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The Memory That Dare Not Speak Its Name: Memory, Monsters and Oblivion in Japanese Popular Culture
No full textIn this paper, I aim at identifying traces of the trauma in Japanese popular and visual culture of the postwar period. Following the Freudian definition, the recollection of the traumatic event is repressed and thus constitutes an absent presence that resurfaces in compulsive repetitions either in the form of re-enactments or in the form of flashbacks. These resist conscious remembering and take on an agency of their own, that is, they are experienced as independent entities that come back to haunt the traumatized person. I thus maintain that when researching the traces of trauma in postwar Japan it is to monsters and ghosts that we need to turn. [NB: An earlier version of this paper was published as Gygi, Fabio. 2008. Mnemonic Monsters: Memory, Oblivion and Continuity in Japanese Popular Culture. Minikomi 75:5-12. We thank the editor of Minikomi, Roland Domenig (Meiji Gakuin University) for permission to republish it in a revised open-access version here.
Hosts and Hostages : Accumulating Objects at Home in Contemporary Japan
No full textFabio Gygi, Hôtes et otages : entasser des objets chez soi dans le Japon contemporain.— Les études portant sur la culture matérielle se placent souvent dans le cadre théorique de l’appropriation, selon lequel les êtres humains peuvent faire des objets leurs choses, en les investissant d’un sens. Mais que se passe-t-il quand un objet offert ne peut pas vraiment devenir le nôtre ? Cet article s’intéresse aux relations entre objets et humains du point de vue de l’hospitalité, de façon à saisir la tension qui existe entre l’adaptation active et l’exposition passive à la présence des objets dans l’espace domestique. Trois exemples ethnographiques portant sur la cohabitation problématique avec des animaux en peluches, des poupées Ichimatsu et du désordre chez les katazukerarenai onna (« femmes ne sachant pas ranger ») illustrent la nécessité de repenser ces relations en termes d’intendance plutôt que de propriété. Dans le premier exemple, les animaux en peluche deviennent des substituts des élèves d’une professeure de danse japonaise ; dans le deuxième, les poupées Ichimatsu qui survivent à leur propriétaire deviennent des présences dérangeantes dont il n’est possible de se débarrasser qu’au moyen de cérémonies funéraires. Enfin, dans les cas d’« accumulations extrêmes », la sociabilité entre humains est éclipsée par une relation d’« être-avec » des choses. Plutôt que d’interpréter ce phénomène comme « des choses devenant des partenaires sociaux », l’entassement au Japon peut être compris comme l’extinction de la « partie-personne » de l’objet et comme le moyen pour celui-ci de retourner à un état d’être de « chose » pure, sans condition, sans qualification et sans modification. En regardant à travers les lunettes heuristiques de l’hospitalité, nous pouvons alors dire que cette hospitalité est accordée à une autre forme d’altérité : l’autonomie des choses. Un grand nombre de mes interlocuteurs m’ont signalé qu’au fil du temps les choses deviennent de plus en plus « étranges » et « étrangères ».Fabio Gygi, Hosts and Hostages : Accumulating Objects at Home in Contemporary Japan.— Material culture studies often use a framework defined by appropriation, in which human actors can make circulating objects their own by investing them with meaning. But what happens when a present given to you cannot entirely become yours ? This article looks at object-human relations in Japan through the lens of hospitality, in order to grasp the dynamic tension between active accommodation and passive exposure to the presence of objects in domestic spaces. Three ethnographic vignettes on contentious relationships with stuffed animals, dolls, and clutter illustrate the need to rethink such relationships in terms of stewardship rather than ownership. In the first vignette, stuffed animals come to replace the students of a teacher of Japanese dance ; in the second, dolls who outlive their owners become uncanny presences that can only be gotten rid of through doll funerals. Finally, in the case of clutter, domestic sociality with human others is completely eclipsed by « being-with » things. Rather than to interpret this as « things becoming social others » (as it is sometimes put in psychological literature), I will argue that the hoarding of clutter in Japan can be understood as extinguishing the person-part of the thing, as a means to return it to untampered « thinghood ». Hospitality thus is granted to another form of alterity, the autonomous quietness of things. While human and divine guests become more or less controllable or at least better known entities through hosting, the opposite happens when things are being hosted. As many informants reported, cut from shared meaning and circulation, things become increasingly « stranger » over time
Influence of growth and preparation condition on the reconstruction of SiC(001) surfaces: a first principles study
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The Work of Gender: Service, Performance and Fantasy in Contemporary Japan
No full textReview of the book The Work of Gender: Service, Performance and Fantasy in Contemporary Japan, edited by Gitte Marianne Hansen and Fabio Gygi
Robot Companions: The Animation of Technology and the Technology of Animation in Japan
No full textContemporary Japan is often described in utopian terms as a place where humans and nonhumans live and work together in harmony. This acceptance of nonhuman others is explained by some anthropologists as stemming from an “animist unconscious” (Allison 2006) that allows people to attribute “life” to robots and other artefacts, a notion that is explicitly linked to the “Shinto universe” of “native animist beliefs” (Robertson 2010). Contrary to the darker tone of robot fantasies in the EuroAmerican tradition, this “techno-animism” turns technological objects into non-alienating allies, or so the narrative goes. This chapter critically examines the ideological underpinnings of these claims. Instead of attributing “modern techno-animism” to a native and naïve ontology, the author argues that all forms of animism are “techno-animism” because they are based on a technology of animation. In turn, this technology of animation is based on what Bird-David (1999) understands as “relatedness”, but which the author hesitates to call a “relational ontology” because what enables animation is often a relation that emerges from an unexpected and surprising encounter. Drawing on the work of Japanese roboticists and anthropologists of technology, this chapter proffers the heuristic device of an “animation continuum” to better apprehend the broad range of relations that result in animation
The Afterlives of Dolls: On the Productive Death of Terminal Commodities
No full textCan dolls die? This paper examines memorial services for dolls (ningyō kuyō) in Japan as conduits to disposal. Dolls, once bought, are widely understood to be terminal commodities: they can only be passed down to a narrow group of relatives and often end up stuck in time and place. The ritual reanimates the “stuck” dolls by providing a symbolic death, after which disposal becomes possible. The ritual also enables—on a small scale—processes of repurposing and recycling of dolls or the material of which they were made. Based on six months of ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that the terminality of dolls is undone by the rite and that they can become available for other, strictly circumscribed material processes. In transubstantiation, the disposed doll is recognized as a museum-worthy object and is saved from disposal; in transposition, the dolls enjoy a second lease on life in dioramas of everyday scenes; and in transmutation, the material of the doll itself is reused to give newly made, playful dolls the luster and respectability of tradition
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