Samurai Champloo and the discourses of modernity, civilisation and Western power in Japan

Essay submitted in response to the following:

Both Russia and Japan were “old” national societies with significantly entrenched social relations and symbolic-cultural traditions when confronted by an expanding global capitalism. Critically discuss the key issues of debate on how to respond to Western modernity.

POL5048S Global Political Thought, Political Studies, University of Cape Town

“An essentialised ‘Japaneseness’ is therefore deployed as “an authentic and originary presence” to act as an anchor against “the dizzying experience of shock, speed and sensation generated by capitalist modernization” (Harootunian 144). As Iwabuchi writes: “the confrontation with cultural difference is subtly replaced by the pleasurable consumption of foreign cultures that are destined to be indigenised into Japanese soil”. (58). These simulations of Europe can be seen within a wider discourse through which the West is drained of any perceived threat it may have held, tamed and sold as a site of pleasurable consumption. Initial encounters with America and European powers in Japan were dominated by fear, primarily fear of being conquered and colonized.”

Chris Wood (2009). The European Fantasy Space and Identity Construction in “Porco Rosso”. Italics added, my emphasis.

Abstract

Japan has managed to position itself as possessing a unique ability to absorb other cultural influences whilst retaining the essential spirit of its own cultural form. Through anime, shorthand for Japanese cartoons, the normative space of modernity is reconfigured to portray Japanese culture as an inherent feature of Western modernity and globalising capitalism. In this essay, I use episode 23 of the anime series Samurai Champloo which reinterprets the 1853 arrival of American gunships forcing Japan to open trade networks, to illustrate how this indigenisation of foreign culture occurs. To that effect, the essay borrows from several academic writing on anime and modernity. The central critique the essay hopes to establish is derived through a juxtaposition of how Russia and Japan debated responses to Western modernity; I focus on two main responses along military-economic and cultural lines. Ultimately, I argue that because both responses seemed to naturalise the expansion of global capitalism as an ‘advance of civilisation’, the response to Western modernity which sought to retain an untainted cultural identity became inextricably tied to global capitalism, and therefore, undermining the preservation of an essential, ‘pure’, Japanese spirit.

Introduction

Background

The introduction of Western theatre in Japan to civilise the urban elite (Buruma, 2003) was marked by a particularly humorous irony. In the second chapter of the book Inventing Japan[1], Ian Burma recounts a slight detail which in many ways heralded what would become a hallmark of distinctly Japanese culture in the modern age of civilisation: anime[2]. Buruma (2003:45) describes a scene where an ex Japanese policeman performs a rendition of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Having returned from a tour in England where he performed a phony version of Kabuki to a jaw-dropped European audience, the ex-policeman returned to Japan and put on a sham performance of the English classic. The audience was none the wiser too. An unforgettable scene in the counterfeit Hamlet which was reproduced for the urban Japanese elite, and which sets the stage for this essay, saw the former police official – who was playing Hamlet – entering the stage on a bicycle. The fact that modern bicycles only came to the world 200 years after Shakespeare’s days did not seem to trouble the audience for whom “Hamlet was as exotic, and modern, as the bicycle” (Buruma, 2003:45). It is here that we notice an example of a version and a meaning  of modernity directly and specifically tied to Europe and the West[3].

Contextual location

It is important to highlight this occurrence because in “pre-modern” Japan – the period in the 17^th century of the Edo era before the Meiji restoration, there were levels of modernity which were only experienced in Europe in the 19^th century (Hobsbawm, 1987:14). The Edo era, 1600 – 1868, preceded the Meiji period of modern Japan and was characterised by the rule of the shogunate, a feudal military government which amounted to a military dictatorship (Totman, 2005). The samurai played a crucial role in upholding this form Japanese government. The last shogunate before the Meiji era was the Tokugawa rulership. In the first century of the Edo period, Japan experienced developments which are generally associated with the modern period. These developments included higher population literacy and numeracy levels – the highest in the world at the time (Henshall, 2012), expanded road networks, higher agricultural output and the standardisation of coinage. This occurred two centuries before the 19^th century era of modernity. Therefore, modernity was not yet entirely the purview of the West.

However, 1853 signalled a decisive turning point for Japan when a fleet of American warships under the Perry Expedition arrived on its shores with the aim of using “gunboat diplomacy” to open Japanese ports to American trade. The anime series Samurai Champloo is set in the Edo period and uses historical facts in that period blended with modern references[4]. In Episode 23, Baseball Blues, the main characters are made to compete with an American team of Baseball players who have come to declare war on Japan. At the 5-minute mark of the episode, there is a clear reference to the Perry Expedition where the 73 cannons under Perry’s Expedition fired blank shots towards the capital of Edo, the town of Uruga. However, the episode deftly manages to not directly reference 1853 until the very end of the show where the American team has been defeated and “returned back with a fear of the Japanese in their hearts”. Samurai Champloo reimagines the Perry 1853 expedition (Anderson, 2013: 123), spelling out the explosive destructive power of the shell guns. The US commander of the ship makes it clear that they have come to command the Japanese to open trade networks, and if they do not obey, war will be declared. At this moment, the commander notices one of the Japanese toying with a baseball, and the American crew laughs about how “the sport of gentleman has come to the country of savages”.  Thereafter, instead of risking bloodshed and war, both parties decide to battle it out through baseball. Samurai Champloo’s illustration of a distinctly Japanese ability to indigenise foreign cultures whilst retaining its own cultural essence, is portrayed in the victory of the Japanese characters in the anime series over the American players (Watanabe, 2004).

Aims and outline

Episode 23 opens in a modern setting depicting successful Japanese baseball players in the American baseball league. This fictionalisation does not correlate to actual historical fact nor present reality. For this essay, my interest is in the Japanese construction of modernity: where the threat of Western power is tamed by either presenting it as inhering in Japanese tradition or packaging it for pleasurable consumption. Through a juxtaposition of responses to modernity from countries such as Russia and Japan starring down the barrel of Western modernity, the essay aims to consider how this response fails to both neutralise the threat of Western power nor preserve an ‘essential’ Japanese culture.

Civilisation under the gun

It would appear that military and economic might, technological advancement and globalising capitalism are the defining features of Western modernity (Wood, 2005; Hobsbawm, 1987). The United States aimed to end Japan’s isolationist policies; a system of rules which prohibited foreign engagement and exchange of goods, travel, books and ‘ideas’ with the aim of ensuring Japanese self-reliance by avoiding entanglement and conflict which could arise through international treaties or trade agreements[5]. The factor of technology meant that poorer and backward countries could easily be defeated and conquered because of the technical inferiority of their armaments (Hobsbawm, 1987:18). Through millitary force, the US, Great Britain and Russia imposed what came to be known as “unequal treaties” which mandated Japan to allow these countries to visit or reside on Japanese territory without the imposition of levies or tarrifs on their imports. In addition, Japan could not try these foreign residents in its courts. The failure of the shogunate to resist Western forces precipitated the fall of the Edo era. Disgruntled samurai, particularly, those infulenced by nationalist doctrine, had ambitions for Japan to become a modern nation-state that could stand its own ground equal to Western powers (Totman, 2005). And these men became some of the most powerful government officials of the Meiji era, the modernising period of Japan, 1868 – 1912.

However, Western aesthetic and philosophical ideas were also seen as part and parcel of the “advance of civilisation” (Buruma, 2003:38) generally regarded as universal (Dostoevsky, 1995:1274). These two separate facets of Western modernity can be broadly classed under the category economic-military, and cultural. Japan’s response was intentionally geared towards attaining economic and military might with the understanding that “colonial conquest was the ultimate sign of greatness and modernity” (Buruma, 2003:51). This was particularly reflected in the defeat of China in the Sino-Japanese conflict. Conversely, in Russia, whilst there were elements which put emphasis towards economic development and industrialisation, intellectuals such as Dostovesky championed a response geared towards elevating a “pure” Russian culture grounded in an embrace of European civilisation as a universal aspiration of the “spirit of the people”. Dostovesky’s reponse was anchored in the idea that “the fundamental moral treasures of the spirit, in their basic essence at least, do not depend on economic power” (Dostoevsky, 1995: 1274). In this respect, Russia could attain the levels of civilisational enlightenemt in Europe as exemplified in its art and high culture. Both these responses were conradictory: on the one hand they acknoweledged that the shift to Western modernity was made possible through economic dominance and millatry might. In other words, it was a clear matter of power. On the other hand, the responses seemed to naturalise the expansion of global capitalism as an ‘advance of civilisation’, thereby directly tying the cultural elements to the response of Western modernity to global capitalism. That is to say, even the true essential cultural spirit would become determined by the geopolitical forces of the time, as is the case today.

Cultural imperialism and discourses of modernity

Even though the two responses are somewhat antithetical, both are undergirded in an embrace of a universalising civilisation. And at the same time, both rely on creating a unique ability to adopt and amalgamate other cultures into their own cultures without losing their own essential spirit (Wood, 2009; Dostoevsky, 1995). In the case of the anime series Samurai Champloo, the word Champloo is from the Nansei islands of Japan from the Ryukyu dialect and means “to mix”[6]. Anderson (2013: 117) notes:

• Samurai Champloo presents a more cosmopolitan and globally engaged Japan, positioning it as an imagined site where multiple cultures meet and participate in exchange.

The series uses African-American Hip hop as an entryway to re-envision 17-18 century Japan through a modern lens. For example, of the three main characters, two of whom are samurais, the other swordsmen – Mugen – is portrayed in urban garb wearing shorts and short-sleeved shirts as opposed to the traditional samurai dresswear. He remains a samurai by virtue of his skill, yet his presentation would not be associated with 18^th century Japan. In Scheming, Treacherous, and Out for Revenge: Ethnic Imperialism, Anderson (2013) notes this as a progressive reflection of contemporary Japanese culture to resist Japanese conformity. Yet, one must ask the question: which idea of modernity is tied to Hip hop in this instance?

Diffusing Western power

Capitalist expansion pervades across cultural lines and undermines the essence of cultural preservation because of its ability to commodify and create consumerism (Wood, 2009). It is true that anime has developed an ability to “mix” different cultural elements and reconstitute the normative space of modernity. Reminiscent of the first stage of production of Hamlet in modernising Japan, anime today takes artistic licence to repackage modernity and present it as veiled from the force and might which has birthed it. Modernity is then presented as a benign, universally applicable phenomena which can be enjoyed and consumed. In this regard, Japan’s response to modernity cushions the threat posed by the West’s technological and military superiority. In the case of Samurai Champloo, the lines between artistic license and cultural appropriation can become blurred.

As a counterweight, the strength of anime in the discourse of modernity lies in how it reconfigures the normative space of what constitutes the modern. However, this alternative framing has several trappings. Among them lies the inability to actually resist what is essentially branded as Western modernity; that is, in not contesting the West’s monopoly and appropriation of specific versions of modernity for itself. Because of anime’s cultural influences tied to globalising capitalism, it is presently unable to render effective critiques of capitalism. This may be necessarily inevitable, because the power which generates the West’s influence in cultural production, is also rooted in its economic dominance globally. Japan opted to respond to modernity by mimicking the West militarily and economically, opting to preserve its unique cultural identity. Yet, it may be that this was not necessarily preserved because of the overbearing effect of consumerism on cultural production.  

References

Anderson CS. (2013) Beyond the Chinese connection contemporary Afro-Asian cultural production, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Benzon WL. (2008) Postmodern Is Old Hat: Samurai Champloo. Mechademia 3: 271-274.

Buruma I. (2003) Civilisation and Enlightenment. Inventing Japan, 1853-1964. New York: The Modern Library, 34-61.

Dostoevsky F. (1995) Explanatory Note Concerning the Speech on Pushkin Printed Below. A Writers’s Diary. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1271-1280.

Henshall K. (2012) A History of Japan: From Stone Age to Superpower, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hobsbawm EJ. (1987) The Centenariana Revolution. The Age of Empire, 1875-1914. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 13-33.

Totman CD. (2005) A history of Japan, Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.

Watanabe S. (2004) Samurai Champloo.

Wood C. (2009) THE EUROPEAN FANTASY SPACE AND IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION IN PORCO ROSSO. Post Script 28: 112-110_113.

Wood EM. (2005) The Overseas Expansion of Economic Imperatives. The Empire of Capital. London: Verso, 89-117.

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[1] Buruma (2003). “Civilisation and Enlightenment” in Inventing Japan.

[2] Believed to originate from Japan in the form of Manga ­– a form of art that can be likened to comic books or cartoon strips – anime is shorthand for animated media and cartoons, or hand drawn and computer animation. Due to its origin, the term anime is generally associated with Japanese cartoons. See Reslie Cortes (2014) Walk Feminine, Talk Feminine: A Critical Textual Analysis of Femininities, Performance, and Representation in Anime.

[3]. See E.J. Hobsbawm (1987) “The centenarian Revolution” in The Age of Empire 1875-1914.

[4] Benzon WL. (2008) Postmodern Is Old Hat: Samurai Champloo. Mechademia 3: 271-274.

[5] Henshall, Kenneth (2012). A History of Japan: From Stone Age to Super Power.

[6] Scheming, Treacherous, and Out for Revenge: Ethnic Imperialism in Anderson CS. (2013) Beyond the Chinese connection contemporary Afro-Asian cultural production, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.