●

Recentering globalization
●
Koichi Iwabuchi

Recentering globalization

Popular culture and Japanese transnationalism

Duke University Press Durham and London

2002
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Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Note on Japanese names ix

Introduction: The 1990s—Japan returns to Asia in the age

of globalization 1

1 Taking ‘‘Japanization’’ seriously: Cultural globalization

reconsidered 23

2 Trans/nationalism: The discourse on Japan in the global

cultural flow 51

3 Localizing ‘‘Japan’’ in the booming Asian markets 85

4 Becoming culturally proximate: Japanese TV dramas in Taiwan 121

5 Popular Asianism in Japan: Nostalgia for (di√erent) Asian

modernity 158

6 Japan’s Asian dreamworld 199

Notes 211

References 233

Index 261
Acknowledgments

This book is based on my Ph.D. dissertation submitted to University of

Western Sydney Nepean in 1999, which was awarded the best Ph.D disser-
tation prize for that year by the Australian Association of Asian Studies. So
many people supported me in various ways writing this book. I most thank
Professor Ien Ang for her always rigorous and productive criticisms and
suggestions on my earlier drafts and her warm encouragement. I also owe
thanks to those who read and commented on my earlier draft such as Judith
Snodgrass, Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Mandy Thomas, Shuhei Hosokawa, Anne
Allison, James Lull, and Ulf Hannerz; and to those who helped me improve
my English expression such as Eduardo Ugarte, Roberta James, Adrian
Snodgrass, Sandra Wilson, David Wells, David Kelly, and Jennifer Prough.
My thanks also go to those who assisted my field work in Japan, Taiwan,
Hong Kong, and Singapore; to mention just a few, Hara Yumiko, Adachi
Miki, Kimura Akiko, Honda Shirō, Yoshimi Shunya, Kosaku Yoshino,
Georgette Wang, Lee Tain-Dow, Su Yu-Ling, Grace Wang, Tanaka Akira,
Yao Souchou, and Cheng Shiowjiuan. I also wish to thank to all the people
who spared their precious time for my interviews in Taipei, Hong Kong,
Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and Tokyo. My thanks are also extended to the
sta√ of Duke University Press, especially to Ken Wissoker for his support for
this project, and to Shelley Wunder Smith for her attentive editorial assis-
tance to the last moment.
Nepean Postgraduate Research Award of the University of Western Syd-
ney, Nepean financially supported my doctoral life. The field research was
supported by a Toyota Foundation Grant 1996–1997. The School of Cul-
tural Histories and Futures of University of Western Sydney Nepean also
supported field research and the copyediting of the manuscript. In Singa-
pore in January 1995, my research was conducted as a research associate of
the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. In Tokyo, the Institute of Socio-
Information and Communication Studies of the University of Tokyo and
NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute generously allowed me to
access their library resources.
Portions of chapters 2, 4, and 5 originally appeared as material in the
following publications: ‘‘Uses of Japanese Popular Culture: Media Global-
ization and Postcolonial Desire for ‘Asia,’ ’’ Emergences: Journal of Media and
Composite Cultures 11, no. 2 (2001); ‘‘Becoming Culturally Proximate: A/
Scent of Japanese Idol Dramas in Tawain,’’ B. Moeran, ed., Asian Media
Productions (London: Curzon, 2001); ‘‘Nostalgia for a (Di√erent) Asian Mo-
dernity: Media Consumption of ‘Asia’ in Japan’’ positions: east asia cultures
critique 10, no. 3 (2002).
Finally, I would like to share the pleasure of this accomplishment with my
wife and daughter, Michiyo and Lina, who have seen this project through to
the completion, despite numerous frustrations. Their encouragement and
distraction a√orded me spiritual nourishment. I dedicate this volume to
them as a token of a√ection and gratitude.

viii Recentering globalization

Note on Japanese Names

This book follows the Japanese convention that family names precede per-
sonal names. However, the names of the Japanese authors of English lan-
guage works (except translations) follow the English convention of the
personal name preceding the family name (e.g., Kosaku Yoshino). Macrons
are put on long Japanese vowels except in the case of place names (e.g.,
Tokyo), words commonly used in English (e.g., Shinto), and author names
which usually appear without a macron in their English language works
(e.g., Shuhei Hosokawa).
Introduction:

The 1990s—Japan’s return to Asia

in the age of globalization

Something unexpected has happened. Japan is beloved in Asia! To whit:

‘‘Export machine—While Asia’s older generation is still haunted by Japan’s
wartime brutality, Hello Kitty culture is hot with the region’s youth, who
are happy to snap up all things Japanese’’ (Export machines 1999, 30–31);
‘‘Cute power! Asia is in love with Japan’s pop culture . . . Everybody loves
Japan! . . . Ask anybody in Asia: Western-style cool is out. Everything
Japanese is in—and oh, so ‘cute’!’’ (Cute power! 1999); ‘‘Asian youth says
‘We love Japan’—Japanese popular culture such as fashion and tv dramas
deeply penetrates Asia’’ (Daitōa atsuzoko kyōeiken 2001); ‘‘Pop passions—
From animation to idols, Japanese youth culture building formidable army
of devotees throughout the region (Asia)’’ (Pop passions 2001).
Animation, comics, characters, computer games, fashion, pop music, and
tv dramas—a variety of Japanese popular culture has been so well received
in East and Southeast Asia that the above-mentioned media coverage might
not sound as remarkable as it actually is. This is not to say that the export of
Japanese popular culture is a new phenomenon. The culture has long prolif-
erated outside of Japan, and particularly in East and Southeast Asia, at least
since the late 1970s. Japanese comics and animations, such as Doraemon,∞ a
fantasy featuring a catlike robot who makes the wishes of children come
true, have become part of everyday life for children in many parts of Asia.
One is also reminded of the Japanese soap opera Oshin, which has been well
received in more than fifty countries since it was first broadcast in 1983–84.
While its distribution has been limited to mostly non-Western countries,
this melodramatic life history of a Japanese woman who overcomes various
su√erings in the early part of twentieth century has captured the popu-
lar imagination not just in Asia but also in Arab countries and in Latin
America. Recently, however, the spread of Japanese popular culture in East
and Southeast Asia has advanced a stage further. The Japanese and other
Asian media industries are systematically and collaboratively promoting a
wider range of Japanese popular culture for the routine consumption of
youth in various markets in East and Southeast Asia. Many youth feel a more
intensive sympathy with the romance in Japanese tv dramas, or with the
latest fashion, trendy popular music styles, or the gossip about Japanese idols
than they do with the American counterparts that have long dominated the
world youth culture. The presence of Japanese popular culture in many
parts of East/Southeast Asia no longer seems to be something spectacular
or anomalous but rather has become mundane in the globalizing (urban)
landscape.
This study was motivated by the sense of surprise and curiosity aroused in
me when I first heard and read, in the early 1990s, about the international
circulation of Japanese audiovisual popular cultural forms and the successful
entry of the Japanese media industries into the booming East and Southeast
Asian markets. I was surprised, not least because Japanese cultural export to
other Asian countries seemed to me a provocative and contentious issue in
light of Japan’s colonialist past and lingering economic exploitation in the
region. An argument for the lack of Japanese cultural influence in Asia was,
in my perception, more sustainable. This perception goes together with a
more generalized assumption that Japanese culture would not be accepted
or appealing outside the cultural context of Japan. As a Japanese, I had
implicitly accepted the idea of Japan as a faceless economic superpower:
Japan has money and technology but does not have a cultural influence on
the world.
My apprehension about the inherent tension of this paradox conforms
with a rather common discourse on Japan which suggests that such a lack of
cultural power confers upon Japan a curious ‘‘quasi–Third World’’ status.
Ōe Kenzaburō, a Nobel Prize–winning Japanese novelist, once lamented
this Japanese image of a faceless economy: ‘‘You know why Honda is great.
But we don’t care about Honda. We care that our cultural life is unknown to
you’’ (quoted in Bartu 1992, 189). Ōe (1995) expressed the discrepancy
between economic power and cultural influence in terms of Japan’s am-
biguous (aimaina) identity in the world as it internalizes and articulates
both first-worldliness and third-worldliness. No matter how strong its
economy becomes, Japan is culturally and psychologically dominated by the
West.
2 Recentering globalization
 Edward Said (1994) makes a similar suggestion in Culture and Imperialism
when he refers to Masao Miyoshi’s (1991) remark concerning the impover-
ishment of Japanese contemporary culture. Said argues that ‘‘Miyoshi diag-
nosed a new problematic for culture as corollary to the country’s staggering
financial resources, an absolute disparity between the total novelty and
global dominance in the economic sphere, and the impoverishing retreat
and dependence on the West in cultural discourse’’ (400). For Said, Japan is
‘‘extraordinarily symptomatic’’ of a distorted modernity which urges us to
consider ‘‘how we are going to keep up life itself when the quotidian
demands of the present threaten to outstrip the human presence’’ (399). To
be fair, Said’s main concern in the book—the intertwined relationship be-
tween Western imperialism and culture—and his evaluation of Japanese
modernity, which has been constructed under an unambiguous Western
hegemony, are compelling indeed. Nevertheless, the total absence of a con-
sideration of Japanese imperialism/colonialism in his analysis of imperialism
and culture is striking to me. In Said’s account, Japan is treated predomi-
nantly as a non-Western, quasi–Third World nation which has been a
victim of Western (American) cultural domination. Japan’s double status as
an ex-imperial, lingering economic, and to a lesser extent, cultural power in
Asia, on the one hand, and as a culturally subordinated non-Western nation,
on the other, disappears behind a totalized notion of Western global cultural
power. When I first encountered information about the spread of Japanese
popular culture to other parts of Asia, I was made to realize that I also had
embraced this assumption.
However, in the 1990s the development of media globalization has made
the asymmetrical cultural relation between Japan and other Asian nations
come into renewed focus. Along with the forces of media globalization, the
strengthened economic power of Asian countries has led to the intensifica-
tion of media and cultural flows in Asian markets, dramatically increasing
the circulation of Japanese popular culture in the region and driving hith-
erto domestically oriented Japanese cultural formation to become more
extroverted.
The development of communications technologies such as vcrs, cable
tv, and satellite tv, and the concurrent emergence of global media corpo-
rations in the late twentieth century, have brought about an unprecedented
abundance of audiovisual space all over the globe. While the financial crisis
in Asia in the late 1990s has had a temporary negative e√ect, the booming
Asian markets, where about three billion people live and where a high level
Introduction: Japan returns to Asia 3
of economic growth has been rapidly achieved, have become the hottest
battlefield for transnational media corporations in the 1990s (e.g., Shoe-
smith 1994; Lee and Wang 1995; TV’s new battles 1994). Best illustrated by
the emergence of pan-Asian satellite broadcasting, such as star tv in 1991,
the idea of the actual and simultaneous reach of the same media products
and popular culture in many parts of Asia has been an irresistible one for
transnational media industries. Fascinated with the size of the potential
audience in the region, Western global players such as News Corp., cnn,
bbc, mtv, espn, hbo, and Disney became allured by the idea of pan-Asian
mega-broadcasting.
The emergence and proliferation of global media conglomerates
prompted several Asian governments to react against the foreign (mostly
American) invasion from the sky. For example, Malaysia, Singapore, and
China have advocated for the protection of ‘‘Asian’’ values from deca-
dent Western morality transmitted through the media. In those countries,
the globalization of the media bears witness to the impossibility of rigidly
guarding national boundaries against foreign (mostly Western) media inva-
sion (concerning Asian governments’ various responses to star tv, see
Chan 1994).≤ The increasing transnational flow of media has also had reper-
cussions on Japanese broadcasting policy and the media industries, but in a
di√erent way. To Japan, as the second largest tv market in the world, media
globalization o√ers an opportunity to expand a hitherto largely domestic-
oriented media production system to other Asian markets. Japanese mass
media have often compared the impact of transnational satellite broadcast-
ing to the mid–nineteenth century arrival of American Commodore Perry
with his fleet of ‘‘black ships’’ which forced Japan to open up to the outside
world after two centuries of seclusion (e.g., Kumamoto 1993a; Furuki and
Higuchi 1996; Okamura 1996; Ryū 1996).≥ The implication is that Japan
can no longer enjoy a self-contained domestic market, but rather is now
under threat of being forced to open its doors to the world. However, unlike
in the mid–nineteenth century, what is at stake this time seems less a foreign
invasion of Japan than a Japanese advance into global media markets (e.g.,
Shimizu 1993; Shinohara 1994).∂
In the early 1990s there had been some doubt about the competitiveness of
Japanese tv programs, and there was concern about the relatively passive
attitude of the Japanese tv industry toward entering Asian markets (e.g.,
Shima 1994; Nihon hatsu no bangumi Ajia kakeru? 1994). Yet, as indicated
by the fact that star tv has constantly broadcast Japanese tv programs from
4 Recentering globalization
the beginning along with the proliferation of media space in Asia has resulted
in a dramatic increase in the demand for Japanese programs throughout the
1990s (e.g., Nihon no bangumi 1994; Ajia ga miteiru Nihon no terebi 1995;
Sofuto kyūbo 1995; Tachanneru no nami 1996). The total export hours of
Japanese tv programs has increased from 2,200 in 1971 to 4,585 in 1980 to
19,546 in 1992 (Kawatake 1994), and a passionate consumption of Japanese
tv dramas and idols has been seen in many parts of East and Southeast Asia. In
1997 the Japanese Ministry of Posts and Telecommunication for the first time
established a committee to report on the promotion of commercial exports
of Japanese tv programs ( Japanese Ministry 1997). The significant potential
of Japanese tv exports to Asian markets has thus come to be widely recog-
nized both within and outside Japan in the 1990s.
These developments in the export of Japanese audiovisual cultural prod-
ucts to East and Southeast Asia induced me to problematize widely held
assumptions about the insignificance of Japanese contemporary culture in
the world and to attend to the duality of Japanese cultural power relations.
These questions appeared even more significant because the di√usion of
Japanese media intersected with another significant historical shift that had
emerged in 1990s Japan, which can be described as Japan’s ‘‘return to Asia.’’
Japan’s ‘‘return to Asia’’ project, like Australia’s ‘‘Asianization’’ project (see
Ang and Stratton 1996), has been driven by the rising economic power of
several modernized Asian countries, but its impact extends well into the
cultural sphere. Japan began explicitly and positively reasserting its Asian
identity in the early 1990s after a long retreat following the defeat of World
War II. The cultural geography of ‘‘Asia’’ has recurred to the Japanese
national imaginary as Japan faces the challenge of (re)constructing its na-
tional/cultural identity in the era of globalization. The expansionist na-
tionalism that inspires Japan’s desire for connecting (with) Asia resurfaced in
the context in which widely proliferated Asian modernities, the restructur-
ing of the post-Cold War geopolitics, the development of transnational
media/cultural flows, as well as the spread of Japanese popular culture in the
region, all joined together.
The purpose of this book is to examine the rise of Japanese cultural power
in light of intra-Asian popular culture flows against the backdrop of the
conjuncture of media globalization and Japan’s ‘‘return to Asia’’ project. I do
this through an analysis of Japanese discourses on Japan’s export of popular
culture to East and Southeast Asia and through empirical studies of the
strategies used by Japanese media industries to enter Asian markets, as well as
Introduction: Japan returns to Asia 5
studies of the asymmetrical bilateral consumption of Japanese and other
Asian popular culture. The analysis will show the various ways in which
burgeoning popular culture flows have given new substance to the ambigu-
ous imaginary space of ‘‘Asia,’’ with which Japanese intellectuals, Japanese
media industries, and Japanese individuals (as consumers) must come to
terms (Mizukoshi 1998). A key concern of this book is how Japan has for the
first time encountered other Asian nations as ‘‘modern’’ cultural neighbors.
Across the Asian region, vast urban spaces have emerged in the last few
decades. There, the experience of West-inflicted capitalist modernity has
given birth to various modes of indigenized modernities, in such a way that
they have become a source for the articulation of a new notion of Asian
cultural commonality, di√erence, and asymmetry. I will elucidate how the
transnational flow of popular culture has significantly rearticulated Japan’s
historically constituted relation with ‘‘Asia’’ in a time–space context in
which cultural similarity, developmental temporality, and di√erent modes of
negotiating with Western cultural influences are disjunctively intermingled
with each other.

The ‘‘Japan–Asia–the West’’ triad

The relative lacuna of discussion on Japanese transnational cultural power in

Asia is not simply contingent, but implicated in the shift in Japanese cultural
orientation after World War II. To put it bluntly, the idea of a Japan lacking
in external cultural power has been collusive with a postwar strategy of con-
structing an exclusive and unique Japanese national identity. It is often
argued that Japanese people themselves are reluctant to di√use Japanese cul-
ture in the world. Hannerz (1989, 67–68), for example, argues that ‘‘the
Japanese . . . find it a strange notion that anyone can ‘become Japanese,’ and
they put Japanese culture on exhibit, in the framework of organized inter-
national contacts, as a way of displaying irreducible distinctiveness rather
than in order to make it spread.’’ Japan’s obsession with the uniqueness of its
own culture has been widely observed in the popularity of Nihonjinron dis-
courses, which explain distinctive features of Japanese people and Japanese
culture in essentialist terms (e.g., Dale 1986; Mouer and Sugimoto 1986;
Befu 1987; Yoshino 1992). Those Japanese cultural practices and materials
that have been internationally exhibited or represented in the global forum
have been predominantly o≈cially sanctioned items of ‘‘traditional’’ culture

6 Recentering globalization
which have little to do with contemporary Japanese urban culture. ‘‘Tradi-
tional Japanese culture’’ is a culture to be displayed in order to demarcate
Japan’s unique, supposedly homogeneous national identity.
Many studies show that Japanese national/cultural identity has been con-
structed in an essentialist manner through the country’s conscious self-
Orientalizing discourse, a narrative that at once testifies to a firm incorpora-
tion into, and a subtle exploitation of, Western Orientalist discourse (see
Sakai 1989; Iwabuchi 1994; Ivy 1995; Kondo 1997). Japan is represented and
represents itself as culturally exclusive, homogeneous, and uniquely par-
ticularistic through the operation of a strategic binary opposition between
two imaginary cultural entities, ‘‘Japan’’ and ‘‘the West.’’ This is not to say
that ‘‘Asia’’ has no cultural significance in the construction of Japanese
national identity. Rather, Hannerz’s astute observation about Japanese na-
tional identity illuminates a historical rupture brought about by Japan’s
defeat in World War II, which dramatically changed the Japanese cultural
orientation from an extroverted to an introverted focus through the sup-
pression of Japanese colonial connections with other Asian countries. In
other words, the complicity between Western Orientalism and Japan’s self-
Orientalism e√ectively works only when Japanese cultural power in Asia
is subsumed under Japan’s cultural subordination to the West—that is,
when Japan’s peculiar position as the only modern, non-Western imperial/
colonial power tends to be translated with a great skew toward Japan’s
relation with the West.
While Japan’s construction of its national identity through an unam-
biguous comparison of itself with ‘‘the West’’ is a historically embedded
project, Japan’s modern national identity has, I would argue, always been
imagined in an asymmetrical totalizing triad between ‘‘Asia,’’ ‘‘the West,’’
and ‘‘Japan.’’ It is widely observed that Japan and Asia tend to be discussed
and perceived within Japan as two separate geographies, whose inherent
contradiction is unquestioned. Japan is unequivocally located in a geogra-
phy called ‘‘Asia,’’ but it no less unambiguously exists outside a cultural
imaginary of ‘‘Asia’’ in Japanese mental maps (e.g., Ueda 1997, 34; Mizu-
koshi 1999, 181–82).∑ This duality points to the fact that ‘‘Asia’’ has overtly
or covertly played a constitutive part in Japan’s construction of national
identity. While ‘‘the West’’ played the role of the modern Other to be
emulated, ‘‘Asia’’ was cast as the image of Japan’s past, a negative portrait
which illustrates the extent to which Japan has been successfully modern-

Introduction: Japan returns to Asia 7

ized according to the Western standard (Tanaka 1993; Kang 1996). ‘‘Datsua
nyūō’’ (Escape Asia, enter the West) is a well-known late-nineteenth-century
Japanese slogan which first articulated Japan’s will to become a modern
imperial power, not to be colonized by the West through the e√ort of de-
Asianization. ‘‘Datsua nyūō’’ signifies less an actual departure from an exist-
ing, coherent entity of Asia than a process of fabricating essentialized, imagi-
nary geographies of ‘‘Asia,’’ ‘‘the West’’ and ‘‘Japan’’ in the course of Japanese
imperialist modernization. Takeuchi (1993, 96–100, 278–85) argues that
there were two major approaches to Asia in prewar Japan. One was datsua
(escape from Asia) and the other was kō (expressing Asian solidarity in
resisting Western imperial domination). Takeuchi (1993, 103) points out
that the Japanese invasion of Asia represented the ultimate synthesis of the
two concepts, where the former absorbed and exploited the latter. In the
process of Japanese imperial expansion, Japan was perceived to rise above
other Asian countries and ‘‘Japan’’ and ‘‘Asia’’ became two separate entities in
Japanese discourse. The binary opposition between ‘‘traditional,’’ or ‘‘under-
developed,’’ Asia and the ‘‘developed’’ West has been necessary for Japan to
be able to construct its national identity in a modern and West-dominated
world order. Japan has constructed an oriental Orientalism against ‘‘inferior
Asia’’ (Robertson 1998b, 97–101).
However, the Japanese discursive construction of ‘‘Asia’’ is marked by the
impossibility of clear separation between Japan and Asia. As Stefan Tanaka
(1993, 3) commented when discussing Japanese Orientalism in the early
twentieth century, Japan’s ‘‘Asia’’ poses an uneasy question of ‘‘how to
become modern while simultaneously shedding the objectivistic category
of Oriental and yet not lose an identity.’’ While an essentialist pan-Asianism
has existed alongside the wish for de-Asianization since the late nineteenth
century in Japan,∏ the 1930s and 1940s, particularly, saw the passionate
advocacy of pan-Asianist ideology by Japanese nationalistic thinkers. They
understood the issue of ‘‘commonality and di√erence’’ in Japan’s relation-
ship to other Asian nations, I would suggest, mostly in terms such as ‘‘similar
but superior,’’ or ‘‘in but above Asia.’’ As the only non-Western imperial and
colonial power which invaded geographically contiguous Asian regions,
Japan resorted to an ideology of pan-Asianism to camouflage its imperial
ambitions. The idea of the Great East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere,π pro-
mulgated in this period, was a claim for an Asian solidarity based in an
inherent ‘‘Asian’’ bond that would be able to counter Western evil.
The advocacy of a cultural and racial commonality between Japan and
8 Recentering globalization
other Asian nations naturally conferred upon Japan a mission to rid Asia
of Western imperial domination and to itself civilize other Asians instead
(Peattie 1984; Lebra 1975). Undoubtedly such a conception of its mission
was highly motivated by Japanese anti-Western sentiment in response to the
Western racist refusal to allow Japan to become a member of the imperial
club (Dower 1986). The assertion of Japanese cultural commonality with
other Asian countries was necessary for any confirmation of Japan’s superior
position in the region, a confirmation that would sustain Japan’s bid for the
same status as that of Western imperial powers. At the same time, Japan’s
mission civilatrice in the region paradoxically confirmed its subordination
to the West, since the country’s claim of superiority over other Asians
was based upon its experience of a quick, successful Westernization (Duus
1995). Only submission to Western cultural power made it at all possible for
Japan to di√erentiate itself from other ‘‘backward’’ Asians.∫ As I will discuss
later, this issue of derived cultural superiority still lingers as a source of
ambivalence which has long governed Japanese discourse on its relation
with Asia.
Japan’s defeat in World War II and the subsequent American occupation
drastically changed, even curtailed, Japanese cultural orientation toward
other Asian countries as a colonial power. The American vision of the Cold
War has deeply influenced the restructuring as well as the intellectual analy-
sis of postwar Japan (Harootunian 1993; Ishida 1995). Attention has focused
on Japan’s cultural relation with ‘‘the West,’’ and especially the United States
as Japan’s most significant cultural Other, against which Japanese national
identity has been constructed.
A glance at transformations in the meaning of the term Japanization,
which articulates Japanese transnational cultural power, reveals the shift in
Japanese cultural orientation. In prewar Japan, Japanization was articulated
in the term kōminka, which means ‘‘the assimilation of ethnic others (such as
Ainu, Okinawans, Taiwanese, and Koreans) into Japanese imperial citizen-
ship under the Emperor’s benevolence.’’ Japanization also referred to the
indigenization and domestication of foreign (Western) culture. The famous
slogan ‘‘wakon yōsai’’ ( Japanese spirit, Western technologies) exemplifies the
latter usage. These two di√erent meanings of Japanization—the assimilation
of the colonized (Asians) into Japanese society, and the indigenization of
Western culture—coexisted in prewar Japan (see Robertson 1998b, 89–
138).Ω After the war, as I will discuss in chapter 2, the prewar meaning of
‘‘assimilation of Asian Others’’ was suppressed, and usage of the term Japan-
Introduction: Japan returns to Asia 9
ization focused on the second meaning, ‘‘Japanese indigenization or domes-
tication of Western (primarily American) cultural influences.’’ Moreover,
the meaning of the term, used to express the process of indigenizing foreign
(i.e., Western) culture, changed from ‘‘imitation,’’ which connoted Japan’s
inferior status, to ‘‘domestication’’ or ‘‘appropriation,’’ which emphasized
the active agency of the Japanese (see Tobin 1992b). To the extent that
Japanese cultural capacity was at all conceptualized, it was as an introverted
urge to counter external, dominant Western cultures.
Since what Harootunian (1993) calls ‘‘America’s Japan’’ has long governed
Japan’s vision of itself, Japan’s connections with ‘‘Asia’’ have been truncated
in various ways. The most notorious is Japan’s avoidance or refusal to take
responsibility for its part in the war and its inability to o√er an o≈cial
apology and compensation for its victims. Japanese cultural introversion
after the war was accompanied by Japan’s project of forgetting its imperial
history, of burying in oblivion the fact that Japan did try to force its colonial
subjects to become Japanese as part of its assimilationist colonial policy.∞≠ As
Gluck (1993) argues, Japan has long been imprisoned within a never-ending
‘‘postwar’’ which is mainly constructed by its relation to the United States.
Thus, its war memory has been persistently imagined in terms of its own
victimhood. Japan’s conception of the ‘‘postwar,’’ which negates continuity
with the past, made it possible for Japan not to face seriously the aftermath
of its own imperialist violence in the former colonies and occupied terri-
tories. Under the umbrella of American global power, Japanese interest in
and connection with Asia in the postwar period has not just tended to
eschew East Asia, which had previously been the main region for Japanese
colonial expansion, but has also focused on the economic aspect. Here, the
issue of Japan’s war compensation for Asian countries was not dealt with
as an opportunity for Japan’s sincere expression of its war responsibility.
Rather, it was subtly exploited as the first step for Japan’s economic expan-
sion in the region in the form of o≈cial economic aid (Ishida 1995). Ac-
cordingly, the sense of being the leader of Asia lingered in economic terms,
as shown by the regional rise of the theory of the ‘‘flying geese pattern of
economic development,’’ in which Japan is assumed to play a leading role in
that development (see Korhonen 1994).∞∞ This has been particularly so since
the 1960s, when Japan was in the midst of high economic growth.
This is not to neglect the fact that the connection in fields other than the
economy between Japan and other Asian nations has never been totally cut
o√ after the war. Many people in Japan have been critical of the Japanese
10 Recentering globalization
government’s refusal to face seriously its war responsibility and the after-
math of its imperial and colonial rule in Asian regions. They have tried to
make alliances with people in other parts of Asia to fight against any form of
domination and repression. However, the prevailing attitude toward ‘‘Asia’’
taken in Japan has been rather economy-oriented and condescending. It was
the rise of regional anti-Japanese sentiment in the early 1970s that forced the
Japanese government to reconsider the significance of its cultural ties with
other Asian countries and to develop the so-called ‘‘Fukuda Doctrine,’’ a
policy of cultural diplomacy for Southeast Asia. However, the purpose of
promoting such a cultural-exchange policy was less to promote a grassroots
dialogue by seriously engaging the issue of Japan’s war responsibility than to
further Japan’s economic interest by smoothing the way for the expansion of
Japanese corporations into Southeast Asia. There have also been transient
‘‘Asian booms’’ in popular culture and tourism in Japan, but the imaginary
distance between ‘‘Japan’’ and ‘‘Asia’’ has been firmly maintained (Murai,
Kido, and Koshido 1988, 12–29). ‘‘Asia,’’ therefore, continued to signify
lack and poverty, a posture that covertly sustained the complicit opposition-
ing between Japanese self-Orientalization and Western Orientalization.

Japan’s civilizational mission of reconciling

the East and the West

Not until the 1990s did the rise of global Asian economic power push Japan
to once again stress its ‘‘Asian’’ identity. Even Gluck (1997) remarks that
Japan’s postwar posture is finally ending, as she observes significant changes
occurring in Japanese society. These changes resonate with those of world
geopolitics in the early 1990s, and they are recumbent upon the end of the
Cold War and the rise of Asian economic power. The loss of the unam-
biguous Cold War ideological enemy and the relative decline of Western,
particularly American, hegemonic power gave rise to a reactionary thesis
that would subsume the previous paradigm of the antagonistic East–West
divide. By dividing the world into seven or eight clearly demarcated ‘‘civili-
zations,’’ in terms of the largest organically integrated cultural entities,∞≤
conservative American thinker Samuel Huntington (1993) has infamously
argued that civilizational di√erences will be the major cause of international
conflicts in the post–Cold War era.
Huntington’s argument has been countered by the discourse of ‘‘Asian
values,’’ which was advocated as key to understanding the recent economic
Introduction: Japan returns to Asia 11
success in the region. The rapid economic growth of several countries in
Asia has, for the first time in history, turned negative connotations associ-
ated with the term Asia into positive ones. Accordingly, several leaders of
Southeast Asian countries, such as Lee Kuan-Yew of Singapore and Maha-
thir Mohamad of Malaysia, main advocates of the Asian value thesis, have
earnestly emphasized the limitations of the universality of the Western
modernization model, with its associated social and cultural values, such as
democracy and human rights (Zakaria 1994; Mahathir and Ishihara 1995).
Although they are in sharp conflict with one another in terms of political
interests, the relationship between these two discourses can be described
as a collusive interplay, as they share much in their essentializing of the
cultural/civilizational di√erences between West and East.∞≥
In this context, the Japanese experience of modernization and its eco-
nomic power are no longer perceived as scandalous or spectacular, since the
ascent of Asian power is becoming more important to the West. While
Japan has also said ‘‘no’’ to the United States in connection with spe-
cific trade disagreements, the most assertive Asianists have been the leaders
of Southeast Asian countries, notably Singapore and Malaysia. Although
Huntington recognizes the uniqueness of Japanese civilization, as the only
case where a civilizational unit also corresponds to that of the nation-state,
Japan is nevertheless losing its unique position vis-à-vis the West, as world
attention has focused more on ‘‘Asian values’’ and on the increasing political
assertiveness of other Asian countries, one result of their increasing eco-
nomic power.∞∂
Furthermore, in an atmosphere of increasing regionalism during this
period—manifest in the emergence of the eu (European Union) and of
nafta (the North American Free Trade Agreement)—Asian leaders have
tried to promote equivalent vehicles for economic regionalization. The
United States has warned Japan that it should attach more importance to
apec (the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum), which includes
Western countries such as the United States, Australia, and New Zea-
land, than to the eaec (East Asia Economic Caucus), which excludes these
‘‘white’’ economies (see Berger and Borer 1997). Japan, heeding the U.S.
warning, refused to join the eaec. Nonetheless, Japan could not neglect
Asia as a vital market for its products, and a new Asianism emerged in Japan
in the early 1990s. Although this trend was somewhat dampened by the
Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s, the question of how to return

12 Recentering globalization
to Asia has reemerged as an important economic as well as political issue
for Japan.
The legacy of pan-Asianism, then, is still alive, as can be discerned in
Japan’s newly articulated interest in Asian identity in the 1990s. Economic
motives for the return to Asia have often been disguised with nostalgic racial
and/or cultural justifications. As the president of Fuji Xerox claimed: ‘‘Just
as Gorbachev once declared that Russia’s home was in Europe, so it is only
natural for us to say that Japan’s home is in Asia, not in the United States or
Europe’’ (quoted in Saitō 1992, 17). Political ambition, deeply motivated by
an anti-West sentiment, is once again expressed in terms of the inherent
commonalities amongst Asian nations. Some even advocate an exclusivist
and essentialist view of a new Asianism. Prominent Asianists such as Ogura
Kazuo (1993), for example, champion pan-Asian solidarity and have
pointed out the common cultures, traditions, values, and racial origins
shared by Japan and Asia (see McCormack 1996). Ishihara Shintaro, in his
book The Voice of Asia, coauthored with Malaysian prime minister Mahathir
Mohamad,∞∑ strongly asserts the necessity of an Asian unity to counter
perceived Western political and economic domination (Mahathir and Ish-
ihara 1995, 205). He proudly evokes Japan’s natural a≈nity with other Asian
nations by declaring that Japan has never been a mono-racial nation but a
hybrid nation of many Asian races. This is possibly a shamelessly strategic
comment, as Ishihara is known to have made the exact opposite statement
on an earlier occasion (Oguma 1995).
On the other hand, in reclaiming Japan’s geopolitical significance in the
clash of civilizations thesis, Japan has been able to reemphasize its longstand-
ing mission of reconciling tensions between East and West in an emerging
chaotic and antagonistic world order. The major tone of the discussion is
that Japan should not identify itself with either side, West or East, but rather
should attempt to play a mediating role between the two in an age of global
interconnection which otherwise supposedly engenders a sense of uncer-
tainty and antagonism to cultural di√erence in the world at large.∞∏ The
point is clearly articulated by the well-known sociologist Imada Takatoshi
(1994). Imada argues that what is required for the present chaotic world—
where neither Western universal hegemony nor modern principles such as
functionalism, rationalism, e≈ciency, and unity any longer produce cen-
tripetal forces—is the negotiation of di√erence without suppressing or ne-
gating it. It is a capacity for ‘‘editing’’ di√erent cultures and civilizations that

Introduction: Japan returns to Asia 13

should characterize the new Japanese civilization in the 1990s and beyond.
Although he concedes that Japan has not yet fulfilled its mission, Japan’s long
experience of editing Western and Eastern civilization would qualify it as a
principal world editor.∞π
The imaginings of Japan’s mission as a mediating leader is not necessarily
motivated by reactive or chauvinistic sentiment. Nevertheless, we can still
discern a strong impetus to keep the mutually exclusive trichotomy, men-
tioned above, intact. Many slogans emergent during early 1990s show this
tendency. The most famous one is ‘‘Datsuō nyūo’’ (Escape the West, enter
Asia), an inversion of ‘‘Datsua nyūō.’’ Others, cautious of excluding the
United States, advocate ‘‘Nyūō nyūa’’ (Enter the West and Asia), ‘‘Datsua
nyūyō’’ (Escape Asia, enter the Pacific) or ‘‘Han’ō nyūa’’ (Enter Asia together
with the West). An underlying common assumption of these slogans is that
‘‘Asia’’ and ‘‘the West’’ are imaginary entities, demarcated from each other,
between which ‘‘Japan’’ is floating as a leader of the former. If, as Berry
(1994, 82) argues, Singapore—and perhaps other Asian countries as well—is
trying ‘‘to resolve its contradictions between localization and globalization
by asserting a new coherent identity that is regional,’’ Japan’s strategy is not
to identify with either of the clearly demarcated entities, ‘‘Asia’’ or ‘‘the
West.’’ More precisely, Japan resists subsuming itself under the category of
‘‘Asia’’ or ‘‘the West,’’ and is still trying to find a unique place between them.
Japan tries to distance itself from either side in order to retain its distinct
identity. In this strategic project of reorienting its own position within a
familiar Asianism narrative, Japan’s homecoming has still less to do with its
will to become an interlocutor among neighbors than with its narcissistic
search for a Japanese national identity (Hein and Hammond 1995).

Return to modernized Asia

The Asia which Japan encounters in the 1990s, however, is no longer con-
tained by the image of traditional, underdeveloped, backward neighbors to
be civilized by Japan. In this regard, it is important to stress that what has
substantiated the cultural geography of ‘‘Asia’’ in the 1990s is less some
essential and distinct concept of ‘‘Asian values’’ than the advent of global
capitalism in the region. As Dirlik (1994, 51–52) argues: ‘‘What makes
something like the East Asian Confucian revival plausible is not its o√er of
alternative values to those of Euro-American origin, but its articulation of
native culture into a capitalist narrative.’’ No matter how ‘‘Asian’’ values are
14 Recentering globalization
emphasized as a key to the economic growth in Asia, the rise of ‘‘Asian’’
capitalism signifies a transnational configuration wherever the global spread
of Western-origin capitalism has made any attempt at a clear discursive
demarcation of ‘‘the West’’ and ‘‘Asia’’ (and ‘‘Japan’’) fallacious.
The process of globalization has made the conception of rigidly demar-
cated national and cultural boundaries implausible and tenuous (e.g., Appa-
durai 1996; Hannerz 1996). The rise of the discourse of ‘‘Asian values’’ and
Japan’s cultural project of a ‘‘return to Asia’’ should be considered in this
context. As Stuart Hall (1995, 190) neatly defines the concept: ‘‘Globaliza-
tion is the process by which the relatively separate areas of the globe come to
intersect in a single imaginary ‘space’; when their respective histories are
convened in a time-zone or time-frame dominated by the time of the West;
when the sharp boundaries reinforced by space and distance are bridged by
connections (travel, trade, conquest, colonization, markets, capital and the
flows of labor, goods and profits) which gradually eroded the clear-cut
distinction between ‘inside’ and ‘outside.’’’
As Hall emphasizes, globalization is not a new phenomenon but rather
should be considered in light of the long history of Western imperialism.
The experience of globalization is unequivocally marked by uneven power
relations in a West-dominated modern history. However, the historical
process of globalization has not simply produced the Westernization of the
world. Its impact on the constitution of the world is much more hetero-
geneous and contradictory. The unambiguously dominant Western cul-
tural, political, economic, and military power has constructed a modern
world-system covering the entire globe (Wallerstein 1991), yet at the same
time the global reach of capitalist modernity has destabilized the exclusive
equation of modernity with the Western world. The experience of ‘‘the
forced appropriation of modernity’’ in the non-West has produced poly-
morphic indigenized modernities in the world (Ang and Stratton 1996).
One corollary of the phenomenon of ongoing asymmetrical cultural en-
counters in the course of the spread of Western modernity, as Ang and
Stratton (1996, 22–24) argue, is that we have come to live in ‘‘a world
where all cultures are both (like) ‘us’ and (not like) ‘us,’’’ a world where
familiar di√erence and bizarre sameness are simultaneously articulated in
multiple ways through the unpredictable dynamic of uneven global cultural
encounters.
In this dynamic context of the 1990s, Japan encounters ‘‘Asia’’ as a mod-
ernized cultural neighbor vis-à-vis a common but di√erent experience of
Introduction: Japan returns to Asia 15
indigenizing modernity under Western cultural dominance. As the rise of
other Asian economies has deprived Japan of its unique position as the only
non-Western nation to achieve a high degree of industrialization and mod-
ernization, Japan needs to come to terms with the increasingly visible gap
between a discursively constructed ‘‘backward Asia’’ and the rapidly de-
veloping economic power of geographically specific Asian nations. The
trichotomy, ‘‘Asia,’’ ‘‘Japan’’ and ‘‘the West,’’ that has long governed Japa-
nese discourses has been seriously put into question (Satō 1998; Yamamuro
1998).∞∫
In this book, I will conduct an investigation into Japan’s encounter with
‘‘modern’’ Asia through a focus on the di√usion of Japanese commercialized
popular culture, especially tv dramas and popular music, in East and South-
east Asia. The development of communication technologies has facilitated
the simultaneous circulation of numerous kinds of media information, im-
ages and texts, on a global level. Various (national) markets are being pene-
trated and integrated by powerful global media giants such as News Corp.,
Sony, and Disney. Globalization processes, however, have not simply fur-
thered the spread of Americanized ‘‘global mass culture’’ (Hall 1991). They
have also promoted the flow of intraregional media and popular culture
within East and Southeast Asia. These popular cultural forms are undoubt-
edly deeply imbricated in U.S. cultural imaginaries, but they dynamically
rework the meanings of being modern in Asian contexts at the site of pro-
duction and consumption. In this sense, they are neither ‘‘Asian’’ in any es-
sentialist meaning nor second-rate copies of ‘‘American originals.’’ They are
inescapably ‘‘global’’ and ‘‘Asian’’ at the same time, lucidly representing the
intertwined composition of global homogenization and heterogenization,
and thus they well articulate the juxtaposed sameness and di√erence among
contemporaneous indigenized modernities in East and Southeast Asia.
The intricacy and disjunctiveness of emerging intra-Asian popular cul-
tural flows under globalizing forces are better expressed by the term trans-
national, as opposed to international or global, for a variety of reasons. Trans-
national has a merit over international in that actors are not confined to the
nation-state or to nationally institutionalized organizations; they may range
from individuals to various (non)profitable, transnationally connected orga-
nizations and groups, and the conception of culture implied is not limited to
a ‘‘national’’ framework. As Hannerz (1996, 6) argues, the term transnational
is ‘‘more humble, and often a more adequate label for phenomena which

16 Recentering globalization
can be of quite variable scale and distribution’’ than the term global, which
sounds too all-inclusive and decontextualized. Moreover, the term trans-
national draws attention in a more locally contextualized manner to the
interconnections and asymmetries that are promoted by the multidirec-
tional flow of information and images, and by the ongoing cultural mixing
and infiltration of these messages; it e√ectively disregards nationally demar-
cated boundaries both from above and below, the most important of which
are capital, people, and media/images (Appadurai 1996; Welsch 1999).
At the same time, unlike the term global, the term transnational tends
to ‘‘draw attention to what it negates’’ (Hannerz 1996, 6). As Michael
Peter Smith (2001, 3) argues while problematizing the assumed e≈cacy of
boundary-policing by the nation-state in the modern constitution of poli-
tics, economy, and culture, the transnational perspective at the same time
explicates ‘‘the continuing significance of borders, state policies, and na-
tional identities even as these are often transgressed by transnational com-
munication circuits and social practices.’’ Transnational cultural flows nei-
ther fully displace nationally delineated boundaries, thoughts, and feelings,
nor do they underestimate the salience of the nation-state in the process of
globalization. Rather, it might more often than not be the case that ‘‘the
transnational has not so much displaced the national as resituated it and thus
reworked its meanings’’ (Rouse 1995, 380).
This point is particularly important when we look at the way in which
cultural globalization has presented a ground for the recentering and reas-
sertion of Japan’s cultural power in Asia. While globalization processes have
drastically facilitated the transnational cross-fertilization of popular cultural
forms in many parts of the world (e.g., García Canclini 1995; Lull 1995), this
boundary-violating impulse of cultural flow is nevertheless never free from
nationalizing forces. In the emerging landscape of modern Asia, it is pre-
cisely through its receptivity to, ongoing cultural appropriation of, and
negotiation with Western cultural influence that Japanese transnational cul-
tural power is highlighted. The growing Japanese interest in its cultural
export also tends to be informed predominantly by a historically constituted
nationalistic desire for ‘‘Asia’’; that is, it is articulated by a distinct ‘‘Japanese-
ness’’ in popular cultural forms, designed to raise Japan’s position in Asia and
to (re)assert Japan’s cultural superiority.
On the other hand, the simultaneous achievement of capitalist modernity
by several Asian nations has made it clear that the subtle cultural mixing of

Introduction: Japan returns to Asia 17

‘‘the local’’ and ‘‘the foreign’’ (the West) is not exclusively a Japanese experi-
ence but a common feature in the formation of non-Western modernity.
Activated popular cultural flows induce Japan to encounter familiar but
di√erent modes of Asian indigenized modernities in both cultural produc-
tion and consumption. The transnational cultural flow in East and Southeast
Asian regions is, though admittedly uneven, becoming more multilateral.
The increasing intra-Asian cultural flow precipitates (asymmetrical) con-
nections between people in Japan and those in modernized (or rapidly
modernizing) ‘‘Asia,’’ not through reified notions of ‘‘traditional, authentic
culture’’ or ‘‘Asian values,’’ but through popular cultural forms which
embody people’s skillful negotiation with the symbolic power of West-
dominated global capitalism.
Being unequal in their e√ect, transnational media and cultural flows have
had contradictory impacts on Japan’s engagement with ‘‘Asia.’’ The analysis
of these cultural dynamics will highlight both the rupture as well as the
continuity of Japanese condescension, as expressed in its conception of its
own superior position and asymmetrical relation vis-à-vis other Asian na-
tions. The Japanese popular cultural encounter with other Asian countries
in the 1990s is overdetermined by Japanese imperial history. Nevertheless, it
is more multiple, contradictory, and ambivalent than a totalizing and cava-
lier Japanese Orientalist conception of ‘‘Asia’’ would suggest.

The following chapters deal with various aspects of Japan’s popular cultural
‘‘return to Asia’’ through discourse analysis and empirical studies, in which
Japan’s transnational cultural power is reasserted and articulated in terms of
indigenized modernity. In chapter 1, I present theoretical reconsiderations
concerning Japanese transnational cultural power. By presenting an over-
view of the development of Japanese active involvement in the global ex-
port economy of cultural products, I will situate the rise of Japanese cultural
power in light of globalization processes and will show how the foreground-
ing of Japan’s ascent in the global cultural flows correlates to the decentering
forces of globalization.
Chapter 2 examines what I call trans/nationalism discourses, in which the
transnational reach of Japanese popular culture in East and Southeast Asia is
discussed and interpreted in nationalistic ways, against all the odds of dis-
junctive cultural flows, through a wide range of Japanese popular media
texts as well as academic discussions. An essentialist configuration of Japan’s
sophisticated capacity to culturally indigenize the foreign, in which terms
18 Recentering globalization
the putative Japanese national essence is imagined, has long had its place in
Japanese nationalistic discourse. In the 1990s, this capacity was extrovertedly
applied to the spread of Japanese popular culture in Asia. It is claimed that
the appeal of Japanese popular culture lies in its subtle indigenization of
American popular culture, making it suitable to ‘‘Asian tastes,’’ and that
therefore Japan has had a special leading role in constructing the sphere of
Asian popular culture. The hybrid nature of Japanese popular culture is also
seen to present modern, liberal facets of Japanese society to other parts of
Asia. In this case, the spread of Japanese popular culture in other parts of Asia
is conceived as improving Japan’s image as an oppressor in Asia and thus
overcomes the legacy of its history of imperial aggression in the region. I
will suggest that there is an apparent ambivalence in such nationalistic claims
concerning Japanese cultural export, as they occur within the context of
accelerated transnational cultural flows, which have gradually made it dif-
ficult, and possibly insignificant, to specify the original source of trans-
nationally circulated cultural products in the first place.
Chapters 3, 4, and 5 elucidate through empirical study the nature of
Japanese cultural power, the decentralizing force of globalization, and the
(im)possibility of transnational dialogue via popular cultural consumption.
These chapters show intricate ways in which Japan’s asymmetrical relation
with Asia appears as regional cultural flows become intensified.
Field research was conducted in Tokyo in October 1994, from mid-
January to late February 1997, and from mid-March to late April 1998; in
Singapore in January 1996 and early December 1996; in Kuala Lumpur in
mid-January 1996; in Taipei from mid-December 1996 to mid-January 1997
and in late May 1997; and in Hong Kong from late February to mid-March
1997. I interviewed more than 110 people who work for tv stations, in the
music industry, and for publishing companies and advertising agencies in
Tokyo, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia. The interviews
posed questions concerning the promotion and reception of both Japanese
popular culture in East Asia and of Southeast Asian popular culture in Japan.
In Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, I also observed the production process of a
star-search program, Asia Bagus!, coproduced by Japan, Singapore, Indo-
nesia, and Malaysia. In addition, I conducted informal, in-depth interviews
with eighteen female and three male viewers (whose ages ranged from
seventeen to the late twenties) concerning Japanese tv dramas in Taipei, and
with twenty-four female ‘‘fans’’ (whose ages ranged from the early-twenties
to the fifties) concerning Hong Kong films and pop music singers in Tokyo.
Introduction: Japan returns to Asia 19
These informants were selected mostly through personal introductions and
therefore do not properly represent the total audience community. My
purpose in interviewing these people was to identify ways in which au-
diences feel cultural resonance through Japanese tv dramas and Hong Kong
pop stars, respectively.
Chapter 3 is particularly concerned with the ‘‘localization’’ strategy
adopted by the Japanese media industries for entry into Asian markets,
which sought to export the Japanese experience of local indigenization of
Western popular culture. In spite of a dramatic increase in the export of
Japanese tv programs and popular music to East and Southeast Asian mar-
kets in the early 1990s, the main strategy taken by Japanese media industries
was the application of Japanese know-how in ‘‘localizing’’ American popu-
lar culture. Based on my interviews with Japanese producers concerning
their strategies in Asian markets, I will argue that Japanese media industries,
informed by the discourse of trans/nationalism, saw their strength as a
capacity for indigenizing American popular culture, but that in their actual
operations they have encountered more di≈culty than facility with this
strategy. As Howes (1996, 7) points out, discussions of globalization that do
not attend to empirical contradictions and ruptures in global marketing
strategies, tend to be remarkably similar in their language to the discussions
of transnational corporation executives. Taking Howes’s warning seriously,
I will elucidate how the ‘‘localization’’ strategies of transnational media
industries worked in contradictory ways (see Negus 1997).
What has become increasingly conspicuous in the mid-1990s is the shift-
ing emphasis in the strategy of ‘‘localizing’’ Japanese popular culture in East
Asian markets, away from the export of Japanese know-how and toward the
direct marketing of Japanese popular culture in conjunction with local in-
dustries in East Asia. This change indicates that the intraregional flow of
popular culture—collaborative industry promotion and sympathetic audi-
ence reception—has developed. Chapters 4 and 5 elaborate on this emerg-
ing phenomenon. The main issue is how asymmetrical power relations in
East Asia are articulated in the favorable consumption of the media texts of
neighboring countries. My focus is the media flows among Japan, Taiwan,
and Hong Kong. Apart from time and funding considerations, I did not
include South Korea in my fieldwork because of its restrictions on the
import of Japanese popular culture.
Specifically, in chapter 4 I will discuss how Japanese cultural forms are

20 Recentering globalization
consumed in East Asia, with a particular focus on Japanese tv dramas in
Taiwan, the largest and most receptive market for Japanese popular culture.
My emphasis is on the way in which several forces have been articulated
together in the surging popularity of Japanese tv dramas in Taiwan during
the mid-1990s and the way that Japanese cultural power productively has
worked to generate a sense of cultural resonance for Taiwanese audiences in
these contexts. My research in Taipei and Hong Kong suggests that many
young viewers relate more easily to Japanese tv dramas and find them more
attractive than American dramas, both because of cultural and bodily simi-
larity and textual subtlety. This is neither to say that Japan has become an
object of yearning in other parts of Asia, nor that a priori cultural proximity
generates regionalization. Rather, under globalizing forces, the sense of
cultural similarity and resonance in the region are newly articulated. It
reflects an emerging sense of sharing the same temporality based upon the
narrowing economic gap, simultaneous circulation of information, abun-
dance of global commodities, and common experience of urbanization, all
of which have particularly sustained a Japanese cultural presence in Taiwan.
Chapter 5 concerns itself with the other trajectory of intraregional cul-
tural flow: the promotion, consumption, and discourse surrounding various
Asian popular cultural forms in 1990s Japan. It highlights the asymmetry in
intraregional cultural flow in East Asia by showing that Japanese audiences,
contrary to Taiwanese audiences of Japanese tv dramas, tend to emphasize
di√erence rather than similarity, nostalgia rather than contemporaneity, in
their appreciation of other Asian popular cultures. While Japan has strug-
gled since the early 1990s with an economic slump after the so-called bubble
economy and other Asian nations have enjoyed relatively high economic
growth until an economic crisis hit the region, Japanese media representa-
tion of Asian popular culture and Asian societies has been sharply marked by
a nostalgic longing for a lost social vigor. This posture displays Japanese
failure and refusal to see other Asians as modern equals who share the same
temporality and attests to Japan’s lingering double claim to a sameness with
and a sense of superiority to ‘‘Asia.’’ However, I will also show through an
empirical study of Japanese female fans of Hong Kong films and pop stars
that ‘‘modern’’ Hong Kong fascinates those fans, not least because these
cultural products represent a di√erent mode of Asian modernity, a way of
negotiating with the West that produces a cultural hybrid that is perceived as
even more sophisticated than the Japanese counterpart. While Japanese

Introduction: Japan returns to Asia 21

connections with ‘‘Asia’’ are tenaciously pervaded by a perceived temporal
lag between Japan and the rest of Asia, a lag which prevents the Japanese
from meeting the latter on equal terms, they are nevertheless becoming
more complicated and ambivalent in ever-increasing transnational popular
culture flows in East and Southeast Asia.

22 Recentering globalization
●
∞
Taking ‘‘Japanization’’ seriously:

Cultural globalization reconsidered

No one would deny Japan’s status as a major economic power. While its
power has been relatively undermined by a prolonged economic and finan-
cial slump since the early 1990s, this only serves to highlight Japan’s tremen-
dous economic influence in the world, particularly in Asia. As Japan has
become the second biggest economic power in the world, its external influ-
ence has come to be discussed in terms of the export of Japanese manage-
ment and industrial relations techniques and Japanese organizational cul-
tures (e.g., Bratton 1992; Oliver and Wilkinson 1992; Thome and McAuley
1992; Elger and Smith 1994). Such discourses started in the 1970s, when
many Western scholars advocated that the West should learn lessons from
the Japanese economic success (e.g., Dore 1973; Vogel 1979). Although not
exclusively representing post-Fordism, ‘‘Japanization’’ of industrial relations
and organizational cultures was discussed specifically in the search for post-
Fordist industrial models, whereby ‘‘Toyotism’’ for example, attracted much
attention as a more flexible production system than Fordism (Lash and Urry
1994; Dohse, Jurgens, and Malsch 1985; Waters 1995, 82–85).
However, it was not until the late 1980s that the significance of Japan in
the global culture market began attracting wider international academic and
media attention. It was a time when Sony and Matsushita were buying out
Hollywood film studios and the animation film Akira was a hit in the
Western markets. In the English-language world, many books and articles
have been published on Japanese animation, computer games, and the Japa-
nese advance on Hollywood since that time (e.g., Mediamatic 1991; Wark
1991, 1994; Morley and Robins 1995; Schodt 1983, 1996; Levi 1996). The
Sony Walkman has even been chosen for analysis, as the most appropriate
example of a global cultural product, by a British Open University cultural
studies textbook, itself prepared for global distribution (du Gay et al.
1997).
 Certainly, the emergence of such discourses on the spread of Japanese cul-
tural products in the world reflects the fact that Japanese media industries
and cultural forms are playing a substantial role in global cultural flows.
It seems that Japanese cultural power may finally match its economic dom-
inance. Yet crucial questions remain unanswered: what kind of cultural
power (if any) is conferred on Japan? and how similar or di√erent is it from
American cultural hegemony? In this chapter, I will present a theoretical
consideration of the recent rise in Japanese cultural exports and will explore
how that rise might be situated within the study of cultural globalization.
Rather than seeing an easy comparison between Japanese cultural exports
and ‘‘Americanization,’’ or dismissing this phenomenon as merely frivolous,
I will instead suggest that it o√ers some new and significant insights into
understanding the decentered nature of transnational cultural power.

Culturally ‘‘odorless’’ commodities

Even if the cultural dimensions of Japan’s global influence have not been
widely discussed until recently, this does not mean that Japan did not have
any cultural impact before then. Rather, the hitherto assumption of Japan’s
lack of cultural impact testifies to a discrepancy between actual cultural
influence and perceived cultural presence. The cultural impact of a particu-
lar commodity is not necessarily experienced in terms of the cultural image
of the exporting nation. For example, in the realm of audiovisual com-
modities, there is no doubt that Japan has been a dominant exporter of
consumer technologies as well as animation and computer games. From
vcrs, computer games, karaoke machines, and the Walkman, to the more
recent appearance of digital video cameras, the prevalence of Japanese con-
sumer electronics in the global marketplace is overwhelming. This develop-
ment has been based upon the adage ‘‘First for consumers’’ expressed by
Ibuka Masaru, founder of the Sony Corporation (quoted in Lardner 1987,
38). After the Second World War, freed from the obligation to devote its
research and development energy to military purposes, and with the sup-
port of the Japanese government, the Japanese electronics industry suc-
cessfully inverted the idea of ‘‘scientific or military research first.’’ Instead,
technological development would henceforth be propelled by consumer
electronics (Forester 1993, 4).
Japanese consumer technologies certainly have had a tremendous impact
on our everyday life, an impact which is, in a sense, more profound than that
24 Recentering globalization
of Hollywood films. To use Jody Berland’s (1992) term, these are ‘‘cultural
technologies’’ that mediate between texts, spaces, and audiences. New cul-
tural technologies open new possibilities for the consumption of media texts
by audiences. In turn, by promoting the market-driven privatization of
consumer needs and desires, new cultural technologies open up new ways
for capital to accommodate itself to the emergent communication space in
the service of individual consumer sovereignty. For example, vcrs have
facilitated the transnational flow of videotape-recorded programs through
both legal channels and illegal piracy. This has given consumers, especially
those in developing countries whose appetites for information and enter-
tainment have not been satisfied, access to diverse programs which have
been o≈cially banned. In response, governments have changed their poli-
cies from rigid restrictions on the flow of information and entertainment to
more open, market-oriented controls—for example, the privatization of tv
channels (Ganley and Ganley 1987; Boyd, Straubhaar, and Lent 1989;
O’Regan 1991). On the whole, this development has consequently encour-
aged global centralization of the distribution and production of software, as
well as facilitating the further spread of American software. Despite the fear
of profits being skimmed o√ by piracy, vcrs have helped Hollywood open
up new markets and find ways of exploiting new technologies through
video rental and export of tv programs to newly privatized channels (see
Gomery 1988; O’Regan 1992).
At the level of the consumer, Japanese electronic technologies have pro-
moted strongly what Raymond Williams (1990, 26) has called ‘‘mobile
privatization.’’ These consumer technologies give people greater choice and
mobility in their media consumption activities in domestic, private spaces.
For example, while tv and radio made it possible for individuals in their
own living rooms to experience and connect with what was happening in
remote places, the Sony Walkman conversely promoted the intrusion of
private media into public spaces. vcrs allowed people to ‘‘time shift’’—to
record tv programs and watch them at a later, more suitable time. It is an in-
teresting question why such individualistic, private technologies have been
developed and have flourished in a supposedly group-oriented society such
as Japan. Kogawa (1984, 1988) coined the term ‘‘electronic individualism’’
to characterize Japanese social relations and argued that Japanese collectivity
is increasingly based upon electronic communication and therefore becom-
ing more precarious. Although Kogawa views the contemporary Japanese
situation somewhat pessimistically, he points out that it o√ers the dual possi-
Taking ‘‘Japanization’’ seriously 25
bilities of the emancipation of individuals via technologies and, alterna-
tively, the sophisticated control of individuals. Indeed, as Chambers argues,
the consumption of one of the most successful Japanese cultural technolo-
gies of the past decades—the Sony Walkman—is an ambivalent ‘‘cultural
activity’’ that sways between ‘‘autonomy and autism’’ (1990, 2). Such an
activity can be seen as a form of escapism that makes individuals feel a sense
of atomized freedom from the constraints of a rigidly controlled society. It
also has the possibility of substituting a privatized ‘‘micro-narrative’’ for
collective ‘‘grand-narratives’’ (3). Speaking of the Chinese, Chow (1993,
398) argues that listening to a Walkman is ‘‘a ‘silent’ sabotage of the technol-
ogy of collectivization’’ (for a more thorough analysis of the Walkman, see
du Gay et al. 1997).
Despite the profound influence of Japanese consumer technologies on the
cultural activities of our everyday life, they have tended not to be talked
about in terms of a Japanese cultural presence. Hoskins and Mirus (1988)
employ the notion of ‘‘cultural discount’’ to explain the fact that even
though certain Japanese films and literature have had a Western following,
the outflow of Japanese popular cultural products (particularly to Western
countries) has been disproportionately small. Hoskins and Mirus describe
‘‘cultural discount’’ as occurring when ‘‘a particular program rooted in one
culture and thus attractive in that environment will have a diminished appeal
elsewhere as viewers find it di≈cult to identify with the style, values, beliefs,
institutions and behavioral patterns of the material in question’’ (500). Cul-
tural prestige, Western hegemony, the universal appeal of American popular
culture, and the prevalence of the English language are no doubt advan-
tageous to Hollywood. By contrast, Japanese language is not widely spoken
outside Japan and Japan is supposedly obsessed with its own cultural unique-
ness. Given the high cultural discount of Japanese films and tv programs,
Hoskins and Mirus argue, Japanese cultural export tends to be limited to
‘‘culturally neutral’’ consumer technologies, whose country of origin has
nothing to do with ‘‘the way [that they work] and the satisfaction [that a
consumer] obtains from usage’’ (503).
Apparently, the notion of ‘‘cultural discount’’ does not satisfactorily ex-
plain a consumer’s cultural preference for audiovisual media texts such as tv
programs. Foreign programs, for example, can be seen as more attractive
because they are ‘‘exotic,’’ ‘‘di√erent,’’ or less ‘‘boring.’’ The cultural di√er-
ence embodied in foreign products can also be seen as less of a threat to local

26 Recentering globalization
culture precisely because the imported products are conceived as ‘‘foreign,’’
while those originating from culturally proximate countries might be per-
ceived as more threatening (O’Regan 1992). The legacy of Japanese imperi-
alism in Asia is a case in point. More importantly, Hoskins and Mirus’s
argument is highly West-centric. They are not aware that Japanese tv
programs and popular music have been exported to East and Southeast Asia,
if rarely to Europe or North America, though we also should be cautious
not to mechanically explain this trend by employing ‘‘cultural discount’’ or
‘‘culturally proximity’’ in an essentialist manner (see Straubhaar 1991). I will
return to this question in later chapters. For the moment, though, I will
elaborate more on Hoskins and Mirus’s discussion of the nature of Japan’s
major cultural export to the world (including Western markets).
Notwithstanding the argument about Japanese cultural export outlined
above, the term ‘‘culturally neutral’’ seems misleading, too. The influence of
cultural products on everyday life, as we have seen, cannot be culturally
neutral. Any product has the cultural imprint of the producing country,
even if it is not recognized as such. I would suggest that the major au-
diovisual products Japan exports could be better characterized as the ‘‘cul-
turally odorless’’ three C’s: consumer technologies (such as vcrs, karaoke,
and the Walkman); comics and cartoons (animation); and computer/video
games. I use the term cultural odor to focus on the way in which cultural
features of a country of origin and images or ideas of its national, in most
cases stereotyped, way of life are associated positively with a particular prod-
uct in the consumption process. Any product may have various kinds of
cultural association with the country of its invention. Such images are often
related to exoticism, such as the image of the Japanese samurai or the geisha
girl. Here, however, I am interested in the moment when the image of the
contemporary lifestyle of the country of origin is strongly and a≈rmatively
called to mind as the very appeal of the product, when the ‘‘cultural odor’’ of
cultural commodities is evolved. The way in which the cultural odor of a
particular product becomes a ‘‘fragrance’’—a socially and culturally accept-
able smell—is not determined simply by the consumer’s perception that
something is ‘‘made in Japan.’’ Neither is it necessarily related to the mate-
rial influence or quality of the product. It has more to do with widely
disseminated symbolic images of the country of origin. The influence of
McDonald’s throughout the world, for example, can be discerned in terms
of the bureaucratization and standardization of food; and the principles

Taking ‘‘Japanization’’ seriously 27

governing the operation of McDonald’s can also be extended to other
everyday life activities such as education and shopping (Ritzer 1993). How-
ever, no less important to the international success of McDonald’s is its
association with an attractive image of ‘‘the American way of life’’ (e.g.,
Frith 1982, 46; Featherstone 1995, 8). McDonald’s, of course, does not
inherently represent ‘‘America.’’ It is a discursive construction of what
is ‘‘America’’ that confers on McDonald’s its powerful association with
‘‘Americanness.’’
Sony’s Walkman is an important cultural commodity that has influenced
everyday life in various ways. For this reason, du Gay et al. (1997) chose it as
the cultural artifact most appropriate for a case study using the multilayered
analyses of cultural studies. While taking note of the social constructedness
of any national image, Sony’s Walkman, they argue, may signify ‘‘Japanese-
ness’’ because of its miniaturization, technical sophistication, and high qual-
ity. Yet, I suggest, although such signs of ‘‘Japaneseness’’ are analytically
important, they are not especially relevant to the appeal of the Walkman at a
consumption level. The use of the Walkman does not evoke images or ideas
of a Japanese lifestyle, even if consumers know it is made in Japan and
appreciate ‘‘Japaneseness’’ in terms of its sophisticated technology. Unlike
American commodities, ‘‘Japanese consumer goods do not seek to sell on
the back of a Japanese way of life’’ (Featherstone 1995, 9), and they lack any
influential ‘‘idea of Japan’’ (Wee 1997).
The cultural odor of a product is also closely associated with racial and
bodily images of a country of origin. The three C’s I mentioned earlier are
cultural artifacts in which a country’s bodily, racial, and ethnic characteris-
tics are erased or softened. The characters of Japanese animation and com-
puter games for the most part do not look ‘‘Japanese.’’ Such non-Japanese-
ness is called mukokuseki, literally meaning ‘‘something or someone lacking
any nationality,’’ but also implying the erasure of racial or ethnic characteris-
tics or a context, which does not imprint a particular culture or country
with these features.∞ Internationally acclaimed Japanese animation director
Oshii Mamoru suggests that Japanese animators and cartoonists uncon-
sciously choose not to draw ‘‘realistic’’ Japanese characters if they wish to
draw attractive characters (Oshii, Itō, and Ueno 1996). In Oshii’s case, the
characters tend to be modeled on Caucasian types. Consumers of and au-
diences for Japanese animation and games, it can be argued, may be aware of
the Japanese origin of these commodities, but those texts barely feature
‘‘Japanese bodily odor’’ identified as such.
28 Recentering globalization
 Japan goes global: Sony and animation

While the propensity of Japanese animators to make their products non-

Japanese points to how a Western-dominated cultural hierarchy governs
transnational cultural flows in the world,≤ Japan’s hitherto invisible and
odorless cultural presence in the world has become more and more conspic-
uous since the late 1980s. On the one hand, Japan has become one of the
main players in the development of media globalization, by virtue of the fact
that its manufacturers of consumer technologies have extending their reach
into the software production business during the 1990s. It was Sony’s pur-
chase of Columbia in 1989, and Matsushita’s purchase of mca (Universal) in
1990, which dramatized the ascent of Japanese global media conglomerates
through the merger of hardware and software. There was considerable reac-
tion from within the United States against these buyouts, including claims
that the Japanese were ‘‘buying into America’s soul’’ (Morley and Robins
1995, 150). In the film Black Rain, Japanese costar Takakura Ken replies to
Michael Douglas’s antagonistic remark about Japanese economic expansion
into the United States: ‘‘Music and movies are all your culture is good
for. . . . We make the machines’’ (quoted in Morley and Robins 1995, 159).
This comment apparently displays a generalized disdain by American media
industries for the Japanese fascination with technology: Creative software
production should not be controlled by mindless hardware manufacturers.
However, this kind of expression of the creative supremacy of American
popular culture has gradually proved to be an American fantasy rather than a
reflection of what is really happening. Although Matsushita retreated from
Hollywood and Sony at first struggled to make a profit (see Negus 1997),
Sony demonstrates that Japanese transnational corporations can make it in
Hollywood, as Columbia finally achieved phenomenal box-o≈ce sales in
1997. Moreover, apart from the takeover of Hollywood by Japanese com-
panies (as well as by European companies), there is good evidence to con-
firm that the era in which ‘‘the media are American’’ (Tunstall 1977) has
ended. Japanese consumer technologies have become so sophisticated that
we can talk about a ‘‘technoculture’’ in which ‘‘cultural information and the
technical artifact seem to merge’’ (Wark 1991, 45). More significantly, Japan
is not only increasing its capital and market share in the audiovisual global
market but also its cultural presence on the global scene through the export
of culturally odorless products other than consumer technologies. Japanese
animation and computer games have attained a certain degree of popularity
Taking ‘‘Japanization’’ seriously 29
and become recognized as very ‘‘Japanese’’ in a positive and a≈rmative sense
in Western countries as well as in non-Western countries. They embody a
new aesthetic, emanating in large part from Japanese cultural inventiveness,
and capture the new popular imagination (Wark 1994; Schodt 1983, 1996).
Since the release of Ōtomo Katsuhiro’s hugely popular animation film
Akira (1988), the quality and attraction of ‘‘Japanimation’’ has been ac-
knowledged by the American market. In November 1995 the animated film
The Ghost in the Shell was shown simultaneously in Japan, America, and
Great Britain. Its video sales, according to Billboard (24 August 1996),
reached No.1 on the video charts in the United States. According to a Los
Angeles Times report, the export value of Japanese animation and comics to
the American market amounted to $75 million in 1996 (Manabe 1997).
Furthermore, three Japanese manufacturers, Nintendo, Sega and Sony,
dominate the market for computer games. The popularity of Japanese game
software is exemplified by the popularity of such games as Super Mario
Brothers, Sonic, and Pokémon. As a director of Nintendo pointed out,
according to one survey, Mario is a better-known character among Ameri-
can children than Mickey Mouse (Akurosu Henshūshitsu 1995, 41–42).
The huge success of Pokémon in the global market since 1998 further
persuades us to make a serious scholarly investigation into Japanese cultural
export. Pokémon’s penetration into global markets even exceeds that of
Mario. As of June 2000 Pokémon game software had sold about 65 million
copies (22 million outside Japan) and trading-cards about 4.2 billion (2.4 bil-
lion outside Japan); the animation series had been broadcast in fifty-one
countries; the first feature film had been shown in thirty-three countries,
and its overseas box-o≈ce record had amounted to $176 million; and there
had also been about 12,000 purchases of character merchandise (8,000 out-
side Japan) (Hatakeyama and Kubo 2000). These figures unambiguously
show that Pokémon has become truly a ‘‘made-in-Japan’’ global cultural
artifact.
These examples certainly illustrate the rise of Japanese cultural products in
world markets, particularly within the domain of animated software. Ac-
cordingly, we have observed an increasingly narcissistic interest in articulat-
ing the distinctive ‘‘Japaneseness’’ of cultural products in 1990s Japan. As
early as 1992, for example, the popular monthly magazine DENiM ran a
feature article on made-in-Japan global commodities that began ‘‘Who said
that Japan only imports superior foreign culture and commodities and has
nothing originally Japanese which has a universal appeal? Now Japanese
30 Recentering globalization
customs, products and systems are conquering the world!’’ (Sekai ga mane-
shita Nipponryū 1992, 143). In the article, global Japanese exports included
food, fashion, service industry o√erings, animation, and computer games
(see also Noda 1990). This concern was further advanced in a book on
Japanese global commodities entitled Sekai shōhin no tsukurikata: Nihon me-
dia ga sekai o seishita hi (The making of global commodities: The day Japa-
nese media conquered the world). The main purpose of the book was to
reconsider Japanese culture in terms of its influence in the world: ‘‘It is a
historical rule that an economically powerful nation produces in its heyday
global popular culture whose influences match its economic power. Such
was the case with the British Empire, Imperial France, Weimar Germany
and the United States of the 1950s and 1960s. What, then, has Japan of the
1980s produced for the world? Has Japan produced anything that is con-
sumed globally and influences the lifestyle of world consumers?’’ (Akurosu
Henshūshitsu 1995, 6). Consumer technologies, particularly the Walkman,
have long been regarded as representative of Japanese global cultural com-
modities. The editors of the above volume remark that they originally
coined the term global commodities in 1988 in order to articulate the phenom-
enal global popularity of the Walkman, but that there has been a prolifera-
tion of Japanese global commodities since then (Akurosu Henshūshitsu
1995, 6–8). Made-in-Japan global commodities discussed in the book in-
clude not only Japanese hardware commodities such as the Walkman, in-
stant cameras, or vcrs, but also ‘‘software’’ cultural products such as anima-
tion and computer games, and that even the system of producing pop idols,
a process that has been predominantly exported to Asia, has come more into
the foreground.≥
Euphoria concerning the global dissemination of animation and com-
puter games prompted Japanese commentators to confer a specific Japanese
‘‘fragrance’’ on these cultural products. The emergence of obsessively de-
voted fans of Japanese animation in both Europe and the United States
whose craze for Japanese animation makes them wish they had been born in
Japan has been often covered by the Japanese media. Many images of West-
ern fans playing at being would-be Japanese animation characters, wearing
the same costumes and make-up, have been presented in popular Japanese
magazines as evidence of the ‘‘Japanization’’ of the West (e.g., Nihonbunka
kosupure Amerika yushutsu 1996; Amerika nimo otaku ga daihassei 1996;
Furansu de kosupure kontesuto 1997; Otaku no sekai kara mejā e 1997).∂
Okada Toshio, the most eloquent spokesperson for the global popularity of
Taking ‘‘Japanization’’ seriously 31
Japanese animation and computer games, further argues that Japanese ani-
mated culture and imagery has come to evoke, to a certain degree, a sense of
Western yearning for ‘‘Japan’’ (1996, 52–56; see also Eikoku ga mitometa
Nihonbunka 1996, 30–31). Comparing the passionate Western consump-
tion of Japanese animation to Japan’s and his own yearning, via the con-
sumption of American popular culture, for ‘‘America,’’—the nation of free-
dom, science, and democracy—Okada (1995, 43) proudly argues that to
those Western fans, Japan ‘‘looks a more cool country’’ than the United
States. More recently, the Pokémon phenomenon has provoked an increas-
ing Japanese interest in associating its global appeal with Japanese symbolic
power. Japanese scholars have observed that, increasingly, American chil-
dren who love Pokémon believe Japan must be a cool nation if it is capa-
ble of producing such wonderful characters, imaginaries, and commodities
(Kamo 2000; Sakurai 2000).

Is the world being ‘‘Japanized’’?

It remains a contentious issue, however, what power status (image of power)

the global spread of Japanese animations and computer games may have
granted to Japan. How do these products evoke a distinctively Japanese way
of life to consumers and audiences? The cultural presence of a foreign
country is often interpreted as a threat to national identity and/or to the
national interest, or as a sign of the foreign country’s status as an object of
yearning in the recipient country. In either case, it marks the foreign coun-
try’s cultural power. Here, the notion of Americanization and cultural im-
perialism has long informed discussion of the cultural imposition of a domi-
nant country over others. As Said (1994, 387) argues, ‘‘Rarely before in
human history has there been so massive an intervention of force and ideas
from one culture to another as there is today from America to the rest of the
world.’’ The unprecedented global reach of American power is all-inclusive,
a complex of political, economic, military, and cultural hegemony. In the
Cold War era, it is well known that the United States strategically dissemi-
nated an American model of a modern, a∆uent, open, and democratic
society to win the ideological battle against the Communist bloc. Mass
media and consumer culture were the major vehicles of ‘‘Americanization.’’
American political scientist Joseph Nye (1990, 188) argues that a signifi-
cant factor that confers on the United States a global hegemony is its ‘‘soft
co-optic power,’’ that is, the power of ‘‘getting others to want what you
32 Recentering globalization
want’’ through symbolic power resources such as media and consumer cul-
ture: ‘‘If [a dominant country’s] culture and ideology are attractive, others
will more willingly follow’’ (32). In contrast, Nye contends that Japan is a
one-dimensional economic power and its consumer commodities, no mat-
ter how globally disseminated, still lack an associated ‘‘appeal to a broader set
of values’’ (194)—and thus are culturally odorless.
This is not simply due to the fact that since the end of World War II, Japan
has had no manifest policy of political, military, or ideological/cultural
exertion of its transnational power. More importantly, what is implied here
is that there is an inherent di≈culty in comparing the advent of Japanese
animations or computer games to an ‘‘Americanization’’ paradigm as sug-
gested earlier. This is not to say that Japanese animation does not embody
any specific cultural characteristics that originate in what we call ‘‘Japanese
culture.’’ American fans of Japanese animations are inescapably ‘‘dependent
upon Japanese culture itself ’’ (Newitz 1995, 12; Kamo 2000).∑ But to inter-
pret the global success of Pokémon and other Japanese cultural products as
the mirror image of the global process of ‘‘Americanization’’ is fallacious.
Looking beneath the surface of these celebratory views of Western percep-
tions of the coolness of Japanese culture, we find a basic contradiction: the
international spread of mukokuseki popular culture from Japan simulta-
neously articulates the universal appeal of Japanese cultural products and the
disappearance of any perceptible ‘‘Japaneseness,’’ which, as will be discussed
later, is subtly incorporated into the ‘‘localization’’ strategies of the media
industries. The cultural influence of Japanese animation and computer
games in many parts of the world might be tremendous, but it tends to be an
‘‘invisible colonization’’ (Bosche 1997).∏
One cultural critic, Ōtsuka Eiji (1993), thus warns against any euphoria
concerning the global popularity of Japanese animation, arguing that it is
simply the mukokuseki (the unembedded expression of race, ethnicity, and
culture), the ‘‘odorless’’ nature of animation, that is responsible for its popu-
larity in the world. Likewise, Ueno (1996b, 186) argues that ‘‘the ‘Japanese-
ness’ of Japanimation can only be recognized in its being actively a mukoku-
seki visual culture.’’ If it is indeed the case that the Japaneseness of Japanese
animation derives, consciously or unconsciously, from its erasure of physical
signs of Japaneseness, is not the Japan that Western audiences are at long
last coming to appreciate, and even yearn for, an animated, race-less and
culture-less, virtual version of ‘‘Japan’’?
It is one thing to observe that Pokémon texts, for example, are influenc-
Taking ‘‘Japanization’’ seriously 33
ing children’s play and behavior in many parts of the world and that these
children perceive Japan as a cool nation because it creates cool cultural
products such as Pokémon. However, it is quite another to say that this
cultural influence and this perception of coolness is closely associated with a
tangible, realistic appreciation of ‘‘Japanese’’ lifestyles or ideas. It can be
argued that the yearning for another culture that is evoked through the
consumption of cultural commodities is inevitably a monological illusion.
This yearning tends to lack concern for and understanding of the socio-
cultural complexity of that in which popular cultural artifacts are produced.
This point is even more lucidly highlighted by the mukokuseki nature of
Japanese animation and computer games.
As mentioned earlier, Japanese exports to other parts of Asia are not re-
stricted to culturally odorless products but include popular music, tv dramas,
and fashion magazines, in all of which textual appeal has much to do with
visible ‘‘Japaneseness.’’ Though Japan’s cultural presence is thus di√erently
but more clearly manifested in the region, the comparison of Japanese
transnational cultural power in Asia to its American counterpart nevertheless
raises serious doubts. In interpreting the popularity of Japanese popular
culture in Asian regions, some Japanese conservative intellectuals argue that
Japan has replaced the United States as an object of yearning (e.g., Morita and
Ishihara 1989). However, this is refuted by the fact that it matters not that
Japanese animations and tv programs are eagerly consumed. It is argued that
a sense of yearning for Japan is still not aroused in Asia, because what is
appreciated, unlike American popular culture, is still not an image or idea of
Japan but simply a materialistic consumer commodity. A critical Japanese
scholar of Asian Studies, for example, is unequivocal in his dismissal of the
spread of Japanese consumer culture as a mere extension of the Japanese
economy. He argues that ‘‘Japanese culture is not received in other Asian
countries with the same sense of respect and yearning as American culture
was received in postwar Japan’’ (Murai 1993, 26). Though the Asian popu-
larity of Japanese animation, such as Doraemon, according to Murai, symbol-
izes a convenient and enjoyable Japanese consumer culture, Japanese cultural
influence is nevertheless much weaker than Japanese economic influence.
Similarly, in his introduction to an edited volume on the Japanization of
Asia, Igarashi Akio gives a concise overview of the ‘‘Japanization’’ phenom-
enon and then wonders whether the Japanese attention to the spread of Ja-
pan’s popular culture in Asia merely reflects ‘‘a simplistic nationalism among

34 Recentering globalization
the Japanese, a surplus of self-consciousness,’’ as there might actually be no
distinctive Japanese cultural influence to be found in the ‘‘Japanization’’
phenomenon (Igarashi 1997, 15). While the notion of ‘‘Americanization’’
includes broad cultural and ideological influences, such as ideas of American
democracy and the American way of life based upon a∆uent, middle-class
material cultures, Igarashi argues that ‘‘Japanization’’ only embodies con-
sumer culture and thus represents ‘‘more materialistic cultural dissemina-
tion’’ (6). A similar observation is made by a Singaporean scholar, Wee
Wan-ling (1997). He warns us not to confuse the presence of Japanese con-
sumer commodities, animation, and popular music in Singapore with a
‘‘Japanization’’ signifying a substantial influence on ideas. Congruent with
the view regarding Japanese imperialism’s cultural power over other Asians
as derivative, this argument expresses a di≈culty in seeing specifically ‘‘Japa-
nese’’ influence in the spread of Japanese popular and consumer culture in
other parts of Asia. What is experienced through Japanese popular culture is
actually a highly materialistic Japanese version of the American ‘‘original.’’

Global cultural power reconsidered: Decentered

transnational alliances

Certainly, any attempt to interpret the increase in the export of Japanese

popular culture in terms of an ‘‘Americanization’’ paradigm would mis-
judge the nature of Japanese cultural power in the world. There is apparently
a di√erent logic of global cultural influence operating here. However, I
would argue, it is possible and perhaps productive to take the awkwardness
denoted by the notion of ‘‘Japanization’’ as an opportunity to reconsider the
meaning of transnational cultural power which has long been understood in
terms of ‘‘Americanization,’’ and to appreciate the precarious nature of
transnational cultural consumption (Appadurai 1996; Howes 1996), rather
than to dismiss the pervasiveness of Japanese influence. The rise of Japanese
cultural export can, I suggest, be read as a symptom of the shifting nature of
transnational cultural power in a context in which intensified global cultural
flows have decentered the power structure and vitalized local practices of
appropriation and consumption of foreign cultural products and meanings.
In this sense, it does not seem entirely contingent that the manifestation of
Japanese cultural power has occurred in the last decade. This is a period
during which the historical process of globalization, as defined by Hall

Taking ‘‘Japanization’’ seriously 35

(1995), has been accelerated by several interconnected factors. These in-
clude the global integration of markets and capital by powerful transnational
corporations; the development of communication technologies which eas-
ily and simultaneously connect all over the globe; the emergence of an af-
fluent middle class in non-Western countries, especially in Asia; and the
increasing number of people moving from one place to another by mi-
gration and tourism. Theoretical reformulation has become imperative in
order to cope with these globalizing forces that make transnational cultural
flow much more disjunctive, non-isomorphic, and complex than what the
center-periphery paradigm allows us to understand (Appadurai 1990).
The expansive force of globalization, the transmission of cultural forms
from the dominant to the rest via communication technologies and trans-
portation systems, has brought about a ‘‘time-space compression’’ (Harvey
1989), or the shrinking of the distance between one place and another. As
the merger and cooperation of transnational corporations of di√erent coun-
tries of origin intensifies, various markets are increasingly integrated and
interrelated. This, together with the development of communication tech-
nologies, leads to an increasing simultaneity in the cultural flow of infor-
mation, images, and commodities emanating from a handful of powerful
nations, including Japan, to urban spaces across the globe. The speed and
quantity of the global distribution of cultural commodities has been rapidly
accelerating. The recent simultaneous popularity, and quick decline, of
Spice Girls and Tamagotchi (a tiny digital pet) in many parts of the world
testify to this trend. Under these developments, discourse on globalization
has tended to facilitate myths of global coherence (Ferguson 1992) by its
evocation of global synchronization or a utopian view of world unity, in the
same way that Macluhan’s famous term global village connotes a sense of
bonding, togetherness, and immediacy.
However, media globalization does not simply promote the global reach
of Western media and commodities. It also facilitates ‘‘the de-centering of
capitalism from the West’’ (Tomlinson 1997, 140–43) through increasing
integration, networking, and cooperation among worldwide transnational
media industries, including non-Western ones. For transnational corpora-
tions to enter simultaneously those global, supranational, regional, national,
and local markets, the imperatives are the establishment of a business tie-up
with others at each level—whether in the form of a buyout or collabora-
tion—along with the selection of new cultural products that will have an
international appeal.
36 Recentering globalization
 It is thus important to place the significance of Japanese inroads into
Hollywood, as well as the international popularity of Japanese animation
and computer games, within a wider picture of transnational media and
market interconnections as well. The rise of Japanese media industries artic-
ulates a new phase of global cultural flow dominated by a small number of
transnational corporations (Aksoy and Robins 1992). These moves testify to
the increasing trend of global media mergers which aim to o√er a ‘‘total
cultural package’’ of various media products under a single media conglom-
erate (Schiller 1991).π After all, the reason Sony and Matsushita bought into
Hollywood was not to dominate American minds, but rather to centralize
product distribution. The purpose was to construct a total entertainment
conglomerate through the acquisition of control over both audiovisual
hardware and software. It was based upon the sober economic judgment
that ‘‘it is cultural distribution, not cultural production, that is the key locus
of power and profit’’ (Garnham 1990, 161–62). The incursion can be seen as
a confirmation of the supremacy of American software creativity and there-
fore of Japan’s second-rate ability as a software producer. Japanese trading
companies such as Sumitomo and Itochu also invested in American media
giants (e.g., Sumitomo–TCI or Itochu–Time Warner). This suggests that
Japanese cultural influence and presence in the world is still overshadowed
by its economic power (Herman and McChesney 1998, 104). Seen this way,
the purpose of the Japanese takeover was not to kill the American soul; on
the contrary, it was to make Hollywood omnipresent. Japanese ingenuity in
hardware production and American genius in software go hand in hand
because ( Japanese) consumer technologies work as ‘‘distribution systems’’
for (American) entertainment products (Berland 1992, 46). These Japanese
companies strengthen American cultural hegemony by investing in the
production of Hollywood films and by facilitating their distribution all over
the globe.
Conversely, finding a local partner is particularly important in facilitating
the entry of non-Western media industries and cultural products into West-
ern markets. Morley and Robins (1995, 13) point out three strategic pat-
terns of activities for global media corporations: producing cultural prod-
ucts; distributing products; and owning hardware that delivers products.
Penetration of transnational media industries into multiple markets needs
the combination of at least two of the above three, particularly production
and distribution, both of which are dominated by American industries. If
Sony’s encroachment on Hollywood articulates Japanese exploitation of
Taking ‘‘Japanization’’ seriously 37
American software products in order to become a global media player,
media globalization also promotes the incorporation of Japanese, and other
non-Western, media products into the Western-dominated global distribu-
tion network. Japanese media industries and cultural products cannot suc-
cessfully become transnational players without partners. The most serious
shortcoming of the Japanese animation industry, despite mature production
capabilities and techniques, is its lack of international distribution channels.
Western (American) global distribution power is thus indispensable to make
Japanese animation a part of global popular culture. The process can be
called an ‘‘Americanization of Japanization.’’ For example, it was the invest-
ment and the distribution channels of a British and American company,
Manga Entertainment (established in 1991 and part of the Polygram con-
glomerate) that made The Ghost in the Shell a hit in Western countries.
Similarly, in 1995, Disney decided to globally distribute Miyazaki Hayao’s
animated films. Miyazaki gained prestige from Disney’s decision, which
helped turn his animated Mononokehime into a phenomenal hit in Japan in
1997. As the producer of the film acknowledged, the fact that Hayao’s
animations are highly appreciated by the global animation giant, Disney,
worked well as the publicity for giving the film an international prominence
(Mononokehime, datsu Miyazaki anime de 100 okuen 1998).∫
The global success of Pokémon also has much to do with America’s
intervening partnership. Most manifestly, Warner Bros., one of the major
Hollywood studios, handled the global distribution of Pokémon: The First
Movie, as well as televising Pokémon on its own U.S.-wide channel. No less
significant is how Pokémon has been localized, or Americanized, ‘‘to hide
its ‘Japaneseness’ ’’ (Invasion of the Pocket Monsters 1999, 68–69) as part of
a global promotion strategy. Significantly, it is the remade-in-the-U.S. ver-
sion of Pokémon that has been exported to other parts of the world (except
Asia). Thus, the successful marketing of Pokémon as a global character owes
much to American intervention (handled by Nintendo of America), which
testifies to another ‘‘Americanization of Japanization.’’ Japanese animation’s
inroads into the global market articulate the ever-growing global integra-
tion of markets and media. The examples discussed above clearly show that
the Japanese animation industry is becoming a global player only by relying
on the power of Western media.Ω

38 Recentering globalization
 Global–local complexity: From cultural imperialism
to globalization

Decentered processes of cultural globalization have also accompanied a sig-

nificant theoretical shift—the questioning of the ‘‘cultural imperialism’’
thesis—in studies of asymmetrical transnational cultural flows in the last
decade. The cultural imperialism thesis emphasizes the unidirectional flow
of culture from the dominant (in most cases equated with the United States)
to the dominated. It argues that American popular culture, combined with
economic and political hegemony, is disseminated all over the globe, instill-
ing American consumerist values and ideologies. The cultural imperialism
thesis, as mentioned earlier, tends to describe the relationship between the
West (America) and the Rest as one of unambiguous cultural domination
and exploitation (e.g., Hamelink 1983; Mattelart, Delcourt, and Mattelart
1984; Schiller 1969, 1976, 1991). But the thesis neglects analysis of empirical
evidence of audience reception in subordinate cultures, and that is par-
ticularly problematic. In considering the global cultural flow and foreign
cultural influence in a particular region, ‘‘cultural domination’’ is in many
cases a discursive construct rather than the reflection of the subordinate
people’s actual experience. This is what Tomlinson (1991) convincingly
discusses in his book on cultural imperialism and what other excellent
studies on the discourse of ‘‘Americanization’’ also demonstrate (e.g., Kuisel
1993). The cultural imperialism thesis bases its argument of domination on
a political economy approach and does not pay adequate attention to
whether, and how, audiences are culturally dominated through the act of
consuming media texts from the center. The thesis explicitly or implicitly
sees audiences as passive ‘‘cultural dupes’’ who, apparently without a critical
cultural lens, automatically absorb any messages and ideologies from the
dominant center. However, such a simplifying view of cultural exchange
has been refuted by many ethnographic studies which show that audiences
actively and creatively consume media texts and cultural products (e.g.,
Morley 1980, 1992; Radway 1984; Ang 1985).
Perspectives of globalization, in reconsidering the nature of transnational
cultural unevenness highlighted by cultural imperialism discourses, instead
stress that what is occurring is not simply homogenization through the
global distribution of the same commodities, images, and capital from the
Western (and Japanese to a lesser extent) metropolitan centers. Such dis-
semination also produces new cultural diversity (e.g., Hall 1991; Robins
Taking ‘‘Japanization’’ seriously 39
1997). The term transculturation refers to this process of globalization, in
which the asymmetrical encounter of various cultures results in the trans-
formation of an existing cultural artifact and the creation of a new style.
Mary Louise Pratt (1992, 6) states this succinctly when she writes, ‘‘While
subjugated peoples cannot readily control what emanates from the domi-
nant culture, they do determine to varying extents what they absorb into
their own and what they use it for.’’
Although Pratt uses this concept to analyze colonial encounters in a
‘‘contact zone’’ through the reading of Western imperial travel writings, the
concept of transculturation is helpful for us to understand that it is through
engagement with West-dominated global cultural power that non-Western
modernities articulate their specificity (Hall 1995). In contrast to the ho-
mogenization thesis, this view is concerned more with sites of local negotia-
tion. It suggests that foreign goods and texts are creatively misused, recon-
texualized in local sites, di√erently interpreted according to local cultural
meaning. Something new is produced in the unequal cultural encounter by
mixing the foreign and the local (e.g., Hannerz 1992; Lull 1995; Ang 1996).
The ascent of Japanese transnational cultural power should be considered in
the context of this wider vista of theoretical paradigm shifts, which attempt
to attend simultaneously to the homogenizing forces of globalization and to
transformative local practices in the formation of non-Western indigenized
modernity, so as to understand the question of transnational cultural power.
The shift from an emphasis on center–periphery relations to a di√usion of
cultural power marks the relative decline of the main actor, the United
States. It is often pointed out that, contrary to the logic of cultural imperial-
ism, U.S. tv programs are not as popular as ‘‘local,’’ or domestically pro-
duced, programs in many countries (e.g., Siji 1988; Lee 1991; Straubhaar
1991; Tomlinson 1991). The unambiguous American domination of global
culture is also put into question by the rise of other global players such as
Brazil (e.g., Sinclair 1992; Tomlinson 1997). Tunstall (1995, 16), the author
of The Media Are American (1977), argues that American media are still
influential but no longer dominant: ‘‘The United States is the only media
superpower, but it is a media superpower in gradual decline against the
world as a whole.’’ Tunstall argues that American tv programs are becom-
ing less popular in the world not because their quality is degrading but,
rather, because there exists a process of local indigenization of original
American tv formats, a point I will return to later.

40 Recentering globalization
 This does not mean that the United States has lost its cultural hegemony.
Even if the global popularity of American tv programs has declined, Ameri-
can cultural power is still articulated in the recognition that media and
cultural forms which originate in America have been fully globalized (Mor-
ley and Robins 1995, 223–24). As Bell and Bell (1995, 131) argue, ‘‘ ‘Amer-
ica’ has rather come to symbolize the very processes of social and cultural
modernization themselves.’’ Likewise, Yoshimi (1997), in his studies of the
‘‘Americanization’’ of Japan, argues, with a particular emphasis on Tokyo
Disneyland, that ‘‘America’’ shifted from a symbol to an invisible system in
the 1980s. While the American way of life has lost its manifest appeal in
Japan, according to Yoshimi, the Japanese cultural scene has been saturated
with the logic of American consumer capitalism. Baudrillard also declares
that ‘‘America is the original version of modernity and Europe is the dubbed
or subtitled version’’ (1988, 76). Although admitting that American hege-
monic power is in decline, Baudrillard argues that the decline merely shows
the changing nature of power: ‘‘It [America] has become the orbit of an
imaginary power to which everyone now refers. From the point of view of
competition, hegemony, and ‘imperialism,’ it has certainly lost ground, but
from the exponential point of view, it has gained some’’ (107). According to
Baudrillard, American power has entered a new stage of ‘‘hysteresis,’’ which
is ‘‘the process whereby something continues to develop by inertia, whereby
an e√ect persists even when its cause has disappeared’’ (115). America is now
ubiquitous as the unmarked model for (post)modern culture.
It is an open question if this transformation of the nature of America’s
global cultural influence is the pinnacle of Americanization or the demise of
Americanization. Smart (1993) criticizes Baudrillard by arguing that an
exclusive comparison between Europe and America leads to a failure to
realize the limits and decline of all-powerful Western/American modernity.
Baudrillard is, deliberately or not, ‘‘indi√erent to the possibility that Amer-
ica may no longer be the model for business, performance, and international
style, no longer the ‘uncontested and uncontestable’ model of modernity’’
(Smart 1993, 66). While Smart emphatically refers to Japan as an emerging
model of postmodernity, the critical issue here is not the substitution or
addition of new cultural centers but overcoming a nation-centric view of
global cultural power. At the high point in the development of moderniza-
tion theories, discussions of non-Western modernization either stressed
divergence or convergence with the Western model. Or conversely, West-

Taking ‘‘Japanization’’ seriously 41

ern countries were thought to follow the Japanese modernization model as
a process of reverse-convergence (Dore 1973; see also Mouer and Sugimoto
1986). However, the late twentieth century is marked by the fact that there
is no absolute societal model to follow (Scott 1997).
The disappearance of an absolute center of global power is often inter-
preted as evidence that Americanization has not melted into air but into
global capitalism. Spark (1996, 96–97) makes the point astutely, referring to
the British context: ‘‘Americanization might better be considered as only
the evidential characteristic of modern consumer capitalism, with the ap-
pellation ‘American’ referring only to the prime, originating characteristics
of the model. In this sense, America is not acting to subordinate foreign
cultures: the process is one of globalized modernization, and as the experi-
ence of the British with America reveals, it is reciprocal.’’ Sklair (1995, 153)
extends Spark’s point further when he criticizes the view that media and
cultural imperialism tend to be equated with ‘‘Americanization’’: ‘‘It im-
plies that if American influence could be excluded, then cultural and media
imperialism would end. This could only be true in a purely definitional
sense. Americanization itself is a contingent form of a process that is neces-
sary to global capitalism, the culture-ideology of consumerism.’’
Sklair’s argument captures the fundamental force of globalization, that
generated by the logic of the ever-expanding reach of capital, and few
would disagree with this point (Tomlinson 1997, 139–40). However, this
argument seems too sweeping a generalization of transnational cultural
flows to capture the contradiction and ambivalence articulated in local
practices. Hall is more sensitive to the decentralizing feature of global capi-
talism. He coins the term global mass culture to characterize the emerging
global di√usion of media images. While acknowledging American and
Western hegemony in this process, Hall points out that this is a ‘‘peculiar
form of homogenization’’ which does not destroy but rather respects cul-
tural di√erences in the globe: ‘‘[Global mass culture] is wanting to recognize
and absorb those di√erences within the larger, overarching framework of
what is essentially an American conception of the world.’’ Capital does not
try to obliterate di√erences but to ‘‘operate through them’’ (1991, 28).
Unprecedented concentration of capital in transnational corporations has
generated another feature of decentralization, where the recognition of
cultural diversity and di√erence is increasingly exploited by transnational
corporations.

42 Recentering globalization
 Globalization as structuring differences

The theoretical shift from cultural imperialism to globalization thus goes

together with a turn from the notion of a straightforward globally homoge-
nizing cultural dominant toward the idea of an orchestrated heterogeniza-
tion under the sign of globalizing forces; from an emphasis on content to an
emphasis on the form of cultural products, which structure diversity and
di√erence in the ever-increasing interconnection of the world (e.g., Wilk
1995; Hannerz 1996; Robins 1997). Globalization brings about, as Hannerz
(1996, 102) put it, ‘‘an organization of diversity rather than a replication of
uniformity,’’ or a ‘‘repatriation of di√erence,’’ which is produced by the
local absorption and indigenization of homogenizing forces.
A dichotomous view of global–local would fail to acknowledge the com-
plex, juxtaposed and fractured nature of cultural globalization. We should
consider, instead, what Morley and Robins (1995, 116) call the ‘‘global–local
nexus’’: ‘‘Whilst globalization may be the prevailing force of our times, this
does not mean that localism is without significance. . . . Globalization is, in
fact, also associated with new dynamics of re-localization. It is about the
achievement of a new global–local nexus, about new and intricate relations
between global space and local space’’ (emphasis in original). The concep-
tion of globalization as an organizing force of new diversity and particularity
is also argued by Robertson (1992, 1995). He refers to globalization in terms
of the form in which global interconnection is structured and a new kind of
particularism is globally institutionalized (1995, 38). Robertson is cautious to
distance his view from the ‘‘naive functionalist mode’’ of integration. He em-
phasizes that homogenization and heterogenization, like globalization and
localization, are ‘‘complementary and interpenetrative’’ phenomena (40).
Newly articulated particularism or localism in the local negotiation with
globalizing forces testifies to the spread of common forms in which di√er-
ence and diversity can be claimed. In this sense, while the concept of
‘‘hybridity’’ that tries to deconstruct the essentialization of ‘‘original’’ has
gained intellectual currency, it should not simply be read as a celebration of
the creative practices of the dominated. It indicates that global homogeniz-
ing power is a constitutive and generative part of any local cultural practice
(e.g., Hall 1991, 1992; García Canclini 1995; Lull 1995). Arguing that the
hybridization perspective should shift our conception of culture from a
territorial/static mode to one of a translocal/fluid movement, Pieterse
(1995) defines globalization as an ongoing production of a ‘‘global mélange’’
Taking ‘‘Japanization’’ seriously 43
through hybridization processes. He distinguishes structural hybridization,
where the production of various hybrid forms is facilitated by ‘‘the increase
in the available modes of organization’’ (50), and cultural hybridization,
where such hybrid forms represent ‘‘new translocal cultural expressions’’
(64). The ever-increasing hybridization in these two processes actually testi-
fies to ‘‘transcultural convergence,’’ as Pieterse argues that ‘‘the very process
of hybridization shows the di√erence to be relative and, with a slight shift of
perspective, the relationship can also be described in terms of an a≈rmation
of similarity’’ (60, emphasis in original).
Likewise, in discussing the discourse of Japanese cultural uniqueness in
the wider context of globalization, Morris-Suzuki (1998b, 164) emphasizes
the ‘‘formatting of di√erence,’’ by which she means ‘‘the creation of a single
underlying common framework or set of rules which is used to coordinate
local subregimes’’ as a significant structuring force of globalization. Di√er-
ence can be convincingly and successfully advocated precisely because of the
di√usion of a common format. As I will discuss in detail in chapter 4, if it can
be argued that the hegemony of the global cultural system is articulated in
globally shared ‘‘forms’’ (Wilk 1995), the latter also promote the production
of multiple, distinct indigenized modernities in the world. In sum, a con-
vincing analysis of the unevenness of global interconnectedness should go
beyond a global–local binary opposition. The operation of global cultural
power can only be found in local practice, whereas cultural reworking and
appropriation at the local level necessarily takes place within the matrix of
global homogenizing forces.

The Japanese cultural presence under a global gaze

The decentralizing forces of globalization open the way for Japanese trans-
national cultural power to be seen in a di√erent light from that of ‘‘Ameri-
canization.’’ The increasing emphasis on the decentralization of global cul-
tural power does not mean there are no longer dominant centers. The
suppliers of transnational cultural products and ‘‘forms’’—which make cre-
ative local hybridization possible—are still limited to a small number of
centers. Cultural commodities and images are predominantly produced by
a small number of wealthy countries, including Japan, and many parts
of the world still cannot even a√ord to enjoy global cultural consump-
tion (Sreberny-Mohammadi 1991). From an American point of view, the
globalization process might testify to the decentralization and decline of
44 Recentering globalization
American/Western power. From a Japanese point of view, however, it
represents a recentralization by means of which new globally powerful na-
tions such as Japan have successfully repositioned themselves.
Nevertheless, it should be reiterated that this reconfiguration of trans-
national cultural power is occurring in the context in which uneven
distribution and circulation of such cultural products are becoming more
di≈cult to trace and the origins of images and commodities become in-
creasingly insignificant and irrelevant. Ang (1996, 13) argues that there has
been a significant shift in audience reception of tv texts in the postmodern
age, in that audiences are expected to be active, not simply in theory but in
their real-life situations, producing meaning out of multifarious media texts.
Likewise, it can be argued that the local needs to be creative in articulating
di√erence by indigenizing the global. With the proliferation and accelerated
speed of globally circulated images and commodities, the local transcultura-
tion process has come to be a quotidian site where the local negotiates and
appropriates the global rather than that of the unambiguous cultural domi-
nation by the center of the periphery (see Hannerz 1991; Miller 1992).
Although we cannot be too cautious in generalizing this picture on a
global scale, gradually disappearing in this process is the perception, not the
fact, of derivative modernity, the sense that ‘‘our’’ modernity is borrowed
from a modernity that happened elsewhere (see Chatterjee 1986; Chakra-
barty 1992). Ubiquitous modernity, in contrast, is based on a sense that
‘‘our’’ modernity is the one that is simultaneously happening everywhere.
To put it di√erently, the Western gaze, which has long dominated the
material and discursive construction of non-Western modernity, is now
melting into a decentered global gaze. To use Lash and Urry’s (1994, 29)
words about the nature of current cultural power emanating from the core
to the rest, ‘‘It is there, it is pervasive, but it is not the object of judgement—
one does not assent to it or reject it.’’ This might sound exaggerated. Need-
less to say, there are still clear-cut protests against American global cultural
hegemony and strong anti-America sentiments in many parts of the world.
Indeed, ‘‘America’’ still stands as a significant (hated) center. Nevertheless,
at the least, the age of ‘‘Americanization,’’ in which cross-cultural consump-
tion was predominantly discussed in terms of the production of a sense of
‘‘yearning’’ for a way of life and ideas of a dominant country, seems to be
over. Global cultural power does not disappear but is now highly dispersed.
It is the shift from a Western gaze to a decentered global gaze, manifested
in the process of indigenizing modernity, that the new meaning of ‘‘Japani-
Taking ‘‘Japanization’’ seriously 45
zation’’ thrives on. Japanese cultural power has paradoxically become visible
and conspicuous, as the absolute symbolic center no longer belongs to a
particular country or region and transnational cultural power is deeply in-
termingled with local indigenizing processes. Transnationally circulated im-
ages and commodities, I would argue, tend to become culturally odorless in
the sense that origins are subsumed by the local transculturation process. By
appropriating, hybridizing, indigenizing, and consuming images and com-
modities of ‘‘foreign’’ origin in multiple unforeseeable ways, even American
culture is conceived as ‘‘ours’’ in many places. McDonald’s is so much a part
of their own world that it no longer represents an American way of life to
Japanese or Taiwanese young consumers (Watson 1997).
The multiplicity of indigenized modernities brought about by local cre-
ative practices has, for one thing, spotlighted the Japanese experience of
transculturation as an exemplar to be followed by other non-Western coun-
tries. As mimesis has become associated less with second-hand cheapness
and superficiality than with creativity and originality (Taussig 1993), the
borrowed nature of Japanese cultural power has come to be seen as not
totally groundless. Tunstall (1995) suggests, in arguing the relative decline of
American media power in the world, that the Japanese mode of indigeniza-
tion of American original media products can be seen as a pattern in the
development of non-Western tv industries, which, he predicts, other non-
Western countries such as China or India will follow. Local indigenization
and consumption is, moreover, consciously incorporated into the global
marketing strategy of Japanese transnational corporations, as is the case with
Sony’s articulate strategy of ‘‘global localization’’ (see Aksoy and Robins
1992; Barnet and Cavanagh 1994; du Gay et al. 1997). The Japanese capacity
for indigenizing the foreign is reevaluated in globalization theories, and
Toyotism has been replaced by Sonyism (Wark 1991). Sony’s strategy of
globalization has come to signify a new meaning of ‘‘Japanization.’’ As
Featherstone (1995, 9) argues, ‘‘If the term Japanization of the world means
anything it is in terms of a market strategy built around the notion of
dochaku, or ‘‘glocalism.’’ The term refers to a global strategy which does not
seek to impose a standard product or image, but instead is tailored to the
demands of the local market. This has become a popular strategy for multi-
nationals in other parts of the world who seek to join the rhetoric of
localism.’’
I will argue in later chapters that the exclusive association of Japanization
with glocalism looks tenuous and essentialist (see chapters 2 and 3). Suf-
46 Recentering globalization
fice it to say here that Featherstone’s observation is derived from the fact
that the Japan-originated marketing strategy of ‘‘global localization’’—or
‘‘glocalization’’—has come to be credited as a leading formula for global
corporations in the 1990s in place of ‘‘global standardization’’ (Robertson
1995). Profits brought about by cultural power are becoming articulated less
in association with the symbolic and ideological domination by the power-
ful nation-state and more with local camouflaging which smoothes the
economic expansion of transnational corporations.

Power reconfigured in the intraregional cultural flow

As suggested earlier, the ascent of Japanese transnational cultural power is

most conspicuously illustrated in the specific cultural geography of East and
Southeast Asia, as the export of Japanese popular culture to Asia includes a
wide range of products such as Japanese tv dramas, pop idols, character
goods, and fashion magazines, most of which have rarely found receptive
consumers in the West. Although the wide range of Sony’s transnational
activity can be called ‘‘global’’ and the strategy of ‘‘global localization’’ is
deployed in multiple locales in the world, the application of the strategy to
the production of popular music and tv programs is clearly limited to the
Asian region. Even animations, which are well received in the West, are
more eagerly consumed in Asia, and some animations and comics are only
exported to Asia (e.g., Ono 1992, 1998; Kawatake 1995). East and Southeast
Asian markets were at the receiving end of almost half of the total number of
Japanese tv program exports in 1995 ( Japanese Ministry 1997). These facts
suggest that a Japanese mode of indigenized cultural modernity embodied
in popular cultural production is not simply the model for a localizing
strategy. Japanese cultural products themselves have come to hold a certain
symbolic appeal to other Asian nations—which can be conceived neither as
merely ‘‘odorless,’’ nor as nonderivative of American cultural power, nor as
comparable to the Americanization paradigm—in the context of the pro-
liferation of non-Western indigenized modernities, which we need to ex-
amine with a di√erent analytical tool.
The specificity of the spread and consumption of Japanese popular and
consumer culture in Asia reminds us of one important caveat: unsubstanti-
ated use of the two-relational concepts ‘‘global’’ and ‘‘local’’ as empty cate-
gories would risk overexaggerating the reach and the impact of trans-
national cultural flows (Ferguson 1992; Chua 1998). It would underestimate
Taking ‘‘Japanization’’ seriously 47
‘‘the historical and cultural situatedness of spaces traversed by [disjunctive
cultural] flows’’ (Ang and Stratton 1996, 28). Even if it has become a com-
mon view that globalization processes are too chaotic, decentralizing, and
disjunctive to be explained by a center–periphery model (e.g., Lash and
Urry 1994; Appadurai 1996), as Ang and Stratton (1996) argue, we should
not assume that such flows totally replace the old power relations, as the
current cultural flows are always already overdetermined by the power rela-
tions and geopolitics embedded in the history of imperialism and colonial-
ism. While, together with the dissolution of the cultural and economic
imperialism perspective, fifty years would seem long enough for former
colonies, South Korea and Taiwan, to become more tolerant toward, if not
to forget, the legacy of Japanese imperialism,∞≠ this does not mean that
Japanese cultural power has altogether vanished. Focusing on supra-national
regional flows presents a productive way to analyze how globalization re-
inscribes Japanese transnational cultural power in a new configuration of
more complex, multiple and intersecting power relations in Asia.
The concentration of Japanese cultural export in East and Southeast Asian
regions testifies to another facet of the decentralizing globalization process,
in which local practices increasingly acquire another importance: the rela-
tive decline of American cultural power has brought about the capitalization
of intraregional cultural flows, with the emergence of regional media and
cultural centers such as Brazil, Egypt, Hong Kong, and Japan (e.g., Straub-
haar 1991; Sinclair, Jacka, and Cunningham 1996b; Lii 1998). Given the
limited reverse cultural flow from these non-Western semicenters to West-
ern metropoles, the rise of non-Western economic power and its trans-
national corporations in the global arena has not seriously challenged the
Western-dominated ‘‘power geometry’’ (Massey 1991). Nevertheless, the
analysis of intraregional cultural flows would highlight alternative patterns
of transnationalization of media and popular culture, compared to the
sweeping view which equates globalization with Americanization, by turn-
ing our attention to another significant facet of ‘‘locality’’—the transnational
appeal of a non-Western mode of indigenized modernity for culturally
and/or geographically contiguous nations.
Of particular concern for this book is the question of how transnational
cultural power is embedded in the perception of cultural distance, which is
in a state of flux under globalization processes. Complexity articulated in
the intensification of intraregional cultural flows is closely related with the
ambiguity of the meaning of cultural intimacy and distance associated with
48 Recentering globalization
‘‘locality,’’ in which audiences are thought to find pleasure through the
consumption of cultural products from supposedly culturally similar nations
(Straubhaar 1991; Sinclair, Jacka, and Cunningham 1996a). The reservation
about claims for Japanese cultural power in Asia occurs not simply because
Japanese cultural products are supposed to lack the signification of substan-
tially Japanese ideas and lifestyles or because of a lingering, unambiguous,
Western cultural hegemony. Japanese cultural power in Asia, I suggest, also
tends to slip into a seemingly power-free perception of cultural similarity
and local intimacy which is derived from the narrower temporal and spatial
distance perceived among East and Southeast Asian countries than is the
case with the latter’s relation to the West.
However, it should be stressed that the sense of ‘‘cultural proximity’’
(Straubhaar 1991) is never a given attribute equally embodied in cultural
products in a specific region and experienced by various strata of people.
Rather, the production of locality (see Appadurai 1996, 178–99) itself is to
be considered as a site at which a regional cultural power is articulated. The
perception of cultural distance among non-Western nations has tended to
be swayed by their relative temporal proximity to Western modernity, the
standard by which the developmental ranking of the non-West has been
determined (see Fabian 1983). As an apt illustration, such a developmental
yardstick was earlier exploited by Japanese imperialist ideology to confirm
Japan’s superiority to other racially and culturally ‘‘similar’’ Asian nations
and justify the Japanese mission to civilize Asia (e.g., Duus 1995; Oguma
1995).
The recent spread of Japanese popular culture in other Asian nations in
turn suggests a possibility that the diminishing temporal lag between them
(re)activates the sense of spatial a≈liation in the region. A certain degree of
economic growth might have brought about commonalities underlying the
formation of modern Asian cultures. However, as the increase in Japanese
export of media and cultural products shows, it also produces the asymme-
try in which the Japanese mode of indigenized cultural modernity embod-
ied in popular cultural forms becomes more appealing in other parts of Asia.
As I will show in chapters 4 and 5, the di√erent ways in which Taiwanese
and Japanese perceive cultural and temporal distance in consuming other
Asian cultural products—one marked by a sense of coevality, the other by a
sense of nostalgia—demonstrate that unequal cultural power relations are
deeply inscribed in one’s spatial-temporal experience of ‘‘familiar di√er-
ence’’ in the popular cultural products of cultural neighbors. While the
Taking ‘‘Japanization’’ seriously 49
consumption of Japanese popular culture in other Asian nations might not
produce the same kind of a sense of yearning for Japan as does (or did) its
American counterpart, Japan’s relatively dominant position in intra-Asian
cultural flows is noted in the fact that Asian consumption of Japanese popu-
lar culture generates a positive sense of cultural immediacy.
Although o√ering stimulating new insights into the investigation of de-
centered global cultural power relations, intraregional cultural interaction
is an underexplored area in the study of cultural globalization. In recent
years, theories of modernity and modernization have been criticized for
their Eurocentric perspective. Now that many non-Western countries have
achieved a certain degree of modernization, it has been fully, though be-
latedly, recognized that spatial di√erences were unjustifiably subsumed by
the developmental temporality of Western modernity and that equal em-
phasis should be placed on space so that academics engage seriously with
plural modernities, (e.g., Featherstone, Lash, and Robertson 1995). Al-
though globalization perspectives surely complicate the straightforward ar-
gument for the homogenization of the world based on Western modernity,
the arguments for transculturation, heterogenization, hybridization, and
creolization still tend not to transcend the West–Rest paradigm. Global–
local interactions are predominantly studied in terms of how the Rest re-
sists, imitates, or appropriates the West. There have been fascinating analy-
ses of (non-Western) local consumption of Western media texts (e.g., see
Miller 1992, 1995), which go beyond a dichotomized perspective of the
global and the local and explore how non-Western countries ‘‘rework mo-
dernities’’ (Ong 1996, 64). Nevertheless, even in these examples, ‘‘global’’
still tends to be associated exclusively with the West.
Likewise, the rise of non-Western cultural centers of power such as Japan
and Brazil often has been pointed out to refute a straightforward view of
Western cultural domination and to support an argument for decentralized
Western cultural hegemony (e.g., Morley and Robins 1995; Barker 1997;
Tomlinson 1997). However, how such emerging non-Western semicenters
exert cultural power through their dynamic interaction with other non-
Western modernities has been seriously under-explored. The following
chapters aim to take a further step in the analysis of decentered global
cultural power relations by exploring from a Japanese perspective the dy-
namic and asymmetrical relations between Asian modernities.

50 Recentering globalization
●
≤
Trans/nationalism: Discourses on

Japan in the global cultural flow

It has become commonplace to argue that national identity is never natu-

rally given but is rather discursively constructed, invented, and imagined, a
conception that has been developed out of excellent studies of the origin of
national identity or nationalism (e.g., Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983; Ander-
son 1983). It is argued that the precariousness of national identity is becom-
ing more visible and conspicuous as a result of globalization processes which
have interconnected the world in multiple, contradictory, and disjunctive
ways (e.g., Hall 1992).
The concept of ‘‘hybridity,’’ developed in postcolonial theories, brings to
light the doubleness and in-betweenness of national/cultural identity for-
mation. Hybridity usefully counters exclusivist notions of imagined com-
munity, as well as the essentialism and ‘‘ethnic absolutism’’ involved in ideas
of cultural ‘‘purity’’ and ‘‘authenticity.’’ It creates ‘‘the ‘third space’ which
enables other positions to emerge. . . . It displaces the histories that con-
stitute it, and sets up new structures of authority, new political initiatives,
which are inadequately understood through received wisdom’’ (Bhabha
1990, 211). The concept fruitfully displaces our conception of clearly de-
marcated national/cultural boundaries, which have been based upon a bi-
nary opposition between ‘‘us’’ and ‘‘them,’’ ‘‘the West’’ and ‘‘the Rest,’’ and
the colonizer and the colonized, with a postcolonial perspective which
‘‘oblige(s) us to re-read the binaries as forms of transculturation, of cultural
translation, destined to trouble the here/there cultural binaries forever’’
(Hall 1996a, 247).∞
In the study of transnational cultural flows, the concepts of hybridity and
hybridization, together with others such as creolization (Hannerz 1991) and
indigenization (Appadurai 1996), also articulate the dynamic, ongoing, un-
even but creative process of cultural interconnection, transgression, appro-
priation, reworking and cross-fertilization.≤ The accelerating flow of media
images and people all over the globe not only generates the multiplicity of
di√erences within a nation but also highlights the porousness of any appar-
ently bounded cultural entity. As Hannerz (1996, 18) argues, ‘‘That image of
a cultural mosaic, where each culture would have been a territorial entity
with clear, sharp, enduring edges, never really corresponded with realities’’
(see also Gupta and Ferguson 1992; Buell 1994).
More recently, as discussed in the introduction, the term transnationalism
has come to be commonly used to describe such a situation facilitated by
globalization processes, ‘‘a condition by which people, commodities, and
ideas literally cross—transgress—national boundaries and are not identified
with a single place of origin’’ (Watson 1997, 11). As exemplified by the
analysis of cultural politics concerned with diasporas, the notion of trans-
nationalism draws attention to the ways in which the intensifying scale and
speed of the transnational flows of people, capital, and media has disre-
garded, though not entirely, the e≈cacy of clearly demarcated national
boundaries and identities, from below as well as from above. It highlights
new modes of unevenness, connection, and imagination crisscrossing the
world that we need to come to terms with (e.g., Smith and Guarnizo 1998;
Grewal, Gupta, and Ong 1999).
However, this does not mean that the ‘‘national’’ has become insig-
nificant. On the contrary, its persisting significance is newly articulated
precisely through transnational movements (Smith 2001). This chapter dis-
cusses this dynamic in the Japanese context by attending to how the discus-
sion of cultural hybridization and transnational cultural flows has been gen-
erated by and has even fuelled a strong nationalist impulse of claiming a
distinct and superior ‘‘Japaneseness.’’ I will critically examine this set of
reactionary discourses, what I call trans/nationalism, which has desperately
tried to contain the emergent state of transnationality within the national
framework and thinking in contemporary Japan. After giving an overview
of the historical evolution and transformation of Japanese and Western
(English-language) discourse in terms of its capacity for cultural hybridiza-
tion before and after the collapse of the Japanese empire, I will discuss how
that language became assertively extroverted again in the 1990s in tandem
with the growing narcissistic urge to (re)claim Japanese cultural prominence
through the spread of Japanese popular culture to other parts of Asia. Pre-
viously, I have discussed the emergence of self-congratulating views of the
worldwide consumption of Japanese ‘‘odorless’’ cultural forms, or muko-
kuseki (in the sense of the disappearance or erasure of obvious national/
52 Recentering globalization
cultural characteristics), such as animation and computer games. A form of
trans/nationalism has di√erently manifested itself with regard to the favor-
able reception of Japanese popular culture in East and Southeast Asia since
the 1990s. It is strongly overdetermined by Japan’s imperialist history and
intertwined with its postcolonial desire for ‘‘Asia.’’ The nationalist discourse
in this case disregards the complexity inherent in transnational cultural flows
and consumption by claiming a likable modern ‘‘Japaneseness’’ in mukoku-
seki cultural forms (this time, in the sense of ‘‘culturally hybridized’’ forms
set against ‘‘traditional’’ ones). Here, the transnationalization of Japanese
popular culture has not simply regenerated a conception of Japan’s leading
position in Asia, it is also conveniently regarded as helping Japan suppress
and overcome its historically constituted, problematic, and uneven relation-
ship with other Asian nations. In sum, the transnational intersects with the
postcolonial under the influence of the media globalization process.

Imagining Japan as a hybrid nation

In the course of Japan’s modern history, in which West-centric transnational

and cross-cultural encounters, conflicts, and connections have been acceler-
ated at various levels, a particular self-image of the Japanese national essence
has been developed so as to construct a modern national identity in the face
of Western domination. Japan is said to be a vociferously assimilating cul-
tural entity: The Japanese modern experience is described in terms of ap-
propriation, domestication, and indigenization of the foreign (predomi-
nantly associated with the West) in a way that reinforces an exclusivist
notion of Japanese national/cultural identity. It is in this sense that I argue
that the Japanese capacity for cultural borrowing and appropriation does not
simply articulate a process of hybridization in practice, but it is strategically
represented as a key feature of Japanese national identity itself. This mode of
self-representation, which I am calling ‘‘strategic hybridism,’’ is a principal
form of Japan’s trans/nationalism discourses. Friedman (1994, 209) argues
that, ‘‘The establishment and maintenance of creole identity are a social act
rather than a cultural fact.’’ Japanese hybridism aims to discursively construct
an image of an organic cultural entity, ‘‘Japan,’’ that absorbs foreign cultures
without changing its national/cultural core. As Yoshimoto (1994, 196)
suggests, the problematic of hybridism arises from the nationalistic recon-
ciliation of two ‘‘contradictory principles of cultural production—obsession
with native uniqueness and the indi√erence of origins.’’ Foreign origin is
Trans/nationalism 53
supposed to be purged by the Japanese tradition of cultural indigenization.
Japan’s hybridism strategically attempts to suppress ambivalence generated
by the act of cross-fertilization, relentlessly linking the issue of cultural
contamination with an exclusivist national identity, so that impurity sustains
purity.
Hybridism thus essentializes hybridity and hybridization as an organic
and ahistorical aspect of Japanese national/cultural identity. Hybridism is
based upon the concentric assimilation of culture, while hybridity empha-
sizes the incommensurability of cultural di√erence. Hybridism assumes that
anything foreign can be domesticated into the familiar, whereas hybridity
assumes an ‘‘awareness of the untranslatable bit that lingers on in translation’’
(Papastergiadis 1995, 18). Hybridity thus destabilizes the very notion of
identity, whereas hybridism does not create such a liminal space in which
fixed and exclusive national/cultural boundaries can be blurred. Rather, it
reinforces the rigidity of these boundaries. Hybridism might be called a
fluid essentialism. The snare of a static essentialism is to imagine a ‘‘pure,
internally homogeneous, authentic, indigenous culture, which then be-
comes subverted or corrupted by foreign influences’’ (Morley 1996, 330). In
a fluid essentialism, by contrast, identity is represented as a sponge that
is constantly absorbing foreign cultures without changing its essence and
wholeness.
The manner in which Japan’s cultural encounters and indigenization of
the foreign (the West) is talked about changes according to the historical
context. Within Japan, assimilation of foreign cultures has not always been
viewed positively. It has also precipitated relatively negative, self-defensive,
or ironical discourses on cultural borrowing. Since the mid–nineteenth
century, the threat of colonization by the West has forced Japanese leaders to
try hard to emulate Western modernity. Rapid and selective Westernization
was at one time o≈cial policy (Westney 1987). At the same time, in the face
of apparent Western domination, the search for, and claim of, an ‘‘uncon-
taminated’’ Japanese essence became an imperative for the construction of a
Japanese national/cultural identity. Westernization had to be balanced by
Japanization. The slogan, ‘‘wakon yōsai’’ ( Japanese spirit, Western technolo-
gies)—a modified version of the mid–nineteenth-century ‘‘wakon kansai’’
( Japanese spirit, Chinese technique) which articulated Japan’s cultural in-
debtedness to China—was a manifestation of this need (Kawamura 1982;
Wilkinson 1991). The search for a national ‘‘essence’’ in the sphere of race,
culture, and language has been a recurrent theme in modern Japanese his-
54 Recentering globalization
tory (Minami 1994). Indeed, indigenous discussion of Japanese culture is
notorious for an obsessive claim of racial/ethnic purity and homogeneity
(e.g., Dower 1986; Yoshino 1992; Mouer and Sugimoto 1986; Iwabuchi
1994). Thus, the search for, and construction of, a pure ‘‘Japaneseness’’ has
gone hand in hand with the acceptance of significant Western influence.
During the twentieth century, however, a defensive view of cultural bor-
rowing and an associated discourse on Japanese racial purity and superiority
have been juxtaposed with a more confident and aggressive one, particularly
as Japan became an imperial power in the early part of the century (Oguma
1995). The Japanese capacity for assimilation (dōka) of the foreign without
changing the Japanese essence has been promoted and characterized as a
great quality of Japaneseness which justified Japanese colonial rule of other
Asian nations. Numerous prominent scholars and political leaders such as
Shiratori Kokichi or Gotō Shinpei have maintained that this capacity is not
only a characteristic of Japanese culture and civilization but is evidence of
Japanese superiority to the West (see Oguma 1995; Kang 1996). An o≈cial
statement of nationalist ideology, Kokutai no Hongi (Cardinal principles of
the national entity of Japan), published and distributed to Japanese schools at
all levels in 1937 as a teaching guide on the distinctiveness of the Japanese
nation, demonstrates that the Japanese capacity for assimilating the foreign
was clearly defined as a unique Japanese characteristic.

Our present mission as a people is to build up a new Japanese culture by

adopting and sublimating Western cultures with our national entity as the
basis, and to contribute spontaneously to the advancement of world
culture. Our nation early saw the introduction of Chinese and Indian
cultures, and even succeeded in evolving original creations and develop-
ments. This was made possible, indeed, by the profound and boundless
nature of our national entity; so that the mission of the people to whom it
is bequeathed is truly great in its historical significance. (Hall 1946, 183)

It should be noted that the Japanese capacity for assimilation is discussed

from the perspective of the racially mixed origins of the Japanese people as
well as the history of importing foreign cultures in prewar Japan. This point
is particularly important when we consider how the image of the Japanese
fusion of East and West was firmly incorporated into Japanese imperial
ideology, which regarded Japanese sovereignty over Asia as a national mis-
sion. In the first part of twentieth century, Japan, as a colonizing center, was
concerned with the assimilation of non-Western (Asian) racial and cultural
Trans/nationalism 55
Others into the empire, as well as with the management of the absorption of
Western ideas, technologies, and culture. As Oguma (1995) shows in detail,
there were competing arguments in prewar Japan, evoked by Western scien-
tific discourse, about the racial origin of the Japanese. Some advocated
Japanese racial purity, stressing the blood linkage of the nation to an unin-
terrupted Imperial family line (Morris-Suzuki 1998b, 88–90).≥ A no less
powerful argument in prewar Japan emphasized the hybrid racial origin of
Japanese: Japan was a nation formed by the mixture of Northern and South-
ern Asian races in ancient times, followed by a vast number of Chinese and
Koreans, who settled in Japan from the late fourth century to the early
eighth century and introduced the culture of the continent to the country
(Oguma 1995; Morris-Suzuki 1998b, 90–95).
Discourse on the racially mixed origins of the Japanese was readily appro-
priated to justify Japanese colonial rule over other Asian nations; since Japan
had long successfully assimilated foreign (Asian) races as well as their cul-
tures, Japan was endowed with the capacity to harmoniously assimilate
colonial subjects in Taiwan and Korea. Therefore, so the argument went,
Japanese colonial rule and assimilation policy, unlike those of its West-
ern counterparts, was not based on racism (see, e.g., Peattie 1984; Oguma
1995; Duus 1995; Morris-Suzuki 1998b). Needless to say, this ideology of
Japanese racial hybridism sharply contradicted the reality of Japanese colo-
nial rule and its harsh racial discrimination against Koreans and Taiwanese
(Weiner 1994; Komagome 1996).∂

Postwar twist to introverted symbolic hybridism

A≈rmative self-evaluation of Japan’s assimilation of the foreign continued

after the end of World War II and on into the second half of the twentieth
century. However, there was a fundamental di√erence between prewar and
postwar Japan. After the war, Japan no longer had to consider racial and
ethnic di√erences within the nation to claim Japanese uniqueness. Japan’s
defeat in World War II and its consequent occupation by the Allied Forces,
led by the United States, allowed Japan to avoid seriously confronting the
consequences of its own imperialism/colonialism. The postcolonial mo-
ment for Japan was articulated predominantly by its subordinate position
to the United States: Japan was a victim, not an oppressor. While as an
imperial/colonial power Japan had been forced to face seriously the cultural
and ethnic di√erence within the empire of the prewar era, postwar Japan
56 Recentering globalization
was free of this burden. It was allowed to forget its colonizing past and to
become obsessed with claiming its racial purity and homogeneity through
the binary opposition of two culturally organic entities, ‘‘Japan’’ and the
‘‘West.’’ Through this collusive ‘‘othering,’’ Japanese cultural uniqueness
became exclusively associated with an homogenous Japanese nation (Iwa-
buchi 1994).
Thus, the loss of Japanese imperial power in Asia was accompanied by an
introverted shift of emphasis in discourse on Japan’s hybridity, from a dis-
course of racial/ethnic assimilation to one of symbolic/cultural mixing.
Japan’s hybridism changed from an outwardly directed state ideology of
Japanese imperialism and colonialism to an inwardly oriented nationalistic
discourse on Japanese cultural hybridity.
Prominent critical commentator Katō Shūichi’s two essays on zasshu
bunka (the hybridity of Japanese culture) (1979, 5–46), originally published
in 1955, initiated the postwar discourse on Japanese cultural hybridity. Katō’s
main point was not to evoke nationalistic sentiment but to find a third way of
seeing Japanese culture, that is, a way beyond the two extreme views of
purity: a self-disparaging view of modernity as ‘‘pure’’ Westernization, or,
alternatively, a nostalgic nationalistic turn to the concept of traditional ‘‘pu-
rity.’’ Katō tried to a≈rm the hybrid formation of Japanese culture, which
could be seen in everyday life as a counterargument to the ethnocentric
discourse of an uncontaminated ‘‘authentic Japanese culture.’’
However, Katō’s critique failed to discern the similarity of the two puri-
ties in terms of their nationalistic orientations. As Yoshimoto (1994, 196)
argues, ‘‘To the extent that the impulse to modernize and Westernize Japan
is inseparable from a strong nationalistic sentiment, what first appear to be
two opposite manifestations of Japanese obsession with purity are only two
di√erent modes of Japanese nationalism.’’ Recognizing the similarity be-
tween these two modes of nationalism exposes the flaw in Katō’s claim of
transcending Japanese ‘‘purity.’’ Katō’s failure to realize the common nation-
alistic orientation of the two views of purity in his argument for a Japanese
hybrid culture seemed to testify that he somewhat shared with them an
essentialist assumption of Japanese ‘‘national culture.’’ Katō saw the Japa-
nese way of actively adopting Western things and ideas as unique in com-
parison with other Asian countries, which he thought directly imported
‘‘the West.’’ The comparison he made was not based on a rigorous analysis.
Rather, on intuitive comparison of the outlook of Singapore and Kobe was
convincing enough to make him conclude that Japanese culture is funda-
Trans/nationalism 57
mentally and typically hybrid, because only Japan absorbs Western influ-
ence in a way that suits local contexts. While Katō suggested the impossibil-
ity of ‘‘purifying’’ Japanese hybrid culture in terms of either ‘‘authentic
tradition’’ or ‘‘Western modernity,’’ he did not radically deconstruct the
essentialist assumption of ‘‘Japanese culture,’’ so that in spite of his intent, his
critique risks turning to another discursive purification of Japanese culture.
Historical context should also be taken into consideration in evaluating
Katō’s arguments. His articles were published in 1955 in two prestigious
opinion magazines, Shisō and Chūō Kōron. This was just after the end of the
postwar occupation and at the beginning of Japanese economic recovery. In
this sense, his a≈rmation of Japanese hybridity (zasshusei ) reflected the
recovery of a confidence by the Japanese in their own culture (Minami
1994; Aoki 1990). The Japanese practice of indigenizing the foreign without
changing its cultural core has continued to be a recurrent theme of Japa-
nese scholarly investigation in postwar Japan (e.g., Maruyama 1961, 1991;
Tsurumi 1972; Kozakai 1996). While these authors are not necessarily cele-
bratory of Japanese cultural borrowing, it is above all in the decades after
Japan attained the status of a leading economic power, particularly since
the 1980s, that the positive image of assimilator has gained currency in
Japan. This was the moment when the nationalist slogan of kokusaika (inter-
nationalization) became prevalent in Japan (Befu 1987; Yoshimoto 1989;
Iwabuchi 1994). Japan’s increasing engagement with foreign (predomi-
nantly Western) people and cultures enhanced the drive for embracing the
Japanese skill of absorbing the West without losing the definite demarcation
between ‘‘us’’ and ‘‘them.’’ As Ivy argues, ‘‘The foreign—because of its very
threat—must be transformed into a manageable sign of order’’ (1995, 3).
The confrontation with cultural di√erence is subtly replaced by the pleasur-
able consumption of foreign cultures that are destined to be indigenized into
Japanese soil. As Ivy succinctly describes it, ‘‘The image of Japan as the great
assimilator arises to explain away any epistemological snags or historical
confusion: Japan assimilates, if not immigrants and American automobiles,
then everything else, retaining the traditional, immutable core of culture
while incorporating the shiny trappings of (post)modernity in a dizzying
round of production, accumulation, and consumption’’ (1).
In this context, the practice of cultural appropriation, or Japan’s ‘‘genius
for simulacra’’ (Buell 1994), has become a well-accepted feature of the
prosperous Japanese nation; so much so that many people in Japan now hold
the view that the capacity for absorption and indigenization of foreign
58 Recentering globalization
cultures is uniquely Japanese. In his study on the consumption of Nihon-
jinron (essentialist discourses on Japanese uniqueness), Yoshino (1992, 114)
found that almost half of his seventy-one respondents agreed with the view
that ‘‘the active receptivity of the Japanese towards foreign cultures, as well
as their ability to blend them with Japanese culture to create a distinctive
form of culture, (is) [another] example of Japanese uniqueness.’’
Even at Tokyo Disneyland, we find this familiar narrative of Japan’s long
history of cultural appropriation. As Brannen (1992) discussed in detail,
an exhibition called ‘‘Meet the World,’’ an original Japanese attraction at
Tokyo Disneyland, teaches Japan’s history in terms of Japan’s encounter
with Others and the way Japan has successfully indigenized foreign cultures
to create a unique culture out of foreign input. The attraction confidently
tells visitors that even before encountering the West, Japan had a long
history of cultural borrowing from China, as mentioned earlier. Japan’s long
tradition of cultural indigenization is celebrated as the secret of Japan’s
prosperity and as the core of Japan’s national sense of Self.

Japan as a champion of globalization

In the same postwar period, the spectacle of Japan’s domestication of foreign

culture, particularly the way that Japan has successfully purged the impurity
of foreign contamination in the process of cultural indigenization and thus
maintained rigidly demarcated boundaries between Japan and the West, has
become an object of intrigue and analysis in the Western academy . It is my
contention that Western (critical) analyses of Japan’s domestication of the
West have merely perpetuated notions of Japan as a great assimilator. West-
ern discourses have colluded in lifting Japanese strategic hybridism to the
level of a recognized national essence. This is not to underestimate the
strong impetus to cultural hybridization in modern Japan. Rather, I would
argue that the unquestioning acceptance of the e≈cacy of Japan’s skilful
boundary-making in opposition to the foreign, whether under the name of
domestication, indigenization or self/counter-Orientalism, tends to result
in an essentialist celebration of the object of analysis and in conceiving
of ‘‘Japan’’ as a porous yet stable, unchanging entity. Thomas criticizes
Bhabha’s concept of hybridity for its strange denial of the autonomy of the
colonized, which tends to reify ‘‘a general structure of colonial dominance’’
by seeing resistance and subversiveness themselves as ‘‘deeply conditioned
by it [colonial enunciation]’’ and ‘‘expressed on the ground defined by the
Trans/nationalism 59
oppressor’’ (Thomas 1994, 56–57; see also Parry 1987, 1994). Conversely,
the prevailing analysis of Japan’s hybridism should be criticized for too much
emphasis on intentional counter-Western-domination enunciation and for
the apparent success of nationalist strategies of ‘‘decontamination.’’∑
As a non-Western society that has achieved a degree of modernization
comparable to or higher than the West, Japan appears to be an extreme
example of successful domestication of the West. It therefore is seen as
subverting the very assumption of a Western Orientalism. Japan-meets-the-
West becomes the theme, under the aegis of which all questions tend to
revolve around whether Japan ‘‘domesticates’’ the West or is ‘‘colonized’’ by
the West. The edited collection, Remade in Japan, deals solely with Japan’s
‘‘domestication of the West.’’ The introduction sees ‘‘the Japanese as en-
gaged in an ongoing creative synthesis of the exotic with the familiar, the
foreign with the domestic, the modern with the traditional, the Western
with the Japanese’’ (Tobin 1992a, 4). In a wider context, this view corre-
sponds to a critique of the ‘‘cultural imperialism thesis’’ in which the non-
West is a mere victim of Western cultural domination (Tomlinson 1991).
Such a position can also be put in the context of recent anthropological
interest in the local consumption of global (Western) cultural products (e.g.,
Miller 1992, 1995; Howes 1996).
Nevertheless, despite its innovative insight in alignment with a recent
theoretical shift in the study of consumption, Remade in Japan is quite dis-
tinctive in its strong emphasis on Japan’s adept demarcation of the boundary
between ‘‘Japan’’ and ‘‘the West.’’ While o√ering intriguing analyses of
Japanese ‘‘domestication of the West,’’ most of the essays in the book do not
attend to the dynamic socio-cultural transformations engendered by cul-
tural hybridization and/or the internal cultural politics of di√erence per-
taining to race, ethnicity, gender, and class. Consequently, the arguments
tend to be based upon the presumed demarcation of a fixed and absolute
boundary between ‘‘Japan’’ and ‘‘the West’’—thus risking reproducing some
essential di√erence between these two entities. While giving a detailed
analysis of the importation of Disneyland into Japan, for example, Mary
Yoko Brannen (1992, 219) concludes that ‘‘the process of assimilation of the
West, the recontexualization of Western simulacra, demonstrates not that
the Japanese are being dominated by Western ideologies but they di√erenti-
ate their identity from the West in a way that reinforces their sense of their
own cultural uniqueness and superiority, or what we might call Japanese
hegemony.’’ Furthermore, she declares that the process is ‘‘a specifically
60 Recentering globalization
Japanese form of cultural imperialism,’’ in which the assimilation of the
foreign is successfully appropriated for ‘‘continually reinforcing the distinc-
tion between Japan and the Other, keeping the exotic exotic’’ rather than
just ‘‘domesticating’’ it or making it familiar (Brannen 1992, 227). Too
much preoccupied with a rivalry between Japan and the West in analyzing
Japanese experience of cultural indigenization, Brannen’s argument regards
the Japanese cultural and historical context as given and everlasting. As
corollary of this, it seems as if ‘‘the West’’ is domesticated and indigenized
into a ‘‘Japan’’ whose essence never changes and where a stable hybrid
‘‘Japaneseness’’ is constantly reproduced (Yoshimi 1997, 212). We should
think seriously whether this kind of analysis of Japanese domestication of
the West actually lends itself to keeping Japanese ‘‘Japanese.’’∏
Thus, the exclusive attention to the binary opposition ‘‘Japan’’ and ‘‘the
West’’ conspires with Japan’s postwar hybridism, which exploits Japan’s
di√erence in a unitary mode of opposition to ‘‘the West.’’ It not only ho-
mogenizes the two cultural entities but also directs our attention away from
the doubleness of the Japanese (post)colonial experience as a non-Western
colonizer. The relative marginalization of postcolonial discourse in Japan
until recently might have been the other side of the predominance of other
‘‘posts’’—postwar, postmodern, poststructuralism—all of which are, in Ja-
pan’s case, products of an exclusive engagement with the West.
With the development of globalization theories, Japan’s long history of
appropriating foreign dominant cultures has gained further prominence as a
conspicuous counterexample to academic conceptions of self-sustaining
‘‘society’’ and ‘‘culture.’’ With the increasing emphasis on relational, spa-
tial, and processual aspects of ‘‘society,’’ society’s conceptualization as an
unambiguous unit of analysis has recently been called into question, par-
ticularly in sociology. Mike Featherstone (1995, 137) argues that sociology
had tended to see society as an integrated whole and has underestimated
‘‘inter- and trans-societal processes’’ in favor of the intrasocietal dimension.
This critique of the image of society is similar to that of anthropology’s
central concept of ‘‘culture,’’ which tends to foreground the ‘‘inherent pat-
terning to culture’’ where there is little sense of intercultural transcultura-
tion. In emphasizing the global interconnectedness of societies and cultures,
Featherstone refers to Japan as a representative counterexample. Although
widely regarded as a closed country until the mid–nineteenth century, he
argues, Japan was never closed but always connected to the outside world
through cultural appropriation, particularly from China: ‘‘The cultural bor-
Trans/nationalism 61
rowings and syncretisms which have resulted from this process . . . can-
not but put a big question mark against the long-held notions of culture
within sociology and anthropology which emphasize organic or aesthetic
unity’’ (135).
Featherstone’s discussion of ‘‘the death of society,’’ by which is meant a
limit to conceiving ‘‘society’’ as a clearly demarcated unit of sociological
analysis, is well taken. Still, Featherstone tends to ignore the extent to which
Japan’s construction of an exclusivist national identity has been based pre-
cisely upon a particular narrative of its history of intersocietal relativiza-
tion and cultural borrowings (Iwabuchi 1994). The issue at stake is again
whether or not Japan’s practice of constructing a national identity based
upon cultural borrowing amounts to the postulation of a transhistorical
cultural essence for Japan, and whether the image of Japan’s capacity for
assimilating the foreign tends to be reified as an ahistorical essence. Without
critically attending to this risk, Featherstone’s deconstruction of the as-
sumption of an ‘‘inherent patterning to culture’’ paradoxically accompanies
another essentialized patterning of cultural hybridization in Japan.π
More significantly, unlike the domestication thesis, some globalization
perspectives tend to conceive Japan’s experience of appropriating foreign
dominant cultures not simply as a domestic Japanese trait but as a possible
model for other nations. Jean Baudrillard, for example, articulates a post-
modern image of Japan. He mentions in passing that Japan represents a
‘‘weightless artificial satellite,’’ which is concerned neither with origin nor
authenticity but knows ‘‘how to exploit that situation to the full,’’ and that
the future of the world will belong to such a weightless satellite (Baudrillard
1988, 76). Although we cannot generalize Baudrillard’s conception as the
Western image of Japan, it appears that Western evaluations of the Japanese
genius for hybridization have become even more positive along with a new
interpretation of the historical dynamic in the age of globalization. This has
much to do with theoretical shifts from modern to postmodern, from pro-
duction to consumption, and from a view of societies as separate entities to
one of global interconnectedness. David Morley (1996, 351), for example,
referring to Claxton’s discussion of Singer’s History of Technology, argues that
the rise of Western modernity was heavily based on imitation and improve-
ment of Near Eastern [sic ] techniques, and this ‘‘can be seen to be in close
parallel with the relation of Japanese to Euro-American technologies in the
late twentieth century, in which the originally inferior imitators finally
surpass their erstwhile ‘masters.’ ’’
62 Recentering globalization
 Likewise, Roland Robertson suggests that the answer to the secret of
‘‘Japan’s high degree of careful selectivity concerning what is to be accepted
or rejected from without’’ lies in ‘‘the new globality-globalization problem.’’
Robertson argues that ‘‘whereas the old, but still surviving way of consider-
ing Japan was in terms of its externally stimulated internal transformation
along an objective path of modernization, the new, more appropriate form
of consideration should take as its starting point Japan’s relatively great
capacity not merely to adapt selectively to and systematically import ideas
from other societies in the global arena but also, in very recent times, to seek
explicitly to become, in a specifically Japanese way, a global society’’ (1992,
90) Robertson further emphasizes the significance of Japan’s capacity as a
model for emulation: ‘‘Japan is of great sociological interest not because it is
‘unique’ and ‘successful,’ but because it fulfills the function in the contem-
porary world of the society from which ‘leaders’ of other societies can learn
how to learn about many societies. That is what makes Japan a global society,
in spite of claims to the contrary’’ (86; emphasis in original). With the ascent
of globalization theory, Japanese cultural hybridization takes center stage, as
‘‘Japan is an e√ective generator of specific conceptions of world order’’ (96).

From culture to civilization: Reevaluating

cultural hybridization

In the 1990s the increasing attention to Japan’s history of cultural absorption

of the foreign as a corrective to the Eurocentric view of history and global-
ization in Western scholarship again has an interesting convergence with an
emerging Japanese discourse on the transnational influence of its sophisti-
cated hybridizing capacity. With the extroverted shift in its cultural orienta-
tion, Japan’s hybridism this time is talked about within Japan not in terms of
Japanese culture but in terms of Japanese civilization.∫ Japanese civilization
theory was first espoused by a leading ethnologist, Umesao Tadao in his
1957 article, ‘‘Bunmei no seitai shikan’’ (Civilization from the perspective of
ecological history), published during the same period as Katō’s papers on
hybrid culture. Rejecting a Eurocentric view of evolution and the associ-
ated dichotomy of West and East, Umesao organizes Eurasian civilizational
geography into two regions. Japan and Western Europe, situated on the
fringes, make up the first region; the desert areas of central Eurasia, includ-
ing China, India, and Russia, constitutes the second region. Umesao’s argu-
ment is that the similarities between Japan and Western Europe in terms of
Trans/nationalism 63
their ecological history produced a parallel civilizational evolution. Umesao
insists that Japan does not therefore belong to Asia, as it is much closer to
Western Europe by the yardstick of the historical process of civilizational
evolution from agricultural civilization to industrial civilization. By dis-
sociating Japan from ‘‘backward’’ Asia, Umesao’s argument, like Katō’s,
tried to positively reevaluate Japanese culture/civilization, which had been
negatively regarded as a cheap imitation of the West since Japan’s defeat in
World War II (Aoki 1990, 70–76).
Umesao’s work undoubtedly has had a great influence on contemporary
civilization theory, particularly in its eagerness to place Japanese civilization
on a par with Western civilization by rejecting the Eurocentric world view
as well as the teleological Marxist view of social evolution (Morris-Suzuki
1998b, 142–43). As we have seen in the introduction, however, inspired by
the advance of a ‘‘clash of civilizations’’ thesis and the rise of Asian economic
and political power that accordingly deprived Japan of its unique experience
vis-à-vis the West, in the 1990s Japanese civilization has been more eagerly
and assertively discussed. While there is diversity in the arguments and
approaches of civilization theories in Japan, there are some common as-
sumptions. Although emphasizing historical dynamics and spatial di√er-
ences in the creation of multiple civilizations, the notion of ‘‘civilization’’ in
these discussions is derived from the essentialist view of organic culture
(Morris-Suzuki 1998b, 152). Like the hybridism discourse, Japanese civili-
zation theories take the existence of clearly demarcated integrated cultural
entities as given. More significantly, there is also a general agreement among
Japanese scholars in regard to the di√erence between culture and civiliza-
tion. While ‘‘culture’’ is the way of life of a social group, ‘‘civilization’’
articulates a higher stage which a particular culture has reached in the course
of historical evolution (e.g., Ueyama 1990, 42–43; Kawakatsu 1991, 22–24;
Hirano 1994, 31; see also Morris-Suzuki 1998b, 143–44). This view is
clearly expressed by the well-known cultural critic Yamazaki Masakazu
when he distinguishes culture and civilization: ‘‘Culture is a way of life,
a conventional order, physically acquired and rooted in subliminal con-
sciousness. Civilization, in contrast, is a consciously recognized ideational
order. . . . Cultures die hard, but their spheres of dominance are limited.
Civilizations can become widespread, but they may be deliberately aban-
doned’’ (Yamazaki 1996, 115). ‘‘Culture’’ thus signifies something particu-
laristic, but ‘‘civilization’’ has much to do with universal principles which
can be willingly adopted by other cultures and civilizations.
64 Recentering globalization
 This shift in attention from particularistic culture to universal civilization
has accompanied an important transformation of the conception of hybrid-
ism. The main concern of Japanese civilization theorists in the 1990s is less
with discerning a parallel between Japan and the West than with advocating
a distinct and exportable Japanese civilizational pattern. If civilization and
culture are to be distinguished in terms of the capacity for external in-
fluence, the term civilization must connote an active extroversion endorsed
by confidence in its own cultural export capacity, where culture connotes
something more introverted (Tsunoyama and Kawakatsu 1995, 231). In
other words, the articulation of Japanese civilization theories in the 1990s is
strongly motivated by the desire to put Japan at the center of human history,
to present Japanese civilization as a new guiding principle of global history.
As Morris-Suzuki (1998b, 178) argues, the shift reflects a growing belief that
‘‘the distinctive features of Japanese society are no longer merely national
issues, but o√er a pattern for others to follow, just as the patterns of Egyp-
tian, Greek, or Roman civilization once shaped the development of wide
realms of world history.’’
It is in terms of this emerging concern with civilization’s capacity for
expansive spatial spread that famous civilization theorist, Ueyama Shunpei,
who edited seven volumes on the history of Japanese civilization, attracted
criticism from other scholars of Japanese civilization theory. Ueyama distin-
guishes Japanese and Western civilization in terms of their propensities to
cross-cultural influence. Western societies are marked by a ‘‘convex cul-
ture,’’ willing to exert influence on others. Japanese culture is a ‘‘concave’’
culture, receptive to foreign influences (Morris-Suzuki 1998b, 144–45).
Ueyama’s view, however, attracted much criticism from other civilization
theorists. Tsunoyama (1995, 32), for example, argues that unlike Umesao,
who insisted on the parallel development of Japanese and European civiliza-
tion, Ueyama’s evaluation of ‘‘concave’’ Japanese culture reduces Japanese
industrial civilization to that of a follower of European civilization. Like-
wise, Kawakatsu (1991, 23–24) refutes Ueyama’s (1990) attempt to articu-
late a distinct Japanese civilization through the development of the Japanese
Emperor system, arguing that the Emperor system is too particularistic to be
analyzed in a civilizational framework. For Tsunoyama and Kawakatsu, no
civilization can be secondary to others, and all civilizations inevitably have a
significant transnational impact.
Thus, it is suggested that one of the core principles of Japanese civilization
to be emulated in the world is Japan’s capacity for assimilating the best from
Trans/nationalism 65
other cultures and civilizations. Kawakatsu (1991, 244–47) argues that, un-
like other nations, which have resisted absorbing foreign civilization, Japa-
nese civilization has a superior capacity for taking the best out of foreign
civilizations. The time has come, according to Kawakatsu, for Japan to
conceive foreign cultural influence not in terms of either worshiping or
denying Western influence. Japan should positively regard its own capacity
for cultural mixing so that it can present itself to the world as a distinguished
model of making good use of the world’s diverse civilizations. Japan is,
Kawakatsu (1995, 81–82) argues, a living museum and a great laboratory in
which world civilizations coexist.

Japanese popular culture and an Asian civilization

The shift from culture to civilization, from inward hybridism to outward

hybridism, newly generates Japan’s claim for its cultural superiority through
asserting commonality with other Asian nations. This urge is strongly in-
scribed, as I discussed in the Introduction, by an historically constituted
ambivalence of the Japanese conception of ‘‘Asia,’’ a cultural geography that
o√ers Japan at once a shared identity with other parts of Asia and is also the
source of Japanese feelings of superiority (Tanaka 1993). What is new this
time is the observation that the Japanese popular culture exports, such as tv
dramas, animation, and popular music, demonstrate Japanese cultural hege-
mony in the region, while at the same time inferring a sameness between
the Japanese and Asian populaces.
Japanese nationalists easily translate this spread of Japanese popular culture
to other parts of Asia into the ‘‘Asia-yearning-for-Japan’’ idea, which con-
firms the shift of power from the United States to Japan that took place in
the 1990s. The most eloquent right-wing Asianist in Japan, Ishihara Shin-
taro, asserted in Japan that Can Say ‘‘No’’!, a book that posits the rise of
Japanese power and the decline of American power: ‘‘Japanese popular
songs are sung throughout East and Southeast Asia, a phenomenon similar
to the impact of American pop music on Japan after World War II. We
hummed the Top Ten tunes, became fascinated with the American way of
life, and created a U.S.-style mass consumption society’’ (Morita and Ishi-
hara 1989, 151). This view displays a belief that Asian people are now
yearning for Japanese a∆uence, technology, and popular culture in exactly
the same way that the Japanese people in the postwar era yearned for the
American way of life. It tends to stress an evolutionary time lag between
66 Recentering globalization
Japan and Asia: Asia is behind Japan but is becoming like ‘‘us.’’ In the
controversial Voice of Asia (1995), Ishihara again observed the spread of
Japanese popular culture in Asia but subtly shifted the book’s emphasis from
one of Japanese cultural superiority to one of Asian commonality. Ishihara
calls this a manifestation of the ‘‘natural’’ commonality shared by Asians:
‘‘Our popular culture strikes a sympathetic chord across Asia. No hard sell is
necessary: the audience is receptive’’ (Mahathir and Ishihara 1995, 88). The
unambiguous claim of Japanese cultural superiority to other Asian countries
is, again, camouflaged by apparent cultural commonality.
As Ching (2000) points out, there is a certain similarity between the
prewar pan-Asianism exemplified by Okakura Kakuzo’s (known as Oka-
kura Tenshin) (1904) saying ‘‘Asia is one’’ and the 1990s neo-Asianism
uttered by Ishihara. Nevertheless, as the object of such discourse signifi-
cantly shifts from aesthetics or high culture to commercialized popular
culture, the existence of primordial racial and cultural sameness becomes
less persuasive to elucidate the commonality between Japan and Asia. In-
stead, the experience of absorption of Western modern civilization and the
practice of cultural indigenization of Western/American cultural influences
are brought more into focus.
In this respect, it should be noted that an essentialist view of ‘‘Asian value’’
discourse has attracted as much criticism as approval in Japan. Yamazaki
(1996) argues, for example, that history shows how Asia has been marked by
the existence of incommensurable cultural di√erences, without any civiliza-
tional umbrella which might have brought coherence to Asian regions, until
the spread of Western modern civilization o√ered a common ground, if not
common attributes or values, to Japan and other Asian cultures. If the
notion of ‘‘Asia’’ has any substantial meaning at all, Yamazaki (1996, 112–
13) argues, it is based not upon traditional, authentic values and culture
but on the contemporaneous experience of modernization. Saeki Keishi
(1998, 26), a prominent economist, succinctly paraphrases Yamazaki’s point:
‘‘Asian modernity should not be regarded as a stage of the teleological
civilizational evolution. It might be characterized by the greediness to ab-
sorb anything universal, irrespective of its origin, in a twinkling and to
assimilate and hybridize various foreign things with its own ‘culture’ ac-
cording to the yardstick of convenience and pleasure.’’ It is the keen indige-
nization of Western modern civilization that is giving birth to a shared
(East) Asian civilization for the first time in history.Ω
Accordingly, the urban, middle-class, consumer culture widely discerned
Trans/nationalism 67
across Asia is referred to as proof of the ‘‘Asianization of Asia.’’ A noted
newspaper journalist, Funabashi Yoichi (1993, 77) argues that the Asianism
observed in several Asian societies in the 1990s is marked by the fact that
Asian societies have begun defining ‘‘Asia’’ in a positive way, not just as the
shadow of Western modernity, and that this is less a ‘‘re-Asianization’’ than
an ‘‘Asianization.’’ This is because the search for Asian identity is ‘‘predomi-
nantly a≈rmative and forward-thinking, not reactionary or nostalgic.’’ Such
‘‘Asianness’’ is more a ‘‘workaday pragmatism, the social awakening of a
flourishing middle class’’ (Funabashi 1993, 75). Such ‘‘Asianness’’ is, it is
suggested, now primarily articulated in the shared pursuit of urban con-
sumption of Americanized (Westernized) popular culture. As Funabashi
further argues, ‘‘Asia, which lacks a common heritage of aristocratic class
culture, has increasingly become a hotbed of middle-class globalism’’ where
the cultural links between the middle classes of various Asian countries are
strengthening through the development of consumerism and electronic
communication technology (78). It is supposed that this ‘‘nouveau riche
Asianness’’ is taken positively by Japan because it signifies ‘‘the birth of the
real Asia’’ (Ogura 1993) and ‘‘the first commonness in the history between
Japan and Asia’’ (Aoki 1993).
In this claim of a shared popular and consumer culture in Asia, the idea of
a shared consumer culture among Asians has still tended to be utilized by
some intellectuals as a reactionary alibi for secondarily confirming the exis-
tence of, or justifying the search for, shared Asian values, such as Confucian
values, a strong work ethic, or collectivism, all of which are at odds with
hedonistic consumerism. For example, one of the most eloquent Japanese
Asianists, Ogura Kazuo (1993), cites the influence of American popular
culture as a common ground for Asian societies, but quickly makes his point
that in order to make ‘‘the real Asia’’ more substantial, Asian people should
search for features of the ‘‘Asian spirit’’ which could be o√ered to the rest of
the world as universal values, some of which may be diligence, discipline,
and group harmony. This search should be done through a reexamination of
traditional values and through the education of Westernized youth who are
ignorant of Asian culture.
More importantly, the spread of a common culture cited as evidence of an
‘‘Asianization of Asia’’ often means the prevalence of Japanese popular cul-
ture in Asia. Funabashi (1995, 223–24), for example, argues that ‘‘increasing
interaction with Asia and the sharing of popular culture have revealed to the

68 Recentering globalization
Japanese people the mutual interests they share with other Asians.’’ How-
ever, he refers to the popularity of Japanese cultural products, such as the
drama Oshin or animations such as Doraemon, as the main examples of
‘‘cross-fertilization’’ in Asia, in which he seems to assume that Japan oc-
cupies the central position. Hence, the argument that Japan and Asia share
the common experience of ‘‘hybrid’’ modernization is easily developed into
the assertion that Japanese experience can be a leading model for other
Asians to emulate—a position which presumes that Japan is a non-Western
nation that has most sincerely and successfully absorbed Western civilization
and culture (e.g., Kawakatsu 1991, 244–47; 1995, 81). The transnationaliza-
tion of Japanese popular culture is thought to o√er a great opportunity for
Japan to go beyond a hitherto too introverted and self-contained cultural
formation. The era when Japan’s national identity that was constructed
simply in terms of its ‘‘original’’ and ‘‘unique’’ receptiveness to Western
modernity is over. Japan’s capacity for producing attractive cultural products
and disseminating them abroad, particularly to Asia, and its leading role in
creating an Asian popular cultural sphere, it is asserted, should feature in
fostering the newly articulated modern Asian common.
This point is made explicit by Kumamoto Shin’ichi, a journalist working
for the same newspaper as Funabashi: ‘‘In the age of the global village, we
should think seriously of how ‘Asian wisdom’ can contribute to the hitherto
Western-dominated global tv culture. Numerous possibilities are open for
Japan, as the most ‘Westernized’ country in Asia, to internationally play a
significant role in mediating Western and Eastern cultures’’ (Kumamoto
1993a, 218). Kumamoto’s view of Japan’s role as a mediator between Asia
and the West is shared by a media scholar, Kawatake Kazuo (1995). He
argues that the significance of the export of Japanese tv programs to Asian
markets lies in countering the massive advance of Western media in those
markets, a phenomenon that calls to mind the high point in Hollywood’s
conquest of the world. The advance of Japanese tv programs, Kawatake
(1995) expects, would lead to the creation of a shared tv culture in Asia. As
an Asian nation, Japan could lead the globalization of Asian media markets.
A more clear-cut remark concerning Japan’s leading role in the creation of
Asian modern civilization was uttered by a bureaucrat of the Ministry of
Foreign A√airs in a conversational article on how Japan should present itself
to the world. The article was featured in Gaiko Forum, a monthly journal
about diplomacy published by the ministry. Referring to Doraemon as a

Trans/nationalism 69
made-in-Japan universal character and to the popularity of tv dramas in
Asia, as well as to the fact that Tokyo Disneyland is a favorite destination for
Asian youth, the author argues that Japan embodies a new, modern civiliza-
tion for Asia: ‘‘We are now observing the birth of Asian modern civilization
which is di√erent from American modern civilization. In this process, Japan
not only plays a leading role but, I think, the creation of a new Asian
civilization is becoming a constitutive part of Japanese national identity’’
(Ansart et al. 1994, 54).

Articulating Mukokuseki as distinctively ‘‘Japanese’’

Thus, Japanese popular culture has clearly come to feature in the Japanese
department store of civilization. What has been left to answer is how Asian
and American modern civilizations are di√erent and how Japanese popular
cultural formations articulate Japan’s role in creating an Asian modern civili-
zation. Tsunoyama (1995) attempts to answer the question by interpreting
the spread of Japanese popular culture in Asia in terms of Japan’s civili-
zational role in indigenizing Western material culture/civilization to suit
Asian conditions. The notion of material culture is deployed as an analytical
tool by Kawakatsu (1991; 1995) to explore the history of a distinctive Japa-
nese civilization. Kawakatsu argues that every nation or ethnic group (min-
zoku) has a unique ‘‘product mix’’ (bussan fukugō) which produces a dis-
tinctive cultural ethos or values which he calls a ‘‘cultural complex’’ (bunka
fukugō). Tsunoyama (1995) extends Kawakatsu’s argument on ‘‘product
mix’’ by distinguishing products and commodities in terms of their inter-
national reach. Tsunoyama (Tsunoyama and Kawakatsu 1995) argues that
products as discussed by Kawakatsu were those of the premodern form of
trade; they embodied the culture of a particular country or region but did
not much circulate outside that region’s boundaries. Culture embodied in a
particular product was elevated to the status of a universal civilization, he
maintains, only after products were transformed into internationally cir-
culating capitalist commodities, and that this took place with the advent of a
modern materialist civilization in nineteenth-century Europe. Commodi-
ties do not distinguish consumers in terms of race, culture, or nation. With
money, commodities can be obtained and consumed by anyone in any part
of the world.
It is in this sense, Tsunoyama (1995, 98–114) contends, that Japanese

70 Recentering globalization
consumer commodities o√er a clue in understanding the distinctive features
of Japanese civilization. The significant role played by Japanese civilization is
evident in its di√usion of Western material civilization through the produc-
tion of a√ordable commodities for Asian markets. In his view, Japan has
acted as a ‘‘transformer sub-station’’ which successfully refashions original
Western commodities to suit the tastes and material conditions of consum-
ers in Asia. Tsunoyama (102–4) further argues that the capacity of Japanese
indigenization of things Western has elevated Japan to a new ‘‘power plant’’
in the world, a major exporter of many kinds of commodities, even to
Western markets. These are disseminated internationally due to the univer-
sal appeal of their functional convenience in everyday life. Nevertheless, in
articulating Japan’s civilizational role, he puts particular emphasis on the
Asian context, where Japanese civilization has consequently become a
model for other parts of Asia to follow: ‘‘Western countries might see Japa-
nese civilization as a cheap imitation or a mere extension of Western civiliza-
tion. However, it is people in Asia who are now enthusiastically looking up
to Japan as a familiar but yearned for nation. A rapid industrialization of
postwar Japan . . . is a familiar model for other Asians to emulate’’ (189).
Japan, in Tsunoyama’s view, does not simply present itself as a prototype
of industrialization to Asia. Tsunoyama (189–92) applies his metaphor of
Japanese civilization as a substation and a new power plant for Asia to the
spread of Japanese popular culture in Asia:

It is obvious that the origin of Japanese popular culture can be found in

American popular culture. The Japanese indigenized American popular
culture into something that suited Japanese tastes. Filtration through a
Japanese prism has made American popular culture something more
familiar to people in Asia. The Japanese sub-station has made American
popular culture more universal, acceptable even for East Asian youths. . . .
The universal appeal of Japanese popular culture in Asia is based upon its
erasure of any nationality [mukokuseki] from popular culture of Ameri-
can origin. (191)

The term mukokuseki is widely used in Japan in two di√erent, though not
mutually exclusive, ways: to suggest the mixing of elements of multiple
cultural origins, and to imply the erasure of visible ethnic and cultural
characteristics. As I have discussed in chapter 1, while the latter meaning is
closely associated with animation and computer games, it is basically via the

Trans/nationalism 71
former meaning that Tsunoyama explains the spread of Japanese popular
culture to Asian regions. Tsunoyama (1995, 191) stresses that Japanese pop-
ular culture is not appreciated in Asia for its ‘‘authentic’’ cultural appeal.
Rather, referring to the positive reception in East and Southeast Asia of
Japanese tv dramas that portray romance, friendship, and the lifestyle of
young people in urban settings, and of Japanese popular music that has
subtly incorporated a wide range of American popular music styles (though
he never refers to concrete media texts), Tsunoyama contends that it is
Japan’s skill of indigenizing Western culture in Asian contexts that articu-
lates the transnational appeal of Japanese popular culture. Here, Tsunoyama
does not simply assert that Japanized American popular culture is naturally
appealing to Asian audiences. More significantly, he argues that Japan’s
subtle indigenization of American popular/consumer culture has elevated
Japan to ‘‘the object of yearning for young people in other Asian countries
again’’ (189–90).
A main problem with Tsunoyama’s argument, typical of other hybridism
discourses, is his failure to appreciate the existence of other modes of cul-
tural mixing. Conferring a distinctive ‘‘Japaneseness’’ on mukokuseki Japa-
nese cultural products, Tsunoyama assumes that Japan is the first and final
stop in the indigenization process in global cultural flows. Hybridism dis-
course can hold good only so far as it can defer acknowledgment and appre-
ciation of the multifarious and contradictory ways of endless indigenization,
appropriation, and mixing all over the world. Also suppressed in hybridism
discourse is the undeniable fact that Japanese culture itself, arguably the fruit
of skillful hybridization, is in turn destined to be contradictorily consumed,
appropriated, and indigenized in the process of transnational consumption.
Tsunoyama’s argument does not address the question of whether and how
distinctive Japaneseness, other than the act of cultural indigenization and
mixing, is concretely embodied in mukokuseki popular culture or perceived
by audiences/consumers in other parts of Asia. If Japanese popular culture is
well received in Asian regions, because it lacks perceptible ‘‘Japaneseness,’’ as
Tsunoyama argues, how could ‘‘Japan’’ become the object of yearning? I
will return to this point shortly.
These questions might not concern civilization theorists who refer to the
spread of Japanese popular culture as merely a convenient example of Japan’s
genius for cross-fertilization. However, once we closely look at how things
happen in the real world, the tenacity of such a straightforward claim of
Japan’s central positioning in the endless transnational indigenization process
72 Recentering globalization
of West-dominated cultural flows becomes apparent. As I will discuss in great
detail in the subsequent chapters, the assumption about Japan’s leading role in
Asia in terms of hybridizing West and East was overtly or covertly incorpo-
rated into the strategies adopted by Japanese media industries for entering
Asian markets in the 1990s. However, it did not well fit the reality and proved
to be only partially successful in practice. Likewise, audience identification of
cultural similarity through the consumption of Japanese popular culture in
other parts of Asia is a more complex and dynamic process which does not
directly generate a sense of Japanese superiority among Asian audiences.
These empirical studies will thus illuminate the ambivalence and contradic-
tion embraced in the Japanese discursive articulation of its superiority to and
commonality with other parts of East and Southeast Asia.

Popular cultural diplomacy in Asia

Nationalistic employment of the meaning of the mukokuseki-ness of Japa-

nese popular culture that highlights disregard for the complexity of trans-
national cultural flows is not only found in the condescending view of the
‘‘Asia yearning for Japan.’’ The form of trans/nationalism also manifests
itself di√erently in the discussions by Japanese journalists, industry people,
government o≈cials, and academics, who excitedly regard the export of
Japanese popular culture as primarily serving the national interest of en-
hancing Japan’s cultural diplomacy in the region.
As discussed in chapter 1, some Japanese intellectuals express objections
and hesitations to the assertion of the ‘‘Japanization of Asia’’ thesis, due
to the di≈culty of demonstrating Japanese cultural influence as separate
from Japanese economic power. This kind of materialist interpretation of
the spread of Japanese popular culture in East and Southeast Asia tends to
underestimate its symbolic appeal (which I will analyze in chapter 4). How-
ever, such disapproval of the ‘‘Japanization of Asia’’ thesis that put an em-
phasis on economic aspects cannot be lightly dismissed, because it critically
draws our attention to Japan’s historically constituted asymmetrical relation
with other Asian countries (Murai 1993; Igarashi 1997). The historical
legacy of Japanese imperialism and colonialism, as well as its lingering asym-
metrical economic relation with other Asian countries, are important re-
minders that prevent a straightforward nationalist view of the spread of
Japanese popular culture from being accepted without reservation in Japan.
As early as the mid-1980s Japan’s dominant economic and cultural pres-
Trans/nationalism 73
ence in Southeast Asia was documented in Yoshioka Hiroshi’s acclaimed
nonfiction work, Nihonjingokko (Playing at being Japanese) (1993 [1989]).
The book deals with a fourteen-year-old Thai girl who deceived the Thai
people in the mid-1980s by pretending to be a daughter of the Japanese
ambassador. The protagonist called herself ‘‘Yūko’’—which was the name of
the Japanese actress who performed the role of the heroine of Oshin. In his
investigation in Thailand, Yoshioka discovered with surprise that the real
Yūko’s knowledge about Japan was actually quite limited—even incorrect—
and that she was not very fluent in the Japanese language either. He won-
dered why many Thai people could not see that Yūko was an imposter.
Yoshioka found a clue when he witnessed a massive influx of foreign (par-
ticularly Japanese) cultures and commodities dominating the country, a
situation Japan had never experienced. However, unlike in the 1970s when
Japanese economic domination in Thailand caused anti-Japanese demon-
strations, he observed in the 1980s that a number of Thai people who were
eager to consume products either ‘‘made-in-Japan’’ or the flood of con-
sumer commodities and popular culture that imitated its Japanese counter-
part. These observations made Yoshioka sense that it was not the real Yūko’s
skillful performance but the Thai people’s blind acclamation for Japanese
material a∆uence that was the key to understanding the incident. When
Yoshioka finally met Yūko in Bangkok, his guess turned to conviction, as
she told him that no one doubted that fact of her being Japanese as long as
she confidently preached to the Thai people that Thailand should emulate
Japanese economic success: ‘‘Yūko surely played at being Japanese. But what
her hundred-day-long performance really suggests is deceived Thai people
playing at being Japanese more eagerly. Yūko at least knew that she was
playing at being Japanese, but what about the deceived Thai people? Are
they not still unconsciously playing at being Japanese?’’ (Yoshioka 1993,
293). The spectacle of the Thai people’s cheerful consumption and imita-
tion of ‘‘Japan’’ evoked an unease in him, as it elucidated the widening
unequal relationship between Japan and Thailand, as well as the Thai’s
identity crisis, a serious problem precisely because most people did not
perceive it as such.
Needless to say, the history of Japan’s invasion and exploitation of other
Asian countries is not just inscribed in the Japanese discourse on Japan’s
cultural export to the region.∞≠ The threat of cultural Japanization is still
felt among Asian peoples, who have not forgotten the brutal legacy of
Japanese imperialism. An Indonesian journalist, for example, called Japan
74 Recentering globalization
the ‘‘America of Asia,’’ suggesting that ‘‘with its growing influences, Japan
has become increasingly condescending towards others’’ again (quoted in
Choi 1994, 148).∞∞ No matter how di≈cult it might be to place Japanese
cultural influence in Asian countries on a par with America’s, the spread of
Japanese cultural export to other Asian countries nevertheless articulates the
indelibility of Japan’s imperial history, unresolved issues of Japanese war
responsibility, and its lingering economic exploitation of the region.
Nevertheless, the increase in the export of Japanese popular culture to
Asian markets has demonstrated that Japan’s colonial past does not prevent
Japanese tv programs and pop idols from being accepted in East and South-
east Asia. Accordingly, a strong interest has emerged within Japan in the
potential for Japanese popular culture to improve Japan’s reputation and
soothe—even suppress—the bitter memory of the Japanese invasion of Asia
through the dissemination of an enjoyable Japanese contemporary culture
throughout Asian countries, particularly among younger people who did
not experience Japanese imperialism in the first half of this century.
In this context, the Japanese government has become interested in pro-
moting the export of tv programs and popular culture in order to improve
international understanding of Japan, particularly in Asian countries.∞≤ The
Japanese soap opera, Oshin, is a case in point. First exported to Singapore in
1984, Oshin has been well received in forty-six countries throughout the
world. Its ratings in many non-Western countries were much better than
those of American tv dramas such as Dallas or Dynasty (Singhal and Udorn-
pim 1997; Lull 1991). The main recipient countries are those of East, South-
east, and South Asia, the Middle East, and South America, where the series
has been in most cases distributed for free under the cultural exchange
program of the Japan Foundation, an extradepartmental organization of
the Ministry of Foreign A√airs. In a special issue, the Japan Foundation’s
monthly journal explored the possibility of Japanese cultural interchange
with Asia through electronic media programs, in which Oshin was the main
focus (Kokusai Kōryū 1994). The international popularity of Oshin also
encouraged the distributor of the program, NHK International, to organize
an international conference on the program in Japan and to subsequently
publish its proceedings in 1991. The main purpose of the publication and
the conference was to discuss the transnational appeal of Oshin and Japanese
tv programs in general, and to explore the further possibility of exporting
Japanese tv dramas, with the aim of disseminating a ‘‘humane’’ image of
Japan in the world.
Trans/nationalism 75
 If, as pointed out above, Japanese cultural export to Asia cannot be con-
strued entirely in terms of the disappearance of visible Japanese cultural
presence, it is also because the products exported to Asia include non-
animated tv programs and popular music whose textual appeal is embodied
in actual Japanese actors and musicians. Some commentators thus stress that
the popularity of Oshin in other Asian countries is important because it
gives those people an opportunity to see the ‘‘real’’ lives of Japanese people
rather than to know about Japan only through the cars and other consumer
goods they purchase (e.g., NHK International 1991; Kobayashi 1994). Itō
Yōichi, a media scholar, argues: ‘‘As animation is mostly mukokuseki and
therefore has little to do with Japanese ethnicity (minzokusei ), the increase in
the export of animation does not mean that Japan exports its culture. How-
ever, popular songs and Oshin embody Japanese culture and this is why the
export of these products is unique and deserves serious analysis’’ (NHK
International 1991, 99). For those who see the possibility of enhancing the
image of Japan through the export of tv programs, animation and com-
puter games are simply not e√ective in conveying the state of contemporary
Japanese society and culture because they do not represent any realistic
image of Japan.
Needless to say, the questions of what constitutes the ‘‘real’’ Japan, whether
it is possible to represent the ‘‘real’’ faces Japan, and in what manner such
images of Japan are (in contradictory ways) consumed and received by
audiences, are highly contested. These questions are not taken seriously by
those who stress the importance of exporting Japanese tv programs. What
concerns them is the belief and the fact that a Japanese tv program, Oshin,
has improved the image of Japan in other Asian countries. The usefulness of
the tv program in this respect conversely determines what are the real and
humane faces of Japan in the eyes of those observers.
Particularly significant in this respect is the fact that Oshin cultivates
among Asian viewers a sense of commonality between Japan and other
Asian nations. It is argued that the representation of common values such as
perseverance, diligence, and familialism in Oshin is responsible for the popu-
larity of the program in other Asian countries and has engendered a positive
change in the image of Japan in Asian countries (e.g., on Indonesia, see
Takahashi 1991, 1994; on China, see Kumamoto 1993a). No less significant
is the sense of a common ‘‘non-Westernness’’—the common harsh expe-
rience of non-Western modernization. As scriptwriter Imamura Yōichi

76 Recentering globalization
(1995, 15) argues, ‘‘Japan should show itself more clearly to others, par-
ticularly to Asians who are now facing similar social problems to those Japan
once experienced. The popularity of Oshin lies in its successful representa-
tion of the social contradictions produced in the process of modernization
and democratization, the interaction between tradition and modernity.’’
In order to overcome the distrust of Japan held by other Asian countries,
Imamura (1995) suggests that Japan should stress the fact that it shares with
other Asian countries the agony and su√ering that are inherent in the course
of modernization. However, it should be noted here that Oshin narrates the
modern history of Japan from a woman’s perspective. Japan’s past is repre-
sented mostly in terms of a pacifist woman’s experience of overcoming
su√ering caused by the war (Morris-Suzuki 1998b, 134–35; see also Harvey
1995). This representation of Japan’s gendered past proves to be useful for
the purpose of rendering more troublesome aspects of Japanese modern
history irrelevant.
The beneficial aspects of Japanese popular culture in the country’s recon-
ciliation with its neighbors are not simply found in the common historical
experience of the non-West and in traditional values. tv dramas and popu-
lar music that feature contemporary urban culture in Japan are also thought
to present a new possibility of promoting cultural dialogue between young
Japanese and other Asians. While this kind of optimistic use of youth popu-
lar culture for cultural diplomacy has recently been becoming even more
conspicuous in terms of Japan’s historical reconciliation with South Korea as
the two countries co-hosted the 2002 soccer World Cup (see Fukamaru
kōryū 2000), as early as 1994 Gaiko Forum had featured articles about the
spread of Japanese popular culture among Asian youth. The September
1994 issue contained an articles written from the Japanese perspective; and
in November three responses, from Thailand, Singapore, and Hong Kong,
appeared (see Honda 1994a; English translation 1994b). The September
article, while mentioning the importance of bilateral cultural flow and the
increasing number of personal, face-to-face, contacts between people in
Japan and those in other Asian nations, emphasized that the transnational
attraction of Japanese popular culture in Asia o√ered a new possibility of
Japanese cultural exchange with other Asian countries. Here, as is not the
case for dramas (like Oshin) that stress traditional cultural values, it is the
hybrid nature of Japanese popular culture that is stressed.
According to the author of the article, there are two related points in

Trans/nationalism 77
testifying to the potential of Japanese popular culture to facilitate Asian
dialogue. First is the fact that Japan has had ‘‘no hand’’ in the dissemination
of Japanese popular music and tv programs in Asian regions. The spread of
Japanese popular culture ‘‘has occurred with virtually no e√ort on the Japa-
nese side: the East Asian middle class took note of Japanese popular culture
and chose to embrace it of its own accord’’ (Honda 1994b, 78). This might
be reminiscent of Ishihara’s view, discussed earlier, but Honda considers the
‘‘spontaneous’’ reception by Asian audiences to be important, if Japanese
cultural exports are to overcome the historical legacy of Japanese imperial-
ism.∞≥ And this is related to Honda’s other point that the universal appeal of
Japanese popular culture lies in its non-self-assertive mukokuseki nature.
Honda refers to mukokuseki, in the same sense as Tsunoyama’s (1995)
usage mentioned earlier, that is, that it is ‘‘a country-neutral quality’’ due to
the massive influence of the American original (76). Such mukokuseki
Japanese popular culture, Honda argues, unlike traditional images of Japa-
nese culture and society, have a cosmopolitan appeal that articulates ‘‘a sharp
break from the traditional, prewar image,’’ and they will lead to ‘‘[erasing]
the old, oppressive image of the country—especially among the younger
generation’’ (78).∞∂ Referring to the rise of the middle classes, who are the
main audiences for Japanese popular culture and who are primarily urban,
Honda argued that ‘‘the link that Japanese popular culture now provides for
ordinary young people from Tokyo to Singapore could foster dialogue on a
scale and closeness never before achieved’’ (77). This is because ‘‘Japanese
comics, dramas, and pop music not only provide a common topic for dis-
cussion among East Asians but also portray Japan’s modern, liberated face’’
(78).∞∑
Honda does not refer to the mukokuseki-ness of Japanese popular culture
in order to illustrate Japan’s civilizational excellence of cultural indigeniza-
tion. Nevertheless, the crucial questions left unanswered in Honda’s hopeful
view are, again, what sort of dialogue can be facilitated through the trans-
national mass-mediated consumption of popular culture? And how might
the dialogue be shaped by continuing unequal power relations between
Japan and the rest of Asia? What sorts of images of ‘‘Asia’’ are being imag-
ined and where is ‘‘Japan’’ positioned in them? All of these issues are not
given due attention, as the mukokuseki-ness of Japanese popular culture is
apprehended predominantly as something useful for the Japanese national
interest.

78 Recentering globalization
 Ambivalence elucidated in the ‘‘Japanization’’ of Asia

I have shown various ways in which the complexities and contradictions

imbricated in disjunctive transnational flows of culture are discounted in
Japanese nationalist discourses on its export of popular culture. Such trans/
nationalism discourses in Japan, I suggest, can be seen as symptomatic of the
growing di≈culty of claiming the significance of Japanese cultural export in
the face of the contradictory and unforeseeable consumption and indigeni-
zation process in every corner of the world. Trans/nationalism desperately
attempts to resolve, though temporarily, the ambivalence that results from
the international circulation of Japanese culture and cultural products in a
time when the dynamics of local cultural indigenization, while deeply im-
plicated in cultural asymmetry, tends to downplay the straightforward view
of cultural power of any country of origin over another (see e.g., Miller
1995; Appadurai 1996). In the following chapters, I will try to disentangle,
through empirical analysis, how these contradictions are articulated in the
production and consumption of Japanese popular culture in Asian markets
and the Japanese consumption of Asian popular culture. I would now like to
analyze the text of the 1993 film Sotsugyō Ryokō: Nihon kara Kimashita (My
graduation trip: I am from Japan) in terms of the way in which the con-
sumption of Japanese popular culture in other parts of Asia articulates the
contradiction and ambivalence generated by transnational cultural flows.
The film tells the story of a male Japanese university student who, while
traveling, becomes a pop star in a fictional Southeast Asian country. The
country is in the midst of a phenomenal ‘‘Japan boom,’’ and the young man
is recruited by a Japanese agent, wins a star-search audition, and quickly
becomes a national media star. At first glance, Sotsugyō Ryokō seems to
claims that, just as Japan has admired Western culture, other Asian countries
now worship Japan.∞∏ The film cheerfully depicts, through food, popular
music, and use of the Japanese language, how Japanese culture is consumed
and appropriated, although in a distorted manner, by other Asian people.
This approach to the Japanese cultural presence in the world is reminiscent
of, but in stark contrast to, Pico Iyer’s 1988 travelogue, Video Night in
Kathmandu, which deals with the creative indigenization and appropriation
of dominant American popular cultures in Asia. Iyer analyzes the process
of negotiating American cultural hegemony in Asia, elucidating modes
of ‘‘postmodern boundary violating and syncretistic cultural intersections’’

Trans/nationalism 79
The cheerful ‘‘Japanization’’ of Asia? A film
pamphlet for the film Sotsugyō Ryokō (1993).

(Buell 1994, 5), which produce ‘‘a carnivalesque profusion of hybrid forms’’
(11). By conferring agency to the receiving side, Iyer’s text illuminates how
the culturally dominated actively negotiate with West-dominated global
cultural flows at the local site. It is parallel with Appadurai’s (1996, 29)
remark that ‘‘if a global cultural system is emerging, it is filled with ironies
and resistances, sometimes camouflaged as passivity and a bottomless ap-
petite in the Asian world for things Western.’’
However, such contradictory scenarios are apparently absent in Sotsugyō
Ryokō. Rather, the comical depiction of Asian imitation of Japan is marked
out by a peculiar indi√erence to the receiving side. The predominant issue
of the film seems to be the question of how a Japanese protagonist himself
plays at being Asia’s image of Japan, and of how Japan distortedly presents
itself according to the assumed expectation of Asian audiences. In this sense,
the film represents Japanese identification with the spectator subject, who
enjoys the game of others objectifying us, ‘‘the Japanese,’’ while believing
80 Recentering globalization
that it is ultimately impossible.∞π It is less the putatively imitating subject,
‘‘Asia,’’ than the object of imitation and yearning, ‘‘Japan,’’ that is the actual
subject of the film. Japan’s doubleness, which is at once the subject and
object of imitation, is represented through the negation of subject positions
for those who consume ‘‘Japan’’ in other parts of Asia. While Iyer depicted
the decline of American cultural hegemony through the vivacity of local
consumption, this film seems to claim the rise of Japanese cultural power
through a narcissistic reference to the (grotesque) elasticity of Japanese cul-
tural products for local consumption. The supposed impossibility of any
foreign appreciation of ‘‘authentic’’ Japanese culture ensures that ‘‘Japanese
culture’’ remains inviolate and intact, safe in its transculturation encounter
with others. Japanese observers thus have only to indulge in watching for-
eign distortions and (mis)appropriations of globally circulated Japanese cul-
ture in order to a≈rm its symbolic power status.∞∫
It also can be argued, however, that Sotsugyō Ryokō shows the producer’s
refusal to o√er an easy and idealized pattern of cultural exchange and dia-
logue between Japan and Asia. The precariousness and fallaciousness of
cultural diplomacy and dialogue through asymmetrical cultural flows is
comically represented in the film through Asian cultural misunderstanding
of Japan, acquired via the consumption of Japanese commodities and im-
ages. Compared to other Japanese who claim that Japan has become the
object of yearning for the foreign consumer of Japanese popular culture, and
those who see a possibility of a cultural dialogue between Japan and Asia
through popular cultural flows, Japanese film producers seem to observe the
Asian consumption of Japan in a more detached and skeptical manner.
Isshiki Nobuyuki, a screenwriter for Sotsugyō Ryokō, remarked in a Japanese
newspaper interview that he had wanted to write a comedy dealing with the
gap between Japanese reality and the image other Asian people have of
a∆uent Japan (Ajia to Nihon no zure egaku 1993). When he traveled to
other Asian countries such as Thailand and Hong Kong, Isshiki found the
distorted images of Japan held by Asians to be quite embarrassing, since they
reminded him of a similar illusionary yearning for the United States—the
illusion that everyone in California must be a stylish surfer!—which he
had experienced in the early 1980s. Apart from the arrogance and self-
confidence displayed in his remarks, Isshiki seems to suggest that there exists
an irreducible discrepancy between the ‘‘real Japan’’ and the ‘‘yearned-for
Japan.’’ Here, what is problematized is not just the possibility of cultural
diplomacy. As was not the case with the material domination of Japan over
Trans/nationalism 81
Thailand, described in Yoshioka’s (1993) uneasy observations mentioned
earlier, cultural domination of Japan over other Asian countries is also il-
lustrated as implausible, as the meaning signified by ‘‘Japan’’ is inevitably
appropriated there.
Moreover, in Isshiki’s statement there seems to be a sober realization of
the tenuousness of Japanese cultural hegemony in Asia and evidence of
Japanese self-mockery of its own past imitation of America. The interesting
issues dealt with in Sotsugyō Ryokō are the status of American popular cul-
ture and the circulation of ‘‘Japanized’’ Western popular culture in other
parts of Asia. The film begins with a scene in Japan in 1979 in which the
hero as a child is earnestly watching a Japanese star singing a Japanized
version of the song ‘‘YMCA’’ by the American pop group, Village People.
The Japanese version, unlike the original, has no gay culture subtext. In-
stead, it features an ‘‘original’’ dance. Like the discussion of the mukokuseki
nature of Japanese popular culture as shown by Tsunoyama (1995), the film
seems to suggest that the subtle act of indigenizing the West is interpreted as
the source of Japanese cultural and civilizational excellence. However, once
the discursive is materialized into an actual product, an uneasy question left
uninterrogated in the hybridism discourse comes to the surface: If ‘‘imita-
tion of America’’ is a significant determinant of contemporary Japanese
culture itself, is there any authentic ‘‘Japaneseness’’ left to be appreciated by
other Asian people? The apparent phenomenon of the ‘‘Japanization of
Asia’’ does not necessarily articulate Japanese cultural power. On the con-
trary, it eventually arouses the ambivalence Japanese cultural producers feel
toward the nature of Japanese cultural power, an ambivalence caused by the
mimetic origin of Japanese cultural formation.
This point becomes sharper when we look at the fact, which is suppressed
in the film, that Japanese popular culture is not simply consumed or dis-
tortedly appropriated but directly copied in some East and Southeast Asian
countries. The style of the pop singer is a case in point. It is widely ob-
served that the song, dance, hairstyle, clothing, and even names of Japanese
pop idols were imitated in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, and South Korea
in the 1980s (e.g., Morieda 1988; Shinozaki 1988; Ching 1994). Unlike
Bhabha’s (1985) concept of ‘‘mimicry,’’ by which he tries to illuminate the
scandalous subversion of the colonizer’s cultural hegemony through a gro-
tesque appropriation of the original by the colonized, this straightforward
copying of Japan by fellow nonwhite Asians, I would argue, destabilizes
Japanese cultural domination by revealing that there is no such thing as a
82 Recentering globalization
cultural hegemony which originates in Japan. A cheerful Asian second-
order mimicking of Japanese imitation of American popular culture sets
up the Japanese unease, an unease derived from a realization that Japan’s
mimetic modern experience deeply underpins the formation of Japanese
popular culture. That is, Asian mimesis of Japan forces Japanese to realize
that Japan, after all, embarrassingly performs ‘‘grotesque America’’ among
other Asian nations (e.g., Shinozaki 1990a; Kōkami and Chikushi 1992).
The Japanese observation of the ‘‘Japanization of Asia’’ leads not simply to
the problematization of Japan’s authority and originality through secondary
Asian imitation. It also articulates a moment when Japan encounters the
impossibility of retaining a master position in transnational cultural flows.
At the same time, Asian mimesis of Japan does not merely prompt Japan to
realize how bizarre is its own imitation of Western popular culture. It also
highlights the vivacity of local consumption, which is suppressed in the
observation of a ‘‘grotesque Japan’’ (see, e.g., Ajia de kageki ni shōhi sareru
Nippon bunka 1993). Here, Asian imitation of Japanese popular culture
o√ers Japan a common ground with other Asian nations in terms of the
ongoing process of cultural hybridization/indigenization. This posture is
discerned in the above-mentioned Yoshioka text too. While documenting
Japanese economic and cultural dominance in Thailand, Yoshioka never-
theless realized that there is nothing di√erent between the way that Thai
companies copied Japanese clothes and the way that Japan copied Western
consumer technologies: ‘‘I suddenly felt Thailand was very intimate. I can
clearly see ourselves in Thais’ keenness to copy Japan, the past which we
forgot after Japan became an a∆uent economic superpower’’ (1993, 246).
Here, awareness of the way in which Japanese popular culture is multi-
fariously simulated and copied by other Asians destabilizes the Japanese
belief that while any country can Westernize, others cannot successfully
indigenize the West like ‘‘us’’ (i.e., like the Japanese). Asian imitation of
Japan displaces Japan’s hybridism in its construction of an essential national
identity by exposing the fact that skillful hybridization is not unique to
Japan. Rather, it is quite common to all subordinated nations (see e.g.,
Appadurai 1990; Hannerz 1991).
Nevertheless, the common experience of cultural hybridization can also
be the source of a Japanese condescending view toward a ‘‘behind-the-
time’’ Asia. As I will argue in chapters 4 and 5, an analysis of the two-way
flows of popular culture between East Asian nations and Japan displays the
unevenness in terms of the perception of temporality that Asian neighbors
Trans/nationalism 83
inhabit. ‘‘Japanization’’ of Asia may not signify a straightforward economic
or cultural domination of Asia by Japan, but this does not mean that there is
no power asymmetry between Japan and other Asian nations. This asymme-
try consistently overshadows any optimism about a dialogue on equal terms.
Before exploring this asymmetry, however, we must first explore how the
contradiction and ambivalence articulated in Japan’s trans/nationalist dis-
courses are reflected in the corporate strategies and practices of the Japanese
media industries as they try to enter Asian markets.

84 Recentering globalization
●
≥
Localizing ‘‘Japan’’ in

the booming Asian media markets

In this chapter I shall turn to the empirical study of the strategies used by the
Japanese music and tv industries for entry into the booming Asian audio-
visual markets in the 1990s. The economic power of Asian countries and the
proliferation of media space in the region have increased the export oppor-
tunity for Japanese popular culture. Lured by the potential of the booming
Asian audiovisual markets, Japanese media industries also became keen to
promote the circulation of Japanese popular music and tv programs to East
and Southeast Asia. Nonetheless, Japanese media industries were at first
concerned mainly with ridding cultural products of ‘‘Japanese odor’’ and
with making ‘‘local’’ products in Asian markets, as well as with direct export
of Japanese cultural products.
Localization strategies deployed by Japanese media industries included
selling their ‘‘know-how’’ for indigenizing foreign (Western) popular cul-
ture in Asian markets. This strategy indicates a conviction widely held by
the Japanese media industries that, no matter how Japanese tv programs
become popular in Asia, other Asian countries will sooner or later follow
the Japanese experience of absorbing and localizing the American media
influence. Apparently, behind the localization strategy exists the same as-
sumption of Japanese excellence and superiority in handling transnational
cultural flows, as articulated in the discourse on hybridism discussed in
chapter 2. Such an assumption reveals its operational limitations when put
into practice. The localization of Japanese ‘‘know-how’’ in cultural produc-
tion has been inconsistent and only partly successful. By contrast, the direct
spread of Japanese popular music and tv programs in Asian markets has
become conspicuous, thanks to another localization strategy deployed by
local industries in East Asia. The meaning of ‘‘localization’’ is shifting, from
the export of Japanese know-how, to the local promotion of Japanese cul-
tural products that synchronizes with trends in the domestic Japanese mar-
ket. This testifies to the increasing a≈liation and integration between Japa-
nese and other East Asian media industries and markets, which has resulted
in highlighting the transnational appeal of Japanese popular culture.

The difficulty of engaging in Asian media wars

Although the export of Japanese tv programs and popular music has dras-
tically increased in the 1990s with the expansion of Asian audiovisual mar-
kets, this development has not proceeded smoothly or straightforwardly.
While there were certain e√orts to export Japanese tv programs and popu-
lar music to Asian markets,∞ the Japanese tv and music industries overall
were not as active as other Asian and Western counterparts in exporting
cultural products to Asian markets in the early 1990s. There has even been
some discussion on how Japan had fallen behind Asian countries, not to
mention the West, in the development of transnational broadcasting (e.g.,
Shima 1994; Nihon hatsu no bangumi Ajia kakeru? 1994; Osaki ni hōsō
senshinkoku 1997).
Several factors tend to discourage Japanese media industries in their ef-
forts to export products to other Asian countries. First of all, the reluctance
of the Japanese tv industry to enter Asian markets was partly due to the
obstacle posed by the historical legacy of Japanese imperialism and the
existence of a profitable and wealthy domestic market in Japan. As men-
tioned earlier, in the former colonies of Taiwan and Korea, Japanese films,
tv programs, and music had been totally banned until recently. The legacy
of Japanese imperialism has prevented Japan from actively exporting its
‘‘culture’’ to Asian countries. The South Korean government may have
preferred American to Japanese products, because they were thought to be
less culturally damaging and dangerous to South Korea than the products of
‘‘the Japanese Empire.’’ Accordingly, even Japanese companies operating in
Asian markets had come to think that the suppression of Japanese cultural
visibility was a desirable strategy for enabling Japanese economic expan-
sion into Asia. Kawatake (1995) found that many Japanese companies were
in favor of removing any signs of ‘‘Japaneseness’’ from their international
advertising material. Likewise, when the Japanese government amended
its policy on transnational satellite broadcasting in 1994, nhk quickly an-
nounced the launch of a satellite service to Europe, but it hesitated to
broadcast to Asian regions because of a fear of being accused of cultural

86 Recentering globalization
imperialism (Kokusai hōsō Ajia de hibana 1994; TV kaigai hōsō mienu
tenbō 1994).
This fear of condemnation was reinforced by the hard-line criticism made
by several East and Southeast Asian governments of the Western ‘‘cultural
invasion’’ from the sky (e.g., Atkins 1995; Lee and Wang 1995). However, at
an abu (Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union) meeting, held in Kyoto in No-
vember 1994, this anxiety was to some extent dispelled and nhk seemed
finally prepared to launch its service in Asian regions. Japanese media indus-
tries realized with surprise during the meeting that a gradual shift in other
Asian countries’ policies, from rigid protection to promotion of local and
regional industries, was aimed at countering the Western ‘‘cultural inva-
sion’’ (Nihon hatsu no bangumi Ajia kakeru? 1994). As Wang (1996, 14) has
observed concerning the policies of Asian governments, these policy deci-
sions matched an overall trend in the 1990s: ‘‘What we see in the mid-1990s,
is a change in the role of communication policy, especially in third world
nations, from that of a protective guardian against ‘harmful, alien informa-
tion’ to one of a supportive sponsor for cultural production.’’ This policy
shift was based upon a realization by Asian governments that the best way to
counter U.S.-driven media globalization is less to persist in the (impossible)
guarding of national borders from transnational satellite broadcasts than it is
to promote local entertainment industries which produce products more
attractive to local audiences than those from Western countries. This shift
ironically displays that, no matter how vehemently some Asian govern-
ments denounce the influx of decadent Western consumerism through
media products, ‘‘Asian’’ cultural values can only be protected by the de-
velopment of the capitalist mode of cultural production (see Dirlik 1994).
The threat of cultural imperialism has been dispelled by the advent of global
capitalism.
Yet, there are two additional structural and financial impediments for the
Japanese tv industry in seriously entering Asian media markets (Tsuda
1996; Odagiri 1996). One is the di≈culty of making profits in Asian mar-
kets. American media corporations entered Asian markets quickly as an
extension of their existing global business. Almost all the satellite and cable
channels, including star tv, have failed to make a profit in Asia, but these
deficits are compensated for by their profits in a∆uent Western markets.
However, Japan, with no presence in the Western markets, would not be
able to make a profit in Asia until the price of tv programs became as high as

Localizing ‘‘Japan’’ 87
those paid by Western markets. As a Japanese tv international sales division
manager expressed it, ‘‘We are not actively selling our programs in Asian
markets, as there would be no profit no matter how earnest we become’’
(quoted in Tsuda 1996, 53). According to a survey by the Ministry of Post
and Telecommunication, 6,800 hours of programming, worth 48.1 billion
yen, were imported to Japan during 1992. As for exports, 16,471 hours were
sold, which were valued just at 2.1 billion yen (Nakazora 1994). Japan, then,
exported about two-and-a-half times as much programming as it imported,
but the industry’s earnings were no more than a twenty-third of the amount
paid for importing foreign (mainly American) programs. While we should
remember that expensive Hollywood films account for large part of Japan’s
media imports, this means that the unit price of programs (cost per hour of
programming) was almost fifty-five times less than their import value (based
on an import price of 7 million yen and an export value of 127 thousand
yen). The average production budget for a one-hour drama in Japan was
about 25–45 million yen in the mid-1990s, but the same drama could be
sold in Asia for only 200,000–300,000 yen (Nishi 1997, 187).
Another reason for the low export of Japanese products to Asia concerns
copyright and royalties. In Japan, the production of tv programs had been
primarily for a domestic market and there had been no incentives to develop
copyright contracts for secondary and tertiary broadcasts in an international
market. Since the early 1990s, as Japanese tv programs were increasingly
exported to Asia, Japanese tv stations came to realize that copyright issues
were an obstacle to selling their programs overseas. To sell a drama overseas,
for example, Japanese tv stations have to get permission from the cast and
music composers for each series. It takes at least six months to clarify all the
copyright issues for the secondary broadcast. Some talent management of-
fices demand fees, which are more expensive than the tv stations can a√ord
(Tsuda 1996, 53–54; Odagiri 1996, 18–19). For this reason, an international
sales division manager of Fuji TV told me in an interview in 1996 that the
company could not sell even one-third of the twelve drama series it pro-
duced annually.
According to my interviews with Japanese tv station managers, in 1997
the wholesale price for programs in Asian markets was three times higher
than it had been during the early 1990s but it still constituted less than 1 per-
cent of the total sales figures of Japanese tv stations.≤ Given the low price of
the programs, the cost of copying and packaging, and the extremely small

88 Recentering globalization
percentage of total profits, it is no surprise that Japanese tv stations have not
been active in exporting their programs to Asian markets.

Localization strategies in Asian audiovisual markets

Furthermore, in the mid-1990s, in addition to the historical and structural

obstacles, Japanese media industries also realized the significance of localiz-
ing strategies in Asian markets. The development of these Asian audiovisual
markets has shown the need for producing and distributing cultural prod-
ucts that are more sensitive to the diversity and tastes of local markets, as
opposed to the simple distribution of the seemingly almighty American tv
programs. In this respect, a joke told by a Japanese tv news reporter cover-
ing an asean meeting in Kuala Lumpur in July 1997 is suggestive of the
increasing significance of articulating locality with the global spread of capi-
talist modernities. The reporter joked that there were three requirements
for becoming a member of asean. First, one must play golf; second, one
must love karaoke. But, unlike these first two cultural practices, which do
not particularly originate in Southeast Asian but are common in male-
dominated business circles and among the middle class in many parts of Asia
(thanks to Japanese influence), the last requirement is very much ‘‘Southeast
Asian.’’ The reporter continued with a faint smile, saying that, last but not
the least, one must be fond of durian, the delicious but pungent fruit of
Southeast Asia. This joke suggests the rise of economic power and the
emergence of a a∆uent middle class in Southeast Asian countries, but the
punch line of the joke reminds us that the common signifiers of middle-class
capitalist modernity in the region, such as karaoke and golf, are not enough
to articulate distinct local identities. It is not these internationally spread
cultural activities, but the local fruit with an insuppressible odor, that ulti-
mately confers the Southeast Asian-ness of asean.
This emphasis on local specificity has become the key to the global mar-
keting of consumer goods in the last decade. In a book on global marketing
and advertising strategies, Mooij (1998) argues the inappropriateness of the
slogan ‘‘Think globally, act locally,’’ because, she says, any ‘‘global’’ thinking
must be colored by one’s cultural background. According to Mooij, the
imperative for transnational companies is to ‘‘Think locally, act globally,’’
that is, to distribute products globally and market them locally. What is
increasingly apparent is that Theodore Levitt’s formula of ‘‘global standard-

Localizing ‘‘Japan’’ 89
ization’’ (1983), advocated in the 1980s, actually promotes a ‘‘mythology of
globalization’’ (Ferguson 1992) implemented by global company execu-
tives. As Mooij argues, ‘‘In reality, few successful global brands are fully
standardized. The wish for global brands is in the mind of the producer, not
in the mind of the consumer. Consumers don’t care if the brand is global,
and they increasingly prefer local brands or what they perceive as local
brands’’ (1998, 39). More attention to local di√erences is called for, because
global corporations ‘‘only thrive on respect for and exploitation of local
cultural values’’ (299).
The strategy of global localization, or ‘‘glocalization’’ (Robertson 1995),
most eloquently explains the significance of the exploitation of the locality
by transnational corporations. This is a strategy for penetrating many dif-
ferent local markets at once. Global companies try to ‘‘transcend vestigial
national di√erences and to create standardized global markets, whilst re-
maining sensitive to the peculiarities of local markets and di√erentiated
consumer segments’’ (Aksoy and Robins 1992, 18). ‘‘We are not a multi-
national, we are a multi-local’’ (du Gay et al. 1997; Watson 1997), insist such
transnational corporations as Sony, Coca-Cola, and McDonald’s. The strat-
egy of global localization aims to blur the distinction between the foreign
and the local, making it irrelevant: such companies feature local sta√, local
decision-making, and locally tailored products in their e√orts to manage the
tension between ‘‘economic imperatives (achieving economies of scale) and
cultural imperatives (responding to diverse consumer preferences)’’ (Robins
1997, 36).
This same realization of the significance of locality is also the main chal-
lenge faced by transnational media industries which are attracted by the
potential of huge Asian markets. Apart from protectionist government reg-
ulation policies, one of the di≈culties in entering Asian markets is the
considerable diversity of culture, religion, language, race, and ethnicity in
the region. Moreover, there is a tendency for audiences to prefer local and
regional programs to their foreign (mostly American) counterparts, even
though such programs may entirely imitate products of foreign origin (e.g.,
Straubhaar 1991; Sinclair, Jacka, and Cunningham 1996b). It is precisely the
irreducible cultural di√erence and preference for ‘‘local’’ programs with
which Western transnational media corporations have been struggling and
which has validated, at least in part, the above-mentioned policy shift from
rigid protectionism to the encouragement of domestic cultural production.
It is in this sense that local media in some Asian countries, such as Hong
90 Recentering globalization
Kong (which has a long-established, powerful media industry whose prod-
ucts have won the hearts of their people), more subtly exploit local specifici-
ties in expanding their reach to other parts of Asia: ‘‘Local tv takes on the
satellite giants’’ (Asia strikes back 1996). In the early 1990s, Hong Kong’s
leading television station, tvb, began actively entering Asian markets with a
capacity of 5,000 hours of programming a year (Cast of thousands 1994).
TVB not only exported its programs and launched tvbi, its satellite channel
service, mainly to Taiwan in 1995, but it also started to co-produce locally
tailor-made programs. Apart from its production capacity, the strength of
tvb lies in its presumed cultural ‘‘Chineseness,’’ which may be more or less
shared by a vast number of ethnic Chinese in the Asian region. This co-
production strategy enabled tvb to penetrate the Mandarin-language mar-
ket of China and Taiwan, and in cooperation with a Chinese-Indonesian
partner it was extended to the Malay-language market (Honkon TVB no
chōsen 1994).
Likewise, transnational media industries in Asian markets have striven to
make programming ‘‘localized,’’ as was reported in a cover story for Asian
Business Review (Satellite TV sees gold in local content 1996): ‘‘The battle
for a share of Asia’s huge television audience is in full swing, with inter-
national broadcasters pouring in vast amounts of cash. But it’s the players
who provide local programming content that look likely to succeed.’’ The
shift in star tv’s programming strategy is a case in point. By assuming the
omnipotence of American cultural products, star tv conflated the central-
ization of distribution with that of transmission and neglected the existence
of multiple local cultures at the point of consumption. The lesson star tv
has learned is that exporting English-language programs produced in Holly-
wood is no longer enough. As Rupert Murdoch remarked, ‘‘We’ve com-
mitted ourselves to learning the nuance of the region’s diverse cultures’’
(Satellite TV is way o√ beam 1994). Rather than pursuing the old-fashioned
‘‘communication-as-transmission view’’ of broadcasting pan-Asian pro-
grams in only one language, the strategy of star tv has changed to one of
ensuring the availability of local programs by finding local partners (Cast of
thousands 1994; TV’s new battles 1994). Driven also by political reasons,
star tv replaced the bbc World News and American mtv with drama and
music programs that were more Chinese-sensitive (STAR drops MTV to
help it capture China 1994). And mtv Asia has struck back with much more
localized programming produced in a variety of local languages, such as
Mandarin and Hindi.
Localizing ‘‘Japan’’ 91
 The localization strategies of transnational media corporations are remi-
niscent of the academic critique of the ‘‘cultural imperialism thesis.’’ As
discussed in chapter 1, the cultural imperialism thesis has been criticized for
implying there was a ‘‘more or less straightforward and deliberate imposi-
tion of dominant culture and ideology,’’ and for its reliance on the ‘‘center–
periphery model,’’ which connoted a one-way flow of cultural products and
meanings from the (Western) producer to the (non-Western) consumer
(Ang 1994, 196). However, in the ‘‘real’’ world, foreign products are often
locally domesticated in terms of their meanings as well as in their forms and
content (Miller 1992). Moreover, non-Western regional centers such as
Brazil, Hong Kong, and India export a significant volume of cultural prod-
ucts to regional and global markets, and in many cases these overwhelm
American products in terms of their popularity (Straubhaar 1991; McNeely
and Soysal 1989). However, as Maxwell (1997, 198) argues, ‘‘Along with
cultural studies professors, marketers share an interest in the popular re-
jection and playful re-interpretations of the transnational message.’’ Trans-
national media corporations are quick to incorporate the decentered media
flows into their own strategies; as a manager of star tv commented,
‘‘There is no money to be made in cultural imperialism’’ (Gautier, quoted in
Sinclair 1997, 144). While capital still operates on the instrumentalist logic
of transmission and dissemination of messages, global media giants, by ‘‘ab-
sorbing local di√erences of value and taste into the global sales e√ort’’
(Maxwell 1997, 193), exploit such logic by emphasizing the sharing of
symbols and aesthetic experiences among consumers in a particular niche
markets.

The way we were: Marketing the experience

of cultural indigenization

In the mid-1990s Japanese media industries also clearly recognized the sig-
nificance of deploying localization strategies in Asian markets. In 1994,
Dentsū, the largest advertising agency in Japan, organized a committee to
promote the export of Japanese audiovisual products and submitted a report
to the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (Dentsū and Dentsū
Sōken 1994). The report’s authors clearly saw the great possibility of Japa-
nese products being further accepted in Asian markets and suggested the ne-
cessity of developing more export-oriented production systems, including
market research and language-dubbing of tv programs and films. At the
92 Recentering globalization
same time, however, many members of the committee were not optimistic
about the future of Japanese cultural exports to Asia. Interestingly, they
pointed to the strong likelihood that Japanese cultural products would soon
be superseded by local ones. This view corresponds with my own research.
In November 1994 and February 1996, I interviewed more than twenty
people working for the tv and music industries in Japan concerning the
popularity of Japanese products in Asia. Almost every producer thought that
Japanese products would not be well received in Asian markets for long.
One program sales director of a Japanese tv station whose tv dramas had
been well received in many Asian countries clearly stated that the popularity
of these dramas would not last to the end of the twentieth century. As a
long-term strategy, Japanese media industries were not as keen to export
Japanese products as to be somehow involved, and to take the initiative, in
the (co)production of ‘‘local’’ media products in various Asian markets.
The stress on involvement in the local production process indicates that
Japanese media industries have tried to engage with global-local dynamics
di√erently from Western and other Asian local media industries. This pos-
ture is hinted at by the fact that a Japanese transnational corporation, Sony,
has had a strong policy of becoming a global company from the outset and,
as mentioned in chapter 1, is considered to be the primary developer of the
marketing strategy of ‘‘global localization.’’ As we saw earlier, global locali-
zation today is not exclusively a Sony practice, but a marketing buzzword of
the global business world. Nevertheless, as Robertson (1995) points out, the
Oxford Dictionary of New Words (1991, 134) clearly acknowledges that global
localization and the new word glocal originate in Japan and that global mar-
keting strategy is another of Japan’s significant contributions to consumer
society: ‘‘In business jargon: simultaneously global and local; taking a global
view of the market, but adjusted to local considerations. . . . Formed by
telescoping global and local to make a blend; the idea is modeled on Japa-
nese dochakuka (derived from dochaku ‘living on one’s own land’), originally
the agricultural principle of adapting one’s farming techniques to local
conditions, but also adopted in Japanese business for global localization, a
global outlook adapted to local conditions.’’
It is indeed an intriguing question why the term glocal was originally used
by Japanese companies,≥ but we should not regard the act of dochakuka
(indigenization) as uniquely Japanese. As I discussed in chapter 2, cultural
borrowing, appropriation, hybridization and indigenization are common
practices in the global cultural flow. A more relevant question to be ad-
Localizing ‘‘Japan’’ 93
dressed regarding any distinct Japanese engagement with glocalization is
how Japanese companies are imagining Japan’s position in the global cultural
flow when they develop strategies of glocalization.
Behind the development of the Japanese localization strategy, we can see
the intertwining of Japanese media industries’ negative and positive self-
appreciation of their capacity for popular cultural production. On the one
hand, there is apparently distrust widely held by Japanese media industries
concerning the appeal of visible ‘‘Japaneseness’’ embodied in cultural prod-
ucts in a global context. In chapter 1, I argued that the major cultural
products which Japan exports are characterized as ‘‘culturally odorless.’’ Yet,
it is no accident that Japan has become a major exporter of culturally odor-
less products. Japanese media industries seem to think that the suppression
of Japanese cultural odor is imperative if they are to make inroads into
international markets. The producers and creators of game software inten-
tionally make computer-game characters look non-Japanese because they
are clearly conscious that the market is global (Akurosu Henshūshitsu 1995).
Mario, the principal character of the popular computer game, Super Mario
Brothers, for example, does not invoke the image of Japan. Both his name
and appearance are designed to be ‘‘Italian.’’ Even if Japanese animators do
not consciously draw mukokuseki characters with export considerations in
mind, the Japanese animation industry always has the global market in mind
and is aware that the non-Japaneseness of characters works to its advantage
in the export market (Akurosu Henshūshitsu 1995, 36–97). Since the ad-
vent of Tezuka Osamu’s Astro Boy in the early 1960s, Japanese animation
has long been consumed internationally. Japan routinely exports animated
films, which made up 56 percent of its tv exports in 1980–81 (Stronach
1989) and 58 percent in 1992–93 (Kawatake and Hara 1994). While other
film genres are mostly exported in Japanese, only 1 percent of animated
films are in Japanese. This implies that animation is routinely intended for
export (Stronach 1989, 144). Japanese producers are even more determined
to localize (or Americanize) its Pokémon characters in various international
markets to hide their ‘‘Japaneseness’’ as a part of their global promotion
strategy (Hatakeyama and Kubo 2000; Invasion of the Pocket Monsters
1999, 68–69). For example, the local renaming of 151 Pokémon characters
(with the exception of Pikachu) helped make the individual characteristics
of each Pokémon monster understandable and familiar in di√ering global
markets. As a consequence, Pokémon game software is translated into five
other languages (English, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese) and
94 Recentering globalization
animations and trading-cards into ten (Italian, Mandarin, Cantonese,
Korean, and Greek, in addition to the previous five).
As the negative side of these developments, the Japanese tv industry
speculated in the early 1990s that Japanese tv programs, other than anima-
tion, would not attract Asian audiences, due to Japanese cultural and lan-
guage di√erences (Nihon hatsu no bangumi Ajia kakeru? 1994). The Japa-
nese tv industry itself seems to assume that its product would su√er a high
‘‘cultural discount’’ (Hoskins and Mirus 1988) in international markets,
since, unlike ‘‘culturally odorless’’ products, the imagery of tv programs and
popular music is inescapably represented through living Japanese bodies.
On the other hand, and more importantly, the Japanese invention of
glocalization, I would argue, points to the way in which the localization
strategies of Japanese media in Asian markets is informed by the industries’
convinced reflection on Japan’s own experience of successful indigenization
of American popular culture. As the organizer of the above-mentioned
Dentsū committee told me, Japanese cultural producers believed, from their
own experiences, that ‘‘foreign popular culture such as tv programs and
popular music will sooner or later be superseded by domestically produced
ones, particularly as local media industries absorb foreign influence.’’ Japa-
nese cultural export to Asia is no exception to this rule of transnational
cultural flows. While Japanese media industries are not very much con-
vinced of the exportability of Japanese audiovisual products other than
animation, from experience the industries are convinced that other Asian
countries will take the same path as Japan in terms of the rapid indigeniza-
tion of foreign (American) popular culture. And it is in this process that
Japanese media industries have tried to take the initiative.
Since World War II, Japanese popular culture has been deeply influenced
by American media. Rather than being dominated by American products
and ‘‘colonized’’ by America, Japan quickly localized these influences by
imitating and partly appropriating the originals. At the inception of Japa-
nese tv history (in 1953), Japanese tv programming relied enormously on
imports from Hollywood in the 1950s and early 1960s. However, this im-
balance has drastically diminished since the mid-1960s. As early as 1980,
Japan imported only 5 percent of all programs, and this trend has continued
(Kawatake and Hara 1994). There were several reasons for this rapid trans-
formation. First, two national events around 1960 contributed to the ascen-
dancy of tv popularity. One was the crown prince’s wedding in 1959, and
the other was the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. These two events created a
Localizing ‘‘Japan’’ 95
nationwide boom in television sales. Second, the maturity of feature-film
production lent itself to the quick ascendancy of the tv industry, ironically,
at the cost of its own decline. The popularity of tv decreased Japanese
movie attendance, which declined drastically from 1.1 billion theater admis-
sions in 1958 to 373 million in 1965 (Stronach 1989, 136). The number of
feature films produced fell from more than five hundred in 1960 to just fifty-
eight in 1990 (Buck 1992, 126). Accordingly, capable filmmakers turned to
television, and this led to the maturity of the tv industry. In the end, Japan’s
economic miracle and the large size of the domestic market made this rapid
transformation possible. The Japanese population of more than 120 million
people and its economic wealth make the Japanese audiovisual market,
along with that of the United States, one of the only two self-su≈cient
markets in the world.
This is not to say that foreign popular culture is no longer consumed in
Japan. In fact, American popular culture has continued to strongly influence
Japan. People in Japan have been saturated with American popular culture.
Japan is one of the most important buyers of Hollywood movies (O’Regan
1992, 330). Many Japanese tv formats and concepts are also deeply influ-
enced by and borrowed from American programs, and information about
the American way of life appears in the mass media frequently. However,
directly imported tv programs have not been truly popular, particularly
since the 1980s with occasional exceptions such as The X-Files, which be-
came popular in 1997. In Japan, people can watch many popular American
tv series such as Dallas, Dynasty, or The Simpsons, but these programs have
never received high ratings (concerning the failure of Dallas in Japan, see
Liebes and Katz 1993). Popularity does not depend upon whether the
product is originally Japanese or not, but rather upon how Japan localizes
the original. Who knows or cares, for example, whether the Japanese ver-
sion of the globally popular quiz show, Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?, is of
Japanese origin or not? What the Japanese audience cares about is whether
the program contains a ‘‘Japanese odor’’ through localization.
These experiences, as I show below, seem to drive Japanese media indus-
tries to believe that if there is anything about Japan which attracts Asian
people, it is the hyperactive indigenization and domestication of ‘‘the West.’’
Put di√erently, behind the localizing strategies of Japanese media industries
in Asian markets there is a firm conviction that the localness to be exploited
in Asian markets is in the process of indigenization rather than in the prod-
uct per se. Japanese localization strategies attempt to create local zones
96 Recentering globalization
by gauging the practices of local media centers and their dynamic indig-
enization processes. These are strategies that incorporate the viewpoint
of the dominated, who long ago learned to negotiate Western culture in
their consumption of media products imported from the West. ‘‘What was
marked as foreign and exotic yesterday can become familiar today and
traditionally Japanese tomorrow’’ (Tobin 1992a, 26). This dynamic is ex-
actly what Japanese media industries have tried to produce in Asian markets
and what they believe are the commonality between other Asian nations
and Japan.
Here, we can nevertheless see how Japanese localization in Asian markets
is imbued with a condescending posture toward other Asian nations. It is an
unambiguous presupposition that as in Japanese civilization theories dis-
cussed in chapter 2, Japan’s successful indigenization of foreign (Western)
cultural influences presents a developmental model for other Asian coun-
tries to follow. A newly articulated ‘‘Asia’’ embedded in the localizing strat-
egies of Japanese media industries thus illuminates the asymmetrical rela-
tionships between Japan and other Asian nations in the context of globalized
production of indigenous modernities.

Finding local pop stars: The Japanese music

industry in Asian markets

One of the popular localizing strategies of the Japanese tv industry en-

tering Asian markets in the early 1990s was ‘‘format trade’’ (Bangumi uri-
masu 1993; Eisei 1995). Japan would sell program concepts rather than the
programs themselves to other countries, thereby ensuring that video mate-
rials would contain hardly any ‘‘Japanese odor.’’ Concept trade is a wide-
spread business practice throughout the world.∂ Japanese exports of con-
cepts are not restricted to Asian markets. For example, ntv, a Japanese
commercial tv station, has sold the format and visual material for the quiz
show, Show-by-Show-by, to Spain, Italy, Thailand, and Hong Kong. The
original concept of America’s Funniest Home Videos can be found in a Japa-
nese variety show.
In the early 1990s ‘‘format trade’’ in Asia was promoted by the largest
advertising company in Japan, Dentsū.∑ Dentsū’s main purpose was to pro-
mote ‘‘syndication’’ so that it could sell commercial time to Japanese spon-
sors in several Asian countries as well as selling the program concepts.
Syndication sales compensated for the low trading price of tv programs in
Localizing ‘‘Japan’’ 97
Asian markets (‘‘Eisei’’ 1995, 32–33).∏ Like Hong Kong’s tvb, Dentsū sells
the program concepts of chat shows and game shows which have been well-
accepted in Japan, together with video material, the supervision of produc-
tion, and Japanese program sponsors to Asian tv stations (Thought of in
Japan 1994). All local tv stations have to do is provide local celebrities and
audiences, and to learn the know-how of tv production from Japanese
producers.
However, the most active exploitation of localization has been forged by
the music industry. Although some Japanese pop idols and singers such as
Sakai Noriko and Chage & Aska were popular in Asian countries, especially
in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore in the early 1990s (e.g., Manga mo
aidoru mo NIEs sei 1990; Taiwan ga Nippon ni koi o shita 1996), the
Japanese music industry aimed less to promote those Japanese musicians in
East and Southeast Asian markets than to seek out ‘‘indigenous’’ pop stars
who could be sold to pan-Asian markets with Japanese pop production
know-how (see Ongaku sangyō wa Ajia mejā o mezasu 1992). The Japanese
project of finding pan-Asian pop singers is thus motivated by a chimera of
producing trans-Asian popular music through cross-fertilization of a Japa-
nese initiative.
I argued in the previous chapter that a 1993 Japanese film about the
Japanization of Asia is suggestive of how Japanese film producers imagine
the global cultural flow. The premise of the film is that the basic model of
Japanese popular culture is American, and that Japan can provide a model
for localizing e√orts. What the film does not show is the endless simula-
tion of American pop in Asia through the second-generation simulation of
‘‘home grown’’ Japanese pop music, which unquestionably owes a debt to
American trends. A Japanese version of the song ‘‘YMCA’’ was covered in
Canto pop, which became popular in Hong Kong and Singapore. Another
popular song, ‘‘Rouge,’’ was covered at least in Hong Kong, Singapore,
Indonesia, Thailand, Burma, Vietnam, and Turkey (Hara 1996, 144–51).
Japanese popular music, much of which is deeply influenced by American
popular music, has been well received in East and Southeast Asia, but there is
little local awareness of this because most of the songs are sung by local
singers in local languages (Hara 1996, 144–57). For example, Chinese au-
diences listening to Hong Kong pop are unaware when the songs they are
hearing are actually cover versions of Japanese songs because they do not
know the Japanese originals (cover songs might well constitute, along with
consumer technologies, computer games, and comics/animation, a fourth
98 Recentering globalization
‘‘C’’ of Japanese culturally odorless products). In a 1994 Japanese news
report on the Japanese music industry in China, both the owner of a record
shop and a customer admitted that local people knew very few Japanese
songs (Hatsunetsu Ajia, 1994). They also noted that Japanese songs were not
popular in China and that Japanese record companies should develop more
subtle marketing strategies. But this was followed by a Japanese narration
observing that people listen to many Japanese songs in China without
realizing their origin, because the songs have come to Shanghai via Hong
Kong or Taiwan.
These examples suggest the way in which Japanese popular music is in-
fluential as a mediating element in the chain of transnationalization of
America-dominated popular culture: Japanese popular music, which is ar-
guably the product of Japanese indigenization of American and other,
mostly Western, popular music, tends to be further localized and di√erently
appropriated in other Asian markets. It is through this cultural role that the
Japanese music industry has attempted to make inroads into the music
business in the region (see e.g., Akurosu Henshūshitsu 1995, 98–131; Ich-
ikawa 1994). As the director of Epic Sony told me in an interview in 1994:
‘‘The Japaneseness of Japanese popular music production can be found in its
capacity for cultural mixing, which makes the original source irrelevant. I
think we are good at appropriating quality aspects from American popular
music and reconstructing our own music. . . . In the same vein, if we produce
something stunning, trendy, and newly stylish in local languages by local
singers, I am sure that it can sell in Asian markets. The base [of the stunning
style] is American popular culture.’’
In this venture of boosting cultural indigenization of American popular
culture in Asian markets through a Japanese filter, the Japanese music indus-
tries, at least from a marketing perspective, seems to realize that Japan is not
the final stop of transnational cultural flows in Asian regions. However, the
localization strategy of the Japanese music industry in Asian markets posits
an evolutionary temporal lag between Japan and other Asian nations. Japan’s
past is found in the present of other East and Southeast Asian countries, as
the director of an influential Japanese music-ranking magazine commented:
‘‘The Japanese know-how of producing pop idols is applicable to other
Asian countries, as the present situation in Asia looks like that of Japan about
sixteen or seventeen years ago’’ (Aidoru sangyō nimo kūdōka no nami?
1994). That is to say, there is a certain degree of economic growth which
enables (particularly younger) people to consume cultural products such as
Localizing ‘‘Japan’’ 99
cassette tapes, cds, concert tickets, and magazines; there is also the develop-
ment of commercial tv, which is the major vehicle for promoting popular
songs and idols (Inamasu 1993; Ogawa 1988). The rise of economic power
in East and Southeast Asia and the rapid growth of commercialized tv
markets in the region has not only reminded the Japanese music industry of
the high times of the Japanese idol boom of the late 1970s and early 1980s,
but has also pushed the industry to apply the well-worn techniques of
manufacturing pop idols in other Asian markets.
The value of idols does not necessarily lie in any distinctive singing ability.
The main feature of what is called the Japanese aidoru (idol) system is the
production of an intimacy between stars and audiences and the blurring of
the distance between professionals and amateurs, which is di√erent from the
Hollywood star system (see Inamasu 1993; Ogawa 1988; Ching 1994). This
explains why, while the medium for Hollywood stars is film, intimate pop
idols are better produced using tv as a medium. The frequent exposure of a
pop idol through commercial films and other tv programs makes him or
her appear to be like someone living next door or studying in the same
classroom. Once again, the film Sotsugyō Ryokō illustrates this method of
finding and developing a pop star. The protagonist achieves fame through
an audition and through subsequent frequent appearances on tv programs
and commercials, which gives audiences the feeling that anyone in Asia can
be tomorrow’s star. In the 1970s and 1980s a televised star-search audition
became the basis for the development of the Japanese pop idol system—the
process by which media industries manufactured pop idols.
In the early 1990s Japanese media industries adapted the strategy for the
booming East and Southeast Asian markets. A Japanese tv station, Fuji tv,
began producing a talent-quest program in 1992 jointly with Singapore,
Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan, and South Korea.π The title of the program,
Asia Bagus!, means ‘‘Asia is terrific!’’ in Malay/Indonesian. The program
has three presenters, one Japanese woman and two Singaporean men. All
presenters speak English and in addition each speaks, respectively, Japanese,
Malay/Indonesian, and Mandarin Chinese. This program has been broad-
cast almost simultaneously in five countries since April 1992; in Singapore
on tcs –5, in Malaysia on tv3 (since 1997 on ntv –9), in Indonesia on tvri
(since 1996 on rcti), and since 1994 in Taiwan, on ttv (since 1996 on
tvbs). While the Japanese original was scheduled at midnight in Japan,
most of the other countries broadcast Asia Bagus! in prime time—in Sin-
gapore and Malaysia, for example, it was broadcast at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday
100 Recentering globalization
night, which is a significant time for tv programming—and it constantly
gets high ratings in those countries (Nihon no bangumi 1994); the rating in
Malaysia, for example, has been as high as 70 percent of total viewers in this
time slot (Chiki wo musubu kakenhashi 1994). Although Asia Bagus! was
directed and produced mainly by Japanese sta√, its production was done in
close cooperation with other Asian tv stations. It was filmed in Singapore,
in order to make the program more ‘‘Asian.’’ My field research in Singapore
suggests that about half of the studio audiences did not associate Asia Bagus!
with Japanese production. Most responded that the attractiveness of the
program had much to do with its ‘‘Asian’’ flavor, which cannot be limited to
the influence of a single country.
The program had obviously borrowed its concept from a Japanese popular
star-search program from the 1970s, Sutā Tanjō (A star is born). The distinc-
tive feature of the earlier program lay in the fact that it was not merely an
amateur singing contest. Recording companies and talent agencies were
closely involved in the program. The same is true with Asia Bagus! Each
week, four amateur singers from among five countries compete with one
another, and the winner is guaranteed to make a professional debut and a
recording contract with Pony Canyon, a company that belongs to the same
media conglomerate group as Fuji TV, the producer of Asia Bagus! Pony
Canyon has established branches in Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore, and
Kuala Lumpur. Unlike the global corporation Sony, Pony Canyon set out to
become an Asian industry operator in order to activate intraregional flows in
Asia (Ongaku sangyō wa Ajia mejā wo mezasu 1992). Pony Canyon’s Asian
market strategy has benefited from the popularity of Asia Bagus! The pro-
gram introduced a trans-Asian audition system in East and Southeast Asian
countries where to that point there had been no established system of
opportunity for young people whose dreams were to become a pop singer
(Kanemitsu 1993).
Likewise, Japanese recording companies and talent agencies actively in-
vested in the potential of Asian markets by avidly seeking pan-Asian pop
stars through organizing auditions in the early 1990s. Sony and Sony Music
Entertainment implemented a series of music auditions called the ‘‘Voice of
Asia’’ in eight Southeast Asian countries, for example, in the hopes of
finding a new pan-Asian pop star in 1991. About four thousand groups and
singers competed and the winner was a female Filipino singer, Maribeth
(Kyūseichō Ajia nerau ongaku sangyō 1994). It was the huge size of the
Chinese population in Asia that most enticed Japanese media industries in
Localizing ‘‘Japan’’ 101
its search for pan-Asian pop idols. A Japanese producer stressed in my inter-
view in 1994 that ‘‘while the Japanese market consists of a Japanese-speaking
tribe of merely 120 million people; we can sell Chinese popular songs to a
global Chinese population of 1.5 billion’’ (see also ‘‘Eisei’’ 1995; ‘‘Mezase’’!
1993; Chūgoku māketto no neraime 1994). Lured by the potential of the
Chinese cultural market, in 1994 Sony Music Entertainment and Yoshi-
moto Entertainment, the biggest agency representing comedy artists in
Japan, also held auditions in Shanghai, with the aim of producing a pop
group to be called ‘‘Shanghai Performance Doll’’ (Utatte odoreru aidoru
shūdan 1994). The group took its name from Tokyo Performance Doll, a
popular female group in Japan. According to my interview with the director
of Epic Sony, Sony wanted to exploit the up-tempo dance music of Tokyo
Performance Doll by exporting the group’s style, in the guise of Shanghai
Performance Doll, to China and other Asian countries; for their part, Yo-
shimoto aimed to produce a variety tv show featuring the new group
(Ongaku to owarai 1994; Warai no Yoshimoto 1995). Japanese talent agen-
cies have also actively tried to find and develop Chinese pop stars. One of
the biggest agencies in Japan, HoriPro Entertainment Group, established
branches in Hong Kong and Beijing in 1993. Although it also organized
an audition in Vietnam in August 1995, HoriPro’s main target is the
Mandarin-speaking market. In 1993 HoriPro held auditions all over China
to find Chinese pop stars, and the final competition was broadcast by star
tv. Five winners were selected from more than 400,000 contestants and
made their debuts in 1994. Another big talent agency, Amuse, held audi-
tions in Shanghai in 1993. Their goal, similar to HoriPro’s, is to produce a
Chinese pop star, using Japanese capital, management know-how, and mar-
keting strategies, who can be sold in the potentially huge Chinese market in
Asia (see Chūgoku tairiku de yūbō tarento 1993).
Music is an attractive export to the Japanese industry, not only because of
its low cultural discount, but also because of the sale of associated consumer
commodities such as cds and cd players. The target market encompasses
those countries in East and Southeast Asia whose economic growth has
enabled their populations to enjoy the consumption of such cultural prod-
ucts, both hardware and software. These countries include China, South
Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Malay-
sia, and Indonesia. Moreover, in order to participate in auditions, people
practice by themselves and repeatedly listen to their own favorite songs to
become a star, as well as being fans and consumers. In this way, consumer
102 Recentering globalization
technologies such as karaoke, the Sony Walkman, and cds find new sources
of revenue. Pioneer, a Japanese producer of audiovisual equipment, had held
amateur karaoke contests in seven Asian countries since 1991 in order to
promote sales for laser-disc players and discs. In 1993 more than 10,000
people joined the contest and Pioneer shipped 600,000 laser-disc players to
the East and Southeast Asian region, more than double the number that
were shipped in 1992 (Kyūseichō Ajia nerau ongaku sangyō 1994).
Japanese media industries assume that Asian audiences are willing con-
sumers, just as the Japanese people have been since the late 1950s. With the
development and di√usion of tv in Japan, the American middle-class way
of life, as represented in some American drama serials, has had a tremendous
influence upon the Japanese people. It is a life abounding in electrical
appliances. The Japanese electronics industry has subtly exploited the desires
of the people by using the catchphrase, ‘‘the three treasures,’’ which associ-
ates the acquisition of electrical appliances with a happy middle-class life-
style (see, e.g., Kelly 1993; Ivy 1993). In the late 1950s the three treasures
were the ‘‘three S’s’’—senpūki, sentakuki, and suihanki (the electric fan, the
washing machine, and the electric rice cooker); in the 1960s, the ‘‘three C’s’’
were a car, a cooler (air conditioner), and a color television. The strategy of
the audition-based star system, combined with consumer technologies, was
also the vehicle for promoting consumerism in Japan, especially in the 1970s
and early 1980s. In the 1990s the same strategy has been deployed in the
Asian market. The industry tries to exploit and produce desire among the
people to be members of the middle class in a modern capitalist society.
Thus, Japanese capital and transnational manufacturing companies have
supported Japanese media e√orts with the aim of marketing consumer com-
modities in Asian. According to a 1995 survey of the most well-known
companies and product names in China, Japanese companies occupy six of
the top ten positions, as follows: Honda, no. 10; Suzuki, no. 9; Marlboro,
no. 8; Mickey Mouse, no. 7; Toyota, no. 6; Tchingtao, no. 5; Toshiba, no. 4;
Panasonic, no. 3; Coca-Cola, no. 2; and Hitachi, no. 1 (Nihon burando
1995). These companies all look for an ‘‘image character’’ to sell their
products in the local markets in Asia. Thus, Sony pushed Asian singers in
those markets in order to promote sales not only of cds but also of cd
players. The Filipina singer, Maribeth, is a case in point. Maribeth’s first
album sold more than 350,000 cds and cassette tapes in Indonesia in just
four months, which is close to Michael Jackson’s best-selling record of
400,000 cassettes and cds sold for Alone Against the World (Kyūseichō Ajia
Localizing ‘‘Japan’’ 103
nerau ongaku sangyō 1994). The main reason for Maribeth’s success in
Indonesia was the use of her hit song in a tv advertisement for Sony cd
players. Maribeth’s single was titled ‘‘Denpasar Moon.’’ Sony created an
advertisement for a cd player that featured Maribeth singing the song in
Bali, which contributed to sales of both cd players and cds (Ichikawa 1995,
336). According to what a director of Sony Music Japan told me in 1994,
Maribeth’s next song would be a duet, and Sony planned to promote the
song along with its karaoke machines which have a dueting facility. This is a
common strategy in Japan, called a ‘‘tie-up,’’ and the strategy has obviously
worked well—in the case of Maribeth, in Indonesia. Likewise, Panasonic
has changed their ‘‘image girl’’ for the Asian market, from a Japanese idol
who is quite popular in Taiwan and China, to a Chinese singer, the winner
of the audition held by HoriPro Entertainment Group in Beijing in 1995
(Eisei 1995). Yaohan, a big retail chain store in Asia, used Shanghai Perfor-
mance Doll to disseminate Yaohan’s good image when it introduced its
stores in Shanghai (Ongaku to owarai 1994). Indeed, the export of Japanese
popular culture to other parts of Asia is interlinked with that of Japanese
consumer commodities and department stores (Igarashi et al. 1995).
It is in this Japanese capitalist exploitation of ‘‘the new rich’’ in Asia
(Robinson and Goodman 1996) that the featuring of local pop stars for
diverse local markets was supposed to work better than the direct export of
Japanese musicians. In order for the Japanese music industry to profit from
multimedia strategies, these pop icons need not necessarily be ‘‘indigenous,’’
strictly speaking. The Filipino singer Maribeth, for example, is popular in
Indonesia, where she evokes the common experiences and dreams of Indo-
nesians, dreams of an a∆uent, commodity-saturated lifestyle.∫ The cloth-
ing, hairstyles, and attitudes of highly ‘‘Westernized’’ Asian celebrities are
much more stimulating to Asian viewers than those of American stars. It is
much easier and more ‘‘realistic’’ for them to identify with Asian stars. One
producer of Asia Bagus! told me that one of the most important things Japan
does in producing the program is the use of a first-rate Japanese makeup
artist and fashion stylist to make an ordinary person into a star on the tv
screen.
It can be argued that Japanese media industries do not try to o√er, much
less impose, ‘‘authentically Japanese’’ concepts or pop stars through tv.
Likewise, neither are Asian pop stars (including Japanese stars) presented as
representative of ‘‘traditional national cultures’’ or as ‘‘authentically Asian.’’

104 Recentering globalization

Panasonic Electronics product pamphlet
for Asian markets featuring a Chinese
‘‘image girl.’’

Rather, they represent a variety of ‘‘Asiannesses’’ that intensely indigenizes

‘‘Westernness’’ or ‘‘Americanness.’’ The Japanese music industry attempts to
produce Asian pop idols who are skillful at ‘‘domesticating the West’’ in
Asia.Ω Each singer from di√erent locales appropriates Western culture in his
or her own way, to the extent that hierarchical relationships cannot be
discerned between the original and the indigenized, at least not by Asian
audiences. What Asian pop idols embody is neither ‘‘American’’ nor ‘‘tradi-
tional Asian,’’ but something new and hybridized. People no longer con-
sume ‘‘the West’’ or a ‘‘Westernized Asia’’ but an ‘‘indigenized (Asianized)
West’’; they are fascinated neither with ‘‘originality’’ nor with ‘‘tradition,’’
but are actively constructing their own images and meanings at the receiv-
ing end. The specificities, or ‘‘authenticity,’’ if you like, of local cultures are

Localizing ‘‘Japan’’ 105

to be found ‘‘a posteriori not a priori, according to local consequences not
local origins’’ (Miller 1992, 181).
Yet the active construction of meanings takes place under the system of
global capitalism in which Japan has a major role. The flow of cultural
products and of profits is unquestionably one-sided and asymmetrical. Peo-
ple’s freedom of negotiation at the receiving end of the global cultural flow
coexists with the unambiguously centralized control of the production and
distribution system. No matter how production processes are localized, they
are financially at the mercy of giant corporations. It is this contradiction
between the privatized negotiation of meanings and the centralization of
production and distribution which not only characterizes but also reinforces
the strategy of ‘‘global localization.’’ In other words, the strength of ‘‘global
localization’’ lies in the simultaneous mustering of ‘‘local consequences’’ and
global structural constraint, which are closely interconnected and inter-
penetrated. While most people do not personally feel the global forces that
structure their everyday lives, these forces are nonetheless structurally and
analytically real.
It is also naive to generalize about urban middle-class culture in Asia, as
the term still excludes too many peoples and regions across Asia. This point
has been particularly highlighted as the recent economic crisis in Asia has
deprived many people of the material base for middle-class status. The
danger, as Sreberny-Mohammadi (1991) argues, is that ‘‘global players’’ are
still confined to ‘‘the a∆uent few’’ and the local tends to be equated with the
national, which neglects various unprofitable ‘‘locals’’ based upon class,
gender, and ethnic inequalities within each nation. In marketing consumer
culture, Japanese media industries imagine a particular kind of Asian au-
dience without considering any sublocal specificity and how actual people
live their everyday lives in their locales. This is not to say that Japanese media
industries fails to recognize the existence of multiple social and cultural
di√erences across the region. Asia Bagus! encountered many problems in the
production process, caused by such irreducible cultural di√erences among
participating nations as fashion, religion, language, and the frequent changes
of broadcasters and participating countries.∞≠ The Japanese producer of Asia
Bagus! clearly recognized the irreducible diversity of Asian cultural markets
(Kanemitsu 1993). The point is, however, that while the localization strat-
egy is meant to be attentive, from a marketing point of view, to regional and
national di√erences in East and Southeast Asia, ‘‘Asia’’ is nevertheless recon-
structed by the Japanese media industries, which are enchanted with the
106 Recentering globalization
idea of the Japanese orchestration of a pan-Asian entertainment project as a
bounded capitalist space of ardent consumer aspiration for indigenizing
Western modern culture. In this space, Japan does not simply share the
aspiration with other Asian nations, but it is also qualified to guide them in
how to develop local forms of vernacular consumer and popular culture.

The limits of glocalization

Because of economic di≈culties encountered by the Japanese media indus-

tries, however, Japanese ventures for cultivating pan-Asian pop idols have
only been, at best, partially successful. In entering Asian markets with these
localizing strategies, Japanese recording companies and talent agencies did
not expect immediate returns on their investment in the Asian entertain-
ment business, but they gambled on the potential of flourishing Asian, and
particularly Chinese, markets (Eisei 1995; Wasei poppusu wa Ajia wo
mezasu 1994).∞∞ In spite of their original intentions, many Japanese music
companies could not continue to bear their accumulating losses, and so they
retreated from their projects to find local pop idols in Asia. When I returned
to Tokyo in January 1997, to meet media industry people whom I had
interviewed in October 1994, their earlier passionate and optimistic com-
ments about localizing projects in Asian markets had been replaced by more
sober and exhausted voices. The prolonged economic recession in Japan
and other Asian countries had made it di≈cult for Japanese media industries
to sustain their low profits in Asian markets in comparison with the rich
domestic market. A manager at Dentsū who had promoted the concept
trade of Japanese tv variety shows had been transferred to a di√erent sec-
tion. He told me that he still saw possibilities in the idea of concept trade,
but that Dentsū could not currently sustain his endeavor. Beyond advertis-
ing agencies, the economic crisis in Japan and Asia had also cast a dark
shadow on the activities of Japanese media industries. Pony Canyon had
actually retreated from the Asian markets in late 1997. After its radio station
(an a≈liate) was listed on the Japanese stock market, most of its o≈ces in
Asian cities, except those in Malaysia and Hong Kong, had been closed and
liquidated. Yaohan, which had attempted to use Shanghai Performance
Doll for its marketing campaign, also went bankrupt in 1996.
The despondency in the media industries also has much to do with the
more general limitations of localization strategies that have come to light
through actual operations in Asian markets. A music producer for HoriPro
Localizing ‘‘Japan’’ 107
Entertainment Group told me that there was gap between ideals and reality.
In many cases, the di√erent media system in China and strict control of the
media by the Chinese government presented di≈cult obstacles for the Japa-
nese media industries. The producer pointed out, for example, that in China,
unlike Japan, a song is not necessarily guaranteed widespread popularity if it
is chosen to be the theme song for a tv commercial or a tv program. The
most powerful medium for the promotion of popular music in China accord-
ing to him, is fm radio, and the way in which deejays broadcast a song is a key
to its success. However, the Chinese government has imposed a cultural
policy that gives top priority in airplay to songs composed and recorded
by Chinese performers. Second priority is given to songs that originate
in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Other, internationally ‘‘corrupted’’ songs, ei-
ther composed or performed by non-Chinese, face di≈culties in reaching
an audience. The situation is much worse in Vietnam, where HoriPro
Entertainment Group also organized an audition in 1995. The Vietnam-
ese government allows foreign capital to establish joint companies in Viet-
nam. However, the government is quite nervous about the prospects of a
Western-style entertainment industry, which would have a ‘‘bad’’ cultural
influence on the populace. HoriPro Entertainment Group could not obtain
permission from the Vietnamese government to establish an entertainment
company. Without a local o≈ce, HoriPro could not promote their music in
Vietnam. As a Chinese sta√ member of HoriPro’s International Department
told me in January 1997: ‘‘I think the Asia boom is cooling down. Each new
album accumulates not profit but deficit. Maybe we are moving from ‘Let’s
do something in Asia’ to a sober confrontation with the reality.’’
A director of Epic Sony also lamented the di≈culties of working with the
Chinese media system. Shanghai Performance Doll made its debut in 1996
both in China and in Japan. The group quickly sold 80,000 copies of its
cassette tape recordings in China. But the Chinese publisher of the tape
refused to repress additional copies. No matter how much Sony pushed the
Chinese publisher to repress the album, according to the Sony director, the
company was reluctant to follow through, insisting that they were following
the Chinese way of business. In 1994, the director told me passionately, he
had wanted to produce many versions of Performance Doll in various Asian
countries, but two years later he seemed to have recognized the di≈culties
of doing business in China, and he had lost interest in exporting the Japanese
system to other Asian countries as well. By February 1997, his thinking had
changed. He now told me that the ‘‘Japanese music industry should not
108 Recentering globalization
impose a Japanese way on other Asian markets’’ and that ‘‘we should not
attempt to forcibly develop local music industries.’’ His comments might
sound ethical, but they were derived from his unsuccessful try to break into
the Chinese market.
Another related issue is the way that Japanese media industries do business
in foreign countries. In my research, I often heard that Japanese companies
imposed their own way of doing business without considering local di√er-
ences in terms of business culture and market structures. The Chinese sta√
who worked for HoriPro Entertainment Group related in an interview that
the frequent conflicts between the Japanese and the local (Chinese) sta√
over promotional strategies and the selection of songs for cds were al-
ways resolved at the company’s Japanese headquarters and that this had led
the local Chinese to distrust the headquarters group. A Singaporean music
producer also complained that Japanese music companies were too vigorous
in imposing their thinking, leaving few decisions to the local sta√, even
though the Japanese did not fully understand the local market. This sounds
like a contradiction when one considers the way that Japanese companies
are celebrated for their glocalization strategies. Japanese media tend to
stress that they hire local sta√ and leave everything to them (see Akurosu
Henshūshitsu 1995, 100–19), but there is a significant gap between what
they say and what they do. The structure remains highly centralized and
final decisions tend to be made in Tokyo.
The then managing director of the Taiwan o≈ce of a Japanese recording
company described in an interview with me in 1997 the di≈culty he had
encountered in trying to convince the Tokyo o≈ce of the necessity of
spending money on publicity to sell cds in the Taiwanese market: ‘‘Japanese
companies naively assume that Japanese know-how is completely transfer-
able to other Asian markets, but they do not understand how media en-
vironments vary and systems work di√erently. In Taiwan, tv is a medium
that just sells spot commercial time, and recording companies have to pay
for using it, even when the record is the theme song from a tv drama. This
is common practice throughout the world, as far as I know, but [the head
o≈ce] does not realize this.’’ These comments show some of the impedi-
ments the Japanese music industry faced in exporting Japanese know-how
to Asian markets.∞≤ The Japanese media naively assumed that they could
localize Japanese experiences by themselves, but in fact they either knew
too little about the specificity of the local market or they left the local
business decisions totally in the hands of Japanese management sta√.
Localizing ‘‘Japan’’ 109
 Japanese media industries have attempted to become translators of ‘‘the
West’’ for ‘‘Asia.’’ A Japanese cultural producer stressed in an interview with
me in 1996 that the strength of the Japanese media industries vis-à-vis the
Asian industries are their fifty years of experience and the accumulated
know-how of its ‘‘American education,’’ a view which is widely shared by
other cultural producers, as discussed earlier. He, like others, seems to be-
lieve that Japan is able to perform such a cultural translation for other Asian
nations because it is the most successfully Westernized non-Western coun-
try in the world. The confidence of the Japanese media industries in their
own superiority at indigenizing the West is, as a Chinese sta√ member of a
Japanese talent agency told me, not only perceived as arrogance by local sta√
but also often deters Japanese media industries from appreciating di√erent
ways of negotiating Western cultural influences in other parts of Asia.
This attitude was well discerned by a Japanese director of the Singapore
branch o≈ce of a Japanese advertising company. In my interview with him,
he deplored the fact that Singapore did not have a sophisticated advertising
culture, that advertising in Singapore too straightforwardly promotes com-
modities in terms of competitive price and quality, to e√ectively foster a
Japanese-style consumer culture (mono bunka). This perception of the cul-
tural role of advertising companies is based upon his own experiences in
Japan. For example, he was involved in promoting an advertisement for a
Japanese department store in the 1980s. The advertisement featured an
image of Woody Allen with a depressed expression, over which was super-
imposed the Japanese phrase ‘‘Oishii seikatsu’’ (literally, ‘‘Delicious life’’).
This ironical and paradoxical appropriation of an American cultural icon for
the Japanese cultural scene was more than a straightforward advertising
message (Wark 1991). What the Japanese advertising manager wanted to
export to Singapore was a highly image-oriented advertising culture, which
he believed would be more culturally significant: ‘‘Singapore so easily and
directly imports things from outside. They never try to indigenize it in a
Singaporean way. This is because there are no cultural producers who can
work as cultural filters that indigenize the foreign to the local.’’
He wanted to be such a cultural filter for Singapore, but in vain. As a
result, he tended to denigrate Singapore’s consumer culture as backward
compared with that of Japan and Western countries. Singapore’s alleged
incapacity for absorbing foreign influences through ‘‘local’’ filters was not
the issue, but rather the Japanese inability to recognize a di√erent mode of
negotiating Western cultural influences. The specificity of the Singaporean
110 Recentering globalization
situation is elucidated by Wee (1997, 44), who argues concerning the spread
of Japanese popular and consumer culture in Singapore that ‘‘it would ap-
pear that people seem to feel that there is no need for a Japanese mediation
between them and the images/representations of the West. . . . With re-
gard to Japanese products, why consume what could be construed as a
second-hand modernity?’’ For many Singaporeans, the direct consumption
of Western popular culture might be experienced as much more exciting
and desirable.
These cases propel us to reconsider the emphasis placed by Japanese media
industries on their sophisticated capacity for indigenizing ‘‘America’’ as
symptomatic of a growing disquiet generated by the globalization of indige-
nized modernities. Behind the confidence of Japanese music producers in
their know-how concerning indigenizing the West, I would argue, there is
also an anxiety that ‘‘the Japanese system is too self-contained to extend its
power overseas’’ (as the Japanese manager of the Taipei o≈ce of a recording
company put it in an interview with me). As transnational cultural flows and
cultural indigenization are ever more intensifying and accelerating in the
world, the Japanese claim to an unmatched Japanese experience in the
formation of non-Western indigenized modernity has been dismantled.
And what is more disturbing is the fact that other Asian countries, par-
ticularly the Chinese, are now bypassing Japan and are now indigenizing the
West directly and possibly more subtly.
Some Japanese media producers clearly recognize this dark picture and
share with other economic sectors a pessimistic view of the country’s stand-
ing vis-à-vis the rise of other Asian economic powers. It seems that the
world has shifted, from Japan-bashing, which loomed large in trading be-
tween Japan and the United States in the late 1980s, to Japan-passing, and
now to Japan-nothing (E. Saitō 1997; McCormack 1998).∞≥ Although the
Japanese director of the advertising agency in Singapore whom I inter-
viewed saw Singapore’s direct import of the West as somewhat unsophisti-
cated, some cultural producers have increasingly come to realize that in the
1990s other Asian countries are more eagerly and creatively indigenizing
Western popular culture. The producer of Asia Bagus! emphasized this point
in an interview with me when he suggested that the direct consumption of
popular cultures all over the world, and particularly those of the West,
makes the pop culture scene in other Asian countries more creative and
exciting than it is in Japan.
Another cultural producer elaborated on this point: ‘‘Japanese media in-
Localizing ‘‘Japan’’ 111
dustries have a misconception that Japan is more advanced than any other
Asian country in terms of popular cultural production, but what is happen-
ing is that other Asian countries are also rapidly absorbing American cul-
ture in their own ways. I think an Americanization of Asia cannot be
avoided. Japan has to be involved in this process in order not to be left out
of the prosperous Asian markets. I would propose the acronym ‘USA’ to
stand for the United States of Asia. Like the United States of America where
many di√erent cultures are fused, our USA should fuse di√erent cultures so
something new emerges in Asia.’’ He was stressing that Japan must be fused
with other parts of Asia, particularly with the Greater China cultural bloc.
The speaker’s production house, Amuse, has been the most active in pro-
moting the coproduction of films in East Asia. In 1995, for example, it
coproduced with Shanghai tv twenty-five one-hour episodes of a drama
series, Shanghai People in Tokyo. The drama concerns the lives of overseas
students from Shanghai in Tokyo.∞∂ Amuse is also very active in copro-
ducing films with Hong Kong production houses. Since 1994, it has co-
produced three films, Nankin no Kirisuto, Hong Kong Daiyasōkai, and Kitchen
(Higashi Ajia konketsu eiga 1997). In 1997 Amuse established a joint pro-
duction company with Golden Harvest Hong Kong to produce a string of
love stories (Amyūzu 1997) and also set up a branch in Seoul soon after the
South Korean government decided in late 1998 to phase out restrictions on
importing Japanese popular culture.
If Amuse sustains an accumulating loss in its ventures in Asian markets,∞∑
this is because, as the manager of Amuse suspects, it is the only way for Japan
not to be left out of transnational popular culture markets in the Chinese
cultural bloc (see also Mizukoshi and Baeg 1993). The company is strug-
gling with the question of how to be involved in the rise of cultural markets
in the Chinese cultural sphere before it is too late, before the deconstructive
forces of cultural globalization render Japan’s know-how not simply irrele-
vant and unappreciated by other Asian nations, but also completely isolate
Japan from the increasingly Chinese-dominated market in East and South-
east Asia.

‘‘Real time’’ local promotion of Japanese popular culture

Another consideration in the analysis of Japanese localization strategies in

Asian markets is that they are deployed mainly in relatively immature mar-
kets, such as China, and not in mature markets like Taiwan and Hong Kong,
112 Recentering globalization
where Japanese popular culture has long had an influence (see, e.g., Morieda
1988; Shinozaki 1988; Ching 1994). The producer of Asia Bagus! has made
it clear that Hong Kong has not been included in the program because its
market and media are too mature to penetrate (Kanemitsu 1993). Such
countries have imitated and indigenized American popular culture, as well
as the Japanese idol system, on their own accord and there is not much need
for Japanese media industries to teach them the techniques of cultural indig-
enization in the 1990s.
The Taiwanese music industry conscientiously copied the Japanese idol
system during the 1980s, particularly in terms of the performers’ appear-
ance, clothing, and music. Imitating the Japanese model was an easy and safe
way to for the then not-so-mature Taiwanese music industry to promote its
own pop idols; producers thought that the success of the Japanese system
would guarantee their own success (see Ching 1994). However, that imita-
tion stage is over. By the early 1990s, local idols had begun to create their
own styles. The chief editor of a Taiwanese version of the Japanese idol
magazine, Up to Boy, told me in 1997 that ‘‘Taiwanese idols used to be quite
conscious of which Japanese idols to copy, but this is no longer the case.
They are now emphasizing their own styles and are considering the inter-
national market as well. There is no time lag between Japan and Taiwan any
longer.’’ The move toward local maturity is also seen in the composition of
music hits. As mentioned earlier, Japanese popular songs had been ‘‘cov-
ered’’ extensively by Taiwanese and Hong Kong singers. Now, local com-
posers have brushed up their capabilities and the local industry has quite
consciously striven to improve its expertise. For example, Hong Kong’s
influential radio station, Commercial Radio, banned the broadcasting Japa-
nese cover songs in 1994. Seen as a protectionist measure, this decision can
also be interpreted as a reflection of the increasing confidence of the Hong
Kong music industry in its own production capacity and in the maturity of
the music market.
This is not to say that Japan no longer has any cultural influence in these
areas, however. On the contrary, it is precisely in such mature East Asian
markets that Japanese popular music and tv programs are most keenly
imported and consumed. An emerging trend since the mid-1990s is that
while the export of the Japanese idol system has proved to be sporadic, the
dissemination of Japanese popular music has become more constant and
synchronous (Honkon, Taiwan, Nihon wa poppu kyōeiken 1997; Ajia mo
watashi no ikiru michi! 1997). Although there are no reliable figures avail-
Localizing ‘‘Japan’’ 113
able, according to executives in the Taiwanese recording companies, in 1997
Japanese popular music was estimated to occupy only a 2–4 percent share of
the Taiwanese market in terms of cds sold (the estimates for China were
75–80 percent of the market, and for the international market, 15–20 per-
cent). However, Japanese popular music has been gradually increasing its
presence in Taiwan throughout the 1990s. According to the International
Federation of Phonogram and Videogram Producers (ifpi), for the week
25–31 March 1997, five Japanese songs were in the top-10 for single-cd
sales—two songs by the Japanese artist Amuro Namie (one of which held
the No. 1 slot), two songs by the group Globe, and one song by Dreams
Come True. This is an astonishing phenomenon, even if we consider that
Taiwanese and Hong Kong artists generally do not issue single-cds and thus
Japanese pop music single-cds do not compete with the most popular local
(Taiwan and Hong Kong) pop music there.
In a feature article in the monthly popular magazine Bart, the ‘‘real time’’
popularity of Japanese pop songs in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore
was described as ‘‘unassuming’’ (shizentai ), as distinguished from the gam-
bling spirit required to penetrate booming Asian markets and the rhetoric
of cultural diplomacy that called for ‘‘bridging Japan and Asia’’ (Ajia mo
watashi no ikiru michi! 1997). Referring to the increasing cooperation and
coproduction among Asian cultural producers and musicians, the article
implied that the emerging trend toward regional synchronization of popular
culture in Asia, which has been promoted by media globalization processes,
is seen somehow as an organic development among East Asian nations.
Behind this development, however, there are massive promotional e√orts
and money invested by the media industries. ‘‘Real time’’ and similar ex-
pressions, like ‘‘simultaneity’’ or ‘‘no time lag,’’ are terms I frequently heard
in my interviews with Japanese as well as Taiwanese and Hong Kong music
producers. These terms are not simply the expression of an increasing con-
fidence in the Hong Kong and Taiwanese industries, as noted above; they
are also uttered as part of a key marketing strategy for promoting Japanese
popular music in East Asia. As the Japanese managing director of a recording
company in Taiwan told me in 1997: ‘‘Taiwan used to be a place where
Japanese idols on the wane could still sell, but nowadays they must be
popular simultaneously in Japan in order to succeed in Taiwan because the
information and images circulate in real time. The popularity of Japanese
artists/idols in Taiwan is closely influenced by daily Taiwanese media cov-

114 Recentering globalization

erage of how many records they have sold and how much fame they have
attained in Japan.’’∞∏
What should be noted here is that in this synchronous circulation of
Japanese popular music in Taiwan and Hong Kong, the ascendancy of
Japanese popular music is not a result of successful promotion by Japanese
media industries. Rather, it is the local media and the local music industry
that have been earnestly marketing Japanese products. As I will elaborate for
Japanese tv programs in the next chapter, along with political and eco-
nomic liberalization, the development of communication technologies and
the expansion of the entertainment market in Taiwan has been important in
facilitating the influx of Japanese popular culture in Taiwan since the late
1980s. These developments have exposed the audience in Taiwan to more
information about Japanese pop icons, through newspapers, magazines,
television, and the Internet, and they have given the locals an incentive for
exploiting the commercial potential of Japanese popular music by encour-
aging them to invest a large amount of money in promoting it in Taiwan.
The disappearance of time lag thus operates in a double sense—by erasing
the developmental lag in popular music production capacity and market
development, and by facilitating the transnationalization of fame through
the instantaneous circulation of imagery and information. Both factors have
been responsible for and have generated the local promotion of Japanese
popular music in Taiwan and Hong Kong.
During the time of my field research in Taipei in 1997, two local com-
panies, Magic Stone and Sony Music Taiwan, were particularly keen to sell
Japanese artists in Taiwan. Interestingly, neither company is controlled by a
Japanese company. Magic Stone distributes Japanese popular songs through
Avex Japan, a company which has no established branches in Asian capitals
but which promotes its cds through licensing agreements. The manager of
Avex Hong Kong who was in charge of exporting their cds to Asian
markets told me that licensing allows this small independent company to
avoid the high cost of maintaining an o≈ce and employees. For Japanese
popular musicians, Japan itself is no doubt the most important market and
they cannot a√ord to sacrifice it so as to visit other, less profitable markets.
The group Chage & Aska, which has toured Asia twice, were exceptional in
this regard and were also exceptional in the extent of their popularity over-
seas. The Japanese music industry and pop musicians are hesitant to invest
huge sums of money in other Asian markets where profits may not seem

Localizing ‘‘Japan’’ 115

very likely. The result is that Japanese companies avoid investing much of
their own money, and Japanese artists do not tour frequently outside of
Japan to promote their music. One disadvantage of the system is that the
artists whom Avex wants to sell do not necessarily attract licensing partners,
and the amount of money to be spent on publicity is at the total discretion of
the licensing partner. Nevertheless, this licensing strategy has been success-
ful in Taiwan.∞π The promotional strategy taken by Magic Stone has paved
the way for the Japanese dance music of Komuro Tetsuya (the then most
popular and influential artist and producer in Japan), which has become
‘‘cool’’ in Taiwan. Taiwanese record companies usually spend a lot on pub-
licity for the new albums of local artists but relatively little for international
artists. The managing director of Magic Stone boasted to me that, for the
first time, Magic Stone had invested the same amount of money in promot-
ing Japanese artists in Taiwan as it historically had done for local artists.
A similar arrangement can be seen in Sony Music Taiwan’s promotion of
the trio Dreams Come True. It was Sony Music Taiwan, not Sony Music
Japan, which took the initiative in deciding which Japanese artists to sell in
the Taiwanese market. Sony Music Taiwan had cautiously made plans to
promote Dreams Come True in Taiwan over a two-year period and had
finally succeeded in inviting the group to Taiwan in 1996. According to the
vice-president of Sony Music Taiwan, the company spent a considerable
amount of money on promotion in Taiwan, almost ten times the average for
international artists, and the result was sales of over 200,000 copies of the
latest cd for the group, a phenomenal success for a foreign artist.
The increasing popularity of Japanese popular music in Hong Kong has
caused the Hong Kong–based star tv to more actively forge transnational
alliances with the Japanese music industry. For example, Komuro Tetsuya
made inroads into Asian markets by establishing a joint company with News
Corp.’s tk news in 1996 (Mādokku to kunde Komuro Tetsuya 1996; Sekai
tenkai senryaku Komuro Tetsuya 1997). The purpose of the new company
was not simply to promote Komuro’s music in Hong Kong, but also to
popularize the Komuro Family as performers throughout East Asia. The
strength of tk news is that it is closely connected with star tv’s music
channel, Channel [V], on which Komuro and his family now appear fre-
quently. In January 1997 Amuro Namie (she is part of the Komuro family)
was selected as Channel [V]’s ‘‘artist of the month,’’ the first time that
designation has been given to a Japanese artist. Her single went to number-
one on the channel’s Asian Top-20.
116 Recentering globalization
 In May 1997 the Komuro Family’s two scheduled concerts in Taipei
surprisingly attracted more media attention than did global pop star Whit-
ney Houston, who happened to be giving a concert two days before the
Komuro Family and who was staying at the same hotel. TK NEWS also
produced a star-search tv program, TK Magic, to discover new Taiwanese
artists; the result was that a thirteen-year-old Taiwanese female singer called
Ring made her debut with the Komuro Family in April 1998. This sounds
like the familiar strategy of finding a local star, but the crucial di√erence is
that Komuro is not only an artist but also a capable producer. Komuro
announced his willingness to learn from News Corp.’s localizing marketing
strategies developed for Asia (Sekai tenkai senryaku Komuro Tetsuya 1997);
however, for tk news, it was Komuro’s fame that was important, not
localizing his sound—though localizing his lyrics was considered important.
The selling point for Ring was that she was a local artist whose producer was
the best producer in Japan. As a result, Ring’s first single went to the top of
the ifpi Taiwan single-cd chart immediately after its release in 1998.
Behind this promotion of Japanese popular music there is a strong convic-
tion among industry people in Taiwan and Hong Kong concerning the
unambiguous attractiveness of Japanese popular music for East Asian au-
diences. The director of Channel [V], Je√ Murray, who was also the inter-
mediary between Komuro and News Corp., expressed that opinion to me.
According to Murray, in terms of the subtle absorption and indigenization
of a variety of Western pop styles, Japanese music production is definitely
more sophisticated than its counterpart elsewhere in Asia, and Japanese
music, though a new taste for the Taiwanese audience, is more similar to
Taiwanese pop and easier to relate to than Western pop. The recognition of
an ‘‘Asianness’’ in Japanese popular music is significant for Channel [V]’s
strategy of di√erentiating itself from MTV Asia. Murray stressed to me that
the strength of Channel [V] is that its content is more local than that of mtv
Asia: ‘‘If mtv can be compared to McDonald’s, Channel [V] is dim sum
[Chinese snack food].’’ When I asked whether Japanese popular culture and
music are also dim sum, he answered ‘‘yes.’’ However, he noted that it is not
simply one dim sum among others. As well as suggesting a primordial
cultural commonality among Asian nations, Murray predicted that ‘‘being
Japanese will be fashionable in the twenty-first century’’ (Honkon, Taiwan,
Nihon wa poppu kyōeiken 1997). This view was shared by the Taiwanese
managing director of Magic Stone, who told me: ‘‘Japan should be con-
fident of its own popular culture. . . . The 1990s are a turning point in which
Localizing ‘‘Japan’’ 117
Japanese popular culture is taking over the symbolic role of American popu-
lar culture in Asia.’’ By this he meant that Japanese popular culture is becom-
ing another object of desire for young people in Asia.
To what extent these scenarios, which locate Japan at the center of intra-
Asian cultural flows and transnational regional modernity in Asia, will come
to pass remains to be seen. Since the predictions were made by people in
managerial positions, they strongly reflect the desire and will of those man-
agers to turn their predictions into self-fulfilling prophecies. As the manag-
ing director of Magic Stone asserted during our conversation, the promo-
tion of Japanese popular music in Asian markets can only be done e√ectively
in conjunction with the marketing strategies of the local industry. In sum,
the meaning of localization for Japanese popular culture in Asian markets
has gradually shifted its emphasis from the export of Japanese know-how in
localizing Western popular culture to the synchronous promotion of Japa-
nese popular culture by local industries in Taiwan and Hong Kong, which
ardently attempt to turn the attention of audiences to the ‘‘fragrance’’ of
Japanese popular culture.

The sweet scent of Asian modernity?

It should be noted, however, that Japanese popular culture has not prevailed
in Taiwan to the extent that the local odor no longer matters. The desire to
become at once modern and di√erent is one which globalization processes
generate (Hannerz 1996, 55). It is this desire that lets the durian articulate
the ‘‘modern’’ local identity of Southeast Asia; and the glocalization strategy
of transnational corporations, including Japanese companies, increasingly
attempts to exploit this same desire by re-demarcating the boundaries of a
larger cultural/civilizational formation such as the Chinese cultural bloc,
which indiscriminately includes all people of Chinese descent in Asia. The
Japanese market is not immune to transnational media industries’ strategies
of glocalization. Yoshida Miwa, the female vocalist with the pop group
Dreams Come True, appeared on the cover of the 14 October 1996 issue of
Time Asia; the cover story was entitled ‘‘The Divas of Pop.’’ Yoshida was one
of these divas, along with Celine Dion, Gloria Estefan, Whitney Houston,
Mariah Carey, Alanis Morissette, Tina Arena, and Faye Wong. In Japan this
story was reported in major newspapers and sales for the issue almost tripled
(according to my phone interview with Time Japan). But Yoshida only
appeared on the cover of the Japanese version of Time Asia. In other Asian
118 Recentering globalization
countries, including Taiwan, the cover carried a picture of Faye Wong, a
Beijing-born Hong Kong singer. No matter how well received it is in other
parts of Asia, it will not be easy for the sweet scent of Japanese popular
culture to fully overpower the deodorant of transnational media industries,
which are the main forces for organizing cultural diversity and selling cul-
tural odor to local markets.
On the other hand, as I have shown, there is an emerging trend for the syn-
chronous interpenetration and interconnection of East Asian cultural mar-
kets that feature Japanese cultural products seen as embodying a transnational
regional modernity in East Asia. The rise of Japanese popular music in East
Asian markets indicates that media globalization is not only promoting
global homogenization and local heterogenization, but also (supra-national)
regionalization (e.g., Straubhaar 1991; Sinclair, Jacka, and Cunningham
1996b; Hawkins 1997). The development of communication technologies,
the acceleration of information flow, and the maturity of local audiovisual
markets and industries in East Asia, all of these globalizing forces have in-
creased the cooperative contact between various local industries and intensi-
fied the real-time, intraregional cultural flow within Asia, in which Japanese
popular music and tv programs are becoming alluring commodities. As Hall
(1991, 28) argues, transnational capital attempts to ‘‘rule through other local
capitals, rule alongside and in partnership with other economic and political
elites.’’ Hall’s argument is concerned with American global cultural power,
but this logic is equally applicable to the transnationalization of Japanese
popular culture. While the global promotion of Japanese animation is carried
out by American and British distribution companies such as Disney, even
intraregional coproduction in Asia cannot escape the shadow of the global
corporations. Komuro Tetsuya’s inroads into transnational markets have
been facilitated by the global media conglomerate News Corp.∞∫ Even in
concept trade, Oshin, a globally popular Japanese melodrama, has been re-
made in Indonesia by the Australian production house Beckers Group,
which exports tv programs internationally (Indonesia ban de Oshin 1997).
These examples clearly testify to the fact that the operation of Japanese media
industries and the transnational marketing of Japanese media products in
regional Asian markets cannot be conducted e√ectively without partners at
each level.∞Ω
However, we cannot explain why Japanese popular music and tv pro-
grams other than animation are well accepted in Asian countries solely in
terms of the logic of capital and marketing strategies, no matter how ef-
Localizing ‘‘Japan’’ 119
fective and powerful they are. Apart from the self-congratulatory comments
made by representatives of the Taiwanese, Hong Kong, and Japanese media
industries concerning the scent of Japanese popular culture, there is some-
thing culturally embedded in the spread of Japanese popular culture and
hence in the rise of Japanese transnational cultural power in East Asia. We
have seen that the capitalist logic of transnationalization finds a boundary—
however porous and fluctuating—to the transnational reach of Japanese
popular cultural appeal in East Asian regions. But it is also important to
direct our attention to ‘‘Japanese odor,’’ to the textual and symbolic appeal
embodied in Japanese popular culture without falling into the trap of assum-
ing that the media industries’ manipulative techniques are omnipotent or
that some preexisting cultural commonality is at work in spreading Japanese
popular culture in Asian markets.
We have seen that the image of Japan as a translator of Western popular
culture does not match the actual market situations throughout East and
Southeast Asia, yet the increasing outflow of Japanese popular culture sug-
gests that the ‘‘Japaneseness’’ with which resonates for some people in mod-
ernized Asian countries might have more to do with a distinctively Japanese
cultural modernity, something which is not simply a response to Western
modernity. The textual appeal of that popular culture is closely associated
with the lifestyles and social relationships of present-day Japan, as embodied
in living Japanese actors, not animated or digitalized characters. Unlike
traditional culture, in which the irreducible di√erence of one culture from
others tends to be shaped, contemporary popular culture, though highly
commercialized, reminds Japan and Asia alike that they share a common
temporality and a common experience of a certain regional (post)moder-
nity which American popular culture cannot represent well. If Japanese
popular culture tastes and smells like dim sum to the media industries and
consumers in Hong Kong and Taiwan—and tastes like kimchi to South
Koreans (Cute power! 1999)—it might be because it embodies a sophisti-
cated co-mingling of the ‘‘global’’ and ‘‘local’’ within an East Asian context.
It is this transnational appeal of Japanese popular culture, and the newly
produced asymmetry of cultural flows in East Asia that accompanies it, that
will be analyzed in the next chapter by looking at the reception of Japanese
tv dramas in Taiwan.

120 Recentering globalization

●
∂
Becoming culturally proximate:

Japanese TV dramas in Taiwan

In the previous chapter I argued that intraregional cultural flows and in-
dustry connections are becoming more intensive and regular, particularly
among East Asian nations whose popular cultural markets are relatively
mature. These developments have helped increase the prominence of Japa-
nese popular culture in the region. In this chapter and the next, I examine
the sorts of cultural resonances that are experienced by audiences in this
context. I explore how cultural similarity and distance are favorably but
di√erently perceived by audiences in East Asia in their consumption of
media texts from neighboring countries. This approach will elucidate how
the asymmetrical cultural flows and power relations between Japan and
other East Asian countries are articulated at the site of consumption.
This chapter discusses the reception of Japanese tv dramas (with particu-
lar attention to the popular drama series Tokyo Love Story) in Taiwan. In
examining the consumption of Japanese popular culture in East Asia, I focus
on Taiwan for two reasons. First, Taiwan has become, at least quantitatively,
the most receptive market for Japanese popular cultural products, particu-
larly tv dramas, which, unlike animation, are in most cases not exportable
to Western countries and are popular only in Asian markets. Second, the
rapid commercialization and promotion of Japanese tv programs in Taiwan
highlights the necessity to understand the popularization of Japanese tv
programs in that country within the wider dynamic context of political
liberalization, economic development and media globalization, as well as
the history of Japanese colonization. As a former colony of Japan, Taiwan
has long had to deal with a Japanese cultural presence. However, it was after
the Taiwanese government o≈cially abandoned its ban on the broadcasting
of Japanese language programs in late 1993 that Japanese products gained
wide favor among young people. As well, it should be noted that Japanese
cultural exports to Taiwan dramatically increased in tandem with the rise of
Taiwan’s cable tv industry. This development was the result of the country’s
strong economic growth and the forces of market liberalization that had
taken place since the late 1980s, factors that prompted the influx of foreign
media products into Taiwan.
What the Taiwanese case study illustrates is that by configuring the analy-
sis of audience reception of Japanese tv drama in this wider context, we
can better grasp the intertwined relation between the cultural distance per-
ceived by other Asian audiences and the rise of Japanese transnational cul-
tural power in the looming intraregional cultural flow in East Asia in the
1990s. It is often observed that the spread of Japanese popular culture in Asia
owes much to the ‘‘cultural proximity’’ (Straubhaar 1991) between Japan
and other Asian nations. The notion of ‘‘cultural proximity’’ tends to con-
note the seemingly natural—and thus, power neutral—recognition by au-
diences of primordial cultural similarities. This chapter challenges what is an
essentialist view of such similarities and addresses the questions of how and
under what conditions the ‘‘cultural proximity’’ of Japanese tv dramas is
experienced and perceived by Taiwanese audiences. The emphasis is on
how multilayered forces and factors intersected in the 1990s through the
popularity of Japanese tv dramas to articulate audiences’ expression of
‘‘cultural proximity.’’ By examining ‘‘cultural proximity’’ in a new light, as a
dynamic process, I argue that in the case of Taiwanese consumption of
Japanese tv dramas, such an apprehension is due in part to an emerging
sense among the Taiwanese of coevalness (Fabian 1983) with the Japanese,
that is, the feeling that Taiwanese share a modern temporality with Japan.
And it is through the production of these understandings of ‘‘cultural prox-
imity’’ and coevalness, I suggest, that Japanese transnational cultural power
manifests itself in Taiwan.

Waning affection for ‘‘Japan’’?

In the 1990s, in spite of the pessimism of Japanese media industries, the

spread of Japanese popular culture among Asian audiences became ever
more conspicuous and arresting. In a feature article in Asiaweek, for example
it was reported that Japanese tv programs, particularly animation, were
more appealing than their American counterparts in Asia (Asia says Japan is
top of the pops 1996). Similarly, Asian Business Review reported on the
increasing Japanese export of tv programs to Asian markets, stating that
‘‘Japan’s entertainment exports to Asia are on a roll’’ (Satellite TV sees gold
122 Recentering globalization
in local content 1996). This phenomenon has been described dramatically
by a Taiwanese-American scholar, Leo Ching (1994, 199), who notes that
‘‘throughout Asia, Japan is in vogue.’’
The steady rise of Japanese tv programs in Asian markets has finally
encouraged the normally cautious Japanese tv industry to invest in the
transnational broadcast of such programs. Because of the positive reception
of Japanese tv programs, particularly dramas, in Taiwan and Hong Kong,
the Japanese tv industry has been convinced that they do have the potential
to sell in Asia. Hence, their interest in exporting their programs directly to
Asian markets. The manager of Dentsū, a company which promotes the
Japanese quiz-show format in Asia (see chapter 3), alluded to this new
approach in a personal interview in October 1997: ‘‘What has been made
clear is that Japanese tv programs have gained a certain transnational ap-
peal. The next step is to produce programs that target international, par-
ticularly, Asian markets.’’ The Japanese tv industry began setting up a roy-
alty structure for the second and third use of programs. In 1997, a further
step was taken when Sumitomo Trading Co., Ltd. launched the first trans-
national Japanese pay-tv channel, jet ( Japan Entertainment Television), in
partnership with tbs, a commercial tv station whose profits from selling
programs overseas are the highest in Japan. Dubbing Japanese into three
languages—English, Mandarin, and Thai—the jet channel broadcasts by
satellite link-up from Singapore to seven Asian countries (Taiwan, Hong
Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines) and is
devoted exclusively to Japanese programming—dramas, cartoons, and vari-
ety shows. In its advertising, jet declares: ‘‘People with an eye for trends
have their eyes on Japan. On its fashions, celebrities, and hit products—
anything that’s new and fun. Today, trend-conscious viewers throughout
Asia can enjoy up-to-date programs from Japan twenty-four hours a day: on
jet – tv.’’ The explicit emphasis on ‘‘Japaneseness’’ and the attractiveness of
Japanese popular culture has clearly become a key to the export strategies of
the Japanese tv industry in Asian markets.
This is not to say that the spread of Japanese popular culture in East Asia is
an entirely new trend. On the contrary, comics and animation aside, as
Ching (1994) suggests, Japanese popular culture has been influential in the
region since at least the late 1970s or early 1980s. Japanese tv program
formats have been exported and massively copied (pirated). As several Tai-
wanese tv producers told me, it is not overstating the matter to say that in
Taiwan, most variety shows are at least partly copied from popular Japanese
Becoming culturally proximate 123
programs. Japanese popular music has also been widely covered in Hong
Kong and Taiwan, and there have been frenzies for several Japanese tv
dramas and idols since the 1970s. However, the recent popularity of Japa-
nese programming in Asia rests on a much broader consumer base than
before. In the 1980s, when Japanese idols were famous in East Asia, au-
diences were limited to a minority of Japanophiles. A woman in her mid-
twenties told me in Taiwan, at that time, those who liked such artists were
somewhat marginal. In the 1990s, though, it has become common for
young Taiwanese to chat about Japanese idols and tv dramas.
At the same time, it was often observed that in the 1990s the widespread
interest in Japanese popular culture in Asia has paradoxically been accom-
panied by a waning of the region’s a√ection for ‘‘Japan.’’ It is even claimed
that the zenith of the craze for ‘‘Japan’’ in Asia occurred in the early 1980s
and that ‘‘Japan’’ is now in decline. In 1996, the Honkon Tsūshin, a Japanese-
language magazine in Hong Kong ran a feature on Hong Kong Japanophiles
from the late 1970s and 1980s, when Hong Kong was importing more
Japanese tv programs and there emerged enthusiastic fans of Japanese pop
idols there (Nihon otaku to yobitai hitobito 1996). The Japanophiles, now
in their late 30s, reported that they still enjoyed the good old Japanese
popular culture and continued to follow the careers of their old Japanese
idols. When I interviewed him, the magazine’s chief editor told me that by
the mid-1980s the boom in things Japanese had run its course. He remarked
that although the audience for Japanese popular culture in Hong Kong was
increasing, the engaged a≈nity with ‘‘Japan’’ had drastically waned. I heard
similar comments in Singapore. When I traveled there in late 1996, the chief
editor of a Singaporean tv weekly told me that he clearly remembered how
passionately Japanese pop idols were received there in the early 1980s. How-
ever, he added, while Singapore’s import of Japanese popular culture, such as
tv programs and pop music, seemed to be increasing, the craze for Japan
had faded away (replaced by one for Hong Kong in the late 1980s, and by
local, Mandarin pop culture in the 1990s).
In Taiwan, which has eagerly imported and promoted Japanese popular
culture in the 1990s, the situation is more complicated because of the his-
tory of Japanese colonial rule. The recent surge of Japanese cultural influ-
ence is inevitably discussed there in relation to that rule. In 1997 a leading
weekly news magazine in Taiwan featured an article on Japanese popular cul-
ture and introduced a new Taiwanese word, roughly translated as ‘‘(young)
people who adore things Japanese’’ (Watch out! Your children are becoming
124 Recentering globalization
Japanese 1997). While Japan was not strongly condemned for its ‘‘cultural
invasion’’ in the article, the spread of Japanese popular culture was associated
with the colonial habit of mimicking, which has percolated deeply into
Taiwanese society. The issue revealed here is how the historical legacy of
Japanese colonization has overdetermined the recent influx of Japanese pop-
ular culture. From food and housing to language, examples can easily be
found of a lingering Japanese cultural influence in Taiwan. Besides Korea,
the number of people who speak Japanese in Taiwan is by far the largest
outside Japan itself, and many Japanese words and cultural meanings have
become indigenized. Older people who were educated during the Japanese
occupation still speak fluent Japanese and enjoy Japanese-language books,
songs, and tv programs. No small number of them also regard their former
colonizers in a relatively positive light, the bitter memories of their rule
having diminished, especially when contrasted to the repressive and author-
itarian rule of the Kuomintang (kmt) government which moved from
mainland China to the island after World War II (see Liao 1996). These
conditions surely make Japanese tv programs much more accessible than in
other parts of Asia, particularly in stark contrast to South Korea.
However, those who were educated after World War II hold quite dif-
ferent views of Japan. This generational divide and the grim, violent process
of decolonization are elucidated in Wu Nianzhen’s film, Dosan: A Borrowed
Life (1994). The film deals with the nostalgia of older Taiwanese for the Jap-
anese period. In brief, the film narrates the story of a Taiwanese man who
has long harbored a dream to visit Japan. His dream can be seen as a wish on
his part to a≈rm an identity and history which were forged under Japanese
colonial rule but which he was later forced to deny or repress under the kmt
government, in conjunction with Japanese indi√erence to the aftermath of
its colonization policies. Wu, the director of the film, has recollected how,
as a student who was taught negatively about the Japanese occupation at
school, he hated his father’s longing for that period—a longing which was
betrayed by the unresponsiveness Japan displayed to Taiwan after the War
(Taiwan ga Nippon ni koi o shita 1996, 40–42).∞
This generational divide has been exacerbated by the emergence of avid
young consumers of Japanese popular culture. In May 1997 I witnessed two
incidents in Taiwan that nicely illustrate that country’s complicated rela-
tionship with Japan. The first was an anti-Japanese demonstration over the
issue of Japan’s possession of the Diaoyu Islands. The other was a rock con-
cert featuring such popular Japanese artists as Globe and Amuro Namie,
Becoming culturally proximate 125
 Cover of a special issue of The Journalist, which
featured articles on the Taiwanese youth craze
for Japanese popular culture. Reprinted with
permission.

which attracted much media attention as well as young audiences. This

juxtaposition of ‘‘anti-’’ and ‘‘pro-’’ Japanese sentiment articulates the new
generational divide (see also Pro-Japan vs. anti-Japan in Taiwan 1997). The
positive meaning ‘‘Japan’’ possesses for young Taiwanese, most of whom do
not understand Japanese language, is undoubtedly di√erent from that which
it holds for their forebears. Wu has also commented on the recent popu-
larity of Japanese culture among the younger generation in Taiwan, ‘‘My
generation and my father’s generation have a deep love-and-hate feeling
towards Japan, though in quite di√erent ways. But the younger generations
have no special a√ection for Japanese culture, as there is no di√erence be-
tween Japan, America, and Europe for them. Japan is just one option among
126 Recentering globalization
many. I think the relationship between Taiwan and Japan will be more
superficial in terms of a√ective feelings while deepened materially’’ (quoted
in Taiwan ga Nippon ni koi o shita 1996, 42). As is the case for other Asian
nations, Wu suggests that the symbolic meaning of ‘‘Japan,’’ articulated
through Japanese popular culture, is marked in Taiwan by a waning af-
fection.
These observations of the shift in the Asian reception of Japanese popular
culture, from an enthusiastic embrace to a more detached, superficial con-
sumption, are reminiscent of a general feature of the postmodern consump-
tion of global culture. Postmodern theories discuss the domination of the
sign-value of a commodity over its materiality (e.g., Lash and Urry 1994;
Featherstone 1991; Baudrillard 1981, 1983). As the production and circula-
tion of signs and images proliferate, ‘‘objects are emptied out of both of
meaning (and are postmodern) and of material content (and are thus post-
industrial)’’ (Lash and Urry 1994, 15). Of particular importance to my
discussion here is that, as discussed in chapter 1, the proliferation of signs and
images has also been accompanied by the promotion of a ‘‘peculiar form of
homogenization’’ of the world by American transnational power, since the
development of a ‘‘global mass culture’’ dominated by television and film, as
well as by the imagery and styles of mass advertising, is predominantly
‘‘American’’ (Hall 1991, 27–28). In this context, it can be argued that
Japanese popular culture is losing its symbolic idiosyncrasy, its essential ‘‘Jap-
aneseness,’’ and thus it has simply become one among many consumer
options available from di√erent parts of the world. In other words, Japa-
nese cultural products have been sucked into the maw of the American-
dominated global cultural system, which relentlessly reproduces commer-
cialized cultural signs and images for fugitive and depthless consumption
through endless pastiche and simulation ( Jameson 1983; Baudrillard 1983).
Such products are ‘‘here and now and everywhere, and for its purposes the
past [and, I would add, other cultures] only serves to o√er some decon-
textualized example or element for its cosmopolitan patchwork’’ (Smith
1990, 177).
Chō (1998), a Chinese scholar living in Japan, makes a similar point about
the consumption of Japanese popular culture in China. He notes the in-
creasing circulation of Japanese cultural commodities, as well as general
information about Japan, in Shanghai, and he argues that these events are
paradoxically accompanied by a decrease in Japanese cultural influence in
China. Recalling how passionately the Chinese consumed Japanese popular
Becoming culturally proximate 127
This two-page editorial spread from The Journalist
depicts the pros and cons of the Japanese cultural
influence in Taiwan. Pro: Youth are excited about
a Japanese pop concert. Con: A protest against
Japanese possession of the Diaoyu Islands.
Reprinted with permission.
literature, films, and tv dramas in the 1970s, he claims that in the 1990s
Japanese culture is being consumed simply as transient information and
signs by a fragmented youth audience. Although his analysis is literature-
oriented and tends to romanticize the past, when Japanese popular culture
was more seriously received and absorbed into Chinese culture, his argu-
ment hits the point about the postmodern condition, in which local au-
diences can enjoy many kinds of local and international cultural products as
fickle consumers. In the 1970s and 1980s Japanese tv programs were viewed
in the context of a scarcity of local software due to the low production
capacity of the Asian media industries. With the proliferation of satellite and
cable tv channels, as well as the development of production capabilities in
many Asian countries, Japanese tv programs are now broadcast as one way
to fill the abundant media space. In this context, they are popular in the
countries where they are seen, Chō argues, primarily because they are seen
as repositories of information about trendy fashion, interior decoration, and
hair styles, commodities that contain few marked ‘‘Japanese’’ features.

The question of ‘‘cultural proximity’’

Although it hints at a significant change in the transnational consumption of

Japanese popular culture, a ‘‘postmodern’’ perspective like Chō’s does not
su≈ciently address the issue of why Japanese culture is preferred over other
world cultures. If disa√ection with ‘‘Japan’’ has paradoxically generated a
profusion of Japanese popular culture in East Asia, this might be because it
newly provides something appealing that Asian audiences do not find in
their local culture or in American culture. The question then becomes: In
an age of global mass culture, what cultural resonances are evoked for East
Asians by Japanese popular culture? Is the ascent of Japanese popular culture
closely associated with the scent of transnational regional modernity in Asia
that Japanese popular culture articulates?
In media studies, the notion of ‘‘cultural proximity’’ has been used to
account for such regional resonances. It explains the audience preference for
products from countries with which their consumers allegedly share cul-
tural ties. Against the characterization of globalization as the spread of and
response to Western (American) popular culture, the emphasis here is on
regionalization of media and the dynamics of media export within particu-
lar geo-cultural regions (Straubhaar 1991; Sinclair, Jacka, and Cunningham
1996b). Straubhaar (1991) has argued that national and regional markets
130 Recentering globalization
have developed in the periphery despite the dominance of the United States
in the world tv program trade. By indigenizing American influences, some
non-Western countries, such as Brazil or Mexico, have developed local
industries which can produce their own programs and export them to
regional markets. Audience preference, as well as the maturity of the local
tv industries, plays a significant role in the development of local and re-
gional tv markets. In his research in Latin America, Straubhaar (1991, 56)
found that the audience’s search for ‘‘cultural proximity’’ in television pro-
grams reveals ‘‘a preference first for national material, and, when that cannot
be filled in certain genres, a tendency to look next to regional Latin Ameri-
can productions, which are relatively more culturally proximate or similar
than are those of the United States.’’ Language is the most important factor
in cultural proximity, but there are other cultural elements such as religion,
dress, music, nonverbal codes, humor, story pacing, and ethnic types.
No one would deny the empirical validity of the ‘‘cultural proximity’’
thesis. The existence of geo-linguistic and geo-cultural tv markets has been
proven, and not only in the Latin American context. Other studies (e.g.,
Sinclair, Jacka, and Cunningham 1996b; Lee 1991) have also shown that
local tv programs tend to be the most popular in any country and region.
However, precisely because of its apparent empirical validity, the notion of
cultural proximity resists further theorizing. The significance of cultural
similarity, as an influence on a tv viewer’s preferences, appears too obvious
to merit investigation. Yet, it is precisely the seeming naturalness of this idea
that deserves interrogation.
The studies of intraregional media flows suggest the significant role
played by cultural-linguistic regional centers such Brazil, Mexico, Hong
Kong, India, and Egypt in the transnational flow of film/television. Such a
grouping of cultural-linguistic regional markets, perhaps not surprisingly,
tends to correspond to the ‘‘civilizations’’ of Samuel Huntington’s clash-
of-civilization thesis (1993), even though Japanese, African, and Slavic-
Orthodox ‘‘civilizations’’ are in most cases omitted from the analysis (e.g.,
Sinclair, Jacka, and Cunningham 1996b). Nothing is intrinsically wrong
with such groupings, but if the notion of cultural proximity is used only to
explain the tendency of audiences to prefer local programs and programs
imported from countries of a similar cultural makeup, the study of its role in
the consumption of foreign media products runs the risk of representing
culture in an ahistorical and totalizing way. Such an approach tends to be
based on the assumption that there are given cultural commonalities which
Becoming culturally proximate 131
spontaneously direct an audience’s interest toward media texts from cultur-
ally similar regions, but it ignores the diverse historical contexts and internal
di√erences which exist within cultural formations.
Likewise, the prevalence of Japanese popular culture in East Asia tends to
be (easily) accounted for in terms of the presupposed salient cultural and
racial similarities (e.g., Yoshioka 1992; Ishii and Watanabe 1998; Nihon no
terebi dorama Tōnan Ajia de torendı̄ 1998). Such accounts are deployed
from various points of view. A journalist quotes a young Chinese mother on
a Japanese tv drama, for example, to evoke Japan’s close ties to Asia, hith-
erto hindered by Japan’s imperialist past: ‘‘It does not sound strange if the
Japanese speak Mandarin, because we have the same skin color. Moreover
the urban lifestyle of Tokyo, particularly fashion, is very appealing to us
[Chinese]’’ (Kumamoto 1993b, 215). As discussed in chapter 2, this kind of
view is readily absorbed into the Japanese nationalistic assertion that other
Asian nations essentially yearn for Japan while at the same time claiming the
commonality between them. However, the belief is also promoted by its
critics who, employing the same premise, reach quite di√erent conclusions.
As discussed in chapter 2, Murai (1993) dismissively accounts for the spread
of Japanese popular culture in Asia in terms of its closeness and readiness to
be copied and imitated by other Asian peoples, in comparison with Western
products. Yet, the underlying assumption of the existence of cultural and
racial similarities between Asians and Japanese as the self-evident cause of
the reception of Japanese popular culture in Asia remains uninterrogated.
As I show below, in my field research in Taipei I also discovered that most
Taiwanese viewers tend to account for the appeal of Japanese tv dramas, if
not completely, at least in part, in terms of their perceived cultural prox-
imity. This tendency is even more pronounced when the Taiwanese com-
pare such programs with their American equivalents. However, the critical
consideration of this belief shows that ‘‘cultural proximity’’ is never as self-
evident as it appears to be. Most obviously, Japan does not share with other
parts of Asia the most important factor of cultural proximity, namely, lin-
guistic commonality. Unlike most South American nations, which, at the
very least, possess a common language and history of Spanish colonization,
Asia is marked by enormous social, cultural, and historical diversity. Even
Huntington separates Japan from his grouping of Asian nations.
This is not to say that the notion of ‘‘cultural proximity’’ is entirely
fallacious and irrelevant to the analysis of the popularity of Japanese tv
dramas in Asia. Rather, I would suggest that the questioning of the obvious-
132 Recentering globalization
ness of the notion directs us to rethink the dynamics of transnational re-
gional cultural power. The appreciation of foreign media texts in terms of a
favorable cultural distance is never power-free, given that the producing
countries of such media texts are still limited to a small number of re-
gional centers. Transnational cultural power does not necessarily mean the
straightforward embodiment and recognition of one culture’s superiority
over another but can be defined as the capacity of a culture to produce
symbolic images and meanings which ‘‘appeal to the senses, emotions, and
thoughts of the self and others’’ (Lull 1995, 71; see also Thompson 1995). It
can be argued, then, that Japanese cultural power in East Asia is distin-
guished by its ability to produce media products through which Asian au-
diences are encouraged to experience cultural resonance and immediacy,
expressed in the form of ‘‘cultural proximity.’’
What I am proposing here is that by examining the notion of ‘‘cultural
proximity’’ in a wider context and as a dynamic process, we can expose the
nature and workings of Japanese transnational cultural power in the 1990s,
which is inextricably intertwined with the audience’s perception of it. For
this purpose, we can utilize Stuart Hall’s concept of ‘‘articulation’’ (1996b,
ch. 6). As developed by Ernesto Laclau, the concept was originally intended
to explain how particular ideological elements become dominant in a spe-
cific historical and social conjuncture. The concept is based upon the dual
meanings of the term articulate, which means both ‘‘to utter clearly’’ and ‘‘to
form a joint.’’ It is the latter meaning that Hall (1996b, 141) emphasizes: ‘‘An
articulation is thus the form of the connection that can make a unity of two
di√erent elements, under certain conditions. It is a linkage which is not
necessary, determined, absolute and essential for all time. You have to ask,
under what circumstances can a connection be forged or made?’’
It is the sense of historical contingency that tends to be suppressed in the
notion of cultural proximity, but taking it into account can help us under-
stand the context of the ascendancy of Japan’s intimate cultural power. The
experience of cultural similarity perceived as such by audiences through the
consumption of a particular program is not a given but depends upon
specific historical and social conditions. We should ask under which histori-
cal conjuncture does the idea of cultural similarity become associated with
the pleasure of a text. In Taiwan, this has occurred with the development of
media industries, especially cable tv, under the forces of media globaliza-
tion, which has enabled Japanese dramas to be constantly shown. These
structural factors can, in turn, be situated within a wider historical context:
Becoming culturally proximate 133
the traces of Japanese colonial rule; the democratic and liberal movements
that have grown up in Taiwan since the 1980s; the emergence of a pro-
Japanese leader in 1988; and the advance of consumer culture brought about
by the rapid economic growth of the 1980s. The last factor is of particular
relevance to this chapter, as it could be the case that the rise of Japanese
cultural exports to Taiwan is facilitated by the perception, generated by
Taiwan’s material a∆uence and the di√usion of ‘‘global mass culture,’’ of a
diminishing spatio-temporal distance between Japan and Taiwan. All these
circumstances must be considered in any attempt to make sense of how
cultural proximity is articulated in Taiwan.
We should also carefully examine the ways in which audiences identify
with di√erent texts. What is lacking in the study of cultural proximity is a
sense of the agency of the audience. Cultural proximity should not be
regarded as a predetermined attribute of the text. Such a belief reduces the
viewer’s active input in constructing the pleasure of the text. Following
Miller’s discussion of ‘‘a posteriori authenticity’’ (1992), I argue that cultural
proximity does not exist a priori but occurs a posteriori. Cultural proximity
is not something ‘‘out there.’’ It is articulated when audiences subjectively
identify it in a specific program and context. One of the problems for the
study of the regional flow of tv programs is the relative absence of audience
research. As Sinclair, Jacka, and Cunningham (1996a, 19) argue, audience
research has concentrated on the reception of American programs, and that
‘‘far more than for the USA, the success or otherwise of peripheral nations’
export is contingent on factors other than those captured by established
modes of audience study. This explains why so little audience reception re-
search has been able to be conducted on their products in international mar-
kets, and why we need instead middle range analysis to do so.’’ I agree with
Sinclair, Jacka, and Cunningham that middle-range analysis, which addresses
issues of acquisition, time-scheduling, and publicity, is important in under-
standing the global and intraregional flow of tv programs. Nevertheless, so
as not to conceive of cultural proximity in a deterministic way, I would argue
that it is also imperative to examine how and why certain programs become
popular and others do not, and what sort of pleasure, if any, audiences
experience when identifying cultural similarities in specific programs.
A familiar cultural value does not necessarily o√er pleasure in watching
programs. In some cases, audience might reject a program precisely because
of the negative appeal of their society’s cultural values. There is also a

134 Recentering globalization

possibility that the sense of cultural proximity is expressed as a result of a
positive identification with foreign media texts that represent alternative
ideas, values, and forms of life that look desirable and reachable (thus ‘‘proxi-
mate’’). Such expression might reflect audiences’ cognizance that the media
texts are from a supposedly culturally proximate country, but cannot be
regarded as a straightforward recognition of ‘‘real’’ cultural commonalities.
To attend all these complexities, we need to analyze the audience’s enuncia-
tion of cultural proximity, not by taking it at face value, but by scrutinizing
the way in which audiences in Taiwan associate the attractiveness of Japa-
nese tv dramas with the perception of cultural similarity. In sum, the recon-
figuration of Japanese cultural power, in terms of its capacity to produce
media artifacts that allegedly are culturally proximate to Asian audiences,
can only be grasped if we consider the broad context in which such media
artifacts have circulated and the textual pleasure experienced by audiences at
a specific historical time, as well as the middle-range factors that have led to
the routine consumption of them in Taiwan.

Markets conditions: Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan

What has become noticeable in the mid-1990s is that, among the many
genres of popular culture available, Japanese tv dramas have been well
received in many Asian countries. According to a 1997 communications
white paper published by the Japanese Ministry of Posts and Telecom-
munication, Asian markets in 1995 represented 47 percent of total tv pro-
gram exports; and tv dramas occupied 53 percent of exports to Asia.
The popularity of Japanese tv dramas varies from country to country.
Although some dramas such as Oshin, Tokyo Love Story, and 101st Proposal
have been hits in such Southeast Asian countries as Thailand, Indonesia, and
Singapore, Japanese tv dramas have been received most favorably in East
Asian countries such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, and (to a lesser extent) China
(on China, see Chō 1998; on Indonesia, Kurasawa 1998; see also Iwabuchi
forthcoming). While di√erences in the popularity of Japanese tv dramas
cannot be explained entirely by local tv markets, a comparative inquiry into
the structural factors that regulate circulation and promotion of these shows
in some Asian markets is in order here.
In 1996 international programs made up half of the programming on
tcs –8, the most popular Chinese channel in Singapore. Almost 50 percent

Becoming culturally proximate 135

of them were from Hong Kong, 35 percent from Taiwan, and 15 percent
from Japan. According to the programming manager of tcs –8, there had
been a strong trend toward Japanese popular culture in the early 1990s when
the dramas Tokyo Love Story and 101st Proposal first became popular. He
conceded, however, that this trend did not last long, and noted that the
reason why Japanese tv dramas have not been consistently popular in Sin-
gapore is because Japanese stars receive far less exposure in the local media
than their American counterparts. His claim was supported by the chief
editor of 8 Days, a well-known local tv magazine, who blamed the lack of
promotion of Japanese media stars for the comparatively low ratings of
Japanese tv dramas. The importance of such exposure, he argued, is dem-
onstrated by the success of the Japanese pop duo Chage & Aska, who sing
the theme song for 101st Proposal.
The programming manager of tcs –8 characterized the penetration of
Japanese tv programs in this way: ‘‘The presence of Japanese tv programs is
increasing slowly. It was very little ten years ago. But it is still not quite
visible or consistent. I think there is a potential but not enough time and
money to put energy in promoting them in Singapore.’’ This structural
restriction, he stated, renders relatively insignificant the influence of Japa-
nese tv culture in Singapore. Western culture has always been the main-
stream in Singapore, he commented, whereas its Asian ( Japanese, Hong
Kong, and Taiwanese) equivalents have been only seasonal.
In Hong Kong the situation is di√erent in one respect, but similar in
another. Japanese cultural influences are much more profound in Hong
Kong. TVB–Jade is the most popular Chinese channel in Hong Kong;
according to my interview with a programming o≈cer, in the week of 10–
16 February 1997, 19.5 percent of all programs broadcast on the channel
were of foreign origin, and about three-quarters of these were Japanese.
Most were animations, but dramas and game shows were also regularly
broadcast. The o≈cer also told me that the height of the popularity of
Japanese tv programs has been, as was the case in Singapore, in the 1970s
and early 1980s, when about 30 percent of tv programming on the channel
was occupied by Japanese productions. Between the mid-1980s and early
1990s, the share of Japanese tv programs had significantly declined, but
since the early 1990s it had been slowly increasing again, as some Japanese
dramas became popular. The tvb o≈cer told me that American dramas
were the most popular foreign programs in the 1980s, but that in the 1990s
their Japanese equivalents had been in the ascendancy.
136 Recentering globalization
 However, even Japanese dramas are not popular enough to compete with
local dramas. The o≈cer remarked that while tvb had tried to promote the
Japanese detective drama Kindaichi Shōnen no Jikenbo, which features famous
young Japanese idols, its ratings were less than 20 (the average for a local
popular show is 30). This is because the audience for contemporary Japanese
dramas is limited to young people between in their mid-teens and early
twenties. In Hong Kong and Singapore, where two tv channels dominate
the local market, the main target audience is not younger people but chil-
dren and housewives over 40, who comprise the most avid viewers. For this
reason, any popular drama must deal with such issues as love and the family,
according to the tvb o≈cer. The same point was made by the programming
o≈cer of another station, atv, who told me in his 1997 interview that even
Tokyo Love Story, the most famous and well-received Japanese drama in
various Asian countries, had not been very successful in Hong Kong. It did
not appeal to this target audience, he said: ‘‘The response was good, but the
ratings were not good.’’ He added that whereas Japanese tv dramas were
popular among all generations in the 1970s, they are now only well known
among the younger generation.
Nevertheless, the existence of an ‘‘open’’ black markets for pirate videos
and vcds (video cds) works in favor of the spread of Japanese tv programs
in Hong Kong.≤ Even if Japanese tv dramas are not available for viewing on
free-to-air tv channels, Hong Kong youth can watch most of them on
pirated vcds. In the Sino Center Building, where many shops sell such
vcds, the latest Japanese dramas are generally available with Cantonese
dubbing just a few days after their initial broadcast in Japan. Also, informa-
tion about Japanese tv idols regularly circulates in daily newspapers and
weekly entertainment magazines. These factors distinguish Hong Kong
from Singapore in terms of the popularity of Japanese tv dramas.
It is in Taiwan that the media market structure works most favorably,
however, for the exposure of Japanese tv dramas. There, too, vcds are an
important medium through which the youth gain access to Japanese tv
dramas. But in Taiwan, young people have more channel choices via satel-
lite and cable tv services, so that free-to-air channels have been relatively
unpopular among them, which is not the case in Singapore and Hong
Kong. The satellite network, star tv, has been the pioneer in the dis-
semination of Japanese tv dramas throughout Asia since its inception in
1991. Although star tv has attracted much academic attention for its pan-
Asian satellite broadcasts and its possible penetration into the Chinese mar-
Becoming culturally proximate 137
ket, from the outset the Taiwanese market has been a main target, too. This
is particularly the case for the star Chinese channel and music channel [V],
which replaced mtv in 1994. Moreover, since star tv launched its new
Chinese channel, Phoenix, aimed at the mainland Chinese market, in 1997,
the star Chinese channel is now broadcast mostly in Taiwan, and the
channel has made extensive use of Japanese programs, especially dramas, in
prime time to attract a large Taiwanese audience. The manager of the star
tv Chinese channel told me that Japanese tv dramas are particularly impor-
tant to the network’s programming. It has devoted of an hour of prime time
to Japanese drama since June 1992, and according to the manager, Japanese
programs are indispensable to star tv’s strategy of localization for the
Taiwan market.≥
It is the Taiwanese cable-tv market, however, that has made the strongest
initiative in promoting Japanese tv dramas (star tv is also watched on
cable). The rapid development of cable tv has been responsible for the
nearly constant influx of Japanese tv dramas in Taiwan. While such pro-
grams are generally not popular enough for the free-to-air channels, the
cable channels, whose target audiences are more narrowly focused, have
given them a new pattern of tv popularity. Given that the Taiwanese cable
market has taken the strongest initiative in promoting Japanese tv dramas,
before elaborating on their popularity in Taiwan, I should provide a brief
outline of the history of cable tv in Taiwan.
In Taiwan, there are four free-to-air commercial tv stations: Taiwan
Television Enterprise (ttv), the China Television Company (ctv), and the
China Television Service (cts), and Formosa Television (ftv). TTV was
established in 1962; ctv, in 1969 by the Kuomintang (kmt); and cts, in
1971 by the Ministry of Defense; and ftv, in 1997 by the Democratic
Progressive Party (dpp). Although all are privately owned, their program-
ming is not free from state control. There is a restriction on the amount of
foreign programming (30 percent or less), and by regulation at least 50
percent of programs must be non-entertainment o√erings. Cable tv started
in Taiwan in the 1960s as a way to make the three free-to-air channels
available to those who could not receive their on-air signals, but it was the
illegal cable channels, whose programming consisted of foreign entertain-
ment—Hollywood films, Hong Kong dramas, and Japanese programs—that
became popular with subscribers. The development of illegal cable tv in
Taiwan (which was called the Fourth Channel) occurred rapidly after the

138 Recentering globalization

late 1970s, as the service expanded to satisfy the audience’s hunger for the
entertainment programs the three free-to-air stations could not o√er.
Government attempts to exercise strict control over these illegal cable
channels by cutting the cable were in vain; cable operators would quickly
reconnect. From its inception, the popularity of the Fourth Channel has
never flagged. The di√usion rate of the cable channels rapidly increased
when the democratic and liberal movements gained currency after the end
of martial law in 1987. Even the then-opposition party, the dpp, used the
Fourth Channel for political broadcasts. Given this new situation, the gov-
ernment changed its policy from one of banning to one of regulating the
Fourth Channel. In 1993 the new Cable TV Law was finally passed, and in
the preceding year a new copyright law had been passed; this legislation
made it possible for foreign channels and program suppliers to broadcast
their programs through the cable (Hattori and Hara 1997). Even before the
legislation, about 50 percent of households watched cable channels. The
number increased after the legislation. In 1998, nearly 80 percent of house-
holds were enjoying cable television (Republic of China Yearbook 1999),
and Taiwan currently has one of the most developed cable television systems
in Asia.

Japanese cable channels in Taiwan

The Cable TV Law requires at least 20 percent of the programs on a cable

channel to be locally produced, but many cable channels obviously do not
abide by this rule. Most channels buy all their programming from overseas
sources, mainly the United States, Hong Kong, and Japan. Lewis et al. (1994)
argue that the development of cable tv facilitated the ‘‘re-Americanization’’
of Taiwan after the period in the 1970s and 1980s when the people’s prefer-
ence for local programs decreased the number of American programs (see
also Lee 1980). The inroads of espn, hbo, the Discovery Channel, and
CNN International can be said to be representative of this process. It should
be noted, in this respect, that the United States had applied strong pressure
on the Taiwanese government to legalize the cable channels so as to protect
American film and tv industries from piracy and to enable them to operate
legally in Taiwan (Lewis et al. 1994).
An increase in Japanese programming in Taiwan has also been a significant
trend since the early 1990s, however. After the Japanese government of-

Becoming culturally proximate 139

ficially reestablished diplomatic relations with China in 1972, the Taiwan-
ese government banned the broadcast of Japanese-language programs. Al-
though Japanese programs continued to be widely watched through pirate
videos and illegal cable channels in Taiwan, they became even more acces-
sible after the Taiwan government removed the ban at the end of 1993. With
this policy change, the colonial connection between the two countries
resurfaced, particularly in terms of business links. Typically, it is those who
lived under the Japanese occupation and who speak fluent Japanese who
have utilized their old connections in Japanese business circles to become the
owners and managers of Japanese cable channels in Taiwan. For example,
according to my interview with its manager, the launch of the Po-shin
Channel, a pioneering Japanese cable channel in Taiwan, would not have
been possible except for the old friendship between the Channel’s former
managing director and the president of Tōei Movie Japan (see also Sekai-ichi
no yūsen rasshu 1995). In this sense, the Japanese cultural presence in Taiwan
continues to be shaped by the legacy of Japanese colonization.
In 1997 there were five Japanese cable channels in Taiwan. Apart from
nhk Asia, which simultaneously broadcasts most programs from Japan by
satellite, four other channels—Video Land Japanese, Gold Sun, Po-shin
Japanese, and jet ( Japan Entertainment Network)—buy their program-
ming from Japanese commercial tv stations.∂ These channels broadcast
exclusively Japanese programming twenty-four hours a day (with many
repeat showings, since basic daily original programming ranges from 6 to 10
hours a day). In addition, other cable and free-to-air channels also regularly
broadcast such programs. As a result, the number of Japanese tv programs
imported into Taiwan has greatly increased since 1994. In 1992 a total
of about 600 hours of programming was exported from Japan to Taiwan
(Kawatake and Hara 1994). There are no exact figures available for Japanese
program exports to Taiwan after 1993. However, according to my interview
with tbs, in 1996 that commercial tv station alone exported 1,000 hours of
programming to Taiwan.
Before the new Cable TV Law, there had been as many as 600 cable oper-
ators; immediately after its introduction, their numbers were reduced to
126.∑ There are about 100 suppliers of programming, and since most opera-
tors can a√ord to broadcast at most 60 to 70 channels, it is crucial for pro-
gram vendors to secure a place in the allocations of the cable operators so as
to maximize the penetration of their programming into a large number of
households. According to one survey conducted in 1996, local general
140 Recentering globalization
channels such as super – tv, tvbs, and Sanli–2, as well as global/trans-
national channels such as hbo, espn, and star tv Chinese, have the high-
est penetration rates in terms of subscriptions with cable operators. Among
the eighty-one cable channels, those that broadcast Japanese programming
tend to be ranked around the 20th place—Gold Sun was in 19th place, nhk
Asia was 21st, and Videoland Japan was 26th—and all of them were ranked
above such channels as cnn, mtv, tnt, the Cartoon Channel, and the
Discovery Channel (Redwood Research Service 1996).
The penetration rate, of course, does not necessarily reflect the popularity
of a channel. Another significant quantitative measure of popularity is rat-
ings. One survey conducted by Ishii, Watanabe, and Su (1996) showed that
Videoland Japanese was the sixth most commonly watched channel and
Gold Sun was fifteenth, but it is also true that local and Western (mainly
American) cable tv channels are more popular in Taiwan in terms of their
cumulative reach (Hattori and Hara 1997; Ishii, Watanabe, and Su 1996).
However, if one looks closely at specific genres and sections of the audience,
this is not always the case. As far as tv dramas are concerned, Japanese
programs attract greater audiences in Taiwan than Western/American ones
and are even more popular than Hong Kong and Taiwan dramas (Hattori
and Hara 1997; Ishii, Watanabe, and Su 1996). This is particularly true for
young audiences (age 13–25) and for female (age 26–35) audiences. As
Hattori and Yumiko (1997) suggest, young women in general like tv dra-
mas, but not American ones, while young males do not rate dramas highly,
except Japanese ones. When they asked viewers to grade each genre on a
scale of 1 to 10, Hattori and Yumiko discovered that, overall, Japanese
dramas scored highest with 6.8. In contrast, Western (American) dramas
scored 6.6, Hong Kong dramas 6.2, and Taiwanese dramas 6.7. For both
male and female audiences in the age groups 13–15 and 16–25, Japanese
dramas scored significantly higher. The preference of young audiences for
dramas shows an interesting contrast between Japanese and American pro-
grams. While drama constitutes the strongest genre of Japanese tv pro-
grams, tv dramas are the least appreciated American genre in Taiwan.

Japanese idol dramas: Something to talk about

The appreciation for Japanese tv dramas by young people in Taiwan does

not mean that they have become mainstream there. Ratings for cable tv
channels are still low compared to those for free-to-air channels. The tv
Becoming culturally proximate 141
programs with the highest ratings continue to be those that have been
domestically produced, as was the case in the 1970s (Lee 1980). However,
the popularity of Japanese tv dramas is best measured not by ratings but by
their central role in the daily gossip of young people (particularly women).
Given the scarcity of publicity about such dramas in the Taiwanese media,
their renown owed much to word of mouth. A reporter who writes about
Japanese dramas for a local newspaper told me: ‘‘Most high school and
university students who watch Japanese dramas discuss the story line with
their friends. It is the most common topic for them, just as Taiwan prime-
time dramas [those broadcast as 8 p.m.] used to be.’’ My informant’s em-
ployer, the China Times, is one of the most popular dailies in Taiwan and it
inaugurated an interactive column on Japanese tv dramas in February
1996.∏ Apparently the column was targeted to teenage readers of the news-
paper’s Saturday edition.
The Japanese dramas give audiences lots to talk about. Not surprisingly,
one of their main drawing cards for young Taiwanese is the good-looking
actors who perform on these series. This is apparent from the common
name that has been given to the genre—‘‘Japanese Idol Drama,’’—which was
coined by star tv. It is clear that star tv thought that these young
Japanese idols would be the principal attraction of such dramas for the
Taiwanese. Many people in Taiwan confirmed for me that this was indeed
the case.
People also remark that they enjoy viewing the food, fashion, consumer
goods, and music that are presented in these programs. This is not for the
first time such items have been introduced to the Taiwanese through Japa-
nese tv dramas. Even before the advent of such programs, they had already
gained a certain renown in Taiwan through Japanese magazines. For in-
stance, a popular fashion magazine for teenage girls is non-no, a biweekly
Japanese magazine. Most Taiwanese do not understand Japanese; they pur-
chase such magazines predominantly for their pictures. Non-no was first
imported into Taiwan in the late 1970s and became popular during the
1980s. Approximately 100,000 copies are imported monthly (two issues)
from Japan. According to Nippan ipc, the Japanese firm that exports non-
no, export figures for the magazine increased in the 1990s (particularly
in 1993–94), which was roughly the period when Japanese tv dramas
in Taiwan became phenomenally popular. The magazines, combined with
the tv dramas, serve to keep the Taiwanese current, not only on what
they should consume to improve their lifestyles, but on how they should
142 Recentering globalization
consume—that is, how they should wear their clothes, or how they should
arrange their furniture in a room to make it look stylish (e.g., Ichikawa
1994; Ueda 1996; Chō 1998).
There is more to watching Japanese dramas, however, than admiring the
latest in Japanese commodities and fashion. More importantly, it is their
story lines and characters that Taiwanese audiences find appealing and that
they eagerly discuss with their friends and colleagues. Their plots, settings,
and subgenres, ranging from urban love stories and family dramas to detec-
tive series, are diverse, but the most popular programs are those that deal
with the lives and loves of younger people in an urban setting. In most cases,
the dramas are filmed in Tokyo and thus depict modern urban life in Japan.
In contrast, Taiwanese tv dramas are more family-oriented and are aimed
primarily at housewives. Rarely do they engage with the experiences of
young Taiwanese in a modern urban setting. Hence, it is the greater rele-
vance of Japanese dramas that seems to account in part for their popularity
among young Taiwanese viewers.

Watching Tokyo Love Story

It was the drama Tokyo Love Story that ignited interest in Japanese dramas
and prompted a recognition of their quality in Taiwan and other East Asian
countries. Originally broadcast in Japan between January and March 1991,
it was shown for the first time in Taiwan in 1992 by the star Chinese
channel in eleven, one-hour-long episodes. Briefly, the drama is a love story
about five young men and women in their early twenties. The heroine,
Akana Rika, who has spent some time in the United States, is an unusually
expressive and positive Japanese woman. She falls in love with Nagao Kanji
(‘‘Kanchi’’ to her), a gentle but rather wavering young man. Kanji, in turn,
loves an old high-school classmate, Sekiguchi Satomi, but she does not
return his a√ections, preferring instead to have an a√air with another old
classmate, Mikami Kenichi. Although perplexed by Rika’s straightforward-
ness in expressing her love for him—on one occasion she famously exclaims,
‘‘Kanchi, let’s have sex!’’—Kanji nevertheless becomes attracted to her and
enters into a relationship with her. Gradually, though, he becomes ex-
hausted with their relationship and again attempts to link up with Satomi,
whose relationship with Mikami has meanwhile broken up. Rika keeps it
up despite the odds, but ultimately Kanji and Satomi marry, and Rika moves
to the United States for work. The drama ends with their unexpected
Becoming culturally proximate 143
reunion in Tokyo several years later, where Rika proves to be as forward-
looking as ever, with no regrets about the past.
Tokyo Love Story was an epoch-making drama series in Japan in terms of
subtlety of production styles and the way in which the youth’s lives in urban
setting is represented. The drama’s innovativeness was appreciated with
much sympathy by young viewers in Taiwan as well as in Japan. STAR TV
has broadcast Tokyo Love Story several times since 1992, and ttv, the most
popular free-to-air channel, screened it twice in 1995. The success of the
program encouraged a group of university students to conduct research into
its popularity (Li et al. 1995).π In their survey of sixty-one university stu-
dents, they found that about 83 percent had enjoyed watching the drama
and roughly 65 percent had watched it more than twice. A crucial issue not
dealt with in this quantitative survey is a more qualitative exploration of
how viewers perceived Tokyo Love Story. As Ien Ang (1985, 20) argues,
‘‘Popular pleasure is first and foremost a pleasure of recognition.’’ What
matters, then, is whether and in what ways the audience can identify with
the drama.
The popularity of Tokyo Love Story had much to do with the identifica-
tion of its female audience with its attractive heroine, Rika. Her single-
minded pursuit of love and her frankness, unbeaten by hardship, are seen as
admirable traits worthy of emulation. Her resolute and independent attitude
represent a desirable image of the ‘‘modern’’ or ‘‘new age’’ woman. My
interviewees often expressed two seemingly contradictory statements about
her. On the one hand, they might say, ‘‘I have a strong feeling that she is
exactly what I want to be,’’ on the other hand, they might also remark, ‘‘I
would not be able to become as brave and open as Rika.’’ It is thus Rika’s
role as an ideal model that many women consider particularly appealing: she
is what one wants to be but can never quite become. Satomi, in contrast,
serves as Rika’s foil. She is the embodiment of a more traditional woman—
dependent, submissive, domestic, and passive. It may be the case that au-
diences find Satomi more empirically realistic in the Taiwanese context. As
such, she was an object of aversion for all of my interviewees. The juxtaposi-
tion of Rika and Satomi brings Rika’s attractiveness into sharp relief.
This sort of identification with the desirable is similar to what Richard
Dyer calls utopianism: ‘‘Entertainment o√ers the image of ‘something bet-
ter’ to escape into, or something we want deeply that our day-to-day lives
don’t provide. Alternatives, hopes, wishes—these are the stu√ of utopia, the
sense that things could be better, that something other than what is can be
144 Recentering globalization
The Taiwanese vcd cover for Tokyo Love Story.

imagined and maybe realized’’ (1992, 18). Dyer argues that entertainment
does not o√er ‘‘models of the utopian world’’ but provides its consumers
with the possibility of experiencing ‘‘what utopia would feel like rather than
how it would be organized’’ (18). Referring, in particular, to the musical
form, Dyer points out the importance of non-representational means such
as music and colors, and the simplification and intensification of people’s
relationships in entertainment’s articulation of utopianism.
Though Dyer’s argument is about musicals, these points well fit the struc-
ture of many Japanese idol dramas, including Tokyo Love Story. Apart from
the comparatively large budget and the sophistication of the production
techniques, two structural and technical factors make Japanese dramas at-
tractive for their Taiwan audiences. First, Japanese dramas are not soap
operas; they always end within ten to twelve episodes (each episode being an
hour long). By contrast, Taiwanese and American dramas seemingly never
Becoming culturally proximate 145
end. Most of my Taiwanese respondents commented that they felt such
programs were unnecessarily protracted. Because Japanese dramas finish in a
comparatively short time and their plots are usually less complicated than
those of traditional soap operas, my respondents found it easier to focus on
these dramas and enjoy the progress of their narratives. In addition, Japanese
dramas, like movies, use orchestral music and theme songs repeatedly and
e√ectively. The use of a theme song in a drama is particularly important.
Each week, the theme functions not just as background music but as a
constitutive part of the climactic scene. The theme song works in these
instances to encourage the emotional involvement of the audience. It thus
serves to evoke ‘‘romance,’’ helping the audience to enjoy a ‘‘romantic,
beautiful love story,’’ as one of my interviewees put it.
However, there is a crucial di√erence between Dyer’s utopianism of musi-
cals and the realism of Japanese dramas. The attractiveness of Tokyo Love Story
does not reside simply in making audiences feel that ‘‘something other than
what is can be imagined and maybe realized.’’ Emotional involvement in the
drama is facilitated by its depiction of something which the audience thinks
and feels desirable and not unrealistic. It is not just a dream of tomorrow but a
(possible) picture of today. The things that happen in Tokyo Love Story also
seem to be realistic, or at least accessible to most of its young audience. The
same things could happen in their own everyday lives. On his Web site, a
young Hong Kong man explained why he likes the drama in these terms:
‘‘The twenty-something urban professionals of the series face a tightrope of
coping that young people in many Asian cities have faced, but rarely more
sympathetically. The major attraction of Tokyo Love Story to me is that it is not
a story about somebody else. It is a story about our generation, about us,
about myself. I can easily identify shadows of Rika or Kanchi among my peer
group, even in myself ’’ (‘‘Kevin’s Home,’’ http://home.ust.hk/≈kwtse).
This sense of the series being a ‘‘story about us’’ was strongly shared by the
Taiwanese fans. More than 60 percent of those surveyed by Li et al. (1995)—
and 75 percent of the female subjects—replied that love a√airs such as those
portrayed in Tokyo Love Story could happen around them. However, as was
the case for the realism of Rika’s character, discussed earlier, this should not
be straightforwardly read as evidence of the objective, empirical realism of
Tokyo Love Story. As Ang (1985, 44–45) argues concerning audiences’ iden-
tification with Dallas, ‘‘The concrete situations and complications are rather
regarded as symbolic representations of more general experiences: rows,
intrigues, problems, happiness and misery. And it is precisely in this sense
146 Recentering globalization
that these letter-writers find Dallas realistic. In other words, at a connotative
level they ascribe mainly emotional meanings to Dallas.’’ What audiences
find ‘‘realistic’’ in viewing Tokyo Love Story is thus not that an identical love
a√air would actually happen or that anyone could become like Rika. Li et al.
(1995) suggest that one of the attractions of Tokyo Love Story for university
students in Taiwan is its new style of portraying love, work, and women’s
role and position in society. These are all issues which young people are
actually facing in urban areas in Taiwan, but which American or Taiwanese
tv dramas have never sympathetically dealt with. It is in at this more gen-
eralized level of meaning concerning love a√airs and human relations rep-
resented in Tokyo Love Story that audiences in Taiwan perceive it as ‘‘our’’
story.

Audience preference and the perception

of ‘‘cultural proximity’’

The question of particular importance here is whether and how the ‘‘real-
ism’’ of Japanese programs, the Taiwanese sense that they dramatize ‘‘our’’
stories, is encouraged by a perceived similarity between Japan and Taiwan:
whether the perception of cultural proximity facilitates the sense of immedi-
acy. I asked Taiwanese audiences comparative questions about Japanese dra-
mas, Taiwanese dramas, and American dramas. Most of my interviewees in
Taipei noted that emotionally they engaged more with Japanese dramas than
they did with Western or Taiwanese dramas. Of course, insofar as Japanese
dramas are broadcast in Japanese with Chinese subtitles, the Taiwanese
cannot help but regard them as foreign; but for all that, they do not regard
such dramas in quite the same way as they do the American programs. This is
because Taiwanese audiences tend to remark that, racially and culturally,
they have more in common with the Japanese than they do with the Ameri-
cans. ‘‘Japan is not quite but much like us,’’ another woman in her early
twenties said. ‘‘Yeah, Japan is a foreign county and this (foreignness) makes
Japanese programs look gorgeous and appealing. But the distance we feel to
Japan is comfortable. Americans are complete strangers.’’ Another female fan
of Japanese drama in her mid-twenties also mentions the relative cultural
distances between Taiwan, Japan, and the West: ‘‘I do not think that Japanese
dramas are a totally new genre, something I’ve never seen before, but rather
I’ve never seen such dramas which perfectly express my feeling. . . . The
West is so far away from us, so I cannot relate to American dramas.’’ She
Becoming culturally proximate 147
opined as well that the likeness between family and romantic relationships in
Japan and Taiwan made it easier for her to relate to Japanese dramas.
The above point can be illustrated further through a comparison of Tai-
wanese perceptions of Tokyo Love Story and an American drama, Beverly
Hills, 90210. For instance, one informant, a woman in her early twenties
who had just started working for a Japanese cable tv channel and was an ad-
mitted fan of Japanese dramas, informed me that while she enjoyed watch-
ing the lifestyles and romances presented in Beverly Hills, 90210, she found
Japanese love stories to be more accessible and resonant with Taiwanese
situations. Moreover, some interviewees stated that, for all the program’s
color and excitement, they could not imagine experiencing life as it was
lived in Beverly Hills, 90210. A seventeen-year-old high school student de-
clared: ‘‘Japanese dramas better reflect our reality. Yeah, Beverly Hills, 90210 is
too exciting [to be realistic]. Boy always meets girl. But it is neither our
reality nor dream.’’ When I suggested that some Japanese dramas were not
empirically realistic either, she replied, ‘‘Well, maybe not, but it might
happen. Or at least I want to have it.’’ Whereas the attractiveness of Tokyo
Love Story stems from its mixture of alleged empiricist and emotional real-
ism, Beverly Hills, 90210 appears to many Taiwanese fans of Japanese tv
dramas ‘‘realistic’’ in neither sense.
These comments suggest that Taiwanese audiences’ emotional involve-
ment in Japanese dramas is fostered by a perceived cultural similarity be-
tween Japan and Taiwan. However, such an explanation for audience pref-
erence solely in terms of cultural similarity is too simplistic. The di√ering
responses of Taiwanese to Tokyo Love Story and Beverly Hills, 90210 may be
the result not only of the sense of cultural proximity or distance these shows
establish, but also of the degree of their textual emphasis on intimacy and
ordinariness. The rich lifestyles depicted in Beverly Hills, 90210 deter some
Taiwanese audiences from identifying with the series. As a female university
student told me in an interview, Beverly Hills, 90210 is not a story about
ordinary people and thus has little to do with her everyday life.
It can be argued that some Taiwanese audiences’ discontent with the
unrealistic a∆uent lifestyle depicted in Beverly Hills, 90210 actually reflects
their disapproval of the drama’s narrative. Their failure to emotionally iden-
tify with the characters and human relationships in the drama might have
secondarily generated their detachment from the material lavishness of the
series (see Ang 1985; McKinley 1997).∫ Nevertheless, at the least, we cannot

148 Recentering globalization

discount the possibility that the emphasis of Japanese dramas on the quotid-
ian strengthens the sense of cultural proximity felt by Taiwanese audiences.
Most Japanese dramas depict the mundane lives of ordinary people rather
than the glamorous dream-worlds of the rich that are often depicted in
American soap operas. My China Times informant also told me that al-
though the American medical drama ER is of high quality and well received
in Taiwan, it does not get people emotionally involved with the world of
medicine. On the other hand, she said, Kagayaku Toki no Nakade, a Japanese
drama about medical students, does make many people in Taiwan feel like
working as medical professionals. More recently, a Japanese version of ER,
Kyūmei Byōtō 24ji, which was broadcast from January to March 1999, fea-
tured a female intern as the story’s main character and emphasized the
layperson’s view of medicine. Thus, it might be that it is not only the
cultural proximity between Japan and Taiwan, but also the focus on medical
students rather than professional practitioners, that made this Japanese
drama look more intimate and ordinary than ER.
Another comment I frequently heard was that love is expressed more
delicately and elegantly in Japanese dramas than it is in their more crass
American equivalents. Japanese dramas, I was told, are more romantic and
subtle at conveying emotion than American and Taiwanese shows, in which
emotions tend to be presented in an overexaggerated manner. The subtlety
is associated with ways of directing as well as the story lines. A woman in her
late twenties gave me an example of this nonverbal subtlety in Japanese
drama: ‘‘I think Japanese dramas are very subtle in showing delicate feelings.
Japanese dramas place more value on depicting feelings deep inside. When a
woman cries, her emotions are skillfully expressed by the movement of the
fingers. A scene of parting is also well directed by the subtle movement of
the fingers between lovers.’’ Another woman in her mid-twenties told me:
‘‘I clearly remember that a scene of Tokyo Love Story very subtly used the
actors’ backs to show the delicate sentiment of lovers parting. Such delicate-
ness cannot be found in other [American and Taiwanese] dramas. I like
Japanese dramas because I can feel and experience such delicate feelings.’’
The China Times reporter gave me another example, explaining that she
personally liked the romantic scene in Tokyo Love Story in which Rika
narrates Kanji’s life history while placing candles one by one on a birthday
cake. She said that she had never seen such an elegant way of celebrating a
lover’s birthday.

Becoming culturally proximate 149

 In light of the fact that Japanese tv dramas are favorably received only in
East Asia, it may appear that the reputed elegance of their representations
holds a particular appeal for audiences of culturally proximate regions. The
truth is, though, that the appreciation of the subtleties of nonverbal com-
munication and the sensitive presentation of social relationships is not ex-
clusively related to East Asian cultural commonalities. This Japanese skill of
‘‘wrapping’’ is appreciated in the West as well (see Hendry 1993). Moreover,
Taiwanese seem to believe that Japanese subtlety is very di√erent from the
Taiwanese mode of cultural presentation. It was when we discussed this
reputed subtlety of the Japanese programs that Taiwanese usually lamented
the poor quality of their local dramas. As one interviewee stated, ‘‘Tai-
wanese dramas unnecessarily exaggerate their stories. In Taiwanese dramas,
women always cry, cry, cry. There is no subtlety at all in expressing emotion,
as in Japanese dramas.’’ When I asked her whether Taiwanese tv could
produce dramas in the same way, she said, ‘‘No, I do not think Taiwan can
produce (romantic) love dramas similar to the Japanese ones. Taiwan dramas
cannot present delicate emotions in the Japanese way. I think it is not a mat-
ter of learning how to produce tv dramas, but that of the cultural di√erence
between the two countries.’’ This indicates that the Taiwanese preference
for the ‘‘delicateness’’ or ‘‘elegance’’ of Japanese dramas is not necessarily
associated with any cultural proximity between Japan and Taiwan.
Even perceived common cultural values and attitudes cannot be straight-
forwardly regarded as the incarnations of some primordial cultural prox-
imity. Li et al. (1995) argue that Rika’s attitude to love in Tokyo Love Story is
di√erent from that of the female characters in American dramas like Beverly
Hills, 90210, who are too open and not single-minded enough. Her attitude
is also di√erent from that of women depicted in Taiwan dramas, who are
generally represented as more passive and submissive. In reply to my ques-
tion about the di√erence between Rika, who spends some time in the
United States and can therefore appear to be somewhat ‘‘Americanized,’’
and American women as they are depicted in American dramas, a postgrad-
uate student in Taiwan remarked:
About Rika, I think it is true that people in Taiwan identify themselves
with her more than with American women. My opinion is that this is
because Rika is an Asian woman. She has yellow skin, black hair and
speaks Japanese (or Chinese) on tv. . . . I think not many people would
relate Rika to America. Her education in the United States was not often

150 Recentering globalization

 mentioned in Tokyo Love Story. And I think Rika is not totally Ameri-
canized. She kept the American style of femininity only in her pursuing
something directly. But she still has some traditional Asian femininity in
her personality. For example, she loves a man faithfully. And that is why
Asian women identify themselves with her. She is a mixture of American
and Asian femininity—she represents the image of a ‘‘New Age woman’’
to the audience.
As this student’s remarks about Rika indicate, Japan is apparently regarded as
culturally proximate because of its perceived ‘‘Asianness,’’ that is, in the
similar appearance and single-mindedness of Rika in Tokyo Love Story.
Even in this case, however, the sense of cultural proximity perceived by
the Taiwanese viewer in watching Tokyo Love Story should not be over-
generalized to explain the popularity of Japanese tv dramas in Taiwan.
Viewers might find some shared cultural values concerning family and
individualism in Japanese dramas, but the perception of such values does not
necessarily lead to the favorable reception of the tv drama that represents
them. For instance, Taiwanese dramas often emphasize traditional values,
such as the ‘‘fidelity’’ in women (Chan 1996, 142), but young Taiwanese
often do not positively accept or are even critical of such widely acknowl-
edged cultural values, as we have seen with their expressed hatred for the
character of Satomi. Nevertheless, it can be argued, youthful audiences
respond positively to Rika’s ‘‘active single-mindedness’’ in contrast to the
‘‘openness’’ depicted in American tv dramas, since this represents a ‘‘com-
mon’’ value in East Asia and thus can be related to. Here again, however,
what is important is not fidelity or single-mindedness in general or essen-
tialized terms but a specific kind of single-mindedness as it is represented in
Tokyo Love Story. Which is to say, this single-mindedness has been articu-
lated through a Japanese (at the site of production) and a Taiwanese (at the
site of consumption) reworking of cultural modernity in a particular media
text. Only through these dynamic processes has it come to embody an
attractive single-mindedness, which is perceived to illustrate a ‘‘New Age
woman’’ in that it is at once implicated in the global (in the sense of ‘‘Ameri-
can,’’ in this instance) context yet situated in an East Asian context. In order
to understand the complexity of audiences’ identification with Rika’s at-
tractive character in Taiwan, we thus need to consider it in the wider
sociocultural context of the 1990s in which cultural modernity is reworked
in East Asia.

Becoming culturally proximate 151

 Becoming ‘‘culturally proximate’’

The preference of some Taiwanese viewers for Japanese tv dramas over

American ones and the associated experience of cultural similarity is, I
argue, suggestive of the shifting nature of the symbolic power of American
pop icons as well as the nature of transnational cultural consumption in
general. In non-Western countries, America has long been closely associ-
ated with images of modernity. Whenever American popular culture is
consumed, people vicariously satisfy a yearning for the American way of life
and appropriate the images of romance, freedom, and a∆uence associated
with it. As Featherstone (1995, 8) argues, ‘‘It is a product from a superior
global center, which has long represented itself as the center. For those on
the periphery it o√ers the possibility of the psychological benefits of iden-
tifying with the powerful. Along with the Marlboro Man, Coca-Cola,
Hollywood, Sesame Street, rock music, and American football insignia,
McDonald’s is one of a series of icons of the American way of life. They have
become associated with transposable themes which are central to consumer
culture, such as youth, fitness, beauty, luxury, romance, freedom.’’ Indeed, I
clearly remember feeling that I was becoming American after I ate at Ken-
tucky Fried Chicken in the late 1970s in Tokyo. But that stage of cultural
development is over. In 1995 I saw a seven-year-old Japanese boy express
his amazement at seeing Kentucky Fried Chicken in the United States on
tv, ‘‘Wow, there is a Kentucky in America as well!’’ (see also Watson
1997). ‘‘American dreams’’ have been indigenized in some modernized
non-Western countries. It seems that some popular American icons have
also become ‘‘culturally odorless,’’ in the sense that they may no longer be
recognized as essentially ‘‘American.’’
Tomlinson argues that terms such as cultural domination or imposition
are no longer appropriate to describe the current global cultural condition,
which is not necessarily coercive. He argues that, unlike imperialism, ‘‘the
idea of ‘globalization’ suggests interconnection and interdependency of all
global areas which happens in a far less purposeful way,’’ and that as a
consequence, ‘‘the cultural coherence of all individual nation-states, includ-
ing economically powerful ones—the ‘imperialist powers’ of a previous era’’
is undermined (1991, 175; emphasis in original). As Chen (1996, 56) rightly
criticizes, there is a danger that this kind of argument on globalization,
which stresses the decline of Western/American cultural hegemony, ‘‘neu-

152 Recentering globalization

tralizes power relations’’ of the ‘‘not-yet-post-imperialist’’ world which we
still inhabit. Yet, we cannot deny that it is becoming increasingly di≈cult to
identify ‘‘the West’’ (‘‘America’’) as the unambiguously dominating supplier
of images of modernity for people of modernized non-Western nations that
have already achieved a certain level of material a∆uence.
‘‘Americanization’’ seems to have reached another level of signification. It
operates at the level of form rather than content: Abstract concepts such as
freedom, luxury, and romance have di√used so widely that there is no longer
an unambiguous correlation between such concepts and American symbols.
‘‘Americanization’’ has become overdetermined by local practices and con-
tingencies. Unlike the era of high Americanization, when the form of capi-
talist consumer culture was closely associated with the content of American
dreams (Frith 1982, 46), the content and image now associated with Amer-
ica tend to be detached from the form. To appropriate Beilharz’s (1991, 15)
argument about how Althusser’s concept of ‘‘overdetermination’’ points to
the limitation of a Marxist concept of economic base, ‘‘Americanization,’’
like the economic base, could be ‘‘a kind of blu√, a slumbering last instance
never to be called upon.’’ The process of reworking modernity by the non-
West could be relatively autonomous from the base, ‘‘Americanization.’’
If in the modern, secular age the conception of ‘‘time’’ is characterized by
homogeneity and emptiness (Benjamin 1973), what is now becoming ho-
mogeneous and empty in the process of globalization is the conceptual form
of various images. While the concept of ‘‘homogeneous time’’ was the basis
of the construction of ‘‘imagined communities’’ of the nation (Anderson
1983), the global di√usion of shared popular cultural forms is not producing
a singular global imagined community. Rather, it is intensifying cultural
heterogenization across the world. A globalizing hegemony, as Richard
Wilk argues, involves ‘‘structures of common di√erence’’: ‘‘The new global
cultural system promotes di√erence instead of suppressing it, but di√erence
of a particular kind. Its hegemony is not of content, but of form. Global
structures organize diversity, rather than replicating uniformity’’ (1995,
118). What the recent popularity of Japanese dramas in Taiwan suggests,
however, is that the global di√usion of empty ‘‘forms’’ not only structures
diversity but also (re)activates intraregional cultural flows and (a sense of )
cultural proximity through the consumption of popular/consumer culture.
‘‘Content’’ and ‘‘image’’ are at once de-territorialized and re-territorialized
at an intraregional level, as García Canclini (1995, 229) describes: The two

Becoming culturally proximate 153

processes as ‘‘the loss of the ‘natural’ relation of culture to geographical and
social territories and, at the same time, certain relative, partial territorial
relocalizations of old and new symbolic productions.’’
The re-territorialization of ‘‘American’’ images in East Asia has not
brought about by the emergence of a new symbolic power. When I asked
whether Japanese dramas had had any influence on her, a Taiwanese inter-
viewee in her mid-twenties, who used to love American programs but now
watches many Japanese dramas, thoughtfully replied, ‘‘Japanese dramas are
more delicate than Western ones and I can relate easily to Japanese ones.
They are more similar to our feelings . . . but not much influence [at a deeper
level]. . . . Maybe Japan is a sort of mirror, but it is perhaps America that we
always follow and try to catch up with.’’ Even for those who delight in
Japanese tv dramas, ‘‘Japan,’’ as an object of yearning, does not enjoy the
status that ‘‘America’’ once did. As my China Times informant told me,
‘‘Japan is too close to have a yearning for.’’ The key expression here is ‘‘easy to
relate to.’’ In Taiwan, American celebrities are mainly movie stars, whereas
their Japanese counterparts are tv idols who look like their fans; American
movies may be glamorous and entertaining, but Japanese dramas provide
topics for everyday conversation and serve as vehicles for vicarious experi-
ence; things ‘‘American’’ are dreams to be yearned for and conceptual forms
to be pursued, whereas things ‘‘Japanese’’ are examples to be emulated and
commodities to be acquired.Ω
As I will discuss in the next chapter, Taiwanese favorable consumption of
Japanese popular culture is not matched by Japanese consumption of the
Taiwanese counterpart. Nevertheless, as far as audience reception is con-
cerned, the popularity of Japanese television dramas in Taiwan does not
attest to a center-periphery relationship between the two countries, con-
trary to claims made by Japanese nationalists. Rather, it indicates that the
Japanese cultural presence in Taiwan is sustained by a sense of coevalness. As
Fabian (1983, 23) argues in his discussion of how Western refusal to recog-
nize the sharing of the same temporality with non-Western cultural Others
has been institutionalized in anthropological research, the term coevalness
denotes two interrelated meanings: synchronicity and contemporaneity.
The development of global communication technologies and networks may
further the denial of ‘‘contemporaneity’’ of the periphery through the facili-
tation of ‘‘synchronicity.’’ To illustrate, Mark Liechty (1995, 194) elucidated
the Nepali experience of modernity as ‘‘the ever growing gap between
imagination and reality, becoming and being.’’ The disappearance of a time
154 Recentering globalization
lag in the distribution of cultural products in many parts of the world has left
wide political, economical and cultural gaps intact, so much so that they
facilitated the feeling in non-Western countries that ‘‘ ‘catching up’ is never
really possible’’ (Morley and Robins 1995, 226–27).
This is no longer the case, however, with the relationship between Japan
and Taiwan. An interviewee in her early twenties who has long been a fan of
Japanese popular culture stressed the emerging sense of shared temporality
with Japan as one reason for the rise of Japanese popular culture in Taiwan:
‘‘Taiwan used to follow Japan, always be a ‘Japan’ of ten years ago. But now
we are living in the same age and sharing similar lifestyles. There is no time
lag between Taiwan and Japan. I think this sense of living in the same age
emerged three or four years ago. Since then, more people have become
interested in things Japanese.’’ A manager of a Japanese cable channel ex-
plains this shift more astutely: ‘‘When Taiwan was still a poor country, we
had just a dream of a modern lifestyle. It was an American dream. But now
that we have become rich, we no longer have a dream but it is time to put
the dream into practice. Not the American dream, but the Japanese reality, is
a good object to emulate for this practical purpose.’’
This posture displays that the perception of living in the same temporality
is intertwined with what Thompson (1995, 175) calls ‘‘the accentuation of
symbolic distancing from the spatial-temporal contexts of everyday life’’ in
the media-saturated age. The abundance of information, ideas, and images
of other cultures and nations disseminated through the media presents one
with various kinds of alternative ideas and ways of living, thus urging one to
take a reflexive distance from one’s own life, culture, and society (see Ap-
padurai 1996). This tendency is indicated by the reception of Japanese tv
dramas in Taiwan, as we saw with the viewers’ positive identification of
Rika’s particular kind of single-mindedness and their negative reception of
Satomi’s femininity. What is crucial here, as modernity for people in Tai-
wan, especially for the younger generations in urban regions, is no longer
just dreams, images, and yearnings of influence, but a lived reality—that is,
the material conditions in which they live—the mediated reference for self-
transformation has changed for some Taiwanese young people from the
abstract to the practical, something within reach. Japanese tv dramas o√er
for their fans a concrete and accessible model of what it is like to be modern
in East Asia, which American popular culture could have never presented.
Seen this way, the experience of cultural proximity, if we still want to use
this notion, should not be conceived in terms of a static attribute of ‘‘being’’
Becoming culturally proximate 155
but as a dynamic process of ‘‘becoming’’: It is a matter of time as well as
space. The emerging dialectic of comfortable distance and cultural simi-
larity between Japan and Taiwan seems to be based upon a consciousness
that Taiwan and Japan live in the same time, thanks to ever-narrowing gaps
between Taiwan and Japan in terms of material conditions; the urban con-
sumerism of an expanding middle class; the changing role of women in
society; the development of communication technologies and media indus-
tries; the reworking of local cultural values; and the re-territorialization of
images di√used by American popular culture. Historically overdetermined
by Japanese colonization, under simultaneously homogenizing and hetero-
genizing forces of modernization, Americanization, and globalization, all
these elements interact in a complicated dynamic to articulate the cultural
resonance of Japanese tv dramas for some Taiwanese viewers who syn-
chronously, contemporaneously, and self-reflexively experienced ‘‘Asian
modernity’’ in late–twentieth-century East Asia.
This point should not be generalized or overemphasized, however. West-
ern popular culture is still widely consumed in East Asia, and there are many
young people in Taiwan who do not like Japanese tv dramas. Many eco-
nomically deprived people are still excluded from the shared experience
of modernity in the region. Neither should we engage uncritically with
the transnational regional flow of highly commercialized materialistic con-
sumer culture. The sense of contemporaneity might not be derived from
objective reality but from an imagination which is fabricated by the in-
stantaneous circulation of information and commodities in the region. This
sense is oblivious of Japan’s colonial legacy in the region and lends credence
to the voices of many Japanese Asianists who are desperately seeking com-
monalities between Japan and Asia.
Moreover, the analysis of intraregional cultural flows and consumption
highlights the newly articulated asymmetrical power relations in the region.
While displacing the view of power as the articulation of a Taiwanese
yearning for Japan, the cultural immediacy which Taiwanese audiences feel
in Japanese tv dramas does not necessarily articulate cultural dialogue on
equal terms. The flow among East Asian countries, and particularly between
Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, is gradually becoming bilateral and more
young people in Japan are also sampling popular culture from other parts of
Asia—Hong Kong films, Canto-pop, or Taiwan idols (Honkon, Taiwan,
Nihon wa poppu kyōeiken’’ 1997). Still, there is no doubt that the flow of
audiovisual products tends to be in one direction, from Japan to other
156 Recentering globalization
countries. This asymmetry is evident not just in terms of quantity but, more
importantly, in terms of the perception of temporality manifest in the con-
sumption of the media products of cultural neighbors. As observed by a
Taiwanese journalist, the sense of coevalness in the Taiwanese experience in
their consumption of Japanese popular culture also gives them a certain sense
of vanity that ‘‘We’ve finally caught up with Japan’’ (Watch out! Your
children are becoming ‘‘Japanese’’ 1997, 70), but Taiwanese or other popular
culture does not necessarily signify the same perception of coevalness for
Japanese consumers. This articulation of Japanese transnational cultural
power as the capacity for producing cultural products through which Tai-
wanese audiences experience cultural proximity would be highlighted if we
looked at cultural flows in the opposite direction and then experienced
transnational regional modernity through them. This is the theme of the
next chapter.

Becoming culturally proximate 157

●
∑
Popular Asianism in Japan:

Nostalgia for (different) Asian modernity

In the previous chapter, I argued that the sense of resonance that some Tai-
wanese audiences experience when watching Japanese tv dramas is closely
related to an emerging sense of coevalness, the perception of a historical
synchronicity between Japan and Taiwan. In this chapter, I examine cultural
flows in the opposite direction, that is, Japanese representation and con-
sumption of Asian popular culture and the idea of ‘‘Asia.’’ Through the
analysis of what can be called ‘‘popular Asianism’’ in 1990s Japan, I discuss
how the asymmetry in transnational cultural flows in East Asia is articulated
at the site of media consumption.
Japanese interest in Asian popular culture did not start recently. In the
1970s and 1980s, for example, kung fu films from Hong Kong became quite
popular, and several Hong Kong, Taiwanese, and Korean pop singers made
their debuts in Japan. Although, compared with Japanese cultural exports to
other parts of Asia, the flow of popular culture from these regions into Japan
has been less extensive, the overall media coverage of Asian popular culture
has drastically increased, and interest in Asian films and pop music captured
a broad Japanese audience in the 1990s (see Ajia karuchā ryūnyū no 30 nen
1994; Tadashii Ajia no hamarikata 1997). Japanese representation and con-
sumption of Asian popular culture has become so diverse that it is impossible
to deal with all aspects of the culture in a single chapter. Hence, I have cho-
sen to focus on two topical issues in order to show the contradictions and
ambivalence articulated in the Japanese discursive construction of ‘‘Asia’’
through the reception of other Asian popular culture. First, some Japanese
critics and intellectuals have attempted to find in Asian popular culture
di√erent modes of non-Western modernity. This view, unlike the national-
ist discourses discussed in chapter 2, illustrates the attempt to reject and
transcend asymmetrical conceptions of temporal and spatial di√erence be-
tween Japan and other Asian nations. The Japanese reception of the Sin-
gaporean pop musician Dick Lee is a case in point. In the midst of the world
music boom around 1990, Lee’s syncretic music prompted these analysts to
challenge the, to that time, dominant view of Asia as an inferior Other and
to engage with ‘‘modern’’ Asia on equal terms.
However, as Asian economic development stirred Japanese media and
industry attention and broadened Japanese interest in Asian popular culture
in the 1990s, such a reflexive posture was gradually swallowed up by Japan’s
historically constituted conception of a culturally and racially similar, but
always ‘‘backward’’ Asia. Through an analysis of mainstream commercials,
films, tv dramas, and publications in Japan, I will argue that the self-critical
stance in the discourse on Asian popular culture has been overwhelmed by a
stress on the temporal lag between Japan and other Asian nations in the
mid-1990s. Now, modernizing Asian nations are nostalgically seen to em-
body a social vigor and optimism for the future that Japan allegedly is losing
or has lost. This perception, revealing as it does Japan’s refusal to accept that
it shares the same temporality as other Asian nations, illustrates the asym-
metrical flow of intraregional cultural consumption in East Asia.
My analysis is based on empirical research I conducted in Tokyo in 1997
and 1998. It suggests that the aforementioned ambivalences in Japan’s fas-
cination with Asia are apparent in the Japanese reception of Hong Kong
popular culture. In the mid-1990s, the frequent media coverage in Japan of
Hong Kong popular culture significantly increased the number of fans of
Hong Kong films and pop stars. While the approval of such fans still tended
to be informed by a nostalgic longing, some perceived Hong Kong to be the
modern equal of Japan. In their eyes, it was Hong Kong’s synchronous
temporality with Japan, not its temporal distance that had brought about the
di√erences between Japan and Hong Kong. This perception encouraged a
di√erent view of Asian cultural modernity, one through which Japan’s mod-
ern experiences could be critically reconsidered.
This does not mean that the consumption of Asian popular culture in
Japan shows a critical engagement with deconstructing the prevailing con-
ception of ‘‘Asia.’’ Rather, Asian popular culture has become a site where
the continuity, rearticulation, and rupture of a historically constituted Japa-
nese imagination of ‘‘Asia’’ are all complexly manifested. It is these contra-
dictions, embodied in the Japanese consumption of Asian popular culture,
that I will attend to in this chapter.

Popular Asianism in Japan 159

 Commonality and temporal lag:
The Japanese discourse on ‘‘Asian’’ pop music

A significant feature of the Japanese consumption of Asian audiovisual im-

agery is the prevalence of writing on the subject. As an editor of a Japanese
magazine on Asian popular music told me, ‘‘Publications on Asian pop sell
much more than the music itself in Japan.’’ Beginning in the 1980s, this
trend had become particularly conspicuous by the 1990s with the growth in
the popular literature on Asian countries (the so-called Asia-bon) (Maekawa
and Ōno 1997). Asia-related publications in the 1990s have been distin-
guished by the prevalence of travelogues and personal reports, which are
designed to explain daily life and popular culture in Asia to younger Japa-
nese readers (Ōno 1996; Ajiabon no shuppan kakkyō 1994).∞ This pre-
disposition is in contrast to the previously dominant themes of books on
East and Southeast Asia, which focused on Japan’s role in World War II
and its lingering economic exploitation of the region su√ering from poverty
(e.g., Tsurumi 1980, 1982; Murai 1987; Murai, Kido, and Koshida 1983). As
other Asian countries have achieved greater economic development (an
achievement manifested clearly in Seoul’s hosting of the Olympic Games in
1988) and with the development of tourism to Asian regions, an interest in
the culture of urban Asia has become prominent. In these publications,
Japanese writers attempt to understand Asia, not through ‘‘study’’ but
through firsthand ‘‘experience’’ (Maekawa and Ōno 1997).
The main topics of popular Asia-related publications range from informa-
tion about consumer items such as food, shopping, beauty salons, and mas-
sages to articles about the media and popular culture (tv, films, music, etc.).
While their encounters with these quotidian aspects of life in Asian cities
often point to irreducible cultural di√erences between Japan and other
Asian nations, Japanese writers nevertheless perceive underlying common-
alities. In her best-selling travel book, Ajia Fumufumu Ryokō (1994), Mure
Yōko confesses that she had long been fascinated with the West and never
had an interest in Asia, which for her connoted backwardness. However,
when she traveled to Hong Kong, Macao, and Seoul for the first time in the
early 1990s, she found these cities so modern and exciting that she became
addicted to traveling across Asia. She encountered many curiously familiar
scenes in Asia and realized that the region shared ‘‘something’’ with Japan—
though just what that ‘‘something’’ was she does not make explicit. While
traveling through the United States, she had enjoyed its sheer Otherness,
160 Recentering globalization
but in Asia she had delighted in its ‘‘bit of di√erence’’ based on same-
ness. Along with the elusive question of what Japan and other Asian na-
tions share, what the deployment of this ‘‘familiar di√erence’’ (see Ang and
Stratton 1996) between them tells us merits consideration here. If Japan’s
Asian identity is evoked through the perception of a familiar di√erence
rather than as a cardinal cultural commonality, is this familiar di√erence
overtly or covertly employed to confirm Japan’s superiority? Or does it
feed on the conception that Japan meets such nations on equal terms? It
is Japan’s often contradictory posture toward Asia, the ways in which the
spatio-temporal similarities and di√erences between Japan and other Asian
nations are articulated, that the analysis of a popular Asianism in Japan
will elucidate.
In the 1990s, Asian pop music significantly stimulated Japan’s awareness of
its Asian identity. In this regard, an intriguing statement appears on the
cover of an edited volume entitled Poppu Eijia (Pop Asia) (1990), ‘‘The
popular music of Asia reminds us that Japanese are Asian.’’ Judging from the
content of the publication, in which more than ten Japanese music critics
explore the relationship between Japanese and other Asian popular music,
two elements appear to be behind this evocation of Japan’s Asian identity:
the common experience of a (forced) cultural hybridization and of indige-
nization of foreign (mainly Western) cultural forms; and the influence of
Japanese cultural production. Which perspective is employed depends on
the region in focus. Some writers (Saitō 1990a; Shinozaki 1990b; Kawakami
1990) in the volume point out that as far as popular music style is concerned,
Japan shares more with East Asian nations—Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South
Korea—than with Southeast Asia.≤ Such cultural commonality for East
Asian popular music is, according to them, articulated through the recep-
tion of (Westernized) Japanese popular music. Saitō (1990a, 22) argues that
‘‘Japanese influence on Asian music industries is the key factor for the
demarcation of the boundaries between East and Southeast Asia.’’ In South-
east Asia, the influence of English-language pop music has been direct,
but ‘‘East Asian nations tend to prefer Japanese pop music, as it acquires
somehow ‘[East] Asian’ flavor through the absorption and indigenization of
Western pop music’’ (Shinozaki 1990b, 105). Here, familiar di√erence is
perceived in the way in which other East Asian nations develop their pop
music production to a greater or less extent through Japanese influence.
Japan’s Asianness is articulated, as in hybridism discourse, in terms of its role
as a translator between Western and Asian modern cultural formations.
Popular Asianism in Japan 161
 Japan’s Asian identity is di√erently articulated when attention is paid
to popular music in Southeast Asia, where Japanese commentators (Saitō
1990a; Shinozaki 1990b) acknowledge that Japanese cultural influence is
arguably much weaker. Here, as the subtitle of Poppu Eijia suggests—‘‘Tin-
gle with the excitement of cultural hybridization when listening to Asian
pop’’—Asian popular music illuminates the common act of producing local
culture through cultural indigenization and hybridization. For one thing,
the West’s dominant cultural power, underlining the shared experience of
cross-fertilization, articulates the similarity between Japanese and Southeast
Asian pop music. As a young Japanese male commented, ‘‘I have listened
mainly to Western pop music, but when I listened to Thai pop for the first
time, it did not sound entirely strange to me’’ (Ajia myūjikku saikō! 1995).
This remark suggests that the familiarity of Thai pop to Japanese is due to its
incorporation of Western pop elements. At the same time, the common
practice of hybridization also articulates the familiar di√erence of Southeast
Asian pop music in a rather spectacular and exotic manner. According to
Saitō (1990a, 23), unlike East Asian pop music, ‘‘most Japanese audiences are
attracted to its fascinating way of cultural cross-fertilization of the local and
the foreign’’ (see also Kubota 1990). Southeast Asian pop music thus more
often than not conjures up the Japanese perception of a quite di√erent mode
of Asian cultural modernity. I will return to this point shortly.
Which of these two modes of familiar di√erence is emphasized—although
they are sometimes commingled—in Japanese discourse on Asian popular
culture and Japan’s Asian identity also depends on historical context. In the
1980s, there was still a distinct gap between the cultural production capacity
of Japan and other Asian nations. Japanese authors, in their search for Japan’s
Asian connection, tended to encounter this gap in terms of apparent Japa-
nese cultural influence in the region. The popular essayist Morieda Takashi’s
Chūkanzu de mita Ajia (A worm’s eye view of Asia) (1988) is a case in point.
Morieda’s perspective was also that of the urban consumer and he attempted
to escape the conventional focus on some authentic, traditional Asia. He
stressed the significance of introducing the popular and consumer culture of
Asia to Japanese readers, as this would deepen their interest in Asia in the
same way that many people in Japan became acquainted with the United
States through Hollywood popular films (68). Examining popular and con-
sumer culture in Asia, however, Morieda found a significant influence of
Japanese culture in the region in terms of food, fashion, and animation, as
well as popular songs. As the result, while acknowledging the asymmetry in
162 Recentering globalization
the relations—both economic and cultural—between Japan and Asia, Mor-
ieda concluded with no more than an expression of the hope that his book
would be a first step to correct this asymmetry by assisting the bilateral flow
of information between Japan and Asia: ‘‘In any case, there are many people
in Asian countries who are fans of Japanese pop idols. In South Korea,
people eat the same pickle as in Japan. Thai people love watching Doraemon
and Oshin. These facts will make Asia more familiar and intimate to Japa-
nese readers’’ (235). Since the Asia he introduced to readers is one whose
popular culture has been deeply influenced by Japan, Morieda’s intention of
evoking Japan’s Asian identity by making the information tra≈c two-way
ironically resulted in the confirmation of Japan’s dominant position in Asia.
In this period, there was also a Japanese attempt to forge a more self-
critical discourse on the relationship between Japan and Asia via Asian
popular music. Just as world music appeals to the Western ‘‘liberal/left’’ as
the ideological antithesis of an American-centric view of the world (Barrett
1996), Asian pop music serves for some Japanese commentators as an anti-
dote to Japan’s exploitative relationship with Asia and to claims of Japanese
superiority (based on Japan’s reputed closeness to American popular cul-
ture). Shinozaki Hiroshi is one such commentator. A prominent writer on
Asian pop, in 1988 he published a book on the subject entitled Kasettoshoppu
e Ikeba Ajia ga Mietekuru (Understanding Asia through pop music cassette-
tape shops). In his work, Shinozaki explores the politics, economies, and
societies of Asian countries through their popular music. He also examines
their relations with Japan with reference to Japan’s imperialist history, its
economic exploitation of them, and Japan’s role in the Asian sex industry.
While recognizing the influence of Japanese popular music in the region, he
nevertheless tries not to put Japan and other Asian countries on a linear
developmental line. He confesses to being overwhelmed by a sense of déjà
vu upon hearing local music in many parts of Asia, but he adds that this
experience of cultural similarity is not based on his actual historical memory
of Japan’s past: ‘‘The historical path of one country is not necessarily fol-
lowed by another country. I rather hope that other Asian countries will take
di√erent paths from that of Japan. Asia is a really tough other in that it is cul-
turally quite similar to but simultaneously altogether di√erent from Japan’’
(Shinozaki 1988, 235). While he implies that a primordial cultural similarity
exists between Japan and other Asian nations, Shinozaki avoids comparing
the contemporary Asian music scene with Japan’s past and tries to conceive
of the familiar di√erence of Asia on equal and coeval terms.
Popular Asianism in Japan 163
 Is Asia still one? The Japanese appropriation and
appreciation of Dick Lee

Shinozaki’s (1988) caution about the Japanese Orientalist conception that

‘‘their’’ future is ‘‘our’’ past was directed against a faith in Japan’s advanced
capacity for producing pop music in the late 1980s. The success of Singa-
porean musician Dick Lee in the world music genre around 1990 dramati-
cally displaced this perception, however, and threw Southeast Asian hybrid-
ity into high relief.≥ Dick Lee has been the most successful Asian pop singer
in the Japanese market in terms of cd sales figures.∂ The attractiveness of his
syncretic music for Japanese audiences lies in its playful mixing of Western
pop and various adaptations of traditional Asian music. Particularly well
received were Lee’s two albums The Mad Chinaman (1989) and Asia Major
(1990), in which he attempted to articulate his search for an impure identity
as a Singaporean and an Asian, respectively, through the syncretic remaking
of traditional Asian songs and instrumentals in contemporary (Western) pop
music styles. As Kitanaka (1995, 34), a well-known music critic, suggests,
the attraction of Lee’s music resides in the combination of two factors. The
first is an exoticism which derives from the incorporation of local cultural
traditions, and the second is a sophisticated modern music style, backed by
the use of the latest technologies. Lee’s music made Japanese realize that
Asian pop is not backward but represents a highly sophisticated mode of
cultural hybridization (see Shinozaki 1990a; Tokyo FM Shuppan 1995, 168).
Dick Lee became a cause célèbre for Japanese critics because his music
embodied a radical sense of a hybrid Asian identity that was beyond the reach
of the self-contained Japanese cultural formation (e.g., Shinozaki 1990b,
107–8). All by himself, Lee had produced ‘‘a new sound by fusing West and
East that Japanese musicians, who just mimic Western music style, could
never do’’ (Yoshihara 1994, 188). His music presented a di√erent form of
cultural negotiation between Asia and the West, a more cosmopolitan mode
of hybridization that Japan had yet to attain (e.g., Shinozaki 1990b; Kubota
1990). This point has been expanded by Nakazawa Shin’ichi (1990), a
prominent Japanese advocate of postmodernism. He argues that Lee’s music
reflects the postmodernist condition of Singapore, a floating intersection of
cultures which, unlike China or Japan, lacks a strong sense of communal
identity. Japan can never be such an intersection because it cannot resist the
pull of communal gravitation (217). In contrast, Nakazawa contends, in

164 Recentering globalization

Singapore no attempt is made to insert its diversity of cultures into a na-
tionalizing melting pot that homogenizes them: ‘‘Dick Lee for the first time
succeeded in making Asian pop music attain a consistent multiplex structure,
so much so that his music suggests the possibility of the mingled existence of
multiple di√erent rhythms in one song. . . . Dick Lee as a Singaporean is free
from a strong drawing force to the motherland and therefore has attained the
freedom as well as the sorrow of a nomadic subjectivity’’ (217–18).
Nakazawa seems to suggest that Japanese musicians have long been en-
deavoring to indigenize foreign (Western) pop, but in a way that removes all
traces of the original. In Lee’s music, in contrast, the warp and woof of
di√erent musical traditions are highlighted. As was observed in chapter 2,
the Japanese way of mixing cultures suppresses its foreign origins, thereby
articulating ‘‘Japaneseness’’ by rendering the product mukokuseki (express-
ing non-nationality). Dick Lee’s mixing is takokuseki (expressing multi-
nationality/ethnicity); it subtly juxtaposes many diverse cultures without
erasing their original features (Saitō 1990b).∑
Arguably, the above views on Lee’s music and Singapore fail to notice the
contradictory cultural and identity politics operating in Singapore, its in-
betweenness, which is not a voluntary condition but one that was forced
upon Singapore by its history of Western imperialism (see Ang and Stratton
1997). Moreover, these views celebrate Singapore, through the vehicle of
Lee’s syncretic musical style, as an idealized postmodern city of nomads, in a
rather uncritical manner. It can be claimed, for instance, that Lee’s music is
just a fashionable, commercialized, apolitical pastiche of Western pop and
traditional Asian music; that his claim of possessing a pan-Asian identity is
purely a promotional strategy; and that his claim operates, within the con-
text of Singapore’s cultural policies, to stress a multiracial, pan-Asian iden-
tity in nationalist terms (see Kong 1996; Wee 1996). However, the debate
over the cultural politics of Lee’s music has, on the whole, failed to have an
impact on Japanese critics and audiences, who appreciate the music as they
incorporate it into a Japanese context.∏ In this sense, the Japanese dis-
course on Dick Lee’s music is reminiscent of another contentious issue of
intercultural communication—the appropriation of cultural Others via me-
dia consumption. The development of communication technologies has
intensified contact with cultural Others predominantly through a medi-
ated experience (e.g., Meyrowitz 1985; Thompson 1995). Accordingly, the
development of international communications has made transnational me-

Popular Asianism in Japan 165

dia consumption a site where an Orientalist gaze upon a dehumanized,
cultural Other is invariably reproduced (Said 1978; Morley and Robins
1995, 125–46).
However, I would argue that Japanese discourses on Lee’s music, although
they largely ignore the debate about the music in Singapore, cannot all be
dismissed simply as another attempt to domesticate something innovative by
casting it as an inferior, exotic, Asian other. At the least, some display an
e√ort to appreciate Lee’s music as the embodiment of an Asian modernity
whose di√erence articulates a telling critique of the formation of Japanese
modernity and its discourse on hybridism. This is a more encouraging
posture for dealing with cultural Otherness in transnational media con-
sumption: engaging with it ‘‘in a relation of mutuality and equivalence’’
(Hamilton 1997, 149) in order to change one’s own subjectivity.
Adopting the above perspective, Ueda (1994) contends that Lee’s music,
with its a≈rmative emphasis on the dynamic and hybrid ‘‘banana’’ identity
of modern Asians—yellow on the outside, white on the inside—decon-
structs a static, essentialist binarism of East and West that has long been
prominent in Japanese conceptions of Asia. Ueda makes his point by com-
paring Lee with Okakura Tenshin’s phrase ‘‘Asia is one,’’ uttered at the turn
of the nineteenth century. In his famous book, The Ideal of the East with
Special Reference to the Art of Japan (1904), Okakura used a binary East–West
opposition in an attempt to grasp ‘‘Asia’’ as a coherent space characterized
by the existence of ‘‘love’’ underlying art and aesthetics in the region.π More
significantly, Karatani (1994) has argued that in Okakura’s essentialist con-
struction of Asia, he does not simply attempt to articulate a cardinal Eastern
value and aesthetic. Rather, Okakura’s work reflects his desire that Asia
be given an imaginary coherence by Japan. Here, Okakura’s argument is
closely in line with the Japanese discourse on hybridism. Okakura imagined
not just Asian unity in diversity but a curator, ‘‘Japan,’’ through whom this
unity could be achieved in the first place.∫ Admitting Japan’s deep cultural
and intellectual debt to China and India, Okakura argued that many of the
arts, religions, and ideas that had been lost in other parts of Asia were
preserved in Japan. Okakura conceived of Japan as the museum of Asian
civilizations. Okakura’s famous assertion of ‘‘Asia is one’’ thus assigned Japan
the exclusive ‘‘historical mission not only to represent, but also to speak for
the highest ideal of Asia’’ (Ching 1998, 76).
In contrast, Ueda (1994) asserts, Dick Lee in his work does not reify the
East–West opposition. Even in his album The Mad Chinaman, in which he
166 Recentering globalization
expresses his ambivalence toward his position as a Singaporean between Asia
and the West, tradition and modernity, Lee still tries to incorporate both
sides of the binary rather than valorize one at the expense of the other.
According to Ueda, Dick Lee’s ‘‘One Song’’ succeeds in expressing an Asian
aesthetic by incorporating di√erent Asian musical traditions and languages
into a new form without rejecting the West: ‘‘Dick Lee’s message ‘Let’s sing
one song’ is active and dynamic while Okakura Tenshin’s ‘Asia is one’ is
static. Dick Lee does not exclude Western elements from his conception of
Asia. The articulation of Asianness goes hand in hand with the keen hybrid-
ization of many elements of West and East. Okakura’s conception of Asia
was only derived from a binary oppositioning between East and West’’ (46).
Furthermore, Lee’s music does not presuppose any center in the process
of Asian cross-fertilization. Ueda approves of Lee’s claims that many Asians
share a common identity and that, in the course of indigenizing modernity,
they have come to acquire similar bodily feelings and sensitivities (51). Here
it is suggested that the conception of ‘‘Asia’’ should not be derived from
some essential Asianness nor from the sharing of a common Other (the
West). Most crucially, Lee’s music tells people in Japan that if Asian popular
music makes Japanese feel that they are Asian, it is because it reminds them
of the shared modern experience of ever-cross-fertilizing dynamics in Asia,
where Japan does not occupy the position of a transcending center but
merely that of a player—one among many—contributing to the production
of a new syncretic culture.

Dick Lee and East Asian capitalist cross-fertilization

The drawback of the Japanese appreciation of Dick Lee, however, has be-
come manifest in his transient popularity and, more significantly, in the
subsequent, twisted development of Lee’s advocacy of cultural hybridiza-
tion by Japanese media industries. What is significant but missing in Ueda’s
argument is a critical consideration of how the Japanese appreciation of
Lee’s music could work collusively with Japan’s project of reconfiguring its
leading position in a China-centered dynamic space of cultural cross-fertil-
ization in Asia, which I discussed in chapter 3. If ‘‘Lee’s music is symptom-
atic, but not directly reflective, of the ongoing reformations of politico-
cultural issues in Singapore’’ (Wee 1996, 503), I would suggest that its
greater popularity in Japan than in other Asian countries is symptomatic of
the resurgence of Japan’s desire to generate a pan-Asian cultural fusion.
Popular Asianism in Japan 167
 After interrogating his impure Asian identity in The Mad Chinaman (1989)
and Asia Major (1990), Lee tried to explore his persona as a modern ‘‘banana
Asian’’ in his next album, Orientalism (1991). He had come to realize that his
trademark style—the subtle and playful interweaving of traditional Asian
music with Western pop—could be pursued equally well by Westerners. As
Lee commented: ‘‘I know that if I re-make well-known Asian old songs in
Western contemporary popular music style, the album will be well received
by critics and sell. But I do not want to be a spurious ‘Asian’ artist. I think
we should honestly acknowledge that our music style is after all deeply
Westernized, that we are no longer as much ‘Asian’ as we believe. This does
not mean that all we can do is copy the West but we should start creating a
new Asianness based upon a recognition of the state of a√airs’’ (Ajia pawā
1992, 12).
When Lee produced Orientalism, he was thus convinced that Asian popu-
lar music should reflect the ‘‘cultural impurity’’ of Asians in a positive way.
However, the album was not as popular in Japan as his two previous works.
It even disappointed Japanese audiences.Ω As Ueda notes, in Orientalism the
a≈rmation of a ‘‘banana’’ identity results in a more sophisticated Western-
ized music devoid of the juxtaposition of the modern and exotic. Alongside
the decline in the popularity of world music in Japan, the discursive value of
Lee diminished soon after his music lost its strong ‘‘Asian,’’ exotic flavor
(Ueda 1994, 48–49; Ajia pawā 1992). Such ‘‘Westernized’’ music is too
familiar to Japanese audiences to be portrayed as a spectacular antithesis to
Japanese hybridism.
More significantly, the release of Orientalism coincided with an increasing
interest on the part of Japanese business in the expanding markets of Asia,
especially East Asia, where the production of popular music had rapidly
developed in the early 1990s under Western and (to a lesser extent) Japanese
influence.∞≠ This coincidence suggests two things about the Dick Lee phe-
nomenon in Japan: First, it drew the attention of the Japanese music indus-
try to the value of combining traditional Asian music and Western pop in a
sophisticated way; second, it alerted the industry to the potential of market-
ing and producing pan-Asian popular music icons with the Japanese initia-
tive (Ongaku sangyō wa Ajia mejā o mezasu 1992, 12). The title of Lee’s
album Asia Major was thus manipulated to connote the pan-Asian market
strategy of the Japanese music industry (Ongaku sangyō wa Ajia mejā o
mezasu 1992). Ironically, then, at the same time that Lee’s music was sub-
verting a Japan-centric conception of pan-Asian cultural fusion, it was en-
168 Recentering globalization
couraging the Japanese music industry to expand into other Asian (notably
Chinese) markets by becoming an organizer of cultural hybridization. Dick
Lee’s dynamic pan-Asianism basically triggered Japan’s orchestration of the
transnationalization of Asian popular music.
This posture taken by the Japanese music industry casts a shadow over the
media representation of Asian popular music. Here, the desire for the cre-
ation of a pan-Asian cultural sphere still haunts the Japanese imagination
strongly. Stimulated by the Dick Lee boom in Japan, one cultural critic,
Kawakami Hideo (1990; 1995), enthusiastically expected that, just as Paris
had become the center of world music in the mid-1980s, so would Tokyo
become the center of Asian popular music in the 1990s. In 1993 two popular
magazines, Across and Spa!, each ran feature articles on transnational Asian
entertainment (Toransu Eijian entāteinmento 1993; Ekkyō suru Ajia geinō
1993). Both articles focused on the interest of young Japanese in Asian
popular culture. Across’s article related that Asian countries were no longer
just places suggestive of mystery and tradition for young Japanese; indeed,
young Asians who had been deeply exposed to Western culture had now
begun creating new local cultures. Nevertheless, both articles noted the
central role being played by the Japanese media industries in the region’s
cultural ebb and flow.
The legacy of the ‘‘Asia is one’’ ideology is also evident in Japanese media
representations of Asian pop music in the 1990s. During this period, Japan
conceived of itself as the consumer showcase of hybrid Asian music. Al-
though recent Japanese writing on Asian popular culture has been sensitive
to the issue of diversity, it is surprising to see how often Asian countries
continue to be lumped together in a single musical category, with the word
‘‘Ajia’’ (Asia) featuring in the title—a category from which Japan is omitted
(the aforementioned magazine Poppu Eijia is no exception). Take, for in-
stance, AsiaNbeat, a tv series about Asian pop music that was broadcast
between 1993 and 1995. Although its Japanese presenter would shout ‘‘Asia
is one,’’ the program actually regularly lumped together East and Southeast
Asian pop music but exclude music from Japan. In this sense, then, ‘‘Asia is
one’’ really means that Asia is one only in and for Japan (Ichikawa 1994,
171). Likewise, nhk broadcast a tv special, Asia Live Dream (26 December
1996) which also covered many parts of Asia from a Japan-centric perspec-
tive. It featured more than twenty pop singers from ten Asian countries. In
one segment, several Asian singers sang the program’s theme song together
with Doraemon, a character from a popular Japanese animation. All of this
Popular Asianism in Japan 169
suggests that ‘‘Asia’’ is re-imagined as a cultural space in which Japan is
located in the implicit center, playing the part of the conductor of Asian pop
musical cross-fertilization.
In the mid-1990s, as I will discuss later, in accordance with the increase in
Japanese music industries’ interest in East Asian/Chinese pop music mar-
kets, Japanese media attention also shifted to the latter regions from South-
east Asia (Shiraishi 1996). Lee himself quickly adjusted to the changing
currents,∞∞ seemingly always conscious of what the Japanese media indus-
tries expected of him. On another tv program that dealt with the Asian
popular music scene, 21seiki no Bîtoruzu wa Ajia kara (The Beatles of the
twenty-first century will emerge from Asia) (NHK Educational, 8 March
1997), the main topic was no longer Lee’s music but emerging Chinese rock
musicians, some of whom well-known Japanese music critics and scholars
expected to produce globally acclaimed popular music. That music would
reflect social contradictions caused by rapid capitalist development in the
region by appropriating Western musical styles (see Hashizume 1994). Dick
Lee was once again cast in the program as an Asian musician who embodied
the transcendence of the East–West binarism. Lee this time renewed his
raison d’etre by introducing a new acronym, ‘‘weast’’ (a merging of
‘‘West’’ and ‘‘East’’), to express the importance of overcoming the old binar-
ism. The intricacy of the Japanese appropriation and appreciation of Dick
Lee appears to have culminated with his appointment to the vice-presi-
dency of Sony Music’s Asian division in July 1998. Although he quit that job
in 2000, Lee o≈cially had worked for a Japanese-owned global conglomer-
ate promoting the cultural hybridization of East and West (Kyōmi shinshin
Dikku ga Sonı̄ Ajia no fukushachō ni 1998).

Back to the developmental axis

As the pendulum has again swung from a spectacular modernity embodied

by Dick Lee (and some other Southeast Asian pop music) to a more ‘‘proxi-
mate’’ (more receptive to Japanese influence) modernity mainly featured in
East Asian pop music, there has also been a change in the lexicon deployed
to articulate Japan’s relation with Asia. Familiar di√erence has come to be
explained mostly in terms of capitalist developmental temporality. Even
relatively critical Japanese commentators are not immune to this discursive
turn. While warning against the view that ‘‘Asia is following the way Japan
passed ten years ago,’’ their interpretative frame of reference in dealing with
170 Recentering globalization
cultural di√erence in Asia nevertheless tends to pull back from a synchronic
spatial axis to a diachronic evolutionist temporality.
A case in point is the reportage of urban Asia, Ajia wa Machi ni Kike (Go to
the city and understand Asia) (1994), written by Ichikawa Takashi. In the
book, Ichikawa uses popular music to reflect on Japan’s position in and
relationship with Asia, particularly the Chinese cultural regions. While
acknowledging Japan’s influence by citing the many Japanese songs that
have been covered by other Asian musicians, Ichikawa argues that other East
Asian countries are rapidly developing their own music styles by earnestly
indigenizing foreign (American and Japanese) influences (see also Marume
1994; Chikai kuni kara ippai kita geinōjin 1994). According to Ichikawa,
Japan and those Asian countries di√er less in terms of the act of indigeniza-
tion itself than in terms of the latter’s advantage in the developmental pro-
cess. Unlike the modernization of Japan, which was accomplished step by
step, the modernization of other East Asian countries can be described as a
form of ‘‘leap’’ development, in that they have acquired economic and tech-
nological innovations without proceeding methodically. Ichikawa (1994,
144–55) considers popular music development in light of this theory. Japan
developed its own musical styles through a long process of indigenizing
American pop; the corollary of this was the abundance in other Asian
countries of Japanese ‘‘cover’’ songs. Ichikawa considers Asian copies of
Japanese songs to be an example of leap development, in that Asian coun-
tries now e√ortlessly appropriate the fruit of Japan’s long indigenization of
Western pop.
Arguably, this leap development has brought about the condensed coexis-
tence of many temporalities as well as of many cultures in one space, much
more intensely than Japan ever experienced. This point is made by a phi-
losopher, Washida Kiyokazu with his observation of the synchronous juxta-
position of many temporalities in Shanghai: ‘‘All the temporalities I have
experienced are hotchpotched like a soup or lie on top of one another like a
kaleidoscope. The disappearance of all the temporal di√erences leads to an
overwhelming sense of synchronicity. . . . It is as if fifty years of our [ Japa-
nese] postwar experiences are all arranged in every corner of the city. I can
also feel the multiple temporal layers in Japanese cities, but I’ve never known
such a city where many temporalities are compressed in one space as in
Shanghai’’ (1996, 41–42). This argument can be read as a Japanese attempt
to displace the Japanese sense of superiority in terms of developmental
temporality. The juxtaposition of multiple temporalities testifies to a dif-
Popular Asianism in Japan 171
ferent mode of constituting non-Western modernity operating in other
Asian cities. The idea of a gradual progress does not capture what is going on
in other Asian cities, according to Washida, where the development is being
achieved from hop to jump, omitting the ‘‘skip’’ stage in China (1996, 43).
This discourse is reminiscent of a familiar argument concerning the situa-
tion of non-Western postmodernity. Unlike the postmodernity of the West,
non-Western postmodernity cannot be conceived as the subsequent stage of
modernity rather, as Buell remarks, it ‘‘thrives on incomplete moderniza-
tion, the result of modernization from the top down. Peripheral sites thus
produce cultural situations in which distinct time frames (artificially) con-
structed by colonialism and Orientalism, and powerfully separated by de-
velopmentalism’s evolutionary narrative, circulate together’’ (1994, 335).
Buell is apt to see the demise of a grand evolutionary narrative in a pe-
ripheral postmodernity which articulates ‘‘the clash of di√erently encoded
temporalities,’’ as well as the juxtaposition of many cultures (335–37). How-
ever, this kind of view tends to underestimate the deeply uneven nature of
global capitalist modernity. The ‘‘always already postmodern’’ situation of
the non-Western periphery should not be celebrated uncritically, as it has
been brought about and is still deeply a√ected by the legacies of colonialism
and unequal power relations.
Likewise, there is something very problematic in the Japanese views on
Asian (post)modernity expressed above. They rarely suggest an awareness
that slums and hawkers’ stalls might be as much a constitutive part of global-
ized modernity as high-rise buildings and sophisticated hybridizations of
popular music. If recognized at all, the existence of such an unambiguous
asymmetry tends to be belittled as a transient stage in capitalist development,
which sooner or later will be supplanted by the achievement of material
a∆uence, as happened in Japan (see Washida 1996, 41). The Japanese view
thus entrenches the sense of linear progressive development while at the
same time rejecting it. The notion of a linear, step-by-step development
might be displaced, but the direction of development does not change at all.
Since the allure of the disjunctive juxtaposition of many temporalities in a
single place derives from the chimera of a somewhat earlier stage of spec-
tacular economic development in other parts of Asia, it is not surprising that
Japanese commentators, in articulating the common but di√erent experi-
ence of Asian modernity through Asian pop and urban space, tend to as-
sume a retrospective tone. Ichikawa (1994, 176–77), for example, associates
a nation’s capacity to absorb foreign cultures with a specific developmental
172 Recentering globalization
stage of high economic growth—a stage which Japan has passed and which
other Asian countries are now approaching and/or experiencing. It is often
said that while Japan eagerly absorbed Western cultural influences in the
1970s, it stopped doing so in the 1980s, with the result that its popular
culture became centripetal and was confined to the national market (e.g.,
Kawasaki 1993; Mizukoshi and Baeg 1993). Likewise, Ichikawa (1994, 176–
77) asserts that Japan’s receptiveness to foreign cultural influences peaked
in the 1960s and 1970s, when it was experiencing high economic growth.
The prevalence of Japanese cover songs in Hong Kong, he suggests, reveals
not the inferiority of its music industry, but its great capacity for cultural
absorption—a capacity which Japan once had—and hence demonstrates the
stagnant situation of Japanese cultural formation. The discordant temporali-
ties to be found in East Asian pop music or in modernizing Asian cities such
as Shanghai prompt the Japanese commentators to reflect on their own
vivacious path to economic development.
While Ichikawa’s (1994) purpose is not to emphasize the temporal lag
between Japan and Asia, we will see that such retrospective tropes have
been easily exploited in the Japanese media in a more haughty manner in the
representation of Asian societies and rising Asian pop idols in the mid-
1990s. The self-critical discourse on Asian popular music, forged among a
relatively small community of music critics and (world music) audiences was
gradually absorbed by the dominant media discourse; this discourse is dis-
tinctive in its disavowal of the claim that Japan and Asia inhabit the same
temporal location. Before discussing the Japanese promotion and consump-
tion of East Asian (Hong Kong) popular music and idols, we need to analyze
this media discourse, which has been characterized by nostalgia for the
vigorous economic development and industrialization of Japan’s past.

Capitalist nostalgia for ‘‘Asia’’

Nostalgia, once regarded as a symptom of extreme homesickness, has be-

come a key term to describe the modern and postmodern cultural con-
ditions (e.g., Davis 1979; Stewart 1993; Frow 1991).∞≤ Fredric Jameson
(1983) argues that nostalgia, together with pastiche, is a central feature of
late capitalist image production. Nostalgia is no longer what it was under
modernism—the empiricist representation of a historical past; in the post-
modern age, it has become the appropriation of ‘‘the ‘past’ through stylis-
tic connotation, conveying ‘pastness’ by the glossy qualities of the image’’
Popular Asianism in Japan 173
( Jameson 1983, 19). Mass advertising thus often represents ‘‘imagined nos-
talgia’’ by which people are driven to yearn for a mediated world they have
never lost (Appadurai 1996, 77). At the same time, the acceleration of the
transnational circulation of images and signs, of contact with other cultures
and the expansion of tourist industries have facilitated ‘‘the global institu-
tionalization of the nostalgic attitude’’ (Robertston 1990, 53).∞≥ The (imag-
ined) past images appropriated are now derived from other cultures and
places too. Here evoked is ‘‘borrowed nostalgia,’’ in which people’s memo-
ries are constituted by their experiences of consuming mass-mediated cul-
tural forms from elsewhere. As Buell (1994, 342) points out, ‘‘We not only
manufacture our present cultures in closer relationship with each other than
before, but also more and more overtly commingle the inventions of our
memories and pasts.’’
The politics of the transnational evocation of nostalgia is highlighted
when it is employed to confirm a frozen temporal lag between two cultures,
when ‘‘our’’ past and memory are found in ‘‘their’’ present. As Turner
(1994, 116) argues, the Americans’ discovery of their lost frontier in the
Australian outback, as represented in the film Crocodile Dundee, displays
‘‘how e√ortlessly Australian di√erence might be appropriated to American
ends.’’ This shows a moment when the recognition of cultural di√erence is
immediately transfigured into the comfortable a≈rmation of unequal rela-
tions between superior–inferior and advanced–backward (see Said 1978;
Todorov 1984).
Such Orientalist tropes of nostalgia have played a significant part in Japa-
nese representations of an idealized ‘‘backward’’ Asia, in which the Japanese
can find their lost purity, energy, and dreams. Dorinne Kondo (1997) has
identified two types of Japanese (masculine) nostalgia vis-à-vis Asia in her
analysis of magazine articles published in 1990. The first is a nostalgia for a
pre-urbanized unspoiled nature in Bali. Bali is represented as a site which
can be consumed by an a∆uent Japanese tourist for ‘‘spiritual renewal.’’
Kondo also finds in the representation of the premodern innocence of Thai-
land what Rosaldo calls ‘‘imperialist nostalgia,’’ which describes a Western
hypocritical sense of yearning for what uncivilized non-Western societies
are losing on the path to Western-led modernization. It is ‘‘a particular
kind of nostalgia, often found under imperialism, where people mourn the
passing of what they themselves have transformed’’ (Rosaldo 1989, 108).
Rosaldo is especially concerned with how an apparently innocent yearning
can hide the collusiveness of such a nostalgia with the exercise of cultural
174 Recentering globalization
and economic domination. The dominant (the West) mourns what the
dominated (the non-West) is losing, while knowing that such a loss is
inevitable if they are to become civilized and modern like ‘‘us.’’ Similarly,
the Japanese nostalgic representation of ‘‘Asia’’ can be called imperialist—or
more precisely, capitalist—as Japan was not only an imperial power in the
past but also plays a major role in the contemporary global spread of capital-
ism, one which has violently transformed and exploited many parts of the
developing Asian countries. In this regard, it should be remembered that
Japan’s postwar policy has been marked by the forgetfulness of its imperial
past, as well as by its active economic advancement into Southeast Asian
regions.
Japanese capitalist nostalgia does not just mourn what is destined to be lost
in Asia. More emphatically, what is grieved, through the predicted destiny of
premodern Asia, is actually what Japan itself has lost or is about to lose. As
Kondo argues regarding the Japanese representation of an apparently inno-
cent Thai waitress: ‘‘Exposure to Japanization, Westernization, urbaniza-
tion, and other worldly forces will despoil this Thai flower’s shy purity and
turn her into a tough, threatening hussy. . . . By mourning the fate of
Thailand through his [ Japanese journalist] projection of the waitress’s fate,
the journalist also mourns what he clearly perceives to be the ravages of
modernization and the loss of identity undergone in Japan’’ (1997, 88). Such
a capitalist nostalgia, as well as the yearning for unspoiled nature, is firmly
based upon Japan’s economically dominant position vis-à-vis other Asians.
Moreover such a privileged position assures Japan that the loss is revivable, as
Kondo observes, that ‘‘through consumption, Japanese can (re)experience
their lost innocence without jeopardizing the comforts of advanced capital-
ism that ensured its originary loss. Japan’s neocolonial economic dominance
assures access to spiritual renewal’’ (94). In the nostalgic representation of
premodern ‘‘innocence,’’ Japan is not engaging in a dialogue with ‘‘Asia’’ but
consuming it for the transient pleasures of recuperation and refreshment.
The magazine articles Kondo analyses were published in 1990. That year
was the apex of the Japanese bubble economy which let many Japanese sense
Japan’s hegemonic position in the world. Their economic power enabled
Japanese to somehow pleasurably indulge themselves in nostalgia for a pre-
modern innocence that Japan had lost. By the mid-1990s, however, this
nostalgia had become more related to the deterioration of the Japanese
economy and society. It arose in the context of a prolonged economic
recession and a series of gloomy social incidents, such as an increasing
Popular Asianism in Japan 175
number of brutal murders by teenagers and the nerve gas attacks in the
Tokyo railway system by the Aum Supreme sect. Nostalgia for Asia was no
longer just a matter of pleasurable yearning for what Japan had lost; instead,
it was now an attempt to regain the energy and vitality Japan had lost by
identifying itself with the promising land of ‘‘Asia.’’
In the mid-1990s, Bali was surpassed as a site for spiritual renewal by more
mystical, destitute, and chaotic sites in Asia such as Varanasi (India) and Kat-
mandu. Another dominant trend in Asia-related publications in the mid-
1990s was the popularity of books depicting backpackers’ experiences in
Asia. The origin of this genre can be found in Sawaki Kōtarō’s trilogy of
books entitled Shinya Tokkyū (Midnight express) (1986a; 1986b; 1992).
Sawaki’s backpacker travel from Hong Kong to India, Nepal, and finally
London was closely followed in the mid-1990s. TV–Asahi produced a
documentary-drama based on the book in 1997, and photojournalist Koba-
yashi Kisei also followed Sawaki’s route in his phenomenally popular travel
book Asian Japanese (1995), which quickly sold more than fifty thousand
copies (Wakamono wa hōrō o mezasu 1996, 35). This photo-travelogue
depicts young Japanese wandering through Asia, people Kobayashi calls
‘‘Asian Japanese.’’ After resigning from his job as a photographer for a sports
newspaper, Kobayashi went to Asia because he was sick of the media-
saturated daily life in Japan and he wanted to transform himself. In Asia, he
came across many Japanese who, like himself, were searching for their ‘‘real’’
selves through an encounter with life in all its rawness and brutality. While
Kobayashi and his followers commented that they indulged in a form of
transient escapism from Japanese society (e.g., M. Saitō 1997; Sonoda 1997),
he maintains that escape is a powerful riposte to the deficiencies of Japanese
society. One supporter of Kobayashi also defended herself, saying that, far
from constituting an escape, her journey through Asia proved to be highly
enlightening, since life in the dirty alleys of Asia taught her how to lead a
simpler and more humane life. She likened Asia to a set of parents who had
instructed her in the art of living (Wakamono wa hōrō o mezasu 1996, 35).∞∂
This motivation for travel to ‘‘premodern’’ Asia is not new but has been
the common reason why some Japanese people have traveled in Asia at least
since the 1970s (Nomura 1996). There is surely a positive aspect to this
escapism, because it is at least an attempt to take a critical distance from
Japan’s highly consumerist capitalist modernity. Yet, the problem is that
Asian Japanese’s ephemeral escape to Asia does not escape an Orientalist
gaze on Asia, which is still apt to govern any Japanese encounter with Asia.
176 Recentering globalization
Unlike the Western consumption of the non-Western, ‘‘primitive’’ Other
(Torgovnick 1990), the articulation of Asia as Japan’s chimera is not dissoci-
ated from a perceived racial/cultural commonality. Kobayashi writes: ‘‘I can
feel anywhere in Asia to be an extension of Japan. It is something like Japan
pulling strings with me. But in Europe or America, I cannot feel as such.
Strings are totally cut from Japan’’ (1995, 4–5). However, this sense of
connection strangely coexists with the rejection of historical coevalness.
Kobayashi continues, ‘‘A trip to an advanced Western country makes me
feel something familiar to Japan. There is every modern commodity such as
television, telephone and the recent pop culture in the West, all of which I
already know as information. But when I am in Asia, I realize that there is
nothing familiar which I can understand’’ (5). Kobayashi finds something
strange but somehow familiar both in Asia and Europe, but in very di√erent
ways. Japan does not share its past with the West, but both are living in the
same a∆uent but boring, media-saturated (post)modern age. Asia, in con-
trast, signifies some primordial commonality with Japan, but both are not
living in the same time.∞∑ Behind the comfortable distance Asian Japanese
feel toward Asia, there lies a sense of frozen time-lag between Asia and
Japan. Asia is never conceived as an equal interlocutor but only a magic
landscape where the Japanese unfulfilled search for a ‘‘true’’ self is pursued.
For ‘‘Asian Japanese’’ travelers, Asia is a space ‘‘out there’’ to which they can
flee whenever they feel su√ocated in Japan.

Nostalgia for modernizing energy

While the site for transient spiritual renewal has gradually shifted from
tourist resorts to backpackers’ penance, there was another significant change
regarding the object of Japan’s nostalgia in the mid-1990s. Social and eco-
nomic crisis and the prevailing pessimistic atmosphere about the future
caused people in Japan to turn their attention to the ascendancy of other
Asian nations who were enjoying remarkable economic growth. It is not
simply Japan’s economic development in the past but society’s loss of energy
in the present and the hope for the future that Japan nostalgically projects
onto modernizing Asia. As was represented in a weekly magazine, ‘‘When
we [ Japanese] walked around Hong Kong and Bangkok, we were really
overwhelmed by the energy people were releasing. It was the same kind
of raw vigor that Japan once had at the time of high economic growth’’
(Ryokō, shoku dake de naku 1993, 19). While Asia is not conceived as
Popular Asianism in Japan 177
‘‘premodern’’ here, what Japan endeavors to see is apparently not neighbors
inhabiting the same temporality. Rather, it still displays ‘‘the kind of sympa-
thy that identifies with the Other and yet denies him ‘coevalness,’ ’’ which is
constitutive of ‘‘the Orientalizing of the Other’’ (Dirlik 1991, 406). Good
old Japan is to be found in the landscape of ever-developing Asia. Japan’s
Asia is marked out by a diminishing but immutable temporal and economic
lag.
Kobayashi’s capitalist nostalgia for Asia displayed a similar twist when he
turned his attention to local Asians in Asia Road (1997). When listening to a
nineteen-year-old Vietnamese female’s dream of visiting Japan someday,
Kobayashi (1997, 172) had a strong yearning for her to utter frankly a dream
of the future. He envies her for having a vision of a better future, a belief that
tomorrow will be better than today and a hope that Hanoi will be as
developed as Tokyo in ten years. Such modernizing vigor in Vietnam be-
came the theme of a Japanese popular tv drama, Doku, which was broadcast
in prime time between October and December 1996 and attracted a wide
audience.∞∏ It dealt with the relationship between a Japanese female lan-
guage teacher and Doku, her Vietnamese male student in Japan. Moderniz-
ing Vietnam, represented by Doku, is assigned the role of savior to hopeless,
overmodernized Japan, as the following catchphrase appearing in the pub-
licity for the program shows: ‘‘Asian dreams will come true: She teaches
Japanese, he teaches hopes and dreams.’’ During shooting in Vietnam, the
Japanese actor playing the protagonist∞π and a producer were reputedly
overwhelmed by the energy of the Vietnamese, young and old, who were
willing to discuss their dreams (Doku! 1997, 77).
In the first episode’s opening scene, the Japanese heroine who visits Viet-
nam to see her friend is impressed but overpowered by the liveliness of the
Vietnamese, so much so that she is unable to cross a busy street safely
without the help of her soon-to-be Vietnamese student Doku. Asked why
she suddenly came to Vietnam, she tells the friend that while looking at
herself in the mirror in Tokyo, she had realized how her face was expres-
sionless and dull. She confesses that she is now seriously considering the
meaning of her life and wonders out loud if she is going to live this dull life
permanently. Her friend replies, pointing at the Vietnamese people around
them: ‘‘People in Vietnam are somehow marvelous. Energetic, forward-
looking, never looking back. They’d never give way to the hardship. Their
company makes me feel I can become like them. . . . (looking at a Vietnam
girl innocently smiling to her) What a wonderful smile, isn’t it? I wish I
178 Recentering globalization
could keep smiling like that for good’’ (from the first episode of Doku, 17
October 1996). As the heroine admits, Vietnamese people’s vivacity stands
in sharp contrast to the monotonousness of her life in Japan. The vitality of
the Vietnamese is at once Japan’s vanishing present and her desired future.
Because they are still not quite modern, Vietnamese are energetic and can
a√ord to dream of a bright future—hence expected to a√ord unilaterally the
Japanese people spiritual nourishment without complication.
The same nostalgia has been deployed in tv commercial films for the
oolong tea drink Suntory, which since 1991 have featured depictions of a
peaceful, pastoral life in not-quite-modern China. The 1997 version, how-
ever, depicted the fresh, unspoiled image of Chinese female flight atten-
dants. Through scenes of putting on their makeup and preparing for the
flight, of their job inexperience during the flight, and of their wandering
through the rapidly changing landscape of Shanghai, the several versions of
this commercial all depicted the lively faces of two newly recruited Chinese
flight attendants who believe in a good future and whose eyes are shining
with hope. The commercial symbolically features the theme song of an
animation series, Astro Boy, that was popular in Japan in the 1960s. Though
translated into Chinese, the lyric, ‘‘Flying to stars far beyond the sky’’ is
familiar to many Japanese. A modernizing but simpler life in China is repre-
sented with a Japanese nostalgia for hope for a brighter future, as Japan once
had, and perhaps with a self-projected, remorseful wish that the mistakes
Japan has made will not be repeated.
In a well-received film, Swallowtail Butterfly (1996), the trope of nostalgia
is utilized in relation to Asian immigrants to Japan. This is a fictional tale
about Chinese immigrants who are lured to Japan by the prospect of secur-
ing a future and who settle in the lawless suburb of a megacity in Japan, Yen
Town. The main motif appears to be the power and the energy of the
migrants, who participate in every kind of shady business to acquire yen.
The film represents multicultural situations within Japan. Chinese, Japanese,
English, and a fictional migrant language fly back and forth. ‘‘Yen’’ symbol-
izes the uneven and destructive forces of globalized capitalism, which inten-
sify the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots, the violence
among migrants, Japanese discrimination against them, and their own sense
of despair.
In spite of representing multicultural chaos in Japan, however, strikingly
absent in the film is any ‘‘real’’ encounter between the Japanese and Asians.∞∫
The film’s director is not interested in engaging with the otherness of Asian
Popular Asianism in Japan 179
migrants; instead, he aims to represent what Japanese have lost through
imagined Others. As the director, Iwai Shunji, stated, ‘‘I often felt that
Tokyo has become something like a hospital which o√ers the resident every
sort of service. We can somehow live our lives without demonstrating our
inherent instinct for self-defense and surprise. I feel such a situation so
su√ocating and irritating that I really want to break through it. I simply have
a sense of yearning for the power and energy of migrants coming to Japan
who abandon their home country or work in a foreign city for their fam-
ilies. I want to produce a story about them’’ (Swallowtail Butterfly 1996,
44). Swallowtail Butterfly starts and finishes with a superimposed title in a
sepia scene overlooking Tokyo: ‘‘Once upon a time, when the Japanese yen
was the strongest force in the world. . . . ’’ This makes us realize that what
Yen really symbolizes in the film is less Japanese violence to Asian Others.
The film is actually a story about ‘‘us,’’ as Iwai’s remark suggests; Yen Town
is a kind of amusement park where one can transiently pass a stimulating
period of time. Yen Town is where imagined Others live energetic lives full
of dreams as well as frustration, but it exists only for Japanese audiences who
can no longer live out such a dream.
In the film, as for other media representations mentioned above, nostalgia
is projected toward the (imagined) past when Japan was still ‘‘Asia,’’ when
Japan still displayed ‘‘Asian’’ vigor. However, what is suppressed here is the
fact that such vigor itself was the source and manifestation of Japanese
imperial and economic domination and exploitation over other Asian re-
gions after the War. Furthermore, Japan’s perceived loss of social vigor
conceals the reality that Japan’s asymmetrical and exploitative relation with
other Asian countries has not yet ended. Thus, the Japanese media represen-
tation of Asian nostalgia does not simply fail to recognize ‘Asia’ as an equal
interlocutor, it also suppresses the history of subjugation of other Asian
countries that has been constitutive of Japanese modernity. The futuristic
story is marked by a strong sense of imperialist/capitalist nostalgia, in which
Japan’s cultural Others are reduced in an ahistorical manner to consumable
signs for Japan’s lost dreamland.
To recapitulate my discussion so far, I have identified two modes of
Japanese discourse and representation of Asia and Asian popular culture.
One is an attempt of critics and intellectuals to engage with Asian cultural
hybridization on equal terms and to recognize a di√erent mode of Asian
modernity, which in turn o√ers self-critical insights into Japanese moder-
nity and the dominant conception of a Japan/Asia binary. Such an attempt,
180 Recentering globalization
however, is jeopardized by the tenacious recurrence of misrepresentations of
Asia as always ‘‘behind.’’ As discussed in chapter 4, the cultural resonance
that Taiwanese audiences find in Japanese tv dramas is based upon a sense of
coevalness and the articulation of cultural/racial proximity, the interplay of
which is brought about by the disappearance of the economic gap, the
di√usion of globalized consumer culture, and the information time lag
between their country and Japan. Japanese representation of Asian popular
music and culture display a rather di√erent time-space configuration. The
ever-increasing intraregional cultural flows within Asia and the narrowing
economic gap between Japan and some Asian countries have activated a
nostalgic longing for modernized/modernizing Asia.
On turning our attention to the consumption of Hong Kong popular
culture in Japan, however, we realize that the picture is more intricate than it
at first seems. The Japanese fans’ reception of Hong Kong popular culture
shows that the above two views cannot be clearly separated from each other
but are commingled in a complex and contradictory way. It is how this
time-space nexus is articulated in the Japanese audience reception of Hong
Kong popular culture that I examine next.

Promotion and consumption of modern Hong Kong

Since the early 1990s, as Japanese media industries have extended its ac-
tivities to other (mainly East) Asian markets, the lively East Asian music
scene has captured wide media attention, especially in Japanese men’s maga-
zines, which have introduced a number of Asian female idols. Apparently,
nostalgic tropes have also dominated the representation of the proliferation
of East Asian pop idols in Japanese popular magazines in the mid-1990s, in
which the rise of idols is again clearly associated with the rise of other Asian
countries and the relative decline of Japan in terms of economic power in
the early 1990s. One of the most common words for depicting Asian female
pop singers in Japanese media texts is genki (Asia is vigorous): ‘‘Idols emerge
where the society has vigor. The sharp contrast between Japan and Asia in
terms of idol markets elucidates a decline in the vigor of Japanese economy
and society. Like the economy, Asian idols are threatening the predomi-
nance of Japanese idol markets’’ (Daiyosoku Ajian aidoru 1995).∞Ω
Even if the flourishing of female pop idols is positively interpreted as a
sign of the vitality of their societies, the feminized Asian vigor is represented
only to reassure Japan’s temporal distance from ‘‘Asia.’’ The focus on Asian
Popular Asianism in Japan 181
female idols had much to do with the Japanese music scene in the 1990s. As
mentioned in chapter 3, the Japanese idol system culminated in the mid-
1980s, but it has been replaced by dance music and band music in the 1990s
(Inamasu 1993; Nishino 1996). The void of Japanese idols disposed Japanese
media to interpret the rise of idols in other Asian countries in terms of a
retrospective sense of déjà vu. Another prevalent trope of Japanese media
representation of Asian female pop idols is hajimetenanoni natsukashii (some-
thing new in a ‘‘retro’’ kind of way).≤≠ One music critic, Uchimoto Jun’ichi
(1995, 120), writes that one of the main reasons why Japanese are attracted to
Asian female singers is that these singers evoke a Japanese sense of longing for
vanished Japanese popular songs, which he believes still appeal to Japanese
emotions. An article on Asian pop music in the popular monthly magazine
Bart stated that Japanese popular music had become too West-inflicted to
retain an Asian flavor, and referred to an ‘‘Asian melancholy’’: ‘‘Asian female
idols sing the sort of ‘Asian’ popular songs that Japan has forgotten’’ (Chikai
kuni kara ippai kita geinōjin 1994, 11). Obviously, many writers found a past
image of Japanese popular music in the Asian pop music scene of the 1990s.
As Uchimoto noted, ‘‘the vanished Japanese popular music is to be inher-
ited’’ by Asian female idols, as if Asia’s present is Japan’s past (1995, 120). The
past image of Japanese popular music is easily found in the Asian pop music
scene without the cultural specificity of the latter being appreciated.
Along with the nostalgic representation of ‘‘Asian’’ pop idols, another
conspicuous trend of Japan’s popular Asianism in the mid-1990s was the
heavy promotion of Hong Kong popular culture by the Japanese media (see
Tadashii Ajia no hamarikata 1997). This testifies to the fact that the renown
of Asian popular culture in Japan is, like the spread of Japanese popular
culture in East Asia, in part the result of the promotional strategies of local
industries. The Japanese market has joined the intraregional coalition in
promoting contemporary popular culture in Asia. The prevalent sales mes-
sage for Hong Kong popular culture in the Japanese market was, however,
significantly di√erent from the nostalgic representation I discussed above.
Convinced that the appeal of Hong Kong culture is not fully captured by
nostalgic tropes, due to its economic strength and advanced cultural pro-
duction, the Japanese media adopted the promotional strategy of dissemi-
nating ‘‘modern’’ and ‘‘fashionable’’ images of Hong Kong to a public more
used to viewing the city as backward and dowdy. Purénon H, a small film
distribution company, is one example of a firm that pursued this tactic. To

182 Recentering globalization

Japanese pamphlet for the film Chungking Express (1984),
whose Japanese title is Koisuru Wakusei (1994).

improve the image of Hong Kong films, Purénon H organizes a Hong Kong
film fan club, Honkon Yamucha Kurabu, and established a Hong Kong film
shop, Cine City Hong Kong, in a trendy spot in Tokyo where many young
people enjoy window-shopping in an elegantly decorated space. Purénon H
was the distributor for Wong Kar-wai’s film Chungking Express in Japan,
which became a phenomenal hit in 1995. The film was admired because it
was the first Asian movie that refrained from playing upon Hong Kong’s
alleged exoticism and, instead, made the city look like any other major
European city (say, Paris) (Edagawa 1997, 135–36). The quality of the film
notwithstanding, in its publicity Purénon H worked hard to overcome the
dominant image for Hong Kong films as being full of kung fu or (vulgar)

Popular Asianism in Japan 183

slapstick. From more than two thousand possibilities, the company chose as
the Japanese title, Koisuru Wakusei (A loving planet), which was totally
unrelated to the original title, Chungking Express. It hoped in this way to
make the film sound modern and accessible to a wider audience (Tadashii
Ajia no hamarikata 1997, 53).
The success of Wong Kar-wai’s stylish collage films, as well as the upsurge
of Japanese media industry promotion in the lead-up to the return of Hong
Kong to China in July 1997, further fanned the flames of the interest in the
popular culture of a ‘‘modern’’ Hong Kong in Japan. Japan’s biggest cos-
metic company, Shiseido, hired two Hong Kong female actors, Michelle
Lee and Kelly Chen, to appear in their commercials. Lee had acted in the
popular films Fallen Angels and Chinese Ghost Story, while Chen was a rising
star. Thus, two Hong Kong women were depicted as modern Asian beau-
ties, not quite identical yet not totally di√erent from Japanese women (Ima
sekai ga Ajian byūtı̄ ni chūmoku 1997). In 1997 Kelly Chen was also chosen
as the cover model for a new monthly magazine, Ginza, which was to be
targeted to trendy women in their twenties.
The rise of Japanese interest in modern Hong Kong culture was not con-
fined to a masculine gaze; on the contrary, women play a leading part in it.≤∞
Especially keenly promoted by Japanese media industries are Hong Kong
male stars such as Jacky Cheung, Andy Lau, Leslie Cheung, and Kaneshiro
Takeshi ( Jin Cheng Wu in Chinese pronunciation≤≤), all of whom have
performed in Wong Kar-wai’s films. Since December 1995, Hong Kong’s
‘‘four heavenly gods’’ have performed in concert in Japan and increased
their appearances in the Japanese media.≤≥ Amuse, a Japanese production
company, has contracted several Hong Kong stars for media appearances in
Japan (Ajia aidoru ninki no butaiura 1997). In 1995 two Asian pop music
magazines, Pop Asia and Asi-pop, were launched in Japan. Both mostly
feature pop idols/stars from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Both magazines rap-
idly expanded sales—by 1998, 20,000 copies of Asi-pop and 40,000 of Pop
Asia were being sold for each issue (Genki na Ajia ongaku zasshi 1998, 52).
Although their names suggest that the magazines deal with Asian pop in a
comprehensive manner, in fact they focus mostly on Hong Kong and Tai-
wanese male singers. With Pop Asia, this was not always the case. Initially, it
covered a broader range of Asian pop music. However, its editor told me
that in order to increase its female audience, which represents more than
85 percent of its readership, the magazine had to place more emphasis on

184 Recentering globalization

Cover of Pop Asia, a Japanese music magazine,
with Leslie Cheung (no. 13, 1997).

Hong Kong and Taiwanese male pop stars (see also Genki na Ajia ongaku
zasshi 1998, 52).
Correspondingly, women’s magazines since the mid-1990s have often
featured articles on ‘‘trendy’’ Hong Kong male stars.≤∂ Elle Japon, for exam-
ple, had two feature articles about Asian male stars in 1997. One appeared in
June, just before the return of Hong Kong to China. The other, published in
November, was titled ‘‘Sexy Asian guys.’’ Although also dealing with stars
from Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, the article focused on Hong
Kong film stars: ‘‘Gallant, sexy and with a sensitivity so delicate as to appeal to
the maternal instinct . . . Asian stars have all these factors of a seductive guy.
They attract attention not only in Asia but also all over the world, because
they attain an overwhelming aura of stardom and vigor. . . . Japanese women,

Popular Asianism in Japan 185

who are quite sensitive to new trends, are now sensing male sexiness in Asian
guys. Their sexiness is something that Japanese guys do not have. Asian guys
are becoming more and more stunning and beautiful with the economic
development in the region’’ (Ajia no sekushı̄ na otokotachi, 89, 95).
These representations in Elle Japon show an apparent shift in Japanese at-
tention from ‘‘premodern’’ to ‘‘modern’’ and ‘‘cosmopolitan,’’ from South-
east Asia to East Asia. A feature article on Asia in a 1994 issue of another
women’s magazine, Crea, for example, carried a pictorial of attractive young
men in Bali and Phuket. These young men were associated with the natural
beauty of Bali and Phuket with phrases such as ‘‘eyes with purity and
tenderness,’’ ‘‘calmly conversing with nature,’’ and ‘‘their pure heart un-
disturbed by urban city noise.’’≤∑ Likewise, Elle Japon also depicted Asian
charm as ‘‘simple and supple, power articulated in chaos’’ in its feature
article on Asian culture in 1994 (Ima Ajia ni atsui manazashi! 1994). How-
ever, such capitalist nostalgia disappears in Elle Japon articles from 1997; in
that year, the magazine clearly stresses that ‘‘modern Asian (Hong Kong)
guys’’ mark a new trend.

Japanese fandom of Hong Kong pop stars

In the course of my research in Japan, I discovered that the Japanese promo-

tion of Hong Kong popular culture has left its twisted mark on the way in
which that culture is consumed by Japanese fans.≤∏ The emerging depictions
of Hong Kong as ‘‘modern,’’ ‘‘trendy,’’ and ‘‘cosmopolitan’’ have endowed it
in the eyes of many with great novelty value. Several fans overtly or covertly
informed me that their interest in Hong Kong films and stars was motivated
in part by a desire to prove their modish and sophisticated tastes. In this
regard, it is worth noting that while Wong Kar-wai’s movies attract a rela-
tively wide audience, the avid consumption of Hong Kong popular culture
is still confined to a small community of aficionados. In Japan, the media
recently began covering Hong Kong stars, but access to Hong Kong films
and information about their actors is still not readily available. Hence, join-
ing fan clubs and frequently visiting a small number of shops which deal
with Hong Kong pop culture is an essential means of obtaining such access,
and, equally importantly, of publicly acknowledging that one is a devotee of
Hong Kong and Taiwanese movies and stars.≤π
I have observed that Japanese fans are keen to talk to each other about the
films and stars and they harbor a passion for them. Like the fan culture
186 Recentering globalization
depicted by Henry Jenkins (1992), the social communication among fans
plays an important role in the Japanese fan community of Hong Kong stars.
As Jenkins argues, identification as ‘‘members of a group of other fans who
shared common interests and confronted common problems’’ gives them
the ‘‘pleasure in discovering that they are not ‘alone’’’ (1992, 23). Most fans I
interviewed mentioned that their friends and colleagues tend to regard their
fondness for Hong Kong pop stars as somewhat odd. Constituting a com-
munity of taste is an important part of Japanese fandom, since Hong Kong
popular culture is still excluded from the mainstream in Japan and fans
experience some di≈culty in sharing their interest in Hong Kong stars with
their friends, according to my interviews.
However, this does not mean that Japanese fans think they are margin-
alized, or ‘‘labeled a subordinate position within the cultural hierarchy,’’ as
suggested in Jenkins’s (1992, 23) account of the solidarity and creativity of
fan communities in the United States. Apparently, Japanese fans tend to
pride themselves on the appreciation of a not-quite mainstream Hong Kong
and Asian popular culture. As Fiske (1992, 33) argues: ‘‘Fandom o√ers ways
of filling cultural lack and provides the social prestige and self-esteem that
go with cultural capital.’’ The consumption of not-yet-mainstream popu-
lar culture confers social and cultural distinction on them (Bourdieu 1984).
For some fans, Hong Kong popular culture is a resource from which they
can obtain cultural capital. Furthermore, the development of media tech-
nologies, the internet in particular, and the proliferation of media products
has expanded the various kinds of segmented consumer niche markets.
Thompson’s (1995, 222) argument regarding these developments of media
consumption, that ‘‘being a fan is an altogether ordinary routine aspect of
everyday life,’’ seems too sweeping a generalization, but it cannot be denied
that various fans commonly try to play up the idiosyncrasy of their tastes so
as to di√erentiate themselves from the mainstream.
This point is made clearer when we realize that Japanese fans tend to have
an ambivalent feeling about the popularization of Hong Kong stars. On the
one hand, they want other Japanese to know how attractive Hong Kong
stars are. They want to show o√ their good taste to the mainstream. On the
other, they also wish the object of their fascination to remain the best kept
secret in Japan and fear that their ‘‘real’’ attraction will be deformed and
frivolously consumed as their idols are commercially promoted by Japanese
media industries. A female fan in her late twenties of Taiwanese star Kane-
shiro Takeshi expressed to me her a sense of disappointment over a collection
Popular Asianism in Japan 187
of his photographs published in 1997: ‘‘Kaneshiro in this book looks stylish,
but that’s all. I like him because he looks at once dazed and sturdy, but these
characteristics are totally lost in those pictures. I think Japanese publishing
companies made Kaneshiro a cheap commodity without understanding his
real una√ected but cosmopolitan charm.’’≤∫
The interviewee’s anxiety is that Kaneshiro may become another garish,
throwaway commodity, shared by vulgar teenagers. She told me that she was
upset that Olive, a popular teenage magazine, had run a feature story on him,
and that another teenage magazine had elected him as the fourth most
popular male idol amongst its readers (Kaneshiro Takeshi, anata shika
mienai! 1997). Betraying a sense of elitism, she remarked: ‘‘Kaneshiro should
not have been covered in Olive. Its readers are mostly high school students.
They are too young to appreciate his real charm. They wrongly regard
Kaneshiro among other Japanese idols.’’ My interviewee’s conceit was based
on the relative scarcity of exposure which Hong Kong and Taiwanese stars
and films receive and on the small number of fans who follow them. A
common comment made by my interviewees was that they were proud to
have known of a particular performer before he became famous. A woman in
her early twenties who enjoys Asian pop music expressed this point suc-
cinctly: ‘‘My interest in Hong Kong and Asian pop music in general has not
much to do with sympathy. I think I am more motivated by a desire to create
my own world, which is di√erent from something given by the mass media. I
tend to feel that I am losing my own individuality in standardized Japanese
society. So I need to be absorbed in something minor, I mean, something
others are not following, so that I can maintain my own individuality.’’ It is
thus a sense of one’s precious uniqueness, a knowledge of one’s individuality,
that justifies all the e√ort involved in being a serious fan of Asian popular
culture. Indeed, the arduousness of a fan’s calling—the information that must
be collected, the fan clubs that must be established and maintained, the media
texts that must be sought after outside the mainstream Japanese media—only
enhances the pleasure of these self-styled sophisticates who wish to di√eren-
tiate themselves from the cultural ‘‘dupes’’ of the mass media.
The truth is, however, that these fans are closer to those ‘‘dupes’’ than they
care to admit. As noted earlier, it was in part the return of Hong Kong to
China on 1 July 1997 that motivated some people to take an interest in its
popular culture. This is obvious from the fact that most fans first began
following Hong Kong films and stars around 1995, after the intensive pro-
motion of these products in the media (Adachi 1998, 16–22). This media
188 Recentering globalization
coverage has bolstered the confidence of fans in their taste and judgment, as
it gives them the sense that they are at the vanguard of the latest trend. As a
woman in her late twenties told me, ‘‘I felt I am going ahead of others by
appreciating the unknown Hong Kong stars as Hong Kong is now attracting
much media attention.’’ For all their attempts, then, to distance themselves
from the ‘‘mindless’’ consumerism of the mainstream media, the interests of
such fans have themselves been shaped to an extent by that media.

Reflexive nostalgia for a different Asian modernity

The Japanese media industry’s promotional strategy stressing the stunning

contemporaneity of Hong Kong popular culture apparently generates inter-
est among people hunting for novelty. However, the Japanese fascination
with Hong Kong popular culture is more than the familiar story of a freak
subculture attempting to carve out a distinctive place for itself in a media-
saturated society. As I will show below, it is also engendered by a positive
appreciation of Hong Kong’s social and cultural formations, which sharply
contrast with Japanese counterparts. This contrastive idealization of Hong
Kong is reminiscent of Karen Kelsky’s (1996, 1999) argument of how ‘‘inter-
nationalist’’ Japanese women’s sexualized desire for Western men is closely
related to their strong sense of frustration with the male-dominated struc-
ture of Japanese society and workplaces. Although Japanese fans of Hong
Kong popular culture were not much expressive of this kind of feminist
agenda in my interviews with them, the strong sense of dissatisfaction with
present-day Japan (which is unambiguously male-dominated) seemed to
evoke their sexualized longing for Hong Kong and to motivate the extra-
investment of money and e√ort required to be fans. Yet, while the West is
conceived as a ‘‘progressive’’ Other in contrast to ‘‘backward’’ and ‘‘feudalis-
tic’’ Japan by Kelsky’s ‘‘internationalist women,’’ the appreciation of Hong
Kong is intertwined with the perception of the overlap between Hong
Kong’s present and Japan’s past, hence evoking what Japan used to be. Here,
in spite of the gendered inversion of the Japanese consumption of Asian
popular culture, we can see that the female following of Hong Kong male
stars still shares a nostalgic orientation toward them.
This posture is hinted at in the aforementioned representation of Hong
Kong male stars in Elle Japon. In the article, the emphasis is seemingly placed
not on temporal distance but on modern contemporaneousness. Neverthe-
less, the ‘‘modern-ness’’ of Hong Kong is still marked by a sense of ‘‘not-
Popular Asianism in Japan 189
quite.’’ As described in the article, ‘‘Japanese women are sick of Japanese
men, who have become too e√eminate to attain strong masculinity’’ (Ajia
no sekushı̄ na otokotachi 1997, 95). Together with the emphasis on eco-
nomic development as the main cause for the emergence of sexy Asian guys,
this suggests Japan’s loss: What Japanese masculinity has given up in the
course of Japan’s high economic development is projected onto modern yet
still behind-the-times Hong Kong male stars and media texts.
Such a contradictory nostalgic longing for ‘‘modern’’ Hong Kong stars
represented in popular media texts is discerned in my interviews with Japa-
nese female fans. Hong Kong stars satisfy fans’ appetite for recuperating the
lost stardom of Japanese performers. The most common response to a ques-
tion about the attraction of Hong Kong stars during my interviews was their
charismatic aura of stardom. According to their fans, Hong Kong stars are
professional in a complete sense, as they are well trained to sing and act,
always wear the mask of stardom, and are extremely skillful at entertaining
the audience. Their sincere and friendly attitude toward fans is also inter-
preted as an aspect of true stardom, as it shows their willingness to value fans.
These two aspects, the aura of stars and their friendliness, are regarded as two
sides of the same coin. In contrast, Japanese idols look too casual to be
identified as stars and they are not at all friendly, as Japanese agents are very
fussy about protecting their commodities from direct contact with anony-
mous fans. These criticisms are thus, again, directed to the way the Japanese
media industries manufactures idols and entertainment.
This aura of stardom is, according to Japanese female fans of Hong Kong
stars, what Japanese idols used to attain, at least until the mid-1980s. Most
fans I observed in Japan were in their late twenties and thirties, and some
were even in their fifties (see also Hara 1996; Adachi 1998). The relatively
high average age might be due mainly to the fact that Hong Kong stars are in
their thirties, while the target audience of the Japanese idol system are
predominantly in their teens and early twenties. Yet mature-aged Japanese
women often explain the attraction of Hong Kong idols by referring to the
good old days of the Japanese entertainment world which they themselves
enjoyed in their teens or early twenties. A female fan in her mid-thirties told
me that she became fascinated with Hong Kong male stars around 1990.
This was a time when her generation, who were then in their late twenties,
no longer found Japanese popular music and idols appealing. She was then
excited to find in Hong Kong a world of pop music idols that, in her
experience, was similar to the one that had existed in Japan in the 1980s. As
190 Recentering globalization
the organizer of the Japanese fan club for Leon Lai explained to me in an
interview, ‘‘Hong Kong stars remind us of a half-forgotten longing for
heroes of our generation.’’ Hanaoka (1997, 63), in her essay in a popular
weekly magazine, describes the image of Japan’s lost idols as follows: ‘‘Not
very radical music style as now; the existence of idols who unashamedly
maintained their own narcissistic world; and who never betrayed the ide-
alized image fans had of them, looking intimate at the same time.’’ The
adolescent memory of a glittering Japanese entertainment world is appar-
ently evoked by Hong Kong stars today (see also Hara 1996; Murata 1996).
More importantly, the nostalgic yearning for Hong Kong popular culture
is also being fueled by a deep sense of disillusionment and discontent with
Japanese society as well as the entertainment business. The attraction of the
aforementioned films and performers, again, tends to be linked to the loss of
energy and power of Japanese society in general, as two women, one in their
late twenties and the other in her late thirties each explained:
Japanese tv dramas do not have dreams or passions. I sometimes enjoy
watching them, but still feel [compared with Hong Kong actors] Japanese
young actors lack a basic power and hunger for life.
Wong Kar-wai’s films always tell me how human beings are wonderful
creatures and how love and a√ection for others are important for us to
live. All of those are, I think, what Japan has lost and forgotten.

Through the consumption of Hong Kong popular culture, Japanese fans

feel they have regained the vigor and hope lost in their daily lives, as two
interviewees in their mid-twenties and late thirties remarked:
I think people in Hong Kong really have a positive attitude to life. My
image is that even if they know they are dying soon, they would not be
pessimistic. This is in sharp contrast to present-day Japan. I can become
vigorous when watching Hong Kong films and pop stars on video. Hong
Kong and its films are the source of my vitality.
Leslie Cheung makes me realize my virtue, something I forgot and gave
up. I can get energy and courage to do what I could do in my twenties
through Leslie.

These associations of present-day Hong Kong with Japan’s loss, it can be

argued, still testify to Japan’s refusal to consider other Asian nations as dwell-
ing in the same temporality. However, as I listened carefully to these fans, I
came to think that the sense of longing for vanished popular cultural styles
Popular Asianism in Japan 191
and social vigor does not exclusively attest to the perception of a time lag. It
also displays the Japanese fans’ appreciation for the di√erence between Japa-
nese and Hong Kong cultural modernity. Here, we can see an ambivalence
in Japan’s nostalgia for a di√erent Asian modernity: The conflation of a
nostalgic longing for ‘‘what Japan has lost’’ and a longing for ‘‘what Japa-
nese modernity has never achieved.’’ What matters is Japan’s lack as well as
Japan’s loss.
Almost all the interviewees told me that they, like Taiwanese audiences of
Japanese tv dramas, can more easily relate to Hong Kong stars and films
than to Western ones due to perceived cultural and physical similarities.
Western popular culture looks too remote from their everyday lives. How-
ever, unlike Taiwanese audiences of Japanese tv dramas, the sense of cul-
tural and racial proximity tends to strengthen the Japanese fans’ perception
of socio-cultural di√erence between Japan and Hong Kong. What is crucial
here is that such perception is facilitated by recognition of the disappearance
of temporal distance between Japan and Hong Kong. As a female in her late
twenties told me: ‘‘I think that Hong Kong films are powerful and energetic.
Hong Kong is apparently similar to Japan in terms of physical appearances,
but I realized that its society and culture are actually completely di√er-
ent from us. [This is clearly shown by the fact that] Hong Kong has also
achieved a high economic development, but still retains the vitality that
Japan has lost.’’ It is not assumed that Hong Kong is also losing something
important, becoming more like ‘‘us,’’ precisely because Hong Kong has
already attained the same degree of modernization and material a∆uence
as ‘‘ours.’’
Thus, what sets Hong Kong apart is neither solely attributed to some pri-
mordial cultural di√erence nor to some developmental di√erence. Rather, it
is suggested that the di√erence between Hong Kong and Japan has become
evident in the course of modernization, especially in the way in which
Western cultural influence is negotiated. A commercial film producer,
Higuchi Takafumi (1997), has argued that recent interest in Hong Kong and
its popular culture reflects the increasing numbers of young people who
sense a resonance between Japan and Hong Kong in terms of ‘‘the aesthetics
of cultural borrowing.’’ However, what Japanese fans positively find in
Hong Kong popular culture is, I would suggest, rather, a di√erent mode of
Asian modernity, which antithetically demonstrates that something went
wrong with the process of Japan’s modernization. And this is closely related
to the wholesale way in which Japan has absorbed Western culture. As a
192 Recentering globalization
women in her late twenties observed: ‘‘I think Japan is looking to the West
too much. Many people in Japan look down on Asia, but this does not
match the reality. Japan has been too influenced by the West to retain its
own way, but Hong Kong still has its own style and system. In this sense,
Hong Kong is even culturally superior.’’
Like Dick Lee’s music, Hong Kong’s modernity has resisted the erasure of
its ‘‘Asian odor,’’ while Japan has neither retained its own odor nor become
truly ‘‘Western.’’ Japan has simply kept up its modern appearance, according
to an early thirties informant: ‘‘In Hong Kong and perhaps in Taiwan as
well, things traditional and modern subtly coexist even after they achieved
high economic growth. Japan has thrown away the good old things so much
so that everything looks merely quasi-Western.’’
In relation to this, the appeal of Hong Kong stars and popular culture was
also expressed in terms of its ‘‘cosmopolitan’’ feature. It is suggested that the
Japanese mode of cultural absorption of Western culture have promoted the
insularity of its society and culture. Hong Kong, in contrast, is very cos-
mopolitan, and the market for Hong Kong stars is really pan-Asian. A
woman in her late twenties remarked: ‘‘I do not think Japan is superior to
Hong Kong. On the contrary, in Hong Kong, East and West coexist with-
out melding with each other. Japan, in contrast, has absorbed and indi-
genized Western cultures at its convenience (attempting to supress traces of
the original to make them exclusively ‘‘Japanese’’). As a result, Japanese
culture has become closed and lost a meeting point with other cultures. I am
very wary of this. It seems that Japan has come to a kind of dead-end
situation and has no further possibility.’’ Like the criticism uttered by Japa-
nese cultural producers and academics, Japan’s cultural modernity is consid-
ered by Japanese fans of Hong Kong popular culture not to match that of
Hong Kong’s, because Japan has been reluctant to link itself to the outside
world. In contrast, Hong Kong seems to the Japanese woman to have always
been in touch with the outside world, while the fact that this ‘‘openness’’
was an involuntary one, as Hong Kong itself was as a former British colony
—is not well acknowledged.
It is thus the perceived crisis in Japanese national identity that underlies
Japanese fans’ determination to transcend the narrow-minded life of a self-
contained society and to become more cosmopolitan and connected to the
larger world by consuming Hong Kong pop culture. Thus, an introspective
apprehension of Japan’s relations with other Asian nations is not just ex-
pressed by Japanese critics. ‘‘Ordinary’’ consumers of Hong Kong popular
Popular Asianism in Japan 193
culture also experience it. ‘‘Hong Kong’’ presents Japanese female fans with
an opportunity to realize that the idea of Japan being superior to Hong
Kong is not just politically incorrect but also emotionally and culturally
untrue.
Here, I suggest that like the Taiwanese audiences of Japanese tv dramas, a
sense of coevalness perceived by Japanese fans toward Hong Kong finds its
expression in the critical reflection on Japanese cultural modernity but
even more urgently accompanied e√orts of self-transformation. A working
woman in her early thirties expressed how she had been transformed by
Hong Kong popular culture:

Of course, I cannot one hundred percent devote myself to Hong Kong.

I simply observe myself consuming Hong Kong stars and films. I know
I am looking for something I cannot get in my boring company life
[through fictional, dreamlike worlds of Hong Kong stars and films]. But,
by so doing, I have become more positive than before. I am now more
interested in knowing about the language, the history of Japanese inva-
sion, and Japanese prejudice against Hong Kong. My view of Japan has
also changed a lot. I realize how we, Japanese, are shortsighted and that
our a∆uence has been achieved at the expense of so many important
things of life.

Japanese fans, unlike Japanese women who have ‘‘real’’ contacts with
Asian men and immigrate to other Asian nations via international marriage
(Yamashita 1996; Nomura 1996), might neither wish to transform their lives
by leaving Japan or encountering cultural Others in real situations. Never-
theless, their exposure to Hong Kong popular culture has encouraged at
least some of these women to become more critically aware of Japan’s mod-
ern experiences and imperialist history. An accompanied self-reflexive
praxis thus marks out their appreciation of the di√erent cultural modernity
of Hong Kong.

Capitalist coevalness in East Asia

The Japanese representation and consumption of ‘‘Asia’’ in the 1990s shows

that many Japanese are attempting to recuperate something they think their
country allegedly either is losing or has lost. Whether Japan ever had the
social vigor projected on Asian popular culture is highly debatable—and
ultimately irrelevant. As many have pointed out, the object of nostalgia is
194 Recentering globalization
not necessarily some ‘‘real’’ past—the things that used to be (see Davis 1979;
Stewart 1993).≤Ω The important point here is that nostalgia arises out of a
sense of insecurity and anguish in the present.
In the face of rapid modernization and globalization, nostalgia has played
a significant role in the imagining of Japan’s cultural authenticity and iden-
tity. These processes have intensified the country’s cultural encounters with
the West, and these, in turn, have generated a nostalgic desire in Japan, ‘‘a
longing for a pre-modernity, a time before the West, before the catastrophic
imprint of Westernization’’ (Ivy 1995, 241).≥≠ A similar longing for the
purity and authenticity of primordial life underpins Japanese media repre-
sentations of, and backpacking trips to, ‘‘premodern’’ Asia. However, in the
Japanese reception of Hong Kong popular culture, nostalgia is projected
onto a more recent past, not before but after the West, or, more precisely, a
past that is conjoined with the West’s presence. This nostalgia for a modern
Asia is not fed by a nationalistic impulse to rid Japan of Western influence or
to recuperate an ‘‘authentic’’ Japan. Rather, the issue is how to live with
Western-induced capitalist modernity, how to make life in actual, modern
Japan more promising and humane.
A mounting sense of urgency explains, if only partly, why the object of
nostalgia is directed to Asia’s present. Japan’s newly imagined ‘‘Asia’’ serves
as a contraposition to its own society—one which is commonly regarded as
su√ocating, closed, and rigidly structured, as well as worn down by a pessi-
mism about the future instilled by a prolonged economic recession. Here,
‘‘Asia’’ is not simply idealized as the way things were in Japan. Some people
in Japan also appreciate it, for the purpose of self-reformation, as represent-
ing an alternate, more uplifting cultural modernity.
I have tried to show the ambivalence of Japanese consumption of ‘‘Asia’’
by identifying just such a reflexive mode of nostalgia. Nevertheless, I con-
clude this chapter by suggesting that personal feelings and anguish do
not commonly overlap with the critical consciousness of the Japanese na-
tional history as an imperial power in Japan’s appreciation of Hong Kong
modernity. It is, as we have seen in Japanese media representations, more
often than not at the risk of the e√ortless reproduction of tamed cultural
Others. Murai’s (1990) observation concerning the ‘‘Asia boom’’ in late
1980s Japan still holds true here; a Japanese consumerist gaze on Asia is
enticed by Asian exoticism and is not concerned with the asymmetrical
relations between Japan and other Asian countries. Kelsky (1996, 187) ar-
gues, concerning Japanese women who seek out foreign (American) male
Popular Asianism in Japan 195
lovers, that their border-transgressing penchant might have demolished the
reigning stereotype of the submissive Japanese woman; nevertheless, at the
same time, it reinscribes a clearly drawn boundary between the Japanese and
the Other, for such women ‘‘transform the foreigner into a signifier whose
primary purpose is to further their domestic agendas.’’ This point is illus-
trated by Japanese female fans’ mediated consumption of Hong Kong stars.
Even if the nostalgic gaze on Hong Kong might be replaced by the realiza-
tion that ‘‘they’’ are just as modern as ‘‘we’’ are, but in a di√erent way, it
cannot be denied that these fans reduce Hong Kong to a convenient and
desirable Asian Other. In her book On Longing, Susan Stewart argues that
the collection of souvenirs generates a sense of temporal (antique) and
spatial (exotic) longing for authenticity. Similarly, ‘‘Hong Kong’’ is easily
rendered Other, an Other which is, like the souvenir, located spatially and
temporally ‘‘within an intimate distance,’’ so that Japanese can ‘‘appropriate,
consume, and thereby ‘tame’ ’’ it for the narcissistic search for self (Stewart
1993, 146–47).
The admiration for Hong Kong in terms of its subtle juxtaposition of East
and West, like views about Chinese leap development discussed earlier, has
much in common with Western stereotypical images of the chaotic vul-
garity of East Asian (mainly Japanese) cities which have, since the 1980s,
been represented in Hollywood futuristic films such as Blade Runner and
Black Rain. These Western films represented the chaotic coexistence of
West and East, high-tech landscapes and premodern, traditional and vulgar
lives, in an Orientalist fashion (Yoshimoto 1989). Likewise, the animation
director, Oshii Mamoru, in producing a futuristic animation, The Ghost in
the Shell, changed the animation’s location from Tokyo in the original
comic version to Hong Kong in order to depict a futuristic cyber-city
where the traditional and the high-modern disjunctively coexist (Oshii, Itō,
and Ueno 1996). A computer game, Kowloon’s Gate, also represented Hong
Kong as a modern but chaotic space where rationality and irrationality are
fused together, as the distinctions between good and bad, reality and fantasy,
are blurred (Tsunagime Honkon 1997). According to the game’s creator
(Pia info-pack 1997), Hong Kong is a model for modern Japan that is
neither Asia nor the West while at the same time embodying both. Japanese
modernity has been so keen to keep the social order that it has institu-
tionalized and tamed the chaotic coexistence of the rational and the irra-
tional, but Hong Kong has the possibility of producing something totally

196 Recentering globalization

new out of such chaos. It is untenable to ignore the existence of an Orien-
talist imagination behind such an idealized image of Hong Kong.
Furthermore, while showing the possibility of transcending Japan’s denial
of coevalness with Hong Kong, the Japanese appreciation of Hong Kong
cultural modernity at the same time reproduces a ‘‘backward’’ Asia. Being
critical of the Japanese mode of negotiation with the West nonetheless
a≈rms Western-dominated capitalist modernity. As Morris-Suzuki (1998a,
20) argues, the new Asianism in Japan ‘‘no longer implies rejection of mate-
rial wealth and economic success, but rather represents a yearning for a
wealth and success which will be somehow di√erent’’ (emphasis in original).
The fans’ armchair engagement with ‘‘Hong Kong’’ modernity depends
crucially on its imagined capitalist ‘‘sophistication,’’ as opposed to the lack
thereof in ‘‘Asia.’’ Many Japanese fans of Hong Kong popular culture em-
phasize the di√erence between ‘‘Hong Kong’’ and ‘‘Asia.’’ This, on the one
hand, looks a promising corrective to the construction of an abstract, total-
izing conception of ‘‘Asia.’’ These Japanese fans reject the dominant media’s
tendency to use the term ‘‘Asia’’ to refer to Hong Kong male stars.≥∞ How-
ever, in such a conception, other Asian nations are still reduced to entities
that are undi√erentiatedly represented by urban middle-class strata, the
main players in consumerism. Moreover, the demarcation between Hong
Kong and Asia is imperative for many fans, as the latter is predominantly as-
sociated with the image of backwardness.≥≤ I have often heard interviewees
remark that premodern China would corrupt Hong Kong’s charm:
I am afraid that Hong Kong might be more Sinicized after the return to
China. Hong Kong is losing a liberal atmosphere of ‘anything goes’ by
political self-restriction and is influenced by more traditional mainland
Chinese culture which is definitely old-fashioned.
The British presence has made Hong Kong sophisticated and something
special. But I think Hong Kong is becoming dirtier and losing its vigor
after its return to China.

China is threatening to destroy the cosmopolitan attraction of Hong

Kong not only because of its rigid communist policy, as pointed out by
Japanese commentators (e.g., Edagawa 1997), but because of its ‘‘premod-
ern’’ Chineseness. The imagining of a modern, intimate Asian fellow is still
based upon the reconstruction of an oriental Orientalism. As observed in
the depiction of Asian male stars in Elle Japon, ‘‘Asian guys are becoming

Popular Asianism in Japan 197

more and more stunning and beautiful with economic development in the
region.’’ A certain degree of economic development is thus a minimum
condition for other Asian cultures to enter ‘‘our’’ realm of modernity. ‘‘Pre-
modern’’ Asia never occupies a coeval space with capitalist Asia but repre-
sents a place and a time that some Japanese fans of Hong Kong popular
culture have no desire to identify with. It is not temporally proximate
enough to evoke a nostalgic longing for a (di√erent) Asian modernity.

198 Recentering globalization

●
∏
Japan’s Asian dreamworld

In this book, I have explored the various aspects of transnational popular

cultural flows—intellectual discourses, marketing strategies, and audience
consumption—through which Japan’s conception of being ‘‘in but above’’
or ‘‘similar but superior’’ to Asia is asserted, displaced, and rearticulated.
Regarding Japan’s cultural return to Asia in the 1990s, one cannot help but
be struck by its multifaceted and contradictory dimensions. However, these
dimensions have been obscured by a historically constructed taxonomy of
binary oppositioning between ‘‘Asia’’ and ‘‘Japan’’—with ‘‘the West’’ as a
powerful third Other—which still strongly curbs the Japanese transnational
imagination. Various discursive tropes—both positive and negative, self-
congratulatory and self-critical, unequivocal and ambivalent—have been
employed by Japanese observers in asserting Japan’s transnational cultural
significance and in expressing Japan’s (asymmetrical) relationships with
other Asian nations. Nevertheless, they all ultimately tend to be contained
by an all-absorbing idea of ‘‘Asia,’’ which only provides further momentum
for framing the discussion in binary terms.
It is all too tempting to dismiss Japan’s totalizing conception of Asia with
the theoretical assertion that ‘‘Asia’’ is merely a discursive construct, devoid
of any substance or coherence, and that therefore there is no Asia. Yet to do
so is beside the point, for the issue is not the appropriateness of the term
Asia. If we recognize the impossibility of talking about Asia in a generalized
manner in the first place, then what we should focus on is the question of
why Japan’s psychic investment in imagining ‘‘Asia’’ has been rearticulated
in the last decade of the twentieth century.
The reason might be readily sought in the resurgence in the 1990s of the
idea of a supra-national cultural/civilizational regional bloc. Admittedly,
the newly articulated Japanese interest in Asia has much to do with per-
ceived cultural and racial commonalities, age-old historical connections,
and geographical proximity. Nevertheless, commercialized transnational
cultural flows now also play a significant role in the demarcation of the
cultural boundaries—although porous and transient—of Japan’s Asia. While
conservative theorists are busy essentializing civilizational blocs as the largest
cultural entities in the world (e.g., Huntington 1993), such concentration
on the sense of cultural immediacy and proximity that is inherent in the
formation of supra-national regional popular culture markets has created an
incongruity between what is the actual, concrete geographical reach of
Japan’s Asia and the region defined by traditional cultural/civilizational
commonalities.
There is a clear tendency, discussed in this book, to say that as the tradi-
tional high cultures of Asia have been replaced by a capitalist consumer
culture (Ching 2000), Japan’s reach in Asia, in terms of transcultural reso-
nance and imagination, has also gradually shrunk and intensified. In the
pan-Asianist idea of Okakura Tenshin, Asia was defined by its non-West-
ernness, included Arab chivalry, Persian poetry, and Indian philosophy, but
by the early 1990s the idea of a pan-Asian entity encompassed only South-
east and East Asia. Furthermore, by the late 1990s, this idea tended to em-
brace mostly East Asia. This grouping of East Asian nations or cities easily
provokes assertions of primordial cultural commonality (for example, a
shared Chinese cultural legacy). However, the relatively minor role China
currently plays in the intensified East Asian popular cultural flow—though
China’s weight has been articulated in terms of its huge market size—high-
lights the significance of the penetration of West-dominated global capitalist
culture in the spatial demarcation and formation of transnational regional
modernity in the 1990s. In light of that culture’s pervasiveness, it has be-
come untenable to continue regarding the West as the object of Othering
against which a totalizing idea of Asia can be advocated. In the 1990s the
deep inscription of globalized capitalist modernity has played a significant
role in framing the exploration of the meaning of being Asian. In this regard,
it is important to note that Asian interconnections being forged by the flows
of popular culture are not national ones. They are predominantly between
urban spaces, between global cites—Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, Taipei,
Shanghai, and so on.
In this emerging Asian capitalist sphere, Japan’s exploitative articulation
of Asian cultural commonality has been reframed to accommodate itself to
the entangled transnational flows of capital, cultural products, and imagina-
tion (Appadurai 1996). In the 1990s a singular cultural geography called
Asia, with its rich diversity and contradictions, has emerged for Japan as a
‘‘dreamworld’’ in which Japanese can imagine things in the way they want
200 Recentering globalization
them to be. It was Walter Benjamin who coined the term dreamworld in the
1930s to describe the emergent sites of that era, such as department stores
and arcades, which stirred capitalist consumer desire. As Featherstone (1991,
23) remarks, ‘‘The vast phantasmagoria of commodities on display, con-
stantly renewed as part of the capitalist and modernist drive for novelty, was
the source of dream images which summoned up associations and half-
forgotten illusions.’’ Likewise, in the 1990s, ‘‘Asia’’ has served to fuel Japan’s
imagination of a phantasmagoric capitalist dreamworld, one which tran-
scends (if only temporally) the contradictions and limitations of containing
intensified transnational flows within a nationalist framework.
Spectacular capitalist development and the ever-changing urban land-
scapes in Asia have exhilarated the Japanese capitalist desire for Asia in
multiple ways. For conservative thinkers, capitalist modernizing Asia is a site
where Japan’s long-standing nationalist project for extending its cultural
reach to a pan-Asian sphere has been reactivated. In this case, Japanese
capitalist consumer culture has not simply o√ered a sense of nationalistic
pride, it has also played a diplomatic role in healing the wounds inflicted on
Asia by Japan’s imperialist history. For Japanese cultural industries, Asia has
o√ered a business opportunity for the trying out of the transnational reach
of Japanese popular cultural production methods. It has stimulated an un-
fulfilled fantasy of Japanese media industries that one day a trans-Asian—and
possibly global—pop star will emerge from the region through Japanese
initiative. Finally, Japanese audiences have been attracted to various sorts of
Asian popular culture, which inspire nostalgia for the glory days of Japanese
capitalist development. As the exploitative transnational dynamic of cultural
and capital flows has moved from the Japanese archipelago to other parts of
Asia, Asia has come to remind some people in Japan of a half-forgotten
social vigor and hope. All of this indicates that Japan’s Asian dreamworld is a
product of globalizing forces, which have made it no longer tenable for
Japan to contain its cultural orientation and agenda within clearly demar-
cated national boundaries. In this sense, Japan’s ‘‘return to Asia’’ project
demonstrates that transnational popular cultural flows at once displace and
redemarcate national/cultural boundaries.
However, it is important to note that the resurfacing of Japan’s nationalis-
tic project to extend its cultural horizon to East and Southeast Asia is not
simply discursive or ideological. It is structurally backed by a general in-
crease in Japan’s transnational cultural presence and influence under the
forces of cultural globalization. Tomlinson (1997) enumerates three reasons
Japan’s Asian dreamworld 201
why we should reframe the issues posed by the ‘‘cultural imperialism’’ thesis
with a perspective of cultural globalization. They are (1) the question of the
impact and the ubiquity of Western cultural products in the world; (2) the
dialectical nexus between global and local in terms of ongoing cultural
hybridization; and (3) the decentering process of Western cultural hege-
mony. The ascent of Japanese media industries in the process of media
globalization seems to be a testimony to all three. The increasing flow of
Japanese tv programs into other Asian markets refutes the unambiguous
power of Western cultural products in the world; the localization strategies of
Japanese cultural industries are grounded upon the exploitation of global–
local dynamics; the global circulation of Japanese animations and the in-
volvement of Japanese corporations in global media conglomerates shows
the di√usion of cultural power. The activities of Japanese media industries at
three levels—global, regional, local—suggest that the decentered process of
cultural globalization has given added weight to their transnational activi-
ties. Here, we should remember that while the main corporate actors of
cultural globalization disregard the rigid boundaries of nation-states, their
national origins are limited to a small number of powerful nations including
Japan, and that transnational corporations still operate most of their transna-
tional business from their home country, hence their profits are enjoyed
largely within national boundaries (Hirst and Thompson 1997). The frame-
work of the nation-state, both as a spatially controlled entity and as a discur-
sively articulated geography, does not lose its prominence in the analysis of
uneven global cultural flows (Sreberny-Mohammadi 1991; Ang and Strat-
ton 1996).
I hope I have also been able to show that the allure of Asian capitalist
phantasmagoria cannot be entirely contained by the national imaginary and
hence it embodies a potential for mustering up a progressive transnational
imagination. Japan’s dreamworld Asia o√ers the site of concrete—both ac-
tual and mediated—encounters with the ever-changing landscapes of other
Asian modernities, in which people in Japan are driven to realize that Japan
and other Asian nations have been deeply inscribed by each other and that
their relations are becoming more and more immediate and complexly
interlocked in the multilayered web of ‘‘transnational connections’’ (Han-
nerz 1996). While we know theoretically that Asia is culturally diverse and
that Japanese relations with Asian nations are marked by variations, the Japa-
nese engagement in dreamworld Asia has illustrated how diversity works

202 Recentering globalization

concretely in the way in which transnational encounters and imaginations
generate the (partial) demise of the Japanese nationalist project.
The empirical analysis of the expansion of Japanese media industries into
Asian markets shows the impossibility of dealing with Asia as a singular
entity. Through their actual encounter with producers and audiences of
Asian cultural markets, Japanese media industry representatives and critics
have come to realize that the idea of Japan orchestrating the construction of
a pan-Asian cultural sphere is illusionary, and that the actual conditions on
the ground in Asia do not equate with Japan’s perception of its cultural
influence in the region. Through its inroads into Asian markets, the Japa-
nese media industries have been forced to recognize that Japan’s cultural
reach in each Asian nation varies according to such factors as its historical
legacy and the particular political, economic, and cultural conditions in that
nation. The industries now more readily acknowledge the active agency of
other Asian nations, as those nations negotiate with transnational flows in
ways di√erent from Japan’s own past experiences.
It is in the encounter with a concretized Asia (e.g., in the appreciation of
Wong Kar-wai, Dick Lee, or Leslie Cheung and not of ‘‘Asian’’ film or
music in general) that we can detect self-reflexive voices and the realization
that Japanese must meet other Asians on equal terms. Japanese (mostly
female) audiences of Asian popular culture overtly or covertly reject the
singular notion of Asia, which occupies the dominant discourse in Japan, to
appreciate the cultural specificity of particular Asian cultural productions
and the di√erent modes of Asian cultural modernity articulated in them.
The capitalist Asian dreamworld feeds on Japan’s transnational regional
imagination through popular cultural consumption, which goes beyond the
mere reconfirmation of what has already been known about Asia and Japan.
Here, the idea of Japanese cultural superiority to other Asian nations is
displaced, facilitating a more dialogic engagement with other Asian cultural
modernities; dialogic in the sense that it involves self-transformation and a
redefinition of one’s own culture through a developed consciousness of a
shared temporality with di√erent Asian modernities.
Appadurai (1996) argues that the acceleration of transnational cultural
flows, through the development of communication technologies as well as
the escalation of the trans-border movement of people, has dramatically
transformed the role of social imagination in the texture of people’s every-
day life (see also García Canclini 1995). As ‘‘more persons throughout the

Japan’s Asian dreamworld 203

world see their lives through the prism of the possible lives o√ered by mass
media in all their forms’’ (Appadurai 1996, 53–54), the consumption of
transnationally mediated fantasy and imagination has become deeply in-
scribed in social practice and identity construction.
While Appadurai (1996, 55) argues that ‘‘the link between the imagina-
tion and social life . . . is increasingly a global and deterritorialized one,’’ I
have tried to show in this book that such a transnational imagination still
needs to be articulated within a specific cultural geography. The reception
of Japanese tv dramas in Taiwan and Japanese popular Asianism highlight
the imperative of developing a new conceptual toolkit for the analysis of
intraregional dynamics among Asian peoples and nations, other than those
which have been concerned with the ubiquity of Western media and popu-
lar culture in the formation of non-Western modernities. Non-Western
countries have tended to look to the West when gauging their nearness to
or distance from modernity. The non-West’s encounter with the West has
always been based upon the expectation of di√erence and time lag. How-
ever, some ‘‘modern’’ East Asian nations are now bypassing the West and
finding a resonance in other Asian modernities while simultaneously recog-
nizing their di√erences. What is occurring does not have much to do with
an exclusive and essentialist Asian values discourse. The emerging resonance
has become conspicuous with the discovery of neighbors sharing similar
experiences of indigenizing Western capitalist modernity. The transna-
tionalization of commodified popular culture has generated an intra-Asian
search for a common frame of reference for cultural emulation and social
praxis. Transnational media consumption articulates ‘‘a new social and
communicative space’’ in which people can positively and reflexively re-
think their own cultures and those of others (Gillespie 1995, 206). It helps
transform people’s views of ‘‘their’’ as well as ‘‘our’’ modern experiences and
reconceive the cultural boundaries, ‘‘not to divide, to exclude, but to inter-
face and construct’’ transnational alliances (Buell 1994, 341).
Having said all this, it remains a highly contested issue whether or to what
extent transcultural encounters through popular cultural flows really lead to
constructive dialogues between Japan and other Asian nations. By examin-
ing cultural flows in both directions—from Japan to Taiwan and from Hong
Kong to Japan—I have argued that the transnational imagination is unevenly
and unequally experienced via media consumption. While the intraregional
cultural flows and consumption among East Asian nations such as Taiwan,
Japan, and Hong Kong make young people in the region realize some
204 Recentering globalization
familiar di√erence in other Asian cultural modernities, the capitalist ex-
ploitation of cultural resonance in Asian regions has produced a new asym-
metry, one which works in favor of Japan. The mediated encounter with
other Asians will continue to feed new modes of transnational imagination
among people in Japan and other Asian nations. Yet, as transnational media
and cultural flows are always already deeply inscribed in uneven and unequal
power relations, nothing guarantees any promising future that the synchro-
nously mediated consumption of information and images of other Asian
nations under the structural forces of globalization will construct a more
egalitarian and transnational connection.∞
Benjamin once tried to discern in the capitalist dreamworld ‘‘ ‘dialectical
images’ with the power to cause a political ‘awakening’ ’’ (Buck-Morss
1983, 215). Likewise, there is no need to entirely abandon in advance the
radical—and unforeseeable—possibility unleashed by the proliferation of
transnational imagination through media popular culture. Precisely in order
to foster such a potential, however, the recognition of and critical engage-
ment with the inequality of transnational interconnections and interpene-
trations is more imperative than before.

In many ways, the 1990s has been the decade of Asia. The decade opened
with the spectacular economic development of the region which has made
Asian nations more assertive against Western powers. The Asian economic
miracle was followed by a dramatic downfall due to the recent financial and
economic crisis in the region, which occurred in the year of the historical
event of Hong Kong’s return to China. And the millennium came and went
with no optimistic sign of economic recovery in most Asian countries.
While the crisis has highlighted the persistence of Western (particularly
American) economic and financial power, it has not stopped Japan’s engage-
ment with Asia as well as the intra-Asian cultural flows and interconnections.
A prolonged recession and financial crisis in Japan and many parts of Asia
has apparently put a damper on self-congratulatory discourses of Asianism.
The Japanese craze for the capitalist Asian dreamworld is no exception. The
Asian boom in Japan seems to have culminated around 1997, when Hong
Kong was returned to China and the economic crisis hit many Asian coun-
tries. However, the economic crisis in Asia, far from discouraging Japan
from engaging with the region, has activated nationalistic discourses and
facilitated intra-Asian popular cultural connections in new ways. In the
intellectual field, discussion of Japan’s leading role in Asia is still capturing
Japan’s Asian dreamworld 205
attention. Right-wing ex-politician, Ishihara Shintaro, who was elected
governor of Tokyo in 1999, has published another book in ‘‘The-Japan-
That-Can-Say-No!’’ series, entitled Sensen Fukoku: ‘‘No’’ to ieru Nihon kei-
zai (A proclamation of war: The Japanese economy that can say no!: For the
liberation from American financial slavery) (Ishihara and Hitotsubashi Sōgō
Kenkūjo 1998). This time the demonized enemy is the American financial
system. Ishihara argues that Japan should fight against the system for the sake
of Asian recovery. Hence, once again, Japan is depicted as the champion of
the Asian cause. A strong emphasis on Asian solidarity is again accompanied
by the assumed leadership of Japan. Similarly, another eloquent Asianist,
Kazuo Ogura (1999), has restated his position by calling for Japan to take a
leading role in the ‘‘creation of new Asia’’; collective action, rather than the
mere discursive articulation of ‘‘Asia,’’ is needed, he claims, to check Ameri-
can global domination and make shared Asian political and economic inter-
ests more explicit in the international community.≤
The new century has begun in a retrospective atmosphere, even with
strong pessimism for the future, in Japan. The economic recession no longer
seems temporary and the breakdown of other social institutions such as
education and family have also become obvious. Yet, the Japanese govern-
ment has repeatedly shown its inability to take the initiative to e√ectively
restructure the impoverished systems, so much so that there is a prevalent
feeling of living in a stifling straitjacket among the populace—living in a
materially a∆uent country that nevertheless lacks hope.≥ In this gloomy
situation, connecting to outer worlds, particularly to ‘‘Asia,’’ comes to have
a renewed significance for Japan to find its way out of the current wretched
condition. In the feature article emblazoned across the front page of the
Asahi Shinbun for 1 January 2001, the necessity and significance of ‘‘fusion-
ing with Asia’’ was again stressed, so that Japan can cope with a new century
of globalism and thus can create a bright future. Here again, the optimistic
picture that the dissolution of clearly demarcated national boundaries be-
tween Japan and other Asian nations facilitated by transnational flows will
lead to the solution of various problems within Japanese society is all too
easily depicted. However, the article also shows that Japan’s desire for con-
necting (with) Asia has come to be driven by necessity and is becoming
more desperately future-oriented than before.
In accordance with this dire need, cross-cultural fertilization between
Japan and East Asian nations in popular cultural production has been
strengthened since the late 1990s. More Japanese pop music artists now
206 Recentering globalization
regularly tour Hong Kong and Taiwan. A ‘‘hybrid’’ male pop group, Y2K
(made up of two Japanese and one South Korean), became top idols in
South Korea in 1999. One of the most popular Japanese drama series in 1998
featured Taiwanese-Japanese actor, Kaneshiro Takeshi; this tv drama se-
ries was broadcast almost simultaneously every week in Japan and Taiwan
(Nihon no dorama eiga higashi Ajia e 1998). Beijing-born pop singer Faye
Wong sings the theme music of the Japanese computer game, Final Fantasy
VIII; the song reached the Top 10 in Japan (Hitto daijesuto 1999). In
summer 2001, Faye Wong played a heroine in a Japanese tv drama for the
first time. Coproduction among East Asian film industries has become more
frequent (The birth of Asiawood 2001). In 1998, the second biggest adver-
tising agency in Japan, Hakuhōdō, organized a feature film’s coproduction
with seven Asian countries. It starred a Hong Kong actor, Leslie Cheung,
and a Japanese actress, Tokiwa Takako. Wong Kar-wai’s forthcoming film
2046 in turn features today’s most popular Japanese actor, Kimura Takuya.
Generated by the South Korean government’s decision to partly relax its
regulation policies on the import of Japanese popular culture in late 1998,
and its cohosting of World Cup Soccer in 2002 with Japan, cultural ex-
change between Japan and South Korea has been increasing. In 2000, the
Korean film Shiri had more than one million viewers in Japan; correspond-
ingly, in the same year the Japanese film Love Letter attracted an audience of
more than one million in Korea. Japan and South Korea also coproduced
and nearly concurrently broadcast the tv drama Friends, a love story be-
tween a Korean man and a Japanese woman in their early twenties, drawing
a large audience from both countries.
The cross-fertilization of popular cultural does not readily lead to the
creation of an egalitarian relationship among Asian nations, however. The
uneven expansion of Japanese popular culture in East Asian markets has
even been increasing. It is true that the economic crisis has to some extent
inhibited the spread of Japanese popular culture in Southeast Asian coun-
tries such as Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia. It has deterred local tv
stations from buying Japanese and other foreign tv programs, whose prices
soared due to the drastic fall of the local currencies.∂ In contrast, the crisis
has not curbed the spread of Japanese popular culture to East Asia, which has
continued to gather momentum in this century (e.g. Pop passions 2001). In
Hong Kong, we have seen a Japan-boom escalating since 1998. Young
people wear T-shirts with (meaningless) Japanese characters on them, and
Japanese tv dramas have captured a wider spectrum of young audiences
Japan’s Asian dreamworld 207
than ever before (Nihon būmu no urajijō 1998; ‘‘Nichishiki’’ ninki Honkon
de kanetsu 1998). In Taiwan, Japanese tv dramas are still attracting broad
strata of young people, and tv commercials featuring Japanese culture and
language are in vogue (NHK News 11 23 April 1999). In 1999 sales of cds—
both single and album—for rising Japanese pop star Utada Hikaru—had
been at the top for seven consecutive weeks (IFPI Taiwan hit chart, 16–22
August 1999). In tourism, the economic downturn has brought Japan’s
geographical as well as cultural proximity into relief and has led to an in-
crease in the numbers of tourists traveling from Hong Kong and Taiwan to
experience ‘‘trendy’’ dramas in Japan since 1998 (Yasui Nippon e Honkon
no wakamono sattō 1998). A similar trend has been observed in Singapore.
According to a survey conducted by the Strait Times in Singapore, more
than 8 percent of young Chinese-Singaporean respondents agreed that they
would have preferred to be Japanese (No kidding! S’pore youth are into
J-pop 1999).
The increasing export of Japanese popular culture has continued to stimu-
late excessive expectations in Japan of an expanded role for the country in
cultural diplomacy, particularly with two former colonies of Japan. In both
cases, Japanese popular culture in East Asia is again politicized opportunis-
tically in the way in which the complexity of transnational popular cultural
flows is never seriously attended. Since 1999, there has been massive Japa-
nese media coverage about the influx of Japanese popular culture into South
Korea and the overall tone of the argument is unambiguously welcoming
(e.g., Fukamaraka kōryū 2000; Souru ga hamaru Tokyo fasshon 2000). This
tendency was highlighted in August 2000, when the Japanese duo Chage &
Aska, who have been self-conscious of their mission as cultural diplomats in
Asian regions, finally performed in concert in Seoul. The event was highly
celebrated as signifying the beginning of the new era of reconciliation be-
tween neighbors (Atarashii mirai kizuko 2000). It is e√ortlessly assumed that
popular culture can perform the belated historical reconciliation between
Japan and South Korea, terminating the long-standing Korean antagonism
and agony caused by Japanese colonialism.
The mission assigned to Japanese popular culture in Taiwan takes a dif-
ferent postcolonial trajectory. Japanese media coverage of the Taiwanese
craze for Japanese popular culture has also been increasing, but, in contrast
to the case of South Korea, the excessively passionate consumption of Japa-
nese popular culture by Taiwanese youth works only to intensify Japanese
nostalgic desire for legitimizing Japanese supremacy as colonial master. As
208 Recentering globalization
Japan lost socio-economic vigor and confidence, the 1990s also saw the rise
of reactionary nationalism in Japan (Yoda 2001). Most notably was the
movement to revise primary- and secondary-school history textbooks,
whose self-critical view of the history of Japanese imperial and colonial
violence in Asian regions is condemned as ‘‘self-torturing’’ and derogatory
to Japanese national pride by the group called Atarashii Rekisikyōkasho o
Tsukuru Kai (Association for making a new history textbook), Taiwan has
gradually attracted wider attention as it is regarded as the nation that cher-
ishes and fosters the Japanese colonial legacy. In a notorious cartoon on
Taiwan by a core member of the movement, it is jingoistically argued that
Japan has lost Taiwan’s unreciprocated love due to the intervention of ‘‘evil
China,’’ which signifies both the kmt and the Chinese Communist Party,
but that, even so, the good old Japanese spirit and Japanese values are still
alive in Taiwan in even more sophisticated ways (Kobayashi 2000). In this
outrageously self-justifying view of Japanese colonial rule in Taiwan, the
current passionate reception of Japanese popular culture in Taiwan is viewed
ambivalently. While the phenomenon is narcissistically observed, the recent
craze for Japanese popular culture among Taiwan youth is also regarded as
too trivial to match Taiwan’s historically constituted ‘‘a√ectionate’’ rela-
tionship with Japan—though Kobayashi strangely ignores the fact that his
cartoon is also part of such trivial cultural forms. Yet, ‘‘superficial’’ con-
sumption of Japanese popular culture in Taiwan is less denounced than
taken advantage of in reinforcing his point that young people in Taiwan as
well as in Japan should learn the deep history underlying the Taiwanese
crush on Japan (Kobayashi 2000; see also Hsieh 2000).
Thus, since the recent economic crisis and upon entering the new cen-
tury, the main features of the intraregional cultural flow in East Asia that this
book has examined have been illuminated in a number of new guises: the
lingering American cultural and economic supremacy in the world; the sig-
nificant Japanese cultural presence in Asia; the capitalization of regional cul-
tural resonance and proximity, and the intensification of cross-fertilization
among a∆uent East Asian cities, whose cultural connections are increas-
ingly separate from other segments of Asia; and the growing Japanese na-
tionalist desire to connect (with) ‘‘Asia’’ and the reactionary use of Japanese
popular culture for this purpose.
Needless to say, we should not expect that popular cultural phenomena
will remain the same or will have a long-lasting significance, as the trend of
popular culture is only temporary. While Japanese popular culture is still
Japan’s Asian dreamworld 209
well-received in East Asian markets, the rise of Korean popular culture such
as tv dramas, pop music, and films, has become even more conspicuous in
the early twenty-first century. It also remains to be seen whether the perim-
eters of Asia will shrink further or expand again, and whether China will
fully join the capitalist club in the years to come. In any case, it seems
untenable to expect revolutionary modes of Asian resistance against the
global proliferation of capitalist popular culture. Globalization processes
flows will continue to relentlessly capitalize on intra-Asian cultural reso-
nance, at the same time reproducing unequal cultural power relations in
multiple and multilayered ways. This book just begins to grapple with the
fascinating but underexplored study of cultural globalization in the context
of intra-Asian interactions. No clear-cut, armchair speculation—be it op-
timistic or pessimistic—would be able to fully capture these contradictory
and unforeseeable processes. We need to continue to attend to what is going
on in the real world to critically examine the way in which cultural (a)sym-
metry and dialogue are articulated through transnational cultural flows be-
tween Asian nations; and above all, to the way in which the phantasmagoria
of dreamworld Asia holds an allure for the Japanese transnational imagina-
tion.

210 Recentering globalization

Notes

Introduction: The 1990s—Japan’s return

to Asia in the age of globalization

1 Doraemon is one of the most popular animation series in many Asian coun-
tries, but it has never become popular in Western countries.
2 European countries have also denounced American cultural influence.
However, their critique is di√erent from the Asian reaction in that it is
based upon a strong conviction of Europe’s cultural superiority to America
and its centrality in the world, rather than upon a sense of the threat posed
by the culturally dominant center (see Ang 1998).
3 star tv was the first satellite network to have a significant impact on
Japanese policies of transnational broadcasting. When star tv broadcasts
first reached Japan in 1992, the Japanese government banned the commer-
cial distribution of intercepted transnational broadcasts within Japanese
territories, although it did not prohibit private viewing for people with
their own satellite dishes. The star tv incident prompted the Japanese
government and Japanese media industries to face the age of global com-
munications seriously. Further impact on Japan by transnational satellite tv
came from global player Rupert Murdoch. In June 1996 Murdoch an-
nounced his plan to launch JSkyB, stating that Japan was the last unexca-
vated gold mine in the world of satellite broadcasting. Just ten days later, his
company, News Corp.—together with a Japanese computer software com-
pany, Softbank—bought some 20 percent of the shares in TV Asahi, one of
the five key commercial tv stations in Japan. The threat posed by Murdoch
was not that of transnational broadcasting, as with star tv, but rather the
possibility that control of the Japanese media industry could be assumed by
foreign capital. It soon became clear, when Murdoch suddenly decided in
March 1997 to sell the shares of TV Asahi to its parent company, Asahi
Shinbun, that Murdoch’s intention was not to control a free-to-air tv
station in Japan. Murdoch had concluded that the acquisition of shares in a
particular Japanese tv station would deter other stations from cooperating
with JSkyB and thus would do more harm than good in securing good
Japanese programs. Two months after Murdoch sold his TV Asahi shares in
1997, Fuji TV, which is a more popular tv station, and Sony, which
 owns Columbia, decided to join JSkyB (which is currently named Sky-
Perfect TV).
4 While media globalization on the one hand promotes the influx of foreign
media products and industries into the Japanese market, it does not seem to
be posing a real threat to Japanese national identity. Japan has kept its doors
open to foreign cultural goods such as tv programs, films, and popular
music since World War II. It imports many films, particularly from the
United States. In the last ten years, foreign films have generated 60 to 70
percent of total box o≈ce sales (Kakeo 2001). As for the tv market, Japan is
one of the few countries that has no quota on importing programs. Never-
theless, the Japanese tv market shifted from a high dependence on Ameri-
can programs in the 1960s to a high level of self-su≈ciency in the 1970s
(Kawatake and Hara 1994). The relative absence of a defensive discussion
about the protection of national culture in Japan, in contrast even with
many other developed countries (e.g., France and Australia), is a testimony
to the confidence of the Japanese government as well as media industries
that the influx of foreign programs does not have a great impact on au-
dience preference for domestic programs (see Ajia eisei ga sofuto ryūtsū o
kaeru 1993).
5 Murai, Kido, and Koshida (1988) found in their survey of Japanese high
school students that almost 60 percent of the respondents said that Japan is
not a part of Asia.
6 The most famous statement on the matter has been Okakura Tenshin’s
‘‘Asia is one’’ (Okakura 1904; see also Ching 1998). I will discuss Okakura’s
assertion in greater detail in chapter 5.
7 This was an ideology forged by Japanese academics in the 1930s and for-
malized in 1940. It attempted to conceive a coherent Asian space in order
to counter Western imperial power. However, the unambiguous assump-
tion of Japanese superiority in the sphere inevitably resulted in justifying
Japanese imperialism in the region under the name of the solidarity and
self-su≈ciency of Asia and liberation from Western imperial power.
8 Kawamura Minato (1993, 133), writing about Japanese prewar literature
which depicted other Asian people in an Orientalist manner, argues that
Japanese authors mistook Japanese military and economic superiority for
cultural and racial superiority. Japanese Orientalism was, according to him,
based upon a groundless conviction of cultural superiority to other Asians.
It is argued that Western Orientalism cannot be dissociated from its unam-
biguous military and economic hegemony, and that culture played a signif-
icant constitutive role in the Western imperial expansion and colonization
of Others. As Thomas (1994, 2) argues: ‘‘Colonialism has always, equally
importantly and deeply, been a cultural process. . . . Colonial cultures are
not simply ideologies that mask, mystify or rationalize forms of oppression
212 Notes
 that are external to them; they are also expressive and constitutive of colo-
nial relationships in themselves.’’ Japanese colonial power is instead inter-
preted as conceited and self-satisfied. Japanese dehumanizing discourse on
Asian Others is not seen to be productive as an instrument of colonial
domination. Kawamura seems to suggest that because Japanese cultural
power is always secondary and borrowed from the West, Japanese Asian
colonies could not be regarded as less civilized than Japan itself, especially
in light of a long-standing Chinese influence across the region, including
Japan (see also Komagome 1996).
9 Needless to say, this process is not unique to Japan. We can find dual mean-
ings in ‘‘Americanization,’’ too. As Ewen and Ewen (1982) argue, Ameri-
canization was originally about the assimilation of immigrants into the
American melting pot through the spread of consumer culture. This mode
has expanded internationally since the 1920s. The spread of American-style
consumerism and American media products became the most familiar
usage of ‘‘Americanization.’’ The meaning of any ‘‘nationalization’’ includes
internal assimilation and external domination, both of which are necessary
to the construction of imperial nationhood.
10 This is not to a≈rm the e√ectiveness of Japanese assimilation policy. See
Komagome’s (1996) excellent analysis of the contradictory and ambivalent
nature of Japanese assimilation policies and its implementation.
11 This is an ideal pattern of economic development in Asia, as argued by
the Japanese economist Akamatsu Kaname (1959). As flying geese form a
group headed by a leading goose, this pattern refers to Japan’s role as
guiding other Asian countries so that they can form an economic group
based upon a cooperative relation.
12 They are Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox,
Latin American, and possibly African civilizations.
13 In this respect, Asian values discourses are surprisingly similar to the de-
bate on the uniqueness of Japanese culture, in which Confucian values or
consensus-oriented groupism are attributed as the secret of the Japanese
economic ‘‘miracle’’ in the 1970s and early 1980s. It seems that no lesson
has been learned from the debate.
14 In the 1990s the rise of civilization discourse in Japan coincided with
the relative decline of Nihonjinron literature, which emphasized Japan’s
unique cultural traits in essentializing ways. Nihonjinron was powerful and
popular during the 1970s and 1980s. It explained the secret of the Japanese
economic miracle and defended Japan’s point of view in its trade disagree-
ments with the United States (Iwabuchi 1994). In the late 1980s, when the
trade friction between Japan and the United States became a serious issue,
however, so-called revisionists came to the center stage of American for-
eign policy (e.g., Fallows 1989, Wolferen 1989). They insisted that Japan
Notes 213
 was indeed di√erent in terms of its inhumane and undemocratic social
systems and institutions, and they accused Japan of utilizing cultural di√er-
ence to justify an unfair trade game (Miyoshi 1991). Japan’s supposed cul-
tural uniqueness had changed from an object of admiration to one of
criticism. Under these circumstances, as I will discuss in chapter 2, it is not
a coincidence that the discourse on Japanese national identity departed
from the discourse on particularistic culture and became more concerned
with Japan’s overseas cultural influence in the 1990s (see Kawakatsu 1991,
244–47).
15 The original Japanese version was published in 1994.
16 Several Japanese journals have published special issues on the ‘‘clash of
civilizations’’ debate. For example, the title of a 1994 issue of Hikaku
Bunmei is ‘‘Towards the Coexistence of Civilizations: Beyond the Clash of
Civilizations.’’ In this issue, Yuasa (1994) convincingly criticizes Hun-
tington for his totalizing view of cultures and civilizations and his essen-
tialist assumption of a West–East dichotomy. However, Yuasa then argues
that the shortcomings of Huntington’s thesis have much to do with the
underestimation of the role of Japanese civilization in world history. Hunt-
ington, according to Yuasa, cannot o√er a productive vision for the future
because he does not take seriously Japan’s successful experience of fusing
Western and non-Western civilizations. Yuasa emphasizes that Japan’s
unique cultural capacity of absorbing multiple cultural values should be
reevaluated in terms of the reconciliation of cultural and civilizational
di√erences.
17 A scholar of international relations, Iokibe Makoto (1994) also refers to
Japan’s experience of indigenizing foreign civilizations, refuting Hunting-
ton’s binary opposition between the West and the non-West. In Iokibe’s
view, the lesson learned from Japan’s experience of antagonistic confronta-
tion with Western culture or civilization in the prewar era might confer on
Japan the role of accommodating the antagonistic schism between the West
and the non-West. Iokibe finds in apec the best opportunity for Japan to
play such a role in reconciling the relationship between ‘‘Asia’’ and ‘‘the
West’’ (see also Takenaka 1995; Funabashi 1995). To be fair, the imagining
of Japan’s mission as a mediating leader is not necessarily motivated by
reactive or chauvinistic sentiment. Iokibe (1994) makes the good point that
the prevalence of Western values and institutions in the modern world is
not just the victory of Western civilization but also the victory of the non-
West for its successful indigenization of Western civilizations. He tries to
reject a zero-sum view of the encounter of di√erent civilizations and cul-
tures, basing his argument on the recognition that the world is always-
already inter-contaminated. Nevertheless, these discourses on Japan’s role
in reconciling world disorder are reminiscent of the ideological collusion of
214 Notes
 two seemingly competing Asianist discourses in prewar Japan. Koschmann
(1997) distinguishes two kinds of Asianism in prewar Japan: ‘‘exoteric’’ and
‘‘esoteric.’’ ‘‘Exoteric’’ Asianism stressed a harmonious, natural, organic,
quasi-family Asian entity that is based upon cultural and racial commonali-
ties. ‘‘Esoteric’’ Asianism instead emphasized the constructive process of an
inclusive Asian community which is based less upon natural ties than upon
the creation of new culture. A leading proponent of the ‘‘esoteric’’ view,
Miki Kiyoshi, referred to the Japanese cultural capacity of assimilating
foreign cultures as a significant spirit for the creation of an inclusive Asian
community appreciative of cultural particularities: ‘‘Indeed, the depth and
breadth of the Japanese mind are aptly revealed in this practical unification
of objectively incompatible entities’’ (quoted in Koschmann 1997, 92).
Over the course of Japan’s imperialism, however, as Koschmann points out,
the esoteric view was utilized to justify Japan’s invasion of Asia by repre-
senting Japan not as an imperial exploiter but as a mediating leader. The
impetus for complicity between an esoteric view and Japanese imperialism
at the time requires a comprehensive historical research on contemporary
political, economic, and social elements. However, remembering Japan’s
rejection of an exclusivist Asianism and its proposal for an inclusive global-
ism, the advocate of Japan’s role as an editor, translator, or mediator in
creating a new civilizational space in the 1990s has much in common with
the prewar version of esoteric Asianism, hence involving the similar dan-
ger. Both assert Japan’s unique leading role in Asia, both possess the moti-
vation to counter a Eurocentric view and structure, and both articulate
‘‘certain world-historical pretensions, according to which Japan is destined
[in the twenty-first century] to transcend the modern era and move to the
forefront of not only Asia but the world’’ (Koschmann 1997, 106).
18 As a prominent scholar of Japanese Asian studies, Tsurumi Yoshiyuki once
clearly stated, Asia must be conceived as a poor victim in order for Japanese
to engage the issue of Japan’s imperial history and lingering economic
exploitation (Kadota 1998).

1 Taking ‘‘Japanization’’ seriously: Cultural globalization reconsidered

1 The term mukokuseki was first used in the early 1960s by a Japanese news-
paper film critic to describe a new film genre (Koi 1989, 290). Parodying
Hollywood Western films such as Shane, the Japanese film production
house Nikkatsu produced a series of action films which featured a ( Japa-
nese) guitar-toting, wandering gunman.
2 As Classen, Howes, and Synnott (1994) show, while ‘‘odor,’’ or ‘‘smell,’’
seems to be a natural phenomenon, the perceived attraction of any par-
ticular odor is, in fact, closely associated with the historical and so-
Notes 215
 cial construction of various kinds of hierarchies such as class, ethnicity,
and gender.
3 In the book, such a shift in Japanese cultural exports toward software is
addressed, symbolically, by the designer of the Walkman, Kuroki Yasuo.
While Kuroki (1995) stresses the necessity for Japanese manufacturers to
change their corporate culture in order to develop the creativity of Japanese
designers, he also laments Japan’s inability to produce the software that
people consume with the Walkman. Yet, he sees hope, in the success of
animation and computer games, that Japan is shifting from being a hard-
ware superpower to a software superpower (Kuroki 1995, 14).
4 Japanese animation and comics have been more popular in Asia than in the
West, but their popularity in Asia has not been enough to a≈rm the
emerging hegemony of Japanese animation or comics (see, for example,
Nihonjin wa yunı̄ku ka 1990). In this sense, it can be argued that Japan’s
nationalistic view of the global spread of animation is still deeply dependent
on and collusive with Western Orientalism. Japanese hyper-real culture, in
which comics, animation, and computer games feature, has simply re-
placed Western Orientalist icons such as the geisha or the samurai in the
complicit exoticization of Japan (Ueno 1996a; Mōri 1996).
5 With respect to the Japanese romantic comedy animation, Kimagure Oren-
jirōdo, in which the hero and heroine never confess their love for each other
and their relationship is full of misunderstanding to the end, Okada ob-
served that American fans wish to experience this Japanese way of love
(Eikoku ga mitometa Nihonbunka 1996, 30–31). An American researcher
similarly observed about American fans’ fascination with the Japanese
mode of romance represented in Kimagure Orenjirōdo that it was ‘‘a form of
heterosexual masculinity which is not rooted in sexual prowess, but roman-
tic feelings’’ (Newitz 1995: 6). Nevertheless, Newitz’s analysis shows that
this ardent American consumption is articulated in the form of a nostalgia
for ‘‘gender roles Americans associate with the 1950s and 60s.’’ (13). It can
be argued that this nostalgic longing displays an Americans’ refusal to
acknowledge that they inhabit the same temporality as Japan (see Fabian
1983). Here, as in the Japanese consumption of Asian popular culture
which I will discuss in chapter 5, it might be the case that Japan is marked
by temporal lag and consumed in terms of a sense of loss; hence the
articulation of America’s dominant position.
6 See Mitsui and Hosokawa (1998) for this line of discussion concerning the
global di√usion of karaoke.
7 Clearly, animation and computer game characters play a significant role in
the packaged multimedia business. The comic book characters are inter-
textual and can be used in a variety of media such as computer games,
movies, tv series, cd-roms, and toys. Kinder (1991) describes the multi-
216 Notes
 ple possibilities of transmedia intertextuality as representing a ‘‘supersystem
of entertainment’’ which has come to be a dominant force in the global
entertainment business (see especially ch. 4). The worldwide success of
Pokémon clearly testifies to the e≈cacy of such a supersystem. The popu-
larity of Pokémon depends on the multimedia strategy, in which the game,
comics, animation, and playing cards interlink with each other.
8 Its Japanese box o≈ce revenue exceeded 10 billion yen, surpassing the
until-then record amount earned by E. T. This record was easily broken by
Titanic in June 1998, but Myazaki’s latest film, Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi
(2001) established a new record. Actually Miyazaki’s relationship with Dis-
ney has never been peaceful. His stories tend to be long and complicated,
defying a simplified distinction between good and evil, as is commonly
seen in Hollywood films. He refused Disney’s request to shorten the three-
hour long Mononokehime, and its box-o≈ce results in the U.S. market were
not successful. However, as evinced by the fact that Sen to Chihiro no
Kamikakushi won the Best Film prize at the 2002 Berlin Film Festival, the
international appreciation of Miyazaki’s animated films has been enhanced
( Jiburi no mahō 2002).
9 In this regard, Japanese animation is often compared by the Japanese media
to Ukiyoe—premodern Japanese color prints depicting ordinary people’s
everyday lives. Their beauty and value were appreciated as Japanesque by
the West, and they had a significant impact on Western artists. It is often
suggested that animation faces the same dilemma as Ukiyoe, many of which
were taken out of Japan and exhibited in Western art galleries from the
mid–nineteenth century onward. The West (America) may again deprive
Japan of animation if Japan fails to recognize its (commercial) value (e.g.,
Hariwuddo ni nerawareru sofuto taikoku Nippon 1994; Nihon anime no
sekai seiha 1996; Nihonhatsu no otaku bunka ga sekken 1996). Precisely
because they have come to be universally consumed, they are destined to be
copied, studied, and indigenized outside Japan. Thus, Hollywood is trying
to develop a new global genre by making use of Japanese animation. Amer-
ican film producers and directors are recruiting Japanese animators to de-
velop American animation and computer graphics (Nihon anime ni sekai
ga netsushisen 1996; 2020nen kara no keishō 1997). American production
companies, with the help of Japanese animators, have begun producing
Japanimation in the United States (Ōhata 1996; Nihonhatsu no otaku
bunka ga sekken 1996). Also, the South Korean government has begun to
support the promotion of the local animation industry for the sake of the
future development of the national economy. A Korean conglomerate has
entered the animation business by investing in domestic as well as Japanese
animation industries (Nihon anime ni tōshi 1996; Nihon anime ni sekai ga
netsushisen 1996). In the face of the increasing number of competitors, the
Notes 217
 Japanese government has been criticized for its failure to promote Japan’s
most lucrative cultural software industry (Kaigai bunka ikusei seisaku 1997).
Responding to such criticism, the Agency for Cultural A√airs belatedly
decided to support multimedia software content in 1997 and began a media
arts festival in Tokyo in February 1998. Its purpose was to encourage the
domestic production of animation, comics, computer graphics, and com-
puter game software. However, there is strong doubt among the industries
as to the scale and e≈cacy of such governmental support to enhance the
international competitiveness of Japanese animation.
10 Taiwan removed its ban on broadcasting Japanese-language tv programs
and music in late 1993, and in 1998 South Korea also began a step-by-step
process that will eventually abolish all restrictions on importing Japanese
cultural products.

2 Trans/nationalism: The discourse on Japan in the global cultural flow

1 One criticism of the concept of hybridity lies in its excessive popularity,

which risks turning the theoretical tool into what Morelli calls ‘‘a fashion-
able theoretical passport’’ (quoted in Trinh 1996, 9). Detractors (e.g., Parry
1994; Thomas 1994; Young 1994) are critical of the indiscriminate and
celebratory overuse of the concept of hybridity. They find problematic the
concept’s implicit assumption of two (or more) pure ‘‘origins’’ to be mixed,
as well as its negation of agency, neglect of materiality in favor of textual
performance, racial and biologist connotations, and failure to discuss the
specific applicability of the concept in di√erent and unique contexts. There
is also a tendency to employ and examine the concept of hybridity or
hybridization only in certain contexts and geographies. For example, hy-
bridity is discussed mostly in terms of non-Western cultural mixing under
Western influences. The whole subject of hybridity as it relates to cultural
exchange and cross-fertilization among di√erent areas of the non-West
remains to be explored.
2 Hybridization and hybridity remain the most common terms, despite crit-
icisms against them. It is argued that ‘‘creolization’’ too closely suggests
Caribbean and Latin American experiences of cultural mixing. ‘‘Indige-
nization,’’ or the appropriation of the foreign into one’s own culture, is inti-
mately interrelated with ‘‘hybridization’’ or ‘‘creolization.’’ In this book, I
am not much concerned with the subtle theoretical di√erences between
these concepts and will use them interchangeably. For conceptual argu-
ments, see, for example, Ashcroft et al. 1998; Hannerz 1996; Lull 1995;
Appadurai 1996; Young 1994; and Friedman 1994.
3 See also Dower (1986) for an excellent analysis of Japan’s representation of
its racial purity during the Pacific war.
218 Notes
4 Shohat and Stam (1994, 33) argue that hybridity is ‘‘cooptable,’’ referring to
Latin American nations, which often subtly smooth over the existence of
racial hierarchies, o≈cially priding themselves on their racial hybridity as a
source of national identity.
5 For example, in seeking the secret of the Japanese capacity for cultural
absorption in Japanese religious syncretism, Robertson (1992, 94) hints at
the di√erence between hybridity and hybridism by pointing out that Japa-
nese religious syncretism is ‘‘indeed an ‘ism,’ in the sense that it is a kind
of ‘ideology.’’’ Nevertheless, he argues that the traditional Shinto rituals,
Japan’s indigenous religion, of purification helped minimize contamina-
tion from foreign ideas. As Robertson sees it, Japanese boundary-making
between the self and the Other when importing the foreign is never an
innocent cultural practice but a highly nationalistic discursive strategy to
‘‘purify’’ foreignness. It is quite another thing to say, however, that this
strategy has been successful enough to minimize Japan’s contamination.
Robertson seems to subsume any actual ‘‘contamination’’ or influence in
the discursive construction of Japaneseness as the skillful domestication of
foreign influence.
6 Similarly, exploring cultural hybridity and syncretism in the non-West,
Pico Iyer writes that whereas other Asian nations appropriate and indige-
nize the West in creative and enjoyable ways, ‘‘Japan had taken in the West
only, so it seemed, to take it over’’ (1988, 410). Iyer points to the example of
baseball, which was imported from the United States and su≈ciently do-
mesticated in Japan for an American ex-baseball player to say, ‘‘They’ve
out-Americanized America,’’ based on Japan’s victory over the United
States at the Los Angeles Olympics (405). By claiming its superiority over
the West, so the theory goes, Japan has violated the postmodern mode of
enjoyable spectacle of non-Western cultural hybridization.
7 Naoki Sakai’s critique of David Pollack’s (1986) book, The Fracture of Mean-
ing, is a useful reminder here. Sakai severely criticizes Pollack’s essentialist
equation of ‘‘the three unities of Japanese language, Japanese culture and the
Japanese nation’’ (1989, 481). He rejects the implicit assertion that ‘‘Japan
has been from the outset a ‘natural’ community, [that] has never constituted
itself as a ‘modern’ nation’’ (484). It seems a similar sort of essentialism at
work in Featherstone’s discussion. In highlighting the relativity of the Euro-
centric modern worldview with the ascent of non-Western power, Feath-
erstone (1995) actually refers to Sakai’s article, in which the di√erence
between monistic and world history is argued; history is ‘‘not only temporal
and chronological but spatial and relational’’ (Sakai 1989, 488). Feather-
stone quotes Sakai to emphasize that Eurocentric monistic history cannot
appropriately deal with a world in which di√erence and heterogeneity are
irreducible.
Notes 219
 However, the wider context in which Sakai discusses world history is
missing from Featherstone’s account. It was in the 1930s that Japanese
intellectuals argued strongly for the demise of monistic history and the
emergence of world history. However, world history was a conceptual tool
for Japanese intellectuals, enabling them to imagine Japan’s position in the
center of the world, a position which was denied by Eurocentric monistic
history. Sakai criticizes Kōyama Iwao, a young Japanese philosopher of the
1930s, whose view of world history, due to his essentialist conception of
heterogeneity and Otherness, easily became another version of monistic
history that justified Japanese imperial power. Sakai (1989, 489) argues that
‘‘this notion of otherness and heterogeneity was always defined in terms of
di√erences among or between nations, cultures, and histories as if there had
been no di√erences and heterogeneity within one nation, culture, and
history.’’ Thus, Sakai’s main argument is less about the conceptual shift
from monistic (modern) to world, pluralistic (postmodern) history than
about the di≈culty of transcending the former and the danger of the latter
being subsumed in the former by equating the subject of world history
with the nation. As will be discussed subsequently, such a danger becomes
an urgent issue when Japanese hybridism extends its reach to external
geopolitical relations, as was the case in the 1930s.
8 For a good overview and critique of Japanese discussion of ‘‘civilization,’’
see Morris-Suzuki 1993, 1995, 1998b.
9 Likewise, a sociologist, Kōtō (1998) argues that the universal transpor-
tability of Western modernity is the basis of non-Western modernity. He
depicts the latter as ‘‘hybrid modern,’’ which is created by indigenizing the
former. Kōtō stresses the di√erence between ‘‘hybrid modern’’ and ‘‘post-
modern’’ in terms of the transformation of modernity: while in the former,
modernity is transfigured by spatial movement from Western origin to
other cultures, the latter is a product of the passage of time and historical
change in the West. The examination of Japanese hybrid modernity, Kōtō
(1998, 396) argues, is significant in deconstructing the ‘‘modern’’ from an
Asian perspective, as it would lead to a better understanding of the rise of
East Asian economic power and its modern constitution.
10 The Japanese public is often informed that Japan is not trusted and liked by
other Asians, particularly Chinese and Koreans who experienced violent
Japanese imperial invasion (e.g., Nikkanchūbei 4 kakoku yoron chōsa
2000, 2001; Nicchū kyūdō yoron chōsa 1997; ‘‘Ajia to no kyōsei’’ 1997;
‘‘Ajia to no kyōsei’’ 1996; Sengo 50 nen Ajia 7 toshi yoron chōsa 1995;
Nihon girai Kankoku de 69 percent 1995). A featured article of popular
biweekly magazine Views (A report from 12 Japanized Asian countries
1993) which dealt with the spread of Japanese department stores, fashion

220 Notes
 magazines, food, tv programs, animation, and karaoke in Asia; it was
subtitled, ‘‘They hate Japan but want to copy us.’’
11 People in South Korea have the strongest resistance to the spread of Japa-
nese popular culture in Asia. According to a survey conducted by Asahi
Shinbun (Nihon girai Kankoku de 69 percent 1995), almost half of the
respondents objected to the abolition of the restriction on importing Japa-
nese popular culture; more than half of the respondents had a strong aver-
sion to watching Japanese films, and two-thirds felt this way about singing
Japanese popular songs. These trends were still observed in a similar survey
conducted in 2000 (Ajia no mirai 2000).
12 In 1988 the Takeshita government for the first time established a discussion
panel on international cultural exchange with the aim to examine the
possibility of exporting tv programs to Asian countries. In 1991 the Minis-
try of Foreign A√airs and the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications
jointly established jamco ( Japan Media Communication Center) to subsi-
dize the import of Japanese tv programs to developing countries.
13 A prominent cartoonist in Japan, Satonaka Machiko, similarly argues that
Japan should be proud of its cartoons and animations, because they are ‘‘the
first Japanese cultural products spontaneously received by those [Asian]
countries without Japan’s cultural, militaristic, and economic impositions’’
(quoted in Kuwahara 1997, 44).
14 In this sense, while Honda does not clearly state it, apparently Oshin is not
included in this kind of mukokuseki popular culture.
15 Honda’s argument is supported by the then-dramatic rise in market share
of Japanese comics in Hong Kong, from 20 percent in 1992 to about 60
percent in 1995. According to a Reuter’s report (13 September 1995), Japa-
nese comics keep up with the changes of lifestyle in Hong Kong and attract
new middle-class and more educated readers who have not read them
before.
16 The film was described as a ‘‘quite likely’’ story in the Japanese media (Eiga
Sotsugyō Ryokō 1993, 26).
17 This is the same kind of discursive strategy that has been often deployed in
Japanese self-Orientalism vis-à-vis the West, in which there is an intrigu-
ing interplay between ‘‘the non-Japanese seen through Japanese eyes’’ and
‘‘Japan seen through westerners’’ (Ivy 1995, 50; see also Iwabuchi 1994).
John Caughie, in an analysis of American media domination of the world,
defines the process of the subordinated’s double identification with see-er
and seen as ‘‘playing at being American.’’ The subordinated empowers
himself/herself by objectifying the center and rendering it as its own other;
these are ‘‘the permitted games of subordination’’ (1990, 44). In the game
of television viewing, the subordinated adopts a tactical ‘‘‘ironic knowing-

Notes 221
 ness’’ that ‘‘may escape the obedience of interpellation or cultural colonial-
ism and may o√er a way of thinking subjectivity free of subjection’’ (54). In
Japanese self-Orientalism, however, what occurs is less ‘‘playing at being
American’’ than ‘‘playing at being (America’s) ‘Japan,’’’ as the game is
played through the objectification of the Western colonizing gaze. In this
objectification, ‘‘Japan’’ as the object of Western cultural domination is
suspended by setting up the subject position of ‘‘Japan’’ outside the ground
of domination. It is not a double identification with subject and object but
a substitution of the unstable doubleness articulated in the relationship
between games and tactics by a pleasurable game overlooked by otherwise
subordinated Japanese spectators. By suspending Japan’s position as the
object of domination, ‘‘Japan’’ is kept out of reach of the colonizer; the
game attempts to claim that there is no ‘‘Japan’’ that can be the dominated
object of the Western Orientalizing gaze.
18 Such a line of reasoning is clearly found in two books, Inoue (1996) and
Shirahata (1996), both of which were published by researchers of the Inter-
national Research Center for Japanese Culture, which was established in
1986 by then Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro for research on Japan’s
unique, traditional culture. Both were displays of an appreciation of and
indulgence in the spread of Japanese cultural products through the in-
version of the subject and the object in the global cultural consumption
and localization process. Inoue’s Grotesque Japan is mostly interested in an
exploration of the ‘‘grotesquely’’ distorted international consumption of
Japanese culture that could undo the expectation contained by the West-
dominated Orientalist cultural hierarchy. Inoue (1996) attempts to recon-
sider the essence of Japanese culture through the exploration of distorted
international consumption of Japanese culture. Inoue claims that he is no
longer surprised at the spread of made-in-Japan commodities in the world,
nor interested in the Western Orientalist image of Japanese exoticism.
Rather, he is fascinated to find things of Japanese ‘‘origin’’ grotesquely
localized and indigenized in di√erent parts of the world—for example, the
transformation of the rules and rituals of Jūdō and the decontextualized use
of ‘‘zen’’ for the name of department stores (215–18). Inoue distinguishes
himself from hard-liner nationalists who become angry at seeing Japan
misunderstood or distorted in the world and insist on the importance of
exporting a correct image of Japan. His intention in writing the essays is
not to deplore, but to enjoy, the ridiculously distorted image of Japan and
the foreign (mainly Western) misappropriation of a Japanese exotic image.
Inoue’s fascination with a distorted ‘‘Japan’’ is a kind of nationalist strat-
egy that claims Japanese transnational cultural power, a power which si-
multaneously allows for the preservation of a ‘‘pure Japan’’ in a hermetically
sealed space (217–18). Inoue wrote that some commodities, such as tatami
222 Notes
 mats or tanuki dolls (folk-culture figures of well-endowed badgers which
are said to bring fortune and wealth), might embody essential ‘‘Japanese-
ness,’’ precisely because of the fact that they are not exportable (23–29,
54–60).
Shirahata (1996), like Honda, stresses the culturally odorless, or muko-
kuseki, nature of Japanese cultural products that are globally well received.
Shirahata (1996, 240) argues that unlike traditional Japanese high culture,
the internationally consumed Japanese cultural products are not self-
assertive about their ‘‘authentic Japaneseness.’’ Rather, they leave their use-
value to consumer tastes and cultural traditions outside Japan. The universal
appeal of Japanese cultural products, in this instance, is demonstrated by
their openness for local appropriation in other parts of the world. The
discourse of hybridism confers a global cultural power status on Japan in
terms of its own capacity for cultural hybridization and indigenization by
denying the occurrence of other modes of cross-fertilization elsewhere.
Likewise, the narcissistic discourse on Japanese cultural export, as exempli-
fied by Shirahata (1996), endeavors to elevate the mukokuseki, that is, the
non-self-assertive, nature of Japanese cultural products to Japan’s distinctive,
universally appreciated cultural traits by discounting the disjunctiveness of
global cultural flows. Shirahata (1996, 1–3; 242–43) compares Japanese
cultural export to kaitenzushi (fast-food sushi rotating on a conveyer belt),
where customers choose anything at their will: ‘‘All those Westerners who
seek sashimi and tofu for health reasons, Asian children who passionately
read Doraemon comic books, and boys and girls around the world who
watch Japanese animation with a gleam of interest remind me of my own
childhood. At that time, kaitenzushi plates were full of American cul-
ture. . . . Japan, which was a poor but ardent customer of American culture,
has become a shop owner and a powerful purveyor of culture into the
world.’’ With the kaitenzushi metaphor, Shirahata does not simply stress the
capacity of Japanese culture and cultural products to be appropriated in each
locale. The global consumption of Japanese mukokuseki culture reminds
Shirahata (1996, 242–43) of his own past, when Japan eagerly pursued
American cultures and commodities—hence, he suggests that Japan’s global
power status today is analogous to its American counterpart in the past.

3 Localizing ‘‘Japan’’ in the booming Asian markets

1 The film industry, for example, has begun to seriously explore the export
potential of Japanese audiovisual software. In 1992, an annual Tokyo film
market was set up to promote the sale of Japanese programs, though this
was replaced by MIP–Asia (which is the Asian version of an annual inter-
national tv program trade fair in France), held for the first time in De-
Notes 223
 cember 1994 in Hong Kong. Sony Music Entertainment also started a tv
program, Big Gig Japan on star tv’s Channel [V] in 1994, and a radio
program, Postcard from Tokyo, which promoted Japanese pop music in Asia
and was broadcast in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and Thailand in
1995.
2 For example, the business earnings of Nippon Television Network for the
1997 fiscal year were 283 billion yen. However, according to my interview
with the station, international sales earnings were less than 1 billion yen.
3 It is interesting to note that McDonald’s derived its firm conviction in the
e√ectiveness of the multilocal strategy from its local-owner operation in
Japan (Watson 1997, 13).
4 The recent prominent example is the global spread of the aforementioned
British quiz show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
5 The commercial tv network tbs has also been active in the format busi-
ness; it has sold several variety shows and quiz shows to Europe, Asia, and
the United States.
6 In 1997, ntv, a popular commercial tv station in Japan, also coproduced a
program to promote the syndication business in Asian markets. The pro-
gram was called Chō Ajiaryū (Super Asians), and it was produced in associa-
tion with Hong Kong (tvb), Taiwan (ctv), South Korea (sbs), Thailand
(itv), and Singapore (tcs –8). Each week’s program content consisted of a
main topic, such as fashion, idols, or karaoke, and each station covered the
topic on the local cultural scene. What is interesting, however, is that each
of the tv stations used the footage di√erently. Only ctv broadcast the
same program as ntv, with subtitles. SBS, itv and tcs –8 incorporated
some film coverage in local information programs so as to make the pro-
gram look like it was locally produced.
7 Taiwan joined the program in 1994 after the Taiwanese government abol-
ished its ban on broadcasting Japanese-language programs at the end of
1993. South Korea joined the program in 1997, but could not broadcast it
in South Korea due to government policies regulating the broadcasting of
the Japanese language on tv. The program finally ended in late 2000.
8 Another commercial film shows a Sony karaoke machine that features
Maribeth’s song, ‘‘Born to Sing.’’ In the film Maribeth is scouted by a Sony
Music manager when she sings for a nightclub bar. The Sony manager is
not Japanese but Caucasian (seemingly American). This also articulates the
propensity of Japanese media industries to suppress the visible presence of
Japanese in the products.
9 The producer of Asia Bagus! told me in an interview that they often urge
the contestants to choose one of the latest hit songs or a song from a trendy
genre such as rap or dance music.
10 The most dramatic examples are that tvri quit the program in 1995 be-
224 Notes
 cause the Indonesian government did not like to broadcast Mandarin, and
that Taiwan left the program in 1997 due to its strong Southeast Asian
flavor, which did not appeal to Taiwanese audiences.
11 It should be noted that Fuji TV could not make a profit by producing the
program, as Asia Bagus! was not produced for the Japanese market. On the
contrary, Fuji TV was responsible for covering most of the production
costs. The main reason for co-production was to establish a corporate tie
with other Asian industries and make a trial run of searching for pan-Asian
pop singers (Kanemitsu 1993).
12 This is not exclusive to media industries. The same problem and contradic-
tions in the strategy of global localization is often observed among manu-
facturing companies such as Sony (e.g., Emnott 1992, ch.7; du Gay et al.
1997, 80).
13 Even Japanese consumer and household electrical appliances are increas-
ingly overwhelmed by domestically produced products from China (Mo
1999).
14 The program was broadcast in China in 1995 and 1996 and scored high
ratings (Nicchū Gassaku dorama 1996).
15 The director and the protagonist of Shanghai People in Tokyo are both Chi-
nese, but Amuse provided the entire production budget of four hundred
million yen (Amyūzu Chūgoku to 1996). Amuse sold commercial time for
various sponsors, including South Korean and Chinese companies, but
allegedly could not cover the production costs. According to my interview
with the director of Amuse, the main purpose was to establish a relationship
with the Chinese tv industry, to learn the Chinese production system, and
to gain the know-how of selling programs and advertising time in China.
16 In the early 1990s the Japanese music industry attempted to promote un-
known Japanese artists in East Asian markets by showing their professional
acts intensively in the local market. The artists tried to become local idols
by singing songs in Mandarin and frequently appearing on local media
programs and commercials (Ajia aidoru ninki no butaiura 1997). As a
Taiwanese producer commented to a Japanese newspaper, this represented
a Taiwanization of Japanese culture. Unlike the Japanization of Taiwan
through colonial rule, Japan engaged with Taiwan by adopting the local
culture and language (Chikayotte kita Nihon bunka 1995). According to
my interview with Japanese and Taiwanese music producers in Taiwan, the
success of the Taiwanization strategy, however, did not last long because
the idols did not have fame in Japan.
17 The huge success of Japanese popular music in Taiwan pushed Avex Inc. to
establish Avex Taiwan in 1998. Avex Inc. further established Avex Hold-
ings Ltd. in Hong Kong in May 2001 in order to integrate the management
of Avex Asia Limited (established in 1996) and Avex Taiwan.
Notes 225
18 Komuro Tetsuya also tried to launch several Chinese, Hong Kong, and
Taiwanese pop singers in the American market. This movement from
regional (Asia) to global (the West) was forged by his joint venture with
News Corp., tk news, and Komuro established a new record label, rojam
com, within Sony Music Entertainment, for the American market (Hitto
no mukōgawa 1998).
19 Shiraishi (1997) coins the term ‘‘image alliance’’ in the cooperative promo-
tion of Japanese animations in Indonesia.

4 Becoming culturally proximate: Japanese TV dramas in Taiwan

1 For a detailed analysis of the film, see Liao (1997) and Marukawa (2000).
2 See Hu (forthcoming) and Davis and Yeh (forthcoming) for detailed analy-
sis of vcds. In September 1998 the Japanese tv industry and the Hong
Kong Customs and Excise Department finally carried out a raid on the
shops of Sino Center, which sold pirate videos and vcds of Japanese tv
dramas and animation ( Japan TV team joins customs in piracy fight 1998;
Mass swoop nets 200,000 pirated VCDs 1998).
3 It should be noted that this strategy was deployed by star tv as early as
1992, well before Murdoch’s takeover of star tv and the beginning of his
localizing strategy.
4 Po-shin Channel ended its operation in 2000 due to financial di≈culty.
5 In 1998 the number of cable channels was 96 and there were 103 licensed
cable system operators in Taiwan (The Republic of China Yearbook 1999).
6 The collection of letters and columns was published in book form in 1997.
7 I thank Su Herng for giving me a copy of this research paper.
8 McKinley (1997, 92) finds that young American audiences sense that Bev-
erly Hills, 90210 is a story about themselves, even though they clearly recog-
nize the gap between the extravagant lifestyle represented in the drama
series and their own. McKinley (1997, 92) suggests that what prevents
American audiences from emotionally identifying with Beverly Hills, 90210
is not the unrealistic materialistic a∆uence presented but the lack of realism
in the representation of characters and the symbolic meaning associated
with general life experiences.
9 For similar observations for Thailand, see Yoshioka 1992, 1993; for Indo-
nesia, Kurasawa 1998.

5 Popular Asianism in Japan: Nostalgia for (different) Asian modernity

1 Around 1980 two influential travelogues that dealt with everyday life in
Asia were published: Yamaguchi Fuminori’s Hong Kong Tabi no Zatsugaku
Nōto ( Jumbled notes on a trip to Hong Kong) (1979) and Sekikawa Nat-
226 Notes
 suo’s Souru no Renshū Mondai (Doing exercises in Seoul) (1984). Both
featured personal reportage on their experiences with the peoples and
cultures of the region. The popularity of Asia as a tourist destination for
younger Japanese has grown, with more than 60 percent of overseas trav-
elers now choosing individual trips (Ajia no tabi wa yonde jibunryū 1996).
This trend has led to the increasing prevalence of travelogues. Now there
are several series of personal travel guides, such as Asia Rakuen Manyuaru
(Manual for Asian paradise), Asia Karuchā Gaido (Asian cultural guide), and
Wonderland Traveler. The original series was Chikyū no Arukikata (How to
wander around the world), the first issue of which was published in 1981.
This series quickly became the bible of Japanese backpackers in the 1980s.
2 The regional divide between East and Southeast Asia can be seen in terms
of the popularity of Japanese songs. For example, there were two phenom-
enally popular Japanese songs in the late 1980s, but one was popular in East
Asia and the other in Southeast Asia (Shinozaki 1990a; Morieda 1988).
3 Given that many authors (Shinozaki 1990b; Kubota 1990; Saitō 1990b;
Kawakami 1990) refer to him, the publication of Poppu Eijia was itself
apparently caused by Lee’s popularity in Japan.
4 These amount to about 100,000 copies, according to representatives of
Japanese recording companies. While these numbers are impressive for an
Asian musician, they are trivial compared to those of popular Japanese
musicians, who sometimes enjoy sales of more than three million in the
local market.
5 A similar comment on the di√erence between takokuseki and mukokuseki
was made concerning Japanese animation production by a prominent Japa-
nese animator, Oshii Mamoru (Oshii, Itō, and Ueno 1996).
6 A notable exception is Shinozaki (1990a), who places Dick Lee’s music in
the political and sociocultural context of Singapore.
7 Okakura, it should be noted, wrote mostly in English and thus was writing
for a predominantly Western audience. In his writings in Japanese, he
stressed a di√erence that existed between Japan and China (see Ching 1998;
Kinoshita 1973).
8 Okakura was specifically concerned with the arts, but his saying, ‘‘Asia is
one,’’ became infamous when it was appropriated by the ideologues of
Japanese imperialism in Asia in the 1930s. Hosokawa (1998) demonstrates
that they used Okakura’s ideas in their attempts to forge an Asian unity
through traditional music. For instance, an ethnomusicologist of that time
depicted Japanese music as the repository of all Asian music, since it ‘‘con-
tained all the significant characteristics found in Asian music traditions
[sic ]’’ (Hosokawa 1998, 16). Music was thus the medium par excellence in
which the truth of the adage ‘‘Asia is one’’ was manifest.
9 Dick Lee’s Singaporean producer admitted that he consciously attempted
Notes 227
 to sell a new cross-fertilized sound for the most important market, Japan,
but could not really catch up with the changing tastes of Japanese audiences
(Kawakami 1995, 103).
10 In Hong Kong, for example, the maturity of the music industry in this
period was marked by the emergence of local pop stars such as the Four
Heavenly Kings ( Jacky Cheung, Leon Lai, Andy Lau, and Aaron Kwok),
who dominated the Chinese music markets in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and
Singapore.
11 Although he apparently does not care for Canto-pop musical forms and does
not speak Cantonese fluently, Lee released a Canto-pop album (Wee 1996).
12 For an account of how nostalgia has framed sociological discussions of
modernity, see Turner (1994).
13 For the exploitation of nostalgia on tourism, see MacCannell (1976), Urry
(1990), Frow (1991), and Graburn (1995).
14 Ironically, Kobayashi’s romanticization of traveling Asian Japanese was ex-
posed by a tv program’s commodification of backpackers’ travel. In 1996,
an unknown comic duo, Saruganseki, began tracing the same path by
hitchhiking. They had just 100,000 yen at the beginning of their trip and
had to find casual jobs and endure fasting and frequently sleeping in the
open. Their trip was documented in detail and broadcast on a variety tv
show every week. The audience at first just ridiculed wretched conditions
that the duo su√ered through, but as they saw Saruganseki experience
‘‘real’’ life through their heartwarming communication with local people,
crying over the physical threats and emotional fears they faced and being
almost starved to death during the trip, Saruganseki became an object of
applause and envy. The young audiences were jealous of Saruganseki in
that the duo experienced something substantial in life which could not be
experienced in Japan (Wakamono wa hōrō o mezasu 1996, 34–35).
15 Kobayashi’s sense of a commonality with Asia is more apparent in his
subsequently published Asian Japanese 2 (1996). Kobayashi this time went
from Asia to Paris, the place Kobayashi felt would be most di√erent from
Asia. He repeatedly juxtaposed Paris and Asia in a binary opposition: Paris
is the place where he uses sophisticated and established cultural and artistic
knowledge, values, and materials to think things through, whereas Asia is
where modern wisdom is superseded by bodily sensations—all he can do
there is feel, watch, and hear something fundamental to life in a chaotic,
nasty alley (Kobayashi 1996, 365–68); Paris is the place from which Asian
Japanese can no longer escape, whereas Asian Japanese are allowed to in-
dulge in the search for their real self in the a√ection and depth of Asia
(Kobayashi 1996, 74); Paris is the place where Kobayashi stands apart,
whereas he can comfortably ‘‘dissolve into Asia’’ (Morris-Suzuki 1998a)
due to its physical and cultural proximity and the disappearance of a sense
228 Notes
 of inferiority. In the final instance, however, Paris and Asia converge to
Kobayashi’s narcissistic search for self, as he is convinced that Asian Japa-
nese, no matter which foreign countries they are in, are traveling away from
a homeland called ‘‘Japan’’ (Kobayashi 1996, 373).
16 The ratings were between 15 and 20 percent, which are well above the
average rating for Japanese tv dramas.
17 All the main characters, including the Vietnamese hero, were played by
Japanese actors.
18 Like Doku, most main characters were also played by popular Japanese
actors.
19 For the use of the term genki in the media representation of Asian pop
music, see also Ajian poppusu o kike 1994; Marume 1994; Nippon seifuku
bijo zukan 1995; Kitanaka 1995).
20 This phrase is also used for other commodities which exploit the image of
‘‘Asia,’’ such as the Japanese alcohol labeled ‘‘Asian.’’
21 Young women also seem to take the lead in the consumption of Japanese
tv dramas in East Asia, but Japanese consumption of Hong Kong films and
pop stars appears clearly more gendered. While it is beyond the scope of
this book, the gendered transnational desire apparent in the intra–East
Asian cultural flows is a significant issue for further investigation.
22 Kaneshiro is Taiwanese-Japanese, mainly brought up in Taipei, but he has
actively appeared in Hong Kong films and other media productions.
23 Following the successful concerts in Japan of Jacky Cheung in 1995 and
Andy Lau in 1996, Leslie Cheung and Aaron Kwok also held their first
concerts in 1997.
24 For example, Elle Japon (Ima Honkon ga shigekiteki June 1997; Ajia no
sekusı̄ na otokotachi 1997; Chainı̄zu binan danyū ni meromero!! 1997;
Sakimonogai! 1996; and Tadashii Ajia no hamarikata 1997. Japanese news-
papers also cover the popularity of Hong Kong male stars (e.g., Kajinteki
Meisei 21 October 1995; ‘‘Honkon meisei’’ 19 April 1997; CM, zasshi de
hikatteru anohito wa Honkon geinōjin 1997).
25 In the early 1990s, the fascination of Japanese women for ‘‘pure’’ beach
boys in Southeast Asia attracted media attention. They are often described
in a derogatory way as the women’s equivalent of Japanese ‘‘sex tourism.’’
However, it was not just a ‘‘pick-up-a-man’’ phenomenon. Some women
actually migrated to Bali through marriage (see Yamashita 1996; Ajia ka-
ruchā ryūnyū no 30 nen 1994; Hanayome wa kamigami no shima o mezasu
1994; Bari no gensō ni hamaru Nihonjin 1996).
26 I use the term fan, as I will show, not just because interviewees made extra
e√orts to consume Hong Kong popular culture, but also because they were
quite self-conscious of the fact that their tastes were not (yet) shared by the
majority of people in Japan.
Notes 229
27 There are many fan clubs for Hong Kong and Taiwan stars and for Hong
Kong film and music lovers. The largest one by far is a fan club for
Hong Kong films, Honkon Yamucha Kurabu, which has more than 12,000
members (Adachi 1998, 5). Other large fan clubs are those for Leslie
Cheung (about 900 members), Leon Lei’s Leon Family (about 800 mem-
bers), Jacky Cheung (about 500 members), and Aaron Kwok (about 480
members) (see Poppu na Ajia no fan kurabu in Japan 1998, 72–74).
28 Given that Kaneshiro’s father is Japanese (Okinawan), it can be argued that
his appeal is also related to the fact that he has ‘‘Japanese blood.’’ Kaneshiro,
who is Taiwanese-Japanese, speaks five languages ( Japanese, English, Tai-
wanese, Mandarin, Cantonese) and takes an active role in Hong Kong
films, in a sense represents a favorable ‘‘cosmopolitan’’ attribute that cannot
be attained by Japanese.
29 Stewart (1993, 26) argues: ‘‘Nostalgia, like any form of narrative, is always
ideological: the past it seeks has never existed except as narrative, and
hence, always absent, that past continually threatens to reproduce itself as a
felt lack.’’ That the director of Swallowtail Butterfly is conscious of this is
evident from his comments about certain scenes he saw in Shanghai, where
people were cooking outdoors while chatting with their neighbors: ‘‘I am
not sure if I really experienced the same thing as a child, but I somehow felt
nostalgic for the scene. . . . [Cooking outside] has little to do with vitality,
but the scene might be associated with my faint memory of a vulgar and
energetic Japan on the path of high economic growth’’ (Iwai 1997, 6).
30 Such a nostalgic search for an ‘‘authentic’’ Japan has been relentlessly pro-
voked by domestic tourism (e.g., Robertson 1998a; Ivy 1995; Creighton
1997; Graburn 1983).
31 For example, Nikkei Entertainment featured an article on how to become
addicted to Asia (Tadashii Ajia no hamarikata 1997). The article predomi-
nantly dealt with Hong Kong and Taiwanese popular culture and idols, but
the magazine used the term Asia rather than Hong Kong or Chinese. The
same was true for an the article in Elle Japon (Ajia no sekushı̄ na otokotachi
1997).
32 Adachi (1998) also found the same tendency.

6 Japan’s Asian dreamworld

1 This point became acute at the beginning of the twenty-first century,

especially since 11 September 2001, as we were compelled to recognize
through the sudden, massive media attention to the hitherto forgotten
Asian country, Afghanistan, how the disparity between the haves and have-
nots has been widened and how the disparity itself has been left out of
global issues. The development of communication technologies and the
230 Notes
 intensification of media and cultural flows simultaneously interconnecting
many parts of the world have also brought forward global indi√erence
toward many deprived peoples and regions. Facing such a grave situation, a
view that negatively equates globalization with Americanization has ac-
cordingly regained momentum. It is true that a series of events since 11
September 2001 has highlighted anew U.S. economic and military su-
premacy. However, I would suggest that such a view is misleading and
irresponsible, as it conceals the fact that the unevenness in transnational
connections has been intensified not solely by U.S. dominance but also by
the various kinds of collusive alliances among the developed countries
under the patronage of the dominant U.S. military power. It cannot be
overemphasized that the decentering process of globalization has not dis-
solved global power structures: Globalization has been subtly di√used and
even solidified, producing asymmetry and indi√erence on a global scale.
See Hardt and Negri (2000) for a sweeping theorization of new form of
global goverance that is not founded on the sovereignity or the hegemonic
power of a single nation.
2 It should be noted that Ishihara’s anti-American Asianism coexists with
xenophobia against Asian residents in Japan whom Ishihara demonizes as
internal threats to a Japanese national community. This posture was made
clear by racist remarks he publicly made at the event of the Ground Self-
Defense Force in April 2000. Ishihara stated that illegal Asian migrants and
foreigners were responsible for the recent increase in vicious crimes and
potential rioters and looters at the time of disaster, and used a word, san-
gokujin, which discriminatorily referred to Chinese, Koreans, and Tai-
wanese in the postwar period under the U.S. occupation.
3 This is a main motif of a popular novel by Murakami Ryū, Kibou no kuni no
eguzodasu (Exodus to the country full of hope) (2000).
4 From my November 1998 conversation with Kurasawa Aiko, who was
conducting research on Japanese popular culture in Indonesia.

Notes 231
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Yuasa Takeo. 1994. 21 seiki ni okeru shobunmei no kankei. Hikaku Bunmei,
October, 51–62.
Zakaria, Fareed. 1994. Culture is destiny: A conversation with Lee Kuan Yew.
Foreign A√airs 73 (2): 109–26.

References 259
Index

Across (magazine), 169 West, 31–33; Kimagure Orenjirōdo,

Adachi Miki, 188, 190, 230 nn.27, 32 216 n.5; mukokuseki, 33–34; odor-
Advertising. See Promotion less products, 27–28, 94–95; trans-
Agency for Cultural A√airs ( Japan), national domination, 37–38; West-
217–18 n.9 ern marketing, 38
Ajia Fumufumu Ryokō (Mure Yōko), 160 Aoki Tomatsu, 58, 64, 68
Ajia wa Machi ni Kike (Ichikawa), 171 apec. See Asia Pacific Economic Co-
Akamatsu Kaname, 213 n.11 operation Forum
Akana Rika (character), 143–47, 150– Appadurai, Arjun, 15, 17, 35–36, 48–
51. See also Tokyo Love Story 51, 79–83, 155, 174, 200–204
Akira (animation film), 30 Asahi Shinbun, 211–12 n.3
Aksoy Asu, 37, 46, 90 asean, 89
Akurosu Henshūshitsu, 30, 31, 94, 99, Asia: Asianization, 68–69; com-
109 monality with Japan, 66–70, 76–78;
Americanization, 32–33, 35, 213 n.9; exports to Japan, 88, 181–89, 229
cultural imperialism, 39–42; de- n.18; imitation of Japanese culture,
cline, 40–41, 48, 151–52; definition 80–84; intraregional cultural ex-
of modernity, 45, 151–53; form change, 47–50; Japanese conception
over content, 152–53. See also Cul- of, 6–18, 199–201, market expan-
tural dominance and power; sion in 1990s, 3–4, 11–12; modern-
Globalization; Western culture ization, 6; regional values, 11–14,
America’s Funniest Home Videos (tv 213 nn.13–14. See also Protection-
show), 97 ism, cultural
Amuro Namie, 114, 116, 125–26 Asia Bagus!, 19, 100–106, 111, 224
Amyūzu/Amuse, 112, 184, 225 n.15 nn.7, 9, 10
Anderson, Benedict, 51 Asia-bon, 160
Ang, Ien, 5, 15, 39–40, 45–48, 92, Asia Karuchā Gaido, 226–27 n.1
144–48, 161, 165, 202, 211 n.2 Asia Live Dream (tv music program),
Animation and comics, 1, 23, 76, 202, 170
216 n.4, 217 nn.7, 9; Doraemon, 1, Asia Major (cd), 164, 168, 169. See also
34, 69–70, 163, 170, 211 n.1; export Lee, Dick
values, 30; global marketing, 38, AsiaNbeat (tv music program), 169
119, 221 n.15; intraregional ex- Asian Business Review (magazine), 91,
change, 47; Japanization of the 122–23
Asianism in Japan, 6–9; ‘‘Asia is one,’’ racial issues, 132, 147. See also Cul-
166–67, 200, 212 n.6; new, in the tural proximity; Hong Kong; Tokyo
1990s, 5–6, 11–14, 199–201; role of Love Story
Japan in economic development, 10, Audiovisual goods. See Consumer
213 n.11. See also Imperialist history products
of Japan Aum Supreme, 176
Asianism in Japan, popular, 158–161, Avex, 115–16, 225 n.17
cultural energy and social vigor,
Baeg Seong Soo, 112, 173
177–81, 195; female pop idols, 181–
Bali, 174–76, 229–30 n.25
89, 229 n.20; films, 112, 183–84;
Barker, Chris, 50
Hong Kong’s influence, 189–94,
Barnet, Richard, 46
197; nostalgia, 159, 173–81, 189–
Barrett, James, 163
96, 201; pop music, 161–70; role of
Bart (magazine), 114, 182
Japan in cultural fusion, 166–67,
Bartu, Friedmann, 2–3
167–70, 206–10; temporal di√er-
Baudrillard, Jean, 41, 62, 127
ences, 170–73
Befu Harumi, 6, 58
Asian Japanese (Kobayashi), 176, 228
Beilharz, Peter, 153
n.14
Bell, Philip, 41
Asia-Pacific Broadcast Union (abu),
Bell, Roger, 41
87
Benjamin, Walter, 153, 201, 205
Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation
Berger, Mark, 12
Forum, 12, 214–15 n.17
Berland, Jody, 25, 37
Asia Rakuen Manyuaru, 226–27 n.1
Berry, Chris, 14
Asiaweek (magazine), 122
Beverly Hills, 90210 (tv drama), 147–
Asi-pop (magazine), 184
48, 226 n.8
Astro Boy (animation), 94, 179
Bhabha, Homi, 51, 59–60, 82
Asymmetric cultural encounters, 40,
Black market, of media products, 137–
204–5, 231 n.1; Japanese consump-
40, 226 n.2
tion of other cultures, 154–57, 161–
Black Rain (film), 29, 196
62; Japan’s cultural impact on Asia,
Blade Runner (film), 196
19–22, 49–50, 81–84, 207–8; non-
Borer, Douglas A., 12
Western modernity in Asia, 172;
Bosche, Marc, 33
nostalgia, 174; power relations,
Boundaries: between Japan and the
121
‘‘West,’’ 60–61; between Japan, ‘‘the
Atarashii Rekisikyōkasho o Tsukuru
West,’’ and ‘‘Asia,’’ 6–8, 13–14; na-
Kai, 209
tional vs. regional, 15–18, 51–52,
Atkins, Will, 87
199–201
atv, 137
Bourdieu, Pierre, 187
Audiences: age and generation factors,
Boyd, Douglas A., 25
125–27, 137, 141, 190–91; gender
Brannen, Mary Yoko, 59, 60–61
factors, 77, 141, 144–47, 184–86,
Bratton, John, 23
189–90, 203, 216 n.5, 229 n.21,
Brazil, 40, 50
229–30 n.25; market research, 134;
Buck, Elizabeth B., 96

262 Index
Buell, Frederick, 52, 58, 80, 172, 174, Civilization theories, 63–66; civiliza-
204 tions as cultural entities, 11, 13–14,
131–32, 200, 214 n.16; mukokuseki,
Cable tv industry, Taiwan, 121–22,
70–79. See also Hybridism, strategic
137–41, 226 n.5
Coca-Cola, 90, 103
Cavanagh, John, 46
Coevalness, 122, 154–57, 177–78,
Chage & Aska, 98, 115, 136, 208
180, 193–99, 203
Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 45
Cold War, 9
Chambers, Iain, 26
Colonialism. See Imperialist history of
Chan, Joseph Man, 4, 151
Japan
Channel [V], 117, 138, 223–24 n.1
Columbia, 23–24, 29, 37–38. See also
Chatterjee, Partha, 45
Sony
Chen, Kelly, 184
Comics. See Animation and comics
Chen Kuan-Hsing, 152
Commercial Radio (Hong Kong), 113
Cheung, Jacky, 184, 228 n.9, 229 n.23,
Communications technology, 36
230 n.27
Computer/video games, 30, 76, 217
Cheung, Leslie, 184, 191, 207, 229
n.7; mukokuseki, 33–34; odorless
n.23, 230 n.27
products, 27, 33–34; transnational
Chikushi Tetsuya, 83
domination, 37–38
Chikyū no Arukikata, 226–27 n.1
Consumer culture; 89, 99–100, 102–
China, 210; imports from Japan, 101–
7, 151–52, 156, 197. See also
4, 108–9, 127–30, 135; indigeniza-
Coevalness; Promotion
tion of Western culture, 111–12; lo-
Consumer products: Asian, in Japan,
calization strategies, 90–91; popular
160–61, 225 n.13; associated with
music market, 101–2; regional in-
popular music, 102–4; Japanese
fluence, 61–62, 112, 179, 200, 212–
electronics, 24–28; mobile privat-
13 n.8, 225 n.13; return of Hong
ization, 25–26; odorless products,
Kong, 205–6
24–28, 70–72
China Television Company (ctv),
Cosmopolitanism, 78–79, 160–61,
138
193–94, 197, 200, 230 n.28; Hong
China Television Service (cts), 138
Kong pop idols, 186; music fusion,
China Times, 142
164–66
Ching, Leo, 67, 82, 100, 113, 123, 167,
Crea (magazine), 186
200, 212 n.6, 227 n.7
Crocodile Dundee (film), 174
Choi Il-nam, 75
Cultural diplomacy, 74–79, 208
Chō Kyō, 127–30, 135, 143
Cultural discount, 26–27
Chow, Rey, 26
Cultural dominance and power, 32–
Chua, Beng-Huat, 47
33; asymmetric cultural encounters,
Chūkanzu de Mita Ajia (Morieda Ta-
19–22, 40, 49–50, 81–84; cultural
kashi), 162
proximity, 132–33, 155–157; de-
Chung Daekyun, 104
centered, 35–38, 42–47, 50, 201–2,
Chungking Express (film), 183–84
231 n.1; intraregional flow, 47–50;
Chūō Kōron (magazine), 58
Japan’s duality, 3–11, 15–18; trans-
Cine City Hong Kong, 183

Index 263
Cultural dominance and power (cont.) Disney, 38
national culture, 16–17, 35–38, 52– Disneyland (Tokyo), 41, 59, 60–61, 70
53; vs. indigenizing modernism, Doku (tv drama), 178–79, 229 nn.16–
39–42. See also Americanization; 18
Globalization; Japanization Doraemon (comic/animation), 1, 34,
Cultural geography, 49–50, 204 69–70, 163, 170, 211 n.1
Cultural impact of Japanese exports, Dore, Ronald P., 23
207–8, 220 n.10; commonality with Dosan: A Borrowed Life (film), 125
Asia, 21, 66–70, 72–73, 77–79; Douglas, Michael, 29
‘‘cultural discount’’ vs. ‘‘cultural Dower, John W., 9, 55
prestige,’’ 26–27; cultural odorless- Dreams Come True (musical group),
ness, 24–29, 94–95, 215–16 n.2; 114, 116, 118
imitation, 80–84; intraregional flow, Dreamworld, 200–203
47–50; ‘‘Japaneseness,’’ 30–35, 53; Du Gay, Paul, 23, 26, 28, 46, 225 n.12;
leadership role of Japan, 10, 166–67, global localization, 90
206–10, 213 n.11; perception of ex- Duus, Peter, 9, 56
ploitation, 75; popularity of Japa- Dyer, Richard, 144–46
nese culture in East Asia, 122–30;
E. T. (film), 217 n.8
reconciliation with Asia, 78–79;
East Asia Economic Caucus (eaec),
transnational regional modernity,
12
119. See also Consumer products
Economic factors: development of
Cultural proximity, 49–50, 121–57;
Japan, 2, 10–13, 23–24; emergence
articulation, 132–35; audience pref-
of transnational corporations, 36;
erences, 147–51; coevalness, 122,
Japanese tv market, 135–39; reces-
154–57; decline in American cul-
sion of 1990s, 205–6
tural power, 151–54; historical con-
Edagawa Kōichi, 183, 197
texts, 132–35; identification with
Electronics. See Consumer products
tv dramas, 143–47; popularity of
Elle Japon (magazine), 185–86, 189,
Japanese culture, 122–30; regional
197–98, 230 n.31
dynamics, 130–35; spatial aspects,
Epic Sony, 102, 108
49–50; temporality, 122, 153–56.
ER (tv drama), 149
See also Coevalness; Cultural domi-
espn, 141
nance and power
European Union, 12, 211 n.2
Culture and Imperialism (Said), 3
Exports from Japan, 70–79, 92–93;
Cunningham, Stuart, 48–49, 90, 119,
animation and comics, 1, 23, 27–38,
130–31, 134
30, 94–95; civilization vs. culture,
Dallas (tv drama), 146 66–70; consumer products, 24–28;
Davis, Fred, 173, 194 enhanced understanding of Japan,
DENiM (magazine), 30–31 75; government involvement, 75,
Dentsū, 92, 95, 97–98, 107, 123 221 n.12; marketing concerns, 86–
Dentsū Sōken, 92 89, 107–12, 225 n.12; odorless
Diaoyu Islands, 125, 129–30p products, 24–29, 94–95, 215–16
Dirlik, Arif, 14–15, 87, 178 n.2; popular music, 98–99, 113–18,

264 Index
 223–24 n.1, 225 n.16; real time cir- Gaiko Forum, 69–70, 77
culation, 112–18; software, 223–24 García Canclini, Néstor, 17, 43, 153,
n.1; tv animation, 93–95; Western 203
pop culture, 120. See also Glocal- Garnham, Nicholas, 37
ization/Global localization; The Ghost in the Shell (animation film),
Promotion 30, 38, 196
Gillespie, Marie, 204
Fabian, Johannes, 49, 122, 216 n.5
Ginza (magazine), 184
Fallen Angels (film), 184
Global mass culture, 16, 42, 127
Fallows, James, 213–14 n.14
Globalization, 3–4, 16–17, 25, 231
Fans, in Japan, of Hong Kong popular
n.1; American role, 40–42, 48,
culture, 186–89, 230 nn.26–27
151–52; as decentering process,
Featherstone, Mike, 28, 46–47, 50,
14–15, 18, 35–47, 119, 130–35,
61–62, 127, 152, 201, 219 n.7.
201–2; as organizing di√erences,
Ferguson, James, 52, 90
43–44; odorless products, 93–95.
Ferguson, Majorine, 36, 47
See also Cultural power and domi-
Films, 207–8, 215 n.1; Akira, 30; Asian
nance; Glocalization/global
in Japan, 112, 183–84; banning by
localization
Taiwan and Korea, 86; Black Rain,
Globe, 114, 125–26
29; Chungking Express/Koisuru
Glocalization/global localization, 46–
Wakusei, 183–84; The Ghost in the
47, 90–92, 225 n.12; indigenized
Shell, 30; growth of tv in Japan, 96;
modernity in Asia, 118–20; limita-
Love Letter, 207; Shiri, 207; Sotsugyō
tions, 107–12; odorless products,
Ryokō: Nihon dara Kimishita, 80–82;
93–95
Swallowtail Butterfly, 179–80, 229
Gluck, Carol, 10, 11
n.18, 230 n.29; 2046, 207; Western
Gold Sun, 140, 141
imports, 212 n.4
Gomery, Douglas, 25
Final Fantasy VIII (video game), 207
Goodman, David S. G., 104
Fiske, John, 187
Government Information O≈ce
Forester, Tom, 24
(China), 139
Format/concept trade, 97–98, 107,
Green East Asian Co-Prosperity
224 nn.4–7
Sphere, 8, 212 n.7
Formosa TV (ftv), 138
Grewal, Inderpal, 52
Four Heavenly Kings, 228 n.9
Grotesque Japan (Inoue), 222 n.18
Friedman, Jonathan, 53
Guarnizo, Luis Eduardo, 52
Friends (tv drama), 207
Gupta, Akhil, 52
Frith, Simon, 28, 153
Frow, John, 173 Hakuhōdō, 207
Fuji TV, 100–101, 211–12 n.3, 225 Hall, Stuart, 15–16, 35–36, 39–43, 51,
n.11 55, 119, 127, 133
Fukuda Doctrine, 11 Hamelink, Cees, 39
Funabashi, Yoichi, 68–69, 214–15 Hamilton, Annette, 166
n.17 Hammond, Ellen H., 14
Furuki Morie, 4 Hanaoka, Takako, 191

Index 265
Hannerz, Ulf, 6–7, 15–17, 40, 43, 45, Hoskins, Colin, 26–27, 95
51–52, 83, 118, 202 Hosokawa, Shuhei, 216 n.6, 227 n.7
Hara, Tomoko, 190, 191 Howes, David, 20, 35, 60, 215–16 n.2
Hara Yumiko, 94–95, 98, 139–41, 212 Hsieh Yamai, 209
n.4 Huntington, Samuel P., 11–12, 131–
Hardware. See Consumer products 32, 200, 214–15 nn.16–17
Harootunian, Harry D., 9, 10 Hybridism, strategic, 53–56, 219 nn.5,
Harvey, David, 36 7; assimilation of cultures, 59–63;
Harvey, Paul A. S., 77 civilization theories, 65–66; extro-
Hashizume Daizaburō, 170 version in the late twentieth cen-
Hatakeyama Kenji, 30, 94 tury, 63–66; introversion in postwar
Hattori Hiroshi, 139, 141 era, 56–59
Hawkins, Richard, 119 Hybridity, 51–54, 218 nn.1–2, 219
hbo, 141 nn.5–6; ‘‘banana’’ identity, 166; es-
Hein, Laura, 14 says by Katō Shūichi, 57–58; racial/
Hendry, Joy, 150 ethnic concerns, 55–56, 218 n.4
Herman, Edward, 37 Hybridization, 43–44, 167–70, 218
Higuchi Takafumi, 192 n.2
Hirano Ken’ichirō, 64
Ibuka Masaru, 24
Hirst, Paul, 202
Ichikawa Takashi, 99, 104, 143, 170–
Hitachi, 103
73
Hobsbawm, Eric J., 51
The Ideal of the East with Special Refer-
Hollywood studios: Japanese com-
ence to the Art of Japan (Okahura),
panies, 23–24, 29–30, 37–38; vcrs
166
and marketing potential, 25. See also
Idols, 207–8; female Asian, 181–89,
Columbia; mca
229 n.20; from Hong Kong, 186,
Honda, 103
190–91; Japanese, 141–43, 225 n.16;
Honda Shirō, 77–78, 82, 221 nn.14–
local pop stars, 97–107, 113, 224 n.8
15
Igarashi Akio, 34–35, 73, 104
Hong Kong, 19–21, 123–24; films, 21,
Imada Takatoshi, 13–14
112; Japanese music, 115–18, 173;
Imamura Yōichi, 76–77
Japanese tv dramas, 123, 135; local-
Imitation. See Mimicry
ization experiences, 90–91; music
Immigration: to Japan from Asia, 179–
exports to Japan, 181–89, 228 n.9;
81, 231 n.2
pop idols, 112–13, 181–82, 185–86;
Imperialist history of Japan, 5, 8–11,
return to China, 205–6; tv pro-
19, 75, 180, 212 n.7, 220 n.10; his-
gramming, 136–37. See also Fans, in
tory revisionism, 208–9; Japanese
Japan
popular culture in Taiwan, 121,
Honkon Tsūshin (magazine), 124
124–127, 140. See also Asianism in
Honkon Yamucha Kurabu, 183, 230
Japan; Nationalism in Japan; Protec-
n.27
tionism, cultural; South Korea
HoriPro Entertainment Group, 102,
Imports to Japan, of media products,
104, 107–8
88, 181–89, 229 n.18

266 Index
Inamasu Tatsuo, 100, 182 Japanese Ministry of International
India, 176, 200 Trade and Industry, 92
Indigenization, 15–16, 19, 40, 41–42, Japanese Ministry of Posts and Tele-
49–50, 214–15 n.17, 218 n.2, 219 communication, 5, 88, 135
n.6; in Asia, 110–12, 118–20; Japa- Japaneseness, of cultural products, 30–
nese popular culture, 47–50; local- 35, 53, 70–79; traditional culture,
ization strategy, 20, 45–47; local pop 6–7, 222–23 n.18. See also Odorless
stars, 97–107; mukokuseki forms, products
70–79; vs. cultural authenticity, Japan Foundation, 75
104–6; Western culture, 95–97. See Japanization: animation and computer
also Hybridism, strategic games, 30–32; business organiza-
Indonesia, 135 tion, 23; ‘‘glocalism,’’ 46–47; of
International Federation of Phono- Asia, 9–10, 33–35, 73; of Asia, am-
gram and Videogram Producers bivalence toward, 79–84; question
(ifpi), 114 of, 32–35; transnational partnership,
International Research Center for Jap- 35–38. See also Americanization;
anese Culture, 222 n.18 Cultural dominance and power;
Intraregional cultural flow, 12, 14, 47– Cultural impact of Japanese exports;
50, 199–205; cross-fertilization of Globalization
popular culture, 207–8; fusion of Japan Media Communication Center
pan-Asian cultures, 167–70. See also (jamco), 221 n.12
Cultural proximity; [Transnational Japan That Can Say ‘‘No’’! (Ishihara),
culture] 66
Iokibe Makoto, 214–15 n.17 jet. See Japan Entertainment Televi-
Ishida Takeshi, 9, 10 sion (jet)
Ishihara Shintarō, 12, 34, 66–67, 206, The Journalist (magazine), 126p, 129–
23 n.2 30p
Ishii Ken’ichi, 132, 141 JSkyB, 211–12 n.3
Isshiki Nobuyuki, 81–82 Jurgens, Ulrich, 23
Itochu, 37
Kadota Osamu, 215 n.18
Itō Yoichi, 76
Kagayaku Toki no Nakade (tv drama),
itv (Thailand), 224 n.6
149
Ivy, Marilyn, 7, 58, 103, 194, 221
Kakeo Yoshio, 212 n.4
n.17
Kamo Yoshinori, 32, 33
Iwabuchi, Koichi, 7, 55, 57–58, 62,
Kanemitsu, Osamu, 101, 106, 113, 225
135, 213–14 n.14, 221 n.17
n.11
Iwai Shunji, 180, 230 n.29
Kaneshiro Takeshi, 184, 187–88, 207,
Iyer, Pico, 79–80, 219 n.6
229 n.22, 230 n.28
Jacka, Elizabeth, 48–49, 90, 119, 130– Kang, Sang-jung, 7, 55
31, 134 Karaoke, 103
Jameson, Fredric, 127, 173–74 Karatani Kōjin, 166
Japan Entertainment Television (jet), Kasettoshoppu e Ikeba Ajia ga Mietekuru
123, 140 (Shinozaki Hiroshi), 163

Index 267
Katmandu, Nepal, 176 Kowloon’s Gate, 196
Katō Shūichi, 57–58, 63–64 Kōyama Iwao, 219 n.7
Katz, Elihu, 96 Kozakai Toshiaki, 58
Kawakami Hideo, 161, 169, 227 n.3 Kubo Masaichi, 30, 94
Kawakatsu Heita, 64–66, 69, 70, 213– Kubota Makoto, 162, 164, 227 n.3
14 n.14 Kuisel, Richard, 39
Kawamura Minato, 212–13 n.8 Kumamoto Shin’ichi, 4, 69, 76, 132
Kawamura Nozomu, 54 Kuomintang (kmt) government, 125,
Kawasaki Ken’ichi, 173 138, 209
Kawatake Kazuo, 5, 47, 69, 86, 94–95, Kurasawa Aiko, 135, 231 n.3
140, 212 n.4 Kwok, Aaron, 228 n.9, 229 n.23, 230
Kelly, William W., 103 n.27
Kelsky, Karen, 189, 194 Kyumei Byōtō 24ji (tv drama), 149
Kibou no kuni no eguzodasu
Laclau, Ernesto, 133
(Murakami), 231 n.2
Lai, Leon, 191, 228 n.9, 230 n.27
Kido Kazuo, 11, 160, 212 n.5
Language, 125; cultural proximity,
Kimagure Orenjirōdo
131, 132; localization experiences,
(comic/animation), 216 n.5
91, 92–93; tv exports, 123, 135–36
Kimura Takuya, 207
Lardner, James, 24
Kindaichi Shōnen no Jikenbo (tv drama),
Lash, Scott, 23, 45, 48, 50, 127
137
Lau, Andy, 184, 228 n.9, 229 n.23
Kinoshita Nagahiro, 227 n.7
Leap development, 170–71
Kitanaka Masakazu, 164
Lebra, Joyce C., 9
Kobayashi Akiyoshi, 76
Lee, Chun-Chuan, 142
Kobayashi Kisei, 176–78, 228 nn.14–
Lee, Dick, 159, 164–70, 227 nn.3–4,
15
6, 228 nn.9, 11
Kobayashi Yoshinori, 209
Lee, Michelle, 184
Kogawa, Tetsuo, 25–26
Lee, Paul S. -N, 4, 40, 87, 131
Koi Eisei, 215 n.1
Lee Kuan-Yew, 12
Koisuro Wakusei. See Chungking Express
Leichty, Mark, 154
Kōkami Shōji, 83
Lent, John A., 25
Kokusai Kōryū (magazine), 75
Levi, Antonia, 23
Kokutai no Hongi (Cardinal principles
Levitt, Theodore, 89–90
of the national entity of Japan), 55
Liao, Ping-hui, 125
Komagome Takeshi, 56, 212–13 n.8,
Liebes, Tamar, 96
213 n.10
Lii, King-Tzann, 48
Komuro Family, 116–17
Li Zhen-Yi et al., 144, 146–47, 150
Komuro Tetsuya, 116, 119, 226 n.18
Local cultural practices: contribution
Kondo, Dorinne, 7, 174–75
to transnational culture, 35–38;
Kong, Lily, 165
growth, 87, 112–18
Korhonen, Pekka, 10
Localization, 20, 33, 224 nn.3–7, 226
Koschmann, Victor J., 214–17 n.17
n.3; Hong Kong, 90–91; hybridiza-
Koshida Takashi, 11, 160, 212 n.5
tion, 43–44; Japanese strategies in

268 Index
 Asia, 89–92; limitations of, 107–12; McKinley, Graham E., 148, 226 n.8
marketing strategies, 92–97; McNeely, Connie, 92
Pokémon, 38; preferences for local The Media Are American (Tunstall), 40
programming, 90–91; spatial and Media exposure. See Promotion
cultural proximity, 48–50; of West- Media industries: centralized decision
ern cultural imports, 85, 95–97. making practices, 109–10; global-
See also Glocalization/global ization, 3–4, 16, 29–32, 37–38, 212
localization n.4; marketing strategies in the
Los Angeles Times, 30 1990s, 85–120, 201. See also Glocal-
Love Letter (film), 207 ization/global localization; Music;
Lull, James, 17, 40, 43, 133 tv dramas; tv exports
Mediamatic, 23
Macluhan, Marshall, 36
Meyerowitz, Joshua, 165
The Mad Chinaman (cd), 164, 167, 168
Mickey Mouse, 30, 103
Maekawa Ken’ichi, 160
Middle class, development of, 36, 78;
Magic Stone, 115–17
in Asia, 67–68, 103–4; emulation of
Mahathir, Mohamad, 12, 66
Western lifestyles, 106–7
Malaysia, 12, 13, 19
Miki Kiyoshi, 214–17 n.17
Malsch, Thomas, 23
Miller, Daniel, 45, 50, 60, 79, 92, 106,
Manabe Masami, 30
134
Manga Entertainment, 38
Mimicry, 80–84, 125
Maribeth, 101, 103–4, 224 n.8
Minami, Hiroshi, 55, 58
Marketing strategies: format/concept
Mirus, Rolf, 26–27, 95
trade, 97–98, 107, 224 nn.4–7;
Miyazaki Hayao, 38, 217 n.8
glocalization/global localization,
Miyoshi, Masao, 3, 213–14 n.14
93–94; Japanese music, 114–18; lo-
Mizukoshi Shin, 6, 7, 112, 173
calization, 33, 92–97, 115–18; me-
Mobile privatization, 25–26
dia industry, 85–120, 201; tie ups,
Modernity, 204–5, 220 n.9; associa-
104; toward the new middle class,
tion with Western culture, 15, 45,
103–4; vcrs, 25
151–54; and Dick Lee, 164–68; in-
Marlboro, 103
digenized, 15–16, 41–42, 45–50;
Marume Kuraudo, 171
and Hong Kong popular culture,
Maruyama Masao, 58
182–186, 189–98; and Japanese
Massey, Doreen, 48
popular culture, 77–79, 104–6,
Matsushita, 23–24, 29, 37–38. See also
117–18, 119–20, 130, 141–47, 150–
Panasonic
51, 155; spatial aspects, 49–50
Mattelart, Armand, 39
Mononokehime (animation film), 38,
Mattelart, Michelle, 39
217 n.8
Maxwell, Richard, 92
Mooij, Marieke de, 89
mca, 23–24, 29, 37–48
Mōri Yoshitaka, 216 n.4
McAuley, Ian A., 23
Morieda Takashi, 82, 113, 162, 227
McChesney, Robert, 37
n.2
McCormack, Gavan, 13, 111
Morissette, Alanis, 118
McDonald’s, 27–28, 46, 90, 224 n.3

Index 269
Morita, Akio, 34, 66 Orientalism, 7–8, 11, 221 n.17; slo-
Morley, David, 23, 29, 37–41, 50, 54, gans, 8–10, 14, 54, 58; superiority,
62, 154, 166 6–7, 21–22, 49, 52–55, 66–67. See
Morris-Suzuki, Tessa, 44, 56, 64–65, also Nihonjinron discourses
77, 197, 228–29 n.14 Nationalism in Japan, 201–2, 208–9;
Mouer, Ross, 6, 55 Asia’s yearning for Japanese culture,
mtv, 91, 117 132; postwar era, 57–58; pre-war
Mukokuseki forms, 28, 94, 215 n.1, period, 8–9; superiority of Japanese
227 n.5; cosmopolitan appeal, 78– culture, 52–55, 66–67; transnational
79; Japaneseness, 33–34, 53, 70–79 culture, 16–18, 35–38, 52; trans/
Murai Yoshinori, 11, 34, 74, 132, 160, nationalism, 53–56, 79–84. See also
194, 212 n.5 Imperialist history of Japan
Murata Junko, 191 Negus, Keith, 20, 29
Murdoch, Rupert, 91, 211–12 n.3, Newitz, Annalee, 33, 216 n.5
226 n.3 News Corporation, 116–17, 119, 226
Mure Yōko, 160–61 n.18
Murray, Je√, 117 NHK Asia, 140, 141, 170
Music, popular, 47, 76–77, 85, 124, NHK International, 75–76, 86–87
207, 223 n.1, 225 n.16; Asian music Nihonjingokko (Yoshioka), 74
in Japan, 160–70, 181–89, 228 n.9, Nihonjinron discourses, 6–7, 213–14
229 n.20; associated products, 102– n.14
4; Dick Lee, 164–70, 227 nn.3–4, 6, Nikkatsu, 215 n.1
228 nn.9, 11; di√erence between Nikkei Entertainment (magazine), 230
East and Southeast Asia, 161–62, n.31
227 n.2; exports from Japan to Asia, Nintendo, 30, 38
98–99, 113–18, 223–24 n.1, 225 Nippan IPC, 142
n.16; fusion of Eastern and Western Nippon Television Network (ntv),
sounds, 164–66; idols, 97–107, 97, 224 nn.2, 6
112–13, 124, 181–89, 224 n.8; im- Nishino Teruhiko, 182
itation, 82; indigenized styles, 72; Nishi Tadashi, 88
tv dramas, 142, 146 Noda Masaaki, 31
Nomura Susumu, 176, 194
nafta, 12
Non-no (magazine), 142
Nakasone Yasuhiro, 222 n.18
Nostalgia, 159, 194–95, 208–9, 230
Nakazawa Shin’ichi, 164–65
nn.29–30; Hong Kong’s modernity,
Nakazora Mana, 88
189–94; imperialist/capitalist, 173–
National identity, Japanese, 5–8, 51,
81. See also Coevalness
212 n.4, 213–14 n.14; cultural bor-
Nye, Joseph, 32–33
rowing, 61–62; expansion of role in
Asia in 1990s, 11–14; historical per- Odagiri Makoto, 87–88
spective, 6–11, 56–57; localization Odorless products, 24–29, 94–95,
skills, 85; mediating role between 215–16 n.2. See also Cultural
East and West, 7–8, 10, 13–14; ra- discount
cial/ethnic concerns, 55–56; self- Ōe Kenzaburō, 2

270 Index
Ogawa Hiroshi, 100 89, 229 n.20; from Hong Kong,
Oguma Eiji, 13, 55–56 186, 190–91; Japanese, 141–43, 225
Ogura Kazuo, 13, 68, 206 n.16; local, in Asia, 97–107, 113,
Okada Toshio, 31–32, 216 n.5 224 n.8
Okakura Kazuko/Tenshin, 67, 166– Po-shin Channel, 140, 226 n.4
67, 200, 212 n.6, 227 nn.7–8 Postcard from Tokyo, 223–24 n.1
Okamura Riemei, 4 Postwar Japan: economic develop-
Oliver, Nick, 23 ment, 10; national identity vis-à-vis
101st Proposal (tv drama), 135–36 West, 6–11
Ong, Aihwa, 50, 52 Power. See Cultural dominance and
Ōno, Shin’ichi, 160 power
Ono Kōsei, 47 Promotion: Asian music in Japan,
O’Regan, Tom, 25, 27, 96 160–61; consumerism, 101–7; Dick
Orientalism: Japan’s, toward Asia, 8, Lee in Japan, 165–66; Hong Kong
11, 164–66, 174–77, 197–98, 212– popular culture in Japan, 181–89;
13 n.8; nostalgia, 174–76; oriental-, and Japanese fans, 186–89, 230
of Japan, 7–8; self-, of Japan, 7–8, nn.26–27; Japanese popular music
11, 221 n.17; Western, 60, 216 n.4, in Asia, 112–18, 225 n.16; Japanese
222 n.18 tv dramas in Asia, 86–89, 122, 135–
Orientalism (cd), 168 40, 142; nostalgia, 173–81, 189–94;
Oshii Mamoru, 28, 196, 227 n.5 transnational collaboration, 119,
Oshin (tv drama), 1, 69, 75–76, 119, 207, 226 nn.18, 19. See also Glo-
135, 163, 221 n.14 calization/global localization;
Ōtomo Katsuhiro, 30 Localization
Ōtsuka Eiji, 33 Protectionism, cultural, 4, 86–87, 212
n.4; Hong Kong, 113; South Korea,
Pan-Asianism. See Asianism in Japan;
20, 86, 221 n.11, 224 n.7; Taiwan,
Intraregional cultural flow
86, 121, 138, 140, 218 n.10, 224 n.7
Panasonic, 103–4, 105p
Purénon H, 182–84
Parry, Anita, 60, 218 n.1
Peattie, Mark, 9, 56 Radway, Janice, 39
Phoenix channel (star tv), 138 Ranger, Terence, 51
Pieterse, Jan Ederveen, 43–44 Remade in Japan (Tobin), 60
Pioneer, 103 Republic of China. See Taiwan
Piracy. See Black market ‘‘Return to Asia’’ project, 5–6, 11–18,
Pokémon, 30–33, 38, 94, 217 n.7 201
Pokémon: The First Movie (animation Ring (female singer), 117
film), 38 Ritzer, George, 28
Pony Canyon, 101, 107 Robertson, Jennifer, 8–9
Pop Asia (magazine), 161–62, 169, Robertson, Roland, 43, 46–47, 50, 63,
184–85, 227 n.3 90, 93, 174, 219 n.5
Poppu Eijia, 161–62, 169, 184–85, 227 Robins, Kevin, 23, 29, 37–43, 46, 50,
n.3 90, 154, 166
Pop stars, 207–8; female Asian, 181– Robinson, Richard, 104

Index 271
Rosaldo, Renato, 174–75 Shiri (film), 207
Rouse, Roger, 17 Shiseido, 184
Royal wedding, Japanese, 95–96 Shisō (magazine), 58
Shoesmith, Brian, 4
Saeki Keishi, 67
Show-by-Show-by (tv quiz show), 97
Said, Edward, 3, 32, 166, 174
Siji, Alessandro, 40
Saitō Akihito, 161–62, 227 n.3
Sinclair, John, 40, 48–49, 90, 92, 119,
Saitō Eisuke, 104, 110
130–31, 134
Saitō Minako, 176
Singapore, 12, 19; Japanese cultural
Saitō Seiichirō, 13
exports, 124, 135; marketing factors,
Sakai Naoki, 7, 219 n.7
110; pop culture production, 111;
Sakai Noriko, 98
regional identity, 14; tv program-
Sakurai Tetsuo, 32
ming, 135–36. See also Lee, Dick
Sanli—2, 141
Singhal, Arvind, 75
Saruganseki, 228 n.14
Sklair, Leslie, 42
Satellite tv, 86–87, 137–38, 211–12
Sky-Perfect-TV, 211–12 n.3
n.3
Smart, Barry, 41
Satō Hikaru, 16
Smith, Chris, 23
Satonaka Machiko, 221 n.13
Smith, D. Anthony, 127
Satō Shun’ichi, 70
Smith, Michael Peter, 17, 52
Sawaki Kōtarō, 176
Software, 25, 29–32, 37, 223–24 n.1
sbs (South Korea), 224 n.6
Sonic, 30
Schiller, Herbert, 37, 39
Sonoda Shigeto, 176
Schodt, Frederik L., 23, 30
Sony, 90, 211–12 n.3, 225 n.11; ac-
Sega, 30
quisition of Columbia, 23–24, 29,
Sekai shōhin no tsukurikata: Nihon media
37–38; computer games, 30; global
ga sekai o seishita hi (Akurosu Hen-
localization strategy, 46, 93; software
shūshitsu), 31, 216 n.3
production, 29–32; Walkman, 23,
Sekikawa Natsuo, 226–27 n.1
25–26, 28, 103
Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (anima-
Sony Music Asia, 170
tion film), 217 n.8
Sony Music Entertainment, 101–2,
Shanghai People in Tokyo (tv drama),
223–24 n.1, 226 n.18
112, 225 nn.14–15
Sony Music Taiwan, 115–16
Shanghai Performance Doll, 102, 104,
Sotsugyō Ryokō: Nihon dara Kimishita
107–8
(film), 80–82, 100, 221 n.16
Shanghai TV, 112
Souru no Renshū Mondai (Sikikawa),
Shima Keiji, 4, 86
226–27 n.1
Shimizu, Shinichi, 4
South Korea, 48, 208–10; accessibility
Shinohara Toshiyuki, 4
of Japanese cultural exports, 125;
Shinozaki Hiroshi, 82–83, 113, 161–
banning of Japanese culture, 20, 86,
64, 227 n.6, 227 nn.2–3
221 n.11, 224 n.7; reconciliation
Shinya Tokkyū (Sawaki), 176
with Japan, 77
Shiraishi Kenji, 170
Spa! (magazine), 169
Shiratori Kokichi, 55

272 Index
Spark, Alasdair, 42 Takakura Ken, 29
Sreberny-Mohammadi, Annabelle, 44, Takeshita Noboru, 221 n.12
106, 202 Takeuchi Yoshimi, 8
Stars. See Idols Takokuseki, 165, 227 n.5. See also
star tv, 4–5, 87–89, 102, 141–42, Mukokuseki
211–12 n.3, 223–24 n.3; alliances Tanaka, Stefan, 7, 8, 66
with Japanese music industry, 116; Taussig, Michael, 46
China, 138; localization experi- tbs, 99, 123, 224 n.5
ences, 91–92; Taiwan, 137–38; Tchingtao, 103
Tokyo Love Story, 144 TCS-8 (Singapore), 135–36, 224 n.6
Stewart, Susan, 173, 194–96, 230 n.29 Technology. See Consumer products
Strait Times, 208 Television. See tv
Stratton, Jon, 5, 15, 47–48, 161, 165, Temporality and transnational cultural
202 flows, 99–100; American culture,
Straubhaar, Joseph D., 25, 27, 40, 48– 216 n.5; cultural proximity, 122,
49, 90, 92, 119, 122, 130–31 153–56; Hong Kong culture, 192;
Stronach, Bruce, 94, 96 Japan’s perception of Asian back-
Sugimoto, Yoshio, 6, 55 wardness, 159, 181; popularity of
Su Hearng, 141 Asian culture in Japan, 170–73, 181;
Sumitomo Trading Co., Ltd., 37, 123 real time issues, 112–18. See also
Suntory, 179 Coevalness; Nostalgia
Super Mario Brothers, 30, 94 Tezuka Osamu, 94
super-tv, 141 Thai culture, 161–62, 174–75; Japa-
Sutā Tanjō (tv program), 101 nese tv dramas, 135; Nihonjingokko
Suzuki, 103 (Yoshioka), 74
Swallowtail Butterfly (film), 179–80, Thomas, Nicholas, 59–60, 212–13
229 n.18, 230 n.29 n.8, 218 n.1
Syndication. See Format/concept Thome, Katarina, 23
trade Thompson, Grahame, 202
Thompson, John B., 133, 155, 165, 187
Taiwan, 19–20, 21, 48, 208–9; ban-
Time (magazine), 94
ning of Japanese culture, 86, 121,
Time Asia (magazine), 118
138, 140, 218 n.10, 224 n.7; cable
Titanic (film), 217 n.8
tv, 137–41, 226 n.5; Cable TV
TK Magic (tv show), 117
Law, 139–41; Government Infor-
tk news, 116–17, 226 n.18
mation O≈ce, 139; Japanese tv
Tobin, Joseph J., 10, 60, 97
dramas, 123, 135, 137–38; local pro-
Tōei Movie Japan, 140
motion of Japanese music, 115–18;
Tokiwa Takako, 207
music idol system, 112–13; popu-
Tokyo Disneyland, 41, 59–61, 70
larity of Japanese culture, 113–18,
Tokyo FM Shuppan, 164
123–30; tv programming, 137–39
Tokyo Love Story (tv drama), 121,
Taiwan Television Enterprise (ttv),
135–37, 143–48, 145p. See also
138
Akana Rika
Takahashi Kazuo, 76

Index 273
Tokyo Olympics, 95–96 93–95; Asian, to Japan, 229 n.18;
Tomlinson, John, 36, 39–42, 50, 60, cable access, 121–22, 137–41, 226
152, 201–2 n.5; financial disincentives, 87–89;
Torgovnick, Marianna, 177 format trade, 97–98; impact, 69–70;
Toshiba, 103 indigenized, 72; local programming,
Toyota, 103 131, 212 n.4; market conditions,
Toyotism, 46 135–39; Oshin, 1, 69, 75–76, 119,
Transculturation, 39–40 135, 163, 221 n.14; piracy, 138–40;
Transnational culture, 16–17, 35–38, Western, 40–41, 96, 103–4. See also
52, 199–200, 203–5, 231 n.1; de- tv dramas
cline of American cultural power, tvr1 (Indonesia), 224–25 n.10
151–54; indigenized modernity in 2046 (film), 207
Asia, 118–20; localization practices,
Uchimoto Jun’ichi, 182
90–92; pan-Asian music, 167–70;
Udornpim, Kant, 75
partnership with global corpora-
Ueda Makoto, 7, 143, 166–68
tions, 119
Ueno Toshiya, 28, 33, 196, 216 n.4,
Trans/nationalism, 52–56, 78–84
227 n.5
Travel to premodern Asia, 176–77,
Ueyama Shunpei, 64–65
226–27 n.1, 228 n.14, 230 n.30. See
Ukiyoe, 217 n.9
also Asianism in Japan, popular;
Umesao Tadao, 63–64
Nostalgia
Universal. See mca
Trinh, T. Minh-ha, 218 n.1
Up to Boy (magazine), 113
Tsuda Kōji, 87–88
Urban culture, 77–78, 160–61, 193–
Tsunoyama Sakae, 65–66, 70–72, 78,
94, 197, 200, 230 n.28; Hong Kong
82
pop idols, 186; music fusion, 164–
Tsurumi Kazuko, 58
66
Tsurumi Yoshiyuki, 160, 215 n.18
Urry, John, 23, 45, 48, 127
Tunstall, Jeremy, 29, 40, 46
Utada Hikaru, 208
Turner, Graeme, 174
TV Asahi, 176, 211–12 n.3 Varanasi (Benares), India, 176
tvb (Hong Kong), 136–37, 224 n.6 Videoland Japanese, 140–41
tvbs, 141 Video Night in Kathmandu (Iyer), 79–
tv dramas, 135, 202, 204, 207–8; Bev- 82
erly Hills, 90210, 147–48, 226 n.8; Vietnam, 108, 178–79
Doku, 178–79, 229 nn.16–18; Views (magazine), 220 n.10
Friends, 207; identification, 144–47; Vogel, Ezra, 23
Japanese idols, 141–43; Kindaichi ‘‘Voice of Asia,’’ 101–2
Shōnen no Jikenbo, 137; market po- The Voice of Asia (Mahathir and Ish-
tential, 123; relevance, 143–47, ihara), 13, 67
153–54; romance, 149–51; Shanghai
Walkman (Sony), 23, 25–26, 28, 103,
People in Tokyo, 112, 225 nn.14–15;
216 n.3
Tokyo Love Story, 121
Wallerstein, Immanuel, 15
tv exports, 5, 21, 47, 85; animation,
Wang, Georgette, 4, 87

274 Index
Wark, Mackenzie, 23, 29–30, 110 Who Wants to be a Millionaire? (tv quiz
Warner Bros., 38 show), 96, 224 n.4
Washida Kiyokazu, 171–72 Wilk, Richard, 43–44, 153
Watanabe Satoshi, 132, 141 Wilkinson, Barry, 23, 54
Waters, Malcolm, 23 Williams, Raymond, 25
Watson, James L., 52, 90, 152 Wonderland Traveler, 226–27 n.1
weast, 170 Wong, Faye, 118–19, 207
Wee, C. J. W. -L., 28, 35, 165 Wong Kar-wai, 183–84, 186, 207
Weiner, Michael, 56 Wun’geo Srichai, 104
Welsch, Wolfgang, 17 Wu Nianzhen, 125, 126–27
Western culture, 3; anti-Western sen-
The X-Files (tv drama), 96
timents of 1990s, 13; Asian protec-
tionism, 4; cultural imperialism, 15, Yamaguchi Fuminori, 226–27 n.1
39–42; ‘‘cultural prestige,’’ 26–27; Yamamuro Shin’ichi, 16
decline of cultural power, 40–41, Yamashita Shinji, 194, 229–30 n.25
48, 151–54, 202; definition of mo- Yamazaki Masakazu, 64, 67
dernity, 45; direct consumption in Yaohan, 107
Asia, 111–12; global vs. regional Yeh Yueh-yu, 226 n.2
culture, 130–31; indigenization, 16– Y2K, 207
17, 110–12; Japanization, 31–32; Yoda Tomiko, 208
Japan’s Westernization, 63–65, 193; Yoshida Miwa, 118
localization, 85; McDonald’s, 27– Yoshihara Mai, 164
28; popularity in Japan, 96–97; Yoshimi Shunya, 41, 61
postwar dominance over Japan, 2–3, Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro, 53, 57–58, 196
6–11; power of cultural dominance, Yoshimoto Entertainment, 102
32–33; role in pan-Asian culture, Yoshino, Kosaku, 6, 55, 59
200; tv exports, 141; vs. intrare- Yoshioka Hiroshi, 74, 81–83, 132
gional cultural flow, 48

Index 275
Koichi Iwabuchi is Assistant Professor of Media and
Cultural Studies at International Christian University
in Tokyo. For many years he was a reporter and
producer for Nippon Television Network
Corporation (ntv).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Iwabuchi, Koichi.
Recentering globalization : popular culture and
Japanese transnationalism / Koichi Iwabuchi.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 0–8223–2985–9 (cloth : alk. paper) —
isbn 0–8223–2891–7 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Popular culture—Japan—History—20th century.
2. Japan—Civilization—1945- 3. Popular culture—
Asia—History—20th century. 4. Asia—Civilization—
Japanese influences. I. Title.
ds822.5 .i9 2002
952.04—dc21 2002006329