public acceptability in Japan
What’s considered publicly acceptable naturally varies from culture to culture and place to place. And just as Japan’s density - the topic of my last post - contributes to the feeling of a public space, so do what have over a long time become the embedded codes of public conduct. Granted, people behave differently here compared to people in the United States, but one shouldn’t pass it off as mere weirdness or inscrutability.
This display I was startled to stumble upon at a busy corner of a shopping arcade in the city of Tenri. It depicts several dirty colons before and after the use of the advertised cleansing product (not the banana). Though my mouth fell agape at such a thing being so openly displayed, no one else batted an eye. My cultural conditioning would suggest such images be confined to the nethers of medical journals. But in Japan, it seems that using pictures of dirty colons for advertising a detox kit is just as acceptable as pictures of pearly whites on dentistry billboards.
There seems to be a certain level of public accountability tied to this difference in what’s simply acceptable.
Two posts ago I mentioned the element of danger at the Kurama fire festival, where hundreds of torches, from one-handers to massive ones requiring 4 or 5 men to carry, and that the event went over without a hitch. In the video I posted, notice the sheer density of the torches - reminiscent of the stereotypical angry mob intending to cause ruckus. This was the average bystander’s-faces-to-torches distance maintained through the festival, and no one carry a torch ever seemed to worry. It’s not like such a thing can go unnoticed, especially at an event where the fire is the main attraction.
Might I then postulate that the element of danger adds to the attraction? And might I as well suppose that it takes a type of culture like Japan’s to socialize people who actually carry out and witness such an event, with all its revelry, drinking, and thousands of strangers, without notable incident? The festival is open to the public and it appears a good cross-section of Kansai residents attend. I wonder what an equally representative sample of typical Americans would do with such an event. How much would the general plurality of the United States play into whether an event would even be allowed by law? …or am I remiss in attempting a generalization about Americans, who succeed with niche-marketed yet inherently dangerous events like Burning Man (still yet, note this lawsuit)?
2 years ago - read more...
