Chanpon

There you are standing in front of your TV, popping in a copy of �gRobocop3�h into the DVD player. It's not even a good movie but there you are watching it-- a movie in which a Japanese corporation sends a suited cyborg samurai to defeat a Detroit made-in-the-USA titanium cyborg-cop. This is when you start to notice something: technology is associated with an asianess of sorts. But no, you�fve thought this before. You think of William Gibson's classic techno-future novel �gNeuromancer,�h where all the best underground technology came from Japan. You think of "Snow Crash" by Neil Stephenson with the ninja-like Hiro Protagonist character. You think of "Ghost in the Shell:�h the classic anime with the cybernetic hot-shot robot. You even think of Philip K. Dick's �gBlade Runner�h and its bastard child, Luc Besson's �gthe 5th Element�h and remember that many of the scenes took place in a kind of post-industrial Asian cityscape; who can forget that image in Blade Runner with the jumbotron shot of the Geisha girl? You have this entire backlog in the mind of movies which seem to pair asianess with technology, with the future. That's when it hits you. You look at your DVD player; it's made by Sony. So is your TV; your stereo is only an Aiwa but Sony owns them too. There's a developed/developing media position associating Asianess with technology; how so is this popular culture infusing/liquidizing Asianess?

First off take a look at Sony. Sony is widely regarded as a leader in consumer electronics (pioneers of the walkman, compact disc, memory stick and mini-disc among other things). In fact many of Sony's invented gadgets (invented concepts as well) are now household names; who would have known what a �gmemory stick�h was fifty years ago? But it was indeed fifty years ago, during the post-WWII era, that Totsuka Co. (Tokyo Telecommunications Research Institute) began manufacturing and repairing transistor radios in an attempt to reconnect Japan into global communications. Humorously, rice cookers of questionable rice-cooking success were even produced! Yet by the 80's, Totsuka had changed names to Sony to increase the potential for a global market. Rightly so, Sony established itself as the name brand-- making it widely agreed that Japan, the home of Sony, Toyota and Honda, could produce and introduce gadgets far more efficiently than the U.S.A. 80's movies ranging from �gBack to the Future�h to even �gDie Hard�h contained statements concerning Japan's technological superiority. There's even �gGung Ho�h with Michael Keaton and Gedde Watanabe, where a successful Japanese car manufacturer sets up plant in America only to be disappointed by American worker laziness. And what is the portrayal of a nihongin saruriman?: they are up-tight perfectionist workaholics. How could this Ron Howard movie get made if and only if it was some expression of the American concept of the Japanese?

Yet the premise here is that for some reason, modern technology isn't race free. Sony is a brand name that everyone knows is Japanese; this could be a rough base, an arguable foundation to work with (don�ft forget that a katakana sony is on every gadget). But what of computers and the ensuing digital culture? The evolution of the modern PC was fairly American, was grounded in the Silicon valley area of California. The pioneer of the microprocessor was American: Intel--inventing the 4004 microprocessor in 1971. Motorola offered competition as well but was an Illinois born company. Interestingly though, it would seem that most people would assume Motorola's geographical origins the same as Mitsubishi, Yamaha and Panasonic (originally Matsushita Electric). Yet on account of Intel and ubiquitous figures like Bill Gates, have computers become associated with Americaness? The link seems weak. But one thing which could be associated globally with America is Latham Shole's typwriter-originated QWERTY keyboard. Perhaps the fact that other languages are not exactly suited for this keyboard associates the keyboard with Americaness? Perhaps the keyboard is even a messy metaphor for globalization and the loss of culture: the fitting of several lingual systems into one? Though, several new culture-specific keyboard systems have been emerging to suit the culture of its design.

So, if there is a digital culture which is asian-ated, how so does it manifest itself? As cited heavily before, many movies splice asianess with technology and the future. Take a movie like the Matrix. Besides the Kung-Fu scenes there was something else mobilized: a visual style which was reminiscent of countless anime-- even the serialized green and black Graphical User Interface of the Matrix (ala Ghost in the Shell's opening credits). Delve into the world of anime further and there is a style and imagination suggestive of cutting edge freshness and hipness. The Marvel Comic �gthe X-MEN�h even features the Psychlocke character, a woman who underwent facial reconstruction to look more Asian. Many future movies too (Johnny Mnemonic, Star Wars) seem to utilize the Asian-based alphabets in the visuals. Yet it's hard to tell if there is a statement in that or merely a lack of creativity in the filmmaker's attempt to present an evolved character system. What becomes evident is that Asian culture itself isn't really imbedded in digital culture; it's the imagery that's been borrowed: the ideographic alphabets, the Zen garden �glook,�h a certain way of framing moments. The triumph may just be that Japan has a much more daily and symbiotically integrated concept of technology than most other cultures do;this stylizes the Japanese as techno-savants and therefore infuses technology with asianess. The term asianess is used simply so that the idea can be more broadly wielded as asianess is globally, de facto, more dispersed than japaneseness.

Finally, it seems as though sci-fi media sources are acting like self-sustained time machines-- making technology more Asian now by portraying it as such in the future. And is it that Japan, the leader of conceptualizing, producing and popularizing creative technology now, can make the now and future more visually Asian? Of course there are several good examples of digital culture/future movies which lack the Asian connection: Hackers, Wargames, Enemy of the State. So nothing is exactly cut and dry with this subject. But nevertheless, there is definitely something to explore...(post some comments!)

Tosh Chiang attends Bard College in New York, where amongst late-night coffee-fueled madness and pancake free-for-alls, he plays in two bands (the ex-jean jackets, The Broken Bottles), edits and writes for the Bard Free Press, thinks about building tiny electronic toys for integrated arts classes and studies a lot of Sociology. He likes to write too, and sometimes enjoys the occasional cup-o-joe to a finely tuned donut.