Nakama Britannica

On Saturday, I returned home from my holiday in Hastings. Incidentally, it was fantastic! On our return home we always visit somewhere on the way back in order to delay our return home. This particular time we visited the De La War Pavilion at Bexhill-on-Sea. Exhibited there was a collection by artist Nathan Coley. Coley’s collection was a confluence of different ideas and critiques of morality and the way in which religious and political ideology are inherently present within society.

The first part of the exhibition concentrated on how the artists are “Cowboys and Indians”. In essence Coley is saying that the western genre facilitated a need to express feelings, emotions, critiques etc. of then current political situations occurring. e.g. Cuban Missile Crisis (1962). So his use of the western in his exhibition is an attempt to juxtapose this vehicle of expression within a culture that, Coley suggests, has no way to express itself in such an accessible fashion. His exhibition, is, in essence, a confluence, a synthesis, of his different ideas and opinions that the exhibition was exceptionally elaborate, but exceptionally brilliant also.

What has this to do with Japan? Coley is not talking directly about Japan! This is a blog exploring japanese culture is it not? Well at Hastings Museum and Art Gallery had a fantastic collection of prints from various Kabuki performances.

Kabuki is a form of Japanese theatre where, like the Shakespeare plays of Elizabethan England, exceedingly popular but also the all the characters were played by men (Technically women were banned from 1629) but this form of theatre is a marriage of two elements.

Aragoto and Wagoto.

Aragoto is translated as “Rough Style”. It stems from the word aramushagoto which means “reckless warrior matter”. It is used to described performances which were often very dramatic and often to do with the great warrior classes (e.g. samurai) of Japan.

Wagoto is the opposite and refers to the “soft style” and being one with nature more than the bombastic and powerful Samurai of the Aragoto fold.

It is this kind of convergence which characterises kabuki. The Kabuki prints acted as a catalyst for me to realise that things are not as simple as they first seem. You can read a lot into different things. For example, is ‘Dominion Tank Police’ more complex than indulging Shirow’s weird fantasies that are embodied in the Puma sisters? Or is ‘Evangelion’ trying to tell its viewers about society personified within the protagonists of that series? ‘Lain’ certainly is trying to make a statement! Indeed ‘Serial Experiments Lain’ is a sophisticated synthesis of issues such as communication, memory, technology and exploring just what exactly humanity is about.

Nakama Britannia is also such a synthesis, although not as complex as ‘Lain’ and not as weird as ‘Evangelion’, just like the pieces of art mentioned throughout this sort post. It is a synthesis of different personalities and that provides to create a synthesis of brilliant articles exploring wide-ranging topics from cosplay to fan-subbing and Light to Osamu Tezuka. In many ways Nakama Britannia throughout this session has progressed to become a great confluence of ideas and articles concerning Japan and its popular culture.

For example Alex’s defence of Light’s character, two articles about people that have driven the medium of anime forward into popular culture (Abe and Tezuka) along with an examination of the Gothic within anime! It is this synthesis of different personalises that has been so successful in producing a great variety of posts discussing issues that I would never touch upon.

It has been an eventful session seeing me through my A-Level exams until today when I took my theory test. I am looking forward to the break but also looking forward to coming back and ensuring that I can produce some great articles to add to this growing confluence of anime and Japanese popular culture and continuing to work within this synthesis of great personalities.