24 areality

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In contrast to “hyperreality” in which “reality” and its (unreal) image compete in a struggle that reality ultimately loses, areality is a state in which reality and its images coexist without struggle, but also without a default preference for “reality.” Areality exists, for example, when an NHK documentary team goes to Nepal and then films a disaster that has been staged, without considering that this might be a problem. Areality exists when a Japanese cabinet minister speculates that the “rape” of Nanking did not happen.

Areality is the wedge between history as a recordable happening in a place, and the desire to forget what happened and record something else. It is the time between memory and forgetting. Because it can mix made-up images with found objects and practices, areality offers institutions a means to overlay a nasty and recalcitrant institutional history with images that deflect attention from this.

The presence of the real within areality masks the role of the non-real in this. The real becomes the alibi for other desires. The impact of collapse of the “bubble economy” in Japan has real consequences, but the concept of a “bubble” economy is itself an areal concept, as this takes away attention from the management responsibility of the Ministry of Finance (which had taken much of the credit for guiding Japan’s post-War economy until then). The bubble becomes something that happened to everyone, like a typhoon.

Another areal concept is “the Pacific War.” It is not just that most people in Kyoto talk about “the Pacific War” instead of “World War II,” but rather how they talk about this, as though it was another natural disaster that swept across Japan and then ended. “After the Pacific War ended,” they say, except for Resident Koreans, who might prefer, “after Japan was defeated in the last War.”

Areality happens mostly in a passive voice. It is useful in describing circumstances that might otherwise reveal institutional involvement. It often describes a reality that is beyond intervention. In Kyoto, burakus exist in an areal haze of nationally funded remedial programs, and official inattention, and covert discrimination. What is real is the fact that little happens to change the stigma that keeps buraku-dwelling persons trapped inside their neighborhoods.