Tomorrow Saturday, Ideal Jun recommends a Japanese drama "I Am Big Brother" for everyone. Set in Japan in the 1980s, the drama tells the story of high school students Mitsuhashi and Ito who take the opportunity to transfer schools and aspire to become bad teenagers.
The protagonist Mitsuhashi's life credo is "no matter what means you use, as long as you win", while Ito is "never bow to the bad guys", a man who does not calculate strength and wins by tenacious will.
In fact, as early as the 1960s, the Japanese movie "Elegy of Violence" also expressed the theme of "hard youth". The protagonist, Qi Liu, is a typical hardcore: with a flat head, a serious book, nowhere to vent his sexual desires, and only two things that fascinate him: one is to fight in groups, and the other is to make a pure girlfriend.
"Hard school" is often reflected in Japanese culture, including manga and film and television dramas, and has become a key concept in understanding Japanese culture. In The Realm of Japan, Ian Bruma devotes a chapter to a detailed explanation of the cultural meaning behind the word. Share it with you today.
Hardcore
This article is excerpted from the Ideal Kingdom Translation Series 026 "The State of Japan: Heroes and Evil People in Japanese Culture"
1.
The road to adult men is bumpy. In most cultures, this ups and downs are rendered by some kind of rite of passage, usually a test or an exploration; it can be either killing a lion or finding the Holy Grail, and so on.
In Japan, the trauma of losing innocence is no different from anywhere else, and the test of masculinity — let alone the pursuit of the holy grail of countless kinds — is an inexhaustible source of myth and drama. As in most places, the main conditions for passing the test are blind perseverance and the will to overwhelm the flesh. Both are extremely valuable in the eyes of the Japanese, who are keen to promote a certain unique spiritual temperament as a Japanese cultural heritage.
In Japan, the closest thing to a ranger nature is the samurai who walks the rivers and lakes, and they hone their sword skills and mentality with clean and sharp killings. A swordsman has recently become famous in the world: he is Miyamoto Musashi, who is a triple identity of artist, killer and mystic. Musashi's extraordinary achievements have been mentioned in television, manga, and movies, and not only that, but in the United States, he has become a kind of popular icon, where businessmen allegedly read his martial arts treatise The Book of Five Wheels in order to penetrate the esoteric oriental business path.
Little is known about the real Musashi, except that he was born around 1584, and the rest is purely joking. There are many opinions about his life, sometimes seriously contradictory, in a word, everyone sees Musashi differently. All that is needed here is to portray the multifaceted Musashi that has appeared in contemporary films and manga, but he is still a model among the young heroes who have overcome all odds on the road to adulthood.
Like many Tough Japanese guys, Musashi lost both of his parents as a child. Soon, he exhibited a killer endowment similar to that of the Scriptures: to be precise, at the age of thirteen. Don't look at his young age, he actually killed a samurai with a stick. In 1600, when Tokugawa Ieyasu intended to rule the world after Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the Battle of Sekigahara broke out. Musashi further established himself as a typical Japanese hero by fighting alongside the defeated side. For the rest of his life, he spent the rest of his life wandering around, idly in the clouds and wild cranes, often sleeping in caves or farmhouses.
Musashi must have no charm in the flesh, because he was afraid that if the sword left his hand, he would not take a bath, which was very different from the Japanese. Equally paradoxical, he remained unmarried. In fact, he was somewhat misogynistic—not something else among Japanese heroes—always trying to get rid of the entanglement of women who would corrupt his unconventional pursuits. No matter which work of his life is about him, there is a scene that is always familiar and appears again and again: he stands naked under the cold waterfall to extinguish his instinctive desire for a beautiful person.
In a sense, he was a nihilist. In this regard, he is no different from many rugged and masculine Japanese heroes. Without any social ties, he lives only for himself. But to be a true nihilist, one has to become a world-weary adult. Musashi lived most of his life like a single-minded teenager who never ages. His story is a story about studying. Yes, he violated all the rules of a ceremonial society, but only to achieve his single-minded goal: to attain enlightenment through kendo.
The ordinary Musashi is an introverted contemplative, Hamlet with a samurai appearance, full of bitterness about life. I think that finding the source of his mental distress also clarifies why he has a long-lasting popularity. His selfishness and cruelty may be attributed to the harsh times in which he lived, when wars were rife in the 16th century. His books were marketed to the United States for their philosophical ideas, while also endorsing their often unprovoked violence.
The real problem, however, is Musashi's dilemma, and arguably the contradiction between his quests, which still exist in Japan today: how to reconcile self-destruction with arrogance and self-esteem, and the contradiction between Zen Buddhism and the sword. Even leaving aside sword and Zen Buddhism, both of which are insignificant in contemporary Japanese life, what remains is the conundrum that every Japanese teenager has to face: How to live up to expectations, especially those at home, while at the same time being able to stay ahead of the curve and follow the rules? Or to put it another way, how can one be a winner in a society that suppresses individual claims?
It is impossible to fight without blood on your hands. If you want to be a victor in this world, you can't help but be stained with blood and can't help but lose your innocence. So how should people react? Completely dependent on instinct, acting blindly and without thinking like an animal with a head carefully tamed? Or do you go to battle with a wooden sword in hand? Or simply go into hiding? The peculiarities of Japanese society make this contradiction more dramatic, but every teenager in the world has to face it. Hamlet and Musashi simply express themselves in different ways.
2.
Let's take a look at another dazed teenager who has recently appeared on screen: Zi Sanshiro, who was the protagonist in Akira Kurosawa's first film and the second film he shot the following year. In many ways, the film is a model for all of Kurosawa's later works, because many films such as "The Desire for Life," "Heaven and Hell," and "Red Beard" revolve around the theme of spiritual transformation and facing tests.
This way of shaping character is very different from the old British tradition. A gentleman should be able to afford to lose, and pretend not to care when facing win or loss, after all, isn't it a game? In the eyes of people like Musashi and Zisaboro, being a personable loser is not only unnecessary, but also despicable, because it is an unrealistic performance.
The Japanese ideal begs another question: If "loyalty and love" encompass sympathy for others, how does this harmonize with the straightforward, unthinking actions of Zen Buddhism? The answer is that perhaps it does not contain sympathy, at least not the principled, undifferentiated sympathy of Christianity. A person has compassion, not because it is necessary to express empathy out of principle, otherwise this pity will appear hypocritical. (We often feel that this is not the case, and that the sympathy that people give is always directly related to the rewards that can be received, as is the case in Japan and most countries.) ）
A recent example of this way of thinking has sparked heated controversy is Japan's attitude toward refugees, particularly in Southeast Asia. The Japanese government has always been reluctant to help refugees, which is still a more polite statement. The indifference of most Japanese people to this policy allows the above policy to be carried out unimpeded. Only after facing great pressure from mainly Western countries was a small number of "boat people" allowed to land in Japan, and the reception process was also quite cold. The Japanese government and the press — usually not pro-government — complain about this unpleasant external pressure, and they probably really don't understand what such a big move is all about. The suffering of foreigners, and the suffering of Asians outside of Japan, is too far removed from japan's everyday reality to make people sympathize from the heart.
I have no intention of accusing the Japanese of being mean and ruthless. On the contrary, when things involve relatives and friends, they show great sympathy. However, unlike many Europeans, Japanese people are not more keen to show compassion for strangers. The Japanese call this honesty, and others call this numbness. Both statements are true.
In the case of Zi Sanshiro and his fellow practitioners, love and loyalty mean love to the master or leader. Obedience and sacrifice are words of love. Therefore, this love is both highly personal and also against the self. In Zen Buddhism, we advocate the restraint of rational thought, which makes people more and more self-centered.
Rational consciousness, which is regarded as impure by the likes of Musashi and Zishiro, is seen by Westerners as a suppression of impulsive emotions. This emotion is unreliable and therefore dangerous. In Japan, although a certain highly regarded nihilistic ideology has the ultimate goal of completely destroying feelings, the Japanese are still 18,000 miles away from this goal. Perhaps, in general, Japanese people are more susceptible to emotion than people in other countries. Westerners often defend their views by asking angrily, "Don't you understand what I mean?" In other words, the Japanese first reluctantly hid their anger behind the polite appearance that gradually disappeared, and then cross-examined: "Don't you understand my feelings?" ”
A appeals to universal logical thinking, and B appeals to one's own inner emotions.
3.
Not all people are willing to undergo the spiritual test of being a man. In fact, most Japanese people are probably "BabaGinos" who are indulgent and unwilling to be burdened by the "spiritual" asceticism. In Japanese, an interesting distinction is made between these two types of people: "hard school" (こうは) and "soft school" (ナンパ). Both Musashi and Zisaburo are undoubtedly hardcores.
The typical characteristic of the hard school is the belief in Stoicism, that is, the love of hardship, the aversion to sex, the loyalty of people, plus the temper is somewhat fiery. Hardcore protagonists must prove their manhood repeatedly in battle. Soft school nature is the antithesis of all this: its members lack courage, aversion to fighting, and good femininity. Unlike hardcore heroes, softsters rarely get popular culture praise. The ideal is still the hardcore, which is instilled with a peculiar nationalist ideology.
However, the simple mind of this hardcore teenager can also bear much more fruit than baseball. Let's go back to the fictional world again: Kiyoshi Suzuki made a film in 1966 called Elegy for Violence ('けんかえれじい'). The film is still very popular, the protagonist high school student Qi Liu is a typical hardcore: with a flat head, a serious book, sexual desire has nowhere to vent. For Kirito, who grew up in the turbulent 1930s, he was fascinated by two things: one was to fight in groups, and the other was to make a pure girlfriend. The two are closely related, because his love is by no means just platonic, but the worship of idols.
Poster of Elegy of Violence
This idol is so pure that it is difficult to express his admiration for her in body language. Whenever she approached, he stiffened, like a terrified soldier on the move. "Daozi, ah, Daozi," he wrote in his diary, "with the girl can't make me relax, I still go to fight." "Whenever he fights with people from outside the school, Kiritoku always takes the lead, like a mad savage jumping from a tree to an enemy, slamming the latter's brain shell with a bamboo sword, or running wild in the classroom, using his clumsy karate slashing kung fu to kill a bloody road.
But he is not a pure bully, because his emotions have always been simple, and his heart always directs his actions. Moreover, as an authentic hardcore, he is not afraid of pain. There is a scene in the movie where Kiritoku is ordered to walk barefoot on a path littered with nails after confronting a rude army instructor. This good man was stunned and did not retreat.
The film reflects Qi Liu's brave and fierce student career in a witty and humorous and flat-laid-out way, but at the end, the style of painting is blurred. The young man understood that there were more meaningful battles in this world, just as Musashi, Zishiro and other comrades-in-arms had experienced.
Increasingly, he felt that campus battles were meaningless, and that he was no longer content to merely defeat his opponents; there must be a spiritual awakening to flesh it all out.
One day, he walked into the café next to the school and saw a stranger in the corner reading a newspaper. He couldn't say why, but the person's presence was like a magnet that firmly attracted Qi Liu. This jun is no one else, it is the radical nationalist Kita Yihui, the theoretician behind the coup d'état of 1936. Several cabinet ministers were assassinated in the coup. Bei Yihui himself was later sentenced to death.
In the next frame, the protagonist's idol, Michiko, is about to go to the monastery and comes to say goodbye to him (they are from southern Japan, where some Catholics still live today). On the way back she encountered a heavy snowstorm. Michiko was struggling on the narrow road when a column of soldiers traveling to China to spread the Japanese spirit rudely pushed her off the road, and the cross in her neck was trampled under her feet by heavy military boots. Immediately afterward, we heard a notice from the local train station that the military coup had taken place on February 26, 1936.
Stringing all of these things together is puzzling, because the director's true intentions are unclear. Is he implying that the mere violence of young people loses its purity when it is used by a corrupt society (such as marching soldiers and coups)? It is possible, but if so, what the film fails to account for is how the cult of hard school is related to the bizarre Japanese militarism that led to the attempted coup d'état of 1936.
The appearance of Bei Yihui is a hint that this event shows the innocence of young people. Although many Japanese people who appear later in the article agree with this view, Suzuki himself may not agree with it, perhaps based on what he said: "I hate the theme of 'standing', and what people can remember is the scene of 'broken'." It can be seen that this film is indeed an elegy for violence, lamenting the straightforward violence of young people. It is also a nostalgia and nostalgia for the stage of life at which you can hold on to yourself without being harshly punished. After this beautiful time has passed, what follows is the sledgehammer that forces people to conform to the rules, and knocks the nails of the head back into place. The protagonist is still ignorant because his feelings are sincere.
This sincere effect and effect is not as important as the feelings themselves. As the father, who watched his son Yamato Fight like a madman, said, "I guess there's a kid here, but at least he's fully committed." Thinking back to his experience as a kamikaze, he said to his readers, "Yes, there is my blood in this child's veins."
The reason why simple students who wave their fists or take revenge with bamboo swords evoke such strong feelings of nostalgia is precisely because the Japanese recognize more clearly than most peoples that after entering the corrupt world of adulthood, they can no longer behave in this way. In addition, no matter how tough, stoic, porous, and masculine a man is, there is always someone stronger than him in the end; in the comic book, the fanatical military style believers hold a kendo competition, and the only person who beats him is the most kind, weakest, gentlest person... It was his own wife, Yamato's mother.
【Related Books】
The Realm of Japan: Heroes and Villains in Japanese Culture
By Ian Bruma
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"The Mirror of Japan" focuses on Japanese pop culture, through various manga, women dressed as men's Takarazuka Opera Troupe, showbiz idol stars, to gangsters, pornography, family and other films, Ian Bruma reveals the hidden Japanese traditional culture, nationality, social atmosphere, and self-identity, and also explains why these popular cultures are either inspirational, or grotesque and absurd, or bloody and vulgar, but they can all emerge and succeed in commercial and cultural communication.
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