So, I’ve been thinking…

Never a phrase that betides good things, right up there with “We need to talk” or ending a text message with a period.

Now that On Second Glance has found its footing, so to speak, we could probably do to shake things up a bit.

Whatever happened to “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”?

“He that will not when he may, when he will, he may have nay”.

…What?

In simpler terms, “Innovate or die”.

Alright, alright!  Your point is made.  How do you want to ‘shake things up’?

Well, I think it’d be good to address a controversy of some kind.

I wouldn’t exactly call the ideas and thinkers I write about ‘non-controversial’.  Need I remind you that Judith Butler’s work prompted a response from the Vatican?

No, I know that.  But what I’m trying to say is that an essay focusing explicitly on a debate within a field might be an interesting change of pace.

Okay, let’s see… I mean, I’d been writing an essay centring on Steve Lukes for a while now.  And I guess I could reframe it to focus it more on a subject of debate, but–

Awesome, just alter that a bit and you’ll be good to go!

… sure …

I knew you had it in ya!  Alright, so what’s your basic thesis?

In general conversation, we have an intuitive sense of what culture is and who makes up a particular culture.  We may be inclined to say “The Frenchman in France practices French culture”, but the reality is often much less clear.  The boundaries of a particular culture remain unclear and qualifications for membership are often contested.  This lack of clarity is compounded when we enter realm of cross-cultural intelligibility, the ability to understand people from other cultures.  The question of cross-cultural intelligibility is one that is hotly debated, with two camps making a strong case for their position on the question.  By using two case-studies of cross-cultural media, we should be able to shed some light on the debate and begin to approach a consensus on culture and cross-cultural intelligibility.

The obvious jumping-off point for this essay is to define culture.  What, exactly, is culture?

I feel like that’s one of those things that’s easier to give examples of than define.

I don’t entirely disagree, we all have this vague idea of what culture is, even if pinning down a definition is hard.  For example, you might say Scots drink Irn-Bru, wear kilts and hate the English.  The French, meanwhile, drink wine, smoke cigarettes and hate the English.  And the English drink tea, hamstring their economy and hate the English.

I’ll be using the following definition of culture: the collection of practices and values of a group of people.  It’s a fairly useful and uncontroversial definition, but its application is a bit trickier than you might imagine.

How so?  You just pointed out a few (semi-tongue in cheek) examples.  It wouldn’t be that hard to come up with a serious definition of, for example, French culture.

Well, let’s test that theory.  In “French culture”, how do people greet each other?

Everyone knows that!  The bisou, the kiss on the cheek!

Okay, how many times?

… I mean, my friend from Paris usually goes for two.

And if you were to meet a Corsican, you might find they go for five!  Or perhaps you meet a Breton, they may go for only one!  That is, there’s variation in practice.  Next question, what is this?

Pain au chocolat?  Don’t have to speak French to know that one.

Well that may be what you call it, but in the south-west of France, they refer to this as “chocolatine”.

Okay hold on, I see where you’re going with this.

Oh?  Do tell.

You’re trying to show that there are differences in French cultural practice.  And doing so would make it harder, if not impossible, to define French culture.  That’s why you even put “French culture” in quotation marks!

I guess I’m getting predictable, well–

Fortunately, there’s an easy answer to that.  You’re right, you may not be able to define a unified French culture because “French” actually refers to a group of different cultures.  We can, however, define Parisian culture, Corsican culture, etc.

Unfortunately, you’re going to run into the same problem.  There are cultural divisions between northern and southern Corsica.  One would struggle to argue that the wealthy 16^th arrondissement of Paris has the same culture as the famously radical 18^th arrondissement.  If you continue down this path, you’re eventually going to get to absurdly small cultural groupings.

Let’s try approaching this question with a different tack.  Suppose we say that people within the same culture don’t have to have the exact same practices and norms.  What are the consequences of this idea?

Well, doesn’t that destroy the idea of a culture?  Like, if culture doesn’t require similarity in practices and norms, doesn’t that mean any arbitrary group can be a culture?

I think you’re closer than you realize, but let’s keep going down this track.  How could we fold all of these regional cultures (Parisian, Occitain, Breton, Corsican, etc) under the larger banner of “French”?

I’m … I’m not sure.

Well, what do they have in common?

I mean, they all do greet each other with bisous­–

Exactly!  So you could say that greeting with bisous, regardless of number, is a part of French culture.  That is to say, you can find some core qualities that can be used to define a culture while still allowing for some variation in practice.  In this way, you can have Parisian, Occitaine and any other French regional culture fall under the idea of “French culture”.

Oh, yeah duh, of course!  Yeah that makes total sense.  “Similarity in practice and norms” doesn’t have to mean every practice and norm, just a certain core of similarity!

Well said, but here’s where stuff starts to get very interesting indeed.  So if we agree that cultures are defined by having a certain core set of practices and norms, two interrelated questions remain.  The first of these is: how do we choose what those core practices and norms are?

“Choose”?  There’s not choice involved, it’s simply acknowledging similarities.

Well here’s the rub.  Just like there are millions of cultural practices, there are exponentially more ways of delineating cultures based on those practices.  To simplify this, imagine a world where there’s only three cultural practices: A, B, and C.  If a culture is a grouping of these practices, you could come up with 7 different cultural groups just from these practices.

• A vs Not A
• B vs Not B
• C vs Not C
• A+B vs Not A+B
• A+C vs Not A+C
• B+C vs Not B+C
• A+B+C vs Not A+B+C

The point here is not a lesson in combinatorics, but to point out there are nearly infinite ways we could delineate cultures.  The fact that we don’t do this is testament to another aspect of the definition of culture, the idea of the group.

What do you mean?

What I’m trying to say is that our delineations between cultures is often based on our perception of “self-evident” groups.  For example, there’s actually a good deal of cultural overlap between French and German culture.  You could diagram that overlap like so:

            However, this often doesn’t “feel right” to people, who’d be more inclined to see the cultural diagram as below.

But here’s the thing, neither the first nor the second are strictly wrong.  Why then are we generally more inclined towards the second?  My suspicion is that this inclination is due to the well-known historical conflicts between Germany and France.  That is, our decision to delineate German and French cultures is based more on our perception of their being two different groups, not some calculation of actual cultural similarity/difference.  That is, the line we draw between cultures is a fairly arbitrary one.

I think I get what you’re saying.  Could you give us another example of how these cultural lines are “arbitrary”.

Sure, and I’ll continue with Western Europe because it’s the one I’m most familiar with.  Let’s consider French and Spanish cultures.  Both have regional varieties, of which some (like Catalan) show both French and Spanish influence.  So if you define French and Spanish as two cultural groups, you could end up with a diagram like this:

            However, if we had a different set of priorities, this could be drawn differently.  What if, for example, we wanted to emphasize the cultural difference of Catalan culture.  We could also draw the diagram as such:

Both graphs technically describe the same pattern of cultural difference but the former emphasizes Catalan as a regional culture while the latter emphasizes its distinctness from French or Spanish cultures.

This is where the discussion of culture starts to become a political one.  This is most clear historically, where nation-states justified irredentist wars based on uniting their (perceived) cultural group.  But the delineation of cultures continues to be relevant today.  Claims of Catalan cultural difference are the basis for the Catalan independence movement, culminating in an unrecognized declaration of independence in 2017.  There’s also the fact Kurdish people in Turkey are only recognized as “Mountain Turks”, as having the same cultural core as Turks.  This denial of Kurdish cultural difference is used as justification for banning Kurdish from schools, outlawing Kurdish cultural practices and other human rights violations.

Okay, fair enough, where cultures start and stop has consequences.

Right, this brings us conveniently to our next question, one posed by Steve Lukes in Liberals and Cannibals: The Implications of Diversity: who gets to decide the bounds of a culture?  That is, who gets to speak as a representative of a culture?

Presumably that’s a question for the people within that culture.

I don’t disagree, but we arrive at a chicken-or-egg problem.  Without defining the boundaries of that culture to begin with, how could one even find a member of that culture.  That is, how could we pass on the question “What is French culture?” to a Frenchman if we don’t even know what a Frenchman is!

Well, what about self-identification?  If you self-identify as French, Cherokee, Malaysian, or whatever else, then you can presumably speak on that culture’s behalf.

This is a logical next step but is more problematic than might appear at first glance.  For example, how do we deal with competing claims?  Can you determine if a claim is ‘stronger’ than another without choosing arbitrarily?  What happens if two self-identified Russians disagree as to what Russian culture is?  Or what if a self-identified Indonesian includes East Timorese culture as being under the umbrella of Indonesian culture, despite the protest of the East Timorese?  Or what of the French who don’t see the Québécois as being ‘really’ part of French culture, despite the claims of the Québécois?

I imagine you’ll give me the answer.

Well, not exactly.  The answer is that there isn’t a strictly correct way to respond to these questions.  Per Lukes, this is because the bounds of a culture are sites of internal and external contention with no strictly correct answer.  That is, where a culture starts and stops is debated both by people within and outside of that culture, like with the examples cited above.  And more importantly for Lukes, it is through this contestation that the idea of a cultural group begins to crystalize and cultural difference can be determined.  That is, it’s precisely this debate that creates categories like “us” and “them”, “French” and “German”.  This also explains why cultural boundaries and groupings shift over time.  Cultural groups can merge, such as Virginians and New Yorkers coming to see themselves as Americans, or split, such as Americans and Brits coming to see themselves as different.

In summation, Steve Lukes takes this basic definition of culture, a group’s shared practices and norms, and qualifies it by acknowledging it as a contingent and contested grouping.   This allows us to use the idea of a particular culture in a practical way while acknowledging disagreement as to its definition.

Okay, so can we move on?  You haven’t even gotten to the controversy in question, let alone the media you promised!

In Liberals and Cannibals, Lukes addresses two major perspectives on cross-cultural intelligibility, defined as the ability for people from different cultures to understand each other.  The first position is what Lukes identifies as the modernist position (and also his own): that cross-cultural intelligibility is possible because rationality is universal to humanity.  That is, because all humans can reason in the same fundamental way, cross-cultural intelligibility can take place.

That seems … fairly straightforward, surprisingly.

I agree, it’s not that complex of an idea to wrap your head around.  The modernist position is usually made with the caveat that cross-cultural intelligibility is achievable only when sufficient precision is used in communication.  Without that precision, cross-cultural intelligibility can either fail or lead to misrecognitions.  One of the most famous of these misrecognitions is the idea that both European/Western and Chinese cultures both have a conception of ‘dragon’.  Due to some questionable historical translations, we in the West generally assume Chinese dragons to be essentially the same to ours.  However, this is a misrecognition, with the European dragon being a ferocious, fire-breathing beast and the Chinese dragon being an auspicious semi-deity associated with water.  In this case, mistranslation leads to a misrecognition that obscures more than it enlightens.

And what’s the other perspective?

The other position that Lukes identifies is the postmodern perspective (though I’m not sure I agree with that choice in terminology).  This position is that cross-cultural intelligibility isn’t always or fully possible in a substantive way.  They make this claim by arguing that the ‘universal rationality’ described by the modernists is actually a particular Western approach to rationality.  The postmodernist position argues that the extent to which two cultures have different rationalities, they will either fail to be mutually intelligible or have misrecognitions (like our ‘Chinese dragon’ example).   

Hold on, “Western rationality”, they’re not seriously arguing rationality itself is some Western innovation.  That’s practically echoing claims on the far-right that white people/the West are bringers of civilization!

Well, that is a criticism that’s been levied at the position, but I don’t think that’s what the postmodern position is getting at.   They’re not arguing that rationality is a product of the West or something only available to Westerners, but that there are many “rationalities” all based on different assumptions (of which “Western” is but one example).  One formulation of Western rationality comes from American anthropologist Marshall Sahlins.  In his view, Western rationality is based on the following principles and dualisms (among others):

• Logos vs Mythos
  • Western rationality assumes that logos is distinct from and independent of mythos.  Logos are the “objective facts”, while mythos is the internal narrative one has to make sense of these facts.
• Empirical Reality vs Mental Illusion
  • Western rationality delineates between what goes on empirically and what we think is going on.  That is, there is an objective reality that exists outside of our perception of it.
  • You can see this distinction at work in one of the oldest recorded thought experiments: the allegory of the cave.  The thought experiment imagines prisoners who are held in a cave, chained up such that they can only see the back of the cave.  All the prisoners can see are the shadows on the back of the cave wall, which they perceive to be reality.  Per the assumption of western rationality, the shadows are an illusion while the world outside of the cave represents empirical reality.

• The world as lacking spirit
  • Sahlins argues this comes from the Jewish tradition (and later articulated by Augustine) and it is the claim that there is a strict delineation between the material and the mystical.  That is, while the mystical may exist and may impact the material world, it is distinct from the material.  There is no there there. 
• Objectivity as utility
  • In Western rationality, the subject relates to the natural world through their desires and objects are understood as their utility.  That is, water is not simply water but a way to quench thirst, to power a water wheel, etc.

Sorry, but these ‘assumptions’ just feel like common sense!

I don’t disagree but that’s because you and I are accustomed to Western rationalism.  Sahlins is trying to point out that, while these may seem intuitive to us, we shouldn’t assume that the rationalities of all cultures start with these assumptions and premises.  More than that, trying to ascribe Western rationality to the actions of people from other cultures may result in misrecognitions (again, like our Chinese dragon example).  Sahlins gives an example of such a misrecognition in the ongoing debate about the first contact between James Cook and the native Hawaiians.

What a surprise, you’ve found another way to talk about Hawaii.

I’ll definitely cop to being a bit of a Hawaii-phile.  Captain James Cook landed in Hawaii in 1778, representing the first recorded contact Europe makes with Hawaii.  By chance, he happened to arrive during the Makahiki season, a months-long celebration of the yearly return of the akua (often translated as god) Lono from the mythical land of Kahiki.  During the Makahiki season, Lono was believed to arrive in Hawaii in some manifestation (human, animal, or some other form) to participate in the festivals before once again setting off for Kahiki.   Upon landing, Cook is invited by the Hawaiians to participate in the Kahiki festival in a similar manner to how the manifestation of Lono would be expected to participate.  Sometime later, Cook and his crew leave to continue their journey but are forced to return due to bad weather, returning to a considerably less hospitable Hawaii.  Following a dispute over a stolen skipper, Cook makes the hilariously bad decision of trying to take a Hawaiian chief hostage as a bargaining chip.  Unsurprisingly, this results in Cook catching a leiomano straight to the dome, ending his expedition.

Hold on, you’re saying they supposedly treated Cook like a god?  Isn’t that one of those old colonialist tropes, the ‘savages’ worshipping the enlightened Europeans?

It is here that we come across a major debate within Hawaiian studies.  Yes, there certainly was a widespread colonial trope (and one used to justify colonialism) that native peoples would treat Europeans like gods.  You probably know this from the more well-known example of Cortés and his narrative about his interaction with the Aztecs.  As a result, Cook’s claim to have been seen as a god is rightly treated with suspicion, particularly by those with the modernist position.  There’s no way, argue the modernist anthropologists, that the Hawaiians saw Cook as a god because no rational person would come to such a conclusion.  They back this up by citing Hawaiian sources that acknowledge Cook came from “Britannee”, from Britain.  And, these same anthropologists would add, it’d be hard for native Hawaiians to believe Cook to be a god after they killed him!

Well, not much of a debate then!  Sounds like it’s pretty clear that the native Hawaiians didn’t consider him a god.  Gotta give it to the modernists here.

Sahlins doesn’t dispute the Hawaiians recognition of Cook as human but comes to a different conclusion.  For Sahlins, it is the question itself,  “Did the Hawaiians think Cook was a man or a god?”, that is a flawed framework.  Hawaiian cosmology is complex (and I certainly don’t claim to have a full understanding of it), but one of its features is the ability of people, animals and objects to have multiple contingent (and sometimes contradictory) natures.  That is, something can have nature A and nature B simultaneously, even if they appear contradictory. 

I’m sorry, what?

In the example of Cook, Sahlins argues the Hawaiians knew from the start that he was a mortal man (like any of them).  At the same time, the nature of his arrival during the Makahiki season meant that he was also acting as a manifestation of Lono.  That is, Cook had two different contingent, seemingly contradictory natures, Cook as man and Cook as manifestation of Lono.  While this may not make sense within a Western rationalist perspective, it works within the framework of Hawaiian rationalism.  This also explains the comparatively hostile treatment Cook received after returning to Hawaii; he was no longer acting as a manifestation of Lono (and thus not deserving of that level of respect).  As such, the Hawaiians were acting rationally towards Cook but following a Hawaiian rationalism (as opposed to Western).

Okay, fair enough, the actions of the Hawaiians would make sense if Sahlins’ idea of Hawaiian rationalism are accurate.

My thoughts as well.  I’m not saying Sahlins is necessarily correct in his view on Hawaiian rationalism (I certainly am no expert), but it would be a framework consistent with the evidence.

But … doesn’t this undermine the whole ‘postmodernist’ position?  Sahlins was able to understand and explain Hawaiian rationalism to us despite being raised in a Western rationalist background.  That’s cross-cultural intelligibility!

This was also my thought at first, but I see at least two ways Sahlins could rebut this.  The first is that, with sufficient study and participation in a foreign culture, one could begin to reason within the framework of that culture’s rationalism.  For example, one could argue that because Sahlins is so greatly knowledgeable about Hawaiian culture, he can probably engage in Hawaiian rationalism and relay that to his audience accurately.  After all, culture is not genetic but learned, and why would learning a culture as an adult be significantly different to doing so while growing up?  This framework is quite a strong defence of the idea that cross-cultural intelligibility is still limited to the degree of overlap in the cultures’ rationalisms while still allowing people from different cultures to substantively understand one another.  In this case, it is Sahlins’ deep understanding of Hawaiian culture that allows him to understand Hawaiian culture in its own vocabulary and logic.

The second would be for Sahlins to acknowledge that his understanding of Hawaiian rationalism is a misrecognition.  The trick, however, is to note that not all misrecognitions are to the same degree.  For example, the Western misrecognition of the Chinese dragon is a fairly egregious one and thus fairly far from ‘the truth’ of the Chinese dragon.  Sahlins description of Hawaiian culture and rationalism, on the other hand, may be a Western misrecognition but one that is far closer to ‘the truth’.  Here too is cross-cultural intelligibility limited but not fully closed off.

And what do you think of those rebuttals?

Personally, I find the first rebuttal to be stronger (and more useful practically).  The latter strikes me like that classic playground philosophy question, “What if people see colours differently than you do?”  It seems both impossible to verify or to falsify.

I don’t disagree.  But I have a concern…

Yikes, and what might that be?

This discussion has been pretty cerebral.  How can you possibly relate such a debate to a popular anime and a subpar Netflix program?

What would I do I without someone like you to aid my transitions?  But don’t worry, I’m a man of many talents (or so my mother tells me) and I was just about to get to that.  I think you’ll be surprised how many intellectual debates filter down into art, even mediocre art!  Let’s start with Samurai Champloo (spoilers ahead).

Samurai Champloo is an anime following a trio of characters: Mugen, Jin and Fuu.  Vagabond Mugen (centre) and rōnin Jin (left) cross paths in episode 1 and immediately begin fighting before finding themselves in trouble with the law.  Fortunately, they are saved from execution by young teashop waitress Fuu (right) who then implores them to accompany her to find the “samurai who smells of sunflowers”.  The call to adventure accepted, the trio sets off.

Pretty standard premise for an anime.

Well, there’s a catch.  This series was directed by Shinichirō Watanabe, perhaps more famous for his series Cowboy Bebop.  Watanabe has a well-known fascination with American culture and history, a fascination that is reflected in his work.  Cowboy Bebop, for example, is basically a Space Western.  Samurai Champloo is no exception to this, placing contemporary hip hop culture within the setting of 19^th century Japan.  As mentioned earlier, this is reflected in the (absolutely excellent) lo-fi hip hop soundtrack.

Interesting enough, but just putting a hip hop soundtrack over Japanese swordfights does not an inter-cultural piece make, even if it is well-executed!

Couldn’t agree more.  But Samurai Champloo is attempting something more ambitious than a simple change in aesthetics.  To make this clear, let’s take a look at the character of Mugen.  Looking above at his character design, what do you immediately pick out?

At risk of stating the obvious, his skin tone is darker, his hair is either less kempt or is kinked and he appears to have facial hair.  If I didn’t know any better…

You’d think he’s coded as black or African American?

I mean I would, but that can’t be right!  This is set in 19^th century Japan, not many darker skinned folks in Japan at the time.

Well, let’s consider some further evidence.  Mugen frequently uses slang associated with AAVE such as “yo” and “dude”.  His speech is often coarser, such as when he says “I’ll take all you bitches on” in episode 1, evocative of the semantic bleaching in AAVE.  Characters frequently comment on the erratic, unrefined fighting style Mugen uses.  While not suggestive of African American coding on its own, his fighting uses movements and spins that are evocative breakdancing, a form of hip hop dance (and a genre very much associated with African Americans).

Here’s the thing though, Mugen is canonically from a different culture from most characters in Samurai Champloo.  But he’s not African American, he’s Ryukyuan.

He’s what?

The Ryukyuan islands are a chain of islands to the south-west of Japan and is home to the Ryukyuan people, a culture showing influence from both Chinese and Japanese sources (but speaking their own language).  The Ryukyuan Kingdom was a largely independent kingdom that paid tribute to China and Japan until its annexation by Japan in 1879.  Ryukyuans were treated as second-class citizens by the Yamato Japanese (the majority ethnic group in Japan) and often stereotyped as backwards and criminal.  Notably, the islands served as something close to a penal colony, with Japan exiling some of its most violent criminals to the island.  Unfortunately, the Japanese government to this day does not recognize the Ryukyuans as an ethnic minority (mirroring historical attempts to stamp out their culture) and ethnic Ryukyuans often face discrimination today.

Hold up, I’m not following.  Mugen is canonically Ryukyuan, but is coded as African American?

            So it would appear.  The choice appears even more purposeful when you consider that Ryukyuans don’t typically have darker skin than that of Yamato Japanese, like the difference one sees between Mugen and Jin or Fuu.  This then begs the question, why does Watanabe identify Mugen as Ryukyuan, even going so far as to make it a central part of his backstory?

Well, something occurred to me, but I’m not sure what it means…

Lay it on me.

So Ryukyu was used somewhat as a penal colony and Ryukyuans are/were often perceived as criminals.  Isn’t that somewhat similar to the association of criminality with African Americans?

I think you’re on the right track.  It seems like Watanabe is highlighting what he sees as similarities between the Ryukyuan experience in Japan and that of African Americans in the US.  We can see this in a number of ways but particularly with regards to criminality (or the perception thereof) and linguistic and educational barriers.

In Samurai Champloo, many characters react fearfully whenever Mugen reveals he is Ryukyuan.  As noted earlier, this parallels real-life treatments of Ryukyuan and African Americans at the hands of Yamato Japanese and white Americans.  Watanabe also alludes to how this perception of criminality becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy (mirroring real-life trends).  Mugen lacked opportunities when he was younger due to concerns that he may be a criminal and it is this lack of opportunities that forced Mugen to actually become a criminal (joining a crew of pirates).  This parallels how minorities in highly discriminatory societies are often forced to adopt criminality to survive, in turn justifying stereotypical perceptions of that minority by the dominant group in a detrimental feedback loop.

With regards to language and education, Mugen speaks with a sort of pseudo-AAVE (evocative, if not strictly accurate) and is canonically illiterate (due to his upbringing) until episode 18.  As noted in an earlier essay, perceptions of AAVE as “broken” or “bad” English have a negative impact on educational attainment of African Americans.  Similarly, Ryukyuans in Yamato Japanese schools were severely punished for speaking Ryukyuan.  Outside of prohibiting students from speaking Ryukyuan, one particular punishment used was the dialect card.  If a student was caught speaking Ryukyuan, they would be forced to wear the dialect card until someone else was caught, who would then receive the card.  The student wearing the dialect card at the end of the day would be severely punished by the teacher.

And finally, there’s a minor character detail that makes this comparison quite explicit.  Mugen has a series of bluish-grey tattoos near his wrists and ankles.  One can’t help but note how these evoke the idea of chains, such as would be used during the era of chattel slavery in the US.  I don’t believe these tattoos are ever explicitly addressed, but the imagery speaks volumes.

Mugen doesn’t seem to be the only character whose background is used for cultural analogy.  In episode 16 and 17, we are introduced to the character Okuru, who encounters the trio due to a case of mistaken identity as he is a wanted man.  Okuru is canonically Ainu, an ethnic group living on the Japanese island of Hokkaido that Japan attempted to forcibly assimilate.  Due to a number of details about his background, he appears to be coded as Native American (consistent with the larger American-Japanese analogy).  In terms of character design, he wears a headband evocative of an unfeathered war bonnet.  He speaks in a poetic fashion that suggests wisdom and demonstrates knowledge of medicinal herbs, consistent with the noble savage archetype.  He explains to the trio that he’s the last of his village, due in part to plague.  Smallpox epidemics and other diseases quite infamously devastated Native American communities but also caused steep population decline in Ainu communities.  In Okuru’s case, while his community was suffering, it was ultimately Japanese authorities that slaughtered the remnants of his village.  In real life, Japanese authorities committed atrocities on the Ainu and much ink has already been spilled over the genocide of Native Americans.  In Okuru’s case, his village was slaughtered while he was out getting medicine and the blame placed on Okuru.  There’s a suggestion that the timing was not accidental, as Okuru is shown to be a talented fighter on par with Mugen.  This particular detail is reminiscent of the Sand Creek massacre, one undertaken by the US while the majority of the able-bodied Cheyenne and Arapho men were out hunting. 

Towards the end of episode 17, Okuru reveals he no longer intends to run from the Japanese authorities, opting instead for a violent confrontation (one he knows will end in his death).  In his final moments, he is shot several times with flaming arrows, clearly mortally wounded.  He staggers on, however, taking out several Japanese authorities before ultimately plunging off a cliff.

This sort of suicidal attack is evocative of the Ghost Dance tradition.  The Ghost Dance, particularly the Lakota interpretation, is an apocalyptic, millenarian Native American religious movement aimed at ending American westward expansion.  Particularly, it was seen as being an inspiration for more violent resistance to American imperialism, mirroring Okuru’s decision to choose violent resistance to the Japanese authorities.  Unfortunately, we only really get to know Okuru over the course of an episode and a half, hence my focus on Mugen.

Yeah, I buy that, seems pretty clear that Watanabe is making the American-Japanese analogy.  But how does all this fit into that cross-cultural intelligibility stuff you were talking about earlier?

Watanabe, by highlighting the similarities he sees between the Ryukyuan and African American experiences (among others), is implicitly making a claim of cross-cultural intelligibility.  It is the claim that there are substantive (i.e. not topical, like our Chinese dragon example) similarities between the Ryukyuan and African American experiences.  And we need keep in mind that this claim is being made by Watanabe, in conjunction with the writers, who are all (as far as my research showed) Yamato Japanese.

How does this fit within the so-called modernist and postmodernist positions in anthropology?  Well, the modernist perspective understands this to be Watanabe et al. using their knowledge of Ryukyuan and African American history and culture paired with their universal human reason to highlight substantive overlap.  In this formulation, Watanabe’s upbringing in Yamato Japanese culture does not factor into this analysis.  This is because reason is universal, per the modernists, and so anyone with the same set of facts would come to the same conclusion.  Any misrecognitions in this framework, would be the result of lacking/incorrect knowledge or a mistake in reasoning.

The postmodernist position, on the other hand, would likely point to Watanabe’s Yamato Japanese background.  Because cross-cultural intelligibility is limited to the degree of overlap in rationalisms per the postmodernists, Watanabe’s cultural background is relevant.  Because Ryukyuan and Yamato Japanese culture have a great deal of overlap, it is probably a safe bet that Ryukyuan and Yamato Japanese  rationalisms have a great deal of overlap.  This would allow Watanabe to understand Ryukyuan culture with a considerably lesser degree of misrecognition.  As to his understanding of African American culture, the postmodernist may point to his great interest in and extensive study of American culture (as evidenced by his other works).  This personal study would be supplemented by American cultural dominance in media.  This would give him a strong understanding of both Japanese and American/Western rationalisms, allowing for him to make cross-cultural comparisons with a low degree of misrecognition.

And what do you think?  Do you find one of the positions to be stronger in this case?

Well, it’s hard to say as I run into a major problem here; I’m simply not that familiar with Ryukyuan and Japanese history or culture.  I did my due diligence research-wise of course, but that’s nowhere near enough where I’d feel comfortable being able to make sweeping claims of similarity to African American culture.  And this lack of knowledge means that I lack the knowledge to point to something I know and say “hey, this better supports the modernist/postmodernist position”.

We in the US often bemoan our monolingualness, a result of an anglophone media landscape and an educational system with little emphasis on foreign language.  Meanwhile, the French and Germans and others often speak perfect English, sometimes better than natives!  However, I might also argue that Americans suffer from lack of exposure to foreign cultures.  This is changing (if slowly) thanks to the internet, but Americans can very easily go their entire lives without substantive exposure to foreign cultures.  In other countries this simply isn’t possible, at least in part due to the dominance of American cultural export!

And speaking of exposure to foreign cultures, let’s talk about Jinn.

Not the smoothest transition you’ve had, but I’ll allow it.

Jinn follows a group of high schoolers in Jordan who take a school field trip to Petra before things take a turn for the supernatural (which I will get into).  Despite a relatively mediocre looking trailer, I checked it out because it was being marketed as Netflix’s first Arabic series and had an almost entirely Arab cast and crew.  There was also an amusing bit of controversy surrounding it in Jordan, with a top Jordanian prosecutor claiming it had “immoral scenes” as the main character, Mira, kisses two different men in the series.  And so I made the decision to support it (as should readers, if inclined), even if I knew it was going to be a bit of a slog.  Needless to say, I was a bit chemically enhanced while watching.

Alright then, what’s it about?

So as I mentioned, Jinn follows Mira and her group of friends (who are almost invariably insufferable) during and after this trip to Petra.  I’m going to do my best to avoid getting into the web of relationships here because half of them really don’t matter.

Oh good, nothing like useless exposition!

Mira is dating a boy named Fahed who (aside from constantly pressuring her to have sex) is friends with a group of unpleasant guys, one named Tareq among them.  This group spends their free time bullying a boy named Yassin, but Tareq really has it out for Yassin.  This harassment continues during the field trip, resulting in Tareq and his friends chasing Yassin into the famous tombs of Petra.

Yassin then falls into a grave and calls to Tareq and others for help.  Needless to say, they do not help Yassin and leave him to rot. This prompts Yassin to yell out that he hopes they fall and break their necks.

“Hmm”, I wonder aloud, “I wonder if such a specifically worded wish might come true”.

Yeah, needless to say what’s coming is heavily telegraphed (at least in one sense).  After accepting his fate, Yassin hears someone approach and calls out to them.  It’s a girl who introduces themselves as Vera, a senior, but Yassin doesn’t recognize her.  Despite this evidently being a school where all the students know each other, Yassin doesn’t question this random girl helping him out while claiming she’s a classmate.

There’s a joke about high school boys in there somewhere.

And as someone who’s been one, this is one of the few times the writing was convincing.  Anyways, Vera and Yassin return to the school group as night falls, as they’re apparently staying for an overnight trip.  Naturally, Mira and her squad of popular kids sneak off to drink, smoke, and make out (quelle scandale!) 

At some point, Tareq wanders off to pee (the dude obviously needs to cut back on the diuretics) when he is approached by an unknown man who claims he is in great danger.  Tareq naturally shrugs this off.

What follows is a scene that is supposed to shock but is unintentionally one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.  Less than 2 seconds after receiving this warning, we cut back to Mira who, for some reason, is walking around alone.  Out of nowhere and with zero build-up, Tareq drops out of the FREAKING SKY and slams into a rock, dying almost instantly. 

Needless to say, this puts a damper on the field trip and all return home.  As Mira and the gang eventually figure out, Tareq’s death was the result of a jinn, a spirit mentioned in the Quran with pre-Islamic origins.  After a few more deaths and near-deaths, Mira starts to notice that all of the victims are people who bullied Yassin.  As you might have imagined, Vera isn’t some unknown senior student, but a jinn determined to punish Yassin’s tormenters.  The rest of the series revolves around trying to prevent more deaths and get rid of Vera.  The real tragedy, in my view, is that of all the characters they kill off, they leave Hassan alive.

Jesus, here we go…

He’s just the most annoyingly written character and shows no redeeming qualities.  We’re introduced to him during the field trip while a tour guide is giving a lecture on the inhabitants of Petra.  Hassan not only has the nerve to interrupt him, but to interrupt him to ask if there are any jinn in Petra.  That’s like going to the Roman Colosseum and asking the tour guide about ghosts!  Even when he’s drinking with the popular kids (which he apparently is, despite never demonstrating any social aptitude), all he’s doing is going on about jinn.

            When everyone returns to school, and everyone’s mourning the death of Tareq by apparent suicide, all Hassan does is approach other characters and claim the jinn killed Tareq.  Like, I know it’s fiction, but the insensitivity of the guy!  Imagine you suffer a tragedy like that and somebody announces, without being asked, that this must’ve been the work of ghosts.  You’d be furious, right?

And more than that, Hassan then starts hocking his own magical protection against the jinn.  When one character breaks and asks him what the protection is, Hassan unzips his backpack to reveal it’s full of sand!  Sand!  Not even magical sand, just regular old sand.  He unironically has pocket sand!  Imagine if, after a tragedy, some weirdo came up to you and said “Hey, sorry ghosts killed your buddy.  Here, take this dirt I found outside, it’ll protect you from the ghosts”!

You know, it’s very seldom I have any critiques about your writing ability, but you’ve said “ghosts” several times in a row.  Change up your word choice my man!

I appreciate your concern for my technique, but that was purposeful.  Let me explain; after finishing Jinn, I didn’t think I was going to write about it.  So I mentioned the program in passing to a Muslim friend of the OSG team, just to get their reaction.  We were mostly shooting the shit, not really discussing the show seriously; but one thing they said stood out to me.  They described jinn as being “basically like ghosts”.

… So?

There isn’t really a tradition of ghosts in Islamic cultures.  In fact, some branches of Islam, like the Salafi, deny the existence of ghosts entirely.  There is, however, a strong ghost tradition in the West (a fusion of Greek and Christian ghost traditions with some later British innovations).  On the flipside, while Westerners are often aware of genies as wish-granters, there is no equivalent to jinn in the West.

I’m confused, I assumed jinn is basically the Arabic translation for ghost?  Like how Allah is just Arabic for god?

You’re missing a couple key differences!  For example, while jinn and ghosts are both spirits, the jinn are actually mortal and can die (unlike ghosts).  And while ghosts were usually once living people, one wouldn’t die and become a jinn as the jinn came from a “smokeless fire” per verse 15 of surah 55.  There is overlap, to be certain, but to frame ghosts and jinn as essentially the same is at least a partial misrecognition.  It’s not an egregious misrecognition (like the Chinese dragon example), but there are some nuances left out.

Okay, I guess I can see that.  But why would your Muslim friend have made such a comment?

An excellent question.  Before following up with them, there were three possibilities that I came up with.  The first is that they didn’t know the distinctions between the two, assuming like you did that jinn was just a translation of ghost.  This seemed unlikely to me as they’d mentioned they learned about jinn while growing up.  The other two options were more relevant to our analysis. 

The first of these is that they were doing a cultural translation for me.  That is, they would have recognized that I wouldn’t have been culturally familiar with jinn and decided to use an imperfect term to describe it to me.  Moderate comprehension, after all, is better than none!  And by pairing this imperfect analogy with some clarifications (which we would both understand due to our shared universal reason), my friend would be able to explain jinn to me.

The second is that they were operating simultaneously within two cultural vocabularies (and possibly two different cultural rationalities).  Seen this way, while they were chatting with me (a person with an American/British background) they were inclined to operate within that Western cultural space, with Western rationalism.  And in this cultural space, describing jinn as “basically like ghosts” may have been the most accurate way of conveying their meaning to me.

I see what you’re doing.  Those two options are the modernist and postmodernist positions respectively.  But surely you’re not going to pad the length of this essay by just giving another example!

The downside to the Samurai Champloo example is that I had to try and imagine Watanabe’s thought-process.  Fortunately, here I had the benefit of someone willing to let me pick their brain.  So after our initial chat, I asked them if they’d be willing to let me ask them a few questions about their understanding of jinn.  They kindly obliged and I prepared some questions, attempting to keep my intentions hidden so as to not bias the answers.  I asked about a number of subjects (cultural identity, family history, etc) as well as attempted a sort of verbal Rorschach, asking rapid-fire questions about their association between a word and jinn.  While all of the responses were interesting, two answers were particularly relevant to this discussion.

And those were?

The first was a discussion of how they identified.  One parent is a Pakistani Muslim and the other a non-religious, previously Christian American.  While they’ve spent their entire lives in the US (and identified with American culture), the presence of their Pakistani extended family gave them considerable exposure to Pakistani culture.  Religiously, they self-described as following a liberal, somewhat “loosey-goosey” Sunni Islam.  It was here that I was reminded of the work of Aziz al-Azmeh and asked if they identified with “Islamic” culture. 

I’m not following, what’s significant about asking about Islamic culture?  I took an Islamic studies course way back when, I’ve definitely heard that term before.

Al-Azmeh is a well-respected Syrian professor of history, even receiving a Republican Order of Merit from the Tunisian president in 1993 for “services to Arab culture”.  He has a bit of a beef with the term “Islamic culture” and how the term is used in Islamic studies, a beef he explains in depth in his work Islams and Modernities.  There are, obviously, a wide variety of cultures that have been influenced by Islam.  One would fail to see much cultural overlap between Javanese Abangan, Saudi Wahhabists, and Egyptian dervishes.  Al-Azmeh’s frustration is that, within much of the Islamic studies discourse, this cultural diversity is reduced.  That is, each of these unique cultures is framed as simply a local manifestation of a singular, Islamic culture, rather than the variety that they are. 

Now hold on a second, surely he’s not saying that Islam (or religion generally) doesn’t have an impact on culture!  Like, take alcohol prohibition in Islam, surely that’s affected alcohol use/perception within these cultures!

Al-Azmeh doesn’t disagree that Islam has impacted these cultures.  What he is pushing back on is the idea that these cultures are essentially local permutations of some singular, “pure” Islamic culture.  That is, Islam has impacted and is impacted by these cultures, but these cultures are not causally downstream of Islam.  Like your point about alcohol, there are “Islamic” cultures that don’t drink and others that drink like a fish.  I’d read a joke (but can’t find the source) that the only thing Persian poets liked more than complaining about people drinking wine, is drinking wine themselves!  To use al-Azmeh’s rather poetic formulation, “there are as many Islams as there are situations that sustain it”, hence the title Islams and Modernities.

To really drive home the point, al-Azmeh uses the analogy of Christian studies.  Imagine if French Catholics, the Westboro Baptist Church and Ethiopian Copts were all described as being essentially the same.  That is, wouldn’t we think it absurd to say these different groups are local permutations of the same “pure” Christian culture?  Of course we would.  The same, argues al-Azmeh, is the case for Islamic culture.  Thus, to view Islam as fundamentally different to Christianity in this regard is an orientalism.

Would he have said the same for Jewish studies?

He doesn’t address this, but I’d hazard a guess that he wouldn’t.  That’s because, unlike the proselytizing religions of Christianity and Islam, most branches of Judaism are ethnoreligious.  That is, the religion remains largely within the bounds of one ethnicity or culture.  As such, it wouldn’t be wrong to speak of Jewish culture.

Well, what about our friend’s comment?  Are they wrong then?

First things first, there’s no such thing as “wrong” when it comes to question of identification.  We returned to the subject after the interview (as I didn’t want to bias any responses).  I explained al-Azmeh’s argument and they found it largely convincing.  They went on to clarify that this identification with Islamic culture could perhaps be better understood as a sort of solidarity with other Muslims.  At risk of putting words in their mouth, this identification with “Islamic culture” may stem from a recognition of the shared experience of being a Muslim in an often Islamophobic country.

That seems reasonable enough.  What about this other response you mentioned?

Keeping me to it!  The other response is not so much a response as it is a mode of response.  In the first instance of this, I had asked them to explain a jinn to me as though I were 5.  They started to explain how jinn can die when they stopped, paused for a moment, and then said that that “didn’t feel right”.  This repeated again later during the verbal Rorschach.  I asked them if they associated the jinn with any of the classical elements.  Within the sunnah, there isn’t anything to suggest connotations of the elements with jinn (save from their creation from “smokeless fire”).  Nonetheless, they responded that they felt there was an association between the jinn and the elements even though they “knew that wasn’t right” (slight paraphrase).  Upon further reflection, they noted how this association of jinn with the elements was likely due to American media.

What seems to be going on here, to use a bit of a morbid turn-of-phrase, is two trains of thought colliding.  In both cases, the normal procession of thought was interrupted by “wait, that’s not right”.  Notably, the “wait, that’s not right” isn’t just self-correcting their quranic knowledge, as they noted the idea of jinn dying (which features in the sunnah) didn’t “feel right”.  The two thought processes are essentially in contradiction.

Two trains of thought…

Yes, as you might be suspecting, this seems to fit within the postmodernist perspective on cross-cultural intelligibility, especially when you consider their background.  That is, due to their American and Pakistani upbringing, they have two cultural logics playing at the same time.  And when those two logics come into contradiction, you have this phenomenon of a thought “not feeling right”, even when it was one’s own thought!  Within the modernist perspective, this phenomenon of two colliding cultural logics defies explanation, as both cultural logics should be based on universal human rationality (and thus consistent with each other).  All in all, the postmodernist perspective on cross-cultural intelligibility seems stronger in this case.

So, are you saying you’ve solved a major dispute in anthropology?

Let me tell you, if I’d solved a major academic dispute, I’d’ve retired by now and been sipping Long Island iced teas on the beach!  No, I’m certainly not saying I’ve solved the dispute, just pointing out one situation that seems to favour the postmodernist perspective.  At the end of the day, I straddle the two camps.  Like the modernists, I expect that there’s a baseline of rationality shared among all cultures, however thin that shared rationality may be.  On the other hand, I find it hard to disagree with the postmodernist perspective that there are some cultural ideas or practices that can only be understood in their own cultural terms.  It’s a cliché to say the answer’s probably somewhere in the middle, but that’s where I stand.

How do you want to wrap this up then?  Seeing as you came out “somewhere in the middle”?

Questions surrounding the idea of culture are always going to have somewhat unclear answers.  This is a natural consequence of the idea itself; culture is a much more fuzzy, contingent concept than we often assume.  The boundaries are seldom clear and membership is frequently contested.  But these factors don’t make the consequences of our understanding of culture any less significant.  Culture is relevant to every aspect of our lives; it informs our social lives, politics, art, and much more!  And given such high-stakes, these questions will remain one that require deeper consideration and great precision in language.  While the temptation to rely on intuitive understandings of culture may be great, the consequences are too high to not interrogate our understanding of culture further.