I just came across another bit in Kickboxing Geishas that caught my attention. In a later conversation with a Japanese woman about women in the modern workplace, the subject circles back around to what appears to be one of Chambers’ favored topics: role models. The woman she is talking to expresses some dissatisfaction with the famous Japanese female celebrities available.
I ask Kay about her role models. She says that while she finds the Harvard- and Oxford-educated Crown Princess Masako to be an intriguing figure, ultimately, “Masako is too high. Her starting point is too different from mine for me to admire her.” … She also mentions two Japanese actresses: Nanoko Hitoshima and Hitomi Korker. Both women are married with children, and as such, they are seen as examples of how you can balance motherhood and a career. “They are beautiful, even moments after labor,” Kay says, mimicking the media’s breathless reportage of these actresses’ lives. “The mass media wants to establish their status as the role models. And they are nice, but they are not my role models.” She says, in general, she is disappointed by Japanese celebrities. “When they are young, they express strong opinions about many things,” she says. “Suddenly, when they get popular and are being handled by producers and agents and marketers, they have nothing to say.”
-Chambers, 205 (emphasis mine)
The thing that struck me about that last bit was the way it contrasts so much with what one of my Japanese students at MSU once said on his blog, in a review of Green Day’s CD American Idiot:
My favorite musician is greenday,and I like “American idiot”, but I could’nt understand why they criticize for their country. Though I dont grasp all meanings of word, they sing ○○○○ America. In Japan they don’t use phrases like that despite they don’t have patriotism to their coutry.
I think the reason why they criticize their country is they have been fond of irony recentry. The very popular documetary movie “bowring for columbine” effected on their recent irony. At the case of Greenday’s song, it’s not serious, but it’s kidding. It is similar to black joke, but is it allowed to all American people? I don’t think so, because some of them must feel uncomfortable. At the case of Japan, one musician arranged our national anthem, but his CD does’nt appear CD shop, because it’s a not good things.Goverment avoided that its tiny problem become a big one in my opinion.I think if you want to occor revolution, become a politician!
I think it’s not good things to criticize his country by music, because it can’t raise something. It’s just kidding. The music like “American idiot” can gather everyone’s interest, but o the other hand it makes some people uncomfortable.
Takashi was such a good student. I wonder what he’s doing now.
I think that Mike Doughty sums up an American’s ability to protest his country’s actions best in a line from his “Move On (bloom like the sunlight in my song)” anthem:
“I love my country so much, man –
like an exasperating friend”
We can criticize precisely because we love our government. We occasionally want to whack it over the head with a rolled-up newspaper, but it is no less family, and there is affection in our criticism, no matter how strident.
Thus it is interesting to see an analysis of the traditional “reluctant patriot” who would burn their flag in order to save it from someone on the outside. I suppose that many foreigners frequently see America as a single monolithic cultural entity, and it is always a surprise to learn that we are not as culturally homogenous as the advertising our corporations and government might lead one to believe. I suspect that unless you have lived on the inside, it is easy to miss the subtleties of the continuing negotiation and roiling definition of “value” in our little nation-state.
Derksen, I was actually more interested in comparing the opinions of two Japanese people on whether or not celebrities should offer politicosocial thoughts. To me, Takashi’s post says more about what he was raised to expect in Japan than it does about celebrity behavior in the US.