Culture was the central point of my reason to start this blog. I thought that there was so much to explore in Asian culture to try and understand the future.
Initially my interest was focused very much on Japan and Hong Kong. It’s ironic that before the Japanese government’s ‘Cool Japan’ initiative there was much more content out there about what was happening in Japan. Great and really missed publications like the Japan Trends blog and Ping magazine.
Hong Kong’s film industry had past its peak in the mid 1990s, but was still doing interesting stuff and the city was a great place to synthesise both eastern and western ideas to make them its own. Hong Kong because its so densely populated has served as a laboratory of sorts for the mobile industry.
Way before there was Uber Eats or Food Panda, Hong Kongers would send their order over WhatsApp before going over to pay for and pick up their food. Even my local McDonalds used to have a WhatsApp number that they gave out to regular customers. All of this worked because Hong Kong was a higher trust society than the UK or China. In many respects in terms of trust, its more like Japan.
Korea quickly became a country of interest as I caught the ‘Korean wave’ or hallyu on its way up. I also have discussed Chinese culture and how it has synthesised other cultures.
More recently, aspect of Chinese culture that I have covered has taken a darker turn due to a number of factors.
Japanese soft power didn’t start with anime, manga or even Sonny Chiba. Asianometry posted a video covering how Japanese soft power was manifested in the 19th century through a mix of planning and happy accident.
Japan benefited from a sophisticated artisan culture for everything from food and drink to metal working.
Wikileaks
Talking about soft power. Task and Purpose goes back and looks at Wikileaks. This is interesting as it reflects on the US viewpoint of pro-Russian bias with the work Wikileaks did disclosing both Chinese and Russian secrets. The biggest legacy was likely reinvigorating investigative journalism at mainstream media outlets that had been cut back over the previous decade or so.
VFDs
Dutch YouTuber posts a love letter to VFDs or vacuum fluorescent displays. They were featured on stereos, VCRs, Blu Ray players and my Bose Wave (you can get your own one here). They feel nicer than LCD displays, don’t look cheap and don’t affect your sleep.
Streaming culture in China
While most people think about streaming is China’s e-commerce. But the offering of the streamer featured in this documentary is more ambiguous. Her audience feel some sort of romantic attachment to her. ‘Inside the Daily Life of a Live Streaming Star in China’ is as much about the imbalance in male and females in China due to the one-child policy.
It reminded me of Japanese and Korean ‘idol‘ culture, but designed for the mobile addicted COVID traumatised young adults. Buffeted by societal expectations and the economic issues by the government pivot away from economic growth to internal and external control.
Men
Scott Galloway has an interesting prognosis on the current crisis in the male population which seems to be in a socio-economic death spiral. I am not convinced by his solution. It’s very male-centred and assumes that parenting isn’t broken.
Æon Flux’s surprisingly modern take on privacy and surveillance. | Slate – Æon Flux was a name that I hadn’t heard in at least a decade. I remember when it came out as I enjoyed cable TV in our student house. It fitted in with the wider cyber culture. The big beats and brash gravity defying visuals were everywhere from WipeOut to anime. The media was tech artefacts from a future counter-culture.
Macromedia Director and Flash produced animated video hardwired straight into our cortex. It was psychedelia but not as it had been experienced before. Asian animated and real world films weren’t mainstream but serious culture.
Æon Flux & The Matrix
The series came out in the early 1990s as part of a series of experimental animation on MTV called Liquid Television. It came out before The Matrix, yet drew from many similar influences:
Cyberpunk
Biopunk
Anime
Asian ‘gun fu’ action films
European comics in particular the space opera works of Möbius, Mézières & Christin. You can also see the influence that Chung had working with Ralph Bakshi on his fantasy animation
Gnostic beliefs
In another Matrix link; Æon Flux creator Peter Chung (피터 정) went on to create a segment for the Wachowskis’ The Animatrix which told part of the back story of The Matrix quadrology.
Privacy and the surveillance state
Each episode saw a conflict play out between an anarchic city and its authoritarian rival. Flux was an assassin from the anarchic city on undercover missions.
The animated series had been released on VHS, DVD and UMD – the Sony Playstation Portable (PSP) disk media that was the ultimate manifestation of cyberpunk storage. For some reason, it hasn’t been released on Blu-Ray yet.
It was truly transmedia with computer games and graphic novels to complement the animated series. Eventually Hollywood did a live action version that was vaguely related to the original Æon Flux. The original was too difficult and avant garde to be a Hollywood franchise, which is probably why the animated version has slipped back out of view.
Given that Æon Flux was influenced by cyberpunk was inevitably seen as a prescient take on privacy and the surveillance state.
Consumer behaviour
Taking Affection Back | No Mercy / No Malice – some interesting and intractable problems in society revolving around how men are set up for failure. Contrast the diagnosis with this article: The Great Feminization of the American University | City Journal – Female students and administrators often exist in a co-dependent relationship, united by the concepts of victim identity and of trauma. For university females, there is not, apparently, strength in numbers. The more females’ ranks increase, the more we hear about a mass nervous breakdown on campus. Female students disproportionately patronize the burgeoning university wellness centers, massage therapies, relaxation oases, calming corners, and healing circles. Another newly installed female college president, Dartmouth’s Sian Leah Beilock, claims that the two “most pressing challenges of our time” are the “mental crisis among young people” and climate change. College institutions “really have a part to play in how we support students” suffering from that mental health crisis – correlation and causality aren’t the same thing
Why social class is advertising’s biggest diversity blind spot | Advertising | Campaign Asia – Social class might bring up antiquated ideas of British snobbery, but it exists everywhere. In Asia, social class is very pronounced. From obscenely wealthy ‘Crazy Rich Asian’ types, to a much reported on ‘rising middle class’, and a majority who are working class or live in poverty. The pandemic certainly brought class differences in Asia into sharp focus. Yet, despite making up the majority in society, advertising often fails to represent working class people. And when adverts do feature working class people, they usually perpetuate class-based stereotypes. Instead, the advertising industry is obsessed with targeting middle-class 18 to 34-year-olds, resulting in advertisements that seem to overlook the genuine diversity of society and instead mirror adland’s own demographic.
話題のChatGPTをLINEで使える「AIチャットくん」リリースから3日で20万登録突破 | みんなの便利な使用例を紹介 #AIチャットくん｜株式会社piconのプレスリリース – LINE adds ChatGPT gains 200,000 users in 3 days. ChatGPT speaks and understands Japanese, but uptake in Japan has been hampered, apparently, because you need to speak English to sign up. Line is the dominant messaging platform in Japan, and last week they added ChatGPT. You just add “AI Chat-kun” as a friend and start chatting. Up to five messages per day are free, and you can upgrade to unlimited messages for ¥680/month (about $5).
The Daring Ruse That Exposed China’s Campaign to Steal American Secrets – The New York Times – China publicly denies engaging in economic espionage, Chinese officials will indirectly acknowledge behind closed doors that the theft of intellectual property from overseas is state policy. James Lewis, a former diplomat now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, recalls participating in a meeting in 2014 or so at which Chinese and American government representatives, including an officer from the People’s Liberation Army, discussed the subject. “An assistant secretary from the U.S. Department of Defense was explaining: Look, spying is OK — we spy, you spy, everybody spies, but it’s for political and military purposes,” Lewis recounted for me. “It’s for national security. What we object to is your economic espionage. And a senior P.L.A. colonel said: Well, wait. We don’t draw the line between national security and economic espionage the way you do. Anything that builds our economy is good for our national security.” The U.S. government’s response increasingly appears to be a mirror image of the Chinese perspective: In the view of U.S. officials, the threat posed to America’s economic interests by Chinese espionage is a threat to American national security.
Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them in Indonesia | Reuters – Reuters put trackers in usable secondhand shoes to see where they would end up. The main gist of the story is that Dow recycling effort was a failure, which is also embarrassing for their partner the Singapore government.
The idea was the sneakers would be made into playground surfaces. Reuters seems to have stopped investigating the story of Dow recycling shoes, but I was left with more questions about Dow recycling than answers from the Reuters report:
Were some of the shoes more distressed than others?
Do Reuters know what happens to unwearable sneakers that enter the Dow recycling process?
Is it more ethical to sell on lightly used shoes as affordable footwear to Indonesians or recycle them regardless? Reuters doesn’t have an answer to this issue
UK struggles with transition to manufacturing electric cars | Financial Times – foreign carmakers’ core concern is that Britain’s reputation as a stable and pragmatic place in which to manufacture vehicles has been shattered, initially by the 2016 Brexit vote, and more recently by last year’s political turmoil at Westminster. “They are asking whether the UK is a stable partner,” said one person close to the Japanese companies. – Brixiteer economic expert Patrick Minford openly discussed the demise of the car manufacturing industry
Women and ethnic minorities overrepresented in advertising industry, finds report – Women and ethnic minorities are now overrepresented in the UK advertising industry following a decades-long push to improve diversity, according to a new survey. A 2022 census found that an estimated 55pc of employees in the sector were women, compared to 45pc who were men. That was after the number of women increased from an estimated 11,600 to 14,400, an increase of 24pc, the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) said. At the same time, the proportion of non-white employees increased by almost one third to 24pc, compared to 18pc a year earlier. Women made up 51pc of the population in England and Wales in 2021, according to the Office for National Statistics, while non-white ethnic groups comprised about 18pc. In London, where most of the UK’s advertising industry is concentrated, non-white ethnic groups represent roughly 46pc of the population. The IPA said there was more work to do on diversity, as women still only get just over one third of executive jobs in the ad industry, while non-white individuals only occupy 11pc of roles. – Daily Telegraph on how it feels that ‘woke’ addend risks becoming ‘out of touch’ with the British public, but doesn’t manage to make its argument very well.
Walt Disney vs Ron DeSantis: who really won the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ dust-up? | Financial Times – Instead of candidates with backgrounds in economic development or tourism, he packed the board with political allies. Two of them are leading lights in the culture wars that have helped DeSantis build a national profile ahead of a presumed run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Among them is Bridget Ziegler, co-founder of the conservative Moms for Liberty group and a champion of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law, dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” – Disneyland Florida is pretty screwed
Ambient content is the name that I gave to a peculiar type of video content that has been rising in popularity over time at odds with online media. It’s at odds with the direction of online content in general and technological convergence.
Yes we’re in the middle of a metaverse winter at the moment as western platform companies have reduced or withdrawn spending on it. But gaming seems to be as healthy as ever. There is a lean forward bias to online media with the exception of streaming services.
The ambient content by these ‘influencers looks as if it is taking things in a very different direction:
It’s lean back content, there is no call to action or actively engage
What does ambient content look like?
Here’s examples from the couple of accounts that I have noticed.
@nushitoneko
@nushitoneko is a divorced lady living alone with two cats in Japan and apparently holding down two jobs. Her simple cooking that relies on a lot on frozen ingredients looks lovely. She also captures the occasional McDonalds meals and Starbucks take-out in her films. If you are in Japan, you can buy products that she uses in her everyday life from her ‘Rakuten ROOM‘ which is a bit like an Amazon affiliate marketing page.
https://youtu.be/9BYRPS8Lx5U
@Choki
@Choki is more design led. The Instagram account feels like a bit of personal art direction is in place. She shares her home with a rabbit and a cat. @Choki looks as if she might be about to launch some sort of e-commerce venture. She is in her late 20s or early 30s and focuses on unwinding from stress in her content.
https://youtu.be/PlMaH_1rxqo
@usakostyle
@usakostyle is a Japanese national living alone. Like @Choki is has a focus on interior design in her content. While there isn’t animal content in her videos that cute influence comes in from her love of Studio Ghibli animation and this can be seen in some of the detail nature shots she puts in her films, which feel like the background detail in Ghibli movies. She has a Rakuten affiliate marketing page.
@LouCslife
@LouCslife is a Filipino lady who has a corporate job working in Japan. I think that she is the youngest of the trio. Her content focuses more on cleaning and tidying up than on cooking. She has a small apartment that she keeps immaculate. She appears in her thumbnails of her videos, but its hard to know what she really looks like. She also is differentiated by her lack of pets and doesn’t even have an affiliate marketing page like @nushitoneko.
This isn’t only a ‘made in Japan’ phenomenon, but also in Korea as well.
@MariLife
@MariLife is a Korean housewife living in South Korea that shoots similar content, but does it on solo camping trips using the family MPV as her base camp. The style of the videos feel very similar to the Japanese created ambient content. @MariLife’s content is very polished and she has explain that all the footage including the drone footage is shot by herself.
Common aspects of ambient content
Common aspects of ambient content includes:
Relaxing soundtrack
Small moments of everyday life, but as long form content
It’s not educational in nature, but they might inspire you to try your hand at cooking once you’ve watched cooking channels
30+ years old content creator
The idea that (with the exception of pets) its ok to be your own company. They might be alone, but they don’t feel lonely
Non-aspirational in nature. The content creators cooking skills and presentation is very good, but managed within a constrained budget. For instance @nushitoneko buys outfits sparingly from Shein and while she used a tablet for drawing as part of her online marketing job, when eight year old iPad died on her she moved to working on her phone and hasn’t replaced it yet. There are no product pitches or programme sponsors in the content. Instead it is about the small pleasures in the now, the simple satisfaction of a frozen pizza and drinking coffee while watching an anime or reading a book
No over-monetisation of content. For instance, @nushitoneko and usakostyle both have an affiliate page on Rakuten where you can buy some of the products that they have in their respective kitchens such as an electric sandwich maker
Greater degree of anonymity enjoyed by the content creators
I think that there content says a good deal about our stressed lives and seems to tie in with some of the things driving the audience desire for de-influence trend amongst TikTokers to be real.
Pink Floyd released their seminal album The Dark Side of The Moon in 1973. The album went on to be very influential in the decades to come. I first heard of the album in primary school, Mr Garrett talked about seeing Pink Floyd perform The Dark Side Of The Moon – Live At Wembley. I am not sure if he actually went to the concert or saw the film of it.
He was considered our coolest teacher with tales of swimming across the Suez Canal and having a dark green down belay jacket as a winter coat. This was before technical wear became mainstream.
Anyway back to The Dark Side of the Moon. It influenced so many different genres of music and subcultures. It was a popular soundtrack for relaxing at home and beloved even my the mod revivalists that I knew.
The reality was the the psychedelic aspects of the 1960s and 1970s had large scale youth appeal well into the late 1990s.
The voice recordings and ambient noise influenced sampling culture, though Pink Floyd wasn’t always happy about it. The alarm clock sound on Time was sampled by The Prodigy and Bomb The Bass were declined permission to use a sample from Money on a track dropped from their second album Unknown Territory.
Ambient rooms in clubs would see The Dark Side of the Moon and later Wish You Were Here albums played regularly. To celebrate the 50th anniversary, Pink Floyd launched an animation competition.
Generative AI was one of the go to techniques that artists went to in order to match the cosmic nature of the music. Some of the videos are beautiful to watch.
Concern about Christian Japanese
Fervent religious belief in Japan has led to two tragedies in modern Japan. The assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe associated with anger at the Unification church and the Tokyo subway attack with Sarin in 1995 by the Aum Shinrikyo sect.
Devout Christians are a small but visible community in Japan and many Japanese are uncomfortable around them due to these incidents. This leads to children becoming socially isolated in school and friends pulling away in adult life.
Yellow Magic Orchestra
Japan’s Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) get a documentary that highlights the importance to popular music production.
Condor
Condor was British Railways attempt at containerisation, before the popularity of intermodal containerisation. It makes interesting viewing. It would be great if the UK and Ireland could take a similarly enlightened approach to integrated logistics now.
SKYN Japan
Skyn presents undressing softness – the latest brand film and campaign was released in Japan for Valentine’s Day. I was struck by how it about brings out empathy. The performing couples are nervous. They didn’t know what they’ll be asked to do next and they have to do it in public. This becomes even more obivous for the thousands who saw the film on an OOH digital billboard at Shibuya station. It comes across more sweet and loving, than erotic or sexual, which is different for the category.
Whiskas
Whiskas finding the purr in every cat is a really interesting and smart proposition. I love the way AMV BBDO did the creative around this proposition.
