Japan in Singapore
The subject of Japan beyond Japan has been increasingly explored by ethnographers in recent years; this book adds Singapore to the list of world cities whose Japanese presence is examined and debated. While the book does not fully do justice to its topic - there are too many areas not touched upon for this reader to feel satisfied that he has been given a full understanding of Japan in Singapore - the book's chapters are of high quality: the book is well worth reading.
* By GORDON MATHEWS
The first chapter of the book, by John Clammer and Eyal Ben-Ari, examines Japan's presence in Southeast Asia as a whole. This analysis is essential reading for anyone seeking to study Japanese-Southeast Asian cultural interchanges; it does not, however, serve as a sufficient introduction to this book. Singapore is, in many respects, particularly in its affluence, distinctly different from its Southeast Asian neighbours; given the subject of the book, an introductory chapter on Singapore in its relationship with Japan would have been welcome. The second chapter, by Eyal Ben-Ari, explores the cognitive schemas of Japanese businessmen in Singapore; this analysis is innovative in its approach but hardly surprising in its findings, which show that Japan is the dominant reality of these men's lives, with Singapore but a shadowy overseas background. The third chapter, by Thomas Stanley, explores how Japan has served as an economic model for Singapore. This chapter is fascinating in its account of the governmental attempt in Singapore to shape society along Japanese lines, and the socio-cultural difficulties of such an attempt. However, this chapter, like many in this book, is flawed by its age: I would like to know more about how, after its disastrous 'lost decade' of the 1990s, Japan measures up in Singapore today, as a model not just to be emulated but also avoided.
The
word Singapore in English, Chinese, and Japanese script.
The fourth chapter, by Ben-Ari and Yong Yin Fong, discusses 'twice-marginalized' single, female Japanese expatriates in Singapore, who are accepted neither by Japanese salarymen snug in their corporate worlds, nor by Singaporeans; these women's words exude considerable pathos. The fifth chapter, by Mien Woon Ng and Ben-Ari, on a Japanese bookstore in Singapore, explores the daily misunderstandings and mutual incomprehension of Japanese and Singaporeans in the workplace. This is the only chapter in which the reader directly encounters Japanese and Singaporeans interacting with one another 'on the ground,' and is in my reading the book's most interesting. The sixth chapter, by Chua Beng Huat, discusses Japanese cultural influences in Singapore. This book's dust jacket proclaims the 'increasingly visible cultural presence' of Japan in Singapore, but Huat flatly denies this: 'Japanese cultural influence on Singaporeans is minimal' (p. 147), 'there is no significan "Japanese-ness" in...Singaporean consumer culture' (p. 134).
The book's seventh chapter, by Ben-Ari, explores the recreational pursuits of Japanese business executives in Singapore. Like some of his earlier chapters, the dominant impression left by this chapter is that these Japanese lead lives largely similar to their counterparts in Naha or Fukuoka or other provincial Japanese cities. The book's final two chapters explore a neglected topic in accounts of Japan overseas: Japanese religion. Clammer's Chapter Eight deals with Soka Gakkai in Singapore, which illustrates a process of 'protestantization,' whereby Japanese '"papal"...centralization' is broken (p. 193), and the religion may become more autonomous in its own local light. Tenrikyo, the subject of the book's final chapter, has only the most precarious foothold in Singapore, shunned by almost all Singaporeans and by most Japanese. But it is significant, Tina Hamrin argues, in that it represents an attempt to expiate Japanese wartime 'bad karma' through social welfare activities in a foreign land.
A dominant impression of this book is that it might just as easily have been entitled Japan Not in Singapore, in that the Japanese portrayed in the book generally seem to lead remarkably culturally contained lives, as so too do the Singaporeans. Singaporeans hardly appear in this book, except in chapters five and six. The Japanese and Singaporeans in this book appear to lead parallel lives that rarely, if ever, meet. This seems to reflect the empirical reality of much Japanese life beyond Japan; however, it also reflects a weakness of this book, in that so much has been left out. How do the range of Singaporeans view Japan, given the schizophrenia of Japan's dark militarism in the twentieth century and its bright cultural invasion of the present? How do Japanese in Singapore today view Singapore: simply as an 'immature little brother,' or perhaps as a society that, in some sense, has preserved the virtues that Japan recently may seem to have lost? Such broad questions are not directly addressed in this book. The different chapters, on their own merits, are excellent; I have already recommended chapters to my students and colleagues. Yet, the book as a whole does not add up to a coherent portrait of Japan in Singapore: its parts are greater than its sum. *
- Ben-Ari, Eyal and and John Clammer (eds), Japan in Singapore: Cultural Occurrences and Cultural Flows, Richmond: Curzon (2000), 238 pp,
ISBN 0-7007-1245-3.
Professor Gordon Mathews is associate professor of anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
E-mail: cmgordon@cuhk.edu.hk