Japan books - between insider and outsider views

Photos from three recent Japan books

Many times "cultural broker" can be substituted for the word and the work of ethnographer, cultural anthropologist, or social observer doing fieldwork among local residents. That is because the method of participant-observation calls for insider (participant) as well as outsider (observer) perspectives on what the curious person experiences (participant) and interprets (observer). Being in-between and functioning as a bridge between fully participant (local people) and fully spectators (visitors not from around that place) involves talking to both sides in ways that make sense to them. Hence the image of broker or go-between. The down-side of being in the middle is the "glass half-full" effect of missing out on some dimensions of local experience, while also missing out on some of the insights seen by outsiders. At the same time, though, this mid-way position allows a person to see and think of things invisible to the others.

This photo shows a few picture-dominant presentations of people, places, and things in present-day Japan. On the left is World Heritage Japan (John Lander 2019) with online map, https://bit.ly/WorldHeritageMap and on the top right is Tiny Tokyo (Ben Thomas 2014) and 100 Tokyo Sights (Stephen Mansfield 2020). For a non-Japanese with little or no knowledge base, a visual approach is immediately welcoming since little burden of language and history is required to explore the subject according to one's own tastes, habits, and preexisting interests. This is the outsider perspective; somebody on the outside looking in. The opposite is a local Japanese point of view in which some and possibly most of the showcased subjects are already familiar is some way, if not by personal or 2nd-hand reports, then by popular culture of mass media and perhaps some exposure during school days. Both positions, insider and outsider, include blind spots. For the outsider there are dimensions that go undetected, or if noticed then maybe underappreciated or that may be dismissed from ignorance. For the insider there is a risk of taken-for-granted skimming over aspects that are overly familiar already. In other words, Too Much Knowledge (overly familiar) and Too Little Knowledge (ignorance) accompany the insider and the outsider, respectively.

Consider a non-Japanese who is long-time Japan resident, is intermediate or advanced speaker of the language, and is connected to a diverse array of social relationships and obligations with Japanese. Such a person, for example Japan anthropologist or journalist, has bifocal vision: able to see things in the distance, but also able to see things in close-up detail, too. In this cultural broker person reside both of the risks described earlier, the possibility of taking for granted certain meanings and familiar significance, but also the possibility of bouncing off the surface like a passing tourist can easily do. At the same time, though, in this in-between position there is an opportunity to discuss cultural undercurrents visible to Japanese with them and also with outsiders. Likewise, the cultural broker can enter into conversation topics with non-Japanese and interject cultural footnotes, counterpoints, and interpretations only half-aware in the mind of the visiting observer of life in Japan.

Looking at the representation of Japan in these three books (designated Heritage sites, miniature-camera lens manipulation of locations, and seldom seen gems to visit in greater Tokyo) from the eye of a person who is both insider and outsider, the same pages can seem slightly exotic (what tourists might see in the photo) and also slightly ordinary (what nearby residents but also out-of-town Japanese might see in the photo). Take, for example, the officiants of the Shinto Shrine near the center of the composite photo. A Japanese might immediately think of the performance dimension (how well the people approximate to the expectations and ideals for quality of costume and attention to personal grooming, attention to details of ceremony and order of services, and so on) and hearken back to similar experiences at other locations and during other moments of one's own life trajectory. Things like novelty, theology, and hunger to seize on a small piece of interpretive insight are not too likely to be uppermost in the mind of the Japanese who sees the photo.

By contrast, a non-Japanese who sees this same scene for the first (or for the 20th) time may feel cultural, social, and linguistic separation from the people in the photo. Rather than focus on the performative and the personal memories attaching to the portrait, the outsider may drift into abstraction, noticing the textures, geometry, and soundscape that goes with the subject. Or the outsider may view the event as a kind of Reality TV in which the experience of spectating is uppermost in the person's mind: does this thing amuse me, teach me, or cause delight? In between the insider (Japanese) and the outsider (non-Japanese) is the viewpoint of the cultural broker. It could be a Japanese who trains in social science as a way to establish some distance from ordinary habits of seeing and thinking about things native to the person's own formative experience of growing up. Or it could be a non-Japanese who has trained in the language and life among Japanese in order to gain a functional ability to communicate and engage in the cultural landscape there. In either case, the in-between person can look at the photo of officiants in motion and see things that neither the outsider (abstraction, amusement) nor the insider (performative meaning, memory bank) are sensing.

All of the above standpoints may run through the mind of the cultural broker: performance expectations and personal memories for comparison, but also the vantage point from a distance in which artistic abstractness and possibly some small thrill of novelty also come to mind. In the company of outsiders this cultural broker can talk about some of the meanings, origins, and purposes of the officiants. And in the company of insiders the cultural broker can draw attention or the drift of conversation to questions that outsiders might like to know: how does one train to become an officiant, what are the economics of incoming sources of money balanced against expenses to be paid out, organizationally how does this instance fit into larger structures today and across the generations. Both insider and outsider may be content to see the officiants as 2-dimensional, cardboard cutouts doing their jobs. But a social commentator in between the inside and outside will be eager to see the officiants as whole people, not just ceremonial functionaries: who they were before training, who they aim to become as the years of experience accumulate, and what personal likes and dislikes color their experience of the role they perform in formal settings.

Flipping through the pictures and captions in these three books with the eye of a cultural anthropologist of Japan, there is a mixture of exoticness and of familiarity with other places and times experienced first-hand or in the pictures shared by others in print or online. A few subjects stand out for personal visits or experiences of them. These subjects exist as real places that one can plan a trip to visit. They are similar to many other instances seen over the years when living in Japan. At the same time, though, hints of unfamiliarity also come out of these pages: the names, spellings, history, associated events and personalities, and so on may be waiting to be researched. But in the casual browsing of the books, those particulars are absent in most cases. 

Another way to contrast the insider and outsider browsing of photos is that Japanese will have some personal or 2nd-hand knowledge of the subject (conocer in Spanish, "knowing personally"), while a non-Japanese has only book knowledge or spectator experience of the subject (saber in Spanish, "knowing the facts"). In English, though, these twin senses of "know" are blurred in a single word. Yet the difference between knowing (personally known) and knowing (facts learned) parallels the difference between insider (participant; Japanese) and outsider (observer; non-Japanese). So even something as casual and spontaneous as turning the pages of picture books can produce very different viewing experiences in the minds of insiders, outsiders, and those who stand in-between.

Anthropological lens - looking closer at the metaphor

Sometimes the expression, "anthropological lens" or "lens of anthropology," is offered when describing, interpreting, or analyzing a subject by using some of the hallmarks of an anthropological approach: first-person point of view, usually small or interpersonal scale, longitudinal span of time, lots of room for context of language, culture, material culture, environmental particulars, and some attention to the observer's own limitations in the matter.

anthropologists use lenses to document, study, and present; but also figuratively

Perhaps there is is something to see when extending the "lens" metaphor when it comes to engaging in the world as an anthropologist. The most common intention or meaning for mentioning "the anthropological lens" is to alert the reader that now the discussion will dwell on things that anthropologists see when they approach a situation or subject matter (context, point of view, effects of physical, social, linguistic, and symbolic/ideological elements in the person's experience). But extending the idea of a lens, there are wide-angle, normal (human visual experience), and telephoto focal length lenses, each with differing angle of view.

Lenses are built according to the camera's dimension, including its film (or digital sensor) size for recording the image. So for the 35mm film camera a 55mm lens might produce an image that resembles normal human visual experience, neither compressing the distance (magnifying the far away subject) nor shrinking the subject into a wider context. But fitting that same 55mm lens onto a digital camera with a sensor that is only 2/3 the surface area of an individual frame of 35mm roll film means that the lens is producing proportionately more magnification than it does on the film. Therefore the sensor "crops" the middle of that circle of light focused by the lens. In this case the 55mm is perceived by the smaller digital sensor as the equivalent of 85 or 90mm (slightly telephoto magnification).

Even for the same sort of camera there may be several varieties of lens to choose from, newer ones built with the aid of computer calculations and computer assisted polishing and glare-reducing treatments to produce a clearer and brighter result than the older glass. Taking the 55mm lens example for a 35mm film camera (or its equivalent in the world of digital cameras) there could be a newly configured one, the older and maybe heavier one, another specifically meant for macro (close-up) pictures, and one designed for low-light or artful (bokeh) blurring of background. Some have a built-in gyroscope to reduce motion-blur by the photographer's jiggling (image stabilization). A perculiar sort of sense first developed for movie cameras and later sometimes adapted for still photography is the anamorphic lens (recorded 1.33x the width of a scene in 1.0x the available space of the recording film or sensor to be played back or reconstituted for normal perception). Other ways to extend the characteristics of the lens itself include screw-on filters designed to reduce glare, minimize atmospheric haze, correct for specific types of light source (bluish light can be correct to something resembling daylight colors), or reduce the amount of light that reaches the film or sensor. Doing so forces a slower shutter speed, thus capturing some blur of movement; or else attains the correct light exposure instead by making the aperture wider than otherwise would be if not for the neutral density filter (thus narrowing the in-focus depth; its depth of field).

Another distinction among lenses is the different functionality of interchangeable lenses versus fixed lens (permanent mount), and the difference between a lens that has just one measurement (focal length, such as 55mm 'normal' or 20mm wide-angle, expressed relative to 35mm film cameras) and a zoom lens. The optical magnification is expressed by comparing the smaller number to the larger one; for instance, a zoom lens of 100mm to 200mm doubles (200mm is 2x the 100mm, base number). By comparison 25mm to 125mm is a magnification of 5x. In addition to the zoom lens magnification, there is the range of focal lengths that are included: if 55mm is 'normal' then a zoom lens of 25mm to 100mm ranges from wide to moderate telephoto, but a zoom lens of 85mm to 200mm starts at slightly telephoto to full telephoto. By looking at 'normal' the magnification can be understood: 200mm is about 4x the 55mm reference number.

Still another consideration is monocular (camera lens) versus binocular (dual lenses offset to produce stereoscopic imagery). The decades around 1900 saw a wide interest in stereo-photography (stereography). Home subscription to one of the purveyors would bring a monthly selection of scenes from faraway lands, strange events, and news of the day. The twin images would set in a viewing frame for the person's brain to take in the left image and right image and reconstitute the three dimensional subject with full depth perception enjoyed. Modern cinema-goers sometimes watch feature films produced for viewing in 3-D when seen wearing specially filtered "sunglasses" (one eye in blue filter, one eye in red filter).

In summary, when extending the lens metaphor used for looking at a situation like an anthropological social analyst or documentarian does, then there are several dimensions to lenses: size suited to a particular camera body, filtering accessories affecting the image that the lens focuses, magnification (wide, normal, telephoto, specialty), and the effects of aperture on how much of the scene is sharply seen or is blurred incidentally or with artistic intentionality. Closely related to the optics of the lens itself is the matter of composition: what is foregrounded, what is included and excluded in the frame (how wide or narrow the frame is), point of main focus (sharpest part of the image), and exposure decision (producing blurs by accident or on purpose, exposing so the shadow detail is shown even at the expense of bright areas overexposed; or the reverse - careful to record the bright parts of the subject, even at the expense of losing the things shadowed).

In conclusion, "the anthropological lens" is a figure of speech to signal that a long vision and wide but personalized viewpoint particular to anthropology is being invoked by the author. The several attributes of lenses can be explored alone and when coupled to cameras to compose pictures for study, record-keeping, or presentation to others by publication in print or online. Extending the "lens of anthropology" by way of these several attributes shines a light on the variability (not monolithic) of anthropologists' accounts: sure they are recording social observations, but some filter differently to others. Some use a wider angle of view than others. Certain lenses are fixed and applied to all subjects, while others freely change lenses from wide to telephoto, according to the scene. Special situations call for long-exposures that layer movement of several subjects; or time-lapse (compressing long periods into speeded up presentation) or the reverse by slow-motion (moving pictures at high speed to capture the subject in the briefest fraction of a second).

The result is that any two social scientists trained in the traditions of anthropology (Anglophone, Francophone, or any of the many other scholarly communities for anthropology; see World Council of Anthropology Associations) could have congruent or could have very different representation of a particular moment and subject. That does not make one more valuable than the other; indeed, having two visual channels contributes to a compound (stereophonic, stereoscopic) rendering of the subject, whereas a single view from a single fieldwork season and from a single publishing language will give a less vivid account. So, in the same way that lenses affect the compositions produced by them, the same is true of the anthropologist's training and professional path of experiences. Each practitioner's anthropological lens is capable of producing well composed and well focused imagery. No single lens will capture a given subject fully, but being aware of the several attributes that distinguish one lens from another illuminates the ways in which the image presented to the public comes to be shaped.