[ Interarea Sessions, Table of Contents ]
[ Panels by World Area Main Menu ]
[ View the Timetable of Panels ]
Globalization, Locality and Hybridity of Japanese Popular Culture in an Asian Context
Organizer: Shuk Ting, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Chair: Kinnia Yau, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Discussant: Lynne Nakano, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
The popularization of Japanese popular culture in Asia have attracted attentions of many scholars, and have generated research projects which focus on various aspects of Japanese popular culture, such as the cause of its fandom in Asia, its impact and its interactions with local cultures. This proposed panel aims to investigate some of these major issues, which include the reasons of popularization of Japanese popular culture in Asia, and whether they welcome these cultural products in their original form or in some other transformed images which are the result of their interactions with local cultures. This proposed panel consists of four papers, including a study of the image of the famous TV drama idol Kimura Takuya, a study of the development of Korean girls’ comic books influences by Japanese shoujo manga, a study of cosplay fandom in Singapore and a study of the cultural and political issues aroused by the popularity of Japanese popular culture in China, each addressing a particular topic related to the aforementioned issues. The aims of this panel is to bring together scholars carrying out research projects on Japanese popular culture from different places, and to establish a platform on which discussions on the impact of Japanese popular culture can be performed from the perspectives of globalization, locality and hybridity. This panel will evoke discussions and solicit opinions on related topics such as cultural globalization, interaction between local and foreign cultures, problem of cultural imperialism and the like.
Different Senses of Alienity: Kimura Takuya to Japan and Hong Kong
Shuk Ting, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Kimura Takuya is one of the most representative idols in contemporary Japan. He is regarded as a national hero as well as an icon of the Pan-Asian popular culture. His success can largely be attributed to his performance in TV dramas, in which he imposes a coherent image that is well accepted by the younger generation in Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Despite his membership in SMAP, a group created by the highly organized agent Johnny and Associates, the characters played by Kimura Takuya in TV dramas are care-free, rebellious or even anti-organizational. It can explain why Japanese youth consider him as their karisuma, since he dares to follow his own will. It is his individual mind set, which counters the Japanese groupism, makes him an alien as well as a hero for many Japanese audiences. In this paper, the stereotyped Kimura Takuya in TV dramas such as Hero, Beautiful Life and Good Luck will be explored, so as to see how he struggles between the old and the new social values, and gets victory in the end. The second part of this paper will focus on his science fictional image in 2046 (Wong Kar-wai, 2004), through which the different desires of Japanese and Hong Kong people towards Kimura Takuya are compared and contrasted.
Mimicking Japanese Shoujo Manga: The Formation of Korean Girls Comic Book Culture during 1970s-1990s
Kukhee Choo, University of Tokyo, Japan
This paper will present how Japanese shoujo manga have influenced the formation of current day Korean girls’ comic book artists and narratives from a postcolonial gender perspective. Since the late 1970s, Japanese shoujo manga have illegally entered into the Korean market, which later evolved into localized plagiarism during the 1980s as ghost artists redrew these manga under Korean artists’ names. Simultaneously, underground girls’ comic book organizations were formed with members who were heavily influenced by these Japanese-origin comic books. Many of the members later become leading girls’ comic book artists during the 1990s. This underground comic book scene, named Donginji, created a space for many burgeoning girls’ comic book artists to express and contest against the turbulent political milieu of Korea during the 1980s. Throughout the 1980s, the female voice in cultural production was limited and comic book production itself was considered ‘inadequate’ for females to participate in. This was partly due to the fact that the distribution system and accessibility to comic books mainly concentrated on the ‘vulgar’ rental comic book stores rather than wholesale book markets. The Korean Donginji artists openly reappropriated Japanese shoujo manga culture against the censorship that officially interfered with any form of Japanese cultural ‘miscegenation’; trying to establish a Korean feminine space by adopting Japanese culture, which was ironic and ambivalent. By examining the girls’ comic book culture in Korea from the late 1970s to the1990s, this paper will attempt to grasp the complex relationship of Japanese popular culture and the formation of Korean ‘girls’ identity as a postcolonial subject.
Japanese for a Day: Cosplay Fandom in Singapore
Elizabeth MacLachlan, National University of Singapore
Over the past decade, Japanese media culture such as anime, manga and J-pop have gained unprecedented numbers of fans within Asia and have helped to convert the image of a faltering Japan Inc. into a Mecca for trend-conscious Asian youths. This research contributes to an understanding of this phenomenon through an ethnographic study of cosplay fandom in Singapore. Cosplay – short for costume play – is the practice of dressing up as manga/anime characters and meeting in public spaces to take photographs, engage in role play, buy/sell fan art, and socialize. The practice is said to have originated in Japan in the early 1980s and was introduced to Singapore in the late 1990s. Today cosplay events in Singapore attract over 1000 participants with the vast majority between the ages of 15 and 24 and female. In this paper, we look the ways in which representations of “Japaneseness” are simultaneously scripted into and extracted out of cosplay performances. In particular, we focus on notion that while “good” cosplay requires cosplayers to become as Japanese as possible in the terms of the way they look, act, speak, eat and move, it also requires them to reinterpret characters’ appearance and behavior when the original characters are deemed too overtly sexual to conform with Singaporean “Asian Values.” What this play at cultural mimicry and critique implies for cosplayers as Singaporeans, as women, and fans of Japanese popular culture are central questions this paper will address.
Comic Book Diplomacy? Japan, China and Pop Culture Politics
Yoshiko Nakano, University of Hong Kong
Pop culture plays an increasingly greater role in the Asian political landscape. Japanese TV programs such as animation and superheroes shows have been nothing but mainstream since the early 1970s in Hong Kong and since 1980 in China, but they had played only peripheral roles in public diplomacy. However, in an unprecedented speech on the role of pop culture in Japanese cultural diplomacy in April 2006, Foreign Minister Taro Aso proposed to build a solid partnership between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the practitioners of Japanese pop culture to “market” Japanese animation, drama, pop music, and fashion in overseas. The Japanese Foreign Ministry, or at least a part of the Ministry is trying to make the best of Japan’s pop culture resources to enhance Japan’s image in China in the aftermath of the anti-Japanese protests in 2005. In the meantime, the Chinese Government is determined to raise Chinese children with Chinese animation rather than with the popular Japanese animation. The Communist party sees animation as a propaganda medium with which to tell Chinese stories showing Chinese heritage and to teach values such as patriotism and socialism. In April 2004, the Chinese government issued a directive to intensify efforts to produce more domestic animation. One year later, the overall number of hours of approved Chinese domestic animation nearly doubled. Animation is no longer just entertainment for children, but it is increasingly used as a tool to grasp the hearts of young people, and to build national identity.