Popular Orientalism
Find someone wearing an anime T-shirt and ask them about their ideal world, e.g. by using the phrase, "kimi no IDEAL WORLD, tell me about it, kudasai!"
Delicious food, slick public transit systems, cute (kawaii~~!! 😺) mascots, abundant cultural traditions, skyscrapers, make up products, oh my! There are many things a suburban dwelling resident in the United States may envy about East Asia, particularly in the more first-worldy areas.
Contrast this with burrito joint that decided to give you less meat than usual, the bus that's always late, signs without cute illustrations telling you not to have fun, Walmart which replaced many local businesses (vote with your dollars for small businesses if you like them better!), shopping centers that are more parking lot than shopping center, cosmetic products and hair stylists that don't understand your ethnic group(s),... Blarghhhhhhh
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| A sign telling you not to have fun that doesn't have cute illustrations |
You may have even visited (or currently reside) in East Asia and seen some of the aforementioned things first hand. Or, you've been visited by advertisements for Journeys to the East via media, consumer merchandise, or the more expensive options of vacations, study abroad opportunities, and the like.
Compared with the aforementioned no bueno of suburban Western life, the gun-free, aesthetically pleasing, polite, more-or-less homogeneous societies of East Asia may appear to the agitated anime fan as a model for how things ought to be done...
Latent entitlement & authoritarianism
Underlying the colorful garb of Samurai inspired outer-wear, anime pin adorned shoulder bags, unstudied Japanese language materials, and vocaloid music leaking out of cat-ear themed headphones is often something much darker. This, as I will describe it, is the desire to get benefits without costs through the impersonal machines of government and unwritten societal rules.
East Asian societies are able to accomplish lots of things through collective agreements, which has been described with terms such as conformity, social norms, or simply culture. Insofar as these things are in place, a society can be called more conservative in that previous arrangements of things (such as social relations) are conserved.
One question I have asked myself, and that I am curious to hear the opinions of other people that are interested East Asian things on, is this: "would I be willing to exchange value for value with (an) East Asian society"? That is, am I willing to fall into line to conform to a particular society.
Consider littering as a concrete example. Most people, I imagine, would prefer to live in a litter free environment. But, are most people willing to pick up their own trash, clean up after themselves, etc.? Clearly, many people are willing to spit gum on the floor, leave left over food out for birds and squirrels to feast on, spill who-knows-what on tables in common areas, etc. You may like clean areas. Are you willing to help make them?
Where I live in America, we kinda have a rule which is "be nice", but we lack inter-cultural communication and cultural norms about many things, such as how to dispose of trash at a restaurant. At some places, you bring up your tray to some counter. At others, you just leave everything at the table and somehow compensate (e.g. by tipping) someone for cleaning it up. College students have been known to shove trash into piles in the corners of their living spaces waiting for a roommate to finally just get fed up and take it out for them (related: tragedy of the commons).
Consequently, the mixed practices outlined here produce mixed results: some places are much, much cleaner than others. Local, often informal (tacit) agreements between individuals make some very nice spaces (e.g. your favorite coffee shop). But zooming out, we find less shared norms for people occupying the same area than in places like Tokyo; different practices are found in pockets.
So, how do we have nice things and all get along? One way is to negotiate and to start creating cultural norms in your local environment however big or small that may be. You can't spell "society" without "I". 😉
Another way is to ask some other person, thing, force, state, aura, deity, etc. to do it for you. This is where I think the scary latent entitlement & authoritarianism comes up. Those interested in East Asia from a distance (like myself), on vacation (includes study abroad, ha!) or otherwise themselves not becoming a cog in the system that makes the train go choo-choo are detached from the costs that go into producing many nice things. We're something like guests of a gracious host.
But we don't (I hope) go home from a delicious dinner served by a friend and expect that friend to day after day cook up such delicious dinners without some kind of compensation or reciprocation. There's something of an unwritten contract that says you have to exchange value (which could be good conversation, a car ride to the airport, babysitting, help finding a job opportunity, proofreading a paper, etc.) for value.
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Follow rules pls.
(law enforcement in the anime Psychopass) |
By this analysis, asking for Tokyo-like results for your society (e.g. American suburban society) should also involve taking into considerations the cost of such a society. There is no such thing as a free bento box. Are you willing to trade some cultural diversity for universal values? Are you willing to shame and ostracize people who refuse to conform to certain standards? You may already be doing these things, but consider how they would look as a more societal-wide arrangement.
Demanding that society act in a certain way, while you can act as you please is a low key aspiration to become a dictator. Thus, to not be evil, we should think about not just the benefits that we want (to take from others), but the costs we are willing to pay to negotiate for a desirable future.
You can make anime real
Do you like the litter free streets of (some areas of) Tokyo? Start by picking up your own trash. Do you appreciate the care taken by the good people preparing the food you ordered, even at inexpensive restaurants? You too can be subarashii (excellent).
As humans that interact with other humans, we do much to decide what our environment looks like. Call it "community engagement" or "leadership" or whatever you like; the point is that the Japanese government isn't going to take over your city and run it like Tokyo any time soon (⇒ if you find a good conspiracy theory, let me know).
Don't be a wannabe fascist dictator weeb, be an ii hito (good person) onegai-shimasu.Labels: Chinese, Japanese, language, travel
