青出于蓝胜于蓝 日本成功复制美国文化

Kamakura Shirts owner Yoshio Sadasue opened a New York store on Madison Avenue. (Raymond Patrick)
日本人Yoshio Sadasue在纽约的麦迪逊大道上经营着这家“镰仓衬衫”

Acouple of years ago I found myself in a basement bar in Yoyogi, a central precinct of Tokyo, drinking cold Sapporo beers with big foamy heads while the salarymen next to me raised their glasses to a TV displaying a fuzzy, obviously bootlegged video of an old Bob Dylan concert. The name of the bar, My Back Pages, is the title of a Dylan song. Dylan is, in fact, the bar’s reason for being: Japanese fans come here to watch his concert videos, listen to his tapes and relive the ’60s in America, a time and place almost none of them witnessed firsthand. As I heard yet another version of "Mr. Tambourine Man" roaring over the speakers, with some drunk Japanese fans now singing along, I thought how strange this phenomenon was
几年前，我坐在位于东京中心区域，代代木的一家地下酒吧喝着满是泡沫的札幌啤酒，旁边的一个工薪族正对着一台播放着盗版，失真的鲍勃迪伦早期演唱会的电视举杯。这家酒吧的名字叫做“我的过去”，这是鲍勃迪伦一首歌的名字。事实上，鲍勃正是这家酒吧得以存在的原因：日本的粉丝们聚在这里看他的演唱会，听他的唱片，重温美国60年代的生活，一段他们并没有亲自体验过的生活。接着我听到有酒醉的日本粉丝跟着喇叭里喧闹的另外一个版本的“Mr. Tambourine Man”合唱，我觉得这个场景真的好奇怪。

The American presence in Japan now extends far beyond the fast-food franchises, chain stores and pop-culture offerings that are ubiquitous the world over. A long-standing obsession with things American has led not just to a bigger and better market for blockbuster movies or Budweiser, but also to some very rarefied versions of America to be found in today’s Japan. It has also made the exchange of Americana a two-way street: Earlier this year, Osaka-based Suntory, a Japanese conglomerate best known for its whiskey holdings, announced that it was buying Beam Inc., thus acquiring the iconic American bourbon brands Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark.
美国对日本的影响远远超过了遍布世界的快餐产业，连锁商店和流行文化层面。日本长时间对美国事物的痴迷不仅仅使他们的电影产业规模更大更好，更适合拍摄大制作电影或者生产百威啤酒，也使人们能够在这里找到一些更纯粹的美国。也使得对美国产业的交易变成了双向道：今年早些时候，总部位于大阪的著名的威士忌公司三得利，宣布他们收购了Beam Inc.。这样，他们也就获得了著名的美国波旁威士忌品牌：Jim Beam（沾边波旁威士忌）和Maker’s Mark。

In Japan, the ability to perfectly imitate—and even improve upon—the cocktails, cuisine and couture of foreign cultures isn’t limited to American products; there are spectacular French chefs and masterful Neapolitan pizzaioli who are actually Japanese. There’s something about the perspective of the Japanese that allows them to home in on the essential elements of foreign cultures and then perfectly recreate them at home. "What we see in Japan, in a wide range of pursuits, is a focus on mastery,"says Sarah Kovner, who teaches Japanese history at the University of Florida. "It's true in traditional arts, it’s true of young people who dress up in Harajuku, it’s true of restaurateurs all over Japan."It’s easy to dismiss Japanese re-creations of foreign cultures as faddish and derivative—just other versions of the way that, for example, the new American hipster ideal of Brooklyn is clumsily copied everywhere from Paris to Bangkok. But the best examples of Japanese Americana don’t just replicate our culture. They strike out, on their own, into levels of appreciation and refinement rarely found in America. They give us an opportunity to consider our culture as refracted through a foreign and clarifying prism.
日本人能够完美地模仿或者说改良外国的文化，如服装风格，烹饪技巧和鸡尾酒制作。不仅能模仿美国文化。很多技艺精湛的法国厨师和熟练的那不勒斯批萨师实际上是日本人。日本人有一种能认清外国文化的本质然后在日本本土把它复制出来的本事。 在佛罗里达学教日本历史的Sarah Kovner说 ：“我们在日本看到，对技术的精通是人们普遍追求的，在传统艺术上人们如此，打扮成原宿娃娃的人如此，日本所有的餐馆也是如此”
日本人对外国文化的复制很容易被人认为他们只是因为喜爱而模仿罢了，就好像赶时髦的布鲁克林的新美国人肤浅地模仿人家巴黎和曼谷的文化一样，日本人只是另一个版本罢了。但是那些典型的日裔美国人模仿的可不只是我们的文化，他们（在没有导师的情况下）认识和改进事物的水平在美国可是很少见的。他们为我们提供了一个国外参照物或一面清晰镜子，让我们认识本身文化的不足之处。