Organizer: Alwyn Paula Spies, Independent, Canada

Chair and Discussant: Jacqueline Berndt, Yokohama National University, Japan

Much has changed since 1995 when Morley & Robins first coined the term "techno-orientalism" and 1996 when Ueno applied the term to an analysis of "Japanimation". Not only has the economic threat of "Japan Inc." been eclipsed by China, the term "Japanimation" seems quaint in an era where the Japanese word, "anime," has become de rigueur. Furthermore, since non-Japanese audiences now have access to and knowledge of anime as a medium with a range of genres, of which the cyberpunk is only one, current readings of Ueno are complicated as his conclusions are based on a discursive association between Japan and the future borrowed from Morley & Robins’ economic argument but applied to examples of the sci-fi dystopias in Scott’s film Blade Runner and Oshii’s anime, Ghost in the Shell. Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki Hayao’s animated films tend to depict the future in vaguely European settings or to show an idealized Japanese past and thus are a representative example of Japanese animation that is popular both inside and outside Japan yet does not fit well into the techno-orientalism model. Building on concepts of "spaces of identity" introduced through analyses of current works by Miyazaki, the panelists’ papers will lead to a central discussion about the applicability of Morley, Robins and Ueno’s theoretical constructs in 2006. The goal of this discussion is to use the uneasy fit between Miyazaki’s works and techno-orientalism to question current directions of anime research – both inside and outside Japan – and inter/national concepts of Japaneseness.

My paper discusses the recent anime works of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli offering a transgressive space for identity formation. This space is taken as a complication of the categorizations "Orient" and "Occident", stereotyped by media representations such as Disney’s Aladdin and Mulan. I argue that animation offers an imaginary space where viewers can ‘safely’ experience a sense of "Other-ness" in homes or theaters. In a global age where Japan is continuously interacting with many different others, Miyazaki’s animated representations of "Otherness" significantly differ from other futuristic anime or from Disney, as they do not exclude or caricaturize. Morley and Robins’ concept of "techno-Orientalism," a Western view of the Japanese as an emotionless "Other," has been discussed in studies of films such as Blade Runner. Like Said’s Orientalism, techno-Orientalism is a defense mechanism for the Occidental "Self," allowing the projection of desires and fears onto an enigmatic "Orient" in order to secure its identity. Anime is often designated by techno-Orientalists as an indication of a robot-like "Orient," in turn associated with Japanese identity and ethnicity. In this view, anime consolidates the Occident/Orient binary through its production and representations of the "Japanoid" (Ueno 2000). My analysis of Miyazaki’s works will also seek to problematize "techno-Orientalist" theories of anime, by showing how his works lay the foundations for the creation of contentious, ambiguous and hybridized potential identities, as opposed to simplistic and essentialized analyses of Occidental or Oriental representations of Otherness.

Timothy Iles, University of Victoria, Canada

Animated film in general is far more obviously the product of the human mind than is live-action cinema—every aspect of an animated film, even representations of natural phenomena, are created, manipulated, and plotted to function within a narrative framework. As such, animation—more so than live-action film, even works of fantasy—is extremely well suited to the presentation of ideal spaces highly conducive to the nourishment of the human imagination. The Japanese animated film industry understands this point very well, and as such, it is a key component of anime’s success. More importantly, the ideal spaces it creates have tremendous potential to support the nurturing of ideal human identities, however tenuous or naive these may seem in comparison with the ‘real’ world upon which they are modelled. This paper will explore ways in which anime is able to support the imagining of these ideal identities to offer a positive, alternative visioning of the human condition, drawing specifically (but not exclusively) on the works of Studio Ghibli, Japan’s most successful animation company. It will situate these works against a theoretical resistance to idealism—utilising the stances of Susan Napier, David Morley, Ueno Toshiya, and the techno-orientalist relation between economic conditions and cultural exportation as indices of a critical misappreciation of anime’s capacity to encourage an active questioning of the postmodern pessimist imperative, even as it problematises the expanding role of technology in daily life.

Alwyn Paula Spies, Independent, Canada

In a perfect example of post-modern identity politics, the once negative term "techno-orientalism" has become connected to a positive assertion of Japanese uniqueness via the increasing global popularity of Japanese anime as well as a celebration of (pan?)Asian values and aesthetics in contemporary Asian art. While at first glance, the concept of techno-orientalism seems inapplicable to Miyazaki Hayao’s fantastic adventurous romances, through a re-visitation of Morley & Robins and Ueno’s original configurations of the term, this paper argues that techno-orientalism – as a mapping of international power relations and global cultural flow – can show new interpretations of the function of the shôjo protagonists in Miyazaki’s animated films. Contrasting Susan Napier’s valorization of the emancipatory potential of the strong, independent, "masculinized" female protagonists in Miyazaki’s animated films with Cynthia Enloe’s warning that the symbolic use of women as a measure, bearers of, or vehicles for asserting a cultural identity does not necessarily result in a questioning of male privilege within that culture, connections are then drawn between Miyazaki’s iconography of shôjo-ness and his construction of Japaneseness.