Part 2 about Japaneseness – and some scenarios for Nico Nico Douga in the West
Triggered of by the launch of Nico Nico Douga’s German and Spanish version, I asked myself in the last post (“Wunderbar – Nico Nico Douga goes German….”) two questions that I evaded up to this point: How Japanese is Nico Nico Douga? And what does this mean for its fate in the West? This is part two of my try to address these questions.
It turned out that I had good reasons to evade them. Both the last and this post became rather long and arbitrary lists of potential candidates for Japanesness. I am not really happy with this. Not only because Japaneseness is a highly problematic term, loaded and at the same time imprecise. It is simply beyond my (and maybe anyone’s) capability, to give satisfying answers.
So why do I still post it? Well, I still think that it is braver to address these questions head on, instead of evading them, or hiding them in many different posts. Plus it enabled me to develop some scenarios for a potential success or non-success of Nico Nico Douga in the West – and I will write about this at the end of this post. So lets start now, with part two of the long list.
The potential Japaneseness of tags doomed to me in a drunk conversation with Nico Nico Bu members in Tokyo. As mentioned several times before, tags do not only describe videos. Tags take a lead role in user-lead generation of new genres. On Nico Nico Douga, tags compress complex terms into a combination of only a few signs. There are three Japanese alphabets, and one of them, Kanji, resembles the Chinese alphabet. It not only enables the expression of much more content in much less space. It also connects words into one combination of signs. In a visual sense, sentences are internally more connected, almost as if they would be one word.
Some of my Japanese conversation partners have told me, that the condensation of the tags is not only a result of writing in the three Japanese alphabets. It has an equivalent in a passion in Japanese culture for condensation as such. If you believe this, you can see this passion for condensation everywhere: In architecture, as in painting, in Haikus ... Once again, stereotypes all over the place.
However, one thing is for sure: Tags on Nico Nico Douga are so effective, because they are often highly complex, and Nico Nico Douga would not be what it is, without its effective tags. When you look at the German translation of the interface of Nico Nico Douga, you can see already, where one of the difficulties of the adaption of Nico Nico Douga will lie: Obviously it is a challenge to translate the condensed Japanese terms into similarly short and condensed German words. And this is not ony a question of translation. It is simply hard to imagine generic German tags that enable equivalent degrees of complexity.
A next candidate for Japaneseness is the combination of writing and image. I am not an art historian, but you do not have to be one, to know that there is an old tradition of combining text and image in Japanese paintings and prints. Indeed, you just have to watch an hour of Japanese mainstream TV. If you flip through the channels of broadcast TV, you will hardly ever find a TV image that does not show some kind of writing on it. This is by no means a reaction to Nico Nico Douga, I am told. The abundance of written text on TV became popular in the 80ties.
A random example of writing on Japanese TV - here in the lower right corner
The next points are so obvious that it might be important to write them down, merely to not forget them: Without Manga and Anime, which seem to be especially suited for re-editing (see the post Hikawa-san for his further-leading ideas on that); without the cult of 2D characters, who often take a larger than life importance; without the obsession with artificial life, that goes beyond Otaku culture, even though it is especially prevalent there; without Otako culture itself, which provided the blueprint for a hyper-consumerist yet subversive fandom; without the comic market, where fans offer and buy self-made variations of existing commercial products, without the blueprint for toleration of copyright infringement, that comes with that … without all that, much of Nico Nico Douga would not look like it does today. Some of this has long arrived in the West, but still, let’s not forget: Japan is where it comes from, where it has the longest, and often also the strongest traditions.
It is probably no coincidence that all this emerged in Japan. Manga and Anime culture, for example, have roots in older levels of Japaneseness. This seemed apparent to me, when I visited six weeks ago a Kabuki theatre in Tokyo: The codified expressions of the actors did indeed look to me like the codified set of expressions in anime.
Kabuki on Nico Nico Douga. The uploader titled this video “Aitsu koso ga Kabuki no Oujisama” (“He is the prince of Kabuki”): A pun on "Aitsu koso ga tennis no oujisama" (= “He is the prince of tennis”), a manga and camp musical, which is highly popular with the Nico Chuu.
Kabuki is a good starting point for more speculation on Japanesness. Originated in the 17th century, it already contains many of the elements that make Nico Nico Douga so unique: The high level of transtextual clues can be tracked to Kabuki; just as the active audience, which often shouts, when actors come on stage; or the obsession with gender swap (in Kabuki, either female actors play both male and female roles, or, more often, male actors play female as well as female roles).
You think things become quite un-analytic at this point? You think that this is stereotyping too much? Then how about this one: One afternoon I walked through a crowded road full of pedestrians in Ikebukuro, and I saw a woman, riding on a bike single-handedly, while she was texting on her mobile. So, here I was, thinking immediately: This is an ability to multitask that goes far beyond what we have in the West – at least far beyond my abilities. So what do you think? Do we have to look at the interface of Nico Nico Douga against the background of a visual culture that seems to be overloaded and crowded from a Western point of view?
Ok, now I have definitely taken it far enough. The question of Japaneseness cannot be answered, nor can it be evaded. Meanwhile, there is at least some strong support that it is no coincidence that Nico nico Douga emerged in Japan, and not in the West. Based on this, I want to now try to answer the second question: If you agree at least partly with me and most of the Nico Chuu, and share the perception that there is to some degree something specifically Japanese about Nico Nico Douga, will Nico Nico Douga be successful in the West?
An answer about future is best made in scenarios, and I think you can at least make four of them. First scenario: Nico Nico Douga will fail in the West, because it does not make sense. Second: Nico Nico Douga will become a playground for Western Japanophiles, who will use Nico nio Douga to play to be Japanese in their spare time. It remains a niche offer. The third scenario goes further: Nico Nico Douga might transform itself and become something different in West. How this will look like, remains to be seen.
The fourth scenario is the most far reaching: Not so much Nico Nico Douga will transform itself, but it will become part of a transformation of the West. Nico Nico Douga might become one driver of a long-term process of Easternasation. I have put this hypothesis forward at another place in a short article written together with Scott Lash. Easternasation is a speculative hypothesis, and I am not really sure whether I really believe in it. But if there is something to it, Nico Nico Douga could be a key diver of Easternasation: It might promote, for example, new ideas of playfulness, collective creativity and creative evolution, a different relationship between content holders and users, and maybe even the introduction of kuuki itself.
As I said: Time will tell. The new German and Spanish version will teach us, whether one of the first three scenarios will realise itself – the fourth one operates on a longer time frame. In the last days, we in London (Foo-san, Takashiro-san, Zimmer-san, Lash-san and me) started to dream up an offspring project of the metadata project, which might look for answers by a quantitative analysis of Nico Nico Douga’s data. Not sure whether we will really be able to do this – but it seems to me a project worthwhile pursuing.
And as much as I get excited about the data on the German and the Spanish version of Nico Nico Douga, it is the Taiwanese version, which might turn out to be the most interesting. It might give us some ideas, how much of Nico Nico Douga is Japanese, and how much is East Asian. This question is just as relevant as the ones that are based on the dichotomy Western versus Japanese, indeed maybe even more so. You will of course not get straight answers – other factors such as the national business environment or the IPR policy are probably just as important as cultural factors. But it will give hints, and much material for even further questions without answers.
