Taking a walk in the neighborhood of Katahoko Higashimachi made me think about what Benedict Anderson referred to as “Imagined Communities” (Anderson: 1991). Even though Anderson used his famous term by describing how one consider him-/herself as a part of a nation despite that a member of a state or nation is very unlikely to meet or know all the people in the state where they are living.
The same statement can be made about the neighbourhood where I have my stay. As an exchange student in Japan at the lowest language level and not being able to comprehend daily conversations and participate in discussions with the locals of this part of Hirakata has put me in a position of only observing that which is around me. Theodore C. Bestors probably made a correct observation of how well labeled the Japanese societies are (Bestor: 2003, p 321) but without knowledge of how to decode all the labels and signs the possibility of making false assumptions are tremendous.
As a Seminar House 1 resident one of my daily routines is a walk or bike route from the Seminar House towards the Kansai Gaidai University. The neighborhood can by this route be described as a interesting dialogue of commercialization, tradition, the modern and the old Japan. About half way through the route placed among houses and worn down two story apartments there is a memorial ground called Katahoko Konshidan. I remember the first time I saw the memorial ground and how I wasn’t even sure if was allowed to enter it.
When I returned to this part of my neighborhood I realized that the memorial ground from the beginning of the 18th century with it’s statues that I almost didn’t dare to touch also can appear as perfect soccer goals for some of the early teenagers of Katahoko Higashimachi. They didn’t mind when I showed them the camera and in my broken Japanese asked if it was OK to take pictures of them. Rather they started to pose a bit before returning to their intensive soccer game.
I'm not sure if imagined communities works with the idea of neighborhoods. I started to consider that it might in a so-called bed-town where people merely sleep in the place before they commute to their far away job and not ever have any connection to their neighbors. But this would not be much of a community. Bestor describes the neighborhood as a set of institutions that forces people together and encourages cooperation. Neighborhood = participation. I think this idea is behind the recent international festival in the park - to get neighbors and students together.
ReplyDeleteHow can you go about trying to decode the labels you see around you? That is the challenge...
I like your conclusion that illustrates the practical profane uses of objects foreigners might too easily take for granted as (overly) sacred.