Stereotypes

I was thinking about the theme for this post and I remembered some photos of a group of Japanese people visiting the Güell Park , one of Gaudi's masterpieces, I took in Barcelona before coming to Japan.

As you can see in the picture they are all wearing casual clothes and the typical caps and hats they usually wear when they are abroad, because they don't use to wear these caps here every day, and some of them wearing a white mask covering their mouth and nose. To me it was like a "Japanese tourist uniform", it has been really easy to guess who are Japanese and who are from somewhere else in Barcelona.

We are talking about Stereotypes.

Stereotypes have change a lot along history. Some decades ago, when somebody was thinking about Japanese people in my country , they thought about Geishas, Samurais, etc. After the II World War they have been considered a hard working people, but if you ask somebody in Spain to describe a Japanese tourist he would probably tell you that they are very polite people, bowing to everybody with their heads, traveling in groups and with the camera hanging from their necks.

They seem to be always in a hurry, running from place to place, with just a few seconds to take a photo and running again to the bus to go to a new monument. It is said they usually visit Spain in less than a week and there are even some jokes about their knowledge of the country after this week. People think they have just a week of holidays and they wont be able to remember if the Holy Family is in Barcelona or in Sevilla or the Prado Museum and the Alhambra are in Valencia, in Madrid or in Granada because they have seen all these cities and their sightseeing monuments in just two days.

Japanese cinema does not help in this way:

"Andalusia" is the title of the movie, I have not seen it but in the trailer I have seen only images of Barcelona (Catulunya) and even traditional arts and the national flag of Catalonia. But... who cares? Spain - Paella - Flamenco - Gaudi - Andalucía ? (Stereotypes 1 - Reality 0)

But I have to say that obvioursly all these stereotypes have a reason to be and part of them are a reflex of the real situation but others are just fruit of the ignorance between far away culture.

Once in Japan, I realized that most of these stereotypes were just that, stereotypes, and the Japanese are very different. It is true that they have less holidays than we use to have, at least during the Summer, when most Europeans have a month. But the number of bank holidays, free days during the year, I think it's even greater here than in Europe. So this stereotype doesn't reflect the true situation. (Stereotypes 1 - Reality 1)

On the other hand we never bow anybody except some monarchist to the King , the flag etc., or some religious people to the Cardinals, the Pope or images of Saints and God. So it is a representative feature that justify this stereotype. (Stereotypes 1 - Reality 2)

And talking about culture, I think that all Japanese people who have traveled abroad that I have met during these months here, are educated people that perfectly know where they are going on holidays and, of course, where they have been spending the last ones. As an example I could state that I have found more people knowing everything about Antoni Gaudi and his works here in Japan than in my own city. So this is another wrong stereotype.

(Stereotypes 2 - Reality 2)

So the best way to know something about other people or about another culture is not throw the stereotypes but living among them, the stereotypes which are completely wrong and the ones based in some true are often mixed together and hard to separate.

Football in Japan (サッカー)

Football, even though not being the biggest sport in Japan (This is the land of baseball) it has been the second most popular sport for the last few years, followed shortly after by Sumo and Golf. Nevertheless, according to the Central Research Services last surveys, in 2010 professional football popularity remarkably fell to the point that switched positions with Sumo, followed by an increasing popularity of professional Golf. In the chart below you can see the evolution of the answer to the question "What professional sport do you like?".

CRS survey available here

This question is supposed to be the reference to know which are the most popular sports in Japan, but I think it is a little bit tricky. As you can see in the chart all the options people could choose from are sports practised in Japan professionally, but specially talking about football, this does not reflect the real popularity of the sport. Why? Because even though J-League is popular, every football fan has his J-League team and the stadiums sell their tickets, people who are crazy about football in Japan set their eyes in Europe: specially in England, Spain and Italy. Maybe I am wrong, but in my opinion this survey focuses in sports done by Japanese professional sportsmen.

Among my Japanese friends, the ones who are football fans have their favourite teams in Europe, apart from the one here in Japan. And they try to follow the results and news and watch online or in an sports bar the most important matches, no matter what time they are (usually REALLY late at night). When I did not have the chance to watch the game or read the news I know that if I ask them they will always be even better informed about my favourite team back home than me.

I come from Barcelona (Spain) where the biggest sport is definitely football, and my team is easy to guess: Football Club Barcelona. I have supported FCB all my life, but only since the last 3 years I am proud to say that we possibly have the best team in the world, winning almost all the competitions both national and international with astonishing results, breaking all the historical records year by year and gathering admiration all around the world for the particular style of football FCB has been faithful to. This results, as well as the popularity of Lionel Messi breaking all top scoring records and being awarded with the highest prizes for football players several times in a row, have remarkably risen the popularity of FCB all around the world, including Japan.

But in this post I want to focus in how Japanese live football, and how do they behave as supporters during the matches because I think there are some big differences. In Europe, people really throw themselves into the game supporting their favourite teams and some standard social rules of behavior change when the ball is rolling. When the referee does a mistake or there is a polemic move involving rival players, people yell and even curse loudly the poor men (moms included) and I do not say it is correct but I guess it is part of the nervousness and excitement of the game, and I could even say it is part of its fun. When your team scores a goal, everybody starts shouting "gooooal!" and hugging with unknown people holding spilling beers is not very unusual. What I want to say is that people become fully emotional rather than reflexive, standard social rules step a little bit aside and some other kind of behavior comes out. From a sociological point of view this game seems to bring up "tribal" feelings that connect people in a perhaps more primitive way.

The first time I saw a game in Japan I was curious about how would it be in a society with such a strong social ruling to watch such a passionate spectacle. That day FC Barcelona and Real Madrid, which are the maximum rivals were playing, and so I went to a sports bar in Umeda (Osaka) to watch the game with my friends. The game was at 4 o'clock at night, but the bar was full and we even had to pay a special event price and make a reservation in advance to be able to get in there. Amazing, -I thought- even though we are in the other side of the world there is such passion about football and these two teams to choose watching the game over sleeping. I guess that due to the results of FCB in the last few seasons I refered to above, 80% or 90% of the bar was supporting Barça (FCB's nickname). Good start! The place was full, but it felt a little bit weird to me, different. Soon I noticed that nobody was shouting any of the team's cries or behaving any different, there was excitement about the upcomming kick off but everybody was keeping it down. Finally the game started and the torrent of goals started falling on Real Madrid. Every time Barça scored, me and my mexican friend (who loves the game with the same passion as me) shouted "gooooooooooooooooooal!" and made some noise, but surprisingly... we were the only ones! A fully packed sports bar watching a football game but there was a brief applause followed by some comments between friends. It was definitely different. Anyway, the good final result and seeing how many supporters my team has in Japan made me really happy that night.

Japanese Barça fans I met in the place

Shortly after I had the experience to watch a J-League match in Osaka Stadium, it was the opening game of the season and it was a derby: Cerezo Osaka vs. Gamba Osaka. I was so excited to see my favourite Japanese player Endo Yasuhito, former midfielder in Gamba and Best Asian Player in 2009 by FIFA. I saw this man playing in the last World Cup and he is one of the best free kick shooters I have ever seen. That day he did not let down anybody, he scored a great goal and also showed his accuracy hitting the post from 30m in a fantastic free kick that made the whole stadium skip a heartbeat. But back to the subject of this post, going to the stadium watching the game and seeing who Japanese people support their teams there (not for foreign teams on TV) made me understand a little bit more how passion flows into the sport. But first, please watch this video:



As you can see, this is the beginning of the match, when players come out onto the pitch. There were cheerleaders (something I have seen in other sports but never in football) and a speaker presenting the teams whos voice resounded throughout the stadium due to the quietness of the public. Yes, the public was very quiet and remained like that for the whole game, with the exception of some applause. But there is a remarkable exception: behind the two goals there is the special place for the most fanatic supporters, Japanese hooligans who wear wear their team's T-shirts, banners and flags; uniformed from head to tail without exception. They did not stop cheering up their teams for a single second during the whole match, and the way they were doing it was also different from what I am used to see. There was organization, even rank, they had battle cry leaders wielding loudspeakers and the rest of them were following the songs along with the trumpets and drums. The flags also moved all at the same time producing the sensation of pink and blue waves, depending on the side of the pitch. It was just like I remember it was in the anime "Captain Tsubasa" I used to watch when I was a child. A great spectacle. Japan is different.


In conclusion, Japanese people are really passionate towards football but they show it in a different way compared to Europe. Most football fans devour information, statistics and opinion articles about their teams, even more than in other "football countries". Then they gather with their friends and watch the games in a calm way, without losing their composure at all. But then, on the other hand we have the hooligans, crazy about their teams and strongly organized in supporters clubs who behave like a little army. Like in other interests or hobbies, some people in Japan bring them to the extreme that we could call the people 「サッカーオタク」 (Football Otakus). Two sepparate ways of watching football, clearly separated by the location in the stadium.

In Europe we also have hooligans, of course, but in a different way. Unfortunately, too often the difference is that they become violent and end up fighting or breaking stuff, specially a few years ago before the FIFA and the most important clubs took care of the problem and developed strict regulations. I think the main difference is that football fans in Europe "we all are hooligans" in the nicest sense of the word, we all forget about keeping the composure and become extremely passionate when watching the games.

One same game, two different cultures. One same passion, two different ways of living it.

ホスト

It has been a long time since my last blog post and I have to catch up with the rest of my classmates, so this week 頑張ろうと思っていますね (I am going to do my best). Today in class we have seen a documentary film about an interesting and unique aspect of the japanese urban culture: ホスト(Hosts). The film is called The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief by Jake Clennel.

Image borrowed from the official website

I was impacted by the film, which is really good in terms of providing a cold-blooded and objective inside look at the hosts world. There is some kind of drama in the way the different testimonies are edited, but there is a remarkably lack of moral judgement. Before watching this I only knew this world by seeing the hosts in the street, and wondering: What kind of woman would pay for such a guy to pretend he is her boyfriend? Although I think this documentary does not cover the whole range of customers and focuses in the ones who have addiction problems (maybe because they are the only ones who agree to collaborate with the film and show their faces), the hosts telling their experiences and talking about their lifes and feelings help you to understand how the business works.

But first I am going to explain briefly what are "Hosts". This is one of the most lucrative aspects of the japanese night life and sex related industry, and one of the most difficult to understand for foreigners as well. If you have the chance to visit Shinjuku's Kabukicho district in Tokyo or Dotonburi Bridge (Next to the Glico Man) in Osaka, you will find dozens of extravagantly stylish boys in their early 20s going around in their striking hairdos trying to pick up girls from early evening until late at night. In the eyes of a foreigner, they look really, really weird, and sometimes it is really hard to guess if it is a man or a woman because of the amount of make-up and hairspray they use. Not all japanese women like that kind of guys, but certainly a large amount of them find them attractive and hire their services.

A host is not a supposed to be a sex worker (although most of them admit they have had sex for money sometimes), what a host does is to try to make a woman happy, release her from the stress of her job or daily life's worries, and make her feel like a princess, attended and pleased. As we could see in the film, they basically pick up their costumers in the street, offer them to have a drink and bring them to the host club. There they chat and drink together and the host's job is to make the costumer feel fullfilled and have a great time. Of course, trying to make those women spend more and more money in drinks and other services at the same time.

Before watching The Great Hapiness Space, I thought that most customers would be middle aged single women who cannot find a man or young girls who want to have fun in a special ocasion like somebody's birthday or bachelorett parties. Most of costumers the documentary shows are prostitutes who want to feel relieved of their dehumanizing job, and seek for attention and afection as a woman. The sick an even wicked thing is that they fall in love with some of the hosts and they become addicted to them, to that "fake love" hosts sell, to the point that some of them have fallen into the sex business to be able to pay the extremely expensive services hosts offer. The normal thing is to spend between 6.000 and 20.000 yen per hour (which is expensive enough to not allowing anybody with an average salary to go everyday), but they talk about people who have spent 300.000 or 400.000 yen in a single night.

Talking about feelings, it is as interesting as sad how both night and sexual based industries compliment each other. Prostitute's damaged mental state and feelings can only be relieved by the affection and love lies of the hosts, who at the same time lose the capability of trusting anybody or even identify their own personality after spending most of their working time lying to people, causing a never-ending problem, a vicious circle. Such a great market for phychiatrists, isn't it?

In the documentary film we have seen in class they talk about Osaka's most popular host club, but if you want to know a little bit about the most popular one in Tokyo you can take a look at this short report courtesy of Japan in Motion :