Nihon brainwash

More mutated, hypertrophied idiot-savantism from the Galapagos of the advertising world, Japan (see also Kawaii terror). The examples below have an added level of mind mangling daftness because OCD Youtube mentalists have taken it upon themselves to collate (or curate?) them in an almost anthropological manner.

First of all, backwards time travel in terms of Pretz advertising, i.e. apparently starting with the most recent, most sane, and therefore most dull. Eventually we reach the first and arguably most demented Ur-Pretz song and dance at about 2:16. Commercial Zero, if you like.

Pretz are, as the name may or may not suggest to you, a brand of vaguely pretzel-like Japanese snacks. Japan likes your pretzels and therefore we will have them, but silly gaijin didn’t you know they could be improved by being made perfectly straight and flawlessly cylindrical instead of looking like actual food?

Beautiful Spam II

"Obtain the eye." (Photograph ©Alistair Gentry)

[NOTE: The beautiful Sino-Japanese spambot narrative pasted below was received as a spam comment on my post about Philip K Dick and ‘The Man in the High Castle’, Wu Wei Wu. As with all great art, I think we can all relate in one way or another to this barely coherent story of a Kyoto ingénue who just wants to buy cheap silver jewellery from the internet, but gets caught up with the Yamaguchi-gumi yakuza (to whom she is evidently related), Russian mafiya, arranged marriages and some strange eugenic plot coming to fruition on an offshore gambling haven masquerading as a cruise ship: why is the maid described as “homozygous”? Why must Mieko determine who is a “decent jerk zygote”? It’s like an extract from the novel we might imagine William Gibson writing if he’d suffered some kind of massive brain injury and partially forgot how to speak English. Spelling corrected, spam links to buy crap from dodgy jewellery dealers redacted. Sorry.]

Wei Wu Wei-Action Without Action

"... balance between the object's permanence and impermanence." (Photography ©Alistair Gentry)

“It does not have wabi, Paul said, nor could it ever. But- He touched the pin with his nail. Robert, this object has wu.

I believe you are right, Childan said, trying to recall what wu was; it was not a Japanese word- it was Chinese. Wisdom, he decided. Or comprehension. Anyhow, it was highly good

The hands of the artificer, Paul said, had wu, and allowed that wu to flow into this piece. Possibly he himself knows only that this piece satisfies. It is complete, Robert. By contemplating it, we gain more wu ourselves. We experience the tranquillity associated not with art but with holy things. I recall a shrine in Hiroshima wherein a shinbone of some medieval saint could be examined. However, this is an artefact and that was a relic. This is alive in the now, whereas that merely remained…“

“...to have no historicity, and also no artistic, aesthetic worth, and yet to partake of some ethereal value- that is a marvel…“

“…here, an artificer has put wu into the object, rather than merely witnessed the wu inherent in it... an entire new world is pointed to, by this.“

From ‘The Man in the High Castle‘ by Philip K. Dick, 1962.

I recently re-read this book, one of my favourites among PKD’s prodigious catalogue of intensely intelligent, thought provoking and, yes, readable works. A fine example of how a great book keeps on giving you more every time you return is the fact that I’d never before been struck by the philosophy of art expressed by the character quoted above.  The novel takes place in the early Sixties in California, but after it’s been bombed and then occupied by the Japanese following an Axis triumph over the Allied powers during WWII. The Nazis occupy the Eastern seaboard of the country formerly known as the USA, and of course they have subjugated Russia and Western Europe, completing the Holocaust and moving on to repeat it in Africa. Robert Childan is a dealer in the authentic memorabilia associated with the now dead Western consumerist culture, which enjoys huge popularity with the Japanese conquerors who are now the cultural and political elite of Asia and the Pacific.