Monday, September 23, 2013

Public to Private

Are the times of cumbersome public entertainment structures gone?  Good question.  Though the readings by Chalfen & Murai, and Plotz were informative and interesting, I'm not certain if I have an understanding of Japan's current stance on the Pachinko parlor and Print Club.  Both of these articles were written in 2001-2002, and popular culture, especially digital entertainment have been radically changed by current technologies.  Purika enthusiasts and passionate Pachinko players may be a dying breed, flocking to new, more efficient methods to quench their thirst for social contact, or different forms of absorbing entertainment.  Or perhaps the appeal of both Pachinko and Picture Club is the satiation of the Japanese appetite for machinery and gadgets, as Plotz alluded to.  If this is the case, then they're likely safe in the hands of the Japanese public.

More so than Pachinko, much of the niche that was once satiated by the Picture Club can be replaced by a pocket device.  Print Club Photography in Japan Framing Social Relationships was published in 2001, documenting the Print Club phenomenon that was prevalent in mid-late 1990's Japan.  I would think that the catalyst of the craze of Puriku in Japan was the participant's ability to see their photos, and have their pick of the litter prior to printing out their photos.  The 1990s were in the age of film, which may have granted high quality photos, but the tiresome process of having film developed may have deterred many Japanese youth from participating in any form of social photography.  The immediacy of viewing your photos and printing them following the photo session would have been incredibly appealing in a time reliant on film development.  The era of film cameras was also a time that predated preview screen on digital cameras, restricting participants from viewing their shots, and making 'selfies' a risky use of film.  Cameras of the 1990s often removed the photographer from the photo shoot, giving those who own cameras very little reason to carry cameras as a method to document their adventures with their friends.  All photos of an outing's events would exclude whoever was selfless enough to take the photo, unless you were brave to trust a bystander with taking a quality picture.  Additionally, Picture Club provided photo modifying software and frames that would not be commonly available until years later.  All of these benefits provided by the Print Club cabinets (selfies, photo review, photo modifications) have been downsizes to a device that will fit into your pocket.  Cellphone users can now take selfies with a friend, review the photo, and modify it within seconds on their phone.  In addition, phones are now host to digitized social networks, such as Facebook.  The friend list on Facebook plays a very similar role to the photo albums compiled by Japanese youth who would judge their self-worth based on their ability to acquire stickers of or with their friends.   Does this make Print Club vestigial? Perhaps not, but Print Clubs are an example of a publicly accessible medium which may be replaced by private items.


Much like my paragraph on Picture Club, I can only speculate on the current presence and importance of Japanese Pachinko parlours. Plotz mentions in Pachinko Nation that the popularity of Pachinko parlors has leveled off due to the increased competition from television and video games.  While Pachinko is a somewhat limited medium, requiring minimal engagement from the participant, videogames, for the most part, require much more active engagement.  If the goal of a session of Pachinko is to turn off your brain after a long day's work, I do not see videogames as a threat to Pachinko's popularity.  Television is a much more passive medium, requiring little, if any input from the participant.  Perhaps videogames have aided in the reduced popularity of Pachinko, however, the migration of players from Pachinko to popular videogames would be due to a desire for a more interactive experience, and not necessarily the desire to be absorbed.

Monday, September 16, 2013

Sept 18, 2013

Seen in the Iwata and Miyamoto interview, philosophies and goals of home console games appear to have change quite radically over time.  Nintendo, specifically, have had their game design and difficulty influenced by the dominant medium for games.  During the 1980s, arcade games were designed to plunge the player into a world where the gameplay was accessible, but punishing.  The game was designed to be challenging enough to require multiple credits to complete, but offer enough encouragement and progression within the game so that the player can see progress with each quarter.  By striking a balance between progress and punishment, cabinets could squeeze multiple dollars out of participants within a single session, thus maximizing profits.

While sucking the $0.25 pieces out of the player's pocket was not necessary on the home console, Nintendo still employed a similar gameplay strategy.  Miyamoto states that part of a game's replayability was it's ability to make players mad at themselves.  If the game succeeded in making the player angry or frustrated with their performance, they may be more likely to hit the "Continue" button when prompted.  This creates an interesting challenge for game developers: how do you design a level that can frustrate players, but coax them into blaming themselves for their failure?  This admission of fault seems to be key for replayability in a level.  If a player decides that the level that they're currently on is simply too difficult, they may choose to discontinue playing.  If a player self blames for their inability to complete a game segment, they may be more likely to continue playing, as this is a level that they feel they can beat  When a player fails in a level with the difficulty properly tuned, they will experience the sensation of "Near Miss", making success on the following attempts seem more plausible and encouraging.

Since the 1980s, Nintendo and other game developers have adopted a different philosophy regarding video game difficulty.  Game developers seem to be much more forgiving with their game difficulty since the fall of the arcade mindset. Stated by Miyamoto "Well, since you've purchased it, it's surely better to be able to see the ending.", game design is no longer focused on extracting quarters or continues from the player, though micro-transactions can serve a similar purpose.  The modern approach to many video games is to offer varying difficulty levels, or even the option to skip difficult game segments, so consumers of all abilities can fully experience their purchase.  This is not to say that games no longer offer a challenge; there are many gaming experiences out there that may drive the players to scream in frustration.  For those who seek the ultimate challenge in a game, achievements, trophies, or medals were introduced.  These achievements can reward  players with superficial points for going above and beyond game requirements, thus offering a great challenge for those who seek it.  Both achievements and scalable difficulties lend themselves towards making games that can be both accessible, or punishing, based on the players' preference.

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Sept 11, 2013

        My experience with Japanese culture is, well, limited and impure.  Though I've been a participant in the Japanese pop-culture crazes that have floated across the Pacific, this is a very small, and not necessarily representative portion of Japanese culture which has been stripped of some authenticity.  As Benedict stressed, Japan is a culture of greatly varying practices, embracing both the sword, and the chrysanthemum.  While my understanding of Japan’s tendency to endorse shame, debt, responsibility, and a militaristic and aesthetically focused culture (Benedict) is solely based off of Benedict’s writing, I believe the variance between the sword and the chrysanthemum is where Japanese identity is located.  Japanese culture likely lies somewhere, and everywhere between the sword and the chrysanthemum.  It is because of this cultural variance that I am unaware just how often I am interacting with Japanese culture.  Cultural exports of Japan may be produced with what are now considered stereotypical traits of Japanese media (spiky haired characters with minimally detailed eyes), or they may be unidentifiable as Japanese in origin due to their original design, or localization.

 Like many western cultures (or all cultures, if you dig far enough back), Japan is, or was, an immigrant culture.  As an immigrant culture, Japan relied on both the population and ideas from outside countries in order to build its cultural identity into something that has become uniquely Japanese, or “Nihonjinron” (S. Ryang).  The process of constructing an individual culture out of many contributing sources in Japan was a much more gradual process than in North America.  For hundreds of years Japanese culture was slowly molded by the ideas and peoples of the mainland.  The fusion of practices from different groups over hundreds of years will naturally produce a very diverse culture, creating varying practices among geological locations, age groups, political systems, etc.  One of the vital features of the Japanese culture is their ability to appropriate ideas from external influences, improve upon them and reintroduce them to both the Japanese, and the global market.  Japan’s Three Cycle Response (Prasol) of imitation, adaptation, and improvement has not only shaped Japanese culture, but provided industrial Japan with a global niche in both technological and pop cultural exports. 

Japan’s ability to reinterpret cultural features, and improve them to their maximum usefulness (Prasol) has establish Japan as a large provider of cultural exports to the industrialized world.  Many of the products and cultural features released by Japan to the world contain Japanese cultural odor (Iwabuchi), laced with cultural features of the country of origin.  This cultural odor, which may or may not be instilled in an export, aids in the identification of an item as Japanese to the consumer.  While this odor can often be invoked by cultural features that may be stereotypical to a country, they do assist in making the consumer conscious of their product’s birthplace.   Japanese video games, technologies, and cartoons continue to have massive success on the global market, and provide the world with a taste of Japanese culture, though this taste, and odor is impure.  Very similar to Japan’s adaptation, and improvement of external cultural and technological influences, Japanese exports, especially cultural exports, often must be adapted by the destination culture.

Much like ideas that are subject to Japanization (Prasol), cultural exports of Japan often go through the process of localization, where the subject matter and language of the idea or product is adapted by the importing culture so that it is more appropriate for the consumer.  This two cycle response of adaptation and improvement partially strips the cultural export of its authenticity, providing consumers with an impure import.  It is due to this process of localization that I've likely had very little conscious interaction with authentic Japanese media.  When the text of media is interpreted by an outside source, much of the original meaning may be lost or misinterpreted.  Benedict's misinterpretation of the concept of debt, as represented by "on" spreads inauthentic cultural ideas of Japan to the reader.  Localization of game content in Dead Rising (2006) has created a game with minimal Japanese odor, and text that has been well adapted for a North American market.  This localization, though necessary, may cause misinterpretations of the original text, and misrepresentations of the intended cultural export.


Benedict, R. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946)

Ryang, S. Chrysanthemum's Strage Life: Ruth Benedict in Postwar Japan. http://jpri.org/publications/occasionalpapers/op32.html (2004)


Prasol, A. F. Modern Japan: Origins of the Mind: Japanese Traditions and Approaches to Contemporary Life (2010)

Iwabuchi, K. Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism (2002)