Japanese People Are Weird

Read this photo caption and tell me they aren't.

UPDATE: Let me recommend this comment from "Wataru Tenga in Tokyo":

I agree with those who have pointed out that the real weirdness is the New York Times stooping to the level of this drivel. Unfortunately, it happens all the time with regard to the Japanese. There are certain kinds of articles that appear with regularity about how inscrutable the Japanese are, but almost always reporting things that I, as a long-time resident of Tokyo, have never even encountered. Sure, you can find anything in this city if you dig down deep enough. I'll bet I could find weird people in New York, too.

Sounds about right.

Comments

Japanese people are really nervous.

max
['That is, weird.']

Posted by max | October 20, 2007 4:52 PM

I hear they like theater. All kinds of theater.

Posted by abb1 | October 20, 2007 4:58 PM

Forget hiding from assailants--dressing like a vending machine let's you have sex on a downtown street corner in the daytime!

Posted by calling all toasters | October 20, 2007 4:59 PM

I think the water supply in Tokyo is spiked with LSD.

Posted by Jason C. | October 20, 2007 5:08 PM

What happens when someone tries to break into the vending machine?

Posted by jerry | October 20, 2007 5:13 PM

Surely someone's having a bit of fun with a Western reporter.

Posted by KCinDC | October 20, 2007 5:19 PM

The belief that the Japanese are weird is not limited to Westerners. The Thai and Vietnamese think the Japanese are weird, too. Although the Vietnamese will marry Japanese women nonetheless (paler skin). And Thai women will, of course, marry Japanese men (more money).

Posted by fostert | October 20, 2007 5:19 PM

My brother, who lives in Tokyo and is engaged to a Japanese girl, is very sensitive to the whole "Japanese people are strange" thing.

That said... that's very weird.

Posted by Freddie | October 20, 2007 5:23 PM

Whether the Japanese are weird or not is another matter. The issue here is the NYTimes. This is obviously a crap article--perhaps a hoax, perhaps a journalist just promoting the views of a self-described experimental fashion designer into some kind of cultural trend. In its way, the articles no different than a lot of the junk that runs in the NYTimes style section--which consistently invents trends that do not exist, or do so only at the extreme margins, and claims that they are mainstream.

The article does not exactly make this seem like a widespread phenomenon, taking Tokyo by storm, just a quirky story about an "experimental fashion designer"

To be sure, some of these ideas have yet to become commercially viable.

Even if this stuff was marketable, it's only a different kind of strange from your typical Jerry Springer show, which sadly, was extremely popular. American people are weird.

Posted by SoCalJustice | October 20, 2007 6:11 PM

Adding to that, if people were to judge us - or any culture - based on the creations of our/their "experimental fashion designers," doubtful anyone would seem normal.

Posted by SoCalJustice | October 20, 2007 6:15 PM

All insular people are weird, except the Australians, which proves that Australia is a continent not an island.

Posted by Bill | October 20, 2007 6:17 PM

Australians are so insular they had to put a huge desert between its population centers.

Posted by Rob | October 20, 2007 6:44 PM

This is like thinking that Andy Warhol is a typical American. Some Japanese are weird. So are some Americans. I think this is intentional weirdness, not natural unselfconscious weirdness.

Posted by Tim in Yokohama | October 20, 2007 6:45 PM

I agree that the Japanese are weird, and I grew up there till I was ten years old and lived there for two years as an adult. They are just the strangest people anywhere, hands down. (I've also lived in the United States, the Philippines, the Soviet Union (Russia), the Republic of Georgia, Macedonia, Uzbekistan, and Albania. The Japanese are by far the hardest to understand, for all that they are perfectly pleasant and decent folk.

Americans are pretty strange, too, I'd say (I am one), especially these days.

Posted by Invigilator | October 20, 2007 7:21 PM

huge discovery!

people act weird when they are afraid, even when the fear is irrational!

i know whole countries that have acted weirder than this--gone completely self-destructive nutso, threw away their own most valued principles, plus thousand of lives and trillions of dollars--just because they were suffering from irrational fear!

sorry, kids--this ain't uniquely japanese.

Posted by kid bitzer | October 20, 2007 7:26 PM

I agree with those who have pointed out that the real weirdness is the New York Times stooping to the level of this drivel. Unfortunately, it happens all the time with regard to the Japanese. There are certain kinds of articles that appear with regularity about how inscrutable the Japanese are, but almost always reporting things that I, as a long-time resident of Tokyo, have never even encountered. Sure, you can find anything in this city if you dig down deep enough. I'll bet I could find weird people in New York, too.

Posted by Wataru Tenga in Tokyo | October 20, 2007 7:41 PM

As a former resident of Osaka, and someone who loves Japan and regularly seeks out weirdness, I have to agree with Wataru Tenga. Japan is less weird than New York, Austin, or Berkeley.

Posted by Mr. Noah | October 20, 2007 8:10 PM

Blithe assertions of the weirdness and inscrutability of the Japanese or any Asian population are deeply unsettling to me. Constructions of the Oriental Mind as impossiblly foreign and unassimilable, while at times seemingly benign, have been used to reject, intern, and banish.

Yes, Japanese people are not American middle-class whites. But its not impossible for Americans to understand them and their perspectives, given some effort and immersion. There is an odd Orientalism bubbling in this article and this post.

Posted by StJoe | October 20, 2007 8:39 PM

If its any help, when my grandfather watches the satellite Tamil news, the only news about America besides George W Bush are segments about the world's largest wheelbarrow rally, the Times Square naked cowboy, etc.

Posted by harry | October 20, 2007 8:54 PM

Hmm. I thought the story was just cute--I took it at face value and so maybe the NYT did its more naive readers like me a disservice. (They do this a lot, on much more important stories.)

It didn't seem totally implausible that people in a country with a low crime rate might have slightly delusional ideas about how to cope with it. And I'd prefer this kind of delusion to the kind we Americans go for, which is to start blasting away at anything suspicious, whether it's a neighborhood raccoon knocking over a trash can or a Middle Eastern country whose ruler we used to support.

Posted by Donald Johnson | October 20, 2007 8:59 PM

There's a predictable inverse correlation between the amount of time a paper's Tokyo foreign correspondent has been on the job and the frequency/wackiness of the "those wacky Japanese" stories, just as in general, the longer you live here, the less foreign it becomes (although at 14 years and counting, there's still weirdness on a daily basis). After 2.5 years, this guy really ought to know better by now.

As other commenters have alluded to, what gets focused on in reporting from another country, especially when the society of that country is perceived to be very different, has major consequences. You'd be surprised (or maybe not) by what the average Japanese person believes about the rate of gun ownership is in the US, or the frequency of high-speed car chases.

I'd be interested to see what Jim Fallows makes of all this.

Posted by Incompetence Dodger | October 20, 2007 9:34 PM

Since the Japanese have a cultural history of the ninja, who were supposedly able to disappear instantly into a tree or the ground (which was true - they just dug a hole earlier pn their escape route and jumped in), it's not surprising that some designer would conceive of hiding by disguising oneself as a vending machine or a purse as a manhole cover.

Perfectly reasonable to me, based on their cultural history - just like it's perfectly reasonable in American culture for Jodie Foster to be a vigilante in "The Brave One." How do you think the notion of a Japanese woman getting beat up, then buying a gun and wandering around shooting people would play in Japan?

What's really weird is that it's JODIE FOSTER playing the part! I mean, given her history, that is very strange.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 20, 2007 10:04 PM

I love Japan and wish I was back there right now. I don't know how widespread vending machine costumes will become, and I think it's kind of cool that Japanese don't fantasize about righteously gunning punks who make their day like DC residents and Texans. But you know what was popular in Japan until they were outlawed? Used panty machines. They are objectively weird.

Posted by aleks | October 20, 2007 10:54 PM

It's not just Japan. The New York Times is, ironically, one of the most provincial newspapers there is. They find "weird stuff" in any place, not just Japan -- though I think the observations on that are spot on. Read any article on Iowa or upstate (I mean real upstate, not westchester) or any other place outside the metro area and you get this narrow, provincial, sneering or patronizing tone of "aren't these people so strange."

Posted by UG | October 20, 2007 10:54 PM

There is also a pretty easy source of Japanese News of the Weird: Wai Wai. Perfect for lazy reporters on deadline. Still fark, though.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | October 21, 2007 12:09 AM

Instead of saying it weird, perhaps it should be the intelligence of them utilising the automation machine to replace resources for conveniency to the public. The most amazing was that they kept the vending machine functionable & "in-stock" all the time which hardly could be maintained if in other region of the country.

Posted by Maggie | October 21, 2007 1:45 AM

i think i just found my halloween costume...

Posted by tom | October 21, 2007 2:33 AM

"As a former resident of Osaka, and someone who loves Japan and regularly seeks out weirdness, I have to agree with Wataru Tenga. Japan is less weird than New York, Austin, or Berkeley."

I can't say I agree with that. I grew up near New York, I've lived in Austin, and have relatives near Berkeley. Japan is weirder. But what do I know? I think Bangkok is normal, so maybe I'm out of the normal opinion. But if it is weirdness you seek, I'd recommend Jacksonville, Colorado Springs, and Arkadelphia over the cities you mentioned. They are truly weird. And then you can always go to Lynchville.

Posted by fostert | October 21, 2007 3:24 AM

I plan to write a scathing letter to the NYT editor about this misguided reportage just as soon as I can find the way out of this #$&% vending machine disguise.

Posted by Durf | October 21, 2007 7:36 AM

On a not so related note, Hiro's character in Heroes is annoying too.

Posted by yabonn | October 21, 2007 8:06 AM

Several years ago, we had a Korean exchange student. He lived for the internet and found a Japanese hair care ad that he loved. It consisted of 3 pan-sexual, Japanese, mostly smoothly shaven figures whose only nod towards hair were really high, fan-like Mohawks. They were singing something in Japanese that I couldn't understand but the tune was undoubtedly that old kiddie stand-by "If You're Happy and You Know It" although the arrangement was modernique and a little sinister. At the point in the tune where the English lyric says "Clap your hands", the fan-like Mohawks opened and snapped shut like clam shells.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | October 21, 2007 11:59 AM

UG - are these condescending articles like the famous "Democrats who disrespect Christians/rural people/'values voters'"? I'd love to see some cites.

I'd also love to see the articles in the Des Moines Register about, oh, I don't know, the Village Halloween Parade that makes it seem just as normal and American as a goddamn cow carved out of butter.

I love how red staters' definition of "condescending" is "not treating us with more respect than we treat you."

Posted by JRoth | October 21, 2007 6:45 PM

The weird thing about Americans (speaking as one), is that they think they're normal, and then are aggressive in defending the proposition that they're very normal. Or at least are afraid of being exposed as being odd.

Posted by Shrike58 | October 22, 2007 8:18 AM