Panel 58: Japanese Fashion and Festivals

Chair: Nobuko Adachi, Illinois State University

Panelists

Elise Ulrich, Illinois State University, “Toeing the Line: Irezumi and Tatū”

This paper examines the difference between two types of tattooing currently practiced in Japan: irezumi and tatū. There is still a stigma around the large and colorful irezumi due to their association with men and criminal gangs. Recently, however, there has been a new trend in tattooing practiced by young Japanese women for personal beauty and aesthetic proposes. These are labeled by the English loanword, tatū. Here, I examine ethnographically the practice of tatū-ing, and compare it to other traditions of tattoos in Japan, including the traditional irezumi and those found among the Ainu and Okinawans. I argue that tatūs are fashion statements, used by young Japanese to both imitate trends in Western popular culture—where tattooing by the current generation of women is widely popular—and as statements of resistance to continued patriarchy still found in Japan even after several decades of advancement in human rights. Tatūs are “in your face” fashion statements that neither the family, nor Japanese society in general, can ignore. Here, I explore this use of tatūs and ask what it is their symbolic meaning—public and private—among today’s young Japanese women.

Nobuko Adachi, Illinois State University, “How Might a Cultural Practice Be Sustained?: Survival Strategies in the Soma Nomaoi Cavalry Festival in Fukushima, Japan”

The Soma Nomaoi Cavalry event has been held in Fukushima, Japan, for the last 700 years, and was designated as an National Intangible Folk Cultural Asset in 1978. The significance of the event, however, has changed several times over the course of its long history when the local community faced political adversity and change. Each time, locals reunited the community by recreating the ideology and meaning behind the festival. In this sense, then, these kinds of intangible cultural heritages are more arbitrary and flexible than either (a) tangible cultural assets like artworks or archeological finds, or (b) other types of intangible cultural practices like kabuki plays and Noh dramas (which are regulated by iemoto, or masters of particular “schools”). However, today the Nomaoi event is facing a new crisis after the area was hit by a triple disaster in March, 2011, of an earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear plant meltdown. Losing participants and horses due to evacuation and attrition, the surviving people have turned to local government officials for help in sustaining this intangible folk-cultural asset. Today, the Soma Nomaoi Cavalry Festival is becoming a tourist attraction, and to accommodate this, the meaning of the event has become redefined and rebranded. In this paper I look at how intangible cultural assets become transformed in significant ways when the needs and identity of local people change due to the greater vicissitudes of politics, economics, and the social and physical environment.

Kimiko Tanaka, James Madison University, “Japanese Festivals—Community Wisdom, Solidarity, and Challenge”

Japanese regional culture is inseparable from deities and spirits. Locals have celebrated them through ritual performances at festivals. However, postwar urbanization challenged the continuity of such festivals that bring locals together. My book, Japanese Festivals – Community Wisdom, Solidarity, and Challenge documents the processes of locals negotiating and reinventing their festivals in rapidly changing rural regions in Japan. Based on archival data, interviews, and observations, the book highlights how regional festivals provide opportunities for reconstructing place-based identities and building social solidarity. It also highlights limitations in classical frameworks to understand social solidarity in communities due to their inability to consider fluidity in social and symbolic boundaries beyond rural-urban dichotomy. The project brings discussions on limitations in rural-urban political divide existing various nations, and suggest new ways to study changing rural communities.

James Stanlaw, Illinois State University, “Learning From Shōgun Today: Japanese History and Western Fantasy Redux ... and Reduxed Again”

In referring to James Clavell’s 1975 novel, historian Henry Smith said “In sheer quantity, Shōgun has probably conveyed more information about Japan to more people than all the combined writings of scholars, journalists, and novelists since the Pacific War.” Since then, much has happened. Besides two highly-watched TV extravaganzas, we find that Hello Kitty, manga, anime, and other agents of Japanese soft power having conquered much of the world. Almost half a century separates the two television shows; each are different from each other and the novel in significant ways. The ambitious 1980 miniseries won a Golden Globe award and a dozen Emmys. The new 2024 Shōgun miniseries on Hulu and FX has been almost universally critically acclaimed, with newspapers worldwide proclaiming that the new show “has a lot to teach the West.” In this paper I reexamine these two television renditions of Shōgun to see what messages they offer their respective generations. Do Westerners still see Japan as some kind of exotic fantasyland—like a Westeros in Game of Thrones—or has the collapse of the Economic Miracle jaded Westerners to the supposed economic—and spiritual—superiority of Japanese culture? Do the different Shōguns depict worlds starkly different now that a Cold War has been won, with neoliberalism triumphant? How does the use of language in these renderings affect how Westerners interpret plot, character, and affect? In other words, what—if anything—have we in the West learned from Shōgun?