Table of Contents for Flowers That Kill
Introduction: Opacity, Misrecognition, and Other Complexities of Symbolic Communication
Without altogether negating the importance of communication and of language, this introduction explains the aim of the book, which is to explore "communicative opacity"—an absence of communication or mutual understanding due to the fact that individuals in a given social/historical context draw different meanings from the same symbol, or, more often, due to an absence of articulation in their minds of the meaning they are drawing. This leads to the unawareness of the absence of communication among the social actors involved.
1.Japanese Cherry Blossoms: From the Beauty of Life to the Sublimity of Sacrificial Death
The universe represented by Japanese cherry blossoms is full of paradoxes that become a generative power operating at both individual and collective level—simultaneously subverting and upholding the cultural and societal structure. Cherry blossom viewing is an arena for developing the collective identity of various social groups, and ultimately, the Japanese as a whole. All, including the self, are beautiful. When the Japanese military state foregrounded the symbolism of cherry blossoms to represent the sacrifice for Japan, hardly anyone, including the soldiers, recognized the change. The Japanese cherry blossoms offer an excellent example of how multiple meanings of a symbol and their aesthetic contribute to the ambiguity and opacity of communication through symbols.
2.European Roses: From "Bread and Roses" to the Aestheticization of Murderers
Like Japanese cherry blossoms, roses in Western European cultures are assigned a large number of meanings: Christ and the Virgin, birth, death and rebirth, love, beauty, life, joy and sorrow. As an important symbol of the common people against the establishment, the rose occupied a central place in the May Day festivals in medieval Europe, later leading to its role in the festival of the French Revolution. At the end of the nineteenth century, it became the symbol of the Socialist International. The rose as an important symbol of love and comradeship among workers was then used and abused to portray the dictator—Stalin and Hitler in particular—as the benevolent "Father" who loves the people. This flower is another example of how aesthetic and multiple meanings lead to the opacity of the message, preventing people to see the thorns behind the beauty.
3.The Subversive Monkey in Japanese Culture: From Scapegoat to Clown
As the animal considered closest to humans, the monkey is an important symbol in Japanese culture. Its symbolism consists of three major themes: mediator, scapegoat, and clown, each acquiring a dominant meaning in a particular historical period, but all three always constituting a palimpsest. As expressed in the monkey performance, its symbolism involves a subversive element—against the stratification in medieval times, against militarism at the height of Japan's imperial aggression, defiance against a social superior, and questioning the throne on which humans sit, ruling over all other animals. Yet, it never ignited a revolution or a social protest, even when the monkey was symbolically associated with the discriminated social group within which the monkey trainers were recruited, precisely because the simultaneous presence of the multiplicity of its meaning prevents any communicative clarity.
4.Rice and the Japanese Collective Self: Purity of Exclusion
Following the first three chapters that illustrated how polysemy and aesthetic have contributed to communicative opacity, this chapter shows quite a different path to communicative opacity—how Japanese rice, with virtually one meaning as a dominant symbol of the collective self, has created communicative opacity by misrepresenting the collective self, without awareness on the part of almost all Japanese, including those who are excluded from the misrepresentation. Put another way, this chapter shows a symbolic pathway, as it were, to the problem pointed out by poststructuralists of "totalization" by the use of the words, such as the Japanese and the Germans.
5.The Collective Self and Cultural/Political Nationalisms: Cross-Cultural Perspectives
This chapter continues to explore how symbols conceal and/or misrepresent the referent. The examples chosen are the symbols of the collective self of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan primarily as expressed in each regime's propaganda. Most of the time, the singular form, "identity," is used, since the collective self is usually expressed as a singular attribute, although another attribute may be chosen as the self encounters another "other." While an individual always carries a bundle of identities based on ethnicity, nationality, race, gender, age, etc., any one of which emerges as one encounters a specific other, the focus here is on the collective identity.
6.The Invisible and Inaudible Japanese Emperor
This chapter discusses the Japanese imperial system and the basic nature of the Japanese emperor. It asks if externalization is a prerequisite to deliver political power, as in the case of the European monarchs and modern dictators, in contrast to religious power, as in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, in which the supreme being recedes into the void. A simple dichotomy of political vs. religious power is avoided, however, by taking into account cultural traditions on these issues.
7.(Non-)Externalization of Religious and Political Authority/Power: A Cross-Cultural Perspective
This last chapter of the book is a counterpoint to the previous chapter on the Japanese emperor who remained a visual and auditory zero signifier. The focus here is on the problem of religious and political authorities and power, and their relationship to the perceptual, especially visual and auditory externalization in a broader theoretical and ethnographic/historical context. Put concretely, is externalization necessary for political leaders to exercise power? Does it apply also to religious leaders? The ultimate goal is to probe the relationship between the externalization and its absence in creating communicative opacity.