Night-Time and Sleep in Asia and the West. Exploring the dark side of life

BRIGITTE STEGER / LODEWUK BRUNT (eds.), Night-Time and Sleep in Asia and the West. Exploring the dark side of life. (Beitr�ge zur Japanologie 38). Wien: Abt. f�r Japanologie des Instituts f�r Ostasienwissenschaften, Universit�t Wien, 2006. 224 pp., euro 20.00. ISBN 3-900362-21-1

This study is the outcome of a symposium organized in Vienna by the editors and Ayukawa Jun in early 2001. Besides the Introduction (Chapter 1) written by the editors, the book comprises nine case studies, five of which deal with Asia, while the other four are concerned with European countries and the army of the USA.

In their Introduction "Into the night and the world of sleep" (pp. 1-23) Brigitte Steger (Wien) und Lodewijk Brunt (Amsterdam) give an outline of the symposium's methodological intent and the book's content in cross cultural perspective. Central to the discussion are questions relating to the social, cultural and historical conditions that influence the perception of sleep and night time. Neither universal theory nor meta-narrative on sleep and night are, according to the authors, able to include the respective culture-specific concepts, nor does the distinction of Asian versus European cultures prove to be valid. The remaining part of the Introduction reviews significant publications on night and sleep, also providing a preview of typical sleeping patterns ranging from the monophasic sleep culture "with the widespread ideal of an eight-hour nocturnal sleep" (p. 16) via me biphasic siesta pattern to a polyphasic sleep pattern in so-called napping cultures.

In the first case study "Sleeping time in early Chinese literature" (Chapter 2) Antje Richter (pp. 24-44) first introduces the specific terminology. She then distinguishes between the medical and political discourse, and within philosophy between the Confucian, Taoist und legist approaches to sleep. In early Chinese literature we thus find a great variety of judgements about the value of sleeping time.

The second case study (Chapter 3) deals with the "discourse of midday napping" in contemporary China (pp. 45-64). The author Li Yi starts with the fact that midday napping was a significant part of China's traditional heritage. Yet beginning in the 1980s the attitude towards the two or three-hour lunch-and-nap break radically changed due to the challenges of modernization, culminating in the official reduction of the midday break from three hours to one hour as from 1 January 1985.

Wim "Negotiating sleep patterns in Japan" (pp. 65-86) in Chapter 4 Brigitte Steger shows the changing patterns of Japanese culture within the historical and social context. While the habit of imemuri (to be present and fall asleep) was considered natural in traditional Japan, modernization from the Meiji Reform onward favoured the eight-hour monophasic sleep. Today, the Japanese, confronted with considerable lack-of-sleep-related problems, are rediscovering the daytime naps or "the short-sleep method mat makes you smart" (p. 79).

Peter Rensen's case study "Sleep without a home. The embedment of sleep in me lives of the rough-sleeping homeless in Amsterdam" (Chapter 5, pp. 87-107) changes the focus from East Asia to Europe. It is based on the field notes made by the author mainly during winter 1999-2000. Discussing the connection between outside sleeping, addiction and mental illness as well as the various bureaucratic and other obstacles to sheltering homeless people during night and day, the author gives insights into the meaning of sleep for the homeless people.

In Eyal Ben-Ari's study "Sleep and night-time combat in contemporary armed forces" (Chapter 6, pp. 108-126) the focus is on the US Navy and US army as a model for future development towards twenty-four-hour fighting all over the world. It seems that the sleep of a soldier is less than ever an individual choice, but part of a "wider system of brains, bodies, machines, and knowledge" (p. 123) - a quite horrifying vision for naive and sound sleepers like me.

In Chapter 7 "The Mirk Shades O' Nicht (the dark shades of night)" Irene Maver analyzes the "nocturnal representations of urban Scotland in the nineteendi century" (pp. 127-148). Taking Edinburgh und Glasgow as examples, she reveals the dualistic perception of day and night in moralistic terms of good and evil. She focuses on the official discourse and how bureaucrats and philanthropists handled the problems of poverty and dirt, addiction and crimes in order to control, domesticate and civilize urban night life.

In Chapter 8 Ayukawa Jun' again looks at Japan and on the "Changing night scene of youth in present-day Japan, with special focus on deviant behaviour" (pp. 149-170). That youngsters sleep less than ever before has as much to do with the digital revolution (video games, internet etc. at home) as with extended night-time activities in so called night spots, mobile clubs, karaoke bars, and convenience stores where they seek companions and sex and often indulge in delinquent behaviour without considering it as delinquent. Mobile phones are made responsible for easy dating practices on the one hand and for the ignorance of parents about the whereabouts of their minor children on the other. All these phenomena are interrelated and lead to an increasing individualism, to fluid human relationships, to changing norms and, last but not least, to the blurring of the border between day and night.

In Chapter 9 "Between day and night. Urban time schedules in Bombay and other cities" (pp. 171-190) Lodewijk Brunt considers how people deal with time in various big cities including the change of time perception in the process of globalization. The main reason for what he calls "the colonizing" of night time through daily activities is the modem technology of lighting. Yet, in Bombay where he did field studies during the 1990s, even in less modernized suburbs city life displays very different times. This is why it seems difficult to imagine "the dawning of a new, uniform, global time pattern in the cities" of the world, (p. 172)

Chris Nottingham's article, the tenth and last contribution to this reader (pp. 191-214), deals with change and continuity in the politics of the city night. It is enti�ed "What time is this?", a reference to the familiar moral reprimand made by parents scolding a child coming home late in the evening. Talking about contemporary night politics, Nottingham deals with the significance of CCTV cameras all over me city, the various judges of normality being as omnipresent as the cameras, the typical "creatures of the night" (prostitutes, beggars and homeless) and me many regulations they are confronted with. It seems that city night life is on its way not to anarchy but to an almost totalitarian overregulation. At the same time, it has become "a more stratified, specialised, intermittently threatening, not to mention boring, place" (p. 212).

This reader is full of unfamiliar details as well as generalizations. The individual entries are interconnected in various ways and include extended bibliographies. A useful ten page index concludes this book which offers manifold insights into a topic until recently hardly studied in comparative cultural sciences.

Gudula Linck

[Author Affiliation]

PROF. DR. GUDULA LINCK, Seminar f�r Orientalistik der Universit�t Kiel, Sinologie, Leibnizstra�e 10, 24118 Kiel

< linck@sino.uni-kiel.de >