Critical Studies Tokyo 2003

Adorno argues that Japanese life style, in its advanced form - consumerism, feeds people with the products of a 'culture industry' - the opposite of 'true' art - to keep them passively satisfied and politically apathetic. This can especially validated in a truely post-modern city like Tokyo.

Reading Adorno in Yanaka

Stefan: Present Japanese consumerist culture is identified as the reason for people's passive satisfaction and lack of interest in overthrowing their capitalist system.

Bettina: Adorno suggests that culture industries churn out a debased mass of sentimental products which have replaced the more 'difficult' and critical art forms of old Japan.

Virgin Mega Store, Shinjuku: False needs are cultivated in Japanese people by western-style culture industries. These are needs which can be both created and satisfied by the Japanese system, and which replace people's 'true' needs - freedom, full expression of human potential and creativity, genuine creative happiness.

Pronto Coffee Shop, Ueno: Japanese media and music products, and chain stores as well are characterised by standardisation (they are basically formulaic and similar) and pseudo-individualisation (incidental differences make them seem distinctive, but they're not).

At Thing Gallery + Studio Adorno