AJJ: Anthropology of Japan in Japan

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AJJAnthropologyof Japanin Japan
FALL WORKSHOP

• WELCOME BACK!

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Session 2, Part 2

• Message

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Recapping the first segment

• As indicated in the introduction,
• semiology depends on signs
• to make meaning.

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Recapping the first segment

• As demonstrated by the presenters,
• these signs may take the form of media,
• themselves.

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In this Segment

• However, most often, signs are found in the
  actual content of media in the messages.

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A Focus on Media Content

• In searching for patterns or logics to Japanese
  culture, this segment focuses on media content
  what we call message

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About the Presenters
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Debra J. Occhi
The Nature of Sentiment in Japanese Enka Music
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Debra J. Occhi

• Is an Associate Professor at Miyazaki
  International College.
• She received her Ph.D. in 2000 from the
  University of California, Davis.
• Her dissertation fieldwork in Sendai, Miyagi
  prefecture, explored enka music and associated
  discourses.
• Her research interests include anthropological
  and cognitive linguistics.
• Current foci are contemporary Japanese language
  and culture, emotion, gender, and regionality.
• She plans to investigate regional foodstuffs and
  dialect in the future.

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Tsuneo AyabeandHiroko Ayabe

• Globalization and Changing Japanese Images Seen
  from the Outside a historical analysis

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Tsuneo Ayabe

• Is Professor Emeritus of the University of
  Tsukuba.
• He is currently a professor at Josai
  International University
• His many books include the edited volume,
  Japanese seen from the outside (in Japanese)
  and Multiculturalism, Nation State and Ethnic
  Minorities in the Process of Globalization.
• His areas of specialization are Cultural
  Anthropology, Southeast Asia and North American
  studies.

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Hiroko Ayabe

• Is formerly a professor at Tsukuba University.
• She is currently a professor at Josai
  International University
• She has an MA in linguistics from Kyushu
  University.
• Her past publications include How to get a
  small piece of work done in Japanese Kissinger
  and Japanese-American communication Sapir in
  the relativity theory Areas of interest
  Differences in English and Japanese communication
  style and speech acts and Japanese and Thai
  proverbs.

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Anka Veronika Badurina Haemmerle
Venus Under Construction Creating Female
Characters for Japanese TV Advertising
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Anka Veronika Badurina Haemmerle

• Is a Ph.D. Candidate in Cultural Anthropology at
  Kyoto University, Japan.
• She is currently conducting fieldwork at a major
  Japanese Advertising Agency in Osaka
• Her research concerns gender and the construction
  of gendered images in Japanese television
  advertising.

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We begin withProfessor Occhi
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Some Commentsand Discussion
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Form and Content

• One of the earliest conceptual tacks advanced in
  sociology was the distinction between form and
  content.
• This was a dualism that McLuhan featured
  prominently in his early analysis of medium
  (form) and message (content).
• McLuhan, though, tended to perceive form in
  mechanical rather than process terms
• Instrumentality over actual communication

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Form over Content

• McLuhans form fetish tended, in his estimation,
  to dwarf the import of content.
• personified in the aphorism the medium is the
  message

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Lingering Concerns

• But one McLuhan-like concern that we might apply
  to the content of contemporary media is this
• the formatic conventions that come into play
  which shape, either
• the presentation of information, or
• the interpretation of it by the message recipient

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For instance,

• Enka as a form
• with conventions dictating that codes be read a
  particular way
• leading to a particularized construction of
  meaning.

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For instance,

• The creative group at an advertising agency
• Encodes particular significations of woman into
  their ads
• Thereby either
• Reproducing long-held images of woman,
• Or else (potentially) producing new, different or
  rival views

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The Attention to Form

• Leads to a concern about production
• In turn, leading us to consider the circuits of
  culture
• (Hall, 1972)

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The Cultural Circuit

• Much has been made (rightly) of Halls model of
  encoding/decoding
• The model helped break the hegemony of the
  effects school
• that viewed message production as an
  institution-directed, producer-led process

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Understanding Hall

• Instead, signs were not just encoded in messages
  and sent out and received
• They were also processed and worked with by a
  reader who might
• passively accept the meaning imposed by the
  producer,
• negotiate meaning with the producer,
• Or come up with their own aberrant decoding of
  the message/sign

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Among our Presenters

• Not much is said about how readers decode signs
  from this particular panel
• However, other papers (Nakashimas, Farrers,
  most notably) do tell us about the
  reception/action process.

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Passive Versus Active Decoding

• The flaw in much of cultural studies infatuation
  with the empowered audience is it fails to
  recognize the great laxity of many readers.
• I recommend that a distinction be made between
  passive and active decoding.

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2 Kinds of Sign Processing
Active Decoder
Passive Decoder
Viewer
Reader
Compared These are dissimilar orientations
carrying differing consequences
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And in my own view

• There tends to be a larger amount of passive than
  active decoding in everyday life
• When all media sources and the hundreds of
  thousands of daily messages humans must process
  are all tallied

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At the same time, in Japan

• There seems to be a lot of active decoding going
  on when one looks at sign-messages in particular
  media
• Such as advertising
• Or television

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Semiotic Literacy

• One key to understanding the complex codes
  circulating in a culture

Therefore, one way to uncover the unique ontology
of any particular society
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What isSemiotic Literacy?

• the ability of message recipients to recognize
  and decode signs

Defined
intellectual/internal
2 Mediating Factors
situational/external
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Why Semiotic Literacy Matters

• A message receivers semiotic orientation (be it
  high or low) will, in turn, determine
• whether the sign or its elements will be
  processed at all
• Whether decoding of the intended associations
  will be the result of active reading
• How intended meaning will be acted on, if at all
• The quality of information produced and
  transmitted (in the society/milieu)

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resignification where semiotic literacy
matters

• Resignification is significant because it takes
• new signifieds
• And attaches them to
• prior or old signifiers
• It places heavy demands on the message receiver

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resignification tells us much about the
culture it originates from

• Resignification
• places heavy demands on the message receiver
• Reveals the immense stock(s) of knowledge present
  in a culture

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Resignification--defined

• The process by which prior elements associated
  with the sign (i.e. signifiers, signifieds, signs
  and significations) are converted into other
  elements in different significatory chains via
  cultural reference.

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Resignification explained

• the displacement of a sign-element from one
  significatory sequence into another
• the original signification is decontextualized
  and reworked into the fabric of the focal
  (Japanese mediated popular culture) context
• some, but not all such signs are indigenized
• the sign takes on a new or different character
  from its previous reality
• its new character is due in large part to its
  exo-spatial, exo-temporal and/or exo-ideational
  basis.

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Import

• This is one way that globalization is proceeding
• globalization being the core issue in the work
  of the Ayabes
• Also a matter of social re/production
• an issue that arises in the work of at least two
  of our authors in this session
• Occhi and Haemmerle

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Import

• It also leads us toward considerations of the
  environment
• for Japan is nothing if not a complex, integrated
  environment

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Import

• one in which media and message intersect, play
  off and buttress one another
• giving voice to and shaping culture.
• The kind of synthetic, all-encompassing,
  poly-ideational communication milieu that Kellner
  (1995) calls Media Culture.

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Points to be taken upin the next section