"Outsider perspectives of Japan are hardly immune from charges of Orientalism; take the exoticized kitsch of Rob Marshall’s “Memoirs of a Geisha,” to name a glaring recent example. But things are far from clear-cut when it comes to Tokyo, a city whose gridless sprawl and constant renewal can prove disorienting even to natives. If foreign observers have seemed particularly attuned to its secret life, it may be because this is a city that lends itself to the musings of strangers in a strange land.
What’s more, the image of Japanese culture as fundamentally alien is in a way consistent with how Japan sees itself. The notion of separateness or even uniqueness has long been part of the country’s self-image, going back to the centuries of isolation that ended only with the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry’s American squadron in the mid-19th century. The topic of what makes the Japanese who they are, and what sets them apart from other Asians and Westerners, has a way of creeping into the national conversation. (A book arguing that the Japanese brain is different from all others was a best seller in the 1980s.)"
Full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/movies/01lim.html?_r=1
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