What I done found in Japan
Japan, the most remote and inaccessible of all Asian cultures. Thousands of years of solitude followed the forced embracing of western culture at the hands of the Americans has turned this country into a treasure-house of obscure and hermetic beliefs and values whilst at the same time a paradigm for all that we know about the overpowering lustre of capitalism.
The Japanese people exhibit an almost overbearing obsession with progress and consumption of the new both of which thrive hand in hand with a deep respect for the ancient traditions of zen and animist Shinto. It was to this strange and magical group of islands that Ishmael Fred began his now historic study into how the young Japanese identify, adopt and assimilate foreign subcultures into their own youth culture.
"My first and most profound impressions were of a people densely homogenous whilst at the same time exhibiting desperate signs to project themselves as radically different. It was how they utilised technology develop this individuality that interested me the most."
Everyone has seen pictures of young Japanese at Yoyogi Park dressed as Mods, Rockers or even Goths, all adapted from a very particular Western look, but in fact this is merely scratching the surface. What Ishmael Fred set out to do was to prove the extent to which the average young Japanese will go to find a new identity. His findings illustrated just this.
"Almost nothing on the web remains in shadow as the search light of Japan's youth sweeps back and forth ever ready to highlight an attractive new persona or trend."
Reinforcing early American anthropological studies of the Japanese by Ruth Benedict, Ishmael Fred went on to show that if young Japanese cannot imitate the looks or behaviour of a new and attractive sub-group they will at least attempt to align themselves with this group, seeking affiliation with an entity they obviously regard as superior in many ways.
As a controlled experiment Ishmael Fred placed cards at various public locations for a period of seven days. These cards read 'Fred', 'Herman' and 'Otto'.
Both Fred and Herman are groups known to exist in an obscure web-site known as Belmsford which only extensive research can gain access to. Otto was a meaningless control element. As is commonly known to the virtual inhabitants of Belmsford, Fred represents all that is excellent and virtuous about humanity whereas Herman is the antithesis of this a word that functions only to engender feelings of disgust and loathing in all those who come across it.
After seven days of card distribution young Japanese were stopped at random locations and given paper and marker pens and asked to write the first message that came into their heads. Whilst Ishmael Fred asked this task of them his beautiful young assistant whispered the words Fred, Herman and Otto just once in the respondent's general direction.
Ishmael Fred's startlingly photo essay, which follows, shows not only how rapidly young Japanese use technology in response to new stimuli, but also how deeply they can evaluate complex new information and how accurately they can evaluate an a totally foreign and unfamiliar culture prior to making a decision about social alignment.
