Reimagining Mobit - The Legitimization of Japanese Payday Loans

A few years back I wrote about Japanese payday loans HERE. At the time, I noted how discourses of gender were marshalled to appeal to men and women in need of high-interest low-oversight finances to support their bourgeoise dreams.

Since then, there has been a huge development in the payday loan landscape. The company Mobit, whose ads I analyzed before, has merged with Sumitomo Bank (SMBC), Japan's third largest bank and where I put my savings. This change that has resulted in a rethinking of their ad campaign, which is all the more evident due to using the same actors in different ways. Gone is the overt sexuality of actress Natsuna's clothing, as is the chic fashion of Naoto Takenaka, and the implied narratives of May-December romance / sugardaddying these ads contained.

Instead, we see both actors clad in the green blazer of SMBC, the uniformity of their clothing effectuating a democratization of roles and relations, as well as a reduction of sexualized narratives. In fact, the only nod to gender is Takenaka's neck tie and Natsuna's open neck shirt, which still implies the common Japanese office relation of older male superior and younger female OL (office lady, or menial worker there half for labour, half to get married to young male employees).

This use of uniforms also repositions both figures from mysterious characters in their own stories to employees in the service of SMBC customers. The flowers floating around both actors represent the bouquets traditionally placed in front of Japanese shops or businesses to celebrate their opening, and thus signal that SMBC Mobit loans are open for business in helping clients realize their modest financial dreams.

Finally, whereas previous Mobit ads focused on the characters and images of their implied narrative, the SMBC Mobit ad also features an offer of 3900 bonus T-point card points for customers who clear the conditions for taking out a loan. This signals a change in target market as well, from the desperately dreaming borrowers of previous ads to more responsible bank clients, who count up bonus points whenever they buy everyday goods and groceries.

All this serves to legitimize payday loans, once shady organizations called 'sarakin' (or 'salaryman money', mostly indicating personal loans at high interest taken out by working men or housewives). The excessive repayment demands of sarakin companies incited the Japanese government in 2002 to empower paralegals to start legal actions against excessive loan payments, and for years Japanese TV and public transit were blanketed with ads for legal help clawing back money from excessive loan repayments. This was reflected in popular culture in manga about high interest loan companies, such as Naniwa Monogatari, Manami no Teiou, and the most recent and ruthless depiction of unscrupulous loan agencies, Yamikin no Ushijimakun.

All these developments all cast payday loans in a very unflattering light, and thus mergers with respectable financial institutions have become the norm. In this way, high interest loan agencies have acquired a sheen of respectability, and re-legitimized the entrenched cultural practice of acquiring Shakkin (借金 or borrowed money) that features heavily in Japanese classical theatre, popular culture, and daily life.

Sources

'Sarakin'. Definition from Goo.ne.jp.
https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/jn/89531/meaning/m0u/

On Scorsese's "Silence"

I just watched Scorsese's Silence in a theatre in Japan. It was in the original English but with Japanese subtitles. It is the tale of two Portuguese priests (portrayed by Spiderman's Andrew Garfield and Kylo Ren actor Adam Driver) who travel to Nagasaki in a time of religious persecution to find their mentor priest (Liam Neelson), who is ex cummunicado but is rumoured to have gone apostate.

As such, it is basically Apocalypse Now (or Heart of Darkness if you prefer) for Christians, and has much of the same discourses evident.

First, there are the graphic images of violence, much like those in the Vietnam or African scenes of the oeuvres above. People are crucified, showered with boiling water, drowned, beheaded, and hung upside down in pits to bleed dry. In the religious context of the film, it constitutes the Christian torture porn of Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ and thousands of years of Christian imagery. The cathartic violence of Christian imagery has served as both titillation and a badge of shared identity since its inception. This visceral violence fits perfectly with the Japanese antagonists, samurai who are as sadistic as the depictions of bushido in Nanjo Norio's classic novel Shigurui (Crazy for Death). Indeed, viewers of Silence are treated to fervent foreign priests, pious Japanese peasants, and two-faced samurai who are all equally 'crazy for death.'  The largely male nature of the cast also adds a masochistic homoerotic tinge, equal parts Yukio Mishima disembowelling himself and the twelve disciples washing and kissing each other's feet. The inquisitor Inoue and his lackeys top this off with their simpering, overacted sadism, which validates Nanjo's assertion that bushido was only possible in a society constructed of a mass of masochists at bottom and a few sadists at top.

Next, Japan and the Japanese themselves constitute the jungle of civilized savages that has made up much of their depiction by westerners. Besides being all 'crazy for death', they are depicted as inscrutable when Garfield's priest describes their faces as 'masks', a common trope Ian Littlewood (1994) has explored deeply. They are also portrayed as inhuman, unfeeling of fear of death, or pain, unlike the priests who agonize over these threats. This is a clear discourse of western cultural superiority, a humanity the Japanese lack because of their misunderstanding of the religion that supposedly is the fertile soil of its growth. Indeed, the inquisitor Inoue calls Japan a 'swamp' in which the seed of Christianity rots, again echoing the jungle image of Apocalypse Now or Heart of Darkness. As such, the film recreates the battle of the conflicting discourses of bushido's physical hegemony and Christianity's spiritual hegemony. Although these are depicted by the inquisitor Inoue as a clash of civilizations or cultures, in truth they are also a naked power play for the body as well as the soul of Japan by means of dominating the bodies and souls of Christians there. Inoue's offer of life to those who renounce Christ by stepping on his image is thus a reverse Pascal's Wager, asking why not say you don't believe if their is no punishment, rather the end of suffering?

I haven't read Endo Shusaku's original novel, but I have read his novel Samurai, which is almost the inverse tale of samurais traveling to South America and finding faith in Christianity there. Samurai was a nuanced work, with Christianity serving as the only option in a world of dominance and suffering by the enforced karma of Japan's vertical feudal society. Silence has much of the same themes, but by putting westerners at the centre it robs Japanese of agency, and thus both their sadism and piety are rendered meaningless. The final shot of the film, which shows the final, inner victory of Christianity, also seems hollow as this victory was only possible by the white male's painless sacrifice of apostasy and becoming a member of the Japanese hierarchy, and not the sacrifices of the many Japanese who gave their lives for a foreign god.

Sources

Littlewood, Ian (1994) The Image of Japan. London: Seeker & Warburg.

Nanjo, Norio. (2012). Shigurui 1. Tokyo: Akita Bunko.

Looking at 'Die Japan'

[draft]

Today I’ll be taking a look at an infamous blog post in Japan, entitled “Preschool Failure, Die Japan!”

The post appeared February 15^th, in the season in which Japanese mothers search for schools to put their children for April start. It was brought up in government debates, but dismissed by PM Abe as an anonymous and unreliable source. This was met with protests of Japanese wearing signs saying “It was me!” expressing solidarity with the original poster. The Abe regime responded by launching a new day care plan and providing new funding, which was a factor in Japan’s largest postwar budget, despite poor economic performance.

Currently, I identify three ‘debates’ that dominate Japanese public discourse, as is evident by their appearance in media and public protests. There is the nuclear power discourse, in Japanese datsu-genpatsu (脱原発) involving such issues as government response to the Fukushima disaster, as well as Japanese use of nuclear issues. Second, there is the ‘Militarizing Japan’ discourse, centered around kennpo-kaizenn (憲法改善), which would allow collective self-defense and increase Japan’s role in foreign peace-keeping missions for the UN. Last, is the problem of what officials call Japan’s Aging Society Issue, or shoushika-mondai 少子化問題. Although the government uses this term from its viewpoint of having to pay for an increasing number of retirees with less tax income from working age people due to decline in births, the flip side of this is the popular discourse of lack of support for child-bearing families specifically, including lack of daycare, lack of support for mothers returning to the workforce, and virtual non-existence of paternity leave or support., This latter problem and its entailed viewpoint is the stance of the ‘Die Japan’ poster.

Yet neither of the previous two discourses have attained the change of the latter. First, both issues are too broad for popular support. The nuclear discourse especially stretches from Fukushima response to waste disposal, nuclear power regulation, and allowing US nuclear weapons into Japan. Next, both issues require specialist knowledge, which prevents many Japanese from commenting on them. Finally, both are separate from daily life for many Japanese, and thus are beyond topic of discussion. In this way, in the debates on nuclear power and Japanese military, the official discourse is dominant, and no organized or effective opposition can be raised against the status quo. This is not the case with the third debate, where the government discourse of supporting women is contradicted by the everyday experience of many Japanese, as the protests inspired by 'Die Japan' indicate.

In other words, ‘Die Japan’ is part of an anti-discourse, challenging and contesting the official discourse of adequate government support for women returning to work. There have been other responses to this problem, such as the appearance of companies that allow daycare on site, allow flexible working hours, and the rise of ikumen（育メン）or men who step outside the traditional work role to take a greater part in raising children. Although CDA is generally used to analyze official texts for examples of strategic domination, it works equally well for uncovering how anti-discourses challenge existing domination, and this is how I will use it to unpack ‘Die Japan.’

The ‘Die Japan!’ post is a polemic, a frenetic mix of tough talk and political rhetoric. Government ‘buzzwords’ from the Abe plans are thrown back at politicians, as well as their own scandals. In terms of genre, it is best classified as guchi 　(愚痴)、best translated as 'grumbling.' This is a uniquely Japanese form of communication, in which the calmness and objectivity that characterizes discussion which might be termed 'hot debate' in other cultures is utterly dropped in favour of a no-holds barred critique of the object. This critique is based on the subject's bitter personal experience and wry observation or even mocking of the object's discourse. 'Guchi' is usually limited to family or personal acquaintances. It is thus the very antithesis of the studied and serene speeches of PM Abe, both in tone and substance.

A word about genre of social messaging is also relevant here.

Invisible Dress Codes

Please excuse the lateness of this post, but I am just recovered from a tsunami of work duties, PhD writing deadlines, and personal dramas.

Today, I’d like to sharpen my CDA skills on a simple question that I have been asked many times as an ESL instructor at a Japanese university:

“Are you going to teach class dressed like that?”

To the best I can recall, I have been asked this at least 3 to 4 times a semester for the past six years, thus between 18 to 24 times. Of these, only one incident came from a professor, the rest from fellow foreign ESL instructors. They have all happened in the morning when I arrive at work dressed in street clothes due to the sweaty, dirty nature of commuting in Japan, especially in summer. I keep clean, conservative teaching attire in my locker and change into it before starting classes.

After my objection to the question, most interlocutors defensively define the genre of their question as a ribbing joke, but their jab at humour is only pretense. The non-professor questioners have what could be described as ‘gleaming’ eyes, while the intonation is one of a markedly rising pitch. Both these body and vocal signs indicate that a certain pleasure is being taken merely from asking the question itself, not observing any reaction to a punchline indicative of humour, thus further defining it as a different genre. The one Japanese professor who asked this question lacked any of these signs, but was instead marked by a calm voice expressing concern and then relief upon the answer, and thus is excluded from further consideration.

The significant social fact is that all interluctors are of the same professional rank as myself – ESL instructor in Japan. This is a doubly precarious social identity, since ESL academics in Japan are rarely considered ‘real’ educators by academics in other fields, and also because many stay at the full or part time teaching level without ever completing a PhD. They thus have no hope of becoming a professor except in extreme circumstances of having inside help or moving to the countryside where rural institutions are more lax regarding credentials. Add to that recent changes in labour laws limiting instructors to 5 year contracts and reducing benefits and the desperation that births this sort of social jockeying becomes evident.

The main element of the utterance is the juxtaposition of‘the verb 'teach’ and the pronoun ‘that’. Teaching in Japan has the double cachet of respect traditionally afforded to the title of ‘sensei’, while MA-holding foreign university ESL teachers often consider themselves superior to the rank-and-file educators with bachelor degrees teaching in conversation schools across the country. Alternately, the use of the pronoun marks street dress as unmentionable, an alien ‘other’ unfit for the university environment. Ironically, there are non-accredited, 'scab' ESL teachers at my workplace who are forced to wear suits, in other words conform to a stricter dress code than the MA-holding contracted foreign teachers. This irony testifies to the greater social conformity exerted upon workers in relation to the precariousness of their position.

Coming from contracted, accredited foreign ESL faculty, the question itself is a form of self-policing, wherein university employees with little job security or authority attempt to exercise symbolic authority over a fellow by commenting on their violation of an implicit dress code. The fact that no code exists allows the presumption to occur, and also facilitates backpedalling when the interlocutor is confronted. As Bourdieu (1991) explains, this type of self-policing is common among the petit-Bourgeoisie attempting to accumulate social capital to make up for their lack of capital and thus power in other respects.

The fact that almost no professors ask the question implies that they are secure in their social capital and thus have no need for such strategies, although loyalty for the employer would explain the rare instance of questioning from a Japanese professor.

One can expect such strategies and gaming of social reality to increase as the precariousness of the ESL or ‘false’ academic increases in Japan along with worsening economic conditions and a rethinking of the necessity and even utility of English education here.

PS: I should note that since moving to a university with less standing, these questions have ceased, and I have even been suggested to dress more casually in accordance with other instructors.

Bourdieu, Pierre. (1991) Language & Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Finding Takeshi's Satisfaction

Whereas my first analysis started with a charged social problem as presented in a small text, for this next exercise I’d like to look at a longer text without any explicit social problems and tease out both its discursive structures as well as any social issues implicated by them.

I have chosen the ‘Satisfaction’ advertising campaign by ECC, a large English conversation teaching company or ‘eikaiwa’ here in Japan. Web and television versions of its current campaign star Takeshi Kitano, world-famous actor, director, comedian and artist.

It is first necessary to explain the context of English conversation teaching or ‘eikaiwa’ here in Japan. Eikaiwas in Japan are generally non-accredited teaching classrooms where Japanese people come and take lessons in mostly English conversation from mostly unlicensed foreign teachers, usually young people living and working in Japan for a short time. The instruction at eikaiwas is thus largely ‘casual’, with a lack of testing or evaluation, syllabuses, curriculum, or any other trappings of an institutional setting. Tiny local eikaiwas often run by a foreign husband-Japanese wife pair dot the land, while large corporate eikaiwas such as Nova, Geos, and Aeon dominated the casual English teaching scene in the 1980s and 1990s with prominently displayed  ‘ekimae’ classrooms close to most rail stations, so as to be convenient for workers and students. The embezzlement scandal that rocked Nova in the early 2000s began a period of lower profile for these three heavyweight eikaiwas, which are still popular but not as ubiquitous as before. Conversely, ECC has recently taken a larger profile, with advertisements on TV and in trains. ECC previously specialized in children’s English classes as taught in local spaces such as houses or community centers taught by housewives looking for extra income or to use English skills acquired in their youth, but has now branched out to business and adult lessons while relegating child classes to the ECC junior brand.

Since this ad campaign depends largely on visuals, I start my analysis with them. Color is a major element in marketing considerations, and the Satisfaction campaign is marked by the use of a neon pink textbox on white background colorscheme. This is a change from the previous ECC Beat Taheshi campaign that used a scarlet background with gold piping, which held an aura of respectability. The neon pink of the ‘Satisfaction’ campaign, by contrast, is redolent of spontaneity and creativity, allowing the customer to feel their choice of ECC marks them as such.

The screenshot above is taken from ECC's main webpage, and presents the dominant themes of the campaign, as well as their inherent contradictions. On the left are four foreigners, smiling and  besuited, tokens of both the 'fun' often associated with English  ‘eikaiwa’ classes as well as the professionalism denoted by their attire. Although ECC classes may be as fun as any other eikaiwa, their professionalism is just as suspect. A link on the ECC website to its '6 Deciding Factors' (ＥＣＣの６つのこだわり）　begins with its claim of stringent background checks, which is belied by the detail that foreign teachers must have a 4 year university degree, but not any teaching experience or credentials.

In terms of genre, the campaign is not just a simple advertisement, but features the informative or didactive theme of survey results. This touch of ‘scientificity’ adds legitimacy to the ad’s claims, although the objectivity and validity are questionable considering that the agency performing the survey is a for-pay market research company and not an academic organization. The survey is notable for its supposed anonymity, although the use of pseudonyms for rival schools (School A, School B etc) also calls its results into question in terms of transparency.

There are number of claims made through keywords in the main statement for the Satisfaction ad campaign, supposedly, which is found on the ECC main homepage at www.ecc.jp. It is as follows:

英会話学校を選ぶなら、満足度で選ぼう。

プロの教師のもと、楽しく学べるレッスンの雰囲気。

通いやすくて、続きやすい充実のサポート体制。

すべての人に、英語の満足を。

はじめなら、ＥＣＣです。

http://www.ecc.jp/

If you’re choosing an English conversation school, choose for satisfaction.

Learn from a professional teacher, in an atmosphere of fun learning.

Easy to come to, easy to continue, with a complete support system.

The satisfaction of English for all people.

If you’re starting out, it is ECC. (my translation)

The keywords of ‘conversation’, ‘satisfaction’, ‘professional’, ‘atmosphere’, ‘fun’, ‘easy’, ‘support’, and ‘all people’ stand out and define the discourse, as do their ambiguities. First, ECC is a ‘conversation school’, thus ‘satisfaction’ is a natural aim of its discourse instead of the results and accreditation marking the discourse of schools in the education system. For precisely this reason there is no mention of results, credentials, etc, and thus it is marked as a discourse of ‘edutainment’ characteristic of eikaiwas.

Second, the mention of ‘professional’ is a claim of legitimation, despite the lack of any mention of credentials for either students or teachers. As mentioned above, ECC teachers are not required to have any pedagogic credentials or experience. The concomitant claim of ‘support’ is similarly a claim of an organizational status ECC does not have

Next, the claim of ‘atmosphere’ is ironic considering that ECC was outperformed by School E in two categories of the survey concerning this keyword, namely Quality of Instructor Atmosphere (講師の雰囲気の良さ) and Quality of School Atmosphere (学校の雰囲気の良さ). Ironically, the use of the term ‘instructor’ (講師), which is usually reserved in Japanese education discourse for university instructors, mark yet another implicit claim to educational institutional status that ECC and other conversation schools do not deserve. Similarly, the very use of the term ‘school’ （学校）to describe ECC is a calculated misnomer, as businesses of its kind are usually referred to by the term ‘English conversation classrooms’ (英会話教室), and thus another claim of institutional status it does not hold.

Moving on to the terms ‘fun’ and ‘easy’, they hearken back to the ads of the big three ekimae eikaiwa of the past, as mentioned above, and thus are an attempt to capitalize on their popular appeal. This contrasts with the claim of being ‘for all people’, which is simultaneously an appeal for new students, as well as a statement that ECC lessons no longer for kids, as implied by the aforementioned usage of the brand name ‘ECC junior’ to differentiate between children and adult lessons.

Although on the surface this ad campaign may have little to do with social issues, the Japanese public discourse of English as opportunity and English as threat noted by Seargeant (2011) is well in evidence, and has a lot to say about the conception and valuation of foreign labour in Japan. Besides Mr. Takeshi, all actors are smiling be-suited Caucasian males and females, who both iterate the native fallacy and the definition of welcoming white foreigner. The ‘native fallacy’ is the belief that only a native English speaker can impart speakable English to Japanese, a form of fetishization that stems from the school system where foreigners are found teaching English and most kids sleep through classes, preferring to get their English from Japanese teachers at juku, or cram schools that aim to help them pass the entrance exam of the high school or university of their choice. In both these cases, fluency is far from the aim or result. The addition of the prominent ‘white gaijin’ or foreigner underlines the conception of English as a ‘first world’ language, at once both accessible to the Japanese yet denied to Filipino, Indians and other ‘brown gaijin’ who have a harder time of working as English teachers despite their fluency with the language.

References

Seargeant, Phillip. (2011). English in Japan in the Era of Globalization. Palgrave.

NOTE: This analysis took longer than expected, so I will simply mark the paper reference here and add internet links at a later date when I am free.

Guns Don't Kill, Circular Logic Kills

I had intended a longer text for my inaugural analysis, but seeing as starting small is probably the best thing to develop my analytical skills, as well as the only scale my busy life will allow, I’ve decided to start with one phrase:

“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”

This seems a timely subject in light of the shootings in Santa Barbara and Las Vegas and on and on ad nauseum, as well as one rife with power dynamics and semiotic significance that seem perfect for a Critical Discourse Analysis.

First of all, what is the context and genre of the utterance? A lengthy web search indicates that the phrase is an unofficial National Rifle Association slogan, used primarily by pro-gun supporters in the US whenever a new massacre occurs and public sentiment turns towards the so-called ‘liberal agenda’ of restricting or regulating firearms. It is thus normalized and disseminated popularly in right wing camps to provide justification for keeping power in the hands of individual gun owners, while indirectly benefiting the gun industry and lobbies such as the NRA. As such, it can be seen as a tool of hegemonic struggle, specifically to keep the gun industry and right wing power nexus on top by appealing to individual gun owners on the grounds of keeping their freedoms. This linking of individual freedom and corporate or elite benefit is a defining feature of US right wing public discourse, as evidenced in the domination of US economic discourse by Neoliberalism, and is a structure that has come to dominant American discourse in toto.

Next, what are the syntactic and semantic features of the utterance? The first proposition, “guns don’t kill people”, by using the inanimate ‘guns’ as the subject, takes agency away from people and thus depicts gun deaths as blameless and unavoidable affairs. The stripping away of all identifying particles such as articles and inflections like verb tense, while retaining the universal plurals of ‘people’ and ‘guns’, creates a ring of truism about the phrase. By pairing this first proposition with the second tautological clause, “people kill people”, the idea of the unavoidable violence of human nature is reinforced and opposition silenced. The normalizing ‘common sense’ nature of the utterance’s grammar is precisely the kind of blindingly irrefutable shared logic warned of by Gramsci.

Of course the two propositions together constitute a false equivalence – no one is saying that guns rise up magically and kill people, but that their easy access leads to greater gun crime and deaths. This is borne out by statistics ,

(http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2012/12/gun_death_tally_every_american_gun_death_since_newtown_sandy_hook_shooting.html), but such facts have no place in this type of discourse. This simplified equivalence also ignores the material effect of guns in accelerating death – people may kill people, but may also kill many more in a shorter time with automatic weapons. All these details are brushed aside in the mesmerizingly clean circular logic of the phrase “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”

The most pernicious facet of this utterance is that the listener has to admit the first proposition to a certain degree before the second is delivered. It is in this ambiguity linking the two propositions that the utterance as a whole gains discursive power. Once you admit, “Yes, guns don’t kill people by themselves…” the remainder of the phrase is driven home by the binary relation between the first and second propositions, and the false equivalency slips in and derails dialogue. Any chance to debate the details left out of the utterance (“Guns by themselves,” “Automatic guns,”) are swept aside in the overwhelming perlocutionary force of the phrase.

One irony to note here is that the slogan stands for an unregulated access to guns which is the exact opposite of the supposed origin of the phrase as spoken by head of the Colt Patent Fire Arms Co.  President Fred Roff is supposed to have said, "Our big concern is to make sure that guns get into the hands of only those who know how to use them. Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” Considering the recent history of NRA opposition to background checks, waiting periods and other forms of gun registry and regulation, the volte face in discourse is extreme and indicates an almost Neoliberal valuation of market forces appealing to individual freedom over concern for social costs or welfare.

What about creation and reception of the phrase? It’s existence as a ‘bumper sticker’ slogan of gun owners without any attribution to one speaker reveals the popular appeal to common logic that mark discourse about cultural norms such as gun ownership in the US. Even the speeches of politicians and pundits in the gun debate pale in comparison to the illocution and force of this pro-gun bumper sticker, which is understandable in light of the difficulty of making memorable utterances about such ‘hot button’ topics while not offending voter and industry demographics. As for reception, the aforementioned enforced necessity of acknowledging the first half of the phrase renders opposition weak and ineffective, which implies the inability of liberal or anti-gun forces to marshal an equally forceful response or slogan.

“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” allows gun supporters to feel satisfied within their bubble of rhetoric masquerading as logical thought, while creating unease and frustration among gun opponents, who have not been able to satisfactorily pierce the ‘logic’ of the slogan with concise or forceful objections. The way in which the phrase shuts down opposition to and dialog with the dominant party about redistribution of power or reordering of the status quo is an example of the silencing defensive strategy identified generally by Pierre Bourdieu, and specifically in terms of Neoliberal Discourse by David Harvey

This was my first practice CDA. It is rough and weak, but like any exercise program I intend to make it the first step on a long journey to strengthening my analytic skills. If you have any comments or suggestions, leave them below. Please note that I will not be discussing the gun debate nor responding to any comments that try to.