Hip-hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization

Recently I have read the following book, its main points are:

Book title :Condry, Ian. 2006. Hip-hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Book Summary:

The thesis of the book is that the path of hip-hop development had showed that cultural globalization was not solely driven by powerful media (as a Frankfurt school’s thinking). This book shows that localized cultural forms could have a global shared-ness (from the US underground to Japan), and to understand hip-hop in term of a dichotomy of local/global could be problematic.

Condry argues that while the Japanese rappers drew inspiration from hip-hop which was about African Americans’ struggles, hip-hop became an approach for these rappers to talk about race issues in a Japanese way. Contrasting the hip-hop in the US as black noise, some people called hip-hop in Japan as yellow noise. In Japan, race as a topic could touch on the much debated issue of Japanese homogeneity. Rappers also touched on new cultural politics, and advocated transnational connectedness with others ethnic groups, for example easing tension with the Korean (p.47).

Condry notices that many Japanese emcees often packaged themselves into the images of samurai toughness, representing a link to Japanese culture e.g. in history and language (p.49). The author suggests that genba (the actual sites of performance) enabled the audience to feel the global nature of hip-hop while at the same time enjoyed a local feeling (e.g. through the samurai image picked by the rappers/hip-hoppers to represent themselves). Hip-hop generated a challenge to understand cultural globalization using the dichotomy of global and local (p.86).

Focusing on some hip-hop events held in clubs, Condry points out that the clubs were in existence amidst the larger music industry and in a society that encountered a changing youth culture. The young people were facing a change in employment pattern and a drop in job opportunities (p.87). Condry asks the question: whether hip-hop performance in clubs could influence the society (to cause reforms to improve the situation of the youth), the business world (that was looking for sale and profit) and government politics (that was looking at pop music as a source of soft-power) respectively (p.87). The book argues that genba hip-hop, based on performativity, could offer a way to distinguish between the different paths of cultural globalization. Genba hip-hop emerged from the collective focus of energy and attention from all participants, which was different from other US globalized culture such as McDonald fast food. Condry also asserts that through genba we could see how the global and the local intersected (p.94).

For the purpose of examining the relation between rap fans and Japan’s consumer culture,  and  based on the ideas of Clammer and Miller, the author asserts that “consumerism shapes capitalism while extending its reach, becoming integrated into notions of national and local identities” (pp.112-113). Quoting Miller, Condry suggests that “people admire authenticity through creation: if you make it, it is yours” (p.113). The author further argues that Japan in 1990s witnessed a change that could be noticed in the self-organization of hip-hop fans. There were two broad changes: an increased massifcation of popular culture, and an increased diversification of markets. In hip-hop, there were specialized scenes for different styles of hip-hop, and a growing number of fans came to occupy relative autonomous “island in space” (p.115). The author identifies two worlds of Japanese rap fans: the underground hip-hop and the party rap. On the changes in consumer culture, Condry identifies two new concepts seen during 1980s to 1990s: the shinjinrui (the new human type, i.e. those who had money to spend due to the economic boom) and the otaku (those youth who retreated from the society) (p.124).

Condry also pointed out the scarcity of women rappers in Japan. He concluded that this situation reminded us that there was still a peculiar conservatism among the men who control entertainment business in Japan (p.180).

Condry also looks into the use of English in achieving rhyming in hip-hop and suggests that Japanese rap demonstrated the contingency of linguistic identity. Using English could be interpreted as Western domination. But some of these uses were aimed at cracking the hegemonic understanding that Japanese was one people with one language (the Nihonjinron) (pp.134-5). Rapping was not just about rhyming, it was about finding a language that could creak the fissure of artificial language i.e. the “standard Japanese” (p.152).  Language used in Japanese hip-hop told us about the power of English in global popular culture, and that to evaluate the role of English depended on knowing why it was used (might be aiming at generating aesthetic or political forces) (p.162). This view of language politics might help us to see beyond the stereotype that the use of English was an evidence of “American influence” (p.163).

Condry argues that it was not money alone that motived the development of Japanese hip-hop. Without the artists’ commitment in organizing shows and reaching out to the wider audience, hip-hop could not generate money. For the artists, there were other goals to promote hip-hop: to promote upcoming projects, to build a reputation and to extend fan support. (p.182). There were no clear line between culture and market. Both economic force and the cultural force could be at work. Condry concluded that commercialism alone did not drive hip-hop in Japan.

Hip-hop in Japan showed that the conventional understanding of globalization was in need of a revision. If we viewed transnational flow in terms of multinational corporation, powerful media, or government forces, we would fail to see the diversity of paths that connected the global culture. Genba, the actual sites of performance (including nightclubs and recording studios) was and important path for cultural globalization (p.207). Going to clubs embodied a movement against the mainstream; it emphasis leisure, consumption and speaking out. Hip-hop offered a chance to speak truth to those in power, and provided a way for hip-hoppers to imagine themselves as part of a global cultural movement (p.217).

Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-1979

Recently I have read the following book, its main points are:

Book title: Hall, Stuart. 2003. Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-1979. Stuart Hall, David Hobston, A. Lowe, and Paul Willis. London: Hutchinson.

Book summary:

This book is a collection of papers from the Birmingham Cultural Studies Center’s journal: the Working Papers in Cultural studies. They reflect on some key themes and topics touched on during the formative period of Cultural Studies (p.8).

Chapter one talks about the first issue of the Working paper in Cultural Studies published in 1972 which admitted that approaches on culture studies could have a greater variety of ways, and probably be more than the Birmingham Centre could handle (p.15). As such, the Centre refused to fix the range and scope of Cultural Studies. The journal aimed to define and occupy a space, and to put Cultural Studies on the intellectual map. Some intellectual in that era felt that they were confronting a post-war British society which was in a period of change and development (p.16). The revival of capitalist production appeared to bring economic, political and cultural forces into new kinds of relation. What type of social formation was now in the making? What would be the consequences for traditional class relationship? These issues set the term of post-war ‘cultural debate’ and defined the space from which Cultural studies would emerge. The tension between ‘political’ and intellectual concerns would shape cultural studies ever since (p.17). The new direction was to rework procedures and methods so as to apply them to the study of living class cultures.

Among the writers, Raymond William defined culture as the ‘whole process’ through which meaning and definitions were socially constructed and historically transformed, literature and art were merely one kind of social communication. E.P.Thompson defined culture as rooted in the collective experience (p.19). It situated culture between ‘social being’ and ‘social consciousness’. Thompson insisted on the historical specificity of culture. Their writings implied a break with previous conceptualization, and moved culture into the wider field of social practice and historical practice which were defined as ‘sociological’ in a loose sense (p.20).

The ‘sociological encounter’ could be described in many ways and led to a new range of work with emphasis on ‘lived culture’, for example the study of youth future and the study of deviance in schooling etc. (p.22). It extended the meaning of culture from text and representation to lived practice and belief system etc. (p.23).

During the development of Cultural Studies, the influence of ‘Althusseranism’ was important. Althusser and his followers had reshaped the central issue regarding the relationship between ideologies/culture and class formations (p.33). Cultures as the lived practices of social groups inevitably produce a focus on the class formations. Althusser not only challenged both the attempt to reduce the specificity of ‘ideological instance’ to economic factor (i.e. ‘over-determination’), but also the attempt to see a simple correspondence between class formation and cultural formation (p.34). The argument was that classes were not simple ‘economic structure’, the formations included all practices: economic, political and ideological. Also, classes were not integral formations and did not carry pre-set ideologies (p.34). Similarly, Gramsci also resisted any attempts to align cultural and ideological question with class and economic ones (p.35). As an alternative, Gramsci brought about the idea of ‘hegemony’ which had played a key role in Culture Studies. Therefore we could see different research could employed different paradigms and took different focus (p.40). Furthermore, different areas of research had retained distinct mythological emphasis: some emphases on ethnographic field work, some on the centrality of text and discourse, and some on using historical methods of research on archive documents (p.41).

Chapter 4 talks about the subcultural conflict that happened in a working class community in East End London where re-development had begun (p.78). Phil Cohen uses a Marx lens to explain the conflict between the parents and the younger generation, and also the appearance of a youth subculture inside this redeveloped community which was in opposition to the parent culture (p.82). In the concluding paragraphs in explaining the delinquency in the working class, the author suggests that  in the study of structural relation for the emergence of subcultures, we needed to look at not only the Marxist theory, but also in psychoanalytic terms (p.87).

Chapter 7 talks about the relationship between housewives and the mass media which included radio and television. On the radio, the author concentrated on the reaction of women to the disc jockeys (p.107). Regarding television, he focuses on the feminine world, i.e. on how and why a female viewer decided the programmes to watch (113). My comment is that this was a research on feminism.

Chapter 8 talks about development of Media Studies at the Birmingham Center. Basically it first broke from the model of ‘direct influence’ into a framework which drew much more on the ‘ideological’ role of the media (p.117). Second, it challenged the notion of media text as a ‘transparent’ bearer of meaning. Their concern was about the ideological nature of mass communication and the complexity of linguistic structuration of its form (p.118). Third, it broke with the passive conception of the audience. Fourth, it explains the role of the media played in ideological definitions and representation (p.118).

Chapter 9 talks about the ideological dimension of the media. The chapter starts with a definition on ideology by Althusser. Then it adds in the argument made by Veron and Eco. Finally it quotes the idea of Barthes to explain the concepts of signifier and signified.

Chapter 10 was about encoding and decoding. It asserts that traditionally mass-communication research had perceived the process of communication as a circulating loop. It points out that this process could also be conceptualized as a process that had connection yet with distinctive moments of production, circulation, distribution (consumption) and reproduction (p.128). The latter conception had the advantage in bringing out how a continuous circuit: production-distribution-production could be sustained through a ‘passage of forms’. Based on this perspective, the chapter explains how a television programme, as a meaningful discourse, was produced, circulated and consumed (p.130). This chapter points out that linguistic theory frequently distinguished between ‘denotation’ and ‘connotation’. ‘Denotation’ was equated with the literal meaning of a sign. ‘Connotation’ referred to a changeable meaning that needed the intervention of codes in order to give the meaning. To the author the terms ‘denotation’ and ‘connotation’ were regards as useful analytic tools to differentiate between the different levels at which ideologies and discourse encountered (p.133).

Chapter 11 talks about the ‘impartiality ‘of television news and current affairs programmes. The author suggested that it was wrong to perceive TV news and public affair programmes as bias and distorted. The author proves his case by using a television account of the Labor government’s attempts in 1974 to win over the trade unions to accept a policy of wage restraint (p.139). The article concluded that the similar viewpoints held by the broadcasters, the state and the hegemonic organs of civil society such the TUC was not due to conspiracy. The broadcasting accepted the government’s logic of thinking due to the latter’s status as the elected representatives of the people. It was the ‘antiquated fallacy’, not bias, which put the broadcaster, the government and the TUC on the same side.

Chapter 17 argues that the ideology of sexuality was disparate and contradictory for women, although contained within a patriarchal relation such as active/passive (p.220). Using three advertisements that had a female or a female’s body part as the focus of attention, the author illustrates several points on sexuality about women. 

Is Taiwan Chinese? The Impact of Culture, Power, and Migration on Changing Identities

Recently I have read the following book, its main points are:

Book Title: Melissa Brown. 2004. Is Taiwan Chinese?  The Impact of Culture, Power, and                     Migration on Changing Identities. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of                California Press.

Main Points:

Chapter 1.- since 1999 Taiwan had started to assert its claim over sovereignty in terms of the social basis of its identity. The complex ways in which identity underlay the political debate over Taiwan’s future relationship with China was the subject of the book (p.2).

- the examination the border of identities. The question on How borders were drawn and how people cross them – could help answer the question on how could we get to the reality underneath the political rhetoric. How did we know what identities ordinary individual in Taiwan and China had? (p.3)

- a similar identity changes happened before and after 1949  in China’s Hubei showed that changes in Taiwan in ethnic identity were not unique to Taiwan (p.3).

- “narratives of unfolding” were not history, nor were they simply a biased interpretation of past events; they are ideologies – a conscious falsification, a conscious selection of some of the available evidence to serve a political purpose (p.6).

- identities must be negotiated; they were not simply a matter of choice, because identity formation in individuals and groups derived from their interaction with the social and cultural context in which they lived in (p.13).

- if we were to use Confucian criteria related to ancestor worship to classify people as Han, Taiwanese would turn out to be more Han than Chinese in post-cultural revolution 1967. Tu Wei-ming argued that the periphery such as Taiwan, Hongkong were more Confucian than the PRC (p.29).

- chapter 2- the goal was to provide a historical overview of Taiwan that included plains Aborigines from the early 17^th century to end of the 20^th century (p.36).

- the villages Toushe, Jibeishua and Longtian in Taiwan were descendants of plains aborigines that maintained an aborigine identities in spite of some intermarriage with Hoklo through the Qing period until after the Japanese colonial government mandated a ban on foot-binding. The aborigines took on a Hoklo identity in the 1930s and the author called this recent identify change “the long route to Han” (p.66).

-  chapter 3. the author reconstructs when and how the changes in identity in these 3 villages had occurred (p.67).

- except for the gendered  practices of foot-binding and chewing betel among women, Toushe, Jibeishua, and Longtain appeared culturally very like poor Hoklo villages. But they were still regarded as savages by non-aborigines; they were not conferred with the Hoklo identity. It indicated that cultural practise were not enough to confer ethnic identity (p.92).

- why older identities was preferred? The whole point of constructing narratives of unfolding was the presumption that antiquity conferred authenticity (p.132). Yet actual historical development of recent identities could be traced and they showed all too clear that identities were closely tied to socio-political circumstances.

- chapter 4. the book explains that mixed population used ancestry, not culture to claim Han identity, probably through the use of Han surname as “the short route to Han”. They changed identity before they culturally changed towards the Han model (p.134).

- the late 17th century identity changes were important to consider a new narrative of Taiwan’s unfolding for 2 reasons. First, people in Taiwan today accept this older identity changes more readily because people view antiquity as conferring authenticity. The second reason why short-route identity changes (by marriage) was important for the consideration of a new narrative of Taiwan’s unfolding was its cultural impact on Hoklo Taiwanese culture (p.135).

- in the present day, in order for the Taiwanese not to be considered as simply another regional variety of Han, Taiwan’s narrative  must show the distinguished new Taiwanese identity as uniquely different, it was actually the long-route pattern which appeared to be unique to Taiwan and could provide a basis  for claiming a difference (p.165).

- chapter 5, the book introduces the identities changes in the Tujia (natives) in Enshi of Hubei. It was used to compare with the situation in Taiwan because it had similarities to the new narrative constructed about Taiwan’s past. It showed that identity changes were not unique to Taiwan (p.167).

- with the founding of PRC, identity change in Hubei took a different turn, undoing short-route identity changes. Many ‘locals’ in Hubei was classified as Tujia in the 1950s. Most notably, officials in Hubei concluded that intermarriage between Han patrilineal ancestor and non-Han matrilineal ancestors led to de-sinicization. Yet the PRC denied such de-sinicization occurred in Taiwan (p.168).

- chapter 5 the book reconstructs identity and cultural changes among Tujia and their ancestor in Hubei.

- in Hubei on the concept of local and outsiders, there were two important conclusions. First, the border between locals and outsider shifted with each new wave of immigrants, people already there became ‘locals’ to the new immigrants. The second important conclusion was that knowledge of these historical shifts in identity was preserved in genealogies and oral histories (p.185).

- in many practices and beliefs relating the parental authority, locals in Enshi differed significantly from Confucian-derived element of Han culture. Thus in spite of local’s sense of themselves as Han; the government felt strongly that they were not Han (p.205).

- what happened in Enshi provided some insight into the PRC’s reaction to Taiwan’s new narrative. The PRC did not deny that de-sinicization was possible; it denied that cultural changes had gone far enough to warrant a change to non-Han identity (p.210).

- the author investigates how culture, power and migration each impacted identity differently. Ideologies in the form of ‘narratives of unfolding’ talked about identity in terms of culture, demographic condition that would affect social experience (p.210).

- chapter 6 talks about why culture, social power, and demographic condition had different influence on people (p.210).

- The ‘Taiwan problem’ – the question of whether Taiwan should be a part of Chinese nation was a political issue. Moreover, it was fundamentally an issue of identity. Identity was political as proved by this book (p.211).

- in the concluding chapter, the book would first examined the ideological terms of debate as well as actual experience which influenced the choices, and action of people and government. The chapter examines them in a theoretical level and then used a theory to discuss the real-world political implication of the new Taiwanese identity (p.211).

- the author combines cognitive, evolutionary, interpretive, and postmodern insights to suggest that choices were influenced differently by culture meaning, social power, the cognitive structure and operation of the brain, and demographic trend (p.228).

- analysis of the underlying identity issue in the ‘Taiwan problem’ showed how difficult it would be to work out the political impasse over Taiwan’s future. Identity was the negotiated product of the interaction between what people claimed for themselves and what others allowed them to claim. (p.245).

Taiwan: a political history

Recently I have read the following book, its main points are:

Book title: Denny Roy. 2003. Taiwan: a political history. Ithaca and London: Cornell University                       Press.

Main points:

- this book seeks to tell Taiwan’s story in a way that would illumine the origin of Taiwan’s present domestic and international political situation (p.2).

- chapter 1 talks about Taiwan’s early history. The people who became known as the Taiwanese came to Taiwan to get away from conditions in China. This was the beginning of Taiwan’s divergence from the mainland in social, economic, and political development. From here foreign influence would play an important role as well – first the Dutch and then the japans (p.31). While growing within China’s shadow, Taiwan remained distinct from China.

- chapter 2 talks about the Japanese occupation.

- chapter 3 talks about the return of Taiwan to mainland rule in 1945. Mainlanders had regarded the Taiwanese as semi feudal Chinese. Five decades of Japanese influence created suspicion about the depth of Chinese patriotism on Taiwan (p.56).

- Taiwanese had a different interpretation of the significance of the Japanese colonial period. While they resented the discrimination and restrictions on their political power, many Taiwanese also believed Japanese rule had helped Taiwan’s advance economically, politically, and socially. Taiwanese had their own sense of superiority. As some Taiwanese had reminded the mainlanders, it was the Chinese government that had given Taiwan to Japan in the first place (p.57).

- chapter 4 talks about the martial law and Kuomintang domination. The KMT’s fixation on recovering China had contradictory consequence for Taiwan. On the one hand, the ROC government required Taiwan people’s dedication and sacrifice; on the other hand, the KMT believed that successfully implementation the ‘Three principles of the people’ in Taiwan could serve as a model of KMT rule and weaken support for the CCP on the mainland.  Thus doing well in Taiwan would help KMT win back China (p.79).

- Despite the harsh treatment of some political offenders, the combination of modest political reforms began to gain the KMT some legitimacy in the eyes of many Taiwanese (p.104).

- chapters 5 talks about Taiwan in the Cold War. The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 convinced key US policymakers that the contest with the Sino-Soviet bloc had entered a new, more intense phase. In Truman’s word ‘the attack upon Korea makes it plain beyond all doubts that Communism has passed beyond the use of subversion to conquer independent nation’ (p.112).

- Truman saw the Korean War as a temporary setback to US-China relations and expected to return to their prewar policy of accommodating China (p.124).

-  Tokyo remained torn between the need to get along with the PRC, and the affinity of many Japanese for Taiwan based on ties of history and ideology (p.129).

- during the PRC’s Cultural Revolution (1967-77), Taipei answered  with a movement called the Cultural Renaissance, which reaffirmed Sun Yat-sen’s ‘Three principles of the people’ as the basis of Chinese society (p.144).

- the events of the Cold War and the Chinese civil war melded together partially but not completely. There was considerable tension between KMT and the US in the context of American Cold War strategy (p.150).

- it was hard to dispute that American discouragement of KMT’s planned ‘return to the mainland’ was in Taiwan’s best interest at least in the short term. The US continued to provide weaponry to Taiwan (p.151).

- Chapter 6 talks about the struggle of the Taiwanese for political reform and freedom. The ruling KMT conservatives worried that liberalization would make Taiwan more vulnerable to separatism or communist subversion (p.154).

- the opposition party DPP members made their public speeches in the Taiwanese dialect rather than in mandarin. DPP adopted a program with the basic goal that included self-determination of Taiwan’s political status trough plebiscite and rejoining the UN (p.173).

- chapter 7 talks about Taiwan under Lee Teng-hui. KMT’s evolution through the 1980s saw the beginning of a deep division; the most important fault lines involved the perennial struggle between Taiwanese and mainlanders (p.184).

- strategically, international connections and recognition could enhance Taiwan’s security. By strengthening its membership in the international community through economic, culture etc., Taiwan became more eligible to the protection offered by international norm (p.212).

- by and large Taiwanese preferred to wait rather than commit to either unification with China or independence. President Lee said ‘Most Taiwan resident have a fluid and ambivalent national identity’ (p.213).

- disagreement over the one-China principle was an obstacle to cross-strait talks between CCP and KMT. In 1992, negotiators for Taiwan and China agreed to shelve this tough political issue. Subsequently, a controversy developed over whether the two sides had reached a ‘consensus’ that they could hold differing interpretations of the one-China principle (p.219).

- chapter 8 talks about how the DPP captured the presidency. The trends of Taiwanese empowerment and weakening of the KMT culminated in the election of DPP candidate Chen Shui-bian as the president in March 2000 (p.227). The DPP’s successes when Taiwan entered a new century underscored the two main themes of Taiwan’s recent political history: democratization and the persistence of tensions with China (p.239).

- Chapter 9 concludes that this survey of Taiwan’s political history sought to aid comprehension of the island’s unusual present-day political circumstance. One peculiarity was that two distinct ‘Chinese’ government claim over the ownership of Taiwan (p.241). At issue was not only the question of which Chinese government had rightful claim to Taiwan, but also the possibility that Taiwan might reject both and opted instead for political separation from China. Taiwan had not made up its own mind. The identity of Taiwan’s people as a whole remained unsettled (p.242). While recognizing their cultural and genealogical roots in China, Taiwanese were particularly reticent toward the notion of to be ruled by mainland Chinese. Chinese in Taiwan took Taiwan’s handover to Japan in 1895 as a sell out by the central government. The US and China faced the prospect of a war over Taiwan that neither side wanted. China was committed to attack Taiwan under certain circumstances while the US was committed to defend Taiwan under certain circumstances (p.243).

Book’s idea in one paragraph: this book tells Taiwan’s story in a way that would illumine the origin of Taiwan’s present domestic and international political situation (p.2). By and large Taiwanese preferred to wait rather than commit to either unification with China or independence. Most Taiwan residents have a fluid and ambivalent national identity (p.213) and the identity of Taiwan’s people as a whole remained unsettled (p.242). While recognizing their cultural and genealogical roots in China, Taiwanese were particularly reticent toward the notion of being ruled by mainland Chinese.