This article was downloaded by: [Daliot-Bul, Michal] On: 6 September 2008 Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 902174059] Publisher Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Cultural Studies Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713684873 ASOBI IN ACTION Michal Daliot-Bul First Published on: 05 September 2008 To cite this Article Daliot-Bul, Michal(2008)'ASOBI IN ACTION',Cultural Studies, To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/09502380802326678 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09502380802326678 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. Michal Daliot-Bul ASOBI IN ACTION Contesting the cultural meanings and cultural boundaries of play in Tokyo from the 1970s to the present In the past 30 years, play (asobi) has become the subject of a heated ideological debate in urban Japan, reflecting processes of cultural transformation. During these years, a late consumer culture characterized by an incessant pursuit of playlike hedonistic pleasures has reached its apotheosis within a conservative social context that maintains high levels of conformity and prioritizes production. It is against the background of these sociocultural dynamics that the cultural conceptualization and appreciation of play have been negotiated between play as a subsidiary activity complementary to work life, confined within boundaries, and play as a phenomenon of greatest personal significance, hardly constrained by time or space. These dialectics have influenced collective imaginaries, transforming play into a symbolic activity through which people can experience and reproduce cultural rhetoric about social distinctions, values and priorities. Keywords play; Japan; late consumer culture; youth popular culture; institutional culture; everyday hedonism Downloaded By: [Daliot-Bul, Michal] At: 17:40 6 September 2008 Play is more than a mere physiological phenomenon or a psychological reflex. It goes beyond the confines of purely physical or purely biological activity. It is a significant function Á that is to say, there is some sense to it. (Johan Huizinga 1938/1950) In modern Japanese, asobi (play) means, in addition to games and sports, also pastimes, merrymaking, diversions, pleasures, fun, leisure activities, hanging out with friends, hosting or being hosted, gambling and doing nothing. The term asobi circumscribes the concept of play in a particularly broad way by Cultural Studies 2008, iFirst article, pp. 1Á26 ISSN 0950-2386 print/ISSN 1466-4348 online – 2008 Taylor & Francis http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/09502380802326678 2 CULTURAL STUDIES referring to the activities a person does in his or her leisure time, as well as to leisure time itself. From a linguistic point of view, then, contemporary social life in Japan is organized between working and life-preserving activities (shigoto, yoji) and play or leisure time (asobi). This linguistic division between play and non-play in Japanese is a system of representations not necessarily equivalent to subjective experiences of play that are more ambiguous (Cox 2002, p. 181). However, it accurately reflects a cultural conceptualization rooted in the modern Japanese ideology of work ethic that poses a binary opposition between work and asobi that did not exist in Japan until the development of an industrial society in the later half of the nineteenth century. It was only then that the working class began to enjoy a regulated working day with a day off once a week. The concept of leisure was popularized at that time (Bando 1992, p. 27), and it assumed the meaning of non-work. During the twentieth century, this conceptualized binary opposi- tion was the source of ideological dialectics among conflicting sociocultural vectors about the importance of work versus play, about what is socially and personally meaningful play and about the cultural boundaries of play, suggesting that whereas play might seem to be a simple and natural activity, ‘What is play?’ and ‘To what end do people play?’ are questions determined to a large extent by cultural context. Ideological dialectics over the meaning of play express competing interpretations of larger social realities and aspirations concerning these realities. In the complexity of cultural heterogeneity there is always a multiplicity of ideological formations Á the production of dominant classes’ ideologies as well as ideologies of the dominated, ideologies of resistance, of exclusion, of deviation and so forth (Hall 1985). However, when a social group succeeds in convincing others of the validity of its own worldview, the consent so permeates society that to many it seems commonsensical, natural and at times invisible (Gluck 1985, p. 3). Different, unconnected public and private institutions and cultural agents reproduce this consent through their Downloaded By: [Daliot-Bul, Michal] At: 17:40 6 September 2008 activities and cultural practices, thereby reinforcing its universal acceptance and pushing competing worldviews into cultural marginality. In the post-war years, a sociocultural construction of Japan as a ‘new middle class’ society gained a broad, orienting ideological force (Kelly 1986, p. 603). In an imagined post-war Japanese social ecosystem, the idealized life-organizing model was composed of nuclear family units of the ricewinner husband, homemaker wife and two samurai students; large corporations providing secure, lifetime employment; and a meritocratic and highly demanding education system. As pointed out by Kelly (1986, pp. 604Á605), so powerful was this model that even for those who rejected it, it became the target of resistance. It is in this production-oriented climate that the meaning of asobi was contested. The ideological positioning of work and play Á whether institutionally imposed or otherwise Á became an inseparable component of ASOBI IN ACTION 3 the collective Japanese identity. Like all ideological constructs, this one did not necessarily reflect accurately everyday praxis. However, for many this positioning had come to represent sets of aspirations that orient behavior and critical judgment. It had a crucial influence on collective imaginaries, transforming different contexts of play into performance stages for ideological controversies and resonating with other social issues, the most prominent ones being social marginality, cultural resistance and cultural affirmation. The following is a reconstruction of the dialectical contest over the cultural meaning and boundaries of asobi in the public culture of Tokyo from the 1970s to the present. I start with the dominant discourses on play from the 1970s until the early 1990s and the ways these discourses echoed an ongoing production of social hierarchies. I then describe how the sociocultural transformations after the burst of the bubble economy in the early 1990s and the consequent recession promoted a new appreciation of play and triggered a redefinition of the boundaries of play. From this reconstruction two sets of issues will emerge. The first is an analysis of the changes in the cultural concept of asobi as a symptom and reflection of larger sociocultural transformations: from asobi as a subsidiary activity confined within boundaries to asobi as a phenomenon of great personal, social and heuristic importance hardly constrained by time or space. The second is the theorizing of the relation between culture and play in an effort to capture the dynamic aspects of that relationship and its significance to the organization of daily life. Arguably, I have a particularly thought-provoking study case at hand. Not so long ago the Japanese described themselves as bad players (Tada 1974/ 1975, p. 42) and as lacking a play culture (Bando 1992). However, at the dawn of the twenty-first century the urban leisure culture of Tokyo and the wealth of play activities it offers have become a symbol and a dominant image of contemporary Japan, suggesting a recent, swift transformation in the cultural positioning of play. Furthermore, Tokyo Á the locus of my study Á is a cultural center whence trends often start and sometimes spread to other areas of Japan. During the past 30 years, Tokyo has become the apotheosis of the Downloaded By: [Daliot-Bul, Michal] At: 17:40 6 September 2008 Japanese late consumer culture with its pursuit of playlike pleasures (Clammer 1997, p. 69). It has done so in the context of a society in which conformity is still highly valued, creating a very intense cultural environment charged with competing symbolic meanings. The contest over play from