September 25: Comments on this week's readings

On 'Pachinko Nation'

One of the most interesting points made in this article is the reference to pachinko parlours as being a place to zone out, to achieve “a kind of cut rate zen”. This would seem to demand some international comparisons. For instance, South Korea, China and Taiwan would seem to have similarly intense personal pressures – why hasn't pachinko proved exportable? Do the Internet Cafes in these regions fulfill a similar role?

In addition, and in connection with last week's topic, it might be asked whether pachinko is a 'game'. It is in some sense interactive, and there exists a goal that the player aims toward; yet, as the author points out, skill has essentially no bearing on the outcome. Associated with this would be the trend of introducing electronics in pachinko machines, and investigating whether 'gamification' has become an important part of keeping the device relevant.

On Print Club Photography in Japan

My immediate thoughts about this article were on how anachronistic the 'print club' machines appear in the modern context – much like Polaroid cameras. In an environment of ubiquitous digital cameras, and considering Japan's own dominance of the handheld camera market, the idea of a booth-sized machine printing stickers seems dreadfully old-fashioned.

This might be another example of Japan, once a paragon of high tech, slipping behind in the last few years. The New York Times ran an article earlier this year explaining the continued reliance on fax machines in Japan, long after the technology had been eclipsed elsewhere ⁱ. One can't help but wonder if 'Print Club' (or arcades in general for that matter) is an example of the same trend.

I Martin Fackler, “In High-Tech Japan, the Fax Machines Roll On”, New York Times, February 13, 2013, accessed September 23, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/world/asia/in-japan-the-fax-machine-is-anything-but-a-relic.html?_r=0

September 19: Do Games have to be fun?

At the end of the second chapter of his book, James Newman settles on the use of Gonzalo Frasca's definition in describing video games:

“any form of computer based entertainment software... involving one or multiple players in a physical or networked enviroment” (Page 25 of Videogames, Kindle edition, my italics)

The use of the word 'entertainment', and the author's focus on play, lead to an interesting question: Do games have to be fun?

In other mediums, there exist examples which, even when they achieve mass popularity, tend to avoid any connotation of 'fun' or 'entertainment'. For example, few people would describe the film Schindler's List as 'fun', or a book on the Armenian Genocide as an 'entertaining' read. Such examples are not conventionally 'pleasurable', but are often pursued out of an interest in empathizing with and understanding terrible misfortune.

More banal examples exist as well. Instructional films or technical manuals are instances where watching or reading is performed for purely instrumental reasons, without any expectation of pleasure. Additionally, many professional sports, from chess to football, are performed by the participants as work rather than leisure; an NHL player may enjoy playing hockey, but that is incidental to his employment obligations.

Do similar circumstances occur in video games? Certain Japanese visual novels have been referred to (if Wikipedia is to be believed) as Nakige - 'Crying Games'ⁱ, that focus on producing sadness and melancholy amongst players. In the western context, the game Richard and Alice (Owl Cave, 2013) offers a bleak story and ultimately little reward in the end for the player's efforts. Such games rely on emotional value to attract players, rather than more conventional thrills.

Electronic training aids – perhaps most well known in the form of language-learning software – may fit the definition of 'video games', yet are undertaken chiefly for practical purposes. The line between training and leisure is perhaps most blurred by the offerings of Czech-based Bohemia Interactive, which produces the ARMA series of games. Bohemia has used the game engine of ARMA to produce the Virtual BattleSpace (VBS) series of training aids, which are marketed to military forces. A US Marine may 'play' VBS 2 insofar as he interacts with the software, but he is hardly expected to enjoy doing so – indeed, many of the 'fun' elements in the civilian equivalent may well have been removed.

Finally, the phenomenon of E-Sports has in large part replicated the dynamic present in conventional professional sports. A professional player of League of Legends (Riot Games, 2009) or Starcraft II (Blizzard Entertainment, 2010) is quite likely to enjoy the game, but their frequency, consistency and intensity of play is determined not by individual preference, but by team demands or financial opportunity.

Such examples prove problematic for the above definition. It seems more desirable, in my opinion, to return to definitions centred on interactivity – regardless of the problems they may pose – rather than do battle with the subjectivity introduced by a term such as 'entertainment'.

i“Visual Novel”, last modified August 19, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_novel#Nakige

Further Commentary on Ruth Benedict

An interesting, and highly critical appraisal of The Chrysanthemum and the Sword.

http://login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=6423956&site=eds-live&scope=site

Lie, John. "Ruth Benedict's Legacy of Shame: Orientalism and Occidentalism in the Study of Japan." Asian Journal Of Social Science 29, no. 2 (July 2001): 249. SocINDEX with Full Text, EBSCOhost

September 11: Ruth Benedict and 'Feel-Good Narratives'

The first reference to Ruth Benedict that I had ever come across was within John Dower's excellent book on World War II propaganda, War without Mercy. Ruth Benedict is mentioned as part of the American academic effort to study and understand their wartime antagonist. Dower identifies Benedict as a moderate voice, whose 1943 pamphlet Races of Mankind, was attacked by the US Army as 'Communist Propaganda' due to its questioning of discrimination against African-Americansⁱ. Considering this context, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword was, in all likelihood, meant as a progressive rather than racist text. This does not, however, prevent several elements from being extremely striking to the modern reader.

 

Perhaps the most interesting part of Benedict's work is not her analysis of the Japanese (of which this reader has very little ability to critique) but rather her brief, confident statements about American values. For instance, in contrast to the Japanese focus on hierarchy, Benedict writes that “Equality is the highest, most moral American basis for hopes of a better world... we fight hierarchy with a righteous indignation”ⁱⁱ. Such sentiments might have formed the basis for Benedict's personal values, but much less so for her country as a whole; the African-American population of the 1940's would heartily disagree that they lived in a country based on 'equality'.

 

Elsewhere, Benedict critiques Japanese wartime strategy. She announces that the Japanese went to war on a fundamentally different basis than their western counterparts, fighting to establish a preferred international hierarchy where Japan was destined to rule Asiaⁱⁱⁱ. Such a statement ignores America's own fixation with 'Manifest Destiny'. Benedict correctly points to atrocities carried out by Japanese soldiers against Allied Prisoners-of-War and Japanese military's contempt for surrender without realizing that – as shown by Dower five decades hence – that there were incidences of her countrymen showing a similar disdain for enemy prisoners^iv.

 

In The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, Benedict seeks to understand the Japanese, “the most alien enemy the United States had ever fought”^v. In framing the comparison between two utterly dissimilar cultures, Benedict implicitly makes a statement about her own country. By comparing it with a totally alien other, a particular vision of the United States can be manufactured, one that is secular, rational and moral through-and-through. Yet the Japanese do not suffer from the comparison either. Benedict, as mentioned, was not a virulent racist and as related in the Ryang paper, seemed to sympathize with post-war Japan. The Japan described by the book is made to appear strange to the western eye, but it is not weak; the Japanese are shown to be obedient, fanatical and seemingly incapable of internal dissent. If Japan was America's most 'alien' enemy, then it was also – perhaps by that virtue – also it's most worthy opponent.

 

It is the possibilities for positive interpretations of Japanese 'uniqueness' that Ryang points to while evaluating Benedict's continuing relevance in Japan itself. Benedict's narrative plays into the hands of the Japanese right, Ryang argues, by emphasizing the Japanese as a uniform whole, glossing over separate ethnicities and the imperialist oppression of other nationalities. Ryang complains that there is no place in Benedict's book for the conquered people of the Japanese Empire; one might add that there is little discussion of economic disparity or class antagonism. It is this reduction to homogeneity that secures Benedict's fame; by establishing America and Japan as diametrically opposed, uniform entities, each embodying a set of cultural and moral values, the partisans of both nations are satisfied^vi.

 

It is important to keep in mind Benedict's historical context, as well as the research difficulties that she faced in wartime, before one levels any judgements. There is no malice in Benedict's writing, but The Chrysanthemum and the Sword is definitely an orientalist narrative, one that produces a sort of 'feel-good narrative' which reinforces the preconceptions of difference held by both American and Japanese readers.

 

iJohn Dower, War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War (New York, Pantheon Books: 1993) 119-20

iiRuth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (Cambridge, Riverside Press: 1946) 45

iiiBenedict, 20-21

ivDower, 63-68

vBenedict, 1

viLie, John. "Ruth Benedict's Legacy of Shame: Orientalism and Occidentalism in the Study of Japan." Asian Journal Of Social Science 29, no. 2 (July 2001): 249. SocINDEX with Full Text, EBSCOhost (accessed September 11, 2013). 257