when Ritsuko times out

Governments need to get this straight – culture is NOT history. Sure, it’s nice that Malaysia was conquered by the Portuguese in the past, China was once an incredible empire, the Greeks used to tell incredible tales, Japanese cut their guts open by their own hands, Koreans… played Starcraft, and German women wore female costumes and Germans in general eat sausages, but that’s only a small part of culture.

Why is Japan so popular among kids nowadays? South Korea, thanks to TV dramas, is also gaining in popularity – I’ve had a female friend go a little gaga when I mentioned I had a Korean friend. Guess what, she watches KDrama, and I used to do the same for Japanese girls when I watched anime. It’s the culture, people. Japanese are eccentric, incredibly perverted, romantic, badass, unromantic, musical, workaholics, gameaholics, they make cross dressing fashionable… so multifaceted is the image Japan projects onto the world that it’s hard not to fall in love with this quirky country. I don’t watch KDrama, but it’s obvious they’re influenced by Japan, followed closely by China which has even made their own eroge. They even draw the same way now, just look at Korea’s dmyo or Singapore’s LIN+ (pixiv).

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is culture. Real culture, that influences and spreads, and makes people respect want to live in Japan, just to be “near to all the cool stuff”. Coincidentally America has that effect on Japanese. Oh yes, I must add that America’s influence is like the sky – it’s everywhere. I don’t even need to explain how this works. People all around the world download American TV shows and movies – it’s not even considered a niche anymore, like anime. It has become so ingrained into everybody’s culture that people think that America has absolutely no culture.

Let me give you an example. When I first came to Germany, the first impression I got was that it was incredible. Weird glass buildings, incredibly complex and ornate train stations, awesome churches, and… wait a minute, why does everybody on the street wear jeans? Everybody wears dark colours here. It got worse from there – German pop music is patterned after American pop. Aside from the language, there is nothing musical that distinguishes it from any other (except of course for Kraftwerk). For example, JPop has incredibly high pitched screechy vocals that I’ve come to love and enka is instantly discernible from any other genre.

And that image from above? It’s of the Atlanta Saengerkreis, a group dedicated to preserving… German culture? Germans clearly have an identity crisis here. Maybe it’s just me being biased and naive, but there isn’t much that sets Germany apart from all the other countries in Europe apart from its historical landmarks, nothing that sets it apart as much as, say, Japan does from the rest of Asia. Germany has beer – but even China has its own beer. It’s just that more people drink it here. Of course, there are differences, but nothing like Americans’ insistence on having guns under their pillows, or the average Japanese man groping a girl on the train as part of his daily routine.

On Malaysia, my home country: while I certainly love P. Ramlee movies, the trend of making good movies hasn’t carried on, and since then there hasn’t been anything cultural from Malaysia that has made people sit up and take notice. Music? nah, if any, heavily influenced by Indonesia. TV? nope. Tech industry? To the consumer, non-existent (Intel and AMD CPUs are assembled in Malaysia, although they are fabbed elsewhere, and the consumers see them as American). Food is different though – the food is good, because you have so many choices. It’s just that it isn’t particularly influential. The fact that Malaysian cuisine is just an umbrella term for Malay, Chinese and Indian cuisine doesn’t help either.

As far as the Malaysian government is concerned, the Malaysian culture is about the keris, Hang Tuah, dancing, costumes, the wau bulan, and more recently cohabitation between three different races. Which is fine, but that’s just like saying Japan’s culture is the samurai, ukiyo-e, Fuji-san, Yamato Nadesico, and the shamisen – none of them have any relevance today. They are all relics of the past. What matters now is simply what is now.