Linking cosmopolitan and multispecies touch in contemporary Japan

Abstract

This article argues that one novel way to understand the slow death of a homogeneous Japanese identity, viewing it in perhaps a more positive light than simply loss, is to consider how Japan is increasingly ‘post-familial’ (Hansen 2013). In sum, there is an emergent shared (or ‘common’) sense of being Japanese moving beyond the myth of a monolithic or unified political-national/socio-cultural/familial Japanese self towards a desire to get ‘in touch’ with an individual, surely individuated, identity, alongside a concomitant openness to be ‘touched by’ Others who exist beyond the rigidly defined social-political subjectivity of ware ware nihonjin (we Japanese). Engaging in these increasingly ubiquitous cosmopolitical connections may or may not be chosen (Beck 2009), but two influential arenas where encounters of touch are clearly on the rise in Japan are the increase in the number of non-ethnic Japanese residing in the country, with some becoming Japanese citizens, and, less discussed, the sharp rise in the number of urban household pets, specifically dogs, over the past two decades. This article draws together two levels of analysis, the virtual world of multimedia advertising and the ethnographic everyday, in order to discuss how seemingly distinct registers of touch in contemporary Japanese culture have emerged and coalesce in questioning simplistic readings of belonging and identity.