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Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Tokugawa Blogging: Best of 2006
Back in September of 2006 I was looking through the current issue of Science and saw a book review (requires subscription) entitled “Through Art to Association in Japanese Politics” by one Christena Turner. Given my interest in manga and anime, the title caught my attention. That Science was reviewing a book on such a topic, that really caught my attention. So I read the review, of Bonds of Civility: Aesthetic Networks and the Political Origins of Japanese Culture (Amazon.com) by Eiko Ekegami.
According to Turner, Eikegami argued that
Japanese sociability is characterized by an extensive repertoire of practices for handling the problem of how to interact with strangers. Somewhere between friends and enemies lies the domain of strangers. Somewhere between intimacy and danger lies the domain of civility. “The degree of ‘strangership’ may be an indication of the degree of civility in a given society,” she claims. Civility permits ordinary people to be confident in interactions with those of unknown or different backgrounds, making it possible to form social bonds in the absence of friendship or kinship.
This is important because modern democracies requires a civil realm where individuals can form voluntary associations “outside the realms of both the political institutions of the state and the intimate ties of the family.” Ikegami argued
that networks of people engaged in interactive artistic and cultural pursuits created the bonds of “civility without civil society” that prepared the population of pre-modern Japan for its strikingly rapid transformation into one of the first and most successful modern nations outside of the West. Art created politics when participation in aesthetic networks taught people technologies of association among strangers that eased the transition toward institutions of a modern political economy.
That had me hooked. Not only would this book serve as “deep background” for my interest in manga and anime - “deep” because it’s about a period, roughly 1600 to 1850, well before the emergence of those forms - but it also promised to be a volume that argued for the social value of art on an empirical basis, as opposed to asserting ideals. Since I’d already argued that it was music that made apes into humans, I was eager to read a more empirical, less speculative, argument broadly, if only loosely, consistent with that. Finally, it seemed that Ikegami’s argument might be generally useful in thinking about how social networks function in the larger society.
I am pleased on all counts, and regard Bonds of Civility as the most interesting book I read in 2006. Roughly speaking, the argument goes like this: Early modern Japan was, like most such civilizations, socially stratified. Overall rule was vested in the samurai class, who ceased being warriors and functioned more as bureaucrats and civil servants. The samurai class was dominated by the Tokugawa clan, headquartered in Edo (Tokyo). Ikegami argues that individuals who were assigned different stations by the Tokugawa shogunate would temporarily “escape” that structure in the pursuit of poetry, flower arranging, the tea ceremony, theatre, painting, and so forth. Samurai, merchants, farmers, and others were thus able to meet and interact as equals in these aesthetic activities. Over the centuries, these informal institutions forged a civil society “that generated an image of aesthetic Japan as if it had been a natural description of the geographical identity called Japan” (375). In the late nineteenth century, this identity coalesced around the figure of the emperor when the nation in general, and the shogunate in particular, was forced to adapt to Western imperialism (372-376).
At about the time I was reading Ikegami, I was also photographing graffiti and reading about it. In Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant, Subway Art (Owl Books 1984, p. 23), I read:
A youngster starting out finds a new community, focused on the subway, which brings together kids from all over the city. He gets a new name and a new identity in a group which has its own values and rules. He finds the particular subway stations where other writers congregate and where they form new alliances that transcend the old parochial neighborhood and traditional gang territory.
Within the scope of that world, the graffiti crew seems very much like a Tokugawa era aesthetic network. Both institutions bring together people who are otherwise from different neighborhoods and social strata, and in both cases these people take on new names specific to the cross-cutting group, whether the poetry circle or the graffiti crew.
And then we have the internet, with all the various social venues it has engendered, the blogosphere among them. And if we take the academic blogosphere as an example, what do we see? We see academics from different disciplines chatting with one another, we see academics and non-academics chatting as well. In both cases experts and non-experts have to come to grips with one another.
And then there is the name. Some bloggers post under their own name - that’s the policy for those with posting privileges at The Valve. But many do not. This is often (generally? mostly?) glossed as a protective move, for sufficient reason, alas. But the Tokugawa example, and the graffiti example, suggest that something else might be going on as well.
How far can we push the parallels between the blogosphere, graffiti gangs, and Tokugawa aesthetic networks? I haven’t the foggiest idea. At the moment it is sufficient for me that there are parallels. And surely other examples as well. I’ve read anecdotal accounts of camp meetings in early 19th century America where both blacks and whites gathered for a week-long Christian revival. For six days the two groups kept to their section of the camp, with a fence between. On the last night the fence came down and they all danced together. Was that one of the roots of the abolitionist movement?
The important thing, it seems to me, is to think of social structure in terms of networks, in addition to groups. Groups lead you to think in exclusive terms; membership in one group precludes membership in some other group. And there is a lot of that. But we also have networks linking people from various groups into some other group, of a different (cross-cutting) kind.
Comments
IIRC, Eiko Ikegami thinks that the modern political order in Japan was the work of samurai whose individualism won out over the supposed conformity of Japanese society. She’s been criticized for reading a foreign notion of individualism into Japanese history, and it doesn’t help matters any that she uses the term so imprecisely. (It’s only in its meliorative sense that “individualism” is opposed to conformity; otherwise, the proper contrast is with holism.)
And now, besides initiating Japanese modernization, this aesthetic elite is supposed to have invented the norms governing civility? I hope I’ve misunderstood. Explanations like that seem allergic to, among other things, the idea that a lot of the social capital in modern democracies is a holdover from earlier, illiberal regimes.
I’ve not read her book on the samurai. But Bonds says nothing about an “aesthetic elite.”
Is it the case, though, that she sees Japanese civility as emerging despite the hierarchical character of Tokugawa society? That’s what I’m having trouble with.
Yes, despite the hierarchy. When you join a poetry circle, for example, you leave your position in the hierarchy outside the circle. So you have samurai, merchants, farmers, and craftsmen all together in the context of the poetry circle. They assume names specific to the circle. Of course, they know what everyone is in “real life,” but that’s set aside for the moment. Her argument is that such activity was pervasive and thus created associations outside the official system.
The books sounds interesting. Thanks for the explanation--the text isn’t searchable on amazon.com.
There’s lots of useful detail about how these networks operate. You need that detail to get a feel for what she’s talking about.
Doesn’t this presuppose a high degree of stratification and separation by occupation already? If you have to create artificial and ritualized structures for people to interact with one another, that implies that there is a rigid caste system in place already. I believe in some epochs of Japanese history you had to have a certain social status to even drink tea of any kind, let alone participate in the tea ceremony. (I remember reading somewhere...)
Yes, without existing stratification, you don’t need aesthetic networks to cut across them.
I’ll get the book one of these days. The general idea seems useful.
There’s another book whose title I don’t remember: Chinese and Japanese aristocrats gathered in poetry groups which communicated only in writing (since educated Japanese were fluent in classical Chinese). It had a similiar effect of making communication across boundaries possible via aestheticism or dilletantism.
I think that from our vantage it’s hard to imagine how stratified societies work. Even the noneteenth century—reading English novels I always have trouble understanding what “not a gentleman” meant and why people cared so much (aspecially because many of the gentlemen were so beastly.) I’ve argued that it was Nietzsche’s strong sense of class that doomed him to celibacy—he was not good match within his class, and was not willing to step down.
In The Radetzky March by Roth there’s an amazing stratification story. An Austrian common soldier is made an officer because of an act of heroism. His own father was a NCO lifer, and officers only have limited communication with NCOs. As a result, the new officer almost entirely ceases communication with his father, who accepts the reality because he’s a good NCO and knows how it works.
How interesting. Thanks.
This is in line with some recent work in economics (about social cohesion offering economic savings while lack of cohesion imposes costs—“can I trust him?"). Politeness, it turns out, has economic value. (Though beware of one-factor explanations of history. The Chinese used to be a very polite society, too; they fell behind for other reasons).
I find your comparison between Japanese aesthetic communities (I suppose things like tea-ceremony are meant) and modern grafittists interesting. Do the grafittists really congrgate in social clubs? Compare and admire each other’s work? And why is the quality of works produced by Edo aesthetic clubs so much higher than those of the grafitti society?
About blogging—do we blog under assumed names because this is our “pretend life”? “I am not just some Joe-schmo insurance agent, I am Gawain, knight”?
Br
Writers—as the graffiti folks call themselves—used to take pictures of their work and keep them in albums and shoe boxs, both as a record of work that was likely to be destroyed, but also to share with one another. Now they post the photos to the web. There are lots of web sites devoted to graffiti and lots of graffiti photos on, e.g. flickr. If you go to those place you’ll see them commenting on one anothers work.
They’re been some interesting documentaries; Style Wars and Wild Style are about the old days in NYC, when subway cars were the major targets.
"Is it the case, though, that she sees Japanese civility as emerging despite the hierarchical character of Tokugawa society? That’s what I’m having trouble with. “
Hm… does she mention the Kamakura code (12th c.) which penalized offending someone ("killing his face") by death ("killing the man")?
I’ll have to take an afternoon off to look for the grafitto-men commenting on each other’s work. Thanks for the lead. This seems very interesting.
Tokugawa Japan is well after 12th century. More like 17th century up through mid-19th. Basically the Tokugawa clan defeated all the other (contending) clans and so was in a position to assert (loose by modern standards) dominion over all Japan.
Yes, I know. Sloppy writing on my part, my apologies. I should have said that the Kamakura code was only the first (and most brutal) of a succession of many legal codes in Japan which penalized impolite conduct and which persisted well into modern times (and were in one form or another on the books in the Tokugawa times). :)
I checked the index and Ikegami as some reference to the Kamakura, but not to the code.
There’s certainly lots of material on the shogunate’s attempts to regulate conduct in general and to regulate these aesthetic circles. For examples, Ikegami talks about laws regulating how different classes are to dress (sumptuary laws).
Yes; and also laws of the past continue to have cultural effects even after they expire. A ban on a game (as on palant in 19th century Russia) may kill it forever (because after the law expires there may no longer be any real interest in reviving it); or the custom of calling everybody “mister” may continue long after the law no longer requires calling everyone “master”. Hence the laws of ealier periods (such as kamakura) may be relevant.
But this is not to say that politeness is MERELY a tool of the upper class oppression; politeness has important social uses and it is attractive in two ways: everyone likes being treated with deference; and many people enjoy the social admiration which they earn when they display command of polite conduct.
Duh… I am not sure how relevant these thoughts are to Eikegami, since her title suggests she’s interested in social effects of social circles which arise as a result of shared aesthetic interests (something like my own heaventree) rather than politeness. Ergo, I’m probably trying to hijack the topic to suit my own preoccupations. :)
Still, it’s fun to see the subterrenean connections between Cha-no-yu and graffitti. :)
It shades into politeness. Which bears on how strangers treat one another. Remember, we’re a species that evolved living in small face-to-face groups. We need conventions to dictate how we are to treat strangers, of whom there are many in large-scale societies.
The book I mentioned about gentlemanly Sino-Japanese non-spoken communication in written Classical Chinese (mostly poetry) is “Borders of Chinese Civilization”, D R Howland, 1996, Duke.
"I think that from our vantage it’s hard to imagine how stratified societies work. “
John:
Yes. Spending 18 months in India was a real eye opener.
A ban on a game (as on palant in 19th century Russia) may kill it forever (because after the law expires there may no longer be any real interest in reviving it)
I was in Taiwan in 1984, just as the one-party system was losing its grip. Taiwan (the ROC) was still in a state of emergency and still theoretically at war, and ma-jongg and social dancing were forbidden (these were symbolic austerity laws of the “be serious and share the sacrifice” type, obviously, not functional militarily). Mah jongg and (mixed) social dancing thus became acts of political protest for Taiwan nationalists and other anti-KMD people.
Social dancing isn’t a Chinese custom at all. The “Taiwanese” sometimes claimed not to be Chinese, but these weren’t the pre-Chinese inhabitants (called “Taiwan aborigines” or “Mountain Ti”, who did dance). They were the pre-1948 Taiwan Chinese, and social dancing wasn’t a custom of theirs either.
Mah Jongg on the other hand was very deeply rooted and it was an overreach to try to ban it.
Taiwan Christians (2%+ of the population, high for China) did celebrate western Halloween. In the West Halloween is a pagan survival with little actual content, whereas in China it has to compete with actual serious pagan beliefs in certain dangerous days when real ghosts do come out.
John, I was in Taiwan at the same time. (How come we missed each other?) I am here now, again, for a few days, (for the Grand View show at NPM) as a matter of fact. But I am off for a hot spring in Miao-Li in 5 minutes, so I will respond when I get back. Glad to make your acquaintance!
John:
Mah Jongg is played in the privacy of one’s home; i doubt playing it ever stopped even during the darkest CKS days (since new years celebrations require a couple hands of mah jongg); social dancing went on in other parts of the world and there was someone to learn it from when it became possible to engage in social dance in Taiwan; palant was a team sport (it’s a bit like baseball or cricket; there is no way to play it in the privacy of one’s home) and the ban was in effect for 128 years (not 35), long enough for all former players who could remember the game to die; and the ban covered the entire palant playing area—there was no one stil playing it at independence to learn it from. br, see you here—or in Taiwan!
I wasn’t really arguing, just chatting.
Me, too! Btw, the hotspring pool was great, but the whole experience was despiriting: it was a Japanese-style resort, with Japanese prices and that pseudo-luxury-experience by which one takes the nouveax-riches to the cleaners. It’s supposed to be the good life, but it’s mostly gypsum and plastic and the consumer is too dumb to know.
The NPM show ("The Grand View") is fantastic, but the museum has done a MFA on us, its gift shop no longer carrying affordable print reproductions—everything is either mounted or framed and costs $300 and up or it is just utter junk—keychains and hologram post-cards. Yuck. I found a vase I may buy, a beautifully executed repro of a Chienlong—famille rose with mynahs on a plum branch, but its NT11000! (It’s done by Franz collection, who for their mainline do yuck).
Oh, and there are about 10 x as many churches (mainly protestant) as there used to be, and all of them visibly very upper class and very successful: the Taiwanese upperclass is doing the peranakan on us—they dont want to be Chinese anymore so they will be American. Went and worshipped (with about 6 million god money burnt in huge clouds of smoke) at a Daoist outfit down the street just to counterbalance things a little. All I can do to stem the tide a little.