Popular culture refers to the culture that is generally accepted and enthusiastically followed, and its main function is entertainment, so many people feel irrelevant, but in fact, a country's popular culture just grasps the vane of the country's mass culture, and is the embodiment of the will and thought of a country's citizens. Japan as a country with very national characteristics, their popular culture is also a very unique existence, before the Meiji Restoration, the country's culture was more influenced by China, after World War II, it was more influenced by Western countries, once, the "tough guy" image was popular in Japan, and now Japan is "N cannon culture" or "small fresh meat culture" in Asia the first country, the reasons behind the decline of Japanese popular culture, it is worth thinking about.
Let's first understand the history of Japanese popular culture, as early as the Edo period, Japan's popular culture to ukiyo-e-e, the so-called ukiyo-e, at the beginning has the meaning of worrying about the world, is the pursuit of the pure land consciousness of the pessimistic world-weary mentality, and then with the introduction of Buddhism to Japan, this mentality began to change, people began to use the true feeling of love of life to replace the nihilistic feelings of compassion for people, since then, the word ukiyo-e also has the meaning of timely pleasure.
During the middle feudal period, samurai culture began to become the mainstream, and samurai, originally meant to learn martial arts to hold the military power, literary works based on the life of the samurai army, the popularity of Zen Buddhism with the theme of the samurai mentality, and the development of various related ideas were the hallmarks of Japanese popular culture in that period. In the late period of feudal society, Confucianism from China and native Japanese thought began to gain a foothold, and at the same time began to absorb a large number of advanced ideas from Europe, and Japanese popular culture reached a peak period in China.
Then Japan experienced the Meiji Restoration, Taisho culture, Heisei culture, etc. have come to the for a while, the development of imperialist fascist ideas in the Showa period has made war literature, serving the country culture flocked up, after the end of World War II, Japan was wrapped up by the United States, its popular culture behind a lot of political implications, today's mention of "N cannon culture" or "small fresh meat culture" is the United States behind the impetus and formation.
What kind of culture is the "N cannon culture" or "small fresh meat culture" that we call? Contrary to the tough guy culture that was popular in the early Showa era, in the 1970s, that is, in the late Showa era, Japanese male stars began to appear in the public eye with a feminine image, they had long hair, often made up in the camera, and their action voices and even dress appearances were slightly neutral, making people look like they lacked a masculine atmosphere unique to men, which is commonly known as "N cannon culture" or "small fresh meat culture".
The popularity of "N cannon culture" in Japan, there is a crucial figure who plays a key role, he is Kitagawa, it is this person who single-handedly created the popular love bean culture throughout Asia, many people call him, with the light called "idol" to bring love and dreams to countless boys and girls. He has also been called the godfather of Japanese entertainment media, the founder of the idol boy band model, and even the creator of the definition and aesthetic of Asian idols.
Johnny-Kitagawa
Who is he and why did he do all this? Kitagawa's real name is Kitagawa, people are more familiar with his other name, Johnny-Kitagawa, October 23, 1931, he was born in Los Angeles, the United States, grew up in the United States, and then the outbreak of the Pacific War, Japanese residents in the United States were excluded, the Kitagawa family was also imprisoned in the detention center, so they returned to Japan with their families, and during the war their home in Japan was bombed, and then the poor Kitagawa returned to the United States to make a living after World War II, after finishing high school in the United States, Kitagawa became a theater stage manager, and it was from then on that he began to contact the American theater economy, understand the entertainment model of the United States, and step into the American entertainment industry. Kitagawa also worked as a translator assistant at the U.S. Embassy, accumulating some connections, and then joined the army, using the demobilization fee as the first pot of gold to start his career in the entertainment industry.
By chance, he was touched by the movie "West Side Story" and decided to start his own artist team, and the Johnnys office named after him was founded. Superstars such as Takuya Kimura and Masahiro Nakai were all born in the boy band founded by Kitagawa, and since 2000, Kitagawa has planned a total of 8419 concerts for his boy band artists, and in 2012, the Guinness Book of World Records identified Kitagawa as the person who produced the most concerts in the world. Kitagawa created a boy band not only detonated the Japanese women's group, but also brought huge benefits to capital and businesses, thus being accepted and respected by the Japanese entertainment industry, and even developed into an industry, every year to sign up for Kitagawa's boy band training camp of teenagers as few as 400,000, more than 1.5 million a year to apply, Kitagawa will select 200 eight-year-old to 15-year-old teenagers as reserve artists, for all-round training, this model is still continued in many countries continue to follow.
Some people think that the reason why Kitagawa was able to successfully promote the boy band model in Japan is largely due to the American background behind him, combined with the background of the times, such an idea is not empty, when Kitagawa returned to China to develop, due to the US military's hydrogen bomb experiment, causing the death of many Japanese civilians, at this time at a time when anti-American sentiment in Japan was on the rise.
Shoriken Matsutaro
Since World War II, the United States has always regarded Japan as its puppet, intending to use Japan in the East to influence the development of the Soviet Union, so controlling the ideas of the Japanese people has naturally become the top priority of the United States, for which the United States has carried out a series of operations to help Class A war criminal Masani Matsutaro to establish a news media is one of the operations, he not only successfully brought baseball into Japan, but also provided the United States with a strategy to resolve the people's anti-American sentiment, that is, the use of entertainment programs to brainwash the Japanese people and dissipate the masculinity of the people Kitagawa, who returned to Japan at this time, also entered the vision of the US government and became the vanguard of the United States to resolve the anti-American sentiment of the Japanese people, it is said that the boy band founded by Kitagawa at that time, the initial main performance task was to serve the US military stationed in Japan, so it seems that it is difficult not to doubt whether there are other secrets behind the close connection between the two.
Kitagawa created the boy band led by the feminine wind can be widely accepted by the Japanese people, not only because the United States is behind the manipulation, its smooth development and the nourishment of Japanese traditional culture also have a certain relationship, in a book called "Ancient Chronicles" circulated in Japan, the ancestors of the Japanese emperor once dressed as a woman into the enemy military camp to assassinate enemy generals, you know, the emperor's position in the hearts of the Japanese is unique. In Japan's popular Kabuki performances, there are often cases of handsome men playing female roles, and in the Showa era, there were monarchs who recruited handsome young men across the country to perform song and dance in gorgeous female costumes. As a star artist known as Japan's "drag queen", Akihiro Miren shows herself as a women's clothing figure on the stage and in her daily life, so she has gained a large number of fans, including many celebrities like Yukio Mishima.
It has to be said that this strategy of the United States has achieved their unexpected success, not only was the anti-American sentiment in Japan successfully diverted at that time, the feminine beauty among Japanese men became the mainstream, Japan continued to exist as a puppet of the United States in Asia, and this "N cannon culture" or "small fresh meat culture" also spread to South Korea, and even Taiwan and other Asian regions, perhaps even the initiator of the US government would not have thought that such a simple strategy would have such a wide impact.
The second and third articles of the "Ten Commandments" of China, which have long been circulated by the CIA, read: 2. We must do everything possible to do a good job in disseminating work, including movies, books, television, etc., as long as they yearn for our way of clothing, food, housing, travel, entertainment, and education, it is half the success. 3. It is necessary to divert the attention of their youth from tradition and let their minds focus on: sports performances, pleasures, games, entertainment movies, etc. It can be seen that the control of popular culture and thought among young people is particularly important.
Japan's long-standing cultural problem is the lack of innovation ability to its own culture, such as ancient Japan borrowed from the culture of the Tang Dynasty, and modern Japan imitates the culture of Europe and the United States, but rarely explores and innovates its own culture. There is such a scene in the Hungarian writer Melcher-Rengel's play "Typhoon", a Japanese student said: "The ancient culture developed by the West for thousands of years, we have mastered it in Japan for fifteen years, the research results of Western scholars for decades, we have mastered it after reading books for five days, let the Westerners use their brains, what good things they have created, we will learn it when the time comes." It is this kind of thinking reflected in the script that makes It easy for Local Japanese culture to be manipulated by others. Of course, this has something to do with the weak cultural tone of Japan itself, China is an ancient world civilization with a history of 5,000 years of civilization, and it is impossible to become a fertile land for other countries' cultures, and abandon its own traditional culture.
Popular culture is not only a static sense of the art is also the entire consumption process including the work of art itself, has important economic significance, at the same time a great wealth of popular culture for the local people's thinking to lay the foundation for the enlightenment and enlightenment of the local people's thinking, popular culture is the universal language of cultural exchanges between countries and between nations, and should not be a weapon to manipulate the national thoughts of other countries to achieve their own political goals. The mission of popular culture is to narrow the class gap, close to the social psychology of the times, to achieve the purpose of satisfying human beings to pursue themselves and pursue happiness, popular culture itself is not good or bad, because the intention to pursue happiness itself is human nature, but what needs to be vigilant is the loss of discernment in the pursuit process, and what needs attention is to guide and control popular culture.
Resources
1. A study on the aesthetic characteristics of ukiyo-e beauty painting art in the Edo period in Japan
2. How do you evaluate the life of President Kitagawa?
3.A brief analysis of the tortuous course of Japanese cultural development