Identity, club-culture, and the Gospel

"As identities can be picked up from a variety of media sources, the construction of 'who we are' arises increasingly from how we imagine ourselves, rather than from where we live."

- Ian Condry, "Japanese Hip-Hop and the Globalization of Popular Culture" in Urban Life: Readings in the Anthropology of the City, 384.

And, at the same time, as Condry points out, there are places where imagined identity "shows up" and is developed. Condry borrows from the Japanese term genba, used in the hip-hop world to denote the hip-hop clubs as the "actual scene" where hip-hop happens. The word genba is used "in the hip-hop world . . . to contrast the intense energy of the club scene with the more sterile and suspect marketplace" (italics mine, Condry, 386). Condry uses the term genba to describe how within globalization there are global cultural forms that, instead of imposing a cultural imperialism of homogeneity, tend to get interpreted and shaped according to local culture so that there is heterogeneous multiplication of global cultural forms. The diversity and characteristic Japanese-ness of Japanese Hip-Hop is a prime example, and the clubs - the genba - is where it happens.

Condry (after spending over 18 months attending over 100 club events around Tokyo all held between the hours of 1 a.m. and 5 a.m.), describes how even though club culture is extraordinary and exotic it still is "embedded in Japan's political-economic structures, characteristic social relations, and the contemporary range of cultural forms. . . It is largely predictable what kind of pleasures can be expected, and also the generally unpleasant consequences for work or school after a night without sleep" (Condry, 380). This tension is most clearly seen when the clubbers board the first trains at 5 a.m. to return home as the businessmen and women get off the first trains to go to work. Even the train schedule dictates the socializing patterns of the club culture.

It's no wonder that the church has struggled to grow in Japan. When the leading edge of cultural change is centered in smoke-filled clubs between the hours of 1 a.m. and 5 a.m., a Sunday morning worship service that has more in common with a "sterile and suspect marketplace" rather than a place of intense energy and life such as the clubs will by default not capture the imagination of the kinds of people that shape culture in the clubs. Are there any Christians that are part of this club culture? Does anyone know? I sure hope so, because the energy of the club is only a shadow of what could it could be, and what it could lead to, when transformed by the Gospel.