし。

どんどはれ。

The Pillage People

noreply@blogger.com (NayNay) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 00:52:00 +0000

Oh, a plundering they went.

Noah reprised his Sunday role as Batman. Minami debuted her bumblebee costume. Much fun was had by all.

They both walked until they were exhausted, but Noah is still having a little trouble settling in for the night. The excitement and sugar rush (small though it is, mind you) are taking their toll, I guess.

The camera batteries died, so it'll be at least tomorrow before I can have any pictures up, but I promise to do so before the weekend.

ハロウィーン。ノアはバットマン、ミナミは蜜蜂。すごい可愛かった。

まぁ、いっぱいもらったんだね、チョコやらアメやらなにやら。

2人ともけっこう歩いたせいで、帰ってきたらぐったりでした。とはいえ、ノアはやはり落ち着くまでちょっと時間かかったけど。

写真は、カメラの電池を充電したらアルバムにアップします。

Halloween in Glenside

noreply@blogger.com (NayNay) — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:01:00 +0000

Sunday was the neighborhood association Halloween party, complete with lots of sugar and a hayride. Mom and Emily came up from Lancaster, and we all enjoyed the party a great deal. Noah and Minami were adorable (pictures to come this week, I promise) and really enjoyed the whole experience. I was a little surprised that they were content to march in the costume parade, but I guess I shouldn't have been.

It was great to spend time with Emily, who we don't see a lot of even when we're in Lancaster.

And speaking of which, we'll be headed to LanCo to see Mom's new place next weekend. Looking forward to that a great deal. Mom seems very happy with the house, and it'll be great for the kids to have their own place in Lancaster so we don't have to be telling them, "Don't touch that!" and "Careful!" every ten seconds. It should make the whole experience much more pleasant for everyone, but especially for Noah and Tomomi.

Now that Tomomi has her permit, she's been practicing driving whenever we go somewhere. After an initial day or two of getting used to driving on the right side of the road, things are looking up. Granted, she's not ready for a cross-country trip, but since her international license should arrive today she'll soon be able to take Noah to and from school. This will make life a lot easier for everyone: I won't have to be tied to Noah's school schedule, Noah will get into a routine at daycare, and Tomomi will have a great deal more independence. Next we'll see about getting Minami in—not optimistic since they really only do 2+ days a week, but maybe they'll make an exception.

So, all in all things are looking up.

That said, we'll probably be marooned in Glenside for the remainder of the school year. Originally, Tomomi was planning to go to Japan in December or January, and I was going to find an apartment in University City during that time. But now she's really looking to go in April or May, so it'll be too hard to move around and unsettle the kids in January then again in spring. I'm not happy about that because of the continued long commute, but it really is the best choice for everyone else, so I'm going to bite the bullet and try to make the best of it.

Well, I have to go print out my paper on the role of the gods in the Tale of the Heike, aptly (I think) entitled, The Gods Must be Crazy."

I love academia...

Marginal canons (again...)

noreply@blogger.com (NayNay) — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:04:00 +0000

Brainstorming alert! I don't know why I haven't thought to place this caveat in any of my previous rambling posts, but maybe it's because I feel particularly unsure of what I'm driving at here. In any case, this is just a lot of spewage trying to make itself into a paper topic for cultural studies, so be forewarned.

-----

The Japanese radio program "Life" is creating a canon of books for the "cultural" intellectual. I'm getting interested in examining the audience-participative process of canonizing post-War Japanese cultural studies and related social sciences in which the program engages. As an unsponsored show, their main funding appears to come from the Amazon.com advertisements on the site and the book fairs they hold at some of Tokyo's "most storied/prestigious" bookstores (their words, not mine, though it was this desperation for legitimacy that was my eureka moment). More than just a way to pay the bills, creating a textual canon is a process of self-legitimization for 30s-50s (post-War) intellectuals who understand themselves as marginal and somehow adrift in a hard science and technology-driven world that devalues their insights and intellectual pursuits.

I see a potential (or is it inherent?) conflict in this canonization process. Defining a normative canon of texts and knowledge is an authority-forming activity that runs against their professed marginality. Do they seek to remain marginal even with a canon? Or is this a way of legitimizing themselves out of marginality? I guess I'm wondering if a "marginal canon" possible? And if so, what is the point? How does having a canon affect the mainstream?

And what of the audience participating in this project? They are involved in the virtual space of the show by reading the same texts as these on-air heroes, listening to the same music (that's another big part of the show), emailing and being read in the radio debates, listening not just to the live show but also the podcast, and catching the streaming online video. The multiple layers of and opportunities for cyber-intimacy and virtual community are no doubt the result of both conscious and unconscious decisions by the show's staff.

Life is hosted by Suzuki Kensuke, a 31-yo social scientist and former hikikomori. (Explanations of varying value here, here, and here.) Just this makes him a marginal figure, but liminality and marginality are all about power. The further from the center, the greater the leverage per unit.
"Charlie," as he is known on the show, is the "disciple" of Japanese social scientist Miyadai Shinji. More on him later. Anyway, Suzuki's use of "disciple" as opposed to "student" (which he was) to describe his position in relation to Miyadai suggests a return to more traditional master-disciple values—another strategy of legitimation?

The show invites us to view it from the inside out. A good example is the producer, Mr. Hasegawa. Though he is referred to as the kuromaku, he is eminently visible in many ways. Kuromaku was originally a theater term literally meaning "black curtain" but referring to the on-stage performers' assistants and stagehands who wear all black and hide their faces behind a black cloth mask. Though plainly visible on stage, we are to ignore/un-view them so long as their faces are covered. The term has been extended to mean someone pulling the strings from behind the scenes, and it is in this sense that Life describes its producer as such. The paradox here is how visible he is: there is no black curtain anywhere. Often, the whole show (podcasts only—clarification later)is just Hasegawa and Charlie talking about upcoming broadcasts and events. He is often called on during the show, and is never masked.

Streaming video is another good example because we really get to see the sausage being made. Audience emails are another strategy allowing us into the fold and allowing us to influence the content of the show. Though not on equal footing, we are participating in a more meaningful way than Youtube comments—perhaps more analogous to the videos themselves...?

In any case, my point is that creating a sense of physical (visual) connection to the space of the show is an important community-building strategy.

More later. If you (I?) can take it.

Maringal canons

noreply@blogger.com (NayNay) — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:02:00 +0000

Having your own canon is a sign of legitimacy, I suppose. How much more so for the marginalized?

Canonization is often the process of appropriating marginal and liminal power loci, objects, and texts. But if you're marginal, what can you do to create your own canon? And can you be said to be marginal if you have a canon? Do you become a micro-mass, or a subculture? If, as Hebdige argues, style can be a defining metaphor and tool for subculture, how much more so a canon of texts?

And what about the processes chosen to create the canon itself? I'm thinking about participatory, communal "Web 2.0" canonization and what it means. I'll have to come back to this when I'm lucid, which I'm clearly not now...

Death and Alterity (the "Other")

noreply@blogger.com (NayNay) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 23:19:00 +0000

Heuristically, is it helpful to posit the following two ways of thinking about death?

(1) Death as part of the life cycle
(2) Death as the ultimate experience of the Other

(1) If we attempt to see death as part of the life cycle, what happens? It doesn't necessarily indicate any greater acceptance of death, does it? Accepting death as "natural" need not entail any more acceptance of death except insofar as we "accept" other natural disasters like earthquakes and, for the ancients, eclipses. In other words, the acceptance of death as fact doesn't logically (or historically) necessitate acceptance of death as just another phase to be equated with any other stage of the life cycle. Moreover, the power of earthquakes, floods, and eclipses to frighten, mystify, destroy, and even empower (the elites) is not unequivocally diminished by an understanding of them as natural. Earthquakes are scary and destructive whether they are the work of gods or plates. Death is, too.

Is death more frightening as part of nature? If it were something supernatural, there might be a way out—an elixir, a trick to bamboozle the gods with, or a misty island on a distant shore.

(2) Seeing death as Alterity per se does what? There is a more immediate and irrevocable—or at least unavoidable—sense of self-loss implied in this conception, I would argue. The subsumption of the Self into the Other is a horrifying and abject proposition. Grant for a moment that Buddhism is essentially right to equate attachment with suffering, and then consider what you are most attached to... Chances are, it's you. And chances are that the loss of that most-attached-you would lead to the greatest suffering. So if death is seen as the loss of the Me in the Other, well, it's certainly not uplifting.

So what happens when you have the Death=Other paradigm dominant, and you start personifying death? What about the Death=Stage model?

Or what if—brainstorm—the two models are vying for intellectual and emotional hegemony? Then what does the personification of death mean?

I think that even if my models are all messed up (a proposition more likely true than not, since it's all just logorrhea anyway...) the personification of death is about a certain closeness. I mean by this both physical proximity and a reduction of emotional distance. If Death walks amongst us, we are physically close to it. The marginal, liminal, and polluted associations that death brings with it are invading our realm. This is different than having a separate Hell—it is the encroachment of Hellishness and infernality into the banal world of our everyday. How can we allow this? Well, I'm thinking that it's probably because we've already recognized (subconsciously) a reduced psycho-emotional barrier or distance. Could this be a result of a sense that society is dying? Are there other possibilities?

How do our fears of (and implied recognition of potency in) the Other, the liminal, the marginalized, and the polluted play out more generally? Here's an avenue on which good research has been done, so if the Death=Other hypothesis makes any sense I'd be able to take off from solid ground by appropriating a whole discourse on alterity to examine death. That may already have been done, too, come to think of it...

That's the real problem, isn't it? Nihil sub sole novum.

----

Several other updates for those of you who've earned them by sticking with me this far:
-Saw a fox @ University City Station Monday, happily munching carrion on one of the athletic fields. Hope it wasn't one of Penn's athletes...
-Just came back from the department fall party, which Tomomi and the kids attended, too. Much fun was had by all.
-My laptop remains broken. My new keyboard arrived today, but UPS had bent it in transit, so I have to wait at least until Friday for the replacement replacement.

That's all for now—everything below is just Japanese...

月曜日は「学園都市駅(University City Station)」で、正体不明の動物の死骸をおいしそうに頬張っている狐をみた。なぜか、お稲荷さんが食べたくなった。
先ほど、我が学科の秋祭り(ただのパーティだけど、日本人には「祭」の響きがいいかなと)から帰宅したところ。家族4人で行って、友美たちをいろいろな人に紹介しまくった。皆、楽しかったようで何よりです。

以上（異常？）です

Photos

noreply@blogger.com (NayNay) — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 03:02:00 +0000

More new photos at our Picasa Web Album. Click here.
(I finally remembered to switch the page UI to English, so it should be a whole lot more user-friendly now.)

I'll try to put some more pictures up over the weekend, but I have two papers and a lot of research to do. Add to that a broken keyboard on my laptop that'll cost at least $100 to fix, and I might not be doing a whole lot other than sitting in the Penn library at one of their terminals all weekend.

Hopefully I'll at least get in a little rock climbing at the gym...

ネット上に公開している写真（誤変換で「後悔」となって少し考えさせられたけど）を更新しました。上記英文中のリンクをクリックしてください。

ところで、友美はめでたく仮免を取得しました。本当によく頑張りました！えらいよ、友美ちゃん！

Finally!!

noreply@blogger.com (NayNay) — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 01:04:00 +0000

After much ado and delay, Tomomi has her learner's permit!

She really studied hard. I hope she's able to get her license soon, but at least this is a major step toward independence. It'll be great for her and for the kids when hse's able to take them to the library and around to museums, events, etc.

More deathly thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (NayNay) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:57:00 +0000

I guess I'll have to reference not only literary and artistic (high culture) sources on death as much as possible. I wonder to what extent that will be possible in relation to premodern Japan?

I guess it's also a question of how much I want to focus on "popular culture," and what the definition thereof might be, particularly for earlier times.

I think I need to examine changes over time in:

heroic death
>death in religion
>>death in folk religion—particulalrly in Tohoku: Osorezan, Hiraizumi, etc.
death in literature
>both High and popular
medical death?
>changing concepts of medical nature of death?
>terminal care and conceptions of death?
>something else?

and how all of these change over time, are internally inconsistent (not monolithic), inform each other, and lead to personification of Death/death.

I'll need first to establish the non-anthropomorphic nature of death prior to the last several decades.

I have to worry about the objections that personifying death is (a) visual culture strategy, and (b) artistic pastiche. Have to show it's relevant that, despite veracity of both claims, the choice (conscious or non-) to make death more human is both influenced by precedent and becomes precedent in itself.

In this way, the oversimplified feedback loop proposed by Johnson is actually kinda useful. I'll post a better image if someone wants it, but I'm referring to the chart below. It describes the chicken-less, egg-less loop in which Johnson conceives cultures as being created. The important thing for my argument is the way in which lived cultures feed back into cultural production. It's self-evident on a certain level, and easily co-opted for profit by the robber barons in control of the means of production, but as a visual it is nonetheless helpful.

Web albums

noreply@blogger.com (NayNay) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:13:00 +0000

Yes, that's in the plural.

You can access our Web Album index page here.

Viewing the albums should be self-explanatory: just click one of them and see what happens.

I will be adding more photos as time goes on.

From now on, I'll also be adding a line or two of Japanese summary, etc. at the end of family-related posts. If your browser shows junk text in some of these posts, don't worry—you're not missing anything.

Example: if the next line of this post is junk characters, your browser can't read Japanese.
今後、家族関連の出来事などに関する投稿は、極力（時間が許す限り）日本語を併記したいと思います。

Some preliminary notes on portrayals of death in Japan

noreply@blogger.com (NayNay) — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 19:16:00 +0000

武士道と云うは死ぬことゝ見附けたり。
二つ一つの場にて早く死ぬ方に片附くばかりなり。
The Way of the Warrior is death.
When faced with a choice between life and death, promptly choose death.

This is the famous opening of Yamamoto Tsunemoto's Hagakure, a self-styled guide to bushidō.

The "Way of the Warrior" was, as Cameron Hurst (go, Penn!) points out, largely an anachronistic, ahistorical construction introduced into common parlance that has been propagated by the work of Morioka native Nitobe Inazo (my first apartment was down the street from his birthplace, and the rumor is that his wife was an Earlham graduate—she definitely was a Quaker) in his book, Bushidō, the entire text of which can be found online or summarized as "justice, courage, benevolence, veracity, honr, and loyalty." Hurst notes "that the 'trustworthy, loyal, helpfu, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent' moral standards of the Boy Scouts are fully consistent with Nitobe's ethics, suggesting the full application of them would have made one a damn fine Tokugawa samurai." (Hurst, 1990)

Still, Nitobe's idea had its precedents, and Yamamoto's rant is one of them. Yamamoto was himself a samurai unable to follow his master into death with ritual suicide. He lived in peaceful times and probably lamented his inability to act as the "real" warriors of old did. His didactic diatribe seems to have been motivated by a nostalgia for the heroes of old.

Which leads one to wonder, what were they really like?

Well, allow me to introduce a pet theory about history. I call it the "deru kugi" approach, in deference to the widely quoted Japanese proverb that first opened my eyes to the issues surrounding the construction of cultural memory.

First you need to know the proverb and its standard interpretation:
出る釘は打たれる ("The nail that sticks up is pounded")

This adage is often referenced as evidence of Japan's conformist nature and the repression of individuality (always assumed to be a negative in this context).

But there's no evidence that this is an endorsement of the beating down of indvidualism. It could just as easily be a factual observation (which in that case is probably more universal than most Americans, at least, are comfortable admitting). It could also be seen as cultural criticism—a lament against this painful reality.

But even more importantly, you have to wonder what the need for such a proverb would be anyway. I mean, if this is a truism, whether it is critical or not is less interesting than whether there's any point at all in saying it. In that critical sense, it fails the "So what?" test. We all know that individualism is violently repressed. Thanks for flogging the dead horse (or pounding the flush nail, or whatever).

It might just as easily be argued that the whole problem is that there are too damned many nails sticking up all over the place. This brings the whole proverb into an entirely different light: suddenly it becomes prescriptive rather than descriptive.

Consider that, contrary to the contemporary misunderstanding of Zen (a painful example given that I also subsrcibed to an entirely silly interpretation of Zen for many years) as a somehow pure rejection of the oppression of rational thought in search of detached enlightment, Zen was quickly incorporated into the apparatus of Japanese state power and served to inculcate the warrior class with (or strengthen the pre-existing) irrational disregard for their own lives and idealization of loyalty and death in service as the ultimate goal to be obtained. How better to create "mindless" killing machines able to "kill with inner peace--and die with inner calm." Which brings us back to bushidō...

But before we trace that circuitous route in its entirety, I want to emphasize my point about nails. Japan is full of wildly individualistic and eccentric people. Take my wife, please. This doesn't necessarily make it any different from anywhere else, but it does indicate that any aspirants to hegemony and control would have a bugger of a time repressing the general pandemonium of strong individuals that make up Japanese society. Again, nothing special here.

So, what happens when this lens is applied to the "Way of the Warrior?" I'd like to examine the "Tale(s) of the Heike" (Heike Monogatari) and other war(rrior) narratives to root out their conflicted and negotiated visions of death, particularly as they relate to the warrior and as they inform later interpretations.

More on this as it comes to me.

A few more notes on culture

noreply@blogger.com (NayNay) — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 10:21:00 +0000

Structuralism
It's why I can't fly and have no free will.

Why I can't fly
Physics.

Why I have no free will
Because if I did, I'd fly. And maybe choose to be invisible.
Or, to put it another way, if men had free will, there'd be no need for Viagra.

So what?
Structural constraints are real and meaningful. Structure is heuristically convenient and fruitful in examining trends.

Not every map needs to be the size of the area it describes. Why? We are essentially and intensely narrative creatures; one of our fundamental epistemological approaches is to narrate the data we encounter. So the question is not, "Which narrative is true?" but, "Which narrative is useful?" Is a complete ethnography of "lived individual culture" nothing more than a life-size map? If so, is it a goal worth fighting for? Or can we accept that our ability to navigate does not depend on the map's depiction of individual features but its accuracy as a symbolic, structural representation of a shared and real space?

It should concern us that the emphasis of scholarship on "lived individual culture" or experience mirrors the economics/marketing trend of individually targeted advertising and the increasing production of goods and services consciously aimed at micro-masses/individuals. To jump to a conclusion that the Academy and the Market are necessarily in conscious collusion is probably to give the Academy too much credit, but is also to engage in a cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. (That one's for you, Dad.) In other words, it's to apply a logic of cause-effect to something that may simply be coincidence. (So's that.)

What is culture?

noreply@blogger.com (NayNay) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 15:17:00 +0000

A silly question, perhaps, but nevertheless one that has been bugging me in my Cultural Studies class.

First of all, it's not entirely clear to me whether the definitional question must be answered in order to embark on a project of culture/cultural studies. I've never heard of anyone seriously problematizing pornography studies, yet the most famous definition of pornography is probably:

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [hard-core pornography]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.

(Justice Potter Stewart in Jacobellis v. Ohio, 1964)

Definitions of culture surely say more about the definers than they do about the culture.

So, here's mine. Tell me what is says about me.

Culture is the confluence/nexus of institutions (ideologies) subscribed to, imposed upon, or in any other way involved with any group of two or more people.

Humans are narrative creatures. We live in a semiosphere that suggests we're hardwired to derive narrative meaning from discrete and even incompatible data. Ideologies are narratives, narratives of power that are implemented through institutions. The more ritualized the better, since rituals are inherently narrative.

Many contemporary institutions (including, in Marxist parlance, control of the means of productions, etc.) have been created or co-opted to advance a ritualistic, even religious (in the sense of "faith-based" rather than evidential or rational) subservience to power. The irrational obeisance and obedience to power is a salient characteristic of the dystopic nature of contemporary American society. It means that the genuflecting populace have internalized narratives (ideologies) of their own powerlessness, isolation, etc.

In a society (dare I call it a culture?) in which certain freedoms of thought, action, and speech are at least nominally guaranteed it's important to have the illusion of free thought and free debate (I suppose most people accept restrictions on action as necessary for social order). Having the people internalize the limits of acceptable thinking and debate becomes a major task of power. In other words, "racism is bad," "Holocaust denial is wrong," "human rights only extend to the right to live, not to the right to live well," "the free market is mysterious and wise (just like God)," etc. provide de facto limits on the realm of acceptable "civil" debate. Any claim made within this framework requires little or no factual support; the obvious corollary is that any argument made from an enunciative position outside the socially sanctioned one is subjected to the most rigorous proof requirements (and is usually rejected regardless). So if I dare to say that our human rights should include the right to a modicum of nutritious food, the idea is so heretical that it is rejected outright. However, the ideologies and institutions of "human rights" are no less arbitrary social/cultural constructions. If they were truly universal human rights, could we not all agree on them? We don't, which is proof enough that they are not universal. And why should they be? But then again, why shouldn't everyone have enough food to eat? And how about shelter? Education? You get the picture.

Anyway, back to culture. My point is that the ideas and structures that shape the lives of any group of people are their culture. This is by no means a static mesh (Matrix?) enveloping our lives: new experiences, paradigm shifts, changing technologies of power and governmentality, etc. all constantly alter the cultural landscape.

This compounds the two-headed monster of observer effect and the uncertainty principle: we cannot measure (or define) culture without altering it—the ideological bias of the observer and actual violence done to the observed—nor can we measure all of the trajectories and characteristics of a so-defined "culture" at any moment.

More when my brain is working a little better...perhaps after some sleep...or some coffee...but most clearly not after more reading about the definition of culture.

Web Album -- Start!

noreply@blogger.com (NayNay) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 01:46:00 +0000

Just a few pics from our final month or so in PDX. Click here.

More coming—eventually...

Web Album in the works

noreply@blogger.com (NayNay) — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 14:25:00 +0000

For those of you hungering for pictures of me (or the kids, I guess), good news!

I've finally installed Picasa on this computer and will, over the next several months I'm sure, be slowly creating a real online album of highlights from the past several years.

I'll try to work in reverse chronological order so that you can enjoy the most recent shots of me first, then look back on my storied past and marvel at how what you believed was perfection at the time has only grown more exquisitely handsome with age.

And a little premature thinning on top.

Covered, mostly, by hats and bandanas.

Hare, Hare!

noreply@blogger.com (NayNay) — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 01:23:00 +0000

Went to the "Festival of India" and "Parade of Chariots" downtown today.

We had a really good time watching the parade (of a single stupa-shaped float, a few horses, and several nonchalant dancers) and walking from City Hall to the Art Museum along the Parkway. We got to the Festival (books on meditation and some Indian clothing vendors) too early for the free vegetarian feast, but managed to enjoy a not-so-free lunch instead, once again proving that there is no such thing...

I've been totally overwhelmed with school work. There is so much reading that there are literally not enough hours in the day—assuming, of course, that I want to be a father to my children and a husband to my long-suffering wife.

Which reminds me that we went to the DMV yesterday so that Tomomi could take her permit test. The first time, she forgot to bring the application. The second time we were informed that the official Change of Address letter (unopened) from the USPS was not sufficient proof of residence.

And did you know that the DMV doesn't accept cash? Not that this affected us Friday, but I can hardly be the only one who finds it ironic that the government doesn't accept legal government tender. Add to that the fact that the USPS address change letter is not proof of residence in the case of a family move (because the first name of each individual is not listed) but that I can send Tomomi a postcard to this address to prove her address, and it's not hard to feel like you're being tag-teamed by that zany comedy duo of Kafka and Orwell.

Wealth gap

noreply@blogger.com (NayNay) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 11:08:00 +0000

I'm taking Issues in Cultural Studies this semester, and I keep finding myself running up against my well-buttressed wall of skepticism about the role of the Academy in contemporary high capitalist discourse.

Pluralist, tolerant cultural doctrines took root at the same time that private economic power became more concentrated than at any period in post-Industrial Revolution history—but is a plurality of consumers a real plurality? One of the defining characteristics of late twentieth century postmodernism is the penetration of consumerism and the public sphere into what had previously been private. Customization of mediated consumer products and experiences is not liberation from the Frankfurt School's stamp of mass culture: "Have it your way!" is not a liberating philosophy.

In this way, the Academy has been shamefully complicit in legitimizing the extension of private power. By ignoring the economic realities and instead focusing on discursive archeology, the humanities and social sciences have reprehensibly participated in the myth-making of the late twentieth century. We don't talk about class because we're a classist and class-driven society. Even if all other issues are (in theory, at least) on the table, the debate has been steered clear of class because of the class interests of private capital. The illusion of ever-expanding free debate hides the socioeconomic realities because privilege is defined in socioeconomic terms. Keep them debating football stats, Coke vs. Pepsi, and feminism, but never let them talk about the concentration of wealth and media control.

Media control is a funny thing (ha ha) because it means that private capital gets to set the debate terms for discussing itself... How convenient! The media love to debate the role of the media, and while that is transparently self-interested it does tend to hide the "invisible hands" running the show.

What is the sound of one invisible hand clapping?

Income Inequality
Wealth Inequality
Wealth Inequality 2

Under the Cherry Trees

noreply@blogger.com (NayNay) — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 17:26:00 +0000

A complete first draft:

桜の樹の下には
Under the Cherry Trees
梶井基次郎
Kajii Motojirō

　桜の樹の下には屍体（したい）が埋まっている！
Under the cherry trees, dead bodies lie!
　これは信じていいことなんだよ。何故（なぜ）って、桜の花があんなにも見事に咲くなんて信じられないことじゃないか。俺はあの美しさが信じられないので、この二三日不安だった。しかしいま、やっとわかるときが来た。桜の樹の下には屍体が埋まっている。これは信じていいことだ。
This you can believe. “Why?” you ask. Surely you can't believe that the cherry blossoms should flower so beautifully. I cannot believe that beauty, and it has troubled me for the past two or three days. But now, the time has come and I finally understand: Under the cherry trees, dead bodies lie. This you can believe.

　どうして俺が毎晩家へ帰って来る道で、俺の部屋の数ある道具のうちの、選（よ）りに選ってちっぽけな薄っぺらいもの、安全剃刀の刃なんぞが、千里眼のように思い浮かんで来るのか——おまえはそれがわからないと言ったが——そして俺にもやはりそれがわからないのだが——それもこれもやっぱり同じようなことにちがいない。
Every night as I head home, why of all the tools in my room does that small, pitifully thin thing—that safety razor—flash in my mind a clairvoyant vision? You said you don't understand—and I don't really either—but this and that are surely the same thing.

　いったいどんな樹の花でも、いわゆる真っ盛りという状態に達すると、あたりの空気のなかへ一種神秘な雰囲気を撒き散らすものだ。それは、よく廻った独楽（こま）が完全な静止に澄むように、また、音楽の上手な演奏がきまってなにかの幻覚を伴うように、灼熱（しゃくねつ）した生殖の幻覚させる後光のようなものだ。それは人の心を撲（う）たずにはおかない、不思議な、生き生きとした、美しさだ。
When they reach full bloom, the flowers of any tree scatter a sort of mysterious feeling through the surrounding air. It's like when a top settles after a good spin, or how a skilled musical performance always brings on some sort of illusion, or a halo causing the illusion of ??. It is a strange and lively beauty that never fails to strike the heart.

　しかし、昨日、一昨日、俺の心をひどく陰気にしたものもそれなのだ。俺にはその美しさがなにか信じられないもののような気がした。俺は反対に不安になり、憂鬱（ゆううつ）になり、空虚な気持になった。しかし、俺はいまやっとわかった。
But yesterday and the day before, it is this very beauty that afflicted my heart with terrible melancholy. I felt like I couldn't believe in that beauty. Quite the opposite, I felt nervous, depressed, and empty. But now, I finally understand.

　おまえ、この爛漫（らんまん）と咲き乱れている桜の樹の下へ、一つ一つ屍体が埋まっていると想像してみるがいい。何が俺をそんなに不安にしていたかがおまえには納得がいくだろう。
Imagine that there is a dead body buried beneath each one of those marvelously flowering cherries. Then you'll understand what upset me so badly.

　馬のような屍体、犬猫のような屍体、そして人間のような屍体、屍体はみな腐爛（ふらん）して蛆（うじ）が湧き、堪（たま）らなく臭い。それでいて水晶のような液をたらたらとたらしている。桜の根は貪婪（どんらん）な蛸（たこ）のように、それを抱きかかえ、いそぎんちゃくの食糸のような毛根を聚（あつ）めて、その液体を吸っている。
Horse-like bodies, puppy-like bodies, and human-like bodies: all rotten, bursting with maggots, and intolerably rank. But also dripping a crystal liquid. The roots of the cherries clutch at this liquid like a rapacious octopus, drinking it with anemone-like tentacles.

　何があんな花弁を作り、何があんな蕊（しべ）を作っているのか、俺は毛根の吸いあげる水晶のような液が、静かな行列を作って、維管束のなかを夢のようにあがってゆくのが見えるようだ。
It's as if I can see what makes those petals, those pistils, those stamens: the liquid sucked up by the root tentacles quietly queues to dreamily rise up through the trees' vascular system.

　——おまえは何をそう苦しそうな顔をしているのだ。美しい透視術じゃないか。俺はいまようやく瞳（ひとみ）を据えて桜の花が見られるようになったのだ。昨日、一昨日、俺を不安がらせた神秘から自由になったのだ。
Why the difficult face? Is it not a beautiful act of clairvoyance? Now at last I can fix my eyes on the cherry blossoms, free from the mystery which plagued me these last few days.

　二三日前、俺は、ここの溪（たに）へ下りて、石の上を伝い歩きしていた。水のしぶきのなかからは、あちらからもこちらからも、薄羽かげろうがアフロディットのように生まれて来て、溪の空をめがけて舞い上がってゆくのが見えた。おまえも知っているとおり、彼らはそこで美しい結婚をするのだ。しばらく歩いていると、俺は変なものに出喰（でく）わした。それは溪の水が乾いた磧（かわら）へ、小さい水溜を残している、その水のなかだった。思いがけない石油を流したような光彩が、一面に浮いているのだ。おまえはそれを何だったと思う。それは何万匹とも数の知れない、薄羽かげろうの屍体だったのだ。隙間なく水の面を被っている、彼らのかさなりあった翅（はね）が、光にちぢれて油のような光彩を流しているのだ。そこが、産卵を終わった彼らの墓場だったのだ。
A few days ago I came down into this valley and walked upon the rocks. From here and there and from the water spray, antlions were emerging like Aphrodite and I could see them flying into the valley sky. As you know, it is there that they are joined in a beautiful marriage. I walked for a while until I came upon something odd. An unexpected luster as if of oil spilled over the water's surface. What do you think it was? It was tens of thousands—maybe more—of dead antlions. Spread without a break over the entire surface, their wings piled on top of each other shone like oil in the light. This was their post-spawning graveyard.

　俺はそれを見たとき、胸が衝（つ）かれるような気がした。墓場を発（あば）いて屍体を嗜（この）む変質者のような残忍なよろこびを俺は味わった。
I felt a shock as though I had been struck in the chest. I tasted the cruel pleasure of a grave-robbing necrophiliac.

　この溪間ではなにも俺をよろこばすものはない。鶯（うぐいす）や四十雀（しじゅうから）も、白い日光をさ青に煙らせている木の若芽も、ただそれだけでは、もうろうとした心象に過ぎない。俺には惨劇が必要なんだ。その平衡があって、はじめて俺の心象は明確になって来る。俺の心は悪鬼のように憂鬱に渇いている。俺の心に憂鬱が完成するときにばかり、俺の心は和（なご）んでくる。
This valley offers me no pleasure. Little songbirds, the young buds of the trees turning the white sunlight a subtle green: all of these are nothing but a vague mental image. I need catastrophe. That balance is what brings my mental images into focus. Like a monster, heart is starved for melancholy. My heart only finds ease when its melancholy is complete.

　——おまえは腋（わき）の下を拭（ふ）いているね。冷汗が出るのか。それは俺も同じことだ。何もそれを不愉快がることはない。べたべたとまるで精液のようだと思ってごらん。それで俺達の憂鬱は完成するのだ。
You're wiping under your arms—a cold sweat perhaps? It is no different for me. There's nothing to be so upset about. Just think of it like sticky semen: then our melancholy will be complete.

　ああ、桜の樹の下には屍体が埋まっている！
Ah, under the cherry trees, dead bodies lie!

　いったいどこから浮かんで来た空想かさっぱり見当のつかない屍体が、いまはまるで桜の樹と一つになって、どんなに頭を振っても離れてゆこうとはしない。
Who knows where the idea came from, but those imaginary bodies have now become as one with the trees and refuse to leave no matter how I shake my head.

　今こそ俺は、あの桜の樹の下で酒宴をひらいている村人たちと同じ権利で、花見の酒が呑（の）めそうな気がする。
Only now can I sit under the cherry trees and enjoy a drink with the same rights as the reveling villagers.

Long weekend

noreply@blogger.com (NayNay) — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 10:49:00 +0000

In more than one way.

First, I have no classes on Friday, which means a sort of 3-day weekend. So how did I spend it, you ask? Well, between errands, reading, and family time, I did some cooking yesterday.

Noah has been just awful the past week or so. He's delighted to go off to school and seems to really enjoy it once he's there, but he's intolerable around the house. He won't let Tomomi out of his sight—as though he's afraid of being left behind all alone or something. He's been having serious meltdowns on a relatively regular basis. He's doing the "Terrible 2s" again, only the misbehaving is deliberate since he knows better now. He has, on quite a number of occasions, expressed his desire to forcibly remove his sister from this mortal coil. Et cetera, et cetera...

But he still can be enormously charming and a lot of fun in between these episodes of demonic possession. We had a good time playing and walking outside yesterday, and he was at his best when Amy's friend came last night.

It probably helped that he got to sit on the couch and watch a full 30-minute episode of Amy's show, but he was really good before that, too.

And here he is! I've gotta go.

The wilds of Glenside

noreply@blogger.com (NayNay) — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 21:03:00 +0000

Saw a fox in the yard at about 5:30am Wednesday.
Couldn't get to the camera quickly enough to get a shot, but I'm hoping there'll be another chance.

Today was the Glenside neighborhood festival. I had totally forgotten (being up with Noah from 4am is part of my excuse) so we didn't end up going until almost noon. But we still had a good time wandering around and listening to the music.

Painfully close to home...

noreply@blogger.com (NayNay) — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 15:45:00 +0000

"I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart."
- ee cummings

Rashomon

noreply@blogger.com (NayNay) — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 15:22:00 +0000

Rashōmon—the film that changed my life.

The loss of narrative certainty. The loss of Truth. A perfect post-War movie... or so I thought when I first saw it at age 18. But I've come to learn a few interesting things about this problematic film.

First, it's not based wholly on the Akutagawa Ryūnosuke's tale of the same name. The Akutagawa short story is one on the nature of evil and the necessity of evil to get by in an evil world. Kurosawa's brilliance is in interpolating another Akutagawa classic, Yabu no Naka ("In a Grove"). It is Yabu that addresses narrative breakdowns and the subjectivity of truth. In fact, the format is nearly identical to the main story of Kurosawa's film: a samurai is tied to a tree by a robber, his wife raped, and his body found dead. The ostensible killer is captured. Witnesses at the inquiry/trial each tell their irreconcilable stories. There is no explicit resolution. Kurosawa himself says that the dead man lied in his testimony, but I have long wondered whether his audience in Japan got that. I know this idea was put in my head artificially at Earlham, but I guess I have to wonder whether a Japanese audience would attribute the capacity, let alone the volition, to lie to a deceased and thereby "holy" spirit. I wonder whether Kurosawa missed his mark at home... but at the same time I think that this is what made the film so powerful for non-Japanese audiences unsaddled by this (potential) misunderstanding of artistic intent.

By framing this tale with a loose adaptation of Rashōmon, Kurosawa is able to contrast an expository discourse on narrative with a moral tale of the rejection of evil and the leap of faith to good without heaven-sent Truth and Morality.

One thing I have yet to reconcile is the image of the gate (mon itself means "gate," and the Rajōmon was the outer walled-city or castle gate). Visually, it dominates the bookends of the film, and it was clearly the focus of Akutagawa's vignette. However, Kurosawa admits that he made a lot of artistic compromises because of budget and size—that the gate set was woefully short of his vision. What was his vision? And, like the ghost of the dead man at the end, was he intending something that doesn't necessarily translate across cultures?

For anyone interested in the Japanese versions of all three, here are some links:
Rashōmon » text » public domain film
Yabu no Naka » text

Interesting weekend

noreply@blogger.com (NayNay) — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 23:33:00 +0000

Saturday (9/8)

Went to a gathering of the Japanese contingent of the Philly chapter of SGI (Tomomi's religious group) at the home of a couple who've been living in NE Philly for 25 years but are returning to Japan to enjoy their retirement.

Met some nice people, including the Shirai family who live about 10 minutes away in Ambler. Mr. Shirai (Heigoro) is a postdoc MD at Penn. We had a nice talk, and I think that Tomomi and Mrs. Shirai (Sayuri) will probably get together a bit from here on. Their son Seiichi is 7, and is really struggling with English in his US elementary school. I felt pretty bad for him.

We also saw our friends from Reading, the Mizumotos. Noah was especially excited to see Erika (almost 5), with whom he played at her birthday party last year. They come down to Philly often for SGI related stuff, so we'll probably be seeing quite a bit of them.

Noah and Minami both played like crazy with all of the other kids, and were totally exhausted when the day was done. It was good to see them both having such a good time playing with other Japanese kids—it's been a long time for Noah and it was a first for Minami. It's great motivation for Noah to speak more Japanese, too.

Sunday (9/9)

Took the whole family down to Penn at Tomomi's suggestion. Mostly just walked around and just enjoyed a quiet afternoon on campus. The kids really enjoyed running around inside and out. They especially liked climbing on the button sculpture in front of the library.

We stopped in the Penn Bookstore so I could buy some textbooks only to find out that they were at the Penn Book Center—go figure! Anyway, Tomomi met a very nice Japanese couple and their daughter. They live in Ardmore and he works at HUP as an intern (or was it resident? and what the hell is the difference, anyway?) We got their number, too, so Tomomi's made quite a lot of Japanese acquaintances in just one weekend.