Tuesday 26 July 2016

A Brief Pictoral Introduction to Occidentalism in Fantasy Games

We all know about orientalism and all that jazz. Let's talk about its reverse: occidentalism - Asian fascination with the mysterious and inscrutable West, which is in many ways orientalism's mirror image.

We have the veneration of the aesthetic of the exotic sword-wielding warrior:




We have oddly clean-looking and kitschy pastiches of native scenery.



We have somewhat ignoble magpie-like theft of cultural artefacts.



We have an obsession with depicting the exotic other as irrational and violent...




...while at the same time preternaturally and somewhat paradoxically individually civilized and noble.



And finally, of course, the depictions of the female are sexually charged - exotic playthings; the exciting "other".



I like occidentalism and find it charming. One thing I learned about critical theory while I was an undergraduate, and later, was that the clue is in the name - it's all about ascribing the worst possible motives to the author/creator, so that "orientalism" is seen as some sort of sinister replication of racialized and colonial power structures, rather than simply a perfectly natural fascination with difference and, ultimately, the complement of genuine interest in a foreign culture. That's how I always took occidentalism, at any rate, when frequently coming across it living in Japan.

16 comments:

  1. A famous Japanese game designer once opined, "If a Japanese man goes hunting for deer, encounters a bear who charges him, and shoots the bear dead, saving his life, it's the worst thing ever.

    "If an American man goes hunting for deer, encounters a bear who charges him, and shoots the bear dead, saving his life, it's the most awesome thing ever."

    The designer was mostly talking about setting expectations in gameplay between the two audiences, but I imagine there are wider cultural implications. Have you seen any evidence of this in Japanese occidentalism?

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    1. You can certainly see it in Miyazaki films.

      I think it's hard to argue that in Japanese culture generally there is a certain gentleness with regard to nature. That said, I don't really agree with the quote. I'm not American, but is that really something an American audience sees as "the most awesome thing ever", especially in this day and age? See The Revenant for a real world example.

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    2. Ugh, I butchered the quote and mangled the context; apologies. It's not so much about a respect for nature as a love of the unexpected. American audiences revel in the unexpected surprise (so long as it doesn't come completely out of left field); Japanese audiences prefer the expected, and find surprises in their gaming unpleasant. This according to Inafune, and I've always wondered how much truth there was to it.

      The full quote can be found on this page: http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=3&cId=3155815

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    3. Ugh, I butchered the quote and mangled the context; apologies. It's not so much about a respect for nature as a love of the unexpected. American audiences revel in the unexpected surprise (so long as it doesn't come completely out of left field); Japanese audiences prefer the expected, and find surprises in their gaming unpleasant. This according to Inafune, and I've always wondered how much truth there was to it.

      The full quote can be found on this page: http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=3&cId=3155815

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    4. American audiences in general have not lost their love of rugged individualism, and big-game hunting is still a popular expression of that set of values. Hugh Glass' story isn't popular with American audiences because it's something that we think we would enjoy doing ourselves, but (apart from the obvious drama of the story and beauty of the setting) it reinforces our cultural narrative.
      Most of the casual hunters or hunting-adjacent Americans that I know would find the idea of shooting a bear that had attacked them very exciting. On the other hand, having worked briefly in professional Scouting, most of the long-time outdoorsmen I've met would have mixed feelings - of course it's an exciting story to tell, but they'd also feel that it was a real shame about the bear.

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    5. @trollsmyth: Ah, I get you. I'm not sure I agree with that. Have you ever watched a Japanese film or read a Japanese novel and been completely surprised by a twist in the plot that felt to you like it wasn't signposted in any way? Japanese fiction has always felt to me as though it has no concept of "Chekhov's Gun". (Which is part of what makes it feel so exotic to the non-Japanese audience.) So I think rather the opposite of Inafune: it seems to me like Japanese audiences prefer surprises.

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  2. I also rather like it, and even when I'm not particularly impressed, it never bothers me. I guess critical theory is not for me, and I avoid SJW's like the plague.

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  3. You've read as much Said and Spivak as you can, I imagine.
    It is interesting that Japanese fetishize the Euro fantasy, while not paying much attention to their own idealized. There is D&D with its Oriental(ism) Adventures, but Sword World has no antonym. Maid replicates western power structures, like a Miyazaki film would. Whereas western gamers romp in Legend of Five Rings' version of mythic Japan, Japanese themselves would rather play as Tokyo cognates of the X-men (DoubleCross rpg) or DnD 4E reflected back through JRPG# (Arianrod rpg).

    I'll have to research and see if Japan had its own D&D - Samurai & Sorcery?

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    1. That's interesting. Tenra Bansho Zero? I think that is supposed to be set in a future version of the samurai era.

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    2. I would say that D&D is medieval fantasy derived from Tolkien that is occidentalism when remade into a Japanese FRPG like Sword World. Terra Bansho Zero, from what I've read, is future - more Mad Max or Fist of Northstar than medieval fantasy or Genji Monogatari.

      That said, my knowledge isn't encyclopedic, so I may do a little searching. But the fact that such an RPG, if it exists, isn't well known proves my point - Japanese don't fetishize their own past in RPGs.

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    3. A quick look at Wikipedia in Japanese brought up a small list of 'Asian Fantasy' RPGs contrasted with 'Western Fantasy.'

      東洋ファンタジー[編集]
      央華封神RPG
      大江戸RPG アヤカシ
      三國志演技
      戦国霊異伝
      戦国異聞録KAMUI
      大活劇 江戸の始末人
      大帝の剣RPG
      天下繚乱RPG
      天羅万象
      天羅万象・零
      幕末霊異伝 MI・BU・RO
      扶桑武侠傳
      平安幻想夜話 鵺鏡

      I think I'll post about this on my blog in the near future...

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    4. 央華封神RPG ("Oukahoushin RPG") sounds interesting. According to the Japanese wikipedia entry you play "hermits" in a simulacrum of medieval China, although the word for "hermit" means something more like what we'd call a wizard. Basically this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xian_(Taoism)

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  4. And at the same time Europeans have ridiculous ideas about European historical settings and Asians have ridiculous ideas about Asian historical settings.

    I can see orientalism being a problematic issue in times when Europeans occupied Asian countries and treated the locals as sub-humans. But that was a good while ago. In the present I feel this is no longer an issue. It's more problematic in the context of Africa, which is still politically shoved to the sidelines and in some cases dependant on foreign aid. (It does cause real difficulties when African countries as a whole are being dismissed as primitive disaster zones.) But Asia in the 21st century can take it and shrug it off just as well as Europe or America.

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  5. Is the Exalted cover picture (the first of the sexualized women) really an example of occidentalism? As far as I am aware, Exalted was mostly thought up and designed by a bunch of white guys who themselves were influenced by wuxia and anime.

    So even though that artist is Korean, the art direction he was (presumably) working under seems like more of an orientalist one.

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    1. Yeah, maybe so, but there are plenty of other examples of that phenomenon if you care to look (I can think of many far less enjoyable activities than that...).

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    2. Yeah, your second sexualized women picture is certainly occidentalist art.

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