Japan is often referred to in the field of international relations as the Land of the Rising Sun. With its economy being the third largest in the world, suggesting that this country and its inherent culture plays a significant role in the planet and especially in the region would indeed have some merits. The objective of this paper is to focus on Roland Barthes’ book about Japan as an Empire of Signs and the validity of the points he raised about the country, using other works such as that of Sofia Coppola’s lost in Translation, among others.
The main objective of Barthes’ book, for the record, was to broadly discuss the culture, art, society, language, literature, and iconography of Japan, both in terms of reality and fantasy. It is worth noting, however, that he did his analysis not as a native of the country but as an outsider who has mostly been sprinkled with western cultural thoughts and ideologies. For what it is worth, his book belonged to a genre of literary works about authors travelling to a foreign land or in this case a country that is practically fictional or mythical, and the author then tries to reflect on the things he (fictionally) encountered during his stay. Barthes used the same format as those other works of literature, the only difference was that the place he was referring to (i.e. Japan) is real and he actually visited and meditated in it.
Barthes highlighted the fact that he was a tourist, an unfamiliar person to and for Japan. This paved the way for him to make a lot of valid arguments about Japan. From a realistic point of view, for example, one who is not from the country being reviewed would most likely be fair and relentless when it comes to giving either positive or negative comments about the country. A concrete example of some of the advantages of this concept of unfamiliarity when it comes to studying a culture through discourse is the way how he enjoyed the pleasure of walking past the streets of the country’s capital, Tokyo, without feeling any form of discomfort.
He willfully enjoyed the idea of being surrounded by the chattering of people using their foreign unrecognized and incomprehensive language. No matter how Barthes tries to deny it, it is evident, even in the first page of the book, that what he was aiming to do was to compare Japan’s cultural structure to that of the west. It is important to not fall victim to the idea that Barthes’ objective was for his book to serve as a window that people who are unfamiliar with Japan’s culture should read. In fact, it is the contrary. The book exists like a form of dialogue between the representatives of Eastern and Western cultures.
In Chapter I, for example, about the breach of meaning, he discussed the deceptive easiness of haiku; how it differed to the traditional or western way of crafting poetry—that is through various systems of meaning namely the use of symbol through metaphors and the use of reasoning through syllogism. Barthes pointed out that haiku fails the western methods of interpretation and even logic in that it is merely a form of iteration which contributes nothing beyond what it says in itself. In his book, he stated that “the west moistens everything with meaning like an authoritarian religion which imposes baptism on entire peoples” . The concepts of sign, signification place, non-place, and space are all internal to haiku, which essentially is the Japanese way of expressing thoughts. Most of Barthes’ main arguments were in relation to haiku—comparing the way how the East and West expresses their thoughts and uses various concepts like sign and signification as an example.
In Chapter II, he solidified his argument by suggesting that haiku is a flat form of language and that it is a communicative concept that is inconceivable to a person of western cultural origins. It should already be noticed here that there are clear cut evidences of him trying to compare his known culture to one that he was still in the process of crafting. In one part of his book, he stated “there is moment when language ceases and it is this echoless breach which institutes at once the truth of Zen and the form—brief and empty—of the haiku” .
In Chapter III, he focused how western art transforms various elements of culture (e.g. an impression) into a description. For him, this was the way how things are supposed to be done. Comparing it to haiku, which is the Japanese way of contemplation, at least according to his perception which again is based on his “unfamiliar” background of Japanese cultural structure, he mentioned that it does not have any form of metaphysics backing it and that it does not (or if it ever, it does so inaccurately) describe the relationship between the sign and the signified . This can be evidenced by his statement in the third chapter that says “the haiku’s time is without subject, reading has no other self than all of the haikus of which this self, by infinite refraction, is never anything but the site of reading” .
In Chapter IV, he pointed out how Japanese culture achieves successful communication through exemption from meaning and again using his west versus east ideology when it comes to discovering Japan, he mentioned how this kind of logic and reasoning would be inapplicable to western literature and other forms of culture. This can be evidenced by the quote “the haiku’s task is to achieve exemption from meaning within a perfectly readerly discourse (a contradiction denied to western art, which can contest meaning only by rendering its discourse incomprehensible)” .
Lost in Translation’s story was about a faded movie star and a neglected young woman’s being able to form an unlikely bond after accidentally crossing paths in Tokyo . One major similarity between the story of Lost in Translation and that of Barthes’ book is that they were both situated in Japan. Additionally, the main characters namely Barthes, Charlotte, and Bob Harris were all unfamiliar (although at varying extents) to the culture of Tokyo. All three of them apparently came from predominantly western cultures. Now, the only remaining thing that one should focus on in order to verify the validity of the arguments and points Barthes raised in his book would be the outcome of the characters in Lost in Translation’s experiences.
Did they encounter the same outcome as that of Barthes when he visited Japan and started to criticize it as a foreign traveller in light of his apparently pro-western cultural identity and ideology? The answer is that no, they did not arrive at the same outcome. The work of Coppola in Lost in Translation ended with a more optimistic outcome; especially for a person coming from a foreign western land (and culture) that is. To specify, both Bob and Charlotte, the main characters in the 2003 film shared some good times in Tokyo with their local Japanese friends (especially that of Charlotte); the highly unwelcome feeling that Barthes portrayed in his book was somewhat nonexistent here. In the story, Bob was invited by Charlotte to hangout with her and her Japanese friends. The Japanese friends accepted Bob without any visible form of alienation or prejudice, something which was highly evident in Barthes’ work—although such negative attitudes were mostly directed against the Japanese culture because Barthes’ came from a western culture. Bob and Charlotte experienced how fun it was to spend a night in Japan and how accommodating Japanese culture could turn out to be. Although the story ended in tragedy—the two did not end up being together, the way how they interacted with the locales in Japan showed that Japan may not be so empty and devoid of signs and open signifiers after all—because if it was, Bob and Charlotte would have not been able to experience such a wonderful time during their stay.
This somewhat invalidates Barthes’ work in Empire of Signs but it is important to note that the objective of these two works of art and literature were different. Empire of Signs was more reflective and critical. Lost in Translation was more aimed at popular culture and so it would only be normal to predict that the two would have a different outcome.
In a study published in the Journal of International Business Studies, the authors compared the culture of East and West-based countries namely the U.S., Russia, Japan, and China, in terms of their natural culture and economic ideologies and how these variables affect their work values.
This was somewhat similar to the way how Barthes did his comparison. The findings of the said study “largely support the crossvergence prospective, while also confirming the role of national culture; implications from the findings are drawn for the convergence, divergence, crossvergence of values, as well as for the feasibility of multi domestic or global strategies for a corporate culture” .
What this basically suggests is that eastern and western countries and their respective cultures could converge or crossverge. This is literally contrary to what Barthes was trying to show and prove in his book. This reading, however, was more academic and empirical. Barthes’ work was more critical and based on sociology and experience—exploratory if one will.
In conclusion, the various sources reviewed in this paper suggest that Barthes’ work and suggestions about Japan in his work was merely a product of his critical thinking. Even so, they should neither be downgraded nor dismissed as invalid. The approaches used by Barthes, Coppola, and Ralston, Holt, and Terpstra in their respective works were different, although they all pertain to the same entity which is Japan (or in some cases, the Japanese culture). However, comparing them side by side indeed led to a lot of realizations about the Japanese culture. For one, it was shown in this paper how different people (or authors) may have different experiences and perceptions when it comes to travelling in a foreign land and interacting with the people there. Some people may have a positive experience, some may not, and this is what the author of this paper assumes to have happened in this case.
Works Cited
Barthes, R. "Empire of Signs." Hill and Wang (1983): 128. Print.
Coppola, S. "Lost in Translation." (2003): n.p. Media.
Murr. "Empire of Signs by Roland Barthes." The Lectern (2013): http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2013/12/empire-of-signs-roland-barthes.html. Web.
Ralston, D., et al. "The Impact of National Culture and Economic Ideology on Managerial Work Values: A Study of the United States, Russia, Japan, and China." Journal of International Business Studies (1997): 177-207. Print.
