Japanese popular culture and East Asian modernities

The unambiguous dominance of Western cultural, political, economic and military power has constructed a modern world-system covering the whole globe. Yet at the same time the experience of ‘the forced appropriation of modernity’ in the non-West has produced polymorphic vernacular modernities (Ang & Stratton 1996). The latter testifies to the ample incorporation of the Western mode of capitalist modernity into Asian contexts (Dirlik 1991), but it also sheds light on ‘familiarly different’ experience of urbanization, modernization and proliferation of middle-class consumer culture in East Asia (Ang & Stratton 1996). It is in this context that media flows among East Asian countries, particularly between Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea are gradually becoming active and constant more than ever, though Japanese popular culture at the moment apparently plays the central role in the flow.

Popular culture circulating in East Asia in most cases unavoidably embodies American origin. Nevertheless, preferred cultural products are not without East Asian flavour, as those are re-worked in Asian context by hybridizing various latest fads all over the world; they are inescapably global and (East) Asian at the same time. Non-western countries have tended to face the West to interpret their position and understand the distance from Modernity. The encounter has always been based upon the expectation of difference and time lag. However, now some non-Western ‘modern’ countries are facing each other to find neighbors experiencing and feeling similar things and temporality of East Asian vernacular modernities via America-dominated cultural globalization. If Japanese popular culture is well-received by Hong Kong, Taiwanese and South Korean media industries and consumers, it might be because it lucidly represents intertwined composition of global homogenization and heteregenization in East Asian context.

However, it should be stressed that increasing intra-Asian cultural flows newly highlight uneven power relations in the region. The careful analysis of intra-regional cultural flows will underline the newly articulated time-space configurations and asymmetrical cultural power relations tilted with Japan’s desire for Asia, which strongly reflect Japan’s imperial legacy in the region. While the Japanese popular cultural encounter with other Asian countries in the 1990s is more multiple, contradictory and ambivalent than a totalizing and cavalier Japanese Orientalist conception of ‘Asia’ would suggest (see Iwabuchi 1999b), Japan’s condescending conception of other Asian nations and cultures and the asymmetrical power relationship between Japan and (the rest of) Asia are still intact. Japan’s cultural nationalist project has been reconfigured within a transnationalist framework, which increasingly capitalizes on the regional cultural resonance in Asia.

Marketing strategies of Japanese music industries in Asian markets

In the remaining part of this article, I will briefly look at the advent of Japanese popular culture in East Asia through Japanese media industries’ strategy to enter Asian audiovisual markets and the popularization of Japanese TV dramas in East Asia in the 1990s. Although the export of Japanese TV programmes and popular music drastically increased in the 1990s, Japanese TV and music industries have overall not been as active as other Asian and Western cultural industries in exporting cultural products to Asian audiovisual markets in the early 1990s. There are several reasons for this such as the existence of a profitable and wealthy domestic market in Japan and the difficulty of making profits in Asian markets where TV programs are traded for low price. The reluctance of the Japanese TV industries to enter Asian markets was also due to the obstacle posed by the historical legacy of Japanese imperialism.

In the early to mid 1990s, Japanese media industries have instead attempted to enter booming Asian markets through a localization strategy. This strategy corresponds to that of ‘global localization’ which is commonly deployed by transnational corporations (Aksoy and Robins 1992). It is based on the idea shared by most global media industries that in order to penetrate culturally diverse Asian markets, distributing seemingly almighty American TV programs is not enough. They need to produce and distribute cultural products that are more sensitive to the diversity and tastes of local markets in Asia.

It is important to add here that the localization strategies of Japanese cultural industries in Asian markets is informed by their reflection on Japan’s own experience of indigenization of American popular cultural influence. Since World War II, Japanese popular culture has been deeply influenced by American media. But Japan quickly localized these influences by imitating and partly appropriating the original, rather than being dominated by American products and ‘colonized’ by America. From the inception of Japanese TV history in 1953, for example, Japanese TV programming relied enormously upon imports from Hollywood. However, the imbalance has drastically diminished since the mid-1960s with no quota policy. As early as 1980, Japan imported only 5% of all programmes and this trend has continued (Kawatake and Hara 1994). Japanese cultural industries are aware from this experience of quick indigenization of American popular cultural influence that other Asian countries will take the same path. Japanese media industries seem to believe that if there is anything about Japan which attracts Asian people, it would be the hyperactive indigenization of ‘the West’, leading to the creation of vernacular modernity.

Looking for Asian stars

The most active exploitation of localization has been forged by the music industry. In the early 1990s, the Japanese music industries aimed to seek out ‘indigenous’ pop stars who could be sold across pan-Asian markets with Japanese pop production know-how of cultural appropriation of American pop culture. It is thus believed that the strength of Japanese cultural industries vis-à-vis other Asian counterparts is their fifty years of experience and accumulated know-how of ‘American education’. As the director of Sony Music told me:

‘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. But the base [of the stunning style] is American popular culture.’

In the project of finding pan-Asian pop singers through cross-fertilization of a Japanese initiative, Japanese music industries deployed the same strategy as the one developed in the 1970s Japan. They held auditions in the booming East and Southeast Asian markets where there so far had been no established system of giving an opportunity for young people who dream of becoming a pop singer (for more details, see Iwabuchi 1999a).

The rise of economic power in East and Southeast Asia and the rapid growth of commercialized TV markets in the region has reminded Japanese music industries of the high times of the Japanese idol boom in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Japanese music industries assume the willingness of Asian audiences to be consumers, just as Japanese young people have been. That is to say, there is a certain degree of economic growth, which enables (particularly younger) people to consume cultural products such as cassette tapes, CDs, concert tickets and magazines. It is in this Japanese capitalist exploitation of ‘the new rich youth’ in Asia that featuring local pop stars for diverse local markets was supposed to work better than the direct export of Japanese musicians. These pop icons evoke common experiences and dreams in the locale, dreams of affluent, commodity-saturated life styles. Asian celebrities’ fashions, hair-styles, and attitudes, which subtly localize American influence are much more stimulating to Asian viewers than American original stars. It is much easier and more ‘realistic’ for them to identify themselves with Asian stars.

Japanese music industries do not try to offer, much less to impose, anything ‘authentically Japanese’ through the production of pop stars. Likewise, Asian pop stars (including Japanese) are not presenting an ‘authentic Asianness’, but various ‘Asiannesses’, something new and hybrid which intensely indigenize ‘Americanness’. Each singer from different locales appropriates Western culture in his/her own way to the extent that hierarchical relationships cannot be discerned between the original and its imitation, at least for Asian audiences. People are fascinated neither with ‘originality’ nor with ‘tradition’, but are actively constructing their own images and meanings of vernacular modernity at the receiving end (Appadurai 1996; Miller 1992).

However, I would suggest, Japanese localization in Asian markets is imbued with a condescending posture toward other Asian nations. A newly articulated ‘Asia’ embedded in the localizing strategies of the Japanese music industries illuminates an unambiguous presupposition that Japan’s successful indigenization of foreign (Western) cultural influence presents a developmental model for other Asian countries to follow (Iwabuchi 1998). Thus, ‘Asia’ is re-constructed by Japanese media industries, which are enchanted with the idea of 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, it is assumed, Japan does not simply share the latter with other Asian nations but is also qualified to guide them in how to develop local forms of vernacular consumer and popular culture.

East Asian modernities and Japanese TV dramas

However, Japanese ventures for cultivating pan-Asian pop idols have only been, at best, partially successful because of economic difficulties encountered by Japanese cultural industries. The despondency in the media industries also has much to do with some more general limitations of localization strategies that have come to light through actual operations in Asian markets. Japanese cultural industries seemed to believe that Japan can perform as cultural translators of ‘the West’ for ‘Asia’, because it is the most successfully Westernized non-Western country in the world. This confidence of Japanese cultural industries, however, is not only perceived as arrogance by local staff but also often deters them from appreciating different ways of negotiating Western cultural influences in other parts of Asia.

Another consideration to be borne in mind is that the strategy of localization has been forged mainly in a relatively immature market such as China, not in mature markets like Taiwan and Hong Kong. There is not much space for Japanese cultural industries to tell these countries how to indigenize the West, because they have already imitated and localized Japanese cultural production (Ching 1994).

However, it is in such ‘matured’ markets that Japanese TV programs and popular music are becoming more popular than ever. While the export of the Japanese idol system is still sporadic, the circulation of Japanese TV programs and popular music in East Asia has become widespread. Which is to say, the meaning of localization is shifting from the export of Japanese know-how to the local promotion of Japanese cultural products synchronizing with trends in the domestic Japanese market. This testifies to increasing affiliation and integration between Japanese and other East Asian cultural industries and markets, which have resulted in spotlighting the transnational appeal of Japanese popular culture.

Japanese TV dramas attract a much greater young (particularly female) audience in Taiwan than either locally produced, Hong Kong or Western/American dramas. In my research in Taiwan in 1996 and 1997, I found that high school and university students who watch Japanese dramas discuss the story with their friend. The most popular daily newspaper, The China Times started an interactive column on Japanese dramas in February 1996. Japanese dramas have become indispensable for everyday gossip of younger generation. There are many things that the audience wants to talk about in watching Japanese dramas. One of the main reasons why people watch Japanese dramas in Taiwan is that they feature good looking Japanese idols. Food, fashion, consumer goods and music are also popular topics.

However, Taiwanese audiences talk most eagerly about the story and the characters of the drama. Japanese dramas are diverse in terms of story lines, setting and topics but the dramas that become popular in Taiwan are stories featuring younger people’s loves and lives in an urban setting. According to my interview with undergraduate students in Taiwan, one of the attraction of Japanese TV dramas is its new style of portraying love, work and women’s position in society. These are all issues which young people are facing in urban areas in Taiwan, but which Taiwan TV dramas have never offered to audiences. It seems to be this void that makes Japanese dramas popular texts to be talked about in everyday life.

In my research in Taiwan, I often heard Taiwanese young viewers say that Japanese dramas represent favourable realism that cannot be gained from Western/American dramas as well as from Taiwan dramas. An early 20s told me that the life style and love affairs in an American drama such as Beverley Hills 90210 are something she enjoys watching, but she found Japanese love stories more realistic and easier to relate to. A 17-year-old high school student also told me that ‘Japanese dramas better reflect our reality. Yeah, Beverley Hills 90210 is too exciting (to be realistic). Boy always meets girl. But it is neither our reality nor dream’.

Many people also told me that this kind of Japanese drama’s ‘realism’ has much to do with cultural similarities between Taiwan and Japan. Japanese dramas are consciously watched as foreign but not in the same sense as American programs. Japanese culture is perceived as closer to Taiwan and the physical appearance and skin colour are quite similar. ‘Japan is not quite but much like us’, as two early 20s females said, ‘the distance we feel to Japan is comfortable, while Americans are complete strangers’; ‘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.’ They said that the ways of expressing love in Japanese dramas which are delicate and elegant are much more culturally acceptable than those of American dramas, and human relations between family and lovers also look more culturally proximate to Taiwan. This proximity allows Taiwan audiences to relate to Japanese dramas more easily.

Thus ‘Japan’ is apparently felt to be culturally proximate by the audience, which seems to explain, if partly, the popularity of Japanese TV dramas in Taiwan (cf. Straubhaar 1991; Sinclair et al 1996). Yet the perception of cultural proximity here should not be conceived in an essentialist manner. There might be some similar cultural values concerning family and individualism between Taiwan and Japan, but the attractiveness of such values is newly articulated in a particular programme under a specific historical context. For example, the popularity of Tokyo Love Story, a love story of a couple in their early 20s, which sparked off the popularity and recognition of the quality of Japanese dramas in Taiwan and Hong Kong in the early 1990s, has much to do with (female) audience’s identification with the story and the heroine, Akana Rika.

Rika is an unusually expressive and active Japanese woman. A famous phrase uttered to her boyfriend which characterizes Rika symbolically is ‘Kanchi, let’s have sex!’. Rika’s active and pure pursuit of love, and her straightforward expression of feelings are the object of admiration and emulation. Her forward-looking and independent attitude also represent a desirable image of ‘modern’ or ‘new age’ woman. Taiwanese viewers told me that Rika’s attitude to love in Tokyo Love Story is different both from that of the characters of American dramas like Beverley Hills 90210 which is too open and not single-minded and from that of Taiwan dramas which are very passive and submissive.

Taiwanese dramas often emphasize a traditional value, ‘fidelity’ of women (Chan 1996). Young audiences do not relate to it, but Rika’s active and ‘modern’ single-mindedness is favourably identified by them. Conversely, Rika may be too open to emulate, but her single-mindedness is different from American openness. It still represents ‘our’ (Asian) reality and is therefore something to which the audience in Taiwan can emotionally relate. What is at stake here is thus not fidelity or single-mindedness in general, but Rika’s single-mindedness represented in Tokyo Love Story. In other words, a cultural value—fidelity—is reconstructed in Tokyo Love Story, but it is a different kind of fidelity that has been articulated in the process of a Japanese reworking of cultural modernity.

Becoming culturally proximate

In non-Western countries, America has long been closely associated with images of being modern. Whenever American popular culture is consumed, people also enjoy a yearning for the American way of life. As Mike Fetherstone (1996, 8) argues regarding the symbolic power of MacDonald’s: ‘It is a product from a superior global centre, which has long represented itself as the centre. For those on the periphery it offers the possibility of the psychological benefits of identifying with the powerful.’ Indeed, I clearly remember that I ate Kentucky Fried Chicken in the late 70s in Tokyo, feeling that I was becoming an American. But such a stage is over. In Japan in 1995 I saw a 7-year boy express his amazement at seeing a Kentucky Fried Chicken shop in the United States on TV, ‘Wow there is a Kentucky in America as well’. ‘American dreams’ have been indigenized in some modernized non-Western countries (cf. Watson 1997).

To some audiences of Taiwan where modernity is no longer just dreams, images and yearnings of affluence, but reality, that is, the material conditions in which people live, Japanese popular culture offers what can be called an ‘operational realism’; American dreams are concretized into something ready for use. A manager of a Japanese cable channel explains this astutely.

‘When Taiwan was still a poor country, we had just a dream of a modern life style. 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 American dream but Japanese reality is a good object to emulate for this practical purpose.’

It should be noted here that even for those who delight in watching Japanese TV dramas, ‘Japan’ does not attain the status as an object of yearning that ‘America’ once did. Although the recent influx of Japanese popular culture in Taiwan is undoubtedly overdetermined by the legacy of Japanese colonial rule (see Iwabuchi 2001), the popularity of Japanese television dramas in Taiwan does not suggest that the relationship between Japan and Taiwan is straightforwardly conceived one of centre-periphery. It is not the pleasure of ‘identifying with the powerful’, but rather a sense of living in the same temporality, a sense of being equal that sustains Japanese cultural presence in Taiwan (cf. Fabian 1983). In Taiwan, as the gap in terms of material conditions narrows or even is disappearing, the reference of becoming also changes from abstract to practical. An early 20s female who has long been a fan of Japanese popular culture said that:

‘Taiwan used to follow Japan, always be a ‘Japan’ of ten years ago. But now we are living in the same age. There is no time lag between Taiwan and Japan. I think since this sense of living in the same age emerged three or four years ago, more people have become interested in things in Japan.’

Seen this way, cultural proximity should not be conceived in terms of a static attribute of ‘being’ but a dynamic process of ‘becoming’. The comfortable distance and cultural proximity between Japan and Taiwan seems to be based upon a sense that Taiwan and Japan live in the same time, thanks to the narrowing economic gap between the two countries and the simultaneous circulation of information and commodities in the globe. Cultural proximity in the consumption of media texts is thus being articulated and made conscious of under homogenizing forces of ‘modernization’ and ‘globalization’. An ever-narrowing gap between Japan and Taiwan in terms of material conditions, emerging urban consumerism with the large middle class, the changing role of women in the society, and the development of communication technologies and media industries. All of these elements make some Japanese dramas resonant with Taiwan audience’s present experience of being culturally modern in (East) Asia of the 1990s, which American popular culture could never have presented.

Unevenness embedded in intra-regional cultural flows in East Asia

In concluding this article, it is important to repeat that the analysis of intra-regional cultural flows and consumption highlights the newly articulated asymmetrical power relations in the region. While displacing the view of it as the articulation of Taiwanese yearning for Japan, the cultural immediacy which Taiwanese audiences feel in Japanese TV dramas does not necessarily lead to cultural dialogue on equal terms. The asymmetry is evident not just in terms of quantity of media import/export, but also in terms of the perception of temporality manifest in the consumption of media products of cultural neighbours. For Japanese consumers, popular culture from other Asian nations does not necessarily signify the same perception of cultural similarity and living in the synchronous temporality as for Taiwanese viewers of Japanese TV dramas. Japanese consumption of Asian popular music and culture displays a rather different time-space configuration. The ever-increasing intra-regional cultural flows within Asia and the narrowing economic gap between Japan and some Asian countries have activated a nostalgic longing for modernized/modernizing Asia, which strongly reflects Japan’s colonial legacy in the region (see Iwabuchi 1999b). Here, an uneven power relation is reproduced at the site of the intra-regional cultural consumption in East Asia.

Neither should we uncritically deal with the transnational regional flow of a highly commercialized materialistic consumer culture. As we saw, Japanese localization strategies attempt to incorporate the viewpoint of the dominated that have long learnt 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 1992). This dynamic is exactly what Japanese as well as other Asian cultural industries have tried to produce in Asian.

Yet many economically deprived people are still excluded from the shared experience of feeling vernacular modernities in the region. The active construction of meanings takes place under the system of global capitalism in which Japan has a major role. Youth’s freedom of negotiation at the receiving end of the global cultural flow operates only under the unambiguously asymmetrical relations (Sreberny-Mohammadi 1991). To be critically engaged with those issues, we should take intra-regional dynamics in East Asia seriously. This seems to me imperative in the studies of the globalization of culture which have been highly biased towards the ubiquity of western media and popular culture and have tended to neglect intra-regional interactions.

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Koichi Iwabuchi is assistant professor in Media and Cultural Studies at International Christian University, Tokyo. His book, tentatively titled, ‘Got to be transnational: Media Globalization and Japan's return to Asia’ will be published by Duke University Press in 2002. He is organizing an international workshop, ‘Feeling “Asian” Modernities: TV drama consumption in East and Southeast Asia’ which will be held in Tokyo in November 2001.