The Virtual Time Garden

Narratives on "Internationalization”

― A Critical View

 

International Congress at the center for Japanese Studies (Kyoto, Nov.1999)

　

     First of all, I would like to apologize about my awful English in my presentation. However, why is it awful? Because, I am ashamed of my language ability in English at first. Then why should I feel ashamed of it? Because, most people believe that English is an international language and then it is necessary to learn it for the people attending such an international meeting as this. It means that I have not accomplished my duty for it.

     However, it is not an only reason why I am ashamed. Another big reason is the fact that quite a lot of people in this place are same Japanese as me. There may be who is able to speak English perfectly or fluently, and there may be who is not among them. This is embarrassing to me. Probably, I will chat with my Japanese friends afterward; "You could speak enough well", "No, I couldn't express what I really want to say at all ", and so on.

     Speaking foreign language is in itself a border crossing and an unusual and unnatural experience where one must jump into the different oneself. But, when there are people who speak same Japanese as me, the situation will become more complicated. Since two cultural environment are mixed there, and one must use appropriately the two by case.

     That is not only difficult but also embarrassing to me. Because by changing language we must also change the personality or the communication style of ourselves. Even such an expression that one never says in Japanese must be said in English. For instance, instead of "Inaga-kun genki? ", I must say "Hi, Shige-mi ! Fine? ". I can't help feeling reluctant to do like this. Depending on case, I must use more unnatural and inconvenient expression. This seems to be very embarrassing in the place where we must use two languages simultaneously.

     But, if so, why don't I quit my job?ﾊ Because, such an experience might provide some new knowledge to me. The code system to which one belongs will be invaded or interfered by that new knowledge, and the different organization of codes will be born. To know something is nothing but the process of de-territorialization and re-territorialization of a certain code system. Although there is a possibility to be betrayed, I can put up with embarrassment with such a hope.

     So, what I want to confirm here is that using foreign language and learning new knowledge are exactly the deed of crossing cultural borders in itself. The language has each code. Using a certain foreign language is nothing but accepting its code system. That is to abandon the one's own code tentatively and accept the interference or invasion by some external code.

     However, is it a case that happens only when we speak a foreign language? I think it is not. Even when we are using the so-called mother tongue, we are put in the similar situation fundamentally. Indeed, there is not the difficulty of learning foreign languages. But, when we try to communicate with such groups with the different code system as various cultural groups with a different gender or class, and even when we talk with the friends or family, we will find out similar difficulties.

     If so, I want to confirm again that culture itself is always and already crossing borders, and it is fluid and mobile that cannot be fixed. The culture is always changing the figure like meteorological phenomena. Then, it is just an illusion that there seems to be singular or plural culture(s) with fixed structure and then there occurs the interactions or crossing of them.
 

 

1. What was the "Internationalization" in Japan?

 

      In Japan, it is firmly believed that speaking English is equal to be "international" even now.ﾊ Though German and French were included in this status at one time, their popularity has remarkably decreased. That is relating to the historical facts that Japan had been under the occupation of the United States and strongly influenced by American culture in the cold war period, and also the governing power of English has been strengthened still more in the post-coldwar world.

      Japanese television flows with so many commercial of language school everyday. I was a little shocked when I saw a commercial of a language school named "NOVA" in which a girl studying there is talking confidently "I want be an International Woman". What is an "international woman"? If so, could there be an international man? Yes, it is. In Japanese, we have a word "Kokusai-jin" and it means precisely an "international man".

     In this case, the word "international" is caught with a mythological power.ﾊ And, it is not so difficult to comprehend the meaning of this case. Briefly it is the word connecting with the assimilating desire to the West as the standard. Namely, Japan is the area that was colonized or self-colonized in culture although it was not actually or politically colonized by the West. And this still continues even now. Therefore the international woman means the woman like Westerners and doesn't mean cosmopolitan or something else at all.

     Since the Meiji Restoration, Japan has advanced the process of modernization with the model of Europe and America. It was the complete introduction of each various modern systems such as an art and education, without staying to just industrial or political systems. However, it was not done voluntarily by the Japanese themselves. In the first place, the people called “the Japanese” were never existing previously. Accordingly, even the Japanese culture did not exist. The Tokugawa shogunate, which was suddenly approached about opening country as if raped by the black ships of America, was not a central government and was just like the coordinator of each feudal lords. As it is often said, there didn't exist the Nation in Japan. The Meiji government was the artificially made-up central government in the meantime to compete to such empires as America and Europe. It was aiming at both the establishment of the first class country such as European empires for outside and the formation of the "nation" centered on the emperor for inside. Present standard Japanese language was invented, the school system and the National Army were established and many students studying abroad brought in the various knowledge and systems into Japan.

     Certainly there occurred some acculturation such as confusion and misunderstanding by bringing in the different codes. However, as a whole, the consciousness that European countries were much more advanced than Japan was widely shared among the Japanese and the majority was quite active to learning the system and knowledge from the West. Shu Kishida said that it derived from the trauma of being raped by black ships.

     Needless to say, this introduction was not so simple and the various cultural changes had broken out with the process of Japanization. However, at the same time, it is an extremely unusual situation if we observe the examples of other areas that the modernization/Westernization of Japan developed so smoothly. That means the mainstream of people in Japan was so active to the westernization.

     This also means that the encounter with the foreign countries for the Japanese was the process of formation of the double ego based on the contradicting feelings of the hatred and yearning to the strong West that raped us and made our country open. This process has formed the complicated consciousness that put oneself located in the East and behaves as the imperialistic ruler of the neighboring countries and on the other hand, both of the feeling of rejection and assimilation were co-existing against the West.

     Such a double structure of ego can be ubiquitously found in the Japanese culture. For example, it is shown in the way of putting side by side of the Japanese style stool and the Western style stool in the rest room of the public place such as a hotel.

     The university culture and the intellectuals of Japan have rather strengthened such double structure. It is admitted to be cultural to learn the knowledge of Renaissance Art, but not the same concerning the knowledge of ukiyoe. It is no more than dilettantism; while the Western classic music is a culture, the traditional Japanese music is no more than an ethnic music. In general, the intellectuals of Japan dislike Japan or Japaneseness. However, at the same time, this is often reversed because of the double structure. We know so many examples that the intellectual of Japan when they became old suddenly turned out to be the Japaneseness.

     It is well known that the Japanese call the foreigner "Gaijin" uniformly, and this Gaijin is mainly indicating the American and European. As for the Chinese and the Korean, there are few cases that they are called "Gaijin" for it is very difficult to distinguish them from the Japanese by their appearance. That is, the foreign countries mean mainly the western countries for the Japanese, and we have little interest regarding the other countries. Therefore, the word "international" has also been used as a synonym of "western". For instance, when we say international actor or singer, its meaning is nothing but being admitted in the West. Even if one were very famous for example in Taiwan or in Hong Kong, he would never be said "international" but "famous in Asia" to the utmost.

 

2. Narratives on "internationalization"

 

     However, this has been changing little by little in these ten years. In the Post-Coldwar ages, the power of nation states turned into weak, it became borderless in every range, the communication revolution broke out and the move of information and people has drastically increased. The framework of the east and west or the south and north that the cold war structure has produced, are any longer effective now.

     Japan was able to achieve the desire of assimilation into the West for it was taken in the "West Side" in the coldwar structure. I must confess that I believed that I was thinking in a completely free way when I was young. However, now I think that was an illusion or an effect produced by the cold war structure itself.

     Every framework has been broken in the world of the post-coldwar and the process of scattering or diversification has been much advanced. In such a new situation, the unit as the nation state has stopped working well at all. The various strategies for survival are groped. However, I think such demand as that Japan must be more internationalized becomes not only meaningless but also troublesome now.ﾊ Because, in the current globalized world, the word " international " is almost losing its meaning.

     The word "international" means the interrelationship between the nations and is naturally based upon the premise of autonomous unit of the nation state. If the concepts like "inter-cultural" or "cultural borders” are suggesting such fixed and stand-alone cultures which is overlapped with this unit of nation state, the "internationalization" would be rather another form of repression. As I mentioned above, culture is something like the meteorological phenomena that are always changing shapes and it must be nonsense to catch them as fixed substances.

     By the way, why was the fixed concept of "culture" collaborated with the nation state born? All these are derived from the wave of industrialization that has been spreading to the scale of the earth.

     In his famous book "The Third Wave"(1980), Alvin Toffler mentioned six principles that "the second wave as industrialization" expanded throughout the world. Those are the principles as known as standardization, specialization, synchronization, concentration, maximization and centralization and the people have been tied to them in the industrial society. Although these were all born originally from the demand for efficiency in mass production in the factory, they have spread to the industrial society just as the universal moral, and bound the behavior pattern and the worldview of people. It became advantageous to combine oneself with the standard there and have come to increase the uniform human. Furthermore, in accordance with these principles, the standardized public education began in order to make up the homogenous nation.

     If it seems that, we are belonging to the homogeneous culture just for the reason as living in Japan, that is an illusion or a fantasy that such principles of the industrial society produced. And, if the Japanese seem to be tied to their company, as often mentioned, that is not an inheritance of the culture of Samurai -- in all cases the percentage of the warrior's class in the population was quite small --, but the result of these hundred years that industrialization has been so rapidly advanced in Japan.

     The national culture and the cultural identity have been formed rapidly in such industrialization and those are neither universal nor natural issues. Moreover, with "the Third wave" suggested by Toffler, in other words, the move into the information society, those are losing their meaning still more.

     Therefore, all of the discourses regarding the communication between the "different cultures" based upon the premise that all individuals belonging to a certain nation state have the homogeneous culture in nature, would not be more than an etiquette book for the students studying abroad or the tourists. Does it rest any proper problem of "ethics" there? Needless to quote Mikhail Bakhtine's theory of dialogue, that collision, friction, opposition and sympathy are the essential of the human communication in general and there is not a difference between inside a same culture and with different cultures.

     Rather, the real problem is that we still believe that the dominant western rules are the international rules, and most of the problems about crossing cultural borders are deeply related to these dominant rules.

     For the meantime, the dominant group of nation states is accepting the rule of the West as the standard in the global society. This is somehow inevitable as a kind of necessary evil. It is because if there is not at all common rules, the basis of the communication itself has disappeared as well as the conference without any rules only causes confusion.

     However, the problem is to receive the comprehension of this rule too much seriously. That is to take attitude that by believing those rules as universally right, despise or boycott the people who do not accept or defend those rules. It is the so-called ethnocentric or Eurocentric attitude that quite a lot of Westerners including the intellectuals is keeping in tacit. Such an attitude sometimes gives the suppression, discrimination or persecutions to the people outside of the rules. It may become the cause of the ethnocentric repulsion of the people in the outside conversely. Exactly, the ethnic identity in general is formed by this kind of suppression and persecution from the outside.

     Thereupon, the conceivable second one is the so-called cultural relativistic attitude. It asserts that each culture has each different value and it should be mutually respected without requesting any unification of rule. However, same as the case of so-called multi-culturalism, this position has double difficulty. One is that has a tendency to put culture and identity which are originally fluid and mobile, fixed on the ethnicity or the nation as I mentioned before. Another is that it must make some different common rule in all cases, as long as each does not take the isolation policy of noninterference completely.

     It might be inevitable in the practical view to have a common language and code in the globalized world, and that such conventionally dominant codes as English and the Western rule become defacto standard, even if there were several problems with them. However, we should not catch it as a fixed issue in any case. It must be rewritten flexibly by participation of many people. Therefore, both attitudes of the ethnocentrism and the cultural relativism should be overcome. That is the viewpoint of what I call "the meteorology of culture".

     It is also to be said regarding the problem of anthropology and museum that is treated at this conference.

     First of all the anthropology and the art history are not the universal way of knowledge that is valid anywhere in the world. That is, they are kinds of discursive organization closely relating to the political, cultural and economic condition of the modern industrial society.

     For instance, it is not a universal question to ask about the "correct way of representing culture". Rather, it is the question that has a meaning only in the regular social structure where it has a value to represent the other in the scientific language and to exhibit art works or artifacts in the museum.

     The desire of representation is motivated by a certain interest. In the modern society, as Jan Neederveen Pieterse says (1995), the ethnographical museum and the national history museum were deeply related to the formation of the nation, and even the art museum as sanctuary of national culture worked similarly. However, even if we remove those motives, two extremely modern motives will be left there. It is the faith to the Science as an external knowledge database infinitely expanding and the Romantic yearning to the unknown world. This two have made the development of the modern science, which needs to represent everything and tries to collect the whole universe into the language.

     All these do not overlap exactly with the field of culture. It is only a part of it and fairly local cultural and meteorological phenomena from the view of the whole world. The desire to produce the ultra database as the spatial arrangement of knowledge is typically Western idea. It is obvious that this desire was collaborating with the desire of the imperialistic spatial control of the world in the nineteenth century.

     Therefore, it is so unreasonable in itself to believe that the correct, fair and reciprocal attitude is possible in the domain of anthropology and the art history. The museum and exhibition were the devices of the formation of the "Nation" at one time and became the event that was directed by the audience who is consuming them now. There are no representations that are fair to everyone and all will be satisfied with. It is because every representation is nothing but a discourse.

      There is the struggle of discourse in the living knowledge and also there is the interference, violence and resistance in it. It is unable to avoid them, but at the same time, they are rather the chance where the new knowledge will be born. Historically speaking, the new culture always came out not from the ruler's side but from the refugee camps. Rather, the problem is with such attitude that tries to make some fixed and correct system of representation. With such attitude, only a new and choking prison will be brought forth.

　For instance, it is not a problem in itself that there is a representation or discourse full of the prejudice and not correct. Or it is not a crime to become a researcher or artist by the Romantic enthusiasm or the yearning from the Orientalism in the sense of Said. Even the ordinary human relations between lovers or friends are already like that. The important is to bring about cracking and dialogical space to the representation system itself.

　Therefore, the vision of the world in which the different cultures can live symbiotically is almost meaningless. Because, it is just like as trying to fix the meteorological phenomena in a same place. And the multi-culturalistic principle of the mutual respect of different cultures has a danger of becoming the mere "protection of homogeneity", when it is applied too strictly. Anyway, if there is not friction, the life must be so boring. And such culture in mutation that is the combination of the fragmental modules might be the original form of culture. It is important to become free from such spatial system of representation as the nation, standard, race, ethnicity and also science. And a new culture will be born only from there.

　What I feel misgivings about is not to carry out a critical analysis to the method of anthropology or the problem of museum, but to suppose as if there should be the best and right way there. There is no such way. In the first place, the existence of anthropology and museum is neither universal nor right in itself. There exists only an endless trial of open dialogues. To pretend standing at the side of such rightness is nothing but an ethnocentric behavior.

　The problem is to recover the living knowledge that does not adhere to such fixed frameworks as own culture and different cultures. It is necessary to release the heterogeneity not only to the outside but also to the inside of us. To bring about the heterogeneity into one's own discourse and to crack an eggshell of fixed identity of the self. In a sense, the self is also a meteorological phenomenon and the new self and communication will come only from the furious storms and whirlpools.