[lbo-talk] Becoming Japanese

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 8/26/07, dredmond at efn.org <dredmond at efn.org> wrote:
> On Sat, August 25, 2007 3:18 pm, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > But there is one defining element of Japanese culture that has
> > successfully replicated itself everywhere in the global North -- and in
> > most nations of the global South with the exception of Cuba, Iran,
> > Venezuela, and perhaps a few others -- though not due to any conscious
> > effort to export it on the part of the Japanese ruling class.
> > Which aspect is that?  That is utter indifference to republican virtue.
>
> It looks like the Great Neoliberal Ice Age is melting fast, though. To
> paraphrase Marx, the proletariat has no republican virtues to realize,
> only developmental states to win.

Japan is the dream of capital: the withering away of politics in favor
of economic development.  The emblem of this dream is Hello Kitty,
who, without a mouth, never expresses herself, infantilized like an
ideal wage worker and in turn infantilizing all who embrace it.
According to Wikipedia, Hello Kitty was created by Sanrio in 1974 and
registered as a trademark in 1976.  The timing of her birth, at the
threshold of the neoliberal stage of global capitalism, is perfect.

On 8/26/07, joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> ><http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-06-02-japan-women-usat_x.htm>
> >No sex please — we're Japanese
> >By Paul Wiseman, USA TODAY
> >
> >TOKYO — Junko Sakai was nervously looking forward to a romantic
> >getaway with the man she'd been seeing. But when they arrived at a
> >seaside hotel last fall, her beau requested separate rooms.
> >
> Maybe everyone is too tired. Or maybe, because women's social roles have
> changed so much in the last fifty years, sexual play has to be redefined
> for it to be attractive.

Hello Kitty is not only the dream of capital but also its nightmare at
the same time: she doesn't have sex, and she doesn't reproduce labor
power.  It's like the word "kawaii" (cute) pronounced by the average
American, whose tongue dissolves it into "kowai" (frightening).
--
Yoshie