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Erotic Asia
The West's long fascination with sex from the East has evolved and
stayed the same
By Vera H-C Chan
September 27, 2004
The West has long been fascinated with Eastern sexuality. Throughout its
encounters, it has struggled with these passions, from indulging them in
secrecy and condemning them in public to embracing them openly.
Nowadays, sex appears to be everywhere, and much of it seems to be solicited
from the East: The traveling exhibit "Geisha: Beyond the Painted Smile" wraps
up its summer run Sept. 26 at the Asian Art Museum. An international dream team
of actors, including Michelle Yeoh, Ken Watanabe and Zhang Ziyi, begins filming
"Memoirs of a Geisha," seven years after the book camped out for nearly 50
weeks on The New York Times' best-seller list. The newly published "The
Japanese Art of Sex: How to Tease, Seduce and Please the Samurai in Your
Bedroom" made the independent booksellers' Book Sense pick list for September,
and sent its author touring Borders Books & Music stores across America.
This manual, which recounts geisha and courtesan history and includes explicit
tips such as collecting "female essence" in a sake cup, adds to a library of
Eastern-oriented sex how-tos Americans have been building in the last decade:
sexuality according to the Kama Sutra, Tibetan Buddhism, Chinese Taoism and
Tantric philosophy (of which Sting has been a public proponent).
But as we've become more socially conscious and sexually open, we now demand
sexual knowledge from authentic sources; we crave enlightenment with our
titillation. More than wham-bam, we also want the spiritual package the East
has seemingly been privy to for centuries.
Yet a Western history of intolerance and exoticization of the East has
sometimes interfered with not only gathering the actual facts but also
developing the cultural understanding needed for true sexual enlightenment.
Asia, too, has been a complicit partner in feeding our fantasies by giving us
sly peeks into its own practices and, when we don't understand but demand more,
manufacturing new ones.
The shifting balance of power between West and East has helped strip away
fantastic sexual visions and replace them with truer images. Still, even as we
reach out, old perceptions pop up in new ways, from sexual stereotyping to
sex-trade myths. A look at our intertwined pasts reveals how much our
relationship has changed, and, simultaneously, how it's also stayed the same.
Asia versus the Orient
Twenty-five years ago, cultural historian Edward Said propounded a theory that
the Orient is little more than a construct of what the West is not, what he
described famously as the "Other." That mysterious, exotic world bundled
together cultures as geographically distant and diverse as Turkey and Japan,
but ancient glories made the Orient seem at once alluring and past its prime,
especially compared to the rational virility of the New World.
In many ways, the East was perceived as the female counterpart to the masculine
West, both an object to covet and a subject of conquest. Fantasy reflected
itself in sumptuous erotic paintings such as John Singer Sargent's luscious
harem-girl paintings, onstage with Puccini's "Madama Butterfly" and in ornate
japonaiserie and chinoiserie in goods and architecture.
Yet, even back when Said laid out his argument, the West's perception of the
East was evolving quickly. "Historically speaking, attitudes about Asian
sexuality have changed quite a bit," says Amy Sueyoshi, an assistant professor
of ethnic studies and human sexuality at San Francisco State University. "I
think people are often short sighted, [viewing] stereotypes in the U.S. as
being [the same] forever, which is not the case."
The Female East
In the West before World War II, the view of Asian women as beauties had been
largely restricted to the Japanese -- likely a leftover from the 1700s, when
Westerners visited Japan's government-regulated pleasure quarters. They
depicted courtesans (prostitutes) and geisha ("persons of art" who provided
musical and conversational entertainment) interchangeably in art, photographs
and memoirs. Of course, some Japanese women contributed to the confusion, what
with teahouse girls masquerading as geisha and real geisha having private
affairs (often with married men, according to Liza Dalby, anthropologist and
self-proclaimed first American geisha).
Fast forward to the 20th century: At home in the States, Chinese male
immigrants, and, later, Japanese and Filipino ones, took on a "threatening
sexuality" due to economic competition and overseas wars. At the same time,
distant lifestyles once condemned as deviant became examples of diversity, an
attitude change primed by anthropologists such as Margaret Mead. Her promotion
of cultural relativism (all cultures, being equal, should be considered on
their own merits) extended to detailing sexual freedoms in Samoa and New Guinea
that shocked and beguiled 1930s America.
As Mead's ethnographies painted pictures of island girls engaging in premarital
casual sex, foreign wars introduced everyday Americans to the Far East (and,
later, Southeast Asia), and soldiers to hostesses, bar girls and prostitutes.
This limited reality was echoed at home in films and books such as "South
Pacific" (featuring island girls) and "The World of Suzie Wong" (focusing on a
Hong Kong prostitute). Works like these also reflected the American missionary
impulse to save these fallen women: Imagining them in need of rescue fit in
nicely with the United States fashioning itself as a benevolent, racially
diverse and nonimperialist nation.
As Washington, in its rush to becoming a world power, wooed noncommunist Asian
nations as allies, "we can see that same logic operating in popular culture,"
says Christina Klein, author of "Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow
Imagination, 1945-1961." Stories and images emphasized "this idea of
integration," from nonfiction travel tales to media coverage on white Americans
adopting Asian kids to creative works like James Michener's "Hawaii." American
literature and cinema showed how the happy resolution of interracial romance --
overt in "South Pacific" and implied in "The King and I" -- depended on
tolerance.
"The need to renounce racism ... becomes kind of a mainstream view in the 1940s
and 1950s, which has foreign-policy implications," explains Klein, an assistant
professor of literature at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That
notion peaked, pop-culture-wise, in the unprecedented all-Asian casting of "The
Flower Drum Song," a tale of assimilation and romantic (and sexual)
fulfillment: Besides rejecting yellowface, it displayed independent Asian women
(albeit in the "How to Marry a Millionaire"/"Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" vein of
the time).
Following wars in Korea and Vietnam and, later, financial competition with
Japan, Hollywood returned to Asian villains ("Black Rain," "Rising Sun") and
distressed damsels ("Red Corner," "Showdown in Little Tokyo"). At the same
time, demographics and the cultural marketplace were changing. Ethnic studies
and civil rights movements demanded that Asian Americans be taken seriously.
The growing import of Asian culture offered a wider array of images -- sexual
and otherwise -- from which to choose that catered to or confronted
preconceptions.
Embracing the Geisha
Among the archetypes that have benefited in the United States is the
misunderstood geisha. The witty conversationalist who once enjoyed near
pop-star fame had a tarnished reputation in the New World. Notes the
introduction to the program book for the Asian Art Museum's exhibit about
geisha, "Their role as entertainers and artists has been largely misperceived
through the lens of Western culture." Adds author Leslie Downer in one of the
essays, "Westerners fantasized the geisha as everything their Western sisters
were not: 'exotic,' seductive, soft, submissive and -- amazingly -- sexually
available."
The geisha deserved -- and the times demanded -- a makeover. "It is a very
current hot topic that has been looked at the last 15 or 20 years in terms of
anthropology," says Emily Sano, executive director of the Asian Art Museum.
This time, instead of sneaking lascivious peeks, Americans tried out becoming
geisha. Dalby dressed as novice geisha Ichiguku during her Stanford graduate
studies in the 1970s. Arthur Golden ushered enthralled readers into the world
of a 20th-century geisha in his 1997 best-seller "Memoirs of a Geisha." (He
also prompted Mineko Iwasaki, his book's inspiration, to write a retaliatory
autobiography after she accused him of introducing sex where it didn't belong.)
Even Madonna, ever the arbiter of pop sex, had a geisha phase, in between
mehndis and Kabbalah studies.
"Japanese Sex" author Jina Bacarr calls the allure "geisha power." Usually sold
into the profession and dependent on patronage, geisha nevertheless enjoyed
freedoms unavailable to other Japanese women.
The geisha, says Bacarr, "still was her own businesswoman. She had the power to
choose lovers. Japanese women's power is not on the surface. Everything in
Japan, it's very subtle."
The "Geisha" exhibit also probes that subtlety by emphasizing the training and
artistry involved in the profession: American patrons who don't understand the
complex interplay of sexuality can relate, at least, to the business side. All
this complexity imbues the geisha with a sort of feminine power in our
estimation. Moreover, by entering her world, we also get a glimmer of just what
it feels like to be the object of Western attention.
Same Outlook, Different Century?
The willingness to try role reversals speaks to a better understanding between
cultures. Still, old stereotypes do have a way of getting dolling up in new
enlightenment. Packaging philosophy with sex became hot starting with the '60s
counterculture, with ad hoc slogans of free love and investigations into Indian
mysticism. What the West once judged to be loose, perverse and weak, the East
now held to express ancient wisdom that would fill the void in their own lives:
same fantasy, different angle.
"Personally, I think a lot of the New Age stuff is completely Orientalist,"
Christina Klein observes. The end result converted Westerners from conqueror to
pupil, but it "valorizes the idea of the East as having all this great wisdom
... but it maintains that absolute difference between East and West."
Seeking out manuals and toys from other cultures is, says San Francisco
sexologist Dr. Carol Queen, "an attempt for a culture who's hidebound but
pretty fascinated by [sex]. It's a way to reinvigorate and make us think
differently about the role of sexuality. What's problematic about that, a lot
of the cultural context gets peeled away."
She cites "The Yin-Yang Butterfly: Ancient Chinese Sexual Secrets for Western
Lovers," a 1993 book exploring how sex had long been an erotic science in
China. It probed the relationship of passion, health and well being by
observing the emperor at work and even figuring out the five separate depths of
the vagina and the various sensations therein. Some Westerners get that sex in
the East means more than copulation; other folks, though, pull out early in the
culture talk and get details bizarrely wrong, to boot. Queen recalls a recent
panel dealing with cultural and class issues of sex in which a Japanese
American woman related how she had been asked whether Asian women have
different genital configurations.
Queen blames a restrained American sex-education system for the demand on any
sex book, whether focusing on the Japanese, ancient Romans or porn stars.
Without repressive attitudes here and elsewhere in the world, she says, "we
would have a real understanding, as opposed to this marketed understanding of
what are the sexual differences and similarities between cultures. That lack of
understanding really allows exoticization to flower."
Guilt for our past ignorance also drives some attempts to redress perceived
wrongs, such as Southeast Asian sex trafficking. However, says Dr. David
Feingold, who oversees trafficking projects for UNESCO's Bangkok office, "the
reality of the industry is often quite different from what's written about, or
people's fantasies."
His PBS 2003 documentary, "Trading Women," addresses the many myths that
continue to prevail: that Thai prostitution resulted from the Vietnam War, when
it had in fact existed as a state-controlled activity from the 1600s until
recently; that heartless parents sell their girls into the sex trade (many go
voluntarily to the big city to make money, and some get trafficked along the
way); and that sex tourism thrives by serving foreigners, particularly
Westerners, when, actually, the industry, which peaked in the '80s, is on the
decline and trafficked girls don't normally solicit Westerners.
Feingold attributes Western willingness to take the blame partly from the
"Suzie Wong fantasy": saving the bar girl with the heart of gold.
Though sexual trafficking is a serious problem, he says, the major forms of
child abuse in Southeast Asian are forced begging, or working on fishing boats
(where there's a high mortality rate). "There's much less interest in
addressing those [other] issues," Feingold says. "People get more excited about
sexual trafficking. It's much sexier."
The Next Generation
As irksome as some lingering perceptions might be, whether the East as the
idealized fount of sexual wisdom or a place of enslavement, they're fading
slowly. New possibilities, some direct from Asia, are pushing aside or
revamping some old images.
In the Asian-male arena, Sueyoshi points out that the old-school genre of kung
fu films featured an asexual martial arts master (such as the ascetic Shaolin
monk). Now, however, Jackie Chan and Jet Li star in American films and get
hooked up with leading ladies of all races. Even from the old school, the most
potent international sexual image that persists is that of Bruce Lee. His
iconic posture -- bare chested, muscular and indifferently bleeding -- cut
across class and cultural lines and continues to dominate, Elvis-like, in
everything from posters to museum exhibits.
And the next generation is taking it all in. "The kids of today don't have the
baggage" of carrying the weight of stereotypes such as Charlie Chan or Suzie
Wong, Jina Bacarr says. "Their conception of Japan [for instance] is more from
manga and the Japanese pop image." In today's truly global world, American
youth accept Yu-Gi-Oh and Sony PlayStations as their own and get pop culture
from the source. They're absorbing different aspects of Asia -- its economic
prowess and creative flow -- before sexual stereotypes can register.
"It's access to self-representation," Christina Klein says. "It's access to
producing popular culture, rather than being a figure of popular culture. With
technological changes, the diasporic aspects of globalization make it possible
to see Asian stuff directly, rather than always see Asia through a constructed
American lens."
And, if the West still resists, consider the shifts in power that pushed the
release in America of Zhang Yimou's 2002 "Hero," which features potent and
powerful images of stars Jet Li, Donnie Yen and Maggie Cheung. According to a
New York Times story, Chinese officials reportedly pressured Miramax to give
that country's box office record breaker a wide American release. The studio
pleaded empty marketing coffers, but Disney, building a theme park in Hong
Kong, coughed up the money. In its first weekend, the subtitled flick pulled in
$18 million.
The biggest sign of an attitude shift, however, may be among Asian Americans.
"The Flower Drum Song," embraced at the time of its premiere but condemned in
the '70s for perceived derogatory images, enjoyed a revival: Besides David
Henry Hwang's update, which just concluded its Bay Area premiere, the 2002 San
Francisco International Asian Film Festival featured appearances by original
cast members and a sing-along screening. Lucy Liu, accused of perpetuating the
dragon-lady stereotype on "Ally McBeal," vamped alongside Drew Barrymore and
Cameron Diaz in "Charlie's Angels" and drew no fire (except for contributing to
a bad sequel). Recently, "The Guru," a sexually oriented coming-to-America
comedy, did a wicked send-up of American fascination with Indian mystic
sexuality, and, in another movie, two dudes named Harold and Kumar poked fun at
images of Asian-male sexuality during a burger quest.
Whether these events signal growing comfort among Asians in their own images --
and sexuality -- in a West that's shedding its preconceptions remains up for
debate. The good thing is, nowadays, we have more to talk about.
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