The Photographer that Couldn't

"Photographs will offer indisputable evidence that the trip was made, that the program was carried out, that fun was had" (135). As Susan Sontag writes in her chapter "In Plato's Cave", photography is widely practiced and has become a crucial part of the documentation and memory of daily activities. Tourism is most obviously associated with photography, and it is interesting to visit cultural events in Japan--like festivals--and watch how others scramble to create physical proof that they were there.


This past Tuesday I attended the annual Kuruma Fire Festival in the Kumura prefecture of Kyoto. Sorry to use an overused metaphor, but we were packed like sardines as we shuffled up to get a glimpse of the flames. I tried to take a picture from far away because everyone else seemed to be doing it, but the distant scene was obstructed by another photographer. I can see the fire in his camera, but not my own. The technology of digital cameras allows us to hold the camera above our heads and capture a scene we can not see ourselves when in a large crowd of tall foreigners. I feel as though this cheapens the experience--to watch something beautiful through the eye of a camera--but at least I can tell people I have been there, which is the point of tourism, right?


I tried with all my might to get a good-looking picture of this event. Here, men are crowded around one of the two mikoshi, a portable shrine. The colors were stripped away when I used flash, and movement was blurred when I didn't. Even if I did get a clear shot, there is still a curious filmmaker in the corner, interfering in my own anthropological work. What troubles we have to go through to avoid the interference of other spectators with cameras, while being interfering photographers ourselves.

What I learned from being a photographer who failed is that some experiences are just not meant to be captured on film. Margaret Mead is right in that visual anthropology enhances our cultural studies, but in the case of the Kumura Fire Festival, my CoolPix camera could never capture the smells or the cold or what it felt like to walk down an emptying street framed in flaming torches.

Taiko Masters

"Taiko got a boost in the 1970's when the Japanese Government authorized funds to help preserve the intangible cultural assets that were slowly vanishing in the post-war era."
Source: Taiko overview, history.


Taiko is the Japanese word for drum, though in my experience, English-speakers have used the phrase "taiko drumming" to refer to the activity pictured above. The International Beer Summit was held in Umeda this past weekend, featuring various multicultural samples of beer, food, and music/dance. The taiko were used to represent Japanese culture, just as the bagpipes were used to represent Scotland and smiling women in sequined dresses were used to represent Thailand.
Taiko is a significant part of Japanese history, used in battle and religious ceremonies, but--as the website says--its use changed and became more popular in "modern" (post-WWII) Japan. The taiko performance at the Beer Summit seemed as though it was meant to showcase traditional Japan, however.



This may be a more obvious image of "modern" Japan, however. At major arcades anywhere in Japan, Taiko Drum Master is a favorite. The idea is that the player "reads" the music onscreen and hits the taiko accordingly. The song options available range from the Mario Brothers theme song to karaoke hit "Linda Linda". The video game acts as though it is reconciling the traditional and contemporary sides of Japanese culture. Are the intangible cultural assets of Japan truly vanishing? Is the presence of taiko at beer summits and arcades evidence for or against that idea?
I say it is effective, because a large part of many cultures involves proving that the past is still important.

Creative Japan

During the 1990s, foreigners began to consider Japanese culture as "cool", so says the Japanese government. Visual anthropologist Steven Fedorowicz featured "Creative Japan", a website celebrating Japanese popular culture, in his blog on July 30th, 2007 (see post). The Japanese embassy in the UK and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Japan both have a hand in the maintenance and oversight of the website entitled "Creative Japan", and thus it is interesting to see how they claim foreigners (especially youth) should perceive Japan.

"Creative Japan" has a diverse display of aspects of Japanese contemporary culture: anime/manga, fashion, literature, technology, etc. Some text briefly covers what is significant about that sector of popular culture, complemented by small, blurry photos perhaps found on a Google image search. The visual accompaniment is lacking--sometimes indistinguishable or unexplained--and the editors should consider how foreigners likely visit this site for the pictures alone, perhaps scanning the text at best.

"Creative Japan" gives off the sense that Japan is a nation proud of how its emerging culture has reached the corners of the world. It is celebrating its uniqueness while allowing other cultures to embrace it. As my anthropology professor Jeff Hester has lectured, "Nihonjinron" is a term referring to the discussion of the uniqueness of Japanese culture in relation to foreign countries, and I feel that "Creative Japan" is an example of this. Of course it is difficult to capture the essence of a living culture in a few fuzzy photos and abstract text, but I believe they express the point quite well.

Please visit Creative Japan to develop your own opinions. The movie still displayed at the beginning of this post is taken from Creative Japan's anime section.

Stifling Aesthetics

"In Japanese cities the nights are bright. Too bright. Streets, railway stations, offices, shops, vending machines—all vie in their brightness for people's use. The entire interior of convenience stores is luminous. Unfamiliar with the calming effect of balanced lightness and darkness, the Japanese perceive a dark city as desolate. While there has been repeated mention of reviewing the excessive brightness of cities, nothing has changed; rather, cities are calling for more brightness amid economic doldrums."
-Makoto Ueda, "Summer Living in Japan"
See website


This photo was taken in a keitai--or cellular phone--store in Hirakatashi. This particular store offers the top three brands of phones, which are Softbank, au, and DoCoMo. The photo captures the cluttered, fluorescent aesthetics of the store as well as the concentrated, formal process a customer must endure in purchasing a phone for the first time. Surely such a long, tedious, and important rite of passage as buying a phone should be performed in more comfortable lighting.


Again, like moths, Japanese people seem to constantly flutter around bright, pretty lights, especially in a place such as an arcade. An arcade is naturally lit by the neon glow of screens and whirring machines. Many are loud, smoky, and filled with sad, lonely men gambling their funds on pinball. The aesthetics are terrible, in my and Mr. Ueda's opinion, but people are always going back for more.