When the Future Becomes the Past

The late British musician, David Bowie, was famous for his affinity with ‘Japanese culture’. He owned at one point a small home outside Japan’s former capital, Kyoto, and liked to spend time there whenever he needed some distance from his public persona. Whilst it is easy for us to raise our collective eyebrow at such fascination with another culture as some sort of fetish, in this short essay I would like to show that it is more than meets the eye in this particular case. Whilst Bowie’s fascination with Japanese culture may have been indeed a fetish, as anyone who is attracted to a foreign culture must be, to at least some degree, fetishising the Other, Bowie, unknowingly, had an impact on contemporary Japanese culture of his day in a unique way.

Bowie has been known for his role in the deconstruction of gender performance in the contemporary culture. He singlehandedly curved a room for various gender expressions in the world of popular music since his inception of Ziggy Stardust as his public persona. It is difficult to imagine the coming of the British New Wave represented by the likes of Bauhaus without Bowie’s impact on popular culture. Therefore, it makes sense that he has been credited for the deconstruction of gender performance in popular culture that also helped to shape the norms that we live by today. That being noted, the impact of Bowie was not quite the same in Japan. And, importantly, the difference was not quantitative; it was qualitative in nature. He was just as wildly popular in Japan as in Europe and elsewhere for good measure, and, whilst his grip on popular imagination lessened over time, he has been recognised as one of the most fearless performers both in Japan and in the ‘West’. The difference in the nature of his impact is, in fact, rooted in the difference between Japan and the ‘West’ regarding the respective norms of gender performance.

As you might have been known from contemporary shows such as Samurai Champloo (2004), Japanese culture has been relatively less restrictive regarding gender performance and sexuality. This cultural tradition is surprisingly pervasive and longstanding. For example, from the Heian period in Japan, the fictional heroes are often androgynous, the prime example of which must be Hikaru Genji, the protagonist of what is now considered the first novel, The Tale of Genji, by Murasakishikibu. Following it was Torikaebaya MonogatarI (Translated as Changeling in English), which recounts two fictional siblings’ adventure in Medieval Buddhist Japan. It is a fantastic tale of two siblings whose sexes and genders did not match according to social expectations. The son acted as a girl, and the daughter expressed masculinity. To make matters more ‘confusing’, they looked identical. It is no coincidence that Takarazuka, the famed all female theatre group in Japan which pushes the gender norms, adopted the story into their repertoire (Takarazuka’s first hit was the adaptation of a celebrated comic, The Rose of Versailles, whose protagonist Oscar was a woman raised as a swordsman). And this tradition survived during the brutal period dominated by the warrior class; despite their warrior code, when it comes to sex and gender, it appears that Japanese continued to appreciate either neutrality and/or ambiguity regarding them.

This all changed when the Meiji Restoration took place. As Japan began to pursue industrialisation and modernisation of the military, the culture also transformed. The likes of Torikaebaya Monogatari were deemed ‘too revolting and vile’ to consider serious literature, and scholars condemned them as the representation of the moral decline of aristocracy. This reaction reflects perfectly the Geist of Industrial Materialism. As in accordance with any industrial-materialist enterprise, Japan in the Meiji period considered arts and humanity ‘frivolous studies’ and concentrated the national effort on ‘concrete pursuits’, which is the equivalent of what we call STEM today. In short, the Geist of Industrial Materialism only considers whatever gives it a competitive edge valuable, and it knows no distinction regarding the nature of ‘benefits’, be they economic, developmental, or military.

This unfortunate turn persisted even after the WWII, despite some pockets of resistance. The echoes of militarism can be still felt acutely in every aspect of Japanese life, such as social expectations of personal conduct and work ethics. Pupils wear uniforms in many schools and their social structure is hierarchical based on seniority. Most people dress conservatively, preferring not to attract attention to themselves. It is a silent society that put individual expression under the strict seal.

When Bowie arrived for tour in Japan in 1972, his outrageous make-ups and costumes excited the crowds. It was like someone from the future came to call on them to be free. Like elsewhere, he went on to unleash a generation of artists, musicians, and misfits to come out and challenge the stifling social conventions. Yet, in a hindsight, for Japanese, it was not only about the present and the future of their society; it was also their past. Japanese consistently appreciated the ambiguity of the norms and conventions regarding sex and gender. Therefore, unlike in the ‘West’ wherein strict regulations regarding sex and gender are still felt today, Bowie’s impact was not to open our eyes to the future alone; the man who ‘screw up eyes and screwed down hairdo like some cat from Japan’ reminded Japanese of their collective past, albeit a sealed one by the legacy of Japan’s imperial violence. It should not surprise us if Bowie was indeed inspired by some of the Japanese cultural images; Ziggy’s hair stands like a traditional Japanese rendition of a lion, and his make-up is not dissimilar to that of Kabuki actors. His silky big sleeves and platform boots make him look like Oiran, a highly educated courtesan from the Edo era.

Still, it does not matter whether he knew these cultural references and was able to put them in correct context if he did. What matters to us all is that such an encounter was possible in the first place. And thus, we must continue to safeguard curiosity in something different and distant from ourselves. For Japanese to be reminded of their collective past by an English person may be a happy accident, yet if we become overly prosecutorial to the point where cultural curiosities would be snuffed out, we would see much less of these fortuitous coincidences.