Travelosophy: An Academic Guide to a Historical Tour of Kyoto (in 3 days)

Introduction

I have been fortunate enough to have my friends visit me in Japan frequently even after 2 years since my (temporary) leave from school in the North America. I love showing them around the cities I love and taking them to the restaurants for the food I crave, but I have not been recording the accounts of my travels with them in writing, which would have helped a lot for me to concretely learn about the places I have taken them to as well as to explain to the visitors why I take them to these places that are canonical in various guidebooks. It would not be sufficient for me to offer myself as a guide if I am taking them to places any guidebooks can simply tell them. In order for me to fulfill the honour which my friends have bestowed upon me, I need to show them the cities in the way I love about them – I need to have a personality, as it were, in my recommendations that are unique to my perceptions about those places. While I have been very satisfied with the places I have taken them to, I have been unsuccessful in offering them the proper reasoning with which they can satisfactorily understand why they are being taken to these specific places and not to other places.

I thought it would be a good occasion for me to be aware of the activities and histories implicit in appreciating the places I have taken them to so frequently. My hope is that this travelogue would serve as a clearer guidance as to why visitors should visit these places rather than any other place, and further, I hope to hear from my readers any suggestions or comments on my reasoning to better improve my sightseeing itinerary. On that note, let me begin with the most recent pleasure I had of showing my friends around the city of Kyoto.

Chapter 1: NijōCastle, Eikandō Zenrinji, and Heian Jingū

A friend of mine from school and her family in Montreal came to Japan on vacation, and I was honoured to be asked to be their guide while they stay in Kyoto. Even though I am not an expert in Japanese history, I dabble it a little, and I am an aspiring academic whose area of focus primarily includes the history of ideas in Early Modern Europe and in Japan. Being originally from Osaka, I have often travelled to Kyoto since I was little and have visited numerous temples and shrines with my family and form schools ever since. My specific interest in medicine in the 16^thand the 17^thcenturies has also made me appreciate more about the history before Edo-period, and I am always excited to talk about the history as well as the cultures in a given local setting.

Our first day in Kyoto turned out to be a rainy day. We had initially planned to start with Kinkaku-ji (Golden Temple; see Chapter 2 for detail), followed by a lunch and Ginkaku-ji (Silver Temple; see Chap.2), ending with Kiyomizu Temple (see Chap.2), but fearing that walking in those areas can be undesirable on a rainy day, I decided to change the plan and switched around the places we were supposed to visit on the following days to fit the weather constriction. There are of course many temples which you can safely spend time at without worrying about getting wet in Kyoto, however, this is a Kyoto trip for someone who visits Kyoto for the first time that I am planning, and not a day trip plan for someone who can afford to come to the city whenever they feel like it. So, it must fulfill the following requirements: 1) the places they visit must have some degree of historical significance that is internationallyrecognized, i.e. must have an International Appeal, 2) the places must be somewhat thematically organized so the histories or cultures about those places can be more easily retained in memory, i.e., memorability, 3) each place to be visited must have a uniqueness of its own so as not to be confused in memory later with all the other places they have visited, i.e. distinctness from each other while being thematically similar, and 4) the local and regional food or activities must be included, i.e. cultural appreciation.

In sum, places to be visited must be internationally famous so that even if they did not enjoy the places, they can still say that they have beentoKyoto with authority and that they can have their own opinions about them. This requirement satisfies the purely formal criterion of “having been there” aspect. The thematic organization and distinct categorization each avoids geographical/spatial separation and temporal conflation. By that, I mean if the places visited on a day is thematically organized, no matter far away they are from one another, they will always be remembered by association as a set, and one idea of any one of these places visited will necessarily trigger the other memory that is associated with it. Furthermore, if the places to be visited are chronologically connected or express a certain period in time rather than a whole range of periods at random, again, the idea of one period will necessitate in their mind to think of the following or preceding era(s) because they have experienced them by going to those places in a temporal order. These will encourage curiosity in them to learn more about the period(s) and the places and appreciate them more qualitativelyas opposed to the mere quantitativeappreciation satisfied in the International appeal. Lastly but not least, food and cultural activities that are parochial need to be included so they are not only learning about the new places and enjoying the tour intellectually but also empirically.

So, my tour plan must include both the quantitative-qualitative aspect and the intellectual/rational-empirical aspect in order for it to have a fully satisfying experience for any visitors. But that would only be said to be a full experience in an internal and subjective manner, i.e. the visitors can have those experiences without having me as a guide as long as they have a well-planned itinerary. Hence, I need one more criterion for justifying why it is better to have meas a guide rather than travelling by themselves or with someone else as a guide. That is to say, I as a guide must exhibit an emic perspective that is unique to who I am. The interactions with the locals or the ones who have studied about the area exclusively would add much more insight and meaning to the travel experience and make it unique to their own. With that in mind, I eventually settled on visiting Nijō-Castle[1],Eikandō Zenrintemple[2]and Heian-Jingū[3]on this rainy day. Now, on the surface, these three places have nothing in common, as Nijō-Castle was built for Tokugawa family’s residence during the Edo-period while Eikandōwas established during the Heian-period. As for Heian-Jingū, it was only built in 1895 to replicate the Heian period as a commemoration for its 110^thyear anniversary of the establishment of Heian-kyō, over twenty years after the Edo-period ended! What I focused on here, then, was not the historical connections with each place but on the various types of landscapes and gardens from Japanese history. The architecture of the main palace at Heian Jingū, for instance, mirrors the design and features of the Kyoto Imperial Palace in the late Heian Period (11^th-12^thcentury). The Japanese garden at Eikandō-Zenrinjiexpresses the solemn beauty that is a characteristic of the Muromachi period landscape. Nijō-Castle came in a much later period, yet its garden makes its use of space so abundantly that the sheer magnitude of the entire premise is sure to overwhelm any visitors with awe. Nijō-Castle, however, has another significant role to play in the visiting of Kyoto. In fact, Nijō-Castle marked both the beginning and the end of Edo-period. While it is true that the capital moved to Edo (the present-day Tokyo) in Edo period, the emperors still resided in Kyoto and the Shoguns needed to pay occasional visits to them throughout the era. The castle was used for the Shoguns’ lodging when they visited the old city until the restoration of power to the emperor that promoted Meiji period in 1868. Hence, Nijō-Castle is a product of Kyoto and is not at the same time in the sense that it is of the oldperiod. Indeed, the other places most frequently visited in Kyoto were from the period when Kyoto was still the capital of Japan. Its unique status in a historical standing as well as its historical value set itself apart from the rest of the establishment, I think, and that is the reason for my putting Nijō-Castle into the category of ‘landscape’ viewing itinerary, as opposed to, say, a ‘temple visiting’ itinerary. It seemed also fitting to start the tour of Kyoto from the grandiose Edo-period Shogun’s residence that marked the beginning of a new era both to grovel the visitors before the power of Shogun and to make an opening, so to speak, into the belly of the history of Japan. There were a few other advantages in choosing Nijō-Castle as the starting point and not visit there on the same day as we would visit Kinkakuji and Kiyomizu-temple. Even though it was a residence, it was at the same time a place of formal reception. As such, it was built in the center of the city, close to the Imperial Palace. However, all the majortemples in Kyoto are located at the outskirts of the city, and it is rather difficult to include Nijō-Castle if we plan to visit three temples in one day. There are few places that could be visited in the central Kyoto, however, including the Imperial Palace and Heian-Jingū amongst the others, which are also difficult to fit into a multiple temple visiting itinerary. On top of that, it was a raining day after all, and the castle provided us with a shelter for a short period. If it was raining heavily, neither Nijō-Castle nor Heian-Jingū would have been a very good choice. However, a little rain would enhance, rather than detriment, the expression of beauty in the gardens full of greenery, I reasoned. So here we were, starting with Nijō-Castle to mark our first activity in Kyoto.

After walking in and around the castle, we would see a rather stereo-typical Japanese garden that one may see in a botanical garden of the Japanese garden section in the West. It is rather a long walk in the garden when it is raining after the initial viewing of the castle. Such a walk is made exciting during the spring light-up of the castle and the garden, however, the light-up event had already been over by the days we got to Kyoto. The time allocated to the viewing of the castle and walking in the garden was about 90 minutes – I normally try to make it before 10 am so I would have enough time to find a restaurant for lunch and begin the next spot on the list flawlessly. It is always challenging to find a good restaurant that can be a representative of a Kyoto-experience. What are the famous food in Kyoto? The first few things that come to my mind are vegetables, tofu-skin (yuba), soba, udon noodles and sweets with macha or dango and so on. These are only a very few of the candidates representing the Kyoto food culture.[4]Generally speaking, dish with vegetables and/or fish are traditionally relatively predominant in Kyoto. Kyoto may also be a city where it is easier for vegetarians to find food that offers a traditional experience rather than having to choose to have a bowl of salad. Kyoto is, however, very much conscious of its culinary style and dashi stock (or, bouillon) is often an essential ingredient in Kyoto dish. This could be problematic for vegans or vegetarians who do not consume fish, for dashi stocks are oftentimes made from fish. There are of course vegetable dashi-stock, but it may generally be difficult to find a restaurant that does not use fish-based dashi not just in Kyoto but in all over Japan. My friends in this trip were not vegetarians, though they preferred vegetables to fish or meat. Kyoto, luckily, offers a very wide range of traditional food in that respect. So we went to this restaurant called Okakita[5]that has served various udon noodles and rice bowls for the last 70 years. It is located right next to Heian-Jingū and thus is in the center of the city.

After lunch, we headed towards our next destination, Eikandō-Zenrinji, which was about a 30 minute-walk from the restaurant to the east. By then, it was already past 1 pm. Each temple/shrine visit would necessarily take about 90 minutes, and I had initially planned to go to Heian-Jingū since it was right next to the restaurant, only to find out that Heian-Jungū would be open until much later and Eikandō-Zenrinji would close almost 2 hours before the former would close. Quickly changing the plan, we hurried to Eikandō-Zenrinji, which was first built in 853 as a Shingonsect temple to worship Five Wisdom Buddhas, but shifted its style to Jōdosect, formally introduced to Japan in 1175. Eikan 永観 (or also pronounced as Yōkan), who was the seventh head monk at the temple since its establishment in 853, built a facility used to give the needy and care for the ill. It was during Eikan’stime that the temple gained prestige so much so that there is a rather unflattering story of Eikanrecorded in document that is still told to this day. According to the story, Eikanalong with a number of monks was reciting sutras, when the statue of Amidacame to life which halted the ritual. AmidaBuddha then looked back at Eikanand told him, “You are too slow”. Ever since then, the posture of the statue has remained in that position. This statue of Amidais securely stored at the Amida-Hall.[6]

This temple is also known for its autumn foliage. It is much visited by many during November into early December, but it is surprisingly quiet during the spring to early summer season. The orange coloured Japanese maple leaves (Momiji) are mesmerizingly beautiful, but the green and new Momijileaves too are quite beautiful as well.

The next and the final stop was Heian-Jingū. By the time we got to the shrine was, I believe past 4 o’clock. Luckily, we still had about 2 hours to see the garden. As has been stated earlier, this shrine was built to replicate what it would have looked like during Heian-period for its 1100^th anniversary of the city’s establishment during the Meiji period for the industrial exposition fair held in Kyoto in 1895. Heian-period began in 794 and is named after the city of Heian (meaning ‘long lasting peace’), which formally ended in 1192 at the beginning of Kamakura period (initiating the rule by warriors in the subsequent centuries). It was the time of peace, as the name prophesied, and many art forms were cultivated and encouraged during this time. The Tale of Genjitoo is a product of this period. As a replica of such period, Heian-Jingū hosts many aspects of ‘good-old’ Kyoto. Its garden is probably most spectacular feature, as it takes up over the half of the area. The water in the ponds comes from Lake Biwa, the largest lake in Japan, in nearby Shiga-prefecture, and rare species of fish and turtles are seen here.[7]Although it was for an exhibition, the building remained to commemorate the emperor Kanmu, who was the emperor when Heian-kyō[8]became a capital.

By the time it was closing, there were almost no people left at the garden, which gave us a private viewing of the place with only the sound of a drizzle onto the pond to be heard. In this way, we ended our first day in Kyoto after 8 hours of walking.

Chapter 2: Kinkakujitemple, Ginkakujitemple, Kōdaijitemple,

Entoku-Inand Kiyomizu-dera

The second day onwards was a sunny day in Kyoto – a perfect weather for walking around the city and visiting temples. As it was just after the rain, the temperature was just right. We continued our trip with the initial itinerary plan for the first day, which ended up a much longer day than we had anticipated.

When I take people around in Kyoto, if they only have one-day there, I always follow this route to experience Kyoto. Kinkakuji – Ginkakuji – Kiyomize Temple is a route that covers the main temples in Kyoto, including the two of the most visited temples, i.e. Kinkakuji and Kiymizu-dera. This not only satisfies my criteria for a quantitative aspect but also a qualitative one as well, since in addition to be able to visit two most famous places in Kyoto, the paths leading towards them are just as what you would expect in Kyoto. Just in terms of popularity and notability, some might put Nijō-Castle in stead of Ginkakuji, but there is a logistic difficulty in such a plan. For if one were to visit the latter three set of places, there may not be enough time left to complete all three. Geographically, it only makes sense to either start with Nijō-Castle and work way up to Kinkakuji and then back to Kiyomizu temple or start with Kiyomizu temple and end with Nijō-Castle since Kinkakuji is located father north of the city and if you want to economize the time, you do not want to end up in the north when the sun begins to set. However, there are way too many distractions and souvenir shops along the path towards Kiyomizu temple that it is not wise to go there in the first thing in the morning, as it is very easy to spend time on the streets and to get tempted to just forget about the rest for the day. The most you could accomplish as tourists if you go to Kiyomizu temple in the morning would be one more place to visit on that day. But if you are only staying in Kyoto for a few days at most, and if you want to see and experience a variety of culture and be exposed to as many historical wonders as possible during your stay, Kiyomizu temple needs to be visited at end of the day. However, as I mentioned above, if you were to visit Nijō-Castle in the morning and then to Kinkakuji temple, and then to Kiyomizu temple, the transportation alone could take up some of the valuable time and I fear there would not be enough time to get to Kiyomizu temple.[9]While I would agree that you could visit all those places in one day, you will be necessarily taking a bus back from Kinkakuji to the downtown Kyoto to get to Kiyomizu temple, which takes away some fundamental experience of walking in the suburban part of the city. For a mere transporting to a place to another is not necessarily better in terms of experience – while such an itinerary may satisfy the quantitative requirement of sightseeing, it would rob away the qualitative aspect of the trip. Riding on the bus in a foreign country is surely an experience, but when you have to do it many times, it is refreshing to take a different means to explore the city. Walking in Kyoto is in itself an experience, but when you are just visiting for a few days, you do not have much time to spend on walking aimlessly in hopes that you may find something interesting. Chances are that you will find something interesting walking in a foreign country, if ‘something interesting’ just means ‘anything new’. However, something new does not necessarily fit into the grand scheme of narratives you are here to explore. It is good if you find something interesting in your trip, but it is even betterif you find something interesting that is grounded in a theme to tell a cohesive story. My itinerary on the second day, then, is organized around achieving that goal.

As usual, I started with Kinkakuji for two reasons. First, it is situated in the further north of the city of Kyoto that, by starting the day early in the far north, it would save time because I start at the northernmost area and gradually move my way back to the center, as opposed to starting at the center and then move northward and then come back. Second, Kinkakuji is ravishingly golden in its appearance that it sets a glorious mood for the day. It is better to start a day with the main and most lively attraction of all than to start it with a relatively minor spot and move upwards on the scale of excitement. Kinkakuji also uses up a lot of energy not because of the largeness of the garden but because of the swarming school students and tourists, constantly clogging your way through. After the customarily photo-op of the golden temple in the background, we walked along the beautifully arranged pathway and arrived at the Macha tea house, where you can have a quiet experience of having a cup of macha tea in a traditional setting. At Nojō-Castle the day before, we saw the political display of power right before us, making us aware of the period of battles and conflicts that once comprehended the entire city of Kyoto. On this day at Kinkakuji, sipping a bowl of macha tea surrounded by the natural gardenic landscape, we cleansed ourselves in the part of the history which embraced the cultural and religious appreciation of nature. With this activity, we end our visit to the golden temple and headed out for lunch and Ginkakuji.

Whenever I follow this route, I always make it a rule to stop at a local udon noodle restaurant called Ómen.[10]However, as luck would have it, it turned out to be closed on that day (Wednesdays). Having arrived at the area right by Ginkakuji, I was suddenly at a loss as to where to eat. This question may not seem as grave as I make it sound to be for many, however, I am an academic foodie and, like writing an essay with premises to support a conclusion, I like to tell a narrative about the places with the restaurants we eat at in order so that I could present a larger picture of the food culture by the end of the trip. This means that not anyrestaurants would do the job. Just as I cannot make an argument that dogs can swim because I had cereal for breakfast to-day, I cannot tell a consistent narrative to make a point about the food culture if a Kyoto themed restaurant had to be replaced with a mediocre Italian restaurant. Again, I am not saying that you cannot find a good Italian restaurant in Kyoto and that you would not have enjoyed the meal anyway, but only that it seems not only a waste but also detrimental to fill your stomach with a premise that does not necessarily support your conclusion.

In this way, we were forced to look for a suitable replacement that aligns well with the theme of the day and the visit. Many of the restaurants there on the street had similar items on the menu, which is fitting for the argument they are trying to advance as well. Indeed, each district should be making an argument in their own environment. This is why we do not see, especially in a smaller district nearby a temple, any European dish or Indian restaurants but they all seem to serve similarly oriented dish that represents that area of the town. This should make things easier, you may think, because if they all have what each other has to offer, it should be obvious that eating at any restaurants would suffice because they are all the same anyway. That is true and false at the same time, however. It is true in the sense that we know what food to focus on, lest so that we would not accidentally get the French-fries or pancakes, but it is false in the sense that we are now presented with many sets of premises for a specific conclusion we want to advance. As I have said above, each restaurant and each food we eat along the way until the very end of the trip builds up a likelihood of the conclusion in an inductive way. If we are presented with the similarly themed premises for a specific conclusion that needs to be reached at by the end, due to the limitation of how much we can eat in a day, using up one meal out of three on a wrong dish would leave us farther away from reaching that conclusion. At its worst, we may be entrenched with dealing away with the weakpremises, if not wrong, that we may not advance. I had only several minutes to decide in the entire street of restaurants leading up to Ginkakuji. Which restaurant would be best substituted for the one we had set out to eat at? There was no right answer (though there seemed to be many wrong ones), but we opted out for what seemed to offer a different narrative that best suited for our purpose of the trip. We went to the one that served udon noodles and grilled onigiri rice balls. That worked quite well, since grilled rice balls are something that the Japanese are casually fond of but it is hard to get when travelling – no convenience stores would have a freshly grilled onigiri nor restaurants usually carry that item on the menu. Furthermore, this restaurant, the name of which I cannot recollect now, had a yuba-dōfu udon noodle (i.e. udon with tofu-skin), which is among many things what Kyoto is known for.[11]This also helped us set a leitmotif in our food experiences in Kyoto, as we had udon noodle with thick starchy sauce the day before and then another type of udon dish unique to Kyoto on this day. If we could go to the udon restaurant I had initially planned to go the next day, we could theme our lunch with variations of udon noodles that are all unique and express the city of Kyoto. The grilled rice bowls too had played a significant role in expressing the sentiment of Kyoto, as it was grilled with soy sauce and white miso, which Kyoto is also known for.

Having enjoyed our supporting premise, i.e. meal, we resumed our itinerary into Ginkakuji. This is often translated into English as Silver Pavilion/Temple, as opposed Golden Pavilion/Temple of Kinkakuji, and was built somewhat in competition with the latter, for the purpose of building such a ravishingly golden Kinkakuji was to display the political authority (taxing the people to pay for the gold). So it was with Ginkakuji, though the temple does not actually use any silver at all.[12]Instead, it is a stereotypical wooden structure that is characteristic of Muromachi period. Many tourists tend to just go to Kinkakuji, as it is internationally more famous for its flashiness. However, those who actually have visited both places would often prefer Ginkakuji (Silver Pavilion) to Kinkakuji (Golden Pavilion), as the former displays a more nuanced spiritual calmness compared to the latter. It is also located at the polar opposite side in the northeast of the city from where Kinkakuji is located, which is in the northwest of the city, and both thematically and geographically, it makes sense to visit both places on the same day to cover the outskirts of the city. Another reason for choosing this place as the second spot in the itinerary is that it gives us a smooth transition to Kiyomize-dera, for there is a path starting from Ginkakuji that continues down south to the center of the city that you can walk called The Philosopher’s Path, so -called for a Japanese Hegelian philosopher and a professor at Kyoto University during the early 20^thcentury would often promenade by the river canal that runs through the city.[13]The path is also a great walk during the cherry blossom season and in the autumn. It starts from Ginkakuji to Eikandō-Zenrinji and into Nanzenji temple and Chión-In temple towards Kiyomizu-dera district. It is a good 40-minute walk from Ginkakuji, and normally by the time we get to Kiyomizu-dera area, also known as Higashiyama district, it is about 4 pm and plenty time to see the temple and browse souvenir shops in the area. As I said earlier, it is best to have some spare time planned ahead for this part of the city, as this is where most souvenir shops are located and many things Kyoto are definitely found here. However, one thing to note is that the shops around here (or around temples, unless they are in the downtown Kyoto) close at 5:30 to 6 pm, within the hour the temple closes. So if you arrive at Kiyomizu area at 4 pm, allocating 60 to 90-minute to the temple area would leave you only an hour or less to shop around. This would usually be enough, as long as you have extra hours at the end of your visit to Kyoto to come back for a souvenir shopping. This first visit is spent usually on promenading through the shops and decide what you may want to come back to buy for later. That was the plan, but yet another unexpected event was inserted. We did arrive at around just before 4 pm at the area yet continuing with the theme of Japanese gardens and knowing that my friends would enjoy seeing more of the traditional gardens, I made a judgment call to stop by at Kōdaiji temple (which is coupled with Entoku-In right across the street). Kōdaiji temple is located in the midst of the Higashiyama district and is a temple where Hideyoshi’s wife, Néné, dedicated her remaining life as a priestess after her husband’s death.[14]This temple and its garden represent a Zen philosophy and the landscaping was designed by a well-known aristocrat and a landscape gardener, Kobori Enshū, and completed in 1606.

The decision to stop by at Kōdaiji was good but also a tricky one, since visiting here would make us available at only around 5:30 to go to Kiyomizu temple just in time for its close at 6 pm. This would mean that there is no time left for the souvenir browsing, which was worrisome. However, we somehow managed to get out of the temple by 5:15 and then to browse around the shops walking up the streets and made it in time to get into Kiyomizu dera before 6 pm. It was already known to us that the said temple was under renovation and the most of the main hall was covered with sheets. It was for this reason that I suspected we would not need a lot of time to spend at this temple but it was enough to merely fill the quantitative requirement for this temple at this time. It was really serene and beautiful there, even though the most of it was covered. There were so few people, where it is otherwise overcrowded with tourists. It was not owning to the renovation that was undergoing, however, but it was because we got in 10 minutes before the closing time. It seemed like we were the only ones there and although it was rushed a little bit, it was very aesthetic and pleasing to walk in the quiet temple garden.

We were not out of the temple and ending our second day – yet we had more things to do on that day. The shops were still semi-open and we could go into several of them including my one and only favourite incense store on Ninen-zaka street called Niimi.[15]This is where I always make sure to get incense whenever I visit Kyoto and I have even had them ship incense to Canada in the past decade. It is that good. I was told by the manager at the store then that there is going to be a second branch opening in the midst of Gion street on Hanami-kōji[16]in July of 2018. It would be an amazing store to have in the center of Kyoto.

We then went to the other one and only Starbucks whose building is tailored to the local culture – that is, this Starbucks uses the Japanese traditional old housing of Kyoto and has seats with tatami mattresses inside.[17]

Having emerged ourselves with the richness of Kyoto culture, we were now headed for the dinner. Again, my travel plan is asset of arguments with each activity supporting its intended conclusion. However, I purposefully deviated from the underlining theme of Kyoto for dinner plans. This was because I could only get to see my friends during their visit in Kyoto and Osaka, and while there are many Kyoto specific dish to advance, there were also other aspects of Japanese food that I wanted to demonstrate to them. Therefore, I themed lunch and snacks in a Kyoto style fashion, but I advanced an argument for Japanese food culture in general in the evening. I only had a few days with them, and as such I had to make choices. While there are varieties of Japanese food that is authentic and traditional, such as sushi and tempura, etc… those items are easily acquired with good quality in the West as well. I wanted them to taste something they could only taste in Japan and limited to the food category in mostly chicken and vegetables which they enjoyed, but that did not narrow down much yet either. This is where the locals could be useful in offering an emic perspective that the tourists could otherwise not have been able to experience had they come all by themselves. There is simply way too much variety in food in Japan that one is often at a loss as to where and what to eat. In fact, food culture in Kyoto-Osaka area (as well as other parts of Japan) is such that you cannot probably try all the restaurants in a life time. Faced with many premises, I needed to be conscious of the kind of argument I wanted to make, which was for dinner to introduce them to Japanese dining experience. It does not have to be a fancy, expensive restaurant experience but it could also be a very local, family-oriented chain restaurant that the locals would frequent. Since I could only choose a few dishes out of so many that I could show to them, by the process of elimination, I could take out the Japanese food that is often offered overseas and whose quality is quite well-preserved outside Japan. Sushi restaurants and tempura restaurants as well as some of the common food such as rice bowls and fish can be enjoyed in Canada as well with just as good a quality as they are in Japan, thanks to many Japanese chefs opening restaurants over there. I asked myself what I had missed the most in 10 years of living abroad. What were the food that is both difficult to recreate at home and impossible to find at restaurants overseas? And such food must be primarily chicken or vegetables for this occasion. The first thing it came to my mind was yakitori. For some reason, I have never had a good yakitori in Canada or in the States that can be properly called ‘yakitori.’ The chicken tends to be cooked more thoroughly in the North America and probably they use a different breed of chicken as well, as in Japan, we do occasionally eat chicken sashimi– raw chicken, the idea of which is abhorred by foreigners. Oftentimes when I mention to my friends in overseas, they would tell me that it is not safe to eat chicken raw. However, that is not really accurate. It is accurate in the sense that beef tartar or even raw squid is not safe to eat. Chicken needs to be raised in a specific way for a raw consumption and must be disinfected thoroughly, but it is not contradictory in its definition to be prepared raw, as experience shows. It is a particular delicacy in southern part of Japan for a long time, and one can get safe raw chicken at various restaurants. In any case, it is nonetheless a rather high bar for those who are not accustomed to eating raw meat to try. But I would recommend it if any of the willing readers ever visit Japan, because it is really good.

Going back to the dinner, because of the reasons I raised above, chicken meat often has a different texture in Japan from in the North America. Even at Japanese restaurants run by Japanese chefs could not replicate yakitori served in Japan. So the first thing I wanted to try when getting back to Japan was to eat yakitori. With this passion in mind, I decided that we would have yakitori grilled chicken skewers as a sampler of Japanese local cuisine. One problem with many of the yakitori restaurants in Japan is that they are often smoking-allowed inside the store, probably due to the Izakaya culture in which customers would often smoke and drink after work. Even though many restaurants have followed the suit of the European countries in banning smoking inside the restaurants, some Izakaya places still operate under the old tradition. Yakitori is one of the soul food for workers in Japan that smoking while eating and drinking still remains deeply rooted. We wanted to avoid smoking-allowed restaurants, so our options were rather limited. The one yakitori place I really like is a chain restaurant called Daikichi, but its customers are usually smokers. So I ventured into a yakitori restaurant that is local and unknown to me. The dinner there was great – yakitori, to be honest could have been better, but the miso glazed eggplants and umeshu, i.e. plum wine, were supremely divine.

Thus, we concluded our second day, and we would rest well for the last day in Kyoto together.[18]

Chapter 3: Arashiyama and TenryūjiTemple in Kimono

Our last day together in Kyoto meant it is also a time to make a concluding remark in my argument. Some people may think that it is inconceivable that we did not visit Fushimi-Inari or Byōdō-In temple, to which I would agree with them. However, I did not include that in my 3-day visit itinerary in Kyoto with them because they were going to visit those two places the following day with another friend of theirs. So I decided that the only other places that need to be visited in Kyoto on the first trip are Arashiyama and Tenryūji, surrounded by a deep bamboo grove. Instead of simply visiting there, my friend suggested we would wear kimono and walk around. That was such a brilliant idea that we planned the day accordingly. We also had planned to attend a tea ceremony in Higashiyama district near Kiyomizu temple later in the afternoon. This worked out well since, even though it would be far away from Arashiyama to the center of the city, we still had not yet a proper time to shop around the souvenirs. The appointment at the tea ceremony set us the time limit in Arashiyama and that made it easier to plan the morning plan accordingly. We began our day, as per usual, early in the morning so that we would get to our first destination at the earliest time possible. Since we planned to wear a kimono and walk through the bamboo forest, we got to the kimono rental place at around 9:30 am. We changed into kimono and began walking slowly, as the footwears did not allow us to walk fast. We arrived at the bamboo forest at around 11:30 am, and spent some time taking pictures in costume. We then arrived at Tenryūji temple[19]where I also made a reservation for a traditional temple dish, Shōjin Ryōri.[20]

The lunch was amazing and it was very filling as well. Especially sitting on the tatami room in a traditional resto-house with kimono in Kyoto was something exquisite and enriching. Shōjin Ryōri is also something that encompasses the culture of Kyoto that it was better appreciated after having been to all the places we went and having tried all the food we tried. It was in essea summation of Kyoto trip, a finale to be impressed upon memory. After the lunch, we hurried our way back to the kimono rental place to return the kimono (as we were all getting quite uncomfortable with the shoes) and changed into our own clothes and resumed our walk into Togetsu-kyō bridge. Along the way, we stopped for macha drinks and rest at Arashiyama station. We had to leave the place to catch the train at 3 pm, so we walked rather hastily across Togetsu-kyōbridge and got to the station. We then got back to Shijō area, the center of Kyoto to walk up to Kiyomizu area. We went through Yasaka shrine and arrived just in time for the tea ceremony at Ninenzaka street where we were to have the experience. It took about an hour, learning a little about how to drink tea properly and then we had exhausted all the activities that were time-sensitive. We then looked around the souvenir stores and visited Ghibli store and other cute shops. It was time to go back for the last dinner in Kyoto together, and we strode through Hanami-Koji and were lucky to see a real Geisha passing by us. The concluding paragraph for the Kyoto visit naturally consummated in the udon restaurant that we had planned to go earlier. Ómen, the restaurant, is a chain restaurant in Kyoto and there is a branch in the downtown as well. This udon is uniquely Japanese in that you dip the noodles into soup and eat, rather than the udon already soaked in soup. You also put vegetables of your choice and spices to taste. With this dish, we completed the 3-day plan of visiting Kyoto.

Conclusion: The Itinerary Revisited

In this way, our all day long activities of experiencing Kyoto in terms of history, society and culture was concluded.  We had to make several in-the-moment choices due to the bad weather and unexpected events, which are a part of what it is to travel, but it was overall a complete success. In this itinerary, I divided the activities into 3 distinct categories according to the themes; namely,

DAY 1: Nijō-Castle => Eikandō-Zenrinji => Heian-Jingū shrine,

DAY 2: Kinkakuji => Ginkakuji => Kōdaiji => Entoku-In => Kiyomizu-dera

DAY 3: Arashiyama => Bamboo-Grove=Tenryūji temple.

These 3-day activities, where each day stands on its own, can be rearranged according to the purpose and preference of the individual tourist. However, I would argue that my plan for each day beautifully illustrates the themes allocated to its respective day in order to successfully reach its own conclusion of the day, which in turn supports a further argument that Kyoto culture is experienced only thorough the aggregates of monadic experiences. Only when these perceptions and sentiments felt have intertwined with one another can a theme of the historical harmony come to life. In other words, each single day filled with the activities by themselves would only express one aspect of Kyoto and it is necessary, for instance, to have experienced previously various types of udon noodles and Japanese food to appreciate the summation of udon at Ómen or Shōjin Ryōri at Tenryūji temple in Arashiyama. Similarly, it was necessary to have been to Nijō-Castle and Kinkakuji temple as well as other temples visited to reach an enlightenment at Tenryūjitemple, whose name means a dragon in the heavens. It is only at this stage in the third day after the series of activities that one finds home at the spiritual awakening in the bamboo forest, dreaming of becoming one with the drago

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]There are of course Kaiseki Ryōri, Shōjin Ryōri, Yu-Dōfuand many other Dashi-based dish that are distinctly Kyoto. Nishin(herring) sobaand tempuraare also locally known. Sushi also was first inventedin Kyoto, i.e. nare-zushi. Ayu(or sweetfish) too is a delicacy.

[5]See https://www.yelp.com/biz/岡北-京都市for reviews and see http://www.kyoto-okakita.comfor the official website (only in Japanese).

[6]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eikan-dō_Zenrin-ji

[7]Namely, striped bittering, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Striped_bitterlingyellow pond turtles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_pond_turtleand Japanese pond turtles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pond_turtle.

[8]Heian-kyōjust means ‘the capital of peace’, as ‘kyō’signifies a place where the emperor resides. So it was with Kyōto, which simply means ‘the city in which the emperor resides’- similarly, Tokyōjust means ‘the eastern place where the emperor resides’ – this is because after Edo period, the emperor moved to Edo, changing the place name to ‘a city in the east where the emperor lives’, i.e. Tokyō.

[9]This could be contested, however, since normally if you start with Nijō-Castle at 10 am, you are most likely to get out and have lunch by 1 pm. You may begin your visit to Kinkakujifrom 1:30 and then leave there at 3 pm, which would give you enough time to not only get to Kiyomizutemple but also have time to shop around. However, I believe this way of visiting each area would necessarily omit the pathways in the city of Kyoto that may be of an equal value to visiting those places, as I explain above.

[10]See here for the reviews in English https://www.insidekyoto.com/omen-restaurant-kyotoand here for the official website http://www.omen.co.jp

[11]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tofu_skin

[12]There are some theories as to why it is called Silver Pavilion, and one of which suggests that it used to be initially coated with silver but after the multiple destructions of the temple over the years, it was aborted in rebuilding the temple for the expense.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginkaku-ji

[13]https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3906.htmlsee also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher%27s_Walk

[14]https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3927.htmland https://www.kodaiji.com/e_index.htmlfor its official website in English. In Japanese, here http://www.kodaiji.com/index.html

[15]For an amazing selection of original and traditional incense, visit here! http://www.2nenzaka.ne.jp/EN/article/11

[16]https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g298564-d1956593-Reviews-Hanamikoji_Street-Kyoto_Kyoto_Prefecture_Kinki.html

[17]http://www.spoon-tamago.com/2017/06/22/tatami-style-starbucks-ninenzaka-kyoto/

[18]My friends would stay 3 more days in Kyoto, but I was only available for the first 3 days.

[19]http://www.tenryuji.com/en/

[20]https://savorjapan.com/contents/more-to-savor/shojin-ryori-japans-sophisticated-buddhist-cuisine/

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Abstract: History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine in Japan Vol. 2: Oni, Yokai and Evil Spirits as Causes of Illness (日本医療科学の哲学と歴史 第２弾：病因としての鬼、妖怪、そして魔)

Having spoken of the scientific attitude in pre-modern Japan through the eyes of Ninja, who supposedly possessed supra human knowledge of the human behavior and natural medicine, it is now time to delve further into the Buddhist conception of how the world operated. In the first part of my research, I discussed the ways in which a particular group of war specialists in Japan developed their own system of scientific knowledge, prior to the Western contact, and thus making it distinctly Japanese. This group of war specialists, Ninja, studied extensively on human behavior and psychology but my studies have shown that they had poor understanding of medicine and lacked the interest as well as the philosophical rigor in discovering the causes of illness, which in turn led them to essentially rely on nothing but the placebo effect in curing sickness. Hence, in this second part of my research into the history and philosophy of science and medicine in pre-modern Japan, I will look at the broader perspective on medical theory and attitudes towards illness amongst the monastic doctors as well as the commoners prior to the importation of the Western science. In particular, my interest is in the etiology of various types of sickness and how people in Japan dealt with the symptoms. It is of course not possible to speak of purely Japanese practice, since Chinese influence is everywhere seen. However, my study will show that Japanese Buddhist philosophy nevertheless developed distinct features unique to Japan, perhaps as a result of the synthesis of the Buddhism with the Japanese native religion of Shintoism. It is in this context that I will be discussing about the medical philosophy proper to Japan, which must have existed in order to account for sickness and beliefs unique to the culture that were not found in the continent. In this article, I will focus on the supernatural yet real causes of illness according to the Shinto-Buddhist philosophy. Indeed, in the pre-modern period Japan, the causes of illness were explained in terms of the Traditional Chinese medical philosophy, Taoism, and Buddhist medical theory. According to one such view heralded by the etiology explained in the most widely studied book, Makashikan, written in the 6^th century by the founder of Tien Tai school, Chigi (538-597), the major causes of illness were six in number. They are 1) the imbalance of four elements, 2) excessive eating and drinking, 3) lifestyle related diseases, 4) daimon, 5) evil spirits, and 6) deeds in the previous life.[1] Of these, the first three are natural causes and thereby can be treated with the medical knowledge. On the other hand, the latter three are supernatural causes and cannot be treated except spiritually, i.e. one must follow the path of the Buddha. I will focus in particular on the daimon and evil spirits in the field of medical thought in pre-modern Japan. I will unveil the familiar concepts of Oni and Yokai in light of medical context in the history of Japan, and analyze the ways in which these supernatural forces came into the medical philosophy in the Japanese monastic medicine. [1] Taku Shinmura, Medical History in Japanese Buddhism, 34-36.

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Critique of Sexism in Japan: Enlightened Sexism and AKB48

“Before atrocities are recognized as such, they are authoritatively regarded as either too extraordinary to be believable or to ordinary to be atrocious. If the events are socially considered unusual, the fact they happened is denied in specific instances; if they are regarded as usual, the fact that they are violating is denied: if it’s happening, it’s not so bad, and if it’s really bad, it isn’t happening.” – Catherine A. MacKinnon

I: Establishing the Social Norm

Especially since the 1990’s, the way in which we receive news and information has radially changed, thanks to the ever-improving technology. The current generation and the parents of this generation have always lived with the information technologies the older generations could not even conceive of possible. Radios had been around for a while before televisions came to dominate the domestic life, yet prior to the 1950’s, even the television programs were entirely insipid from our modern standard[1], and it was only after the 1960’s when the colour TV was introduced that the people “shared” information worldwide.[2] Hence there is a sharp distinction between what TV was before the 50’s and what it came to be, in particular, after the 60’s. As more households owned colour televisions, the function of television in society changed from mere reception of information to entertainment. People began talking about programs on TV at school, people had much easy access to product advertisement, and it became the norm of social networking among young people. Television programs were, increasingly, catered for the enjoyment of younger generation. Animation was revolutionized with Osamu Tezuka’s unique styles that captured every child’s attention in the 60’s. TV shows included plots that involved teenagers and music programs aimed for a larger audience by having a popularity contest. People no longer had to decide what is trendy to wear, but only had to follow what the celebrities wore in movies and shows to stay in fashion. Hence, what was fashionable was no longer parochial, which admitted gradual acceptance of the community after criticism, but now instantaneously accepted nationwide: whatever she was wearing last night on channel 8 became the fashion. As women were allowed to work along with men, they became the target of scrutiny. “That black dress she was wearing was sexy,” “The colour coordination of the anchorwoman’s clothes was a bit off,” and so on.[3] Television succeeded in setting up a social norm it desired, while people following the norm set by television programs believed they were the part of the culture: the movement, as if they had always worn that black dress. This was the era of the first transformation in social media – commercialization of information.

Over the years, television programs and celebrities came to be regarded as that which reflects reality. This is both true and false. While televisions must understand what is popular among the youth culture and society to be successful, youth culture and society are fed on that very idea of what is popular by the televisions they never miss to watch. In other words, it is not what people want that televisions show, but it is what the televisions want people to want that they show. If televisions are successful in making people want what televisions want (which they are), then it is not completely false to say that televisions show people what they want. But it is not true either to say televisions are responding to the public needs, since it is the very televisions themselves that export the idea of what is desirable for the public.

With the widespread of the Internet in the 1990’s, the media would undergo yet another transformation by commercializing the public. By connecting the people worldwide through the web of networking, anyone can now be seen or interviewed on the Internet. Websites such as YouTube and blog sites are perfect ways to broadcast yourself in your own words. The first decade of the 21^st century saw a growing development of social networking systems such as Facebook and MySpace. Information has transformed itself from top-down structure (i.e., a center gathers information and send it out to regions) to horizontal stricture (i.e., unfiltered information disperses from anywhere). The biggest advantage is of course the accessibility of information by almost anyone with the Internet, diverse discussions that allow people to learn more about the other culture and world affairs easily, and transmission of minority opinions into the world. It is only natural that liberal views become popular among young people as well as the educated. But even such tremendous social benefit is not without a backlash. As liberal views are shared almost worldwide, topics concerning sexuality and gender in particular have taken a twisted turn. In this global age, everybody knows that gender discrimination to be outdated, everybody sees that sexism is a problem in the past, everybody takes for granted that feminism has won the battle for gender equality. Thus, being a feminist in this enlightened era is clinging onto the glory of the past. To be a feminist, indeed, is outdated. It is old and hence to be rejected. “Why would you bring up feminism,” people would question, “since feminists won the battle decades ago? What’s the point of claiming that you are a feminist, other than trying to impress people with your moral sensitivity?” Feminism, indeed to them, died when it ‘won’ the freedom it set out to achieve.

As a matter of fact, feminism is far from dead. In fact, we are facing a new type of anti-feminist movement that is far more subtle and malignant; we are entering into the new phase of discrimination and oppression with the advent of the Internet. This is the age of global sexism, where the uneducated is controlled by the uneducated. Just as bullying has become a global issue throughout the nations with the abuse of the Internet, sexism too has become upgraded. This is what Susan J. Douglas calls ‘the rise of enlightened sexism’ – to understand the mechanics of how enlightened sexism works requires a completely different set of conceptual system from our previous mindsets. We no longer are facing the problems of lack of political opinions or the right to education (the first wave feminism), we no longer are dealing with the attainment of equal job opportunity for women (the second wave feminism), nor are we simply dealing with the unwanted sexual encounter or sexism behind the closed door (the third wave feminism), but what we are facing now is enlightened sexism – it is enlightened in that it “is feminist in its outward appearance but sexist in its intent.”[4] Not only is it dedicated itself completely to undoing feminism (hence it is also an attack against all the feminist battles previously fought) but also includes in-your-face sexism, but done with a twist so it would not seem like sexists are actually being sexists, for why would they, since they are giving opportunities for the girls’ own good.[5]

In this paper, my objective is to elucidate how this enlightened sexism has come to dominate the popular culture to the extent that has turned most of us into unknowing hypocrites. At the same time, to discuss this issue with a sense of urgency, I have picked an increasingly popular Japanese girls-only singer group, AKB48, as the ultimate embodiment of the enlightened sexism.

II: Enlightened Sexism

Social ethics in Japan is almost non-existent. Frequency of death by overwork[6], pornography on the trains and stations[7] and stifling of minority opinions in society[8] are some of the glaring evidence of this. “Men can choose to enter an adult bookstore; women and children cannot choose to avoid sexually violent or beauty-pornographic imagery that follow them home.”[9] There is injustice in society, and nobody is doing anything about it. In the society where female workers get fired because they became pregnant[10], and where it is socio-culturally accepted even by the female workers themselves, it is no wonder exploitation of the oppressed gender becomes the norm and justifies itself by the name of ‘cultural’ practice. In the early 1970s, women in Japan were influenced by the philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir and of Betty Friedan. But at the wake of 1990s, as the enlightened sexism rose as a backlash of women’s getting equality, feminism in Japan existed in name only and its philosophy had practically gone extinct. People still believed that women should be granted equal rights as men, but women in Japan have repeatedly told me, “I don’t like feminists, because they assume they are better than men; they want a revenge, and treat men as their inferior. I don’t like that.” Indeed, this is not a phenomenon unique to Japan, but prevalent in the Western societies as well. But what is different from the Western societies is that in Japan there is no one who tries to correct that definition of feminism, because they believe correcting someone assumes that they are superior to others and hence brings about a hostile eye and embarrassment to themselves. This attitude, indeed, of seeing ethics as a sign of superiority makes it impossible for employees to file a complaint about excessive overwork or for women workers to criticize male perspective (such as that it is natural and lawful for men to fire women because women would get married and quit anyway) in society.

Hence, AKB48 sprang out and won success in a society most fitted for exploiting the socially weaker. Here, perhaps it is best that we see what it is that is so vehemently abhorrent about the girls-only popular singer group in Japan, AKB48, how it encapsulates and promotes the aspects of enlightened sexism and why it, more urgently than other groups similar to it, needs to be discussed and paid attention to from the perspectives of social ethics and culture. AKB48 is a singer group comprised of (in principle) 48 girls who are amateur singers. Yasushi Akimoto, who created and writes lyrics for the group, has produced a number of popular idol groups in the past, but maintains the view that this group is different from any other groups in the past or present.[11] Indeed, Akimoto himself emphasizes that its concept is radically different in that most singer groups go onto the stage after “strict auditions” and “go[ing] through difficult lessons and coaching”, whereas with AKB48, it is the opposite. “AKB48 girls are ‘unfinished’”, Akimoto continues, “they are still not very good at singing or dancing” and “are unpolished and fans can watch them progress.”[12] Asides from a poorly constructed argument from the aesthetic point of view,[13] what stands out in its marketing strategy is that fans can watch them grow. In fact, this is the entire concept. But who would want to watch, semi-permanently wasting their time and using their money, something that is not finished? This is not a sporting contest; when was the last time you just watched a group of people practice until they become skilled at what they do? Clearly, there needs to be an aspect that keeps the audience interested – interested enough that people would not just quit watching. This is where the employment of young girls come in handy. They are malleable, cheaply employed and attractive to male audience who are the one with money. As has been hinted upon above, women in Japan are predisposed to housework duties rather than aspiring careers. Even if they do want careers, they get fired as soon as they have babies. The society in general makes it hard for women to be women. Hence it follows that it is usually the men who have spending money at their own disposal. It is usually the men who work, and it is the men whom companies want to hire.[14] Akimoto was lying when he at one point denied that he is strictly targeting men as his audience when asked a question implying if he is merely using girls to allure economically stronger sex.[15] As a reputable producer of entertainment industry, it is hardly likely that he had not thought about the targeting audience. In fact, he does state that he was initially targeting “people who like idols.”[16] Being fully aware that people who like idols are predominantly men with economic independence,[17] he cannot have sounded more hypocritical than then. This employment of young girls has another benefit of masking the apparent sexism of the past, and turn it into apparent pro-feminism in outward appearance. Contrary to the women in the past, girls can now get jobs as governors, lawyers and distinguished artists. Even in the United States, a 2009 poll showed that “60 percent of men and 50 percent of women ‘are convinced that there are no longer any barriers to women’s advancement in the workplace.’”[18] In Japan, where women believe it is natural for companies to fire them upon pregnancy, the growing popularity of female singer groups in Japan is a proof that women have attained what feminism set out to accomplish and even more. But here lies the trick of enlightened sexism. Even though girls became popular and achieved public fame and ‘career’ success, they neither sing nor dance well on stage, singing in over 10 people at the same time renders it impossible for any sensible audience to ascertain the talent each singer may have, and these girls are often not praised for their singing or dancing abilities (since, for one thing, they all dance the same) but based on their personality, appearance and whether they are single of not.[19] This is a clear statement of enlightened sexism: women are supposed to be admired for how they appear, not what they can do professionally. Is it truly said that women have achieved the same social equality as men? Do men get fired for dating somebody? Are they barred from the competition if they are ugly? Enlightened sexism “takes the gains of the women’s movement as a given, and then uses them as permission to resurrect retrograde images of girls and women as sex objects” and such that it proclaims that since women have attained equality, “now it’s okay, even amusing, to resurrect sexist stereotypes of girls and women.”[20] Because everyone knows that sexism is ridiculous and the guys who embrace it is a bunch of morons, the objectification of women is acceptable; after all, it can’t possibly undermine women’s equality now that they have it all, right?[21] In fact, this is one of the comments I received against my criticism of sexism in popular culture:

“You treat consumers like complete idiots who cannot tell a fantasy that they are being sold from reality. Let people have their fun – if it’s all consensual, it should be just fine”[22]

We all know that they are selling a fantasy, and no one is stupid enough not to differentiate the reality from fantasy, and if they are, then they are just morons – these people “are so dumb, such helpless slaves to big breasts… why, it’s actually a joke on [these] guys. It’s silly to be a sexist; therefore, it’s funny to be a sexist,” so the female display is completely harmless and a feminist critique not necessary.[23] We all know sexism is stupid and retro, so why would we be sexist? Only some clueless morons who don’t get the jokes would think that![24] In fact, now the feminist battle is over and won, we should embrace we used to see as sexist as a relief, including hyper-girliness. Thank God girls and women can bathe together in the shower, use sexy appearances to get jobs, and now act dumb in string bikinis to attract guys. Since women allegedly have the same sexual freedom as men, they actually prefer to be sex objects because it is liberating.[25] That this is a common view by male audience of AKB48 and is widely accepted as a good argument is obvious from a number of comments I received against my criticism.

“Yeah heaven forbid women sing about sexuality. I mean, we all know that women are completely sexless creatures who should only be impregnated in the name of procreation.

And about the girls being “too young”, you clearly are very out of touch with the sexuality of young people today. I can tell you that when puberty hits, it hits, no matter what any moral or law says.[26]

“These girls are not being exploited. They know what they are doing, get money for it and the worst they have to endure is a few morons throwing tickets in their face. Noone [sic] is forcing them to endure it and they get paid for which makes this a regular job. Also they can quit anytime they want.”[27]

“Furthermore I have talked about akb with university students and know full well that girls like akb because they are cute, have cool dresses, use vivid colors and they make songs easy to sing at karaoke bars.”[28]

“Wow just wow, so a girl who is 15 and decides for herself what she wants, then it’s wrong? Girls are old enough to decide by the age of 15 if not sooner.”[29]

These are some of the comments that praise (hence presupposes) equality and independence of women in the 21^st century. If you see women doing something sexual, it is the proof that they have been liberated. Further, who am I to say they are exploited? Obviously it is what they want to do, after all, “no one is forcing them” to do this. However, this kind of view is exactly what enlightened sexism fosters, as it “is especially targeted to girls and young women and emphasizes that now that they ‘have it all,’ they should focus the bulk of their time and energy on their appearance, pleasing men, being hot, competing with other women, and shopping.”[30] It takes what used to be sexist but with a twist – with seeming approval from the women who are exploited themselves. “If women are doing it against their will, then it is bad,” these perpetuators say, “but they signed up to be sex objects themselves. So why bother and assume your view, which is contrary to what those girls themselves say, is right?” Sure, women who take off their clothes for the camera are not exploited, because they made the decision to do it. They can be sexual now and turn their backs on stick-in-the-mud, because it is liberating. But if this were true, that this is what girls want, and that what media do is merely reflect the reality, why do we only see them who are skinny and pretty? The very fact that AKB48 does not have any women considered overweight tells us something we intuitively know: that media are not simply mirrors that show the reality. In fact, Susan Douglas warns us in her book that “[m]any producers insist that the mass media are simply mirrors, reflecting reality, whatever that is, back to the public. Whenever you hear this mirror metaphor, I urge you to smash it.”[31] She also feels that if media are mirrors as they say, it must be fun house mirrors where you see your figures distorted and certain parts become huge while other parts nearly disappear. It eventually dedicates itself on “celebrat[ing] female centered-knowledge – fashion, makeup, babies, relationships – that used to be derided as trivial, and insist that such knowledge matters.[32] That this idea of enlightened sexism is propagated in AKB48 is also made apparent with their “online application called ‘AKBaby’ which allows fans to visualize how their children would look like if their mother were one of the AKB48 girls.”[33] With this application, by sending your pictures, they will computer graphically generate a picture of a baby made with one of the AKB48 members. Indeed, one of the creepiest triumphs of enlightened sexism is the sexualization of young girls as harmless, funny or both.[34] This is why AKB48 girls are mostly consisted of younger girls, wearing bikinis or nothing at all but soap bubbles, including 14 years olds.[35] All this is justified because, as one commented, “girls like akb because they are cute, have cool dresses, use vivid colors,” as if it makes it all okay for them to sing about teenage prostitution.[36] Perhaps, it is less of a problem if they sang about references to safer sex or sexual risks or responsibilities, but they don’t. The questions these perpetuators of enlightened sexism avoid to ask themselves are how girls and women have been sexualized, how that is different from the way men have been, and what the consequence of all this might be.[37] Studies have shown that when young men are exposed to such stereotypes AKB48 portrays women as, i.e. girls bathing each other, thin girls wearing bikinis while smiling for no particular reason, or wanting to be sexualized, men are more inclined to treat women as sex objects or approach them in similarly sexist ways.[38] Another study found that when women are exposed to the similar stereotypical images, they are less likely to want to assume leadership roles and more likely to choose a subservient position.[39] Such studies clearly show us that how influential media are in shaping our identities, our dreams, our ambitions and even our fears. For such media’s “relentless parading of hyper-thin women corrodes many girls’ and women’s self-esteem, makes them very dissatisfied with their own bodies, and contributes to the prevalence of eating disorders.”[40] This is also evidenced by a 2006 survey, where girls felt they had to be skinny to be successful, more than half of the girls in grades three through five worried about their appearance, and yet another study showed that the number one wish of girls between the ages of eleven and seventeen is to lose weight.[41] A primary school teacher in Japan told me that her 6^th graders do not stop talking about how they wish to be like AKB48 members during lunch break. But these idols they wish to be like are distortion of reality. Just as in the West, Victoria’s Secret gives a definitive answer to the ultimate question: “What is sexy?” Answer: Gisele Bundchen or Heidi Klum, AKB48 too defines what success and beauty should look like: Oshima Yuko, Kashiwagi Yuki, or any others in the group, for that matter, as they all point to one answer: Barbie. This is the enlightened sexism’s ideal female form.[42] In fact, this group is so obsessed with creating a perfect female form that in June 2011 they created a computer-generated member named Eguchi Aimi, who is a composite character collected from assembling each member’s best facial features.[43] From such actual examples, what we can learn about women’s roles in popular culture is restricted to their faces, bodies, hair, outfits, behaviors, relationships, and mothering skills by which they are ultimately judged, and hence they perpetually remain under relentless, withering, microscopic scrutiny.[44] This is precisely what beauty is: generic figure that is replaceable. Since what mass culture defines beauty is of a generic figure, as a woman faces being subjected to invasive physical scrutiny, it is impossible for her to pass the beauty test – “you have to look like a supermodel to fit in,” a seventh-grader explained.[45] “‘You are expected to be very sexy and attractive but at the same time are condemned for the sexuality that you portray,” another tenth grader complains.[46] Girls are perpetually trapped in this lose-lose situation: “if you do not dress like a high class hooker, you are a dork; if you do, you are slutty.”[47] In short, there is no right way a woman can look. But in the culture such as ours where men look at women and women watch themselves being looked at, women come to see themselves as cheap imitations of fashion photographs, rather than seeing fashion photographs as cheap imitations of women.[48] If a harsh judgment is passed regarding how they look, it is not her reputation that suffers so much as the stability of her moral universe.[49] This leads to the common view held among young women that they can only feel good about themselves in a state of semi-starvation. Symptoms of semi-starvation are normally seen upon losing 25 percent of their body weight, and the psychological effects of self-imposed semi-starvation are identical to those of involuntary semi-starvation. Namely, emotional disturbance including depression, hypochondriasis, hysteria, angry bursts, loss of ability to function in work and social contexts due to apathy, reduced energy and alertness, social isolation, and decreased sexual interest.[50] Of course, this is not a problem unique to AKB48 or just Japanese popular culture in general. But from what has been said of the group, it is undeniable that AKB48 is as guilty as any other media that use enlightened sexism’s ideal female form to make women hate what misogynists hate. In effect, I believe AKB48 is doing more harm than other similarly oriented groups solely due to its insurmountable popularity. In a way, as we have seen in one of the comments above, it is true, it may be argued as misogynists often do, that women choose to go on an excessive diet, that they choose to look pretty to attract guys and that they choose to be sex objects. So what’s the harm in that? It’s not like they are doing it against their will. Let them have fun. But when this choice is the only choice offered to them to be successful, when the choice is to be visible or to fall out of the picture in the society, when it is to survive or to perish, such a choice means nothing. Indeed, the situation of women resembles that of an animal caught in a trap; an animal caught in a trap does not choose to gnaw its leg off.[51] Hence it is obvious that the girls did not choose to do the mouth-to-mouth relay of the soft candy in a recently controversial commercial.[52] They did not choose to make a promotional video with almost no clothes.[53] And no, they did not choose to believe it is the only way for idols to succeed. It was chosen for them by the popular culture industry, and it was forced on them as the only way to stardom. Yet still, some people believe that women have not only attained social equality but also achieved a high status much envied by men. And this social currency is femininity. Whatever embodies this femininity is, then, beautiful and thus adored as goddess-like. But femininity in the end is nothing but femaleness plus whatever a society happens to be selling, for “ [i]f ‘femininity’ means female sexuality and its loveliness, women have never lost it and do not need to buy it back.” [54] Those who say that women are respected in the society because they are portrayed as goddesses do not realize that the definition of beauty comes from outside women themselves. They are the ones who manipulate this definition in whatever way they like so they may further perpetuate enlightened sexism into public sub-consciousness and justify it by saying ‘we respect women because we adore them.’ We clearly adore them for their beauty, so much so that we sometimes “dismiss or do not hear a woman because our attention has been drawn to her size or makeup or clothing or hairstyle.”[55] This is exactly what is happening with the AKB48, for the members are voted for their looks. That is why even if some of them have developed talents over the years of participating in the group, they are forced into ‘graduating’ from the group, because they are now older and lacking in ‘femininity.’ This also in turn helps “to ensure that as few men as possible will form a bond with one woman for years or for a lifetime” because they are always ‘graduating,’ and at the same time helps to ensure that women’s dissatisfaction with themselves will grow rather than diminish over time” as younger girls come in to replace the older ones. This is the reality of the system of consumer culture: “markets made up of sexual clones, men who want objects and women who want to be objects, and the object desired ever-changing, disposable, and dictated by the market.” [56] AKB48, in this way, stands out as the prime example of beauty myth working with optimum efficiency.

            I believe AKB48 as the result of our neglecting the studies of social ethics in Japan. More than the Western countries, Japanese culture has been openly sexual. That this is the case is obvious to anyone who has been to Japan, got on a train and walked in the city. Here, sexual explicitness is not the issue. As Naomi Wolf mentions, we could use a lot more of sexual explicitness, “if explicit means honest and revealing; if there were a full of spectrum of erotic images of un-coerced real women and real men in contexts of sexual trust, beauty pornography could theoretically hurt no one.”[57] But when the depiction of sexuality is distorted and censored to fit the male fantasy, such as seen in many of the AKB48 promotional videos, it persuades the viewers that that is how it is and hence how it should be. Just as pornography teemed with violence against women desensitizes and “makes men progressively trivialize the severity of the violence they see against women,”[58] popular culture depicts sexuality such as prostitution and female subservience so that men and women will become interested in it.[59] However the fans of AKB48 tries to willfully ignore, the fact is that pornography and mass-culture are working to collapse sexuality with sexual fantasy created by men, “reinforcing the patterns of male dominance and female submission so that many young people believe this is simply the way sex is.” This means that many of the sexual aggressors, such as rapists and people who pay for sex, of the future will come to believe that they are behaving with socially accepted norms.[60]

III: The Reign of AKB48

Feminist movement has always centered on the issue of equal, informed education of women, but the age of enlightened sexism – what I might call a second-wave sexism – is immune to this antidote. This is precisely because the exploitation now begins at a much earlier age. As an example, the youngest AKB48 member is an 11-year-old[61] and a 13-year-old was seen almost naked in the infamous promotional video for Heavy Rotation.[62] The fans claim that those girls choose to wear sexy outfit (or nothing at all) and sign the contract; they know fully well what signing a contract implies, as we should not treat girls as stupid and incapable of making their own decisions. The absurdity of such a claim is so obvious that I will not elaborate it here. What I need to point out to those who believe in such a claim is that this has nothing to do with intellect or stupidity – smart people are fully capable of being exploited. Some people stubbornly argue that these girls are not exploited precisely because they would not be doing this if they were exploited. These people assume that the exploited are only exploited when they are coerced into doing something against their will; because exploitation implies coercion and the girls in AKB48 are all consenting to the terms of contract, they are not exploited.[63] By this reasoning, children who consent to adults having sex with them are not exploited, nor are girls who show their breasts on camera for money. This indeed is an irritatingly idiotic definition of what exploitation is, and I would not have spent time in mentioning about it had I not been getting the same arguments over and over again: that they are not exploited. Whatever their reasoning, I shall respond to them, once and for all, by citing dictionary definitions, Reference.com.[64] According to one of the most referenced online dictionary, ‘exploitation’ means “1) Use or utilization especially for profit, 2) selfish utilization, or 3) the combined, often varied, use of public relations and advertising techniques to promote a person, movie, product, etc…”[65] Does any of this sound like what popular culture does, AKB48 for instance? And not even one dictionary states that ‘exploitation’ has to do with stupidity or coercion. They can be accompanied qualities of persons being exploited but they are not essential for someone to be exploited.

In the reign of popular culture, it is not possible to educate young men and women prior to the exploitation. For one thing, we are born in the midst of indoctrination of exploiting culture, but even if we were not, the popular culture gets to you faster than you can learn multiplication at school. The only way for us to guard ourselves against such an offense is to be aware of the exploitation as a normal course of events in the popular culture, and actively refuse to accept it. The popular culture has interfered feminism by giving us something we can get preoccupied with – a beauty myth. This is because the only way to stop a revolution is to give people something to lose.[66] But we will not be blinded by the beauty myth. Not until we have the conception of beauty that is noncompetitive, nonhierarchical and nonviolent.[67]

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[1] For instance, most programs were limited to transmitting cooking shows and cartoon. (http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe50s/life_17.html) accessed on Aug. 1^st, 2012.

[2] The first colour TV was introduced in Japan on Sep. 10^th, 1960; in Canada in 1966; in the US in 1953 with a gradual replacement of the black and white TV with that of the colour. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_introduction_of_color_television_in_countries) accessed on Aug.1^st, 2012.

[3] The first anchorwoman news reporter was in 1976.

[4] Douglas, Susan S. “The Rise of Enlightened Sexism: How Pop Culture Took Us from Girl Power to Girls Gone Wild.” 10

[5] ibid. 13.

[6] Japan is known for overwork – I once met a man who worked at a head office of a private language school, who told me that he could only come back home and see his newborn baby 2~3 times a week. The company prepares for the workers sleeping bags so as to induce them to work and sleep at the office. Such in-your-face provisions in the office also make it seem normal for workers not to go home.

[7] Advertisement posters for pornographic magazines, such as PlayBoy, are found in each train cart, where it is visually accessible to anyone. Since trains in Japan are used by kids (for commuting to primary school) as much as adults, imagine the psychological influence it produces on them about the image of women.

[8] By this I mean a social pressure rather than strictly political pressure. For instance, even among friends or coworkers, discussing about moral issues in depth makes you seem ‘too serious’ and hence boring. It is embarrassing to be outspokenly moral.

[9] Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth, 135.

[10] This happened to a friend of mine very recently. She used to be a head assistant to a reputable dentist, yet upon her second pregnancy, she was asked to leave – it is not in any way an isolated incident, but is practiced regularly by companies in Japan. The custom and culture gives a peer pressure to the women who get fired due to their physical condition as woman from filing a complaint.

[11] This is a comment most often repeated in many of his interviews about the origin of AKB48. Here, I believe it is more than sufficient to cite one source for the sake of formality. http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2011/12/28/the-man-who-made-akb48/

[12] ibid.

[13] Art normally insists to be complete and presentable, no true artists would show a painter who can’t paint or an unfinished calligraphy and say it is a form of art, as that would justify my claim for a better grade for my unfinished essay in the same reasoning.

[14] When they want women workers, it is normally for receptionists or assistants, as we have seen, and such workers are dispensable. Women are used until they bear children.

[15] http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2011/12/28/the-man-who-made-akb48/

[16] ibid.

[17] He has been in this business for the last 40 years.

[18] Douglas, The Rise of Enlightened Sexism, 21. Her source is from Time magazine published on Oct 26, 2009.

[19] It is famously known that girls in AKB48 are not allowed to date anyone. As soon as it is found out that they have boyfriends, they are fired or reduced to lower status within the group, and many fans cease to support them.

[20] Ibid., 9-10.

[21] Ibid., 9, 13.

[22] See the comments posted by Anon E. Mouse at https://isseicreekphilosophy.wordpress.com/2011/07/24/akb48-sexual-exploitation-of-pre-teen-girls-in-japanese-pop-culture/

[23] Douglas, 13.

[24] Ibid., 166.

[25] Ibid., 12.

[26] See Greelight’s comment at https://isseicreekphilosophy.wordpress.com/2011/07/24/akb48-sexual-exploitation-of-pre-teen-girls-in-japanese-pop-culture/

[27] See Ready2’s comment at https://isseicreekphilosophy.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/the-case-of-akb48-neo-virus/#comments

[28] Ibid.

[29] See Eunseo’s comment at https://isseicreekphilosophy.wordpress.com/2011/07/24/akb48-sexual-exploitation-of-pre-teen-girls-in-japanese-pop-culture/#comments

[30] Douglas, 10.

[31] Douglas, 18.

[32] Ibid., 16.

[33] http://www.alafista.com/2011/11/01/akb48-asks-fans-will-you-make-a-baby-with-me/ See also http://www.akb48.ne.jp/service/akbaby.php

[34] Douglas, 186.

[35] See more on this at https://isseicreekphilosophy.wordpress.com/2011/07/24/akb48-sexual-exploitation-of-pre-teen-girls-in-japanese-pop-culture/

[36] Or compensated dating, as it is called in Japan.

[37] Douglas, 186.

[38] Ibid., 211. Her source is from Laurie A. Rudman and Eugene Borgia, “The Afterglow of Construct Accessibility: The Behavioral Consequences of Priming Men to View Women as Sexual Objects,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 31 (1995):513-514.

[39] Ibid. Her source is from Paul Davies et al., “Consuming Images: How Television Commercials That Elicit Stereotype Threat Can Restrain Women Academically and Professionally,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, December 2002, 1626.

[40] Ibid., 19.

[41] Ibid., 217.

[42] Ibid., 215.

[43] http://www.tokyohive.com/2011/06/eguchi-aimi-akb48s-new-ace-or-just-a-cg-idol/

[44] Ibid., 265.

[45] Ibid., 217.

[46] Ibid., 183.

[47] Ibid.

[48] Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth, 58, 105.

[49] Ibid., 163.

[50] Ibid., 194-195, 198.

[51] Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth, 258.

[52] For more information, see http://www.tokyohive.com/2012/04/akb48s-puccho-mouth-to-mouth-cm-criticized-by-viewers/

[53] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkHlnWFnA0c

[54] Wolf, The Beauty Myth, 177.

[55] Ibid., 274.

[56] Wolf, 144.

[57] Ibid., 135.

[58] For instance, pornographic images often imprints young men and women with a sexuality that is mass-produced, deliberately dehumanizing and inhuman. See Wolf, 162. Further, “[o]f the women raped, 84 percent knew the attacker, and 57 percent were raped at dates. Date rape, this, is more common than left-handedness, alcoholism, and heart attaks.” See Wolf, 166.

[59] Ibid., 138, 141.

[60] Ibid., 167. She further goes on to say that “[c]ultural representation of glamorized degradation has created a situation among the young in witch boys rape and girls get raped as a normal course of events. The boys may even be unaware that what they are doing is wrong; violent sexual imagery may well have raised a generation of young men who can rape women without even knowing it.”

[61] See “The youngest member of the group, Natsumi Tanaka, was born in 2000, and 11 years old at the time of the announcement. She said that “joining AKB48 is my ambition since I was 5 years old, so it feels like a dream to be in this group.”” And its source at http://www.oricon.co.jp/news/music/2002974/full/

[62] Matsui Jurina was born in 1997, and the Heavy Rotation was released in 2010.

[63] I will refer you back to the comment by Ready2, or see the footnote 27 in this paper.

[64] Ranked one of the most popular websites in 2007, many of the information listed come from external sources such as CIA World Factbook, prepared by the CIA, frequently used as a resource for academic research papers. See Wikipedia links at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_World_Factbook

[65] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/exploitation

[66] Wolf, 281.

[67] Ibid., 286.

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