Noel Burch, To the Distant Observer
Part 1 "Grounds and Premises"
Ch. 1. A System of Contradictions
Talks about supposedly "contradictory traits" found in Japan: mainly that while ancient China was a wellspring of creativity--especially in philosophy, Daoism, Confucianism, Moism, the great Book of Changes (the Yijing), but also in government, organization, bureaucracy, the First Civil Service Examination system--Japan was more or a borrower and cultural adapter.
In this chapter, Burch points out a pair of contradictory traits that often come up in discussions about Japan, that is the Japanese “faculty for assimilation” or “lack of originality” (depending on the writer’s inclinations) vs. the idea that Japan is steeped in Tradition, which means at times it can seem to manifest "stagnant conservatism." Or, in other words, resistance to change.
Burch rightly calls these stereotypes that mystify the culture, and he intends to reveal the underlying ideological assumptions behind such claims. Whether Japanese are adept at assimilation and transformation (“making things uniquely Japanese” as it is often put) or are mired in stagnant conservatism (miming China earlier and then the United States in the postwar period), each notion invokes the value and the virtuesd of originality. However, Burch argues that in Japan originality has never been a virtue.
Before the Meiji Restoration and the entrance of capitalism, artists were not the sole creator and proprietor of their work. There was no concept of plagiarism. Tied to this are the terms superposition and supersession. In the West, one period replaces another. In Japan, Burch identifies a fixative effect in which different types of art did not supplant each other, but co-existed to the present day (superposition). These factors are crucial for understanding the development of cinema in Japan.
So, are Japanese known for their Originality? No.
Do they display at times a 'Habit of Copying'? Yes!
This is what Japan is known for; it is Japan's aptitude is "mimetic."
The "defense" of Japan mounted by Japanophiles is that Japan does not merely "adopt," they adapt--and do so creatively. So, get off Japan's back!!
What Burch points out is that both arguments share an ideological base: they both rely on the premise that ORIGINALITY is very important, a central value. It is a "Ground, a Premise." Where does this ideology come from?
According to Burch, it originates with the rise of capitalism in Europe and probably the Judeo-Christian notion of the importance of a Creator; like God, the artist in the west is the "proprietor" of his or her work. It is a "specifically bourgeois notion that
the artist is the creator and the proprietor of his work," he writes, which "is
utterly meaningless within the framework of the traditional arts of Japan." (31)
By referrinbg to capitalism and the "bourgeois notion" of the artist as creater and possesser of the rights to his or her product, Burch seems to be saying that Japan diffres from modern Western nations on this point because Japan did NOT experience the Rise of Individualsm, the development of capitalism, the rise of markets and a "bourgeosie" in the same way the West did.
In Japan, Burch argues, the whole Japanese social construct denies the very concept
of originality and "owning" one's product, and accepts, instead, "the
material reality of the circulation of signs." (32) Whic means, in other words, that language
is taken for what it is: a system of signs pointing to a series of signifiers, something
that should be celebrated and accepted for what it is. Therefore, there is no need to deny it, or to try to hide the fact that creative expression has to operate through and within various linguistic and social structures, no need for things like "invisible continuity [i.e., the Hollywood] codes."
Those who don't accept this prefer to believe in "the Transparency of the Sign," or, the idea that what we see Represents or even IS actual Reality. And it accepts the very Western notion of the Artist as analgous to the Creater God, and with the rise of the Commercial Market Place and the Circulation of Commodities, and eventually the Industrial Revolution, the Individual, the Creator of these Products, must retain ownership and control over them.
So, in Burch's mind, lacking the European
middle-class, and the capitalistic notion that we create artistic works much the way
God created the universe, and that we have "rights" of ownership to that product, Japan treads a different pathway.
Is this an inherently "conservative" position?
Burch quotes cultural historian Kato Shuichi (p. 33) to the effect when an art form--or a system of government--was transformed or superseded in Japan, the old form did not disappear but usually persisted alongside the newer or "Neo-" form.
...different types of art, generated in different periods, did not supplant each other, but co-existed and remained more or less creative from the time of their first appearance up to our time. (33)
"Practically no style ever died" Kato suggests. In the west, the operative law was more the law of "supersession"--once a newer form comes along, it replaces the older version--but in Japan the different layers tended to co-exist.
Perhaps that helps explains why even though Japan is an ultra-modern industrialized, high-tech society, it still retains an ancient indigeous animistic religion (Shinto) and a monarchy that allegedly goes back to the "age of the Gods."
Ch. 2 A System of Signs
In Chapter 2, Burch points to the Japanese writing system, and how it was affected when Chinese writing was introduced into Japan in the 5th and 6th century. Of course, it was not abruptly introducd but very gradually, one supposes, beginning in the late 4th and early 5th centuries. Nevertheless, the result was a hybrid, "double"
system which is partially phonetic and partly ideographic (the Chinese characters
or kanji with which Japanese is written were largely symbolic or ideographic while the "kana" was phonetic ). The result, he argues, is the "co-existence of two fundamentally different types of writing, the one phonetic and the other primarly non-phonetic," and what was created was "a unique system which incorporated both." (36)
As Burch writes: "the Japanese are the only people in the world who, for over a thousand years, have practiced simultaneously and in close symbiosis a phonetic and non-phonetic writing without taking either as the privileged centre of language." (37)
Quoting Aristotle, Derrida points to the idea that "the sounds uttered by the voice...are the symbols of the moods of the soul...and written words are the symbols of the words uttered by the voice."( 37-38)
Phonetic writing, Derrida notes, has been intimately linked with the growth of science which empowered Western capitalism to exercise an undisputed world hegemony."
Since people like Rousseau and the Enlightenment thinkers believed that symbols and signs--like the Chinese and Japanese writing systems--were more primitive and suitable for less developed "barbarian" peoples, while perceiving that the alphabet is for the more advanced, "civilized" peoples. Obviously, this is a very ethnocentric point of view! (38)
But Burch's point is quite the opposite! He argues that Japan
doesn't necessarily assign priority or "privilege" to either one of the writing systems over the other
whereas in the west, writing has always been seen as the passive aspect, the
transcription of speech, which is where truth resides. Why?
"because the voice, as producer of the primary symbols, is in a relationship of essential and immediate proximity to the soul. As a producer of the primary signifier, the voice is not just one signifier among many. It signifies the 'mood of the soul'....." (38)
This reification of the
spoken word is what Jacques Derrida calls logocentrism and he points out that the west is generally
governed by phonetic writing systems which may have helped give rise to scientific
thinking.
Burch speculates that the Japanese, enjoying the benefits of both a linear
mode of representation similar to that of the west, and a phonetic one, have
occupied a unique position in the world, one that enabled them to be creative
and productive not so much in science and philosophy, but in arts and letters,
poetry, painting, and the like. Referring to Jacques Derrida, he notes that Derrida believes that in the West, writing has been regarded as the passive member of the family of language, a mere transcription of speech, of the logos, [which is] regarded as the repository of ultimate truth, whilst writing was merely the contingent temporal 'form' given to the essential and ultimately divine content." (37)
For Burch, then, "the Japanese writing system occupies a privileged middle ground, nearer perhaps than either the Chinese or the Indo-European systems to a dialectically constituted level of reference of languages."
OK, that is quite a mouthful. If it is "dialectically constituted" that means this acceptance of a duality--two different ways of conceptualizing reality--is built into the language structure itself, and since it modifies "level of reference" I think he is suggesting that the very way that Japanese is structured is constantly reminding its users that meaning at the level of what language "refers" to is always tied to or "constitued" by language itself.
So Japanese language excels at reminding us that in the end, all language can do is refer to itself...and there is no reason to shy away from that premise. Most of the French Structuralist and Deconsturctionist critics were impressed why what linguist Ferdinand de Saussure had to say back in the early 1900s: i.e., that language is nothing more than a chain of signifiers that refers back to itself. This helped set up the perception and the understanding that language is what really preconfigures meaning.
Japanese language, then, may therefore be unique because it affords access to both a linear mode of linguistic representation, such as that of the West, and to an 'oriental' mode which it is legitimate to regard, in a theoretical perspective, as a 'practical' critique of linearity." (40) This probably means, then, that Japanese writers and film makers are much less concerned with linear causality that their western counterparts might be. So, are they less incarcertated in "the prison-house of language?"
For us, it simply might mean that we should not expect the same kind of linear causality and plot development followed by resolution or closure that is prioritized in the west.
Endings, tying things up neatly with a bow at the end. Happy endings or endings at all may be less common in modern Japanese literature and film than in the west. On the other hand, some of the visual and aural experiences we encounter in Japanese film might be more purely aesthetic, more about feel and texture, than we are used to.