Overtourism

On neo-Orientalism.

Here’s a fizzy drink I’ve been enjoying in the mornings:

• 2 parts iced coffee

• 1 part soda water

• 3 ice cubes

• 1 lemon slice

Summer is in full swing in Tokyo, along with a rainy season that feels pretty mild so far. After an action-packed first half of the year, with trips to Taipei, Seattle, and New York in quick succession, I’ve finally been able to settle down, with no more international travel until the beginning of December or so.

There’s an intense amount of overtourism in Japan these days due to the incredibly weak yen (trending ever closer to 160 yen to the dollar, an exchange rate last seen in 1986), a pent-up impulse for revenge travel connected to the pandemic, and, of course, a general predilection for people to go gaga for Japanese culture, as I touched upon in an essay for sankaku.

And it feels absolutely insane that the Japanese government has a goal of more or less doubling the number of inbound international tourists to 60 million per year by 2030. One wonders what will happen when the much-vaunted service culture of omotenashi is taxed to its natural limit. It’s not just about foreigners behaving badly, though some inevitably do; there’s simply not enough infrastructure to support this volume of people coming to Japan, even in Tokyo.

In the long term, I’ll be curious to see what will happen when visiting Japan no longer has the same cultural cachet as before, or even becomes passé. (Can you imagine?!) Korea is probably the most likely successor to this boom. Right now, it feels like we’re riding a crest of japonisme not dissimilar to the late 19th century, when Meiji Japan was relinquished from centuries of sakoku (“locked country”) isolationism and Westerners were gleefully consuming and collecting whatever they could of this Far Eastern culture that was, by turns, elegant and twee.

Monet’s wife being a weeb.

The neo-Orientalism of the 2020s feels very much driven by a desire to ingest and possess in the same manner, to align or identify oneself with Japan’s formidable soft power in the domains of craftsmanship, gastronomy, storytelling, design, and so on. To be clear, I’m not knocking anyone who has a sincere passion for these areas, or who has cultivated relationships and communities over time. Just thinking about the dilettantes and clout chasers who blindly put Japan on a pedestal while knowing little, or not giving a shit, about the messy reality of things. For most of the world, the two syllables of “Japan” continue to conjure up a dainty, delicate imaginary of cherry blossoms and cultural forms frozen in time.

The mirror image of this phenomenon in a brief anecdote: C. and I went to a vintage clothing fair with our friends on Sunday. The massive convention center that is Tokyo Big Sight was taken over by hundreds of vendors hawking their wares, screeching words of welcome to would-be customers, and offering dubious discounts. Roving packs of mostly young men filled the space, rifling through clothing racks, digging through bargain boxes.

It seems so glaringly obvious that it almost doesn’t even merit mentioning, but the vintage clothing scene in Japan is heavily American: a hodgepodge of Dickies, Carhartt, Polo Ralph Lauren, and all manner of weird tees sourced from flyover country thrift stores. And the Japanese youth eat that shit right up. Maybe an analogous range of styles and sheer volume of clothing simply don’t exist in any other country.

Just as non-Japanese, myself included, go starry-eyed for the wistful melodies of city pop, with our mental associations of bubble era decadence, a certain young Japanese person will don a t-shirt advertising a long-defunct Wisconsin diner, coordinated with faded Levi’s that have journeyed across space and time to find new life on this side of the Pacific.

What I’m Reading

Just finished Sea Change by Gina Chung, a poignant and oftentimes hilarious debut about a Korean American woman in her early thirties flopping through life whilst working at the aquarium in her local mall. Definitely feels in dialogue with some of the themes of my own forthcoming novel. I also read the fourth volume of the supernatural manga 『光が死んだ夏」』 [The Summer Hikaru Died], a vibey series about a teenage boy in the Japanese countryside uncovering the secret history of his village with the doppelgänger of his deceased best friend.

What I’m Watching

Been trying to use this Criterion Channel subscription more. I must’ve watched The Royal Tenenbaums once in high school and it didn’t leave that strong of an impression on me, as sacrilegious as that may sound to some. Had the same lukewarm feeling upon rewatching more than two decades later. I appreciate Wes Anderson’s commitment to the bit, though.

Also watched Girl, Interrupted for the first time. I suppose the 1990s reflecting on the 1960s is akin to our reflecting on the 1990s nowadays. Crazy. Doe-eyed Winona is such an icon, but Angelina was also great in this role.