Is Japan “wacky”? Of course not. It’s a complex modern civilization with thousands of years of history. Like all societies, it has its quirks, but Japan is not inherently stranger than any other nation. To call Japan “wacky” is simplistic, and even insulting.
And yet, Japan’s responses to social issues, its popular culture, its festivals and traditions, and its solutions to everyday problems frequently appear in media through a decidedly “wacky” frame. From mainstream media reports about Japan’s “sexless youth” and family rental services, to YouTube and TripAdvisor reports about robot cafes and youth fashion trends, everything slightly unusual swells together to create a powerful narrative that Japan is, indeed, wacky.
Wester Wagenaar calls this phenomenon “wacky orientalism.” In an article published in Asia in Focus in 2016, Wagenaar introduced this new framework to complement two other ways used in the West to understand Japan: traditional orientalism and techno-orientalism. As he writes, “The West increasingly judges Japan and its people as weird […]. By using this framework of Japan as bizarre, the West confirms what is normal.” Getting students to understand the power of this portrayal of Japan, and its inherent confirmation of the West as normal, is one of the great challenges facing many of us who teach about contemporary Japan.
The Wacky Japan Project at the National University of Singapore emerged from a problem: the overwhelming depiction of Japan as “wacky” in today’s media landscape and the attractiveness of this depiction to students. Each year hundreds of students take “Introduction to Japan” at NUS, a module that teaches the foundations of Japan’s history, geography, and society. Each year they are given the freedom to choose a research topic, and each year most students choose topics that depict Japan as wacky. Instead of vetoing such topics, we decided to encourage students to research these topics, while giving them a critical lens for interpreting the phenomenon.
Following the success of this project in 2020, we decided to share some of the best student essays, to both showcase student work to the world and to stimulate exploration by future students in the course. The project is designed to be an ongoing collaborative exercise in which each class contributes unique essays that are read by each subsequent class. Each new batch of students will learn from the previous group and apply Wagenaar’s framework to a new group of topics, which over time will reveal both the ubiquity of this simplistic view of Japan and the complexity of the history and culture behind each topic.
This website features two distinct elements geared to two different audiences:
- Student essays – Readers will learn about “wacky” topics and the deep context behind each one. Readers can search for specific topics by searching the “Essays” tab above or enjoy a “Random Student Essay”.
- Course and assignment background – Educators can view the course syllabus, assignments, and inspiration for this project by clicking the “About” tab above.
We welcome your feedback on this project. Please contact Dr. McMorran by email: mcmorran@nus.edu.sg
Image credit for header pictures:
Maid cafe picture by JAPANKURU via flickr
AKB48 picture by kndynt2099 via Wikimedia
Salarymen picture by Moshen Chan via flickr
Landscape pictures by Dr Chris McMorran
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