"Summer Festival"

I recently took part in a Japanese cultural event in which none of the organizers was Japanese. To be fair, some of the participants were, but the person who proposed the idea, as well as those involved in the planning and those manning the information tables, were not. What does this mean? And was the resulting event Japanese, "Japanese" or something else?

I am not one of those people who think that one can learn a cultural art form only in the place where the culture originated; or, in the most extreme, that one can't learn a cultural art unless one is born into the culture. My own teacher, who was Japanese, was very knowledgeable and happy to share what he knew with me. To those who disagree, I like to turn the thought on its head - would you tell a Japanese ballerina that she can't perform Swan Lake because she wasn't born in Europe? No? Well, then, you see my point. To assert that the ballerina can't gain enough understanding to perform a European classical dance sounds ethnocentric; even racist. So to suggest that a white chick can't learn a Japanese cultural art form because she wasn't born in Japan makes just as much sense.

On the other hand, I am in agreement with many colleagues who state that one's understanding of a traditional art form (wherever it originated) is definitely enhanced by training in the Old Country, and I think the ballerina would agree with me as well. Recently, my colleague, the Budo Bum, has written an entry about the depth of experience to be found in a Japanese dojo that can't yet be found outside Japan. This is true for many arts, still, but is that where this ends? If enough certified 6th, 7th and 8th dans eventually emerge in the U.S. for example, will that training then be the same as a similar setup in Japan? What about the feeling of being immersed in the culture of origin? Is that an essential part of the experience, or just some gravy that makes the experience that much cooler?

To go back to my first paragraph - I am making three distinctions (there are probably more, but this is what I am coming up with right now). By Japanese, of course, I mean, at least hypothetically, an experience very much like what someone might expect in Japan. By "Japanese" I mean an interpretation of a traditional cultural event, filtered through the varied experiences of non-Japanese, with varying degrees of actual exposure to a Japanese teacher of a traditional art form, or of direct experience in Japan. The "something else" remains to be determined, if necessary, at the end of this particular entry.

Even though I had a good time at the event, I still felt weird. I have taken part in similar events in New York, which are sponsored by a Japanese cultural organization of many years' standing. The immigrant Japanese community, as well as many Nisei, typically attend this event. I know, from my own experience in Japan, that the events sponsored by this group are not quite the same as what I have found there. They have adopted a daytime schedule, for one thing, whereas in Japan, the event normally takes place at night. The New York event has a religious overtone that may or may not exist in Japan. Still, I can recognize the events as being similar. I would refer to this experience as being Japanese, or at least Japanese-American (or maybe Japanese-New Yorker).

For a "Japanese" sensibility, I can think of no better example that of a "Japanese club" at a community college where I sometimes teach. Even though the faculty advisor (whom I have never actually met) is Japanese, the overall interests of the group are in watching anime and eating maki. They're kids, it's true, but what they are playing at has virtually nothing to do with Japan (in reality, the group would be better labeled the Anime Club). I would also lump in the American eccentric martial arts student who wears his hair in a topknot and is somehow convinced that there are still places in Japan where people wear armor and walk about with swords thrust through their belts, and the women are all Madama Butterfly (I am not kidding).

So, was the event I recently attended Japanese, "Japanese" or something else?

It was not Japanese, though it tried pretty hard. The reason was that, even through the event planning, none of the organizers seemed to know what, exactly, the event was supposed to be about. No one had sufficient experience in Japanese traditional culture (though, to be fair, some of the organizers tried to look it up on the Web). I was not an organizer, and had neither the time nor the inclination to be more involved, though I tried, on occasion, to explain. Nevertheless, when casual observers at the event asked what it was about, "summer festival" was the only explanation available. When I tried to explain in more detail, it stumped people. But, more importantly, it also did not seem like the right explanation. True, there was some Japanese stuff there. People wore Japanese clothes (more or less). Japanese music played over the speakers, and people danced folk dances. But it seemed like everything took place in a vacuum. There was no "there" there.

So, I would call the event "Japanese" instead of Japanese, consisting, as it did, of an incomplete idea of what a "summer festival" was. The Japanese who attended may well have had a much different idea of what the meaning of the event was compared to the organizers, because they brought that meaning with them. For the casual attendees, what they saw was what they got, and I doubt that it mattered all that much what the meaning, if any, was.

But I found myself troubled, and it has bothered me ever since (this is the elusive "something else" part). I study budo. I have lived in Japan only briefly, though I visit often. When I give lectures or demonstrations, and when I teach, I emphasize the history and cultural context of our practice. I try to bust some myths, and get beyond fictional notions of what the practice means (in our media-saturated environment, this is somewhat difficult). I encourage my students to go to Japan once they have some experience, in order to get a more committed sense of what the training is like. I do not consider myself Japanese, or "Japanese." Like many of my budo and buyo colleagues, I am simply learning the practice to the best of my ability. In that sense, the practices we learn are culturally specific, but they are also part of the human experience.