SPOTLIGHT ON SUGAWARA BUNTA AND FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN JAPAN

 

 

When I first went to Japan in the 1980s, a family I stayed with in Gunma prefecture had a lively dog that they called Bunta or Bunchan for short. I saw told that he was named after the actor Sugawara Bunta. This actor was of the old school and, like Takukura Ken, starred in lots of yakuza movies. Between 1975 - 1979 he also made a number of trucker movies in the Torakku Yaro series. In more recent years, he has worked as a voice actor for the Ghibli studios (playing Kamaji in Spirited Away) and even starred with Shinohara Tomoe in the TV drama series Sensei Shirani No. More recently he was the inspiration for the character Admiral Akainu in the 2012 One Piece movie 'Z'.

 

I had the good fortune on one trip back to Japan of finding a CD of the soundtracks to a number of the Torakku Yaro films... Not that my wife sharted my enthusiasm. To her, it probably reeks of enka or some other form of sake induced nostalgia for the 'good old days'. In my mind the Torakku Yaro films are up there with some of my other favourites like Bee Bop High School and the Wolf and Cub series.

Finally, of great interest to me (again), was the appearance of Sugawara Bunta on the NHK news in November 2013. The Abe government is apparently considering reforms that aims to restrict freedom of speech. Sugawara Bunta was interviewed after attending some kind of a protest meeting and he said that given the lack of freedom of speech under the occupation after the war he found it incomprehensible that the Japanese government now considered introducing these same laws on themselves as a democracy.

NUIGURUMI VERSUS HELLO KITTY

The Hello Kitty phenomenon in Japan is well documented. The Sanrio company hit the jackpot with this kawaii or cute character first seen in Japan in 1974 and in America in 1976. Its success with not only children but also young Japanese women has led to speculation that its sucess is indicative of the infanitilisation of Japanese society. Kawaii or cute culture has been blamed for creating a selfish generation of young Japanese women (and men) who refuse to take their responsibilities to their familes and community seriously. By refusing to marry and have children they are somehow not 'Japanese'. And yet others argue that Hello Kitty and cute culture more generally has helped empower women in Japan so that they can confidently seek self-fulfilment rather than social approval based on self-sacrifice. There is no doubt that in Japan today, young women are taking more control over their own lives and making decisions that reflect their own interests and desires rather than the interests and desires of others. Hello Kitty and cute culture in general, rather than Western feminism, seems to be largely responsible for this. The latest wave of kawaii culture can be seen in the youtube vidoes of Harajuku pop princess Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. Kyary is the latest in a long line of kawaii pop princesses that includes Hamazaki Ayumi, Amuro Namie and in the slightly more distant past Puffy and the gya gya girl, Shinohara Tomoe... These women are, of course, representative of the street culture celebrated in the 2005 song 'Harajuku Girls' by Gwen Stefani which Japanese politicians seem to fear the most when they speculate on the reasons for the plummeting birth rate. In 2007 Japan's Health minister Yanagisawa Hakuo told Liberal Democratic Party members that women of child bearing age should perform a 'public service' and raise the birth rate which fell to a record low of 1.26 children per woman in 2005. In his speech, Yanagisawa referred to women as 'birth-giving machines'. 

Which brings me to the article above. In this article from a Tokyo newspaper that a friend, Shigemi san in Inagsahi shi, recently posted to her facebook page, Japanese women appear to be not alone in their obsession with kawaii or cute culture. In this article, a man appears to have appropiated the teddy bear that his wife bought and made it the centre of his attention. His wife is, not surprisingly angry at being supplanted by this non-human rival for her husband's affections. In some ways it is like the short story 'Mado no Soto' by Yoshimoto Banana (from the collection Nambei to Furin) in which a teddy bear helps a child come to terms with the death of a beloved grandmother. In the story, the narrator recalls something 'strange' that happened when she was seven years old. Her grandmother was criticially ill and she spent the night alone while her parents were at the hospital. When she awoke at dawn she saw that the teddy bear that her grandmother had given her was not in the bed. She looked around and saw it sitting with its face pressed against the window. Looking at the dawn together, she realised that despite her childish notions that 'life is forever' her grandmother would die as would her parents and ultimately she herself. In this story, Yoshimoto, herself a product of kawaii culture and Japanese anime and manga, subverts the conventions of 'serious' literature by infusing the world of childhood with a significance that others argue is symptomatic of the infantilisation of Japanese society. In this evolving Japanese society, maybe the husband in the article above believes that the nuigurumi (teddy bear) can communicate with him. If so hopefully it can bring him and his wife together!!! (Below is a picture of Shimizu Yuko in 2010, the creator of Hello Kitty).