beyond walter benjamin’s dialectical tensions...

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Beyond Walter Benjamin’s Dialectical Tensions: Interpreting Fashion Imageries from Japan

Tomoko Matsumoto

Fig. 1. Testino, Mario. ‘Obsessions.’ Vogue Japan November 2014 No. 183, November 1, 2014, cover page.

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When words cannot simply write the history and culture of the ‘Other’ Japan, the

framework of imagination is influenced by fragments of fashion images, distributed to the

masses on the Internet and in magazines of the West. Such a framework is the idea that

Walter Benjamin calls the ‘historical materialism’ that provides us with a selective linear

historiography narrated by the power of the ruling classes.1 Through The Arcades Project,

Benjamin introduces an idea of history as a concept filled with the dialectic tensions of

the past and the present, and the past that is present – the image as the ‘now to form a

constellation.’2 The history is registered through fragments of standstill images. These

fragments of standstill images, Benjamin believes, communicate the symbolic elements of

the story more strongly than the philosophical text.3

The imagination of the fashion history and culture of Japan is in reality limited to the

images available and noticeable to the eyes of the West. While an encounter of these

‘Other’ images may bring a new fascination or a surreal moment, these unfamiliar foreign

constituents are often reduced to the interpretations that are juxtaposed to the available

historical and contemporary ideas within the West. Michel Foucault, in his ‘Preface’ to

The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Science, attempts to resolve such an

idea, describing his encounter with the ‘madness’ of the Chinese taxonomy of animals in

its encyclopaedia, which opens up for him the discursive epistemological experience to

perceive his own society and culture as already framed and ordered as Descartes’

1 Benjamin, Illuminations, 254. Benjamin’s quotation regarding historical materialism. ‘A historical materialist cannot do without the notion of a present which is not a transition, but in which time stands still and has come to a stop. For this notion defines the present in which he himself is writing history. Historicism gives the ‘eternal’ image of the past; historical materialism supplies a unique experience with the past. The historical materialist leaves it to others to be drained by the whore called ‘Once upon a time’ in historicism’s bordello. He remains in control of his powers, man enough to blast open the continuum of history.’ 2 Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 463. 3 Ibid, 464. 'In the dialectical image, what has been within a particular epoch is always, simultaneously, “what has been from time immemorial.” As such, however, it is manifest, on each occasion, only to a specific epoch-namely, the one in which humanity, rubbing its eyes, recognizes just this particular dream image as such. It is at this moment that the historian takes up, which regard to that image, the task of dream interpretation.’

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Cartesian world of perception.4

Thus, when an image can be interpreted by two paralleled linear historiographies

privileged by a representational system in each culture, multiple layers of dialectical

tensions manifest within the combined translations – the Japanese and the Western. The

image, as opposed to the text, provides an ambiguous, yet concealable apparatus of the

engaging and intertwining of the two diverged imaginations of Japanese fashion culture.

In this essay, the multiple layers of dialectical tensions implied by the Samurai armour will

be examined. The embellished chest armour worn by Australian female model, Miranda

Kerr, in the November 2014 issue of Vogue Japan (figure 1), will be investigated through

the metaphors of Benjamin, expanding into the symbolism of the image as a whole.

From the perspective of Western philosophical history, the Samurai armour piece can be

interpreted within the idea of Edward Said’s Orientalism from the 19th Century

conceptualisation of the ‘otherness’, constructed within the Eurocentric ideological

classifications of the knowledge of Japanese culture and fashion history.5 By appropriating

this exotic Japanese fashion element and by emphasising its ‘otherness,’ the Samurai

armour piece is chosen to orientalise the fashion worn by the western model as a whole,

transporting the audience to the world of Japan as a picture.

The history of the Samurai fashion was distinctive to Japanese culture until 1876, when

the Emperor of the Meiji period declared an end to the wearing of the sword after Japan

finally opened itself to trading in 1854, following many attempts by Western countries.

Although Japan was not colonised, it was considered a success by the West in their efforts

4 Foucault, “Preface” xvi.

5 Said, Orientalism.

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to expand western ideologies of imperialism to ‘modernise’ Japan. Therefore, the Samurai

armour is a pivotal historical hallmark of the representation of the power over Japan

through the West’s conquest to unveil the mysterious unknowns into its taxonomy of

knowledge. It is the Foucauldian concept of power/knowledge intertwined with the idea

of Said’s Orientalism.6

On the other hand, the Japanese audience may consider the style of the armour and the pants

reminiscent of the fashion of the upper class Japanese warrior woman (Bushi woman or

onna- bugeisha), Tomoe Gozen (figure 2). In history, Japanese female warriors accounted

for a very small percentage of the female population, and the majority belonged to the

peasant class who typically worked in domestic environments, and the political powers

belonged to high-ranking male officials and the Samurai.7 Accordingly, the Japanese

audience immediately senses two dialectical tensions, between the genders and between the

past and present within Japanese cultural history. However, more obvious is the fact that

a western female model is pretending to become a Japanese female warrior by wearing

the Samurai amour piece quintessential to Japanese history that arises a peculiarity to the

6 Foucault, Power/Knowledge.

7 Amdur, Women Warriors. The history of women warriors, who were wives of the Samurai, is barely mentioned in historical texts and, in general, women were housewives who belonged to a marginalised social class. These warrior women were a minority and a divergence from the societal norm. During the Sengoku period, the Samurai (male) accounted for less than 10% of the population. Figure 2.

Fig. 2. Tsukioka, Yoshitoshi, Tomoe Onna. 1875-1876. Woodblock print on paper. The British Museum. From: the British Museum,

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Japanese audience. Rather than confronting the idea of imperialism and domination by the

West, the Samurai armour is viewed as an apparatus in which to promulgate the uniqueness

of its ‘Japaneseness’ to the western audience. Hence, such opposed binary interpretations

derived by two diverged perceptions reveal a dialectical tension between Orientalism and

nationalism. Yeğenoğlu observes such nationalist movement as being dictated by the

history of master and slave, referring to Chatterjee and Said’s discourses.8

Chatterjee observes that “the problematics in nationalist thought is exactly the

reverse of that of Orientalism,” in the sense that the object still remains the Oriental

except that he or she is now endowed with subjectivity; he/she is not passive and

non-participating. Being just a reverse of the passive subject, the native continues

to retain the same essential characteristics depicted in Orientalism, but nevertheless

imagines himself as autonomous, active, and sovereign. Concerning the thematic,

Chatterjee argues that “nationalist thought accepts and adopts the same essentialist

conception based on the distinction between ‘the East’ and ‘the West,’ the same

typology created by a transcendent studying subject, and hence the same

‘objectifying’ procedures of knowledge constructed in the post-Enlightenment age

of Western science.9

Such problematics of the nationalism today has become a popular apparatus for various

countries in the Far East to promote their unique cultural identities and self-images in

politics and tourism through the application of the concept self-Orientalism. Martijn

Huisman in his thesis stresses ‘the importance of not seeing Japan as a defenseless and

innocent victim of Western Orientalism. The Japanese have actively used the ‘Orientalist

8 Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought.

9 Yeğenoğlu, Colonial Fantasies, 123.

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gaze‘ to create, maintain and strengthen its own national cultural identity

(‘Japaneseness‘) by performing self-Orientalism. This stereotype, often found in

contemporary media featuring or about Japan, is the Samurai.’10 In actuality, the

Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) established The Cool Japan

Advisory Council in 2011 to implement the concept of ‘Cool Japan’ to promote and

commodify the ‘gold mines’ of Japanese uniqueness to benefit its economy with

overseas expansion in six sectors, including apparel & fashion, monozukuri (craft-

making) & regional products, food, content, tourism, and home.11 The proposal outlines

not only the definitions of the ‘gold mines’ found in commodity and culture

perceived by various markets, such as Asia and Europe, but also market-specific

techniques to effectively present such items in different regions in the world. Therefore,

the Samurai armour piece in this image is recognised as a ‘gold mine’ that can help

promote ‘Japaneseness’ to the western audience from a Japanese perspective.

Additional dialectical tensions can be found from the western historical perspective: a

female model wearing male warrior fashion is viewed as comparable to the popularity of

the redingote illustrated in the painting of Marie-Antoinette (figure 7) or the progressive

feminist icon George Sand wearing male fashion (figure 8). These are historical

examples that represent the desire of women to achieve the social and political statuses

that were dominated by men, symbolising a dialectical tension between genders. Such

masculinity is emphasised further with the model’s direct gaze towards the camera and

the pose suggesting an impending departure to fight in a battle. The direct gaze to the

camera, shown in the photography collection of Pierre-Louis Pierson’s The Gaze, 1860s

10 Huisman, “Orientalism and the Spectacle,” 27 & 35. Huisman raises other examples of the 21st century Hollywood films that featured the ‘Japaneseness’, such as The Last Samurai, Kill Bill Volume 1 & 2, Lost in Translation, Memoirs of a Geisha, Flags of our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima, and Fast & Furious Tokyo Drift.

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in figure 9, represents the symbol of confrontational attitude that was not a social norm

for women in western history during this time period.

Fig. 4. Jean Marc Nattier, Madame de Maison-Rouge as Diana, 1756, oil on canvas, 136.5x105.1cm; New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Fig. 3. Valentino. Bead-embellished Dress With Feathers, A/W 2014. 100% polyamide with 91% silk, 9% elastane lining, and pheasant and goose feathers. From: Ealuxe,

Accessed March 21, 2015.

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The Prada A/W2014 leather coat and the Valentino dress embellished with feathers,

shown in figure 3, signify the human desire to dominate animals as shown in figure 4. In

addition, the pose of the legs symbolises the aggressiveness and animality particular to

the Samurai.12 Such animality of the pose is intensified by the idea of feminine in western

mythology that is contrasted with the rationality of science, creating a tension between

Apollonian and Dinosaurian dichotomy of the ancient Greek mythology and the

philosophical concept developed by Friedrich Nietzsche.13 This dialectical tension

between man and animal is further layered with the dialectical tension between

genders from the Japanese perspective – the pose representative of male warriors. From

the western historical perspective, Benjamin may have interpreted such pose as a

dialectical tension between the genders and between man and animals as ‘four-‐footed

companion of the man’ attempting to stand up and walk upright to challenge their social

status:

‘For the females of the species homo sapiens—at the earliest conceivable period of

its existence—the horizontal positioning of the body must have had the greatest

advantages. It made pregnancy easier for them, as can be deduced from the back-

bracing girdles and trusses to which pregnant women today recourse. Proceeding

from this consideration, one may perhaps venture to ask: Mightn’t walking erect,

in general, have appeared earlier in men than in women? In that case, the woman

would have been the four-footed companion of the man, as the dog or cat is today.

And it seems only a step from this conception to the idea that the frontal encounter

of the two partners in coitus would have been originally a kind of perversion; and

perhaps it was by way of this deviance that the woman would have begun to

12 The pose in the cover image is classic gesture of the Samurai getting up to depart for a battle. 13 Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy.

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walk upright. (Convolute B10, 2)’14

In addition, the Samurai armour represents these multi-layered tensions not only between

genders and between humans and animals, but also in the essential differences in feminist

ideals between the East and West. What is not clear in the metaphor to the Japanese

audience, however, is the historical significance of the accumulation of these dialectical

tensions between genders and whether or not the photographer, Mario Testino, wishes for

the Japanese women to attempt to reduce the gender disparity that exists from the under

resolved gender discrimination. In Japanese history, there has not been an influential

feminist movement comparable to those in western history.15 Thus, this metaphor can be

interpreted as the dialectical tension between phantasmagoria and waking of the

Benjamin’s dream image of 19th Century Paris, as it is still a dream for Japanese women

to achieve similar societal position as men.

14 Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 80-81. 15 See figures 10-12 as examples of feminist movements incorporated within the fashion industry.

Fig. 10. Evening trouser suit and blouse Chanel 1937-1938. V&A collection.

Fig. 11. Pritchard, Paige. ‘Women & Words: Vol. 3, The “Ain’t No Wifey” Wife.’ The Riveter. April 15, 2014. Accessed March 21, 2015.

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More elements in the image can be further analysed through the metaphors of the

dialectical tensions. The Japanese Samurai armour is worn by a western female model,

which is an obvious dialectical tension from both cultural perspectives between the East

and West. Her minimal makeup is also not of the typical Japanese women of that time. It

is not only considered unfeminine in Japanese society, but it can also be seen as western

makeup as a contemporary feature, which adds multiple layers of dialectical tensions

between the past and the present along with the dialectical tension between East and West.

Further, the hairstyle and the rolled up pants are depicted as a contemporary interpretation

on the Samurai’s fashion that create a blend of tensions between East and West, past and

present, and ephemeral and eternal. For example, the rolled up Samurai pants can be

compared to the temporality of the current fashion trends in the west which is the revival

of the 90s rollup jeans.

It is not that what is past casts its light on what is present, or what is present its light

on what is past; rather, an image is that wherein what has been comes together in a

flash with the now to form a constellation. In other words: image is dialectics at a

standstill. For while the relation of the present to the past is purely temporal, the

relation of what-has-been to the now is dialectical: not temporal in nature but

Figure 12. Chanel A/W2014 Show. ‘Karl Lagerfeld’s Response to Chanel’s Feminist Protest Criticism,’ The Independent. October 16, 2014. Accessed February 6 2015.

protest-criticism-9799805.html.

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figural [bildlich]. Only dialectical images are genuinely historical…16

Testino’s aspiration for the cover image above was to convey to the Japanese audience the

positive components of Japanese culture and fashion viewed from the West that the Japanese

audience might have not yet recognised. Hence, his intention was not to appropriate the

otherness of Japanese fashion as a picture like the discourse by Timothy Mitchell or the idea

of Orientalism by Said.17 Instead, this image is to portray a newly refined western

understanding of Japanese culture, engaging various dialectical tensions in fashion, the

image of the ‘now to form a constellation.’ Thus, this new image by Testino represents a

renewed perception of Japanese culture and fashion not only from a western point of view,

but also from the Japanese point of view, incorporating various multi-layered dialectical

tensions. This image is truly the historical image filled with the present ideas of Japanese

history, and such imagination of Japanese culture and fashion will be renewed yet again by

a profound image revealed in the future. As Benjamin states, ‘the eternal is far more the

ruffle on a dress than some idea.’18

Where Benjamin is ambiguous, and somewhat unsuccessful, in order to achieve in his

definition of dialectical image throughout his fragments of texts in The Arcades Project,

however, is that the images are more than the replacement of the text.19 Thus, interpreting

the significations of this cover image through his confined metaphor of the dialectical

tensions does not expand onto the applications of the philosophical ideas that have been

developed through the societal and cultural changes that have redefined and expanded the

16 Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 463. 17 Mitchell, “The World as Exhibition,” 217-236; Said, Orientalism.

18 Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 69. 19 Weigel, Body-and-Image Space, 49-60. Weigel states that ‘… Benjamin regarded images in terms of their property as writing (Schrift) rather than as representations. As such, Benjamin’s concept of images has nothing to do with the history of mental images, nor with a ‘mental image’ that is distinguished from the material image in its characterization as derivative or secondary, not proper (uneigentlich).’

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definition of an image. The way we encounter and ‘read’ the images in various medias,

such as photography, videos, and films, proliferated by the use of Internet, TV and social

media applications, is much more than a simple binary relationship with the text.20

Benjamin in his 1936 essay, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,’

and John Berger in his 1972 Ways of Seeing, explore such repercussion of the mass

reproduced artifice of original artworks and how technology transformed the way we

encounter them. Today, as this essay brings attention to the two diverged ways of

interpreting a fashion garment and the image itself, it is essential that we consider an object

or an image through more than the context of one particular social culture or the

environment in which one encounters them.

Understanding an image along with surroundings is to a certain degree analogous to the

idea of parerga in Immanuel Kant’s writing of aesthetics – objects that are attached and

ornamental to the work of art but are not an integral part of its meaning, such as a frame

attached to a painting. For Kant, these ornaments belong to the artwork and also

communicate with the outside.21 For example, we can imagine this cover image placed in

the city of Paris, London, or Tokyo, seeing it as a montage along with the city as a

background. Benjamin portrayed this idea through his photography collections. In

addition, Foucault, in his writing about Magritte’s painting ‘This is not a Pipe (1973),’

further assists us in broadening the way we encounter a painting, whose mechanisms we

can apply to facilitate the interpretation of an image.22 Foucault’s 3rd diagram shown below

assists us in visualizing the manner in which to scrutinise the image – by removing

20 Barthes, “The Myth Today.”; Jay, Downcast Eyes; Mitchell, “Image and Word.”; Mitchell, “There Are No Visual Media,” 27-13; Rancière, The Future of the Image. These are a few of many philosophers who attempted to explore the relationship between the image and the text, which is outside the scope of this essay.

21 Kant, Critique of Judgement, §14 Exemplification. Kant explores the idea of parerga, where the nature of communication is crucial to his aesthetic judgement and that these ornaments also contribute to bridging the gap between his divided worlds of inside and outside, external and internal, object and subject, etc., arriving at the judgement equivalent to a science. 22 Foucault, This is not a Pipe.

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ourselves from focusing only on the representations within the frame, but examining the

image that is placed within the context of different cultures. The problematic of the

schematic ideas of painting and image as a space of representation and the idea of

connecting them to the language of the western art historical epistemology delineate our

interpretation of them within a particular language by the interpreter. Such association to

a particular language, for example English, further delimits our ability to do so because

such language itself is an already framed and ordered taxonomy as Descartes’ Cartesian

world of perception, illustrated by Foucault in his The Order of Things: An Archaeology

of the Human Science.23 The opposite is true when an attempt is made to interpret an

image using a cabinet of words and definitions from a Japanese dictionary.

23 Foucault, “Preface” xvi.

Figure 13. Magritte, Rene. The Two Mysteries, 1966, oil on canvas, 65 x 80 cm. Private Collection.

Figure 14. Foucault, Michel. This is not a Pipe (1973).

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Developing on these ideas, we can further expand the way we view and interpret an image

with dialectical tensions as a whole. The image with fashion elements from the ‘other’

cultures can be examined by placing it in cultures with different interpretations illustrated

in the diagram below: (1) Japanese culture, (2) western cultures, (3) cultures other than

Japan and the West, (4) mixed view with Japan and the West, (5) mixed view with the

Japanese and the rest of the cultures, (6) mixed view with the West and the rest of the

cultures, (7) mix of all cultures, and finally, (8) the perception from outside of all

perceptions. This essay attempts to demonstrate how each dialectical tension and the image

as a whole can be interpreted differently based on constructed ideas in different cultures,

and hopes to merge these diverged views into one complex understanding of them. Today,

images spread instantly over the Internet and social media applications all over the world,

which is probably not the way that the photographers intended us to engage with them.

Therefore, when we encounter an image with dialectical tensions, it is important for us to

recognise such complexities before concluding the understanding of it, and investigate it

beyond the ideas framed within one historiography.

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Barthes, Roland. “The Myth Today” In Mythologies (1957). Hill and Wang 2013.

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Benjamin, Walter. “Convolute N: On the Theory of Knowledge, Theory of Progress.” In The Arcades Project, translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin, paperback ed., 456-88. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2002, 456-488.

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Foucault, Michel. This is not a Pipe (1973). Transl. James Harkness. Berkeley: U of California Press, 2008.

Huisman, Martijn. “Orientalism and the Spectacle of the Other: Japan and the Japanese in Wie is de Mol?” (Master Thesis, Erasmus University Rotterdam, 2011).

Jay, Martin. Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought. University of California Press, 1993.

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgement (1790). Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2008. Mitchell, W.J.T., “Image and Word” in Iconology. University of

Chicago Press, 1986.

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Mitchell, W.J.T., “There Are No Visual Media.” in The Visual Culture Reader, 3rd Edition. Mirzoeff, Nicholas, eds. London and New York: Routledge, 2013, 7-13.

Mitchell, W.J.T. “The World as Exhibition” in Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 31, No. 2. (Apr., 1989), 217-236.

Nietzsche, Frederich. The Birth of Tragedy (1872). Oxford University Press, 2000.

“Proposal by the Cool Japan Advisory Council: Creating a New Japan, May 12, 2011.” The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), http://www.meti.go.jp/english/press/2011/pdf/0512_02b.pdf (accessed March 21, 2015).

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