pink eiga - Superficial Journeys

[Jasper Sharp]

Thank you for your feedback on my last post Aaron. As a British person now
living in Holland (who also lived in Quebec for over a year) I know that
making snap judgements on a country and a culture is both facile and
short-sighted, not to mention ultimately self-defeating. You are correct in
warning against extrapolating anything more from these first impressions.
Culture certainly isn't a unified entity shared across the entire population
of a country. After all, I'm British and I couldn't even begin to explain
half the things that go on in my country.
Regarding the prevalence of pornography and differing sexual mores within
the country, firstly I'd like to say that opinions/prejudices/assumptions
such as mine are primed to some degree by the choice of Japanese films and
culture marketed within the West. Pinku may make up a disproportionately
large amount of Japanese cinematic output compared with other countries, yet
it takes up an even larger proportion of the number of Japanese titles being
released in the West at the moment. Within cult cinema circles, people
assume that Japanese cinema is typified by the output for example, of Japan
Shock Video, or the films listed in books such as 'Eros In Hell' or Thomas
Weisser's 'Essential Guide to Japanese Cinema', where "essential" seems to
overlook, for example, the TORA-SAN movies in favour of films with titles
such as ROPE AND BREASTS. This is almost an inversion of Academic Film
Critique, which as far as Japanese Cinema goes, still seems unable to look
past the Golden Age of Ozu and Kurosawa. The middle ground is still firmly
ignored by distributors, and hence Westerners are more likely to form their
opinions on the Japanese from disparate sources such as Chambara or Roman
Porno, with contemporary films such as those mentioned on this list seldom
making it outside of the festival circuit. This is one of the reasons why
this list is so important.
To clarify my earlier post, I saw men reading pornography publicly in a
number of places (notably in a number of caf?s), not only the Shinkansen,
and when I checked into my Capsule Hotel, I was given the option of
pornography pumped into my own private capsule (not an attractive
proposition, as you here people snoring from the other side of the hallway!)
This was something I have not noticed in other countries, though as I said
earlier, to make any more of this is like assuming that all Dutch people
smoke drugs on the basis of the prominence of the Amsterdam Coffeeshops.
Similarly, my comment about the relative libertarianism of the Edo era and
the consequent morality brought in during the Meiji resotratin was told to
me by a Japanese friend who is a theatre director (and firm traditionalist),
and I must say that at the time I thought he was rather over-stressing the
point. Other Japanese may have reported things differently. 
As a first time visitor to a country, one is more likely to pick up on
differences than similarities to ones own culture, and I am one of those
people who are unable to walk past a sign in Kanji without wanting to know
what it means). These differences were markedly stronger in Japan than in
other countries though which I have travelled (in Europe, North America and
Africa), though these differences are mainly due to the distance of Japan
from England.
My Japanese friends reacted to some of my questions with bewilderment ("why
are those schoolgirls wearing their uniforms on a Sunday? And are those
crazy socks part of the uniform?") Understanding any nation in such a short
period of time is a frustrating and futile business, as the various
conversations with other foreign travellers I met along the way bore out
(all of whom picked up on different things in their first impressions of
Japan). 
Never mind, I intend to go back as soon as possible.