essays on culture

David Byrne used to sing; "Everybody is trying to get to the bar. name of the bar; it is called heaven." (Heaven) Oh yes, my private heaven bar is the bar in Tandjung Sari, Bali, Indonesia.

This hotel is the origin of the small boutique villa hotels in Bali. It started with just 4 rooms in 1962. Now, there

are 29 bungalows. This is still very small hotel.

It used to be a hideaway resort for the celebrities like John Lennon and Mick Jagger. Now, because there are much more gorgeous resort hotels in Bali, and the facilities gets a little bit old, it became an accessible hotel with not very expensive price. The hotel staffs are very friendly, the foods are wonderful, truely comfortable hotel to stay.

I love the garden of the hotel. The atmosphere is somehow like Kyoto. Very quiet place with Wabi Sabi. And the hotel is supporting the Balinese dance lessons for the village people. You can hear the Gamelan music and the dance lessons while you are on the beach in the daytime.

So, my favorite bar is located in front of the sea. During the night-time, it is very dark, and I cannot see the sea at all, only the sound of the waves. But I can feel the big existence of the sea in the dark. Very quiet, no music. So, I drink the Balinese rice wine, Brem, there. (Brem is very good, and cheap, compared to the imported drinks. ) Oh, how I want to go there.... (I am too busy to take vacation now.)

I wrote in the review of Carole King, "she might be too famous and too popular to be taken seriously." There are some artists who are in the same position. For example, Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Carpenters, the Beach Boys (except Brian Wilson). They are too popular, and regarded light. And in my opinion, there is a bias against the professionalism in rock music. John Lennon is always regarded higher than Paul McCartney...

I'd like to say, "stop thinking that way." Music is just a music. You can't judge its value just by its popularity or professionalism.

I am mainly picking up the records which are relatively minor, or sometimes regarded avant-garde. But I am not telling all these avant-garde records are better than the popular ones. I am just saying that we can hear them equally. For example, "Blue" Gene Tyranny is categorized in contemporary music, but his music is beautiful and accessible. You can hear it just like ordinary music. Likewise, Carole King, Paul McCartney and Paul Simon should be taken seriously. They are absolutely great song-writers.

As for Paul Simon, the bias against him is particularly strong among the rock music

listeners. It is not only because his song-writing skill is professional, but also because he sometimes uses musical ideas of the world music. So, they might call it cultural imperialism! On the other hand, they might appreciate the works like Eno/Byrne's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981). They might say, "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts is the inter-cultural collage of music. They have the respects to the original music. On the other hand, Paul Simon's Graceland (1986) is just using the superficial musical features of the South African music. Simon doesn't understand the political situation of the South Africa, and he doesn't understand the true charm of the music either. etc" However, I don't see any difference between these two works. I think they are good music. In the context of cultural imperialism, I feel it is stronger in My life in the Bush of the Ghosts. We can argue that Eno/Byrne just gathered the sounds from radio and records with some exotic interests. On the other hand, Simon played with African musicians, there seems to be musical interaction among them as far as I saw the video of making Graceland.

When we start discussing about the cultural imperialism, there arises the question; Can we ever understand the different culture or music? What is the politically correct attitude to the different culture? etc.

My attitude toward the music is quite simple. Good music is good: bad music is bad. Whether it is good or bad depends on whether I like or no. Whether I like or not does not depend on the genre of the music.

This is simple. However, still the question remains. Do I understand music of the different culture

correctly? I am not sure about this. It is very possible that I misunderstand the cultural context of the music. For example, I think the chanting music of Tibetan Buddhism is really exciting. I am hearing this as an experimental, avant-garde music, but Tibetan monks surely don't have that intention. In this case, I am a cultural imperialist, if you'd like call me that way.

One more big problem is the foreign languages. I do not understand the languages except Japanese and English. And I cannot hear the English lyrics very well. So, in most of cases, I love the foreign music without understanding what they are singing at all. I don't know how the other people hear music when they don't understand the

languages. Surely, the lyric is the part of the music. But I feel I can concentrate on music when I ignore the meaning of lyrics, just hearing the sound of the lyrics. This attitude seems to be imperialistic, lacking the effort to understand the different culture.

But are we hearing music in order to understand the different culture? Some people might hear music that way. But my main interest is music. I feel cultural imperialism question is not very important in music. It is not who is politically correct on the cultural imperialism problem, but which work is a good mixture of different culture.

For example, I like Ry Cooder's Chicken Skin Music (1976); it is a good cultural mixture of Tex-Mex and Hawaiian music. While I don't like Buena Vista Social Club (1997). It is a nice Cuban music, but Cooder's slide guitar does not fit to the music at all. Likewise, I like My life in the Bush of the Ghosts (1981), but I don't like Rei Momo (1989). David Byrne cannot sing Cuban music at all.

I guess I have a right to misunderstand the cultural context when hearing music. This statement is based on the naive faith that music is the common language. How do you think?

I wrote, "I guess I have a right to misunderstand the cultural context when hearing music." This can be misunderstood. So, think about this some more.

My American friend once heard the man on the radio saying,"Burrito in this restaurant is just like it in Mexico." But my friend said that it was not possible because Burrito was not a real Mexican food; it was made in California!

One more interesting food in California is California roll. It is a sushi roll made in California, and you can't find this at the usual sushi bar in Japan. (You have to find the American style sushi bar in Japan to eat this.)

So, Burrito and California Roll are cultural imperialism? Some might say it can be, at least, it is not real. But I don't think so. Particularly, I feel the parson who invented

California roll should be a genius in cooking. There are two great inventions in California roll. One is how to roll. Usually, Japanese sushi roll is made by wrapping the rice with the seaweed sheet. But California Roll is made by wrapping the seaweed sheet with rice. By doing this, California roll can contain more fillings. Second, California roll uses avocado as a filling. I think it is a substitute of the tuna fish. Fatty raw tuna is Japanese favorite, and so expensive. Actually, the taste of fatty raw tuna and avocado are very alike. But it is very hard to find this fact because they don't look alike at all.

These foods are the products of the cultural mixture. I think the culture has developed in this way, mixing the other cultures influences in many ways. This process is sometimes done by the misunderstanding of the different culture. There sometimes is the funny chimera of the multi-culture, but certainly there appear the sudden inventions which might not be done by its original culture.

Less famous American made sushi roll is Philadelphia roll. This is the variation of the California roll which contains the Philadelphia cream cheese, instead of avocado. This is not so bad, but...

Said is the professor of English literature and comparative culture study. He is a Palestinian, born in Jerusalem

in 1935, and studied in Cairo. He went on to earn his B.A. at Princeton University and his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1964. Said currently teaches comparative literature at Columbia University. He was a long time member of the Palestine National Council, and has been a spokesman of the Palestinian in the U.S.. In his famous book, Orientalism (1979), he argues that the Western world has been seeing Arabic world as one entity, ignoring the difference among them. This is sometimes based on the exotic image of the oriental. Even the Western scholars studying the oriental world are not exceptional. They are systematically misunderstanding the oriental world, and secretly supporting the colonization of the oriental world against their own will.

When you read this short biography, you might imagine someone very political with nationalistic, anti-imperialistic passion. However, his discussion is much more subtle, and he is very far from nationalism. Orientalism is kind of modern classics, still controversial. Though I don't agree with all of his points, I think it is a must book for the one who studies about the their culture. And if you are living or going to live in the foreign country, it is a good starting point to think about the inter-cultural understanding.

Recently, I bought his memoir, Out of Place (2000), and started to read it slowly. (I am usually reading several books together, sometimes it takes several months to read one book.) This is a beautifully-written

book which reminds me of Marcell Proust. In this book, Said writes his childhood in Palestine and Cairo, he confesses his ambivalence in the cultural identity. His name Edward is real name though he is a Palestinian. His father fought for the USA during the war and got the citizenship of the U.S., and he named his son a Western name.Said's cultural environment is very Westernized, he read Western literatures and Listened to western classical music, and he liked Western movies. He was always wandering among the two cultural identities as "Edward" and Palestinian. He studied in the U.S., and lives in New York City. Now, he thinks "I've been in solitude and misfortune for a long time, but I think I am happy about my situation now. Being floating around, being out of place is good, not having the house. Particularly in the city like New York, it is not good to be too comfortable" (Sorry, I cannot quote exactly because I am reading this in Japanese translated edition.) Said reached his "identity", through accepting his bi-cultural, unstable situation.

I am very much sympathized with Said's points of view. Kamono Chomei (1155?-1216), a classical Japanese writer, wrote, "the rivers are running through the years, but it is not the same water anymore." (Sorry again, this is my translation, this is not poetic at all...) I think "identity" is not the solid ground that you stand on, but it is like a river. Maybe a river running beneath your consciousness, ever changing.

The cultural identity is not the solid ground we stand upon, but it is like a river.

Still, we, Japanese people, cannot help feeling uncomfortable in communicating with the foreign people because they seem to have the solid cultural or religious background. Compared to them, we, Japanese people don't have the roots. So, why we are not so sure about our identity? There should be many reasons for this, but the fundamental issue, I think, is that the nature of Japanese culture itself does not fit with the notion of "identity".

When I started thinking about Japanese identity issue, I tried to pick up the books which might be useful to understand Japanese culture and identity. Two books came into my minds at first. The Book of Tea (1906) by Tenshin (Kakuzou) Okakura and Zen by Daisetz Suzuki . I tried to pick up one more book. Then, John Cage, pour les oiseaux (1976), the interview of John Cage, came to my mind.

There are two common features in three books.The first one is the Zen spirit. I am not sure if Zen is the essence of Japanese culture or not, but surely it represents the best part of Japanese culture. I feel Zen spirit strongly in the works of John Cage. Listening to Cage's music could be the instant Zen experience. In my understanding of Zen, it is nonsense to argue about "I" and "you". It is not good thing to stick too much on one's identity. And "Truth" might exist, but cannot be described. Or "Truth" might not exist if you think it does exist... (Here, we reach the Godelian paradox.)

The second common feature is that they are all written in foreign languages. The book of tea is published in Boston. Zen is the collection of English writtings of Daisetz Suzuki. These two works were written for the foreigner to understand the Japanese culture; to describe the undescribable things. And John Cage, pour les oiseaux was the interview made by French writer. I think it is done in English, but first published in French. (I happen to write about Japanese culture in English here... Sorry for my poor writing...)

These things tell us that cultural identity exists when we talk to the foreign people; Identity only exists only in the comparison or relations with the other. Because Japanese society is homogeneous and has little needs to communicate with the other, Japanese culture has little language to describe itself. Moreover, Japanese culture is basically undescribable, it is only possible for a few great philosophers like Daisetz Suzuki and Kakuzou Okakura. And their works were done in foreign language. Yet, we don't have the words to describe the culture of modern Japan today.

So, we, Japanese people, should start with the point that we don't have the cultural identity. Otherwise, we easily fall in the trap of the quick and dirty nationalism. The instant nationalism is never a starting point of mutual understanding among the different cultures.

Wittgenstein, Viennese logic philosopher said in Tractatus logico-philosophicus (1921) that what is describable is describable, what cannot be described is left undescribed. When you reach the undescribable point, you should be silent; you have to forget the words. This is very close to Zen.

Tenshin Okakura	Daisetz Suzuki	John Cage	Kurt Godel	Ludwig Wittgenstein

(28/July/2002)

James Bond asks the bartender, "Don't stir, shake it." It is nothing but a joke nowadays; you'd better not do this at the bar. Martini is to enjoy the clearness and sharpness. If it is shaken, the taste becomes softer and gentle by containing the air. I think it is not Martini anymore.

I thought I'd read somewhere that Martini becomes Gibson when it is shaken. The contents of Martini and Gibson are very alike, Gin an Dry Vermouth. So, I checked the internet sites to confirm my memory. But I could not confirm it. There are many recipes for Gibson. And it can be stirred or shaken. (There is no recipe to shake Martini.) The major difference between Martini and Gibson is to put Olive or Pearl Onion in it, is not to shake or not. One says, "It is unfashionable to shake Gibson. Nevertheless, if you still like to do it like James Bond, the portion of Gin should be increased." This person is very strict on the recipe.

When I went to New York City long time ago, I stopped by a bar in a gorgeous hotel. I asked to make Gimlet or something. But the bartender did not seem to be sure about the recipe, and he started to check the recipe book. He used bottled Lime juice, instead of fresh Lime juice, to make the cocktail. It was not good at all, too sweet, unbalanced. I tried some cocktails in some bars in New York and in other cities. But it was never really good as I expected.

I was just having big expectations that New York was the best place for the cocktail. This came from the "jazz-age" image when Scott and Zelda Fitzgelard played in the city. So, I was little disappointed. The cocktail is not very sophisticated drink in America, it is just a mixed up something with alcohol. (If anyone knows really nice bar in America, please let me know.)

On the contrary, the cocktail culture in Japan is something beyond "mixed something". There are usually good bars in good hotels. And there are good bartenders in good hotel bars. They can make very good Martini and anything you like to have. In some bars, there might be several selections for Martini so that you can choose from them. The recipe is not just mixing Gin and Dry Vermouth etc. The important point is what Gin and what Dry Vermouth to use. (Usually, Noilly Prat Dry Vermouth is used in making Martini. As for Gin, there seem to be several alternatives.) Of course, what Gin to use depends on what cocktail to make. So, the cocktail is made carefully with this well-thought recipe, and it is served to you in a perfect condition. It almost reaches to the point of art.

This sophistication of cocktail culture in Japan might have similarities with tea ceremony, which sophisticated the way of having tea from everyday behavior to mysterious philosophy. In the process of the sophistication, every action during tea ceremony is formed into a particular style. It is so formal for usual people like me that they cannot enjoy tea at all. Tea-ceremony-people are very interested in what type of tea is used, or what tea cup or tea spoon, or what charcoal are used in the ceremony. And it is a good manner for guests to ask the host what he/she is using. (It is expected that the host is carefully selecting them according to the situation and season etc.) This sounds very snobbish to me. Anyway, Japanese people might like to sophisticate everyday thing. Thus, tea ceremony is seemingly toward perfectionism.

However, according to "The book of Tea" by Tensin Okakura, the essence of tea ceremony is the love for imperfection of the life; The real world is full of sadness and madness, but let us take a tea break peacefully and accept the imperfectness of the life as it is. So, if he is right, tea ceremony is not a behavior to make imperfect everyday thing perfect, but to enjoy the imperfectness. From this point of view, cocktail culture in Japan may be a snobbish perfectionism.

We like to have perfect cocktail in a special bar in a special occasion. But it might be better to have it with more relaxed way at the end of imperfect days.

One hundred years ago, one young Japanese man arrived at Seattle. He stayed in America for several years until he left to France. First, he studied English and French in Tacoma in Washington State, moved around several cities, and arrived at New York City where he worked in the branch of the Japanese bank. He wrote the book about his experience in America and France. This young person is known as Kafuu Nagai, one of the great novelists in Japan.

When re-reading America Monogatari (American Stories) (1908) now, I feel it is a pre-mature book with many adolescent sentimentalism and stereo-type views on people and Western culture. His way of writing is not descriptive. He was trying to write like Charles Baudelaire, and he saw everything in Baudelaire-like estheticism, eroticism and exotism; he was not looking at things with his own eyes. It must have been forgotten in years, if it had not been written by Kafuu Nagai. Nevertheless, I found that the book was interesting as stories of the lost Japanese people in America.

There was a Japanese young man with long hair. He was sent to America to study at Columbia University by his parents, but he didn't have any interest in studying. He was playing around with girls. Then, he started to live with a beautiful widow, and stopped going to school. This widow had a sadistic nature, and she gave his hair a strong pull when she was frustrated. And he was very satisfied with his life. Another Japanese man was studying philosophy quietly, but actually he was just trying to escape from the strong attraction of decadent life. After having studied quietly, he again went back to the city to see if he could stand up with the temptations from girls. (But it seems not to be possible for him to escape from it.)

When Japan started to build a modern state in the second half of 19th century, Japan sent the first generation of the elite people to the foreign countries to study the Western science. They had a strong sense of mission. 40 years after the beginning of Meiji era, people studying in the foreign countries didn't always have those public missions; they just went to America just because they didn't want to be in Japan. They were lost in Japan, and they were still lost in America.

Along with those wealthy decadent young people, there were also people who went to America because they were poor and couldn't afford to live in Japan. They arrived by ships and worked as cheap labor in the West Coast. There are some tragic stories about those Japanese people in American Stories. One Japanese arrived at Seattle with his wife, but his wife was raped by his working colleagues in front of him. He lost his sanity and he was imprisoned in State Asylum in Tacoma. Another Japanese lost all of his money that he had worked very hard, and he also got insane.

It is very interesting that Seattle was like a Western outlaw town one hundred years ago, considering it is now a beautiful "Emerald City", one of the most livable city in America and the city of Starbucks, Microsoft and Boeing. According to Kafuu, there was a Japanese town in the down town area, where only Japanese was heard in the street; the sound of Shamisen that Geisha played was floating from the room. Every kind of Japanese people were in Seattle, and were making miniature Japan in America! (As I wrote before, I was in Seattle 15 years ago. So, the description of Seattle and Tacoma is the most interesting parts of American Stories.)

At the end of the movie The Sheltering Sky (1990), Paul Bowles asks Debra Winger, "Are you lost?" Winger, after a long incredible journey through Sahara, answers, "Yes". One hundred years ago, there were many lost Japanese people in America. And we may be still lost in many ways here in Japan.

After writing about old time Seattle last week, I checked the history of the city in the WEB. According to my quick research;

Kafuu Nagai arrived at Seattle in 1903. So, the city was just after the great fire. It is very understandable that the city was still like a Wild-West town with many prostitutes as he described it. And a story about a Japanese immigrant working in forestry in American Stories is also understandable, considering the city was first developed with forestry.

I just remembered that I used to join the underground tour in Seattle because one of my friends recommended it. It was the strangest tour I've ever took. I was just imagining the town of one hundred years ago was left in the underground like Pompeii after volcano explosion. However, it was just walking around the old down town area, and sometimes going down to the basements of the old buildings. There was no underground town left intact; there was only some basement rooms and something like that. So, I was a little bid disappointed. (There are both positive and negative opinions about this tour among my friends.) But the guide was entertaining in presenting not-very-exciting-sceneries.

Rather, I was impressed by the story about one old brick building during the tour. Two buildings were built, contacted with each other. Because one owner (call him A) built the building few inches inside of his land, the other owner (call him B) built his building out of his land. A ordered B to move back inside his land. So, B did it by breaking some portions of his building, but he did it few inches inside of his land. Then, A expanded his building, contacting with B's building. Now, B ordered A to move back. Even though A started to work on it, A was forced into bankruptcy. So, B was much smarter and richer than A, and B got all of two buildings. This episode seems to show how Seattle was out-of-law town. If this happens in the city under the rule of law, the problem was solved by conference among A and B. Maybe, it should have been solved by B paying the land rent to A. The solution of re-building the building is not the good for both of them.

As I reviewed the history of Seattle, I found that most of city's today images don't have long histories. Like an underground town beneath the new beautiful city, there should be many stories in the dark sides of history.

By the way, David Lynch's Twin Peaks (1990) was filmed in the town near Seattle. And the town Twin Peaks was supposed to exist near Seattle in the TV story. Lynch might be also fascinated by imaginative underground world of Seattle. And the anti-globalist anarchy during WTO meeting might have been the return of the city's old spirits.

Today I happened to read Slapp Happy's interview on Studio Voice (Aug/2000). It was a wonderful interview. So, I think I'd like to translate it to English from Japanese someday.

In this interview, Dagmar Krause talked about Weill, Brecht and Eisler. She said she was told by one producer that her way of singing was like Kurt Weill when she was singing in Hamburg. She was just 14 years old then! So, she started to hear Kurt Weill's record by Lotte Lenya! Oh, yes. She's been hearing Lotte Lenya since she was a teen age girl!

Another interesting story is about the influence of Basho and Japanese culture on Slapp Happy. Peter Blegvad told that he was influenced by the "compactness" of Japanese culture, such as haiku, tea ceremony and bonsai etc. And he explained that so called "Kawaii", small and cute, was the essence of Japanese culture. (He said "Kawaii" to Dagmar during the stage in Japan!) According to Blegvad, Slapp Happy is "Bonsai Band"!

Moreover, Anthony Moore mentioned about Ohgaki where Basho's The Narrow Road to the Deep North ended. He said he was impressed very much by going to Ohgaki and saw the stone monument of Basho. Because there are songs like Haiku and Going to Kyoto , and Blegvad quoted Basho's "Furuike ya Kawazu Tobikomu Mizuno Oto" on the Japanese stage, I knew that they liked Japanese culture. But I didn't imagined how deeply they love the Japanese culture. It was very interesting.

By the way, I am now reading Basho's The Narrow Road to the Deep North. It was written more than 300 years ago. Because it is rather an old Japanese, I am reading it very slowly. It is sometimes good to read something slowly, but I just thought it might be interesting to compare it with English translation book. So, I tried it on English. I could read it much smoothly! Japanese 300 years ago is a more distant language than a foreign language!

I was curious how Basho's Haiku was translated to English. Haiku is a very short poem sometimes with plural meanings and images. As I imagined, translated Haiku looked like an explanation of meaning rather than a poem. But I was so impressed by the translation of travel essay part of the book. It was very smooth and beautiful in English. It brings a completely different feeling from original Japanese text. Basho looked like a romantic traveler of England in the19 th century. It is a very good translation, but it is a different reading pleasure for me.

So, this is the example of how understanding different culture is difficult. And it is also an example of understand beyond language is still possible.

The other day, I dreamed about New York City. I was supposed to stay there only for one day. It seemed that I just stopped by in a trip to other cities. I was thinking where to go in a day. There were many places that I'd like to go. Museums, restaurants, parks, and shops etc. It is fascinating just to walk around the city. I was trying to make an efficient plan to have maximum fan in a day. However, suddenly, I just remembered that WTC did not exist anymore. I saw the empty sky without WTC from the hotel window. It shocked me deeply. And I realized that the first place I should go is the ground zero. I had to pray for the souls of people who lost their lives there. I felt so sad and cried in my sleep...

I wake up and still felt sad. In reality, one of my friends died there. Though we were not very close friends, we were in the same seminar at the university. I respected him because he was very smart and thoughtful. One day, he came to my apartment after the members of the seminar had a small party. He checked my record collections, and he asked me why I didn't have Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon (1973) while I had some King Crimson's records. I answered him, "I had listened to it too many times." It was in the late 70's. I was more interested in "New Wave", and began to feel Pink Floyd was old. (King Crimson's records like Starless and Bible Black (1974) still sounded good to me at that time, and they still do.) We had tea and listened to music for some while together...

And he does not exist in this world anymore. He was really smart. He was such a nice guy to love Pink Floyd!

ABC (Aoyama Book Center) broke and closed the shops the other day. Though Yohan is expected to help rebuilding the company, it is unknown if the shop can keep its originality. I liked ABC because it always provided interesting books, and interesting linkage among different books. There were beautiful art books, novels, philosophical books etc. The store was fair to pop culture and high culture, even fair to academic and technological books. Many unknown books were waiting for me to be found there. It used to be main reason for me to visit Roppongi along with Wave, the music store that closed much earlier, when I had a chance to go to Tokyo.

For me, as a non-Tokyo resident, Tokyo had powerful attractions in the 80's and in the early 90's. It was full of fashionable bars and restaurants, and shops. These accumulations of shops made the Culture, itself. It may not be the "real", creative culture; it is just a "consumer" culture. It may be just a side-effect of bubble economy. Yet, there was still sophisticated consumer culture. And ABC was representing the consumer book culture. There must be very sophisticated readers who loved books in the store, and they gave very exciting views on books just by showing them on the store.

Roppongi used to be a very fashionable place for night clubbing. And its charm was enhanced by ABC and Wave. But, as the bubble economy bursted and the fashionable nightclubs had gone somewhere, Roppongi became just another town for night life. As its nightclub culture faded away, its music and book culture faded away, too. In consumer culture, book, music, clothing, and night club were equal. (ABC was open until AM 5.)

I still remember the day when I went to Wave for the first time. It was in the early 80's when the shop just opened. When I stepped in the big, beautiful building, Durutti Column's Never Known was played in the store. I was so surprised because Durutti Column was rather a minor, sub-culture artist only played in the small specialized record shop. It was the moment when Capitalism absorbed the post-punk and alternative music as fashionable symbols. So, Japanese capitalism absorbed many new cultures, and expanded to its limits, and finally bursted. And only barren field was left in Roping and many other places in Japan.

Bookstores and CD shops are becoming less and less exciting place; they are just places to buy new books and CDs, not the places to discover new artists or writers. This is not just because of the burst of the bubble economy, but also because of the growth of internet shops such as Amazon.

Amazon can help to find old catalogues as well as new ones, and even recommends what we may like to have. But its recommendations are basically based on what other customers bought. Not the recommendation of keen buyers in the shops. I, myself, mainly buy CDs and books from Amazon and internet auction sites like ebay. I can buy many past catalogues and rare things much more easily than before. However, my interest has not expanded these days.

This tendency seems to be same to many listners today. When many LPs were re-issued in CDs in the 90's, peopel still had chances to hear old music and new music equally because they were both newly released CDs. Many people were listening to many types of music equally. But, as we buy CDs online, we just listened to what we already have interests.