>It may already be beginning to boil over. Seijin no hi ceremonies (Coming
>of Age Day, 2nd Monday in January, a "neo-traditional" national holiday
>established in the pivotal year 1948) have degenerated to the point that
>some authorities have begun to speak of shutting down the events
>altogether. This Januarys' events featured local politicians at the podium
>being pelted with eggs; "bad" youth rolling up in their convertibles
>outside the ceremony hall, denouncing the proceedings bullhorns in hand,
>only to be attacked by police; and generalized scenes of the jeering,
>catcalling and baiting of "grownup" representatives - all viewable on the
>T.V. news. One of a piece with the now generalized obsession with the
>"anti-traditional" behavior of Japanese youth ... As "de-political" behavior
>(it is neither 'pre-political' nor 'apolitical') it is a refreshing contrast
>to the portrait of their apathetic American counterpart's consumption of
>second-hand fantasies. There comes a time when fantasy life is no longer
enough.
I sez:
Brad, an interesting report and illuminating analysis. What do you mean by "de-political", exactly ? An aggressive impatience with the sterile posturing of bourgeois politicians ? If that's what you mean by "de-political" thought and behavior, it sounds like the building blocks of fascism (i.e. a potential mass base for fascism). Whenever I've witnessed similar behavior by mobs of U.S. youth, I've always thought, "these kids are fodder for an Americanized version of fascism." Bored, hostile teenagers and twenty-somethings appearing to be ungovernable b/c of their manifest contempt for existing authority figures, but deep down their hostility springs from the fact that they view existing authority as weak, ineffectual, effete (like tweedy liberal professors amongst a bunch of inattentive and rowdy students). What they subconciously crave is some sort of virile ubermensch to tower above mediocre nameless, faceless, liberal bureaucrats -- they are ready to worship him (and they may not even know it yet) if only given a chance. The current popular appetite for hyper-violent cartoons (not to ignore the political economy on the supply side which the NYT article nicely summarized) may be a precondition for and a product of a brewing post-modern fascism.
John Gulick