お相撲さんが来ている: The Sumo are Coming

I’d like you to pause now and take a moment to reflect on the fact that the amount of filtering that happens to the image of an actor who appears in commercials no one in his motherland will see works both ways. Jones-san is a character played by Tommy Lee Jones in a series of humorous advertisements. The character is just as fictitious as it would be in the states, but the actor’s ethos, all the notions and emotions conjured by the sight of him, is drastically reduced. As far as examples go, this is about as minute a difference that can happen as media passes through the cultural filter. So much of the Japanese mindset is lost upon the West, seeping through the cracks spreading under the weight of Western thought, but before anybody starts thinking that I’m railing against my own culture, let me be clear… This is not bad so much as it is sad. Sad because it is unavoidable; the tint applied in transition is a fact of life until the truth in action has been witnessed. No matter how hard anyone tries to explain, including myself, the world is full of different schools of thought that form as old ideologies meld into what is found at this very moment.

 With that in mind, I can now tackle the conflicting conceptions of Sumo wrestling. Sumo is not about who waddles about with the most colossal gut but leverage and techniques that are part of a cultural tradition wholly Japanese (hence the questionable circumstances surrounding the top Sumo wrestler, a Mongol, leaving Japan). Drawing upon my own memories of representations of the typical Sumo wrestler, I see a boulder of a man with eyes burning a hole into his opponent. I recall montages of schools of fat men gorging themselves upon bowl after bowl of white rice. Their chopsticks flinging the specks of white into their gullets, the only competition seemed to be who could eat more gooey mochi or fresh sashimi. The notion that there was something more tangible to the Japanese sport was easy to grasp, but the depth of a Sumo’s devotion and drive eluded me. The petite figure of an every day Japanese man does not lend itself to the explosion of force found between the masses of flesh hurtling towards each other during each Sumo bout. Japanese genes do not naturally produce Sumo on a regular basis, but Sumo exist nonetheless.

Consider the physical change a body must go through in order to become a top NFL superstar. Hours upon hours in gyms and on the practice field beget the giants of the gridiron. On the street, a college or even high school lineman is a sore thumb that draws the eyes of the crowd. Juxtapose this feeling of looking up at a mountain of humanity with your mental renditions of their Far East compatriots. Their biceps are just as strong in a sport requiring an equal amount of finesse and brute strength on par with the Sunday gladiators of the red, white and blue. Are the Sumo fat?... Yes, in the same way that an offensive lineman is fat. Both men’s lives, Eastern and Western, are poured into their sport until the sport itself becomes their lives. To belittle Sumo wrestling and training in the tatters of culture appearing on television screens on this side of the Pacific is to represent American football as nothing more than a glorified competition of shoving. The technique, cultural history and tradition are gone once the Japanese culture becomes entertainment for Americans. Everything that makes Sumo matter is gone.

今もっとジョンさんある！Now with more Tommy Lee Jones!

The images that have slowly meandered west from the Japanese islands are at once perfect representations of the Japanese people and utterly inadequate. My reunion with my girlfriend now just around the corner, various memories of my time in Japan have bubbled up to the surface of my mind. My recollections of Tokyo, however, are vying for prominence against the flood of media endured over the span of the previous seven months. Sifting through these thoughts feels as though I am peering through a tarnished lens. The truth of the matter is my memory is completely fine, but my freshest images of Japan are those found in American mainstream media. Currently, I am using two dependable news sources for accurate Japanese news coverage. The BBC and Japan Times provide reliable news flawed in their absence of a visual link. I am mired in the unfortunate situation of applying present day descriptions to the memory world that now constantly clashes against what is filtered through the television and internet. The issue does not lay in the glaring misconceptions commonly portrayed by these mediums but with their accuracies. American sentiments of Japan are skewed by the average individual being entertained by realities masquerading as fantasies.

Due to the genuinely impure and confusing nature of representations of Japanese people and culture in America, the only way to adequately enlighten you, dear reader, is to talk about Mr. Tommy Lee Jones. No doubt, you know Mr. Jones from various projects including the academy award winning No Country for Old Men, a visceral, gripping tale. Turning back the clock a few more years, aside from revealing that Mr. Jones has looked exactly the same age for over a decade, revisits the entertaining, science fiction-buddy cop mash-up that was the Men in Black series. The average U.S. movie buff knows Tommy Lee Jones’s acting portfolio well enough to, at the very least, recognize him and his previous escapades across the silver screen. Although I will not go so far as to call the man an icon of the American movie industry, the fact that he has starred in blockbusters taking place in every conceivable setting of every genre (Space Cowboys anybody?) should be enough to convince anyone that he is well known, respected and serious about his line of work.

In Japan, Tommy Lee Jones is famous, but not for his films. He has become extremely well known by the name Jones-san for his work in the employ of Suntory Boss Coffee, Red Bull’s Japanese equivalent in the canned coffee market. I have to take a moment here to convey a feeling of shock and awe at the population of vending machines loitering on every street corner and in every train station. There are full twenty four hour periods when those mechanical soft and sport drink peddlers are more numerous than foreigners so to say that their market is large would be an understatement of epic proportions. If one were to ask the prototypical Tokyo native, the name Tommy Lee Jones would evoke crickets while Jones-san would illicit a grin of recognition and a reserved chuckle at the very least. To the Japanese, our Tommy Lee, an alien in the land of the rising sun, is the silent alien spokesperson observing earthen culture for his home world. Tommy Lee Jones has been stripped of the vast majority of his reputation and become the humorous yet eerie face of a major native product:.. He drinks Boss Coffee, and you should too.






I don’t want my blogs to be full essays so the next installment will put all of this Tommy Lee Jones talk back into its proper context. As always, thank you for reading.

PS:  As a rule I will be avoiding posting images that do not belong to me.  These are my souvenirs that I am sharing, not those on Google Images.

じゃあ行くぞ！ Well, Let's Go!

The two week trip I made to Tokyo this passed winter break has allowed me what will prove to be a decidedly unique view of Japanese culture. I was lucky enough this evening to meet a friend from Boston College who had just returned from his year abroad in the far east.  After a brief ferry mixup, I picked him up from Sausalito before making the leisurely drive to one of the best restaurants California has to offer... In-N-Out.  After a delicious meal, we drove along the stretch of wealth known as Tiburon before beginning the more arduous journey to Pride Rock (Marin, you know what's up). The usual catching up done, our mountaintop conversation turned to the bond we share in Japanese.  Our discussion of the Japanese language, cities, people mingled with the wispy trails of smoke and  lead to a mutual realization of the difference between our initial study abroad starting points.  While the first day of his year abroad had coincided with his first steps on Japanese soil (and first sight of an in-airport zen garden), my feet first touched Tokyo pavement on the twenty seventh of December, 2009. 

My first experiencing of Japan and its capitol was rife with the shock and awe evoked by the sheer number of people crammed into such small spaces such as train cars and narrow sidewalks as well as the bedazzling array of cuteness assaulting the senses from every shop window and street corner, but that is not what this blog is about.  I stayed with my girlfriend and her family about an hour train ride from the glowing Tokyo metropolis where I was treated as family and met with customs I could not have anticipated.  In about a month, I will be returning to Japan, but unlike my returning friend from school, my eyes have already seen the initial flash of culture that casts the rest of what it means to be in Japan in shadow.  My year abroad will not start with eyes wide open in amazement and mouth agape, but with the focus that comes once the eyes have adjusted to the florescent bulb unexpectedly illuminating a dim room.  The Japanese are not defined by their ability to become sardines in a can or to conceive adorable anthropomorphic kittens.  Rather a Japanese person is everything they are not telling you or the media has thankfully missed.

The only proper way to begin this blog of mine is to apologize.  There will be things about the Japanese that I will not be able to adequately convey in English especially to those who have never had the opportunity to be among them in their homeland.  I've never written a blog before, and I hope whoever reads this will take away something useful and see the world as more than just U.S. and them, whoever they are.  This blog is about the differences in communication noticed by a Communication major that people have no idea exist.  No matter how much this blog ends up being personal opinion or random observation, You can count one thing as fact: Deciding to study Japanese changed my life far more than any other decision I have made so far.... and it was the right choice.

Godzilla's first trip to Japan