The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 6 | Issue 2 | Article ID 2660 | Feb 01, 2008

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Japanese Popular Culture in East and Southeast Asia: Time fora Regional Paradigm?

Nissim Otmazgin

Japanese Popular Culture in East andSoutheast Asia: Time for a RegionalParadigm?

Nissim Kadosh Otmazgin

Over the last two decades, Japanese popularculture products have been massively exported,marketed, and consumed throughout East andSoutheast Asia. A wide variety of theseproducts are prominently displayed in theregion’s big cities. Many Hong Kong fashionjournals, for example, can be found in eitherthe original Japanese or Cantonese versions.Japanese manga are routinely translated intothe local languages of South Korea, Thailand,Indonesia, Taiwan, and China, and theydominate East Asia’s comic book market. TheJapanese animated characters Hello Kitty,Ampan Man, and Poke’mon are ubiquitous,depicted on licensed and unlicensed toys andstationary items in the markets of every Asiancity. Japanese animation, usually dubbed, is themost popular in its field, particularly in SouthKorea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Thailand. AstroBoy, Sailor Moon, and Lupin are animatedcharacters seen in almost every shop that sellsanime in Hong Kong, Singapore and elsewhere.In China’s big cities, too, Japanese popularculture products fill local stores, opening doorsinto the country’s expanding cultural market,though in some markets they also face stiffcompetition from Korean and Chinese products.

Army of Kitty-chans, Hong Kong, April 2004

The success of Japanese popular culture in Eastand Southeast Asia has occasioned a flood ofacademic writing, notably in the fields ofcul tural s tudies , anthropology, andethnography. The majority of works havefocused on particular examples, emphasizingthe reaction of audiences to cultural exposurein relation to the global-local discourse (Allison2006; Craig 2000; Ishii 2001; Iwabuchi 2004;Martinez 1998; Mori 2004; Otake andHosokawa 1998; Treat 1996). These studiesconsist of specific case studies with a strongtendency to privi lege the text and itsrepresentational practices. No single study hasyet comprehensively assessed the newlycreated Japanese cultural markets in East andSoutheast Asia, nor framed these issues withina regional paradigm.

This article proposes a regional paradigm foranalyzing the dissemination of culturethroughout East and Southeast Asia, includingJapanese popular culture. Not only does it seek

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to capture the expansion of popular culture intoseveral national markets, but it provides atopology of East and Southeast Asia’s culturalflows by highlighting the region’s geopolitical,economic, and societal densit ies andspecificities.

Textual Analysis and Representations

In explaining the success of Japanese popularculture in East and Southeast Asia (but not inAmerica or Europe), some authors suggest that“cultural proximity” determines the trajectoryof cultural flows. They maintain that Japanesepopular culture embodies a certain “Asianfragrance,” which resonates with localconsumers. According to this view, culturalconfluence is geo-cultural and not simplytransnational. Writing about Japanese TVdramas in East and Southeast Asia, IwaoSumiko has introduced the concept of “sharedsensibilities” (1994: 74), Honda Shino the “EastAsian psyche” (1994: 76), and Igarashi Akio“cultural sensibility” (1997: 11). “Culturalproximity”, however, cannot explain why someJapanese popular culture products have alsobeen successful outside of this region (forexample, Japanese animation in the UnitedStates in recent years), or why Korean,Taiwanese, Chinese or other pop culturalproducts have fared well in certain markets butnot others. Certainly it cannot explain whyTaiwanese youth, for example, prefer for themost part to buy Japanese rather than Chineseproducts, or why Thai students listen toAmerican music, which is ostensibly not as“culturally” close.

Japanese magazines in Taipei, November 2006

On the other hand, others have argued thatJapanese popular culture products are“faceless” (see Allison 2000; Shiraishi 2000).That is, the appeal of Japanese popular culturederives from being non-national and thereforehighly transferable, to the extent that it is nolonger recognized as “Japanese.” In this way,Japanese popular culture is gradually beingindigenized and incorporated into the localpopular culture up to an unrecognizabledegree.

However, consumers in East and SoutheastAsia seem aware that many cultural productsoriginate in Japan. University studentrespondents to interpretive surveys with inHong Kong, Bangkok, and Seoul, readilyidentified as Japanese the range of animation,music, and comics, even when these weretranslated into local languages.[1] They alsodistinguished among Japanese popular cultureproducts, other imported products, and localimitations. Many of the respondents were ableto name a variety of local television dramas,animations, and songs that were based onJapanese originals. This suggests that Japanesepopular culture products are not completely“faceless” in the sense that they represent arecognizable line of products associated withJapan even as they become steeped in localcultures through translation. In other words,while these products do not embody Japanese

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traditional values or philosophies they arerecognized as “Japanese” at the very momentwhen they are incorporated into other culturalconfluences.

Japanese-style “cosplay” in Seoul 1, March 2005

Iwabuchi Koichi (2002; 2004) provides richevidence of the popularity of Japanesetelevision dramas in Taiwan, Hong Kong,Bangkok, South Korea, and mainland China.Arguing that “cultural proximity” cannotexplain the consumption of Japanese popularculture, he concludes that Japanese popularculture products represent “modern” ideas thatconsumers strategically choose.

In Recentering Globalization (2002), Iwabuchisituates the rise of Japanese cultural power inglobalization processes. More specifically, hesees the modernizing role mediated by Japan ascomplementary to the globalization process. InIwabuchi’s view, Japanese media companieshave exported the Japanese experience of

indigenized Western culture to Asia (20). In thisway, Asian people no longer consume “theWest”, but rather a Japanese-indigenized orhybridized product (105).

Iwabuchi’s edited volume Feeling AsianModernities (2004) is one of the mostsophisticated attempts to theorize the contentand flow of Japanese popular culture.Contributor Lisak Yuk-ming Leung analyzestwo popular Japanese dramas that debuted inHong Kong in 1992 (Love Generation) and 1997(Long Vacation). She finds tht the Japaneseganbaru message (“to strive and to strugglehard”) has traveled across Asia throughJapanese TV dramas that “embody ganbarumessages in a new guise” (91). Ganbarubehavior is depicted by the dramas’ urbanheroes, who “have been struggling in work andin relationships… encouraged by theircounterparts to strive on” (92). Viewers, fortheir part, have adopted the ganbaru messagein varying intensities across age groups(100-102).

In the same volume, Yu-fen Ko argues thatJapanese idol dramas play a role in Taiwan’s“latent ambivalence of ‘anxiety and desire’ formodernity” (108). In this context, Japanesedramas represent the “real life problems” thatTaiwanese confront (108). Lee Ming-tsung’sstudy, too, finds that “the cross-culturalpractices of imagining in Taiwan andexper i enc ing i n J apan f ac i l i t a t e atransformation of cultural orientation to andself-identification with the dominant other,Japan” (130). Siriyuvasak Ubonrat’s study ofBangkok and Dong-Hoo Lee’s study of SouthKorea similarly highlight the ways in whichJapanese popular culture products “projectmodernities.”

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Hamasaki Ayumi on an advertisement poster inShanghai. August 2004

These studies provide solid testimonies for theacceptance of Japanese popular culture, someeven suggesting that the act of culturalconsumption leads to strong identification withJapan. The acceptance of Japanese popularculture in East and Southeast Asia is especiallynoteworthy given Japan’s colonial past and theongoing disputes over Japanese historicalmemory (see, for example, Morris-Suzuki 2007;and Shibuichi 2005). Whatever the sufferingthat imperial Japan inflicted on its neighbors inthe decades leading up to the end of World WarII, locals eagerly consume and practiceJapanese popular culture. This suggests that,under certain circumstances, war memoriesand historical grievances may have at mostlimited impact on the acceptance of popularculture, particularly among youth separated bythe experience of colonialism and war by twogenerations.

South Korea, which experienced 35 years ofJapanese colonial rule, has long been sensitiveto the inflow of Japanese culture. The SouthKorean government banned the importation ofJapanese culture during most of the postwarperiod, until a four stage opening policy wasintroduced by President Kim Dae-jung in 1998.However, even before the removal of the banon imports, a variety of pirated Japanesepopular culture products were widelyconsumed, being readily available from streetvendors and shops. For example, approximately10 percent of South Korea’s music market inthe 1990s consisted of Japanese music.Karaoke bars also contributed to the popularityof Japanese music by offering a big repertoireof Japanese songs. Moreover, through antennasand satellite dishes, millions of South Koreansroutinely accessed television programs fromJapan.[2] The South Korean case indicates thateven in places which were previously occupiedand colonized by Japan, consumers are able todistinguish between the way they view historyor politics and the way they relate to popularculture.

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Anti-Japanese poster featuring Prime MinisterKoizumi Junichiro in imperial Army uniform, Seoul.

April 2005

Everything is Global

Globa l i za t ion theor i s t s descr ibe ahomogenizing world in which the evolution ofbusiness and cultural networks increasinglyshape peoples’ economic destiny, identity, andculture (for example Druker 1993; Hannertz1991; Huntington 1996; Kotckin 1992;Robertson 1991; Schiller 1976; Tomlinson1991; and Wallerstein 1991). While someequate globalization with Americanization, theAsian experience, notably the dissemination ofJapanese and other Asian cultural formsthroughout Asia and beyond, complicate thispicture.

Starbucks in Shanghai. August 2004

One weakness of the literature on Japanesepopular culture in East and Southeast Asia isits promulgation of a global-local paradigm.Most of these studies view the expansion ofJapanese culture overseas as part of a globalprocess and overlook the specificities of theacceptance, and a conspicuous impact ofJapanese popular culture within the cultural-geography of this region. Stated differently,they view the “local” simply as a receiver andindigenizer, while Japan is regarded as bothindigenizer and mediator to the “global.” Thistendency is a part of the wider phenomenon ofengaging in contextual analysis and labelingthe examined cultural practices as a part of auniversal global process (see, for example,Craig and King 2002; and Hall 1995).

Interestingly, even those who do recognize theconspicuous regional acceptance of Japaneseculture in East Asia, do so matter-of-factly.P r o m i n e n t s t u d i e s d e s c r i b i n g

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“Japanization/Asianization” (Otake andHosokawa 1998), “Pop Asianism” (Ching 1996),“Trans-Asian Cultural traffic” (Iwabuchi 2004),and “Pan East Asian popular Culture” (Chua2003) tend to see these phenomena astantamount to globalization in the East andSoutheast Asian region. Because they do notconsider the “region” as a viable unit ofanalysis, they fail to consider what kinds of roleintra-regional relations shape the circulationand consumption of cultural products.

Toward a Regional Paradigm

I argue that it is essential to view the“regional” not only as a process whichfacilitates cultural flows across nationalboundaries or as a manifestation of global-localrelations, but as an analytical unit containingparticular characteristics which differentiate itfrom other regions and localities caught up inglobalization. This “region”, as I see it, cutsacross the boundaries that separate thetraditionally defined fields of “East Asia” (i.e.,Northeast Asia) from “Southeast Asia”.Moreover, it is not merely a collection of nationstates as a whole but is a product of theeconomic, societal, and cultural inter-penetration among East and Southeast Asia’sbig cities and their consumer-oriented middleclass population.

Mao and Doraemon, Shanghai, August 2004

In East and Southeast Asia, regional economicinter-penetration over the last three decades(and not merely economic growth) haveincreased the salience of the region, whoseformation has been generated by “marketdynamism” and cross-border economicactivities. This process continues with anemphasis on the informal, negotiated, andinclusive approach in regional policy, as somescholars have observed (Castells 2000; Frankeland Miles 1993; and Katzenstein 2002).

Although embedded in different spatiallocations with different incomes, many leisure-time preferences and consumption prioritiesextend throughout the region. Today’s Chinese,Malaysian, and Indonesian urban middleclasses can aspire to the same cultural accessas their counterparts in Seoul, Singapore, andBangkok. Their socio-economic powerconstantly generates demand for importedconsumer goods and cultural products,invigorating the region’s consumerism andconverging its markets. [3]

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Japanese style cosplay in Seoul 2, March 2005

Regional Cultural Confluences

The cultural landscape of East and SoutheastAsia since the early 1990s is notable for theoverlapping confluences of popular cultures,particularly American, Japanese, Chinese, andKorean popu lar cu l tures . Ex i s t ingsimultaneously and in varying intensities, theycontinually shape and reshape cultural scenesand lifestyles (Otmazgin 2005).

Beat Takeshi in Bangkok. February 2005

C o n s i d e r t h e s e e x a m p l e s o f t h einterpenetration of cultures from music andtelevision. According to a preference surveyconducted in December 2002,[4] Chinese popmusic was the most popular in Chinese-speaking cities of the region. Over 93.0 percentof young Hong Kongers said they listen toChinese pop music (more than double the rateof those who said they listen to Japanesemusic). In Taipei, 83.3 percent listen to Chinesepop music, 25.2 percent in Singapore and 76.9percent in the three Chinese cities of Beijing,Shanghai and Guangzhou. American pop musicwas the most popular in Singapore (48.0percent), followed by Bangkok (25.0 percent)and Seoul (24.5 percent). However, Japanesepop music was more popular than American orKorean pop music in Hong Kong and in thethree major Chinese cities, respectively likedby 45.0 percent and 23.7 percent of thosesurveyed.

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Japanese Music CDs in Hong Kong, April 2004

In the same survey, Japanese television dramaswere equal in popularity to American televisiondramas in Bangkok, but more popular in HongKong, Singapore and in the three Chinesecities. In Bangkok, Japanese and Americantelevision dramas were the most popular,equally preferred by 10.5 percent. In HongKong, Japanese television dramas came second,watched by 22.5 percent, compared with 7.5who watched American television dramas, and64.5 percent who watched Chinese televisiondramas.

In animation, however, Japan is dominant asEast and Southeast Asia’s biggest supplier ofanimation (TV series, movies, characters),surpassing American, European or otherlocally-made animations by a wide margin. In a2004 survey of twenty-three animation shops inHong Kong, for example, Japanese animatedseries occupied between eighty and ninetypercent of all animated CDs, VCDs, and DVDsoffered, supplemented by only a few WaltDisney animated productions.[5] In SouthKorea, in 2004 over 50 percent of the 474hours of foreign animation broadcast on the 3major regular channels (KBS, MBC, and SBS)were Japanese.[6] On cable channels the shareof Japanese animation is even higher. OnTonibus, the highest rated cable channel, 93.5percent of the foreign animation broadcast in2004 was Japanese. On the other cable

channel, Aniwon, 90.2 percent of the foreignanimation broadcast in the same year wasJapanese.[7] In Thailand too, Japaneseanimated television programs are the mostpopular. Thailand’s Channel 9 has broadcast anaverage of 3.5 hours of Japanese animation ona weekly basis since 1981. UBC, Thailand’sbiggest cable channel, has broadcast anaverage of 2 hours of Japanese animation everyweek in the five years from 2001-05.[8]

Movies, Music, and Television

Regional collaborations between mediacompanies and promoters are having a strongimpact on the East and Southeast Asiancultural market. They serve as effective agentsfor the regional transfer of cul turalcommodities and cultural production know-how.

Pan-Asian movies are a conspicuous example ofthe dovetailing of Asian and Western motifs.They have gained great popularity in East andSoutheast Asia, and to a lesser degree in theAmerican market as well . Movies l ikeCrouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero JanDara, 2046, Initial D, and Musa were allproduced and marketed transnationally. Someare ambitious co-productions involving staffand actors from South Korea, China, HongKong, Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand.[9] Lowproduction costs in places such as China,Thailand, and Malaysia provide an incentive torelocate production. The existence of potentialconsumers in regional and global marketsencourages marketing strategies that targetthe widest range of audiences in East andSoutheast Asia and beyond. The resultingproducts are affecting the way both regionaland extra-regional audiences conceptualize“Asia.”

Regional collaborations are taking place inmusic and television as well, testing the watersfor the rise of an East and Southeast Asianpopular culture and creating new cultural

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genres. More than the broadcast media, musicand television production in East and SoutheastAsia seek to develop regional productions andto tap regional rather than global markets.Channel V is an important player. This Asianversion of MTV is popular across East Asia. Thechannel introduces local and international popand rock music to its wide cable televisionaudiences. Channel V’s music programs oftencategorize the featured music as “Asian music,”which includes the pop music of artists andbands from different East Asian countries. SonyMusic Entertainment is also working to createa pan-Asian musical genre. In 2004 it produceda two-volume pop music collection featuringJapanese, Hong Kong, Taiwanese, and SouthKorean artists. The success of the albummotivated the production of new volumes in2005 that also included Thai music.[10]

In transnational television broadcasting, RupertMurdoch’s Star TV is Asia’s biggest outlet,owning a wide variety of entertainment, news,and sports channels and creating a pool ofconsumers in 300 million homes ranging fromChina to India. Its strategy favors localizingcontent and broadcasting in Asian languages,especially Mandarin (Sinclair 1997).

Japanese music and television companies areimportant players. A few have been exploringmarkets in East Asia. Pony Canyon and AvexTrax, for example, two of the big six Japanesemusic companies, have moved from licensingagreements with local companies to openingtheir own branches. In the field of television,Amuse, Rojam, Fuji TV, and JET TV are notable.They engaged in various television broadcastsand productions in the 1990s, often based onJapanese formats, establishing ties with localcompanies and media organizations. TheseJapanese companies have not only marketedJapanese music and television programs, buthave been seen as examples and models bylocal cultural industries in East Asia.

These are only a few of the developments in the

regional cultural scene of East and SoutheastAsia in the last few decades. They have createda new reality in which a wide domain of Eastand Southeast Asian youth, particularly thetrend-setting urban middle classes, share avariety of cultural products and opportunities.In particular, millions of youth in Hong Kong,Seoul, Shanghai, and Jakarta covet the latestfashions from Tokyo, read Japanese comicbooks (translated or in the original), and watchJapanese animation series. However, they alsolisten to American pop music, watch Chinesedramas on television or DVD, and go withfriends to watch the latest Korean movie.

Concluding Remarks

Markets and communities in East andSoutheast Asia are converging as a result ofeconomic, social, and cultural forces.Throughout the cities of this region, especially,markets for popular culture and mechanismsfor cooperation are being constructed,processes that lay a solid discursive andconceptual frameworks for regional culturalconfluence.

Concurrently, companies, producers, andentrepreneurs have created what I callplatforms upon which different people fromdifferent urban communities in East andSoutheast Asia are able to access the samevariety of popular culture. This is the space inwhich joint cultural productions and initiativescan be realized.

Cities are the central nodes where culturalflows overlap with consumerism on a grandscale. East Asia’s megacities (Bangkok, Beijing,Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Jakarta,Seoul, Singapore, Taipei, Tokyo, Osaka, KualaLumpur, etc.) serve as matrices for culturalinnovation, expansion, and mixing; they arewhere the construction of intra-regional andextra-regional consciousness culminates. InEast and Southeast Asia, therefore, we shouldtalk about a multi-layered process that links

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and transforms metropolises, rather thanconfining our gaze to nation-state interactions.

The examination of popular culture flows in thislight is both more detailed and more accuratethan the discourse (and rhetoric) of global-localrelations, with its implicit or explicit emphasison universal homogenization often read asAmericanization. A regional paradigm whichtakes account of local particularities, includingt h e r e g i o n a l d e v e l o p m e n t s i n t h ecommodification and commercialization ofculture, will better comprehend the region’scultural flows and its global impact.

Nissim Kadosh Otmazgin (Ph.D. KyotoUniversity) is a postdoctoral fellow at the LuisFrieberg Center for East Asian Studies, theHebrew University of Jerusalem. He is apolitical scientist by training, working onJapan’s popular culture industries, Japan’scultural policy, and the regionalization processin East and Southeast Asia.

He is also the author of (2005) “CulturalCommodities and Regionalization in East Asia,”Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol. 27, No. 3;and (2008) “Contesting Soft Power: JapanesePopular Culture in East and Southeast Asia”,International Relations of the Asia Pacific, Vol.8, No. 1

This article is a revised and expanded versionof an essay that originally appeared in KyotoReview of Southeast Asia. Posted at JapanFocus on February 8, 2008.

Notes

[1] The surveys were conducted by the authorwith the help of local assistants, among 239undergraduate students in Hong Kong (duringJune 2004), Bangkok (February 2005), andSeoul (April 2005). The questionnaires included19 open ended questions and 2 multiple-choiceparts, inquiring about the students’ cultural

consumption patterns in general and Japaneseculture in particular, and about their attitudeand opinion regarding various aspects ofJapanese society and state. I am grateful to Dr.Ubonrat Siriyuvasak (ChulalongkornUnivers i ty ) and Dr . Sh in Hyun Joon(Sungkonghoe University) for their enormoushelp in conducting the surveys.

[2] Approximately 30 percent of South Korea’spirated market for music in the 1990s consistedof Japanese music. The South Korean piratedmusic market is estimated to occupy more than30 percent of the entire market in the country,which means that illegal versions of Japanesemusic alone reach as much as 10 percent(Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade andIndustry 2002). For more on the proliferation ofJapanese popular culture in South Koreadespite, and perhaps in part because, of theban see (Kim 2004: 162-202; Otake andHosokawa, 1998: 186-187; and Pack 2004).

[3] On East Asia’s middle classes, see Chua2000; Hattori et al. 2002.

[4] The survey was conducted by Hakuhodoamong 15-to-24 year olds, offering multiple-choice answers. See (Hakuhodo News 2003).Available from: (http://www.hakuhodo.co.jp).

[5] The survey was conducted by the author inrandomly chosen shops.

[6] According to the government quota, at least45 percent of animation broadcast on publicchannels must be local.

[7] Information given to the author in aninterview with Korean Broadcasting Institutepersonnel in Seoul, April, 2005.

[8] Information given to the author ininterviews with television station personnel,Bangkok, January- February 2005. According tothem, Walt Disney-made animation is availablein Thailand but in very small quantities.

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[9] See coverage of these movies in Newsweek,21 May 2001, 15 December 2004, and SpecialEdition, July- September 2001; and Time, 21January 2002.

[10] The Sony Music Entertainment regionaloffice in Hong Kong strategically encouragedits branches in East Asia to produceconstellation albums that include transnationalcollaboration of music artists. Interviews inBangkok and Seoul, February and April 2005.

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