Perhaps it was due to Thelonious Monk’s pleasant Bebop Jazz song – by the name of “Japanese Folk Song” (“Kojo No Tsuki”) – why I was able to endure Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries’s “Nippon.” Perhaps it was because I can read Japanese kanji that I had decided to read through a flickering art that was about 15 to 17 min longer than it should have been. Regardless as to why I read through “Nippon,” I have to say that I’m glad that I did. “Nippon” ended up being a piece of art that through deconstructing binaries revealed that the relationship between code and texts is based on harmony.
YHCHI’s “Nippon” is about the thoughts and feelings of a group of business man and woman in an after-hours brothel-bar, wherein woman practice the worlds oldest profession. I have to say that I found the tale quite boring, because the nameless characters, like the lust’ inspiring musician, were typical archetypes that readers find in any literature that deals with human lust.
The narrative is definitely not where “Nippon” shines, however, that is not to say that it doesn’t have anything to offer. One aspect of “Nippon’s” archetypal narrative that I liked was how the world that its plot revolves around can be envisioned to be anywhere – even though the title “Nippon” is another way of saying “Japan” – since the plot is confined to a single room in a single night in an unknown city. I also liked that the narrative, like in “Bust Down The Doors,” was alternating between first and third point of view, and shifting its perspectives between that of a man and woman.
I think “Nippon’s” purpose was not to criticize global corporate capitalism, which the narrative so aptly did, but to ask readers to read between the visible line that divides the language on screen and the hidden line that divides language and codes. YHCHI’s Nippon is about the presentation and deconstruction of binaries.
The opening of “Nippon” (“IT’S WRONG”) and its conclusion (“IT’S WRONG, ALL WRONG, AND YET IT’S ALL SO RIGHT”) is only the beginning of that deconstruction. The conceptualization of division in the English and Japanese language, characters and alphanumeric writing, East and West, black and white, code and language also follows that process. By illustrating different binaries that not only work, but also depend on one another in “Nippon,” YHCHI proves that the relationship between them is rather harmonious instead of chaotic. It’s a relationship that benefits both code and text. I believe that it’s in this deconstruction that “Nippon” truly shines and can be seen as unique piece of art.