ASOBI IN ACTION

Abstract

In the past 30 years, play (asobi) has become the subject of a heated ideological debate in urban Japan, reflecting processes of cultural transformation. During these years, a late consumer culture characterized by an incessant pursuit of playlike hedonistic pleasures has reached its apotheosis within a conservative social context that maintains high levels of conformity and prioritizes production. It is against the background of these sociocultural dynamics that the cultural conceptualization and appreciation of play have been negotiated between play as a subsidiary activity complementary to work life, confined within boundaries, and play as a phenomenon of greatest personal significance, hardly constrained by time or space. These dialectics have influenced collective imaginaries, transforming play into a symbolic activity through which people can experience and reproduce cultural rhetoric about social distinctions, values and priorities.

Keywords:

• play
• Japan
• late consumer culture
• youth popular culture
• institutional culture
• everyday hedonism

Notes

1. Following Robertson (2007, p. 370), I use ‘state’ as shorthand for the several dominant agents and agencies – the government, the corporate sector, the military-industrial establishment, the major media and the education system – that, although not seamlessly, collectively produce and reproduce the status quo. In this article I will use ‘institutional’ as interchangeable with the ‘state,’ and ‘institutional culture’ in reference to this status quo.

2. The contemporaneous cultural constructs of Japan's national identity and cultural images that reflected the dominant work-oriented ideology were intensely debated in the literary genre of nihonjinron (discourses on Japanese) that reached a height of popularity during the 1970s and 1980s (Dale 1986).

3. This echoes interestingly Huyssen's argument (1986, p. 47) that since the nineteenth century mass culture in the West has come to be associated with women while ‘real authentic culture’ remains the privileged realm of men. Huyssen argues that the genderizing of mass culture as feminine in political, psychological and aesthetic discourses is the result of a cultural conception that laments the decline of a male-dominated hegemonic culture and civilization.

4. The term NEET is not indigenous to Japan. It was first coined by the British Department for Education and Skills in 2000 (Department for Education and Skills 2000). In Japan, however, it was popularized and ‘brandized’ by the media, quickly becoming part of the vernacular.

5. The name of the magazine, Jiyujin, meaning “Free people,” should be written The editors, however, have interchanged the second character with its homophone character , which means ‘play.’ The pun suggests that play is a form of freedom and vice versa.

6. In 2002 the number of bachelors in Tokyo had reached an unprecedented record after doubling during the past two decades. In 1980 the rates of single men and women aged 30 to 34 in Tokyo were 21.5 percent and 9.1 percent, respectively. In 2002 the proportions rose to 54 percent and 38 percent (Sendenkaigi 2002, p. 16). Realizing womanhood through work and other pursuits available in Japan mostly to single and childless women rather than through homemaking has become the target of intense social criticism and concern (e.g., Sakai 2004).

7. Yasuko Nakamura is the founder and general manager of Boom Planning, an innovative marketing and promotion company that has been employing high school girls as informants since 1986. I interviewed Nakamura in Tokyo in July 2005.

8. See note 7.

9. See a chat string dated September 23, 2007. Available at: http://www. australiancostumersguild.org.au/forum/index.php?showtopic=936 (accessed August 12, 2008).

10. See note 7.

11. The development of more liberal attitudes in regard to hair colors is attested by several television commercials for men's hair color. In spring 1999 the script of an amusing advertisement for men's hair color by the Shiseido company started by following a young university graduate (played by Masahiro Nakai, a member of the J-Rock band Smap and a TV star known for frequently changing his hair color) on his first day at work with a large Japanese corporation. Upon entering an assembly hall with his new sarariman colleagues in anticipation of the chairman's speech, he notices that everyone is staring at him since he is the only one with black hair. Apparently all the company workers have dyed their hair blond following the chairman's own example. In summer 2001, the script of a commercial for men's hair color by Gatsby started by showing several severe-looking samurai kneeling in front of a gorgeous Western woman. All the samurai have their hair tightly done in a traditional chonmage bun dyed in a different flamboyant color. They keep a grave disposition while their chonmage becomes erect in an obvious phallic movement. There is one last samurai, however, whose chonmage does not quite manage the task, embarrassing its owner until it finally becomes erect too. In spring 2002, another commercial for men's hair color by Gatsby featuring several young Japanese men with rainbow-colored mohawks won the title of the most amusing and interesting commercial among several thousand competing commercials in a survey conducted by CM Data Bank.

12. Following Susan Napier, Allison (2000, p. 84) uses the term ‘committed fans’ in reference to a new kind of spectatorship developed among anime aficionados that transcends issues of national boundaries. I am using the term in reference to an inclination among hardcore fans of Japanese popular culture, especially of anime, manga and related goods and practices, to become agents in the further distribution of this culture through the Internet, fans-organized for-fans conventions and the opening of small scale businesses importing and selling Japanese popular culture goods.