Something incredible is happening before our eyes in Japan. No, it's not Takaichi meaningfully deviating from her predecessors, or the revitalization of the country’s ailing economy [note:1]. Rather, we seem to be witnessing the collective effects of severe culture shock, unfolding in front of our eyes.
By September this year, over 30 million tourists had visited Japan [source:1], the majority likely spending their trip somewhere along the golden route [note:2]. This represents the highest number of foreign visitors the country has ever seen, blowing pre-COVID figures well out of the water, and it'll likely only grow further as more direct air routes come online in the next few years. Through the power of social media, we've all been been brought along for the ride as these bright-eyed, bushy-tailed tourists explore the country, sampling sweet treats, buying anime merch, visiting teamLab, whatever it may be. But among all the chatter and excitement, there’s been a noticeable sense of discontent and frustration which has begun permeating the net. With declarations that Japan is “cooked”, hordes of Japanophiles seem to be realising that the nation may not be the quirky wonderland they’d been led to believe. Who’d have thought?
Let me take a quick pause for a sec to indulge in a bit of storytelling. I first went to Japan in 2017, where I spent a year abroad at Toyo University in Tokyo's Bunkyo ward. It was a formative, and honestly crucial experience for me, and I genuinely can’t overstate that. For better or worse, it literally changed my life and decided the direction I would end up taking to the present day. But I digress. Before I went, I really didn't have many preconceived notions or lofty expectations of what Japan would be like. I was just happy to even be there! It had been my childhood dream to live in Japan, and since I was young, I’d been curious about the strange and wonderful things the country had to offer. But I was also cautious not to fall too far into the, frankly, racist narrative that the country was some form of wacky, wonderland.
As a result, I can honestly say culture shock didn’t really hit me nearly as hard as I’d anticipated! Despite the heap of personal and institutional issues which haunted me throughout (we absolutely don't have time to get into here…), I’d say I adjusted to life in Tokyo fairly well. But the same could hardly be said for some of my peers. A novelty of my year abroad was dorm life something that, due to Ireland's persistent housing crisis and general disregard for the 18-30 demographic, I’d never gotten to experience back home. Toyo’s international cohort all lived together in the I-House, an unassuming red brick building down the road from Sendagi station. There was good reason I used to call the place the “Big Brother House”; It was effectively an island where an eclectic mix of people from different backgrounds and upbringings lived in often very close quarters. Drama and chaos were inevitable, amplified by our relative isolation from the rest of Japanese society.
Unfortunately, I won't be divulging any of the juicier details here (I'm still going to therapy for half of them…), but one of the more striking aspects of life in the I-House was the incredible cross section of personalities, cultures, and motivations for why people were there in the first place. You had people, like myself, who’d never lived in a dorm, but then there were people who’d never even left their home country before. There were the usual hallmarks of Japanese students; the weebs, the lolitas, the dyed hair and band tees. But also, a surprising number of people who seemed largely indifferent to where they'd ended up. And, of course, those who go out on the piss every evening, wishing they'd have been in Korea instead (If you know, you know 😉).
What became abundantly clear over time was that not everyone was taking their time in Japan well, and that’s putting it lightly. I both heard of and regularly saw crashouts, arguments, and some very tetchy exchanges with the incredible teaching and admin staff at Toyo, among many such examples. Some people were even isolating themselves, seemingly afraid to face the realities of the country they'd be spending the next 6-12 months in. I'll be intentionally vague out of respect, but I think this sentiment was best summed up by an American chap in my class, who was by far the biggest otaku I’d ever personally experienced in my life [note:3]. He was there for just one semester, and towards the end he lamented during one of our Japanese culture classes, that the experience had been absolutely nothing like he’d expected, and he really didn’t know how to feel about it all. To my knowledge, he's never been back since.
So why bring any of this up? I recognise that a year abroad living in a dorm in downtown Tokyo is worlds apart from both the typical life of a foreigner in Japan and the experiences of an average tourist. But, witnessing the chaos while my own appreciation for Japanese culture and society matured made me question why we’d all ended up there in the first place. I couldn’t fully relate with those who'd felt they’d been dropped into a completely foreign land, in spite of their seemingly intimate knowledge of Japanese culture. But I could understand it must’ve been pretty crap. This wasn't the Japan they thought they knew, and certainly not the one they'd been anticipating. All the pop culture, movies, anime, series, and sensationalist media they’d been jumped up on was (for the most part) wrong.
The sobering reality is that Japan is a lot more boring and imperfect than most people realise. It’s not full to the brim with submissive ladies, street racers, Pokémon, zen gardens, cube watermelons, wacky "game shows," Ultraman, or panty vending machines. And it’s definitely no utopia, quite the contrary in a lot of respects! The thing that grabbed me the most about Japan when I lived there was the mundane, rather than the extraordinary. I genuinely loved just taking the metro to a completely random station, then popping up in some obscure residential area to get some ramen or to just see what was around. Seeing how normal people lived their lives, in parts of the city just a stone’s throw from the tourist hotspots, was a soul cleanser that I genuinely never knew I needed. It reassured me in a way that my connection with Japan wasn’t solely predicated on the shallow depiction of its culture, as viewed from the outside, or some IP. This isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy the odd afternoon exploring the quirky wonders that lay down the back alleys in Akiba or Shibuya, who doesn’t! But, for the most part, I feel I’m able to reflect on my time in Japan with a great deal of fondness, despite my extensive personal hardships, because I grew to consider Tokyo as home rather than a destination.
I feel this cuts to the core of my visceral hatred for the whole concept of "Cool Japan". I spent most of the time researching and writing my masters grappling with the notion of what “cool” even was. I realised what actually makes Japan “cool” to most people is primarily based around our own perception of normality, and thus how far Japan deviates from it. There's joy in the curiosity of exploring a new place and the triviality of experiencing a vastly different way of life. That is, in essence what's cool about Japan. Not being force-fed a vague construction of popular culture by a bunch of bureaucrats, trying to salvage a semblance of wider cultural relevance that has already long since moved on and grown legs. I feel this is where our current issues lie. After decades of cool propaganda, the hordes of foreign youngsters raised on One Piece and Pokémon, exposed to endless silly Japan clips on YouTube, and egged on by a vaguely orientalist sentiment in western media, finally have the agency and the funds to make their childhood dreams come true. And they’re not particularly pleased with where they’ve ended up.
As I mentioned, the narrative that “Japan is cooked” has really been doing numbers on social media lately. So much so that it’s started leeching back out into mainstream discourse, thus completing the feedback loop. And honestly, I’d agree, though likely not for the same reasons as the talking heads on TikTok. The truth is that Japan really isn’t in a great position right now. The nation is facing some massive issues, huge, glaring, honestly systemic issues, which they seem to be mostly sleeping on. These include, but are certainly not limited to: the record-low birth rate and demographic crisis that threatens to halve the population by the end of the century, the decades of stagnant wages and economic decline, and the pervasive money-in-politics scandals that undermine trust in the LDP. But, if anything, I feel this sudden change in narrative only highlights that we really don’t pay as much attention to Japan as we really should, or at least to the parts that actually matter.
Look, I absolutely don’t expect the average tourist to know the detailed ins and outs of Japan’s political system, or to have an extensive knowledge of the country’s current affairs or social issues. I wouldn’t even expect that of most Japanese people! But the news agencies and publications, who seem more than capable of tackling even more complex issues in other parts of the world have absolutely no excuse. Not only is their continuous trivialisation of Japan irritating and played out, but it's also very telling of the type of narrative they're trying to convey. I suppose orientalism never really went out of fashion.
I've recently written a number of articles about the current political situation in Japan, but I don't currently live there. Therefore, I'm not always privy to the full picture, so I'm mostly at the behest of this incomplete and often baffling coverage for my research [note:4]. I feel I have enough understanding to parse through most the crap and get to the heart of what’s going on, but I also recognise this is a huge privilege afforded to me by my personal connection to Japanese culture and my experiences studying and living in the country. Not everyone has this level of understanding, and I genuinely think it's wrong for publications to continuously and knowingly remove context or shift framing to suit a seemingly pervasive narrative. This is how we end up only digging further into the mess we’re in, rather than trying to pull ourselves out. I recognise my blog likely won't reach an enormous audience, but I still feel as both an academic and someone with these insights, some level of responsibility to level the playing field and refocus Japan's issues on what I feel is actually important. I'd be quick to add that my opinion is absolutely not to be taken as gospel, I'm just hoping to bring some nuance and a reality check to these discussions. Lord knows we need it right now...
I'll finish this, admittedly more opinionated article than I was anticipating, on a somewhat positive note. Writing my master's was an arduous but deeply rewarding process, which allowed me to challenge my own preconceptions, not just about Japanese culture but the whole notion of cultural appreciation altogether. It (rather embarrassingly) made me realise there's a whole other angle to this process that often gets completely overlooked: how the Japanese see us, or more importantly, themselves.
This is something many of us aren't readily able to access, given the significant language and cultural barriers. As a result, it's only natural we'd fall into the same trap of viewing the Japanese perception of us through the same highly sensationalized and warped lens we use for everything else. This is something even I have fallen victim to! It's genuinely quite easy to believe "the Japanese" are pissed off at foreigners clogging up the tills in Don Quijote or lining the aisles of Nozomi with their suitcases (before subsequently dumping them in Kabukicho) if this is all we're being told. And although Japan has never exactly been the most accepting country to foreigners, things are, once again, a lot more nuanced on their side. It may be hard to believe based on most people's impressions of Japan being a quiet and respectful culture, but they also have their fair share of trolls and chronically online arseholes roaming around the big cities at any one time [note:5]. Public chaos and being invasive is not a foreign concept, nor one exclusively dominated by foreigners [note:6].
I've mentioned before that widespread Japanese sentiment is often a world apart from the oft-cited polls and stats, and the same holds true regarding foreigners and everything going on right now. The vast majority of Japanese people are some of the most generous and curious people you'll ever meet, and many genuinely enjoy when foreigners engage with their culture. We just don't hear about it because positivity doesn't get that sweet sweet engagement online. So yes, the whole world is facing some scary problems right now, but Japan isn’t going anywhere, and its absolutely not as cooked as everyone seemingly thinks.