Category: Asia

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[hermit kingdoms]

In a New Yorker article on Burma, John Lanchester notes that “Burma … has long been preoccupied with isolation, and the desire to be cut off from the world recurs in its history.”

But Burma is not alone in one sense: it is hardly the only nation in the world that has sought to isolate itself from all outside intrusion. Korea was long known as the Hermit Kingdom, and North Korea maintains that tradition to this day. Bhutan is less militantly cloistered, but it strictly limits its contacts with the rest of the world. For many centuries, Tibet and Nepal held themselves aloof, as did a number of the kingdoms of Central Asia, and not only from Europeans, though from Europeans more intently than with close neighbors.

Indeed, dotted across Asia, from Japan and Korea to the landlocked mountain fastnesses of Afghanistan, were forbidden kingdoms. I have studied Asian history more closely than some other regions, but I wonder whether Asia is uniquely rich in hermit states. Certainly the territories of Persia and Rome, whatever the ruling state may have been at the time, have not lent themselves to such isolation. Nor has the easily traversed European peninsula, with its superabundant coastline and its many rivers flowing to every sea. About other parts of the world, I’m less certain. But I do wonder whether there is anything in common among the hermit states beyond geographical potential.

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[roh on the ropes]

The New York Times has an article on the dismal approval rate of South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun, down to an appalling 11 percent.

The article makes the point that Roh’s unpopularity has little to do with the North Korean issue, which people across the political spectrum recognize as intractable for any political party. The primary issue is the economy, but the article also argues that the reason the economy has come so sharply into focus is that Roh has been largely successful at what he was elected to do: give greater independence to prosecutors in pursuing corruption, stop using tax collectors and intelligence agencies for political ends, and push democratization forward.

Now voters want to use their enhanced democracy to vote for someone else. They’re frustrated by high real estate and education costs, stagnating wages, high unemployment, and President Roh’s fixation despite all this on ideological issues such as collaboration during the Japanese occupation.

What will all this mean for my little corner of the South Korean government? Hard to say, except that I hope a focus on the economy will mean we can at last get some cost-of-living raises.

I do think the article is salutary, however, for making it clear just how little the internal politics of South Korea have to do with the issues Americans associate with the country. This should be a reminder that the politics in most countries is not primarily about us, but about them. Iraqi factions are almost certainly more interested in the politics of their country and region than in our midterm elections, and spikes in violence shouldn’t be read as secret coded messages to us. The Iranian election of Ahmadinejad and the Palestinian election of Hamas likewise were not gestures of defiance aimed at America, but political calculations based on an intimate concern with the politics of those respective countries. Sometimes, an election is just an election.

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[the spirit of clumping]

Katamari Damacy is a surreal Japanese video game whose name means “the spirit of clumping,” or more simply, “clump spirit.” The goal of the game and the mode of play are fairly simple but different from anything else I’ve ever played: you roll a ball (the katamari) around various environments, picking up all kinds of objects as you go — paper clips, people, elephants, chopsticks. As you collect objects, the katamari grows, allowing you to pick up ever bigger items. (You can see what this actually looks like here.) The game is presided over by a king whose speaking voice is record scratching and who either praises your success or shoots lasers out of his eyes when you fail. (He also has great legs and a psychedelic cylindrical pillow permanently lodged behind his head.)

What makes the game so compelling is the elaborate, creative, surreal universe in which you operate — not to mention its zany, sometimes dark humor — and part of that effect is achieved by the music, which consists of thoroughly loopy J-pop and a pair pieces for full orchestra, recorded with appropriate theatrical bombast.

I wish I could tell you who the artists are, but I can’t find that information anywhere. Still, you can buy the soundtrack at YesAsia.com.

01. Introduction
02. Katamari on the Rocks
03. Overture II
04. Katamari on the Swing
05. Kurukuru Rock
06. Everlasting Love
07. Tsuyogari Katamari
08. Beautiful Star
09. Heaven’s Rain
10. Houston
11. Blue Orb
12. Katamari Holiday
13. Baby Universe
14. Disco x Prince
15. Killing Hot Savannah
16. The Royal Academy of Katamari
17. King of Kings’ Song
18. Untitled

Thanks to DKNY for the link, and for introducing me to the game.

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[orientalism]

I am reading the book, and I am seeing signs of it everywhere. Said provides a revelatory symptomology of Western intellectualism, arguing that Western intellectual efforts to understand the East ultimately create a kind of imaginary Orient whose purpose is to give the intellectuals power over the actual Orient and at the same time cement the role of the intellectuals as revealers of the true Orient.

Said’s narrow focus on the Western intellectual approach to the Orient causes him to overlook two important factors that undermine the charged anger he brings to his book. The first is the degree to which all of the Western scientific effort has been a struggle for mastery over the subjects under investigation, whether they are viruses, Muslims, Native Americans, steam engines, the working classes, the French, etc. The second is the degree to which all intellectual endeavor, Western and non-Western alike, has the effect of reducing raw actuality to categories and types.
Nevertheless, his insights into the particular journey of European scholarship are profound.

Said sees modern Orientalism beginning in about the eighteenth century, or the transition from the seventeenth. He does not explain particularly well why this should be the starting point, but an article on the witchcraft trials of baroque Germany reminded me that the latter half of the seventeenth century was marked by the resolution of the longstanding warfare between Protestants and Catholics (the Thirty Years War ended in 1648), and also by renewed Ottoman warfare in Europe. The long period of intra-Christian conflict sustained a divide between us and them that would need to be supplanted by some renewed sense of Christian unity. A shift of focus onto the more distant menace of militant Islam could certainly have served that purpose, just as it had in earlier centuries, during the Crusades.

I’ll post more ideas as they come up, as they certainly will. A couple quickies: Last night, in a nature show about Yellowstone in winter, a wilderness photographer spoke precisely the language of Orientalism, positioning himself as the one who is able to reveal this landscape to the wider public so that they can set about preserving it in its timelessness, or even restoring it to an imagined ideal, and also prepare it for the future. It is a language of essentialism, paternalism and romanticism, and it occurs to me that environmentalist adventurism remains one of the few traditional endeavors of romantic imperialism that remains respectable within the liberal establishment. (The others are the delivery of aid, and to a lesser extent, the grand tour.)

Or this: Said’s fervor often feels overblown, but then I run across passages that remind me of the intellectual universe in which he was operating when he wrote the book in 1977. For example, at one point Said declares that the study of imperialism is essentially a taboo in the academe, hardly discussed, particularly by American Marxist scholars. Marxist scholars? Right! I forget that just a few decades ago, serious intellectuals of the left were expected to be able at least to navigate the minefields of Marxist thought, even if they ultimately rejected Marxism. Meanwhile, by the time I reached college, the subject of colonialism was everywhere — most certainly a result, at least in part, of Said’s groundbreaking work. This intellectual earthquake, and the entrenched worldview that prevailed beforehand, explain many of the more baffling ritual insistences of our professors in college. Jenny had an East Asian literature professor who devoted considerable class time to debunking the theory that Chinese people are sluggish because they live in a hot climate. To students raised on post-Civil Rights-movement curricula, in a world of Japanese high-tech goodies, the whole idea of racial essentialism and sluggish Asians seemed as absurdly archaic as Lamarckian evolution or epicycles, but these ideas were rendered ridiculous only as recently as our early childhoods.

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[thanks]

I have a lot to be thankful for. I have a brilliant, beautiful, loving wife, a pleasant home with good friends living nearby, a job I love. My family is doing well. My sister is graduating from college this spring, and my brother, after a period of great personal struggle, is settling happily into college life. I’m thankful for the wealthy democracy I live in, and for the opportunities I had this year to participate in the political process, and for the end results of that process. I’m thankful for a thousand small things: brunch, autumn leaves, the left lane, thermostats, MP3s, well made shoes, wasabi peas, etc.

Life is good. Thank you to everyone who is a part of that for me.

And in honor of the holiday, as I tend to do every year, I will once again repost the fantastic material I gathered from my Korean students when this most American of holidays rolled around back in 2002.

Yesterday for reasons having nothing to do with Thanksgiving and everything to do with inept management, Jenny and I had middle school classes for which the lesson was not pages from a textbook, as usual, but “ACTIVITY.” When I asked our boss, Yu-jin, what the ACTIVITY was, she sort of laughed and said, “You make.” So among other things to fill the hour, Jenny and I decided to teach our kids about Thanksgiving and have them write what they are thankful for. It ain’t as good as eating turkey and stuffing, but reading the results was good fun, and here are the best of them.

In the category of family relations:

I’m thankful for mother.
I’m thankful for father.
I’m thankful for brother.
I’m thankful for sister.
I am thankful for my cousins
I’m thankful for uncle’s son here.
I’m thankful for my dog here.
I am thankful for my parents because they help me for grow up and they care of me.

In the category of the religious:

I’m thankful for GOD.
I am thankful that I can go to church
I’m thankful for God Almighty.
I am thankful for my zezus.

In the category of the undeniably useful:

I’m thankful for my pen.
I am thankful that I can buy things.
I’m thankful for oxygen.
I am thankful that I can walk
I am thankful that I can eat
I am thankful that I wear clothes.
I am thankful that I can speak Korean
I am thankful for house
I’m thanksful for my air
I am thankful that I can learn
I am thankful for weather forecast
I am thankful that I was born, I have family and I live in Korea.
I am thankful that I can take a shower.

In the category of things yummy:

I am thankful for foods.
I’m thankful for eat many food.
I’m thankful for I eat past food.
I’m thankful for chicken.
I’m thankful for pizza.
I’m thankful for ice-cream.
I’m thankful for cookies.

In the category of the (accidentally?) poetic:

I’m thankful for my favorite thing.
I’m thankful for my hate thing.
I’m thankful for moon
I thankful for my life
I thankful for earth.
I thankful for many scientist.
I’m thankful for HOT.
I’m thankful for many trees and many rivers.
I’m thankful for mountins.
I’m thankful for earth.
I’m thankful for windy.
I’m thankful for a red sky.

In the category of fun:

I’m thankful that have good time
I am thankful that I can see B.S.B.
I am thankful that I can watch TV.
I am thankful that I can play computer games
I am thankful that I can run.
I am thankful that read a books.
I am thankful that I talk with my friends
I am thankful that I can listen to music
I am thankful that I can play the piano.
I am thankful that I can go to the beach
I am thankful that I can swam in the ocean
I’m thankful for Christmas.
I’m thankful for my birthday.
I don’t thanful that I have to do my homework

In the category of things that warm a teacher’s heart:

I am thankful that I study English
I’m thankful for go to the academy.
I am thankful for that my teachers are give a knowledge
I am thankful that my English teacher are teach me.
I am thankful that I can study
I am thankful that I have to do my homework
I’m thankful for Josh teacher

And in the category of silly English, which reminds me how much work there is to do:

I am thankful that I can see anythings
I’m thankful for many money.
I’m thankful for born in 1990.
I’m thankful for my wear.
I’m thankful for car, because we ride a car, we go fast.
I’m thankful for shoes, because we don’t wear shoes, we hurt our feet
I’m thankfor for telephone, because we say hello for our freinds for telephone
I am thankful that pencil because write a English and Korean letter
Because I learned a lot with they.
Because I can see anything.
Because I learn at books.
I’m thankful for air, rice, head, eye, computer, clothe, money, my house, Korean, pencil, brother, glasses.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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[more great news]

Rummy is out!

Choice quote from Bush: “Actually, I thought we were gonna do fine yesterday. Shows what I know.” Indeed. “I thought we were gonna do fine” has been the approach of this administration — and of Donald Rumsfeld — throughout the protracted disaster that they wrought in Iraq.

Other great news: John Tester has won for Senate in Montana! That means that the Senate will be, at worst, split 50-50, with Cheney as the deciding vote. And so far, Webb is still the leader in Virginia.

Meanwhile, as Rummy is shown the door, let us remember all that was best about him: his poetry and his fighting techniques. Kung fu fighting, that is. His war-fighting techniques are horrible.

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[peace in nepal]

Fantastic news! After ten years and 13,000 deaths, Nepal’s civil war is over.

The leader of Nepal’s Maoist rebellion, Prachanda, today renounced the path of violence and agreed to dissolve his parallel government that operates across much of Nepal once a new constituent assembly and constitution are adopted.

In return, the rebels will become the second-largest party in the new assembly, which will decide the fate of the king by simple majority vote at its first meeting.

I sincerely hope that this is really, truly a new dawn for this lovely, welcoming, beautiful country.

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[actual substance]

While the GOP attacks Kerry’s botched comments on Iraq, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee attacks the Republican Congress and the Bush administration for their botched war in Iraq. The difference couldn’t be clearer.


[Via Daily Kos.]

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[anjalic]

Mistress of Disguise | Seven X Eight | Feline Woman by Anjali

Twelve long years have passed since Portishead first unleashed Dummy upon an unsuspecting world, tapping into a deep, hitherto unnoticed craving for ethereal female vocals over moody, noir-tinged tracks with sophisticated electronic production and hip-hop beats. Eight years after Portishead’s final album, the revelatory PNYC Live, where can one turn to satisfy this peculiar, overly specific jones?

Well, if you’re willing to forgo the extraordinary Portishead scratching in favor of some sitar and don’t mind your spy movie music taking on an Austin Powers vibe, I suggest you give Anjali a try.

Formerly the drummer in UK Riot Grrl band the Voodoo Queens, Anjali Bhatia now claims descent from the Bhatti line of maharajas of Jaisalmer. Whether that’s true or not, her music has ventured as far from Riot Grrl radicalism as her identity. One can hear traces not only of UK trip-hop, but also of Cibo Matto and other late-nineties electronic experimenters, not to mention heavy doses of Anglo-Indian fusion, tinged with old-fashioned Bollywood goodness.

Find more MP3s at Bazaar Sounds, Anjali’s Beggar’s Banquet Site, and her personal web page.

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[why i have a job]

“Now I stand before to you deeply touched and bumbled by the honour and responsibility bestowed on me.”

You can’t make this stuff up, and I definitely don’t have to.