In the opening sequence of Douglas Sirk’s film »Imitation of Life«, pieces of diamond-like glass cascade into the image until they fill the shot. A pointless excess of jewellery is an unambiguous signifier for luxury and waste. It strikes you immediately if you travel to Tokyo: a chic lifestyle, which should not be conflated with extravagance, is cultivated here. Logos of Western luxury brands are flaunted in public on bags and suits or are easy to spot thanks to the insignia of traditional firms (patterns, materials, cut). Why is global chic so vehemently present in the Japanese capital? Are the aesthetics of adverts imitated to apparent perfection? If one were to take the title of Sirk’s film literally – then who is imitating what kind of life here? 1 Do people aspire to live like the lifeless-looking models in literal non-spaces, as found in glossy fashion magazines? A perfect state would be at the same time an inalterable state without activity: individuals’ appearance and interpretations of these can be completely equated if a touch of individual design is missing.

Atsushi Nishijima, an artist from Kyoto, pities the women with stiff lower arms balancing their Louis Vuitton bags as they make their way around town: »They carry the bags as protection«. Magazines even offer a »one-set« service for a younger female target group (known as OLs = Office Ladies), with a diary format prescribing outfits and shopping lists for a whole month.2 The Office Ladies are not the only ones who look as if they’re wearing a uniform, for there seems to be just one standard model in many other spheres of every day life– for example newspapers, universities and Bento boxes: “The most striking feature of the standard model is that it aims to encompass a broad area of business interests comprising a wide range of different products or services in order to be able to offer a ›one-set‹-service«.3

Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han interprets the role of consumerism in Asia in the following terms: »Consumerism is also a practice of appropriation. It is more than a greedy consumption of the Other, although the subject consumed remains unchanged. The objects one appropriates and with which one surrounds oneself do indeed actually constitute the content of the self. Only the myth of pure interiority reduces consumerism to a merely external act. Criticism of consumerism presumes a profound interior that should be protected from an excess of external objects. This ›soul‹ is unknown in the Far East. That is also why the Far East has a thoroughly positive attitude to consumerism. It does not recognise the ›inner being‹, the ›inside‹ to be preserved against too much ›outside‹. It is much more the case that the ›interior‹ is a particular effect of the ›exterior‹.«4
Back at the start of the 20th century, Max Weber5 referred to capitalism as a process of »disenchantment of the world« – which tallies well with the current magic shows on Japanese television, at the end of which the conjurors explain their sleights of hand to the audience.6 The unveiling of the illusion fascinates the audience just as much as the tricks.

I shop therefore I am
Artist Barbara Kruger would have her work cut out for her in Japanese shopping malls. Many of the slogans she exposes or heightens would however not seem at all surprising here as affirmative marketing slogans. In installations by the Japanese media art duo with the coy French name ressentiment7, viewers move through arrangements made up of high- and low-tech devices set out like a pathway to stroll along. In their last installation they employed articles from 100-yen shops, composed to form mythological figures. Their prime aim here was to question the simultaneity of tradition and modernity in Japan. For Takao Mikami from ressentiment, imitation signifies »one of the critical ways of surviving«.
One of the particularities of ressentiment is that they number all their works with the term »ikisyon». The artists picked up this word from a pilgrim during the hike that marked the start of their cooperation on the island of Shikoku, which lies off the coast near Kobe, the island with the thousand temples pilgrimage path. Ikisyon number 16 is a dodecahedron (symbol for the spirit, the universe), holding an Asian star within it. A camera and a microphone are installed in the »cage«, and transmit images and sounds of the bird into the exhibition space. Shots of the bird are projected onto the outside of the cage, whilst the sound recording is reproduced outside the exhibition space. The media-mediated existence of the bird is divided spatially into its visual and auditory components, the original and copy are separated from each other, the copy is split in two.

Imitation not as a counterfeit but as a copy
Ask for a cultural tip on the aforementioned island of Shikoku and people will usually recommend the Otsuka Art Museum8. Otsuka is the name of a multi-national pharmaceutical company based in Japan, which opened the museum to celebrate its 75th birthday. It is, by the way, fairly common for museums in Japan to be called after their sponsors (for example, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo). The Otsuka Art Museum is set on a hill, and the pompous entrance for visitors lies on a country road. After the ticket desk a long escalator leads up into the gallery – shoebox-style functional architecture. All the exhibits here, ranging from paintings of El Greco to Picasso or even Warhol’s silkscreen prints, are displayed as ceramic reproductions. The museum is proud of its manufacturing methods, which involve seven laborious steps; these turn the copies into objects hardy enough to survive natural catastrophes and are »an effective way to preserve cultural heritage«. The museum pamphlet boasts that these pieces convey the »true artistic value of the original« much better than photos. It is surprising to discover this kind of museum in a country like Japan, where so much else, such as Louis Vuitton bags, absolutely has to be the genuine article. Jean Baudrillard dubbed this phenomenon the »Xerox level of culture«: »We secretly prefer not to be confronted with the original. All we want is the copyright.«
In Japan imitation holds the promise of success. Christian marriage ceremonies are imitated in hotel foyers, complete with an »imitation cross« (as a Japanese woman put it when she kindly offered to interpret in a sushi bar). »Imitation Christmas« is also part of the phenomenon, which basically encompasses anything that can be used as an incentive to consume.

However from a Western perspective it’s not easy to derive conclusions about Japanese society from this. Musician Terre Thaemlitz, who’s lived in Japan for several years, rightly warns against shotgun – erroneous – stereotypes. Why for example do young women often walk with their toes turned in? Are they citing the way geishas walked because their kimonos were bound tightly to prevent their mainly male customers from glimpsing their feet or legs? Does that means the trendy girls are copying the way the geishas moved, over and above the notion of folklore? Alongside this reference to cultural history, the ideal of sweet naïve women proposed by fashion magazines might also play an important role. But perhaps this behaviour, interpreted as strained emulation, has nothing to do with the women’s own experiences. After all, according to Max Weber the Confucian approach to life advocates adapting to the world rather than dominating it as Protestant attitudes would prescribe.

Particular thanks to Christian von Borries.

 

 

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