 |
|
||||||||
|
|
||||||||
Dancing Toward Democracy— Tactics
Strategies, de Certeau (1984) reminds us, are the privilege of the strong. For the subject, for the subaltern, there are only tactics. The appropriation of a public space by a subaltern counterpublic group for its own interests tells us several things; This appropriation moves the counterpublic into the center, geographically, and, by various proximities, socially. For the time of the event, in the memories of all who are there, the spectacle of diverse bodies, and of words shouted in public reminds the state that a public is constructed from diversity.
The counterpublic event succeeds from a position of externality. It must avoid reflecting the tolerance of the bourgeois public sphere, which, as Michael Warner noted, masks its unmarked intolerance under the generalized rubric of “we the people,” (1993, 241) or, in this case, “We Japanese...” thereby enclaving all subgroups.
The Higashi-Kujo Madang is not an example of multiculturalism or internationalism as this is paraded by the Japanese state, but rather it disrupts the notion of “we Japanese”1 by inserting within the public space alternative readings of cultural properties and identity.
In Kyoto, the unmarked exclusive identification of its Japanese (non-buraku) citizens into a univocal, mass-public reduces this public to silence. It is precisely this silence that is commonly presented to the world as a “consensus” of agreement with government policies. For when everyone speaks (or remains silent) as one, no one person can speak at all. It also reminds the city that more than three quarters of so-called “international” population of Kyoto was, in fact, born in Kyoto. Even more so, the event tells the city that its international community belongs there.
Kyoto's Higashi-kujo Koreans display what Paul Gilroy (1991; quoting Richard Wright) calls the “dreadful objectivity” of being inside and outside. This perspective, all too rare in Japan, makes their dramatic performance of their marginal circumstances a valuable critique of the city's social order. But the Higashi-Kujo Madang also proves that even the city of Kyoto can be opened up to public participation by a diasporic group outside of the incorporation regimes of officialdom. And if “even” Koreans and buraku Japanese can work together to forge an opening in Kyoto's public sphere, then such tactics must be available to other civil-society organizations.
1Once again, it is difficult to gauge the depth of the unmarked quietus surrounding the notion of “we Japanese” in Kyoto (a place which, after all, is famous for excluding even other Japanese from its self-determined identity: “we Kyotoites”). It is easy to find people who complain about the presence of “foreigners” (gaijin) in Kyoto. But one can also find persons who are ready to converse on the problematics of Japanese national(ist) identity in an age of increasing “internationalism.” Indeed, Kyoto City has “vowed” to become the Japan's most “international city,” although its planning here seems mostly aimed at reducing the level of irritation between locals and foreign tourists and residents (See: Kyoto Declaration). This recent gesture towards “internationalization” (kokusaika) by the City has met with overt ridicule by the resident Korean community (again which makes up more than 80 percent of the City's “foreign” population) particularly in Higashi-Kujo, a district marked by decades of official neglect. Several Koreans I spoke with in Kyoto are also very knowledgeable about international human rights discourses, and about changing rules for citizenship in Europe.
 |
 |
 |
 |
