On the Japanese Modern Tech-Nexus
Nowadays, there is a lot of heated and complex debate worldwide about the idea of copying — something I became particularly aware of when I entered the new creative field of architecture. I was flooded with sleek, innovative, and complex content, which led me to explore modern Japanese design. This exploration challenged some deeply ingrained and widespread notions about copying.
Being around 19 or 20 years old and an avid seeker of originality since my school years (because, somehow, someone is always copying you somewhere in the shadows), I began to question the recent development of Japanese modern culture. For decades, Japan had been growing largely by copying American and European designs — more than 30 or 40 years, I guess.
I was amused to learn that Japanese designers used to receive some of the harshest criticism from Western modern culture, often labeled as the worst or most blatant copycats in industrial design during specific years. However, seeing how this culture and mindset have “transcended” those origins and transformed into a creative present (“the Now!”), I had to rethink these processes.
Note: I call this phenomenon a “creative nexus” partly due to some uncertain information about the post-war relationship between Japan, the US, and Europe. I can’t imagine what it’s like for an entire society to exist and progress over “copied content.” The idea of a whole factory—designers, managers, quality surveyors—being satisfied with the percentage of originality they achieved is puzzling.
Of course, much of recent Japanese design is mind-blowing to me, so I guess the memory of the ‘50s and ‘60s might be somewhat suppressed or transformed. That’s why I call it a “nexus”: the memory of such history and progress cannot be easily erased or alchemically converted into something else. I sometimes wonder how this justification happens in the present. Is “copying” or “evolving through copying” seen as a form of vengeance or success? I thought so for a while. Or is it simply that consumer short memories justify rapid progress, making the copying phase just a transitional stage? I still think originality must suffer somewhere else in the world — how that balance is maintained, I cannot imagine.
Creativity Around Fixed Forms
Coming from a music school background, I was trained to reproduce classical pieces strictly and meticulously. This reproduction focuses on nuance, interpretation, and personal view, though no modification of the original is permitted. After years of practicing these “fixed forms,” the idea of inventing something truly original becomes a hidden or even guilty dream.
Note: There’s a significant difference between cultures that emphasize creativity as part of education and those that lack it—especially former communist countries. In creativity-based societies, institutionalized “cultural behavior” seems to emerge naturally, fostered by a general sense of well-being and common sense. In oppressive societies, however, these creative tools often become paradoxical and constrained — I can personally testify to that.
Relating to Other Creatives
Growing up in the digital age has made me rethink these ideas. Through creative development, I became more flexible about certain forms of copying. No creative process can truly start and grow without some degree of copying — whether complete or partial — because we always develop in relation to someone: someone influential, impressive, or admired.
Usually, we begin by wanting to copy, but eventually a “witness” inside us makes us realize the unnaturalness of it. Depending on our standards—whether aiming to replicate “everything” or just “ourselves”—we either continue or transform the copy into something more personal. I don’t think the “filiation” can ever be erased. Instead, a complicated web of relations forms around the process.
Note: I also believe the balance between “personal content/touch” and “marketing/calculations” in a product’s creation is unique. Each copy might feel like a malware or a destructive installation.
Personally, I’ve never been into copying. If I questioned someone else’s creation, it was out of genuine interest in people and their psychological profiles. Copying someone’s “stuff” helps you understand the creator. Because, after all, the entity creating the object of admiration is someone else.
Of course, copying someone you admire to evolve is risky. Your work will always contain references to that person’s psychological world. Knowing yourself helps you understand the complex relationships involved in copying or quoting another creative mind. The more mature and informed you are, the more you grasp the complicated interactions between different creative media, technology, audiences, marketing, societies, and political systems.
The technological, social, economic, and political divides we face in post-communist transitions are so complicated that they can hardly be fully understood.
Speculative Madness
Music is not the only medium subject to copying. In movies, graphics, technology, everything worth copying carries a complex array of relationships between creatives, media, culture, and audience. Anything that sparks interest in speculative minds tends to be appropriated and used to one’s advantage. I have a long history of playing under the radar of mediocre minds just for fun.
Unfortunately, what is elevated, elegant, or intelligent in human development often remains rare. This introduces risk when working outside mediocrity and normal boundaries — if your availability permits, that is.
I’ve also read that creative content historically flourished only in times and places of comfort, when energy for making “beautiful things” was a luxury.
Institutionalized “art-making” today is something of a paradox. Why has the making of beautiful things become repetitive, tormenting for kids (some even killing themselves at age eight), snobbish, and boring? This is probably more prevalent under rigid political and social regimes. In societies educated about creativity, energies are collected, nurtured, and channeled toward constructive results.
The more corrupt a society, the more creativity becomes a complicated, costly, and even state-controlled affair. Creatives become caricatures, and creative media are torn apart by collective self-images twisted by countless idiosyncrasies.
( rewritten with ChatGpt )
PAUL SELING 
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