(I wrote this while I was still in Japan. I’m not sure if I ever believed it, but maybe it’ll amuse somebody.)
I don’t hear much about Cool Japan these days, the effort to market Japan as a cultural superpower. Maybe it failed. But I haven’t heard anyone make the claim that it was doomed from the very start. It was. “Cool Japan”, two words that just don’t go together. The term itself is fundamentally oxymoronic. That sentence should prove that when it comes to uncool, I know what I’m talking about.
Let’s face it, Japan is one of the lamest countries on earth. Shall we count the ways?
1) This is a small, compact country. The land is small, the people are small, and the portions are small. And small is not cool. Cool is excess, doing whatever you want wherever you want in whatever quantities you want. Japan is a country of limits, where you try and make the most out of what little you have.
Here, you do not wave your hands in the air like you just don’t care. You might hit someone.
At best, Japan is cute. It’s no contest, Japan is the cutest country on earth. But cute isn’t cool. Cute begs you to love it with big puppy dog eyes. There’s a power in that which is difficult to resist. But it’s not what cool does. Cool doesn’t give a fuck whether you like it or not, or even whether you exist. That’s what makes it so appealing.
2) Japan is polite. Conservative. Japan works late and fucks the least out of all the developed nations. Japan doesn’t dance, and if possible, would prefer not to be asked. If it’s true that white people can’t dance, at least they are having fun trying. Japan didn’t even think to build a dance floor, and now that you mention it, they would really like one but they already used the space to build an apartment complex that can house three hundred. Lame.
Japan gets along. Cool gets ahead.
3) Apparently the objective of Cool Japan was to conquer the world with videogames, cartoons, toys and comic books. These were never going to conquer the world. These are things you turn to when you want to run away from the world. In what universe are any of these cool? Oh wait, they also had the fashion. Harajuku girls, and all that. Fashion that makes a real fashion statement. If that statement is the holy shit, those crazy Japanese, which really doesn’t need reinforcing.
Meanwhile, they still don’t have a single star who could open a movie around the world, or a single artist who could sell out Madison Square Garden.
They should’ve pushed their food harder, which everyone knows is awesome. Or hi-tech gadgets, they’re pretty cool. Except Japan came unfashionably late to the smartphone party, because they didn’t really get how the rest of the world were using the technology.
4) Which brings us to the most unavoidable cause of Japan’s lameness – Japan is an island nation. A sheltered child that knows embarrassingly little of the outside world. Often mistaken as a progressive futuropolis, Japan is still a country where, depending on where you’re from, we outsiders can either be worshipped for our foreign wizardry, like being over six feet tall and knowing The English, or else dismissed with casual hillbilly racism. The Japanese language actually has a use for the word “foreigner”, a word I’d never used before in my life, because it really does matter on a practical, day-to-day level who is Japanese and who isn’t.
In fact, “foreigner” is more than just an adjective, it’s a a profession here. You can be a professional non-Japanese person in Japan. And the absolute most damning evidence that Japan is fucking lame is that Japanese people will call anything and anyone “cool” just for not being Japanese.
The youth of Japan are often an exception to this. But while young Japanese aren’t always lame, they are rarely cool either. Jaded is cool, up to a point, but these kids are almost nihilistically self-centered. They’d sooner change the cartridge than change the system. They know it’s a game they can’t beat, so they give up before even trying. But they don’t even give up in style, by rioting and breaking shit or flipping the bird and leaving for good (very few Japanese can stand the rarefied air outside their dome for too long). And that’s why there are millions who are satisfied working unskilled part time gigs for the rest of their lives, and a subclass within that who won’t even leave their rooms.
Sexiness. Swagger. Self-reliance. These things are cool, and Japan has none of these. As hard as it is to say as a non-American, these things are America. America is cool. America does whatever the fuck it wants. Even when America is being evil, you have to grudgingly admit that military is fucking badass. Cool America sells itself, it doesn’t even need to be said. And it sure as hell doesn’t need the dang gubmint to help. Cool Japan, ladies and gentlemen, take it from the Japanese government. Could there be anything lamer than having your mum brag to your friends about how cool you are?
They should’ve gone with Safe Japan, and marketed itself as an expensive but luxury place to retire. Or how about Cute Japan, the mascot of which is a fluffy white kitten with an itchy red spot on its back that it can’t reach and needs you to scratch. Lame Japan probably wouldn’t have worked as a slogan, and might even have failed as hard as Cool Japan, but at least it would’ve been true.
Don’t get me wrong, you can decide for yourself just how worthwhile the term Cool is, and how pejorative the term Lame is. And whether either of them translate at all to “good place to live and raise a family”. You can probably read between the lines and see that I actually love living here …
… but then again I am the lamest person I know.
While I don’t agree with much of this (particularly about the youth, although that may be because I was a children’s teacher while I was playing Professional Gaijin over there and found that Kids are Kids no matter where you go), there’s another factor to add that contributes to the Lameness: Old Japan. The number of old people compared to the number of young people is rising at an alarming rate throughout the country. Having most of your population consist of senior citizens is definitely Not Cool, especially when you’re xenophobic about allowing foreigners (even those of Japanese descent) to officially immigrate and be a part of your society. But I don’t see this changing anytime soon.
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Oh god yes, good point. Although quite a few older people I knew were actually cooler than younger people in terms of being more active and curious about the world.
America doesn’t just embody cool, they were the inventors of cool. The word was given to us by jazz musicians.
When you look at countries before America started exporting its culture worldwide, it’s actually hard to find concepts similar idea of “cool.” Whether you’re looking at 14th century Normandy or 19th century Britain or Qing era China, socially they they were more in line with Japan…that success meant learning a trade, conforming, and fitting in. “Cool” was nowhere in the game plan. Being different and unique got you laughed at.
Cool is many things, but a large part of it is rebellion against the system. It’s an ethos of the underclass and the oppressed (it’s not surprising that the word comes from the black community). It became a part of America’s culture, which means it’s now a part of global culture…but it’s still an American concept. It has not existed for long and it might not be around forever. Japan might be uncool…but uncool is tradition.
Maybe in a hundred years all this cool stuff with have been weeded out, and we’ll all have been turned into staid, boring Japanese salarymen.
“Man, I can’t believe people idolized this Holden Caulfield guy. Imagine looking up to someone who gets expelled from school and blows money on a prostitute. Now to go sleep, son. You have Extension II Maths tomorrow.”
Loved this post. You should definitely write more about life in Japan; usually the “Gaijin’s” perspective makes for some funny and thought-provoking observations. I really wonder what that country will be like in the next twenty years when the mass of elderly people are gone and the somewhat directionless youth take over.
And don’t worry about being lame; you’re in good company even outside of Japan.
Ben: Wow, I think you really nailed it. Cool is also a flavour of the month, so even if a homogenous culture produces things that become cool they’re unlikely to stay that way for long. America is used to consuming things and then spitting them out, and is diverse enough to always have new things to move onto.
Fed: Thanks! But in twenty years there will be even more elderly people, because while there are plenty of middle-aged people to replenish their ranks, the babies who would be replenishing the teens / twenty-something ranks just aren’t being born. It’s tough times, man. Tough, lame times.
Are lameness and coolness mutually exclusive? I think America is pretty lame from where I’m standing. *ducks for cover* Maybe my definitions of the words are a bit different.
I can definitely see why a project to market Japan’s culture to the rest of the world is doomed to fail though. I know I wouldn’t recommend manga or anime or Japanese music or games to most of the people I know. Even I have the urge shake my head at the weird lady with the blue hair up there. Oh Japan, you’re such a weird country sometimes.
Daniel, how cool is Australia on a scale from Japan to America?
The average Japanese citizen is a total slave to authority. One place you see this is their views on drugs. With almost no exceptions, middle-aged Japanese strongly believe that marijuana is a hard, dangerous drug. Again, the government tells them that the radiation from Fukushima is safe and under control, and almost everyone accepts that without question.
When Japanese women come to America they are basically free pickings for any Americans who want them (even losers who couldn’t get an American girlfriend), even if/ESPECIALLY if they have a Japanese husband or boyfriend back home.
@RobinOttens: Aussie cooless is a lot like the Aussie dollar; we’ve been close to America for years, but we’ve finally surpassed it
“Coolness” is a marketing ploy. Trust me, you’re not missing out.
And not to mention that your people aren’t divided by petty political differences that are exacerbated by its own leaders to sequester as much power as possible. And also, creating all
forms of martial arts cements Japan as permanently awesome.
Robin: On a scale of America to Japan, Australia is closer to America. But still the US have a cultural stranglehold on us, especially our young people. A lot of the products we make are just riffing on American ones.
And hearing black slang around here is always pretty cringe-worthy.
I like the idea of that scale, though!
Are we talking about the cool factor here or more about soft power?
Sung: bit of both I reckon.
As far as products go, japanese one’s are in many niches unparalleled in terms of quality/price and also innovation.
Also from a culture perspective, i am from central europe, and at least my generation 20+ was influenced a whole lot by the japanese culture.
An example: i play a piano piece from chopin or mozart, most won’t know it unless its a really famous one, but if i play a theme from some old mario game people my age will know and we can talk about the games and the nice(or not so nice) memories from our childhood.
We have a huge car industry in europe but everyone knows that japanese cars are as far as quality goes superior to our own, we have the swiss watch industry that produces very high quality watches but they know, you get a hand assembled grand seiko which is technically at least as good.. as a mass produced swiss luxury watch like rolex, omega etc. but the hand assembled japanese quality watch is the same price or even cheaper as the swiss mass produced one …, people around the whole world would not be able to enjoy playing music if it were not for the great range of reasonable priced quality instruments from japan… you get what i mean ?
People may not think of japan, their culture and their products as cool, but the huge influence this small country had on our world and still has is undeniable!
I am glad the world has japan ;p
matthias: You’ll get no argument from me there!
I agree with matthias.. Japan may not be a “swag” country, but it’s influence in the world is really big, anime surpased every other kind or style of animation in the world, people of my generation (the 20somethings) learned how to be awesome by watching Goku fight. The technology, the culture, and even the weirdness has a market, I buy weird shit for example.
Also I’m sorry to break the news for you people but America is lame…. take one state, and analize how cool it is, and the answer will always be the same: each state of the US is lame, it’s only when you take all the states together that america is something. Also, it may sound a bit racist but white america is lame too; african americans are the ones that sell for being “cool” (and that depends on your definition of cool). If you ask in terms of style coolness etc, NO ONE wants to be a white american, not even some young white americans.
So my real conclusion its that lame people are everywhere in the world, and cool people too. Also lame its a subjective term, I find the US lame, you would find my country lame, some other country would find us two lame, and so on.
Man, lame sound unreliable, so definitely safe japan, because cute is unreliable too…
there was actually a similar thing here in the UK. i suppose in some aspects we can be sold on being cool, in that our musical and general artistic exports trade well on their cultural currency purely as being ‘british’ (though this is certainly a diminishing return, and we will increasingly seem more like an outdated ghetto as time goes on). i digress. the government had a whole scheme called ‘cool britannia’. it was terrible. at one point, i recall that some Welsh Assembly members were eager to change the welsh flag because wales needed to be seen ‘for bands like catatonia and the manic street preachers’ not farmers and dragons. cringe.
FX: “Also, it may sound a bit racist but white america is lame too; african americans are the ones that sell for being “cool” (and that depends on your definition of cool). If you ask in terms of style coolness etc, NO ONE wants to be a white american, not even some young white americans.”
That does seem to be true in the media, where you’ll see plenty of white people using the word white as a synonym for lame.
slaepwerigne: Oh man, how could I have forgotten Cool Britannia, which Cool Japan was almost certainly riffing off. And it shows just how off my Cool Compass is when I think dragons are cooler than the entirety of Britpop (“road rage” was a great song though).
Actually it’s occurred to me that my idea of cool is basically about as adolescent as this video:
http://www.theonion.com/video/supreme-court-rules-death-penalty-is-totally-badas,14244/
Images of elderly salarymen and staid conservatism are just simplistic stereotypes. Japan is very cool but it’s a secret cool that many visitors never experience. It’s usually for Japanese eyes and ears only. You get some idea though when you compare daytime Japan with nighttime Japan. The bleary world of daylight comes alive in the dark. At night Japan becomes mysterious, magical and yes, cool.
Tez: Well put. I hope you will not violate any solemn vow to tell us more about this secret cool.
If I break my solemn vow, there will be consequences from the yakuza. Don’t want to risk that. Meanwhile here’s more food for thought: http://travel.cnn.com/explorations/life/12-coolest-nationalities-earth-050844 N.B Japan makes the list!!
Tez: Haha that’s an awesome list, even if I think Japan has no place being there. And it certainly riled more people up than what I was able to do.
I agree to this. Enough said. I certainly admire the truth and courage of the article. Courage not in the sense of courage for fear of reprisal, but courage to actually say how things really are. I’ve been made to believe that Japan is the pioneer of everything but if you look at it they, as a country have fallen behind and that’s not the sad part, the sad part is after all that I’m still being told that Japan = cutting-edge technology, every one else, including me, is a primitive caveman (sorry, cave person). Been told of the “politeness” of the Japanese when in fact, they are the worst racists in the world. Being of a “darker” skin colour Japanese people gave these stares as if I have leprosy. Not really caring what I ordered, until now I still don’t get it, maybe being a “foreigner” and from the south east meant they get to decide what I can or cannot eat in their country. Demanding I count my money 2 times before they can accept my cash for buying a bottle of pop, seriously, this is the “polite” country I’ve been told about? The xenophobia in Japan, sad in its way, is very rampant and that is never cool so this article speaks volumes.
Josh, what are your views on this?
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2010/03/japan-its-not-funny-anymore/
The guy rambles on forever, and badly needs an editor, but he says a lot of surprising things about daily life in Japan. Is the article factually accurate from your perspective?
I think most western otaku would NOT like the real Japan, they only like the attractive Potemkin Village’d version of Japan they see in anime and TV.