What time is this picture? Cameraphones, tourism, and the digital gaze in Japan

Abstract

After its introduction in 2000, the cameraphone (a cell phone with digital camera functionality) rapidly became a ubiquitous presence in Japan, part of an increase in non-voice modalities associated with mobile telephony. This essay employs an experimental format to explore what it means to combine cell phone and camera in a single portable device. Particular attention is paid to how cameraphones, within the broader context of cell phone (keitai) culture in Japan, alter the way tourist sites and events are experienced, recorded, and shared. Ultimately, the ease with which the cameraphone facilitates capture, narrativization, sharing, and deletion of photos, causes a blurring of traditional distinctions between the touristic and the everyday. Furthermore, these changes are imbricated in a broader cultural shift in perception and consciousness engendered by the continued interplay between producers of digital technologies and creative use of these technologies by consumers.

Keywords:

• Japan
• tourism
• cameraphone
• cell phone
• keitai
• photography

Acknowledgements

This essay first started taking form during a Residential Fellowship at the Center for Ideas & Society at UC Riverside in Fall 2005; I sincerely thank Susan Antebi, Alessandro Fornazzari, and Freya Schiwy for many hours of productive discussion. I am also profoundly grateful to the members of the Shingetsukai Research Group in Japan, particularly Ariga Takashi. My great thanks must also go to the many people, friends and strangers alike, who were willing to talk with me about their own cameraphone use. Finally, the article has benefited immensely from discussion with Ken Rogers, Kenji Tierney, Jason Weems, Jerry Foster and especially, as always, Michiko Suzuki.

Notes

1. Just a quick glance at recent monographs reveals, not surprisingly, that there is also interplay between corporate interests and academic research. Plant (2001) was commissioned by Motorola; Ling (2004) acknowledges the patronage of Telenor, a major European provider of mobile communications services; Ishino (2008) is published by SoftBank Creative, an affiliate of SoftBank Mobile; Kohiyama (2005) is published by NTT Publishing, part of Japanese telecommunications giant NTT, the parent company of NTT DoCoMo, the largest mobile operator in Japan; and Glotz, Bertschi and Locke thank T-Mobile International for being a ‘wise and unobtrusive sponsor’ (2005, p. 10).

2. Language to signify the device in question is not standardized. Here I choose to invoke a single word, ‘cameraphone’, in order to emphasize the inseparability of the component parts as well as the integrity of the combination they form.

3. Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page coined the phrase in an editorial on 12 May 2004. See Jardin (2004).

4. For a litany of the nefarious ways cameraphones have recently been employed, see Agger, 2007. For an example of cameraphones being deployed for resistant surveillance, see www.hollaback.nyc.blogspot.com/

5. In a similar vein, the fact that many of the statistics and observations in this essay may already seem out of date reflects a qualitative shift with regard to traditional academic print publication, which is becoming – at least when it concerns digital technologies – an expressive mode from a different time zone.

6. Published in 2003, Gibson's novel revolves around a series of online video clips called the ‘footage’. Gibson himself comments on how his text documents a moment that is already part of history: ‘I'm very grateful that it came out in this tiny remaining window before the emergence of YouTube, which would have changed the whole meaning of the book. People are probably reading it today and thinking, ‘Whoa, what happened to YouTube, this is an alternate universe’. I always like to imagine a 12-year old reading ‘Neuromancer’, getting 20 pages in and turning to his friend and going, ‘I figured out what the mystery is! What happened to all the cellphones?’’ (quoted in Lim, 2007).