iafor
The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies
Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

	  

IAFOR Publications
Executive Editor:
Joseph Haldane
The International Academic ForumThe IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

EditorSeiko Yasumoto, University of Sydney, Australia
Associate Editor
Jason Bainbridge, Swinburne University, Australia
Advisory Editors
Michael Curtin, University of California, Santa Barbara, United States
Terry Flew, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Michael Keane, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Editorial Board
Robert Hyland, BISC, Queens University Canada, United Kingdom
Dong Hoo Lee, Incheon University, Korea
Ian D. McArthur, The University of Sydney, Australia
Paul Mountfort, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
Jin Nakamura, Tokyo University, Japan
Tetsuya Suzuki, Meiji University, Japan
Yoko Sasagawa, Kobe Shinwa Womens University, JapanFang Chih Irene Yang, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan

Published by the International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan
Executive Editor, IAFOR Publications: Joseph Haldane
Editorial Assistance: Lindsay Lafreniere
IAFOR Publications, Sakae 1-16-26-201, Naka-ward, Aichi, Japan 460-0008
The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies
Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014
IAFOR Publications © Copyright 2014
ISSN: 2187-6037
Online: http://iafor.org/iafor/publications/iafor-journals/iafor-journal-of-asian-studies/
Cover image by: Norio NAKAYAMA/Flickr
https://www.flickr.com/photos/norio-nakayama/11153303693

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies
Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014
Edited by Seiko Yasumoto and Jason Bainbridge	  Table of Contents	  Notes on Contributors
	
  
	
  
Introduction
Jason Bainbridge, Associate Editor
	
  
	
  
Japan’s “Abenomics” Media Coverage:
A Comparison between Print and Social Media
Barry Natusch
Beryl Hawkins
	
  
	
  
Confucius Institutes and the Network
Communication Approach to Public Diplomacy
Terry Flew
Falk Hartig
	
  
	
  
Global Politics and a Cinema of Localism:
Contemporary Taiwanese Film
Robert Hyland
	
  
	
  
“Gotta Catch ‘Em All!”
Pokémon, Cultural Practice and Object Networks
Jason Bainbridge
	
  
	
  
Asian Identity: Regional Integration and Collective Memoryof the Pacific War in Contemporary Japanese Society
Maciej Pletnia
	
  
	
  
Popular Culture: Islands of Fandom in East Asia
Seiko Yasumoto
Submission Guidelines for the
IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies
	
  
	
  

1
5

7

27

45

63

79

91

107

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Notes on Contributors
Jason Bainbridge
Correspondence: jbainbridge@swin.edu.au	
  Professor Jason Bainbridge is Chair of Media and Communication at Swinburne
University of Technology and Associate Editor of the IAFOR Journal of AsianStudies. He is the author of over 60 articles, book chapters and papers exploring therelationships between media studies, journalism, Law, the city and popular culture;
media representation; cultural flows in the Asia Pacific; the idea of popular culture asvernacular theory; superheroes and comic book culture; and the role of merchandisingparatexts in media convergence, particularly around the development of transmedia
narratives. Jason is a regular media commentator for ABC Radio, Television and
Online. He is the co-author of Media and Journalism: New Approaches to Theory andPractice (with N Goc and L Tynan), OUP, 2008.
Terry Flew
Correspondence: t.flew@qut.edu.au
Terry Flew is Professor of Media and Communications in the Creative Industries
Faculty at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). His books include
Global Creative Industries (Polity, 2013); The Creative Industries, Culture and Policy(Sage, 2012); Key Concepts in Creative Industries (Sage, 2012); Understanding
Global Media (Palgrave, 2007); and New Media: An Introduction (Oxford, 2008). He
is a Member of the Executive Board of the International Communications Association,
and was President of the Australian and New Zealand Communications Associationfrom 2009-2010. He is a member of the Australian Research Council (ARC) College
of Experts for Humanities and Creative Arts, and was a member of the ARC Research
Evaluation Committee (REC) for the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA)
evaluation round in 2012. In 2011-12, he was seconded from QUT to become aCommissioner with the Australian Law Reform Commission, chairing the National
Classification Scheme Review.
Falk Hartig
Correspondence: Hartig@em.uni-frankfurt.de
Dr. Falk Hartig is a post-doctoral researcher at the Frankfurt Inter-Centre-Programmeon new African-Asian Interactions (AFRASO) at Frankfurt University, Germany, anda Contributing Scholar at the University of Southern California Centre on Public
Diplomacy (CPD). His main research interests include China’s public and cultural
diplomacy, China’s global image and the internationalization of Chinese media. His
work has been published in The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Communication,
Politics & Culture, and the Journal of Chinese Political Science. He is currently
working on a book on Chinese Public Diplomacy: The Rise of Confucius Institutes, tobe published by Routledge in early 2015.

1

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Beryl Hawkins
Correspondence: berylh@inter.net
Beryl Hawkins is a former radio journalist, talk show host, professional voiceover
artist/narrator and producer who worked in news and talk show entertainment for
more than five years at a leading news radio station in Washington D.C. As a media
strategist in New York City, she has developed a number of national media campaigns
throughout her public relations career, working with national leaders and cultural andadvocacy groups. She also teaches Broadcast Voice Training and other journalism
courses at Temple University Japan in Tokyo.
Robert Hyland
Correspondence: r_hyland@bisc.queensu.ac.uk
Dr. Robert Hyland teaches cinema studies at the Bader International Study Centre,
Queens University, (Canada) where he specializes in Asian cinema. Prior to hiscurrent post, he completed his PhD in film studies at the University of Kent inEngland, and has taught cinema studies at universities in Taiwan, Japan, Canada andthe UK. Hyland has written about both Japanese and Taiwanese cinema, and has
published for the journal Asian Cinema; the anthology Horror to the Extreme; and has
work forthcoming in the Journal of East Asian Popular Culture. He is a reviewer forthe journal Asian Cinema and in 2013 organized the Post Olympics Chinese Cinema
Studies Symposium held at Herstmonceux Castle. He is currently under way editing afuture special edition of the IAFOR journal on Chinese cinema.
Barry Natusch
Correspondence: bnatusch@yahoo.com
Barry Natusch is a professor at College of Economics, Nihon University in Tokyo
who specializes in international relations, economics and sociolinguistics. He hastaught linguistics at universities but now teaches undergraduate and graduate seminars
in management theory, language learning theory, technology enhanced language
learning and communication theory. He is active in filmmaking and in the field of
data representation using visual media.
Maciej Pletnia
Correspondence: pletnia@gmail.com
Maciej Pletnia is a PhD student at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland.
From 2012 to April 2014 he was a research student at Tokyo University, and in 2009
he conducted research at Tokyo Gakugei University. His main research interests
include collective memory of the Pacific War in contemporary Japan, Japanesenationalism, and cultural and social factors in international relation in the Far East
Asia. His most recent works includes: Resurgence of memory – Abe Shinzō and his
approach towards Japan’s troubled past; and Collective Memory as a Source ofInternational Conflicts: Controversies Surrounding Yasukuni Shrine.

2The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Seiko Yasumoto
Correspondence: seiko.yasumoto@sydney.edu.au
Dr. Seiko Yasumoto teaches East Asian media and popular culture at the University
of Sydney. Her primary research includes Japanese government media policy andbroadcasting media within the domain of popular culture. The scope includes
transmission of content, textual analysis, copyright, media industries, adaptation
theory, youth culture, audience analysis and trans-national media cultural flows inJapan and East Asia. She was co-editor of the scholarly journal Ilha Do Desterro
2006 and guest editor of The Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia special
edition on Global Media 2010 and on a number of editorial boards. She is currently
the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Asian Studies which is affiliated with The
International Academic Forum (IAFOR). She was the Japan and North, East Asia
regional representative of the Asian Studies of Association of Australia (2009-2012).

3

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

4

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Introduction
Jason Bainbridge, Associate Editor
Hello and welcome to the first issue of the IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies.
Our aim is for this to be a progressive journal that takes a holistic approach to Asianstudies. An interdisciplinary journal that brings together cutting-edge scholarshipfrom new voices, the best papers from IAFOR's associated conferences and pieces
commissioned from leaders in the field.
Our remit is to analyse, interrogate and navigate what is increasingly being referred toas the Asian Century. To explore the social, economic, political and cultural trends
emerging through the increasing connectivity of cultures in Asia. To unpack thenotions of cultural citizenship such a convergence creates. And to embrace theregional empathy and conviviality of harmony and hybridism produced along the way.
As such, the journal will present views from across a broad range of areas such as
cultural mobility, cultural arbitration and understanding, citizenship beyond borders,migration and identity (national, cultural and diasporic), belonging and sharing, media
trade, national branding, ‘soft-power competition’ and popular culture.
Together with our Editor Dr Seiko Yasumoto, Associate Editor Professor Jason
Bainbridge, our Advisory Editors Professor Michael Curtin, Professor Terry Flew andProfessor Michael Keane and our extended editorial board we want to give a voice toall of the scholars working across Asian studies.
This first issue provides a taste of the diverse range of topics we intend to cover. From
Hawkins and Natusch's quantitative content analysis of Abenomics, to Flew andHartig's exploration of China's Confucius Institutes initiative through a network
perspective; from Hyland's examination of Taiwan's contested political identity as
represented in contemporary Taiwanese cinema, to Pletnia's interrogation of thetensions in intraregional integration and collective memory of the Pacific War; frommy own study of Japan's Pokemon franchise as object network and cultural practice toYasumoto’s evaluation of the media flows around pan-Asian exports of Japanese
television drama, we truly cover the full spectrum of Asian culture - be it popular,
news, institutional, historical, political or regional.
Subsequent issues will continue this mix, with papers sourced from the Asian
Conference on Cultural Studies and the Asian Conference on Asian Studies, open
calls and special issues dedicated to specific areas, like the upcoming special edition
on current trends in Chinese Cinema following on from the Post Olympics Chinese
Cinema Symposium held at the Bader International Study Centre last December.
We welcome you to submit your work for peer review and hope that you find thepapers in this issue as challenging, insightful and thought-provoking as we did whenputting them together.
Best,
Jason

5

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Professor Jason Bainbridge
Associate Editor
Chair of Media and Communication
Swinburne University of Technology
Victoria, Australia

6

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Japan’s “Abenomics” Media Coverage:
A Comparison between Print and Social Media
Barry Natusch, Nihon University, Japan
Beryl Hawkins, Temple University Japan
Abstract
Mass media and social media shape public perceptions, and in turn, this brings about
an increasing level of public awareness and citizen participation in the flow of news
and information. The impact of Japan’s recent economic policy shift, Abenomics, set
off an avalanche of national and international news stories throughout 2013 in bothprint and social media.
A quantitative content analysis of the print and social media coverage of the
Abenomics news story is explored using the comparative approaches of Galtung andRuge (1965). Print publication data from 12 countries were analyzed for content andclassified into Positive, Neutral and Negative categories. Comments and discussion
were drawn from news aggregators and blogs then classified into a taxonomy partiallyderived from Warner (2010), Churches (2009), Jin (2012) and Cardon and Prieur(2007).
The conceptual design guiding this research focuses on the interplay between
previously separated channels of news communication (print and social media),
resulting in a technological convergence. This integration creates a new dialogic
model of news dissemination.
While the parameters of this evolving dialogic model of news dissemination have yet
to be rigorously defined, it suggests a new paradigm for public awareness andunderstanding of complex issues through the news media.
Keywords: Abe, Abenomics, Japanese economy, content analysis, social media, news
reporting7

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

From	
  Reaganomics	
  to	
  Japan’s	
  Abenomics	
  Today social media users play an increasing role in the news dissemination process.
Traditionally, however, news only flowed in one direction. Another way to describe
the one-way flow of news information could be called a monologic model of news
dissemination, similar to what James Carey describes as a transmission model orsending messages to receivers through a contact (Carey, 1976:15). The reporting ofnews events is filtered to audiences through gatekeepers in news organizations,typically handled by reporters, news editors and other members of the news gathering
staff. Only a rudimentary feedback system has ever been in place for audiences tocontribute their opinions. This traditionally took the form of letters to the editor, callin guests during talk shows as well as letters or phone calls appealing directly tomedia organizations.
A marked departure from this monologic information flow has recently emerged and
we are now witnessing the increasing role of social media in shaping public
perceptions. Increasingly, the Internet offers an entirely different role for media
audiences, which we are describing as an emerging dialogic model of news
dissemination (see Figure 5). Some commentators agree that this new form of citizen
empowerment is largely attributable to Web 2.0, which Lily Canter describes as
opening the gates “to journalism for online audiences, which increasingly participate
in the production, dissemination and response processes of news” (Canter, 2012:604).
Newer media technologies, particularly mobile digital technology, are adding anotherdimension to citizens’ level of participation. The ability to participate instantaneously,in the moment, is the strongest feature of this new technology, thus allowing an evenmore expansive way for citizens to engage in this process. This dialogic model ofnews dissemination diverges from the monologic model after the news event is picked
up by journalists, bloggers and photographers. In the second phase, mainstream media
outlets are continuing to disseminate their stories, but at the same time, aggregators(alternative online news websites which gather stories from a variety of sources) andsocial media networks are actively engaged in the process. The news dissemination
loop returns to the second phase as more social media users and bloggers generate
their own content and feed in more comments. The proliferation of newer stories andcomments in turn affects the ongoing dissemination of the story and at the same timeit breathes “new life” into an existing story, hence the story continues as part of the
public debate for a much longer period of time than stories have in the past.
A further examination of this emerging dialogic modelof news dissemination can best be understood byapplying it to a single story. This converging
relationship between print and social media is examinedusing a single Asian story as reported in theinternational press and social media. The specific focusof this study was the international and domestic media
coverage of Japan’s “Abenomics” story in print andsocial media as an illustration of this dialogic model.

8The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Reaganomics
The term “Abenomics” originally came from U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s
economic policy in the 1980’s, which was nicknamed by the media as“Reaganomics”. Reaganomics led to a serious shift in U.S. economic policy.
Corporations applauded the policy’s objectives of increasing military spending,deregulating the domestic market and reducing income and capital gains taxes. In
contrast, many average citizens deplored the policy’s deep cuts in government social
spending (Niskanen, 1993). It was a period of intense strife between the pro- andanti-Reaganomics factions. The mainstream media covered the public debate byparading out a host of financial and political experts to support the pro-Reaganomics
faction, but at the same time they covered the ongoing mass demonstrations, town hallmeetings and other social protest events occurring on the local, statewide and national
level sponsored by the anti-Reaganomics faction. In the midst of this fray, radio andtelevision talk shows reached an unprecedented level of popularity as the newest
citizen participatory forum. Both factions could freely air their sentiments, sometimes
resulting in blustering, fiery debates. These talk shows can be considered as aprecursor to the social media phenomenon that we are witnessing today because these
programs also allowed citizens to actively engage in the “Reaganomics” debate.
Abenomics
About 30 years later Reaganomics has resurfaced again in the form of Abenomics inJapan. Stirring up as much controversy and public debate as its U.S. predecessor,
Abenomics has also become one of the most prominent economic stories in the news.
Any complex economic policy requires a simplistic explanation to ensure the generalpublic will grasp the basic meaning. In the case of Reaganomics, the policy was
popularly known as “trickle-down economics”.
Abenomics is typically summarized as being a ‘three arrows” policy, taking its namefrom a traditional Chinese story which tells of a man at the end of his life who wastrying to teach his three sons a lesson about working together. He asks each of themto take an arrow, and snap it, which they all do. He then tells them to take three
arrows and try to snap them. They cannot. The moral of the story is that while one
arrow can easily be broken, three cannot.
The three arrows of Abenomics are flexible fiscal policy, aggressive monetary policy
and growth strategy. The economics is actually more complicated than this but thethree arrows policy provided a simple summary of the Liberal Democratic Party’s
economic policy through 2013.

9

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Figure 1: The Three Arrows of Abenomics
Rationale for Abenomics Story
The reason for choosing the Abenomics story as a case study was predicated on thefact that in Japan certainly, and to some extent beyond Japan, it was a big story
throughout 2013, as established through applying the Galtung and Ruge (1965)
analysis. Galtung and Ruge (1965) devised a list describing what they believed weresignificant contributing factors that can determine why a news story is selected. Theirtheory argues that the more an event matches these criteria, the more likely it is to bereported on in a newspaper. Criteria include ones associated with Impact (Threshold,Frequency, Negativity, Unexpectedness, Unambiguity), Audience Identification(Personalization, Meaningfulness, Reference to Eliteness, Consonance and Continuity
with Stories) and Pragmatics of Media Coverage. The Abenomics story scored highlyon all these criteria, and was thus chosen as a story which was likely to have staying
power among media audiences in both print and social media.

Figure 2: Twelve Characteristics of the Abenomics News Story according to Galtung
and Ruge (1965)

10

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Methodology
Print Media
Following the general methodological approaches to qualitative analysis of Trew
(1979), Krippendorff (1980), Schlesinger (1987) and Jensen (2002), and more
specifically the approach of Tang (2012), who studied leading Chinese newspapers
through a content analysis, the present study followed a content analysis approach ofprint media and social media using online databases accessed using LexisNexis.
Print data (stories on Abenomics) were taken from mainstream print mass mediausing LexisNexis specifying the following terms as search words: Abe, Abenomics,
Japan, economy, Japan, economy, yen, deflation, inflation.
Table 1 lists the countries and numbers of news sources which were captured in the
search. To establish an even playing field for analysis, and to avoid problems relating
to translation between languages, only articles published in English were used.

Japan
China
Singapore
Thailand
Korea
Malaysia
U.K.
U.S. /Canada
Aus./N.Z.
Total#
ArticlesQuarter 1
Jan 1 – Mar
31 2013
30
0
6
2
0
1
10
3
2
of 54

Quarter 2
Apr 1 – Jun 30
2013
13
13
19
3
3
0
30
20
16

Quarter 3
Jul 1 – Sep 30
2013
7
6
10
4
1
1
14
6
3

Total

117

52

222

50
19
35
9
4
2
54
28
21

Table 1: Number of Articles by Country
Table 2 lists the publications and countries from where articles were drawn as foundby LEXISNEXIS. News articles about Abenomics were collected from theinternational press from January 1 to September 30, 2013. These were then classified
and rating procedures were established. Two independent raters read the Abenomics
news items, then classified each article as “Positive”, “Neutral”, or “Negative”. Interrater reliability was found to be a high 0.9 correlation rate. Results of these ratings are
summarized by country in Tables 3-11.

11

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Asia
The Daily Yomiuri (Japan)
The Japan Times Weekly
The Nikkei Weekly (Japan)
Global Times (China)
China Daily
China Economic Review
South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
The Straits Times (Singapore)
The Business Times Singapore
The Nation (Thailand)
Korea Times
New Straits Times (Malaysia)

U.K./U.S. Canada/Aus./N.Z.
The Daily Telegraph (U.K.)
Investment Adviser (U.K.)
The Independent (U.K.)
The Times ((U.K.)
The Irish Times
The Observer (U.K.)
The Herald (Glasgow)
City A.M. (U.K.)
The Banker (U.K.)
telegraph.co.uk
thetimes.co.uk
The Guardian (U.K.)
The New York Times
The International Herald Tribune
Business Monitor Online (U.S.)
Automotive News Print Version (U.S.)
Institutional Investor (America's Edition)
The Globe and Mail (Canada)
The Australian
Australian Financial Review
The Advertiser (Australia)
Weekend Australian

Table 2: Names of Publications
Social MediaSocial media data (posts and comments) were taken from news aggregators and blogs.
For analyzing qualitative data the ideas of Fowler (1985) and Fielding and Lee (1991)
were followed, while the classification of blog comments such as those proposed by
Cardon (2007), Warner (2010) and Wei (2012) were considered. Finally, however, atailor-made genre-based taxonomy to classify comments about Abenomics-related
posts and comments was designed and used in Tables 11 to 14.
Discussion of Print Media Results
The news items were found to be generally classifiable as supportive or critical.
Examples of Positive news items were “Abe's second honeymoon – (New Straits
Times Malaysia, February 1, 2013), or “Japan's urban rich loving Abenomics” (The
Nikkei Weekly, Japan, April 29, 2013), or “'Abenomics' is big in Japan as economy
takes upturn” (The Daily Telegraph, London, July 8, 2013).
Examples of Negative news items were “Abenomics isn't trickling down yet” (TheJapan Times, March 5, 2013), “The dangers of Abenomics” (South China Morning
Post, April 8, 2013), “Fate of Japan's PM hinges on economy: Failure to deliver
growth may rapidly erode support” (The Straits Times, Singapore, July 22, 2013).

12

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

The quantitative data (number of articles summarized in percentages) from print
media is graphed in Tables 3-10, and qualitative data, comments in blogs andaggregators, presented in Tables 12-14.
In the case of Japan (Table 3), positive articles dominated in Quarter 1 but by Quarter3, these were decreasing. Negative articles were much fewer in Quarter 1 but by
Quarter 3, these had increased. In the aftermath of the election success of the Liberal
Democratic Party on December 16, 2012, a mood of optimism appeared in the news
stories together with the hope that the economy might recover with theimplementation of the Abenomics policies. In the second quarter a major correction to
the stock market occurred which appears to have coincided with some skepticism in
the news reportage after that.

Table 3: Abenomics Japanese Positive and Negative Reportage in English
Quarter 1 to 3, 2013
In contrast to the reportage within Japan, internationally (Table 4), more of a balanceof positive to negative articles can be observed from Quarter 1 to Quarter 3. It could
be argued that international reporting on the Japanese economy may not be as driven
by political agendas as inside Japan. However, this trend of balanced reporting was
not universal, as can be understood through a survey of individual countries.
Excluding Japan, the selection of articles from the international press is taken fromfour major geographical areas: United Kingdom (Great Britain, Ireland and Scotland),North America (United States and Canada), Australasia (Australia and New Zealand),and Asia (Singapore, Thailand, China and Hong Kong, South Korea and Malaysia).

13

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Table 4: Abenomics International Overall Positive and Negative Reportage inEnglish, Quarter 1 to 3, 2013
The United Kingdom articles included some from Great Britain, Ireland and Scotland(Table 5). The reportage began with a somewhat higher proportion of positive news
stories about Abenomics, but reached a balance of positive and negative reportage on
this issue in Quarter 3. Several of the articles discussed implications in Abenomics forcoping with the ongoing European economic malaise.

Table 5: Abenomics U.K. Positive and Negative Reportage in English
Quarter 1 to 3, 2013
In North America (Table 6), there was greater initial enthusiasm about the effect of
Abenomics policies. By the second and third quarters, however, more of a balance
was being struck between positive and negative articles. Possibly, with Japan being
part of the G8 member nation group, there was concern about how Abenomics would
pay off its internal deficit. Perhaps also, there was some reluctance among G8
delegates to directly criticize a member nation, resulting in an overall balance of
positive and negative discussion. Other political factors, such as the Obamaadministration being under increasing pressure to manage federal spending, werereferred to in the Abenomics articles.

14

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Table 6: Abenomics U.S./Canada Positive and Negative Reportage in English
Quarter 1 to 3, 2013
Australasian countries (Table 7) depend on trade with Japan considerably and watch
economic developments in Japan closely because it directly affects their traderelationships. For example, if Japanese consumer spending was reduced substantiallythrough Abenomics, primary goods exports (farm and agricultural products) could be
affected. Furthermore, Australia depends on China and Japan for exports of raw
materials so any downturn in those economies will affect the Australian economy. A
fairly positive trend was apparent in this region for Abenomics policies at the
beginning of 2013, with a rise in negative reports assessing the impact of Abenomics
appearing as the year progressed.

Table 7: Abenomics Australia and New Zealand Positive and Negative Reportage inEnglish, Quarter 1 to 3, 2013
The Singapore press carried a number of Abenomics stories (Table 8) and contrary toother countries showed a greater number of positive reports and a declining number ofnegative ones during the year. This is possibly reflected in Japan and Singapore’s
generally cordial relations with each other, and fewer territorial or trade disputes thanJapan’s closer Asian neighbors.

15

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Table 8: Abenomics Singapore Positive and Negative Reportage in English, Quarter 1
to 3, 2013
Thai newspapers produced a relatively small sample of news stories (Table 9) andshowed an increasingly positive reportage of Abenomics news over the three quarters.
Japanese companies have a strong presence in Thailand and the country depends also
on Japan for industry such as tourism which may have some connection with thelargely non-critical approach in reporting on Abenomics.

Table 9: Abenomics Thailand Positive and Negative Reportage in English
Initially, there was little English coverage of the Abenomics story in Chinese media.
Most articles came from the 2nd and 3rd quarter and were overwhelmingly negative(Table 10). An investigation of the content of the articles suggested that it could bethat China was not interested in Japan’s economic success, was even jealous of it, orthat China was having a struggle with Japan over territorial issues in the South China
Sea (Senkaku Islands) during this period. A combination of these reasons could
explain why there was so little coverage of Abenomics in the English language mediaof Japan’s close neighbor.

16

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Table 10: China Abenomics Positive and Negative Reportage in English, Quarter 1 to
3, 2013
There were not enough Abenomics news stories reported in the South Korean
newspapers (4 negative stories in Quarter 2 and 3) and in Malaysia (1 positive story in
Quarter 1) to be tabled, but the Korean result might suggest an attitude of reserve in
the South Korean press towards Japan, similar to the somewhat adversarial reporting
stance of China.
In summary, reporting of Abenomics in the print media stories showed differingresults across these countries. This may be attributed to several factors such as theattitude of reporters towards the Japanese government (see Table 3 and 10 for contrast
between Japan and China). Secondly, reporting might reflect the shared economic
problems between other countries and Japan (see Tables 5 and 6 for North America
and the United Kingdom). Third, reporting in other countries might be affected by adependent trade relationship with Japan (see Tables 7, 8 and 9 for Australasia,
Singapore and Thailand).
Discussion of Social Media Results
In the previous section, which focused on quantitative data, changing attitudes
towards the Abenomics news items could be observed between Quarter 1 to Quarter
3, 2013. In this section a sampling of qualitative data from blogs and aggregators will
demonstrate the dialogic nature of the conversations and highlight the difference
between quantitative and qualitative content analyses.
Following a story by accessing a variety of print and social media underscores the factthat different methods of analysis are required to approach contemporary content
analysis. Print media, with its basis in rational argumentation, can be analyzed interms of traditional discourse-based content analysis, whereas social media, may bebetter understood by using a social media communication model.
Tables 11 to 14 present comments on posts about Abenomics on blogs and online
news articles accessed through news aggregators. The categories of comments fall
into four main groups: Positive Comments, Negative Comments, Discussion
Comments, and Other. Each main section is divided into self-explanatory subsections.

17

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Paul Krugman’s February 4, 2013 post in the New York Times “Rate Expectations(Wonkish)” attracted 39 comments, with examples in major categories shown in
Table 11. The comments were mainly technical arguments including statistics tosupport the viewpoint, suggesting that the readership appears to have been a mix of
informed professional economists and finance practitioners. There were instanceswhere discussion between the commentators themselves occurred. Some posts could
not be unequivocally classified into a single category.
Type of Comment
Positive Blog Comments
Adding to or supporting
post

Supporting or defending
subject of post
Negative Blog Comments
Attacking view in post

Attacking subject of post

Discussion Blog
Comments
Adding to or clarifying
one’s own comment
Responding to anothercommentator
Other Blog Comments
Praising poster personallyAttacking poster
personally

Posting with Humor

Stats on Japan: Population growth rate -0.077% (2011 est.) Birthrate 8.39 births/1,000 population (2011 est.) Death rate 9.15 deaths/1,000
population (July 2011 est.) Net migration rate 0 migrant(s)/1,000
population (2011 est.) THEY NEED TO GET TO WORK AND HAVE
MORE CHILDREN! Adam Smith NY. Feb. 6, 2013 at 12:24 a.m
Say the inflation rises to 1.5% (hallelujah, I'd say, hallelujah) sometime inlate 2013 or 2014, and the 10 year bond yield rises to 2.2%, from 1.5%.
Should there be insufficient demand, the BOJ can step. Is it really worth
worrying about this? Mikio Kumada, HKG, Feb. 7, 2013 at 1:32 a.m.
I know nothing about economics never even having taken ec.1 but I
wonder how any inflation will ever be sustained when the Elephants in
the room,China,India,and even the Phillipines and Indonesia are there to
hold down wages and prices.. Bob Titchell, Rochester, Feb. 6, 2013 at
12:24 a.mReally connected, smart creditors (read: Goldman Sachs) want to dip
their proboscis into tax funds and government protection and will tolerate
the minimal inflation that ensues... after they have taken home theirbillions. And they are, to some extent, right. Enobarbus37, Tours,
France, Feb. 5, 2013 at 8:21 p.m

Oops! Cite. Arbitrot, nyc. Feb. 6, 2013 at 12:24 a.m
I realized I didn't fully reply to the post: those breakeven rates are fromvery illiquid instruments, so I'm not sure how much general inflation
expectations are imputed in the price. Jason S. Japan. Feb. 5, 2013 at 6:02
p.m.
Everything Krugman says is right (about Kanno being wrong and he's
right about expected inflation rising, real rates falling etc) but I doubt
there is serious intention to bring about serious inflation, it's just talk to
move the currency. Still, it's good for the country. RMH London Feb. 6,
2013 at 12:24 a.m
Amazing. The chief Japanese economist at JP Morgan doesn't know s..t.
How is that possible? I've read all your stuff about the economics
profession. This is just gross incompetence on a global scale. Good thing
you Drs are not (medical) doctors, just philosophers. Otherwise we'd all
be dead. RBA DC Feb. 6, 2013 at 11:54 p.m.
Wonkish to say the least. Until now, I thought the JGB stood for the Jerry
Garcia Band. My bad. Irwin I. WiklerNew York, NY. Irwin I. Wikler
New York, NY. Feb. 5, 2013 at 4:36 a.m

Table 11: Sample of Blog Comments on Abenomics from Krugman at New YorkTimes, Quarter 1, 2013
Source: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/04/rate-expectations-wonkish/

18

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

The Economist post of June 15, 2013 “Abenomics: Not so super” attracted 25
comments with examples as shown in Table 12. A mix of informed commentary anddiscussion between posters generated a lively conversation. As with the Krugman post
above, the readership appears to have been a mix of informed economists andfinancially knowledgeable professionals, with some comments leading to discussion
between the commentators themselves.
Type of Comment
Positive Blog Comments
Adding to or supporting
post

Supporting or defending
subject of post
Negative Blog Comments
Attacking view in post

Attacking subject of post
Discussion
Blog
Comments
Adding to or clarifying
one’s own comment
Responding tocommentator

another

Other Blog Comments
Praising poster personallyAttackingpersonally
Posting with Humor

poster“A large portion of Mr. Abe government spending is financed by debt.
Such anomaly can happen in Japan only because the debt market is over
90% held by Japanese banks including Bank of Japan itself (holding
about 10%) and domestic Japanese savers, particularly pensioners.”
nkab, Jun 14th, 14:56
Recommend 29“Have the Japanese people truly accepted the need for reform? We canonly blame so much on Abe. ”
Ohio Jun 13th, 17:42,
Recommend 15“Five years of Austerity not meeting it's targets and we are all justsupposed to sit and wait.”
Generic Dave, Jun 15th, 09:12
Recommend 24
Mr.Abe himself has no sense of fiscal discipline.”
Akiakich, Jun 18th, 00:25
Recommend 6“Japan's government debt is diminishing rapidly because Bank of Japanis absorbing them at a very fast pace.”
Mike Tyson Ironman in reply to Akiach, Jun 19th, 05:10
Recommend 4“Well. I think you should be more precise.
It is the Japanese media that is against constitutional reform.”
Mike Tyson Ironman in reply to ShOm82, Jun 17th, 05:41
Recommend 5“I think this article correctly observed that “it (Mr Abe’s “third arrow” ofstructural reforms) is so wide of (off) the mark that one is left wondering
if Abenomics has failed before it even properly began.”nkab, Jun 14th, 14:56
Recommend 29“The pseudo scientific nonsense fails yet again and here comes the galoreof justifications by the modern quacks, the mob stands in awe andreverence.” Mberg, Jun 14th, 005:06
Recommend 1“An awful lot of money and credibility is being invested in getting Mrs
Watanabe to believe in the likelihood of any inflation at all. There arefew signs yet that she is even paying attention.”
TomasHirst, Jun 14th, 11:04
Recommend 0

Table 12: Sample of Blog Comments on Abenomics from The Economist, Quarter 2,2013
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21579464-third-arrow-reform-has-fallen-well-shortits-target-time-shinzo-abe-rethink-not/comments#comments

19

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

The Guardian post of August 26, 2013, “Japan's pump-primed recovery proves US
deficit hawks wrong”, attracted 101 comments with examples as shown in Table 13.
A mix of informed commentary and discussion between posters generated a spirited
exchange and a number of comments attacking both the views and personalities ofother commentators. As with both posts above, the readership appears to have been amix of informed professional economists and finance practitioners. Perhaps because
the comments came later in the year when Abenomics had become a prominent news
story, the number of comments it attracted were in excess of the Quarter 1 andQuarter 2 posts.
Type of Comment
Positive Blog Comments
Adding to or supporting
post

Supporting or defending
subject of post

Negative Blog Comments
Attacking view in post

Attacking subject of post

Discussion
Blog
Comments
Adding to or clarifying
one’s own comment
Responding tocommentator

another

Other Blog Comments
Praising poster personallyAttackingpersonally
Posting with Humor

posterYes, deficit spending can be stimulatory.
But, it depends on how it is spent. For instance, bailing out pension
funds, while certainly of benefit to pensioners, is not stimulatory.
CautiousOptimist
26 August 2013 8:57pm
Hopefully Abe knows what he's doing. He's the only one even close at
the moment. Fingers crossed he doesn't try to 'tackle the deficit' anytimesoon.
The printing money scaremongering that everyone seems to indulge in isa red herring and has been for over 40 years (1971 to be precise).
The key here is to get things moving in terms of jobs, output and trade
and that seems to be what he's focused on.
My money's on Japan (literally) so Go Abe !
RandomAccountant
26 August 2013 5:14pm
This article is a joke. You can argue your ponzi economics all you likebut Japan cannot escape its economic problems without real economic
growth. And where is that going to come from? They have the worst
demographics going and refuse to allow immigration. Abenomics will
result in the thing that will bankrupt the government: jncreased interest
rates. There is no way out. You simply can't borrow against the future to
the extent they have without having something great lined up in the
future. And they just have a really old population lined up.
Succulentpork, 26 August 2013 11:14pm
The case against austerity, both in academia and experience, is now sooverwhelming that no rational adult can possibly advocate it anymore.
RedSperanza
26 August 2013 3:13pm

yes, there is a certain nihilism embedded in anticapitalist views I havefound. Funny how the human brain works. FunkyJunkie
CautiousOptimist, 27 August 2013 2:52am
Define austerity then. PeterS378 RedSperanza
26 August 2013 4:33pm
No. I won't. Google it. RedSperanza PeterS378
26 August 2013 4:41pm
I will repeat AlbertaRabbit's comment: Jeremiah2000 AlbertaRabbit, 27
August 2013 4:46am
I don't think jayant has the faintest idea. PeterS378 lukester
26 August 2013 4:25pm
As Winston once said, we can always be counted on to do the right thing,but only after trying everything else. Yank1948, 26 August 2013 4:31pm

20

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Table 13: Sample of Blog Comments on Abenomics from The Guardian, Quarter 3,
2013
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/26/japan-recovery-us-deficithawks#start-of-comments

Japan Today (Table 14) is a special example of a news aggregator because it is a siteon which both native Japanese and foreigners living in Japan comment extensively. A
number of reflective comments about Abenomics were found. Some of the posters,
however, were highly engaged with each other, even to the point of hurling
deprecatory remarks back and forth about the price and quality of local bread. The
posters can also be quite loyal to the news site as illustrated by one poster who madeit clear that he was a regular reader of the comments section.
Type of Comment
Positive Blog Comments
Adding to or supporting
post

Supporting or defending
subject of post

Negative Blog Comments
Attacking view in post

Attacking subject of post
Discussion
Blog
Comments
Adding to or clarifying
one’s own comment

Responding tocommentator

another“...and yet Abe and his cohorts continue to promote Abenomics day after
day ... especially on TV where it seems they are attempting to brainwash
viewers into believing that all is well in Abeland.
With the election coming up next month, we'll be swamped with "goodwords" about Abenomics. Just hope the voters take a glance in theirwallets & coin purses before casting their votes. If they want more empty
space in them, then go ahead and vote for the LDP & Komeito.
As the Shukan Post article above says ... we'll be clobbered financiallyfrom all sides ...”
edojinJUN. 10, 2013 - 04:35PM JST”It's just another form of the famous trickle down economics. The weak
yen benefits large international corporations who export goods so that
hopefully the resulting cash flow will spread to the rest of the economy.
Except no, there are tons of business that don't run on exports but onservice that won't get much benefit out of this new economic strategy.”
BlueMindJUN. 10, 2013 - 09:55AM JST“The yen is not really "down" that much if you use a measure beyond two
years. The yen settled decisively above the 90 yen to dollar level only as
recently as April of 2011. At its current exchange rate in the mid 90's, it
has regressed to the 5-year average level compared to the US dollar, ie, it
hasn't really changed in value over this period of time.”
thywillbedoneJUN. 16, 2013 - 01:34AM JST
Shukan Post chooses to fear the worst. What else would sell?
sourpussJUN. 10, 2013 - 06:41PM JST

It's just another form of the famous trickle down economics.
Ever wonder why trickle down does not work in the US? It does not,because trade/labor union is weak there. If the trade union is strong, it
will squeeze the money from the corporate. "We are the 99%" thing willcontinue until they re-invent the trade union.
CH3CHOJUN. 11, 2013 - 10:20AM JST
BlueMind
StormRJun. 12, 2013 - 09:17AM JST ”What a lot of rubbish, my loaf ofbread is still 220yen and have not seen any price increases in daily
products,”
DogJUN. 12, 2013 - 12:29PM JST”Why would it rise, when you're already being ripped off, if you're
paying 220yen for your loaf of bread?
A loaf of bread in Seiyu is 75yen.

21

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

However, as usual, StormR missed the point that Pumpkin was making.
The contents within his/her bread roll and the electricity used to make ithave gone up. If you deny that, you're living in another universe, don't do
the shopping or playing at living in Japan.”
Other Blog Comments
Praising poster personallyAttackingpersonally

Posting with Humor

posterI agree Yubaru and a year down the line I reckon the average Japaneseperson won't be feeling too optimistic when they look at how out of
pocket they are.
SpankiJUN. 10, 2013 - 09:19AM JST”Ripped off at 220 yen for my loaf of bread?
The 220yen loaf is far superior to the Seiyu loaf and I wouldn’t eat thatoverly sweet crud.
Your comments are always derogertory too by the way do you ever say
anything that is positive or not rubbishing someone else? All your posts
are either rubbishing japan or other posting you pieous full of yourself
prat.
I live in Japan successfuly for 20 years too and play most happily here,
maybe i havent noticed price increases is because i do not have to countevery yen nor watch where it goes, paying a little extra from time to timegoes unnoticed, unlike some scrooges and poorpers who have to countevey last yen.
Pity You.
StormRJUN. 13, 2013 - 01:03PM JST“...and yet Abe and his cohorts continue to promote Abenomics day after
day ... especially on TV where it seems they are attempting to brainwash
viewers into believing that all is well in Abeland.
With the election coming up next month, we'll be swamped with "goodwords" about Abenomics. Just hope the voters take a glance in theirwallets & coin purses before casting their votes. If they want more empty
space in them, then go ahead and vote for the LDP & Komeito.
As the Shukan Post article above says ... we'll be clobbered financiallyfrom all sides ...”
edojinJUN. 10, 2013 - 04:35PM JST

Table 14: Sample of Blog Comments on Abenomics from Aggregator Japan Today,
Quarter 2, 2013
Source: http://www.japantoday.com

In summary, as can be seen from the entirely different data in Tables 11-14, social
media generates a markedly different news flow compared with print media. It is
immediate, opinionated, individualistic, conversational, and sometimes idiosyncratic.
It challenges accepted orthodoxy bordering on the adversarial. It is thedemocratization of news reportage where professionals engage directly with informed
and uninformed readers.
Conclusion
Abenomics news stories followed a different pattern of attitude and tone acrossseveral different countries, according to the quantitative data. By contrast, the data inthe social media blogs and aggregators revealed that users adopted a more
performative approach towards engaging with the news.
The reportage of the Abenomics story in print media, with its basis in rational
argumentation, can be well understood in terms of quantitative content analysis and amonologic model of news dissemination (see Figure 3). The data results overall
indicated that in Japan, the number of negative articles increased from Quarter 1 to

22

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Quarter 3. On the contrary, among international news publications, the balance of
positive and negative articles held steady throughout the year. Looking back at thecountry-by-country analysis, the results were largely driven by the nature of relations
between Japan and each specific country or region. In the U.K., for example, the news
reportage focused heavily on whether or not Abenomics policies could exacerbate theEuropean economic crisis. Australasian countries are most concerned about theirtrade relationship with Japan, so after closely monitoring Abenomics, they began tolose confidence in this policy as the year progressed. As might be expected, theChinese media took a dim view of the Abenomics policy from Quarter 2 onwards,
perhaps stemming from the deteriorating relations between the two countries over the
Senkaku Islands territorial dispute.

Figure 3: The Monologic Model of News Dissemination
The Abenomics news story as reported in social media, being more of the momentand mercurial, may also be interpreted by using a qualitative social media dialogic
model (see Figure 4). The growing number of comments on blog postings in the U.S.,
the U.K. and Japan about Abenomics suggested a growing international publicawareness of the steps being taken to revitalize the Japanese economy. The increasing
number of discussion threads on Abenomics policies by informed readers also attested
to this. The posters themselves, and the commentators, in defending their views, ingiving more examples, in taking the discussion in other directions, in supporting andattacking each other, seriously and wryly, showed how engaged both writers andcommentators became with the story. This appeared to lead writers and readers to a
deeper understanding of the issues involved, perhaps more than a single longnewspaper article written by a single expert might do. Much as Wikipedia hasdiminished the authority of traditional encyclopedias written by “experts” anddemocratized the process of encyclopedia-writing, the dialogic model of news
dissemination has changed the reporting and discussion of news. Typifying thisapproach to engaging with news stories nowadays, Chris Anderson, editor of Wiredcomments that he receives news from “Twitter, in my inbox, on my RSS feed,through conversations. I read articles from mainstream media but I don’t go to
mainstream media directly. It comes to me. I pick my sources and I trust my sources.”(Anderson, 2013).
This dialogic approach to news dissemination is not so new. Mikhail Bakhtin in the
1930s was describing a dialogic approach to literature where writers fed their creative

23

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

imaginations by responding to what others were writing (Holquist, 1981). As he put
it:“Truth is not born nor is it to be found inside the head of an individual person, it isborn between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic
interaction” (Bakhtin, 1984, p.110).

Figure 4: The Dialogic Model of News Dissemination

24

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

References
Anderson, C. (2013). Chris Anderson on the Economics of Free: ‘Maybe Media Will
Be Hobby Rather than a Job. Interview in Spiegel. Retrieved fromhttp://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/chris-anderson-on-the-economics-offree-maybe-media-will-be-a-hobby-rather-then-job-a-638172.html
Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. M. Holquist(Ed.). Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin and London: University ofTexas Press.
Bakhtin, M.M. (1984). Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Edited and trans. by Caryl
Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Michigan Press.
Canter, L. (2013). The Misconception of Online Comment Threads. Journalism
Practice, 7:5, 604-619.
Carey, J. W. (1976). Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society. New
York: Routledge.
Cardon, D., Delaunay-Teterel, H., Fluckiger C, & Prieur, C., (2007). Sociological
Typology of Personal Blogs. Paper presented at International Conference on Weblogs
and Social Media, Boulder, Colorado, U.S.A. Retrieved fromhttp://www.icwsm.org/papers/4--Cardon--Delaunay-Teterel--Fluckiger--Prieur.pdf
Churches, A. (2009). Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy: Blog Commenting Rubric.
Retrieved fromhttp://edorigami.wikispaces.com/file/view/blogging+commenting+rubric.pdf
Fielding, N.G. Lee, R.M. (1991). Using Computers in Qualitative Research. London:
Sage.
Fowler, R. (1985). Power. In T. van Dijk (Ed.), Handbook of Discourse Analysis (Vol4). London: Academic Press.
Galtung, J. & Ruge, M.H. (1965). The structure of foreign news. Journal of Peace
Research, 2: 64-91.
Jensen, K. B. (2002). A Handbook of Media and Communication Research:
Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies. New York: Routledge.
Krippendorff, K. (1980). Content Analysis: An Introduction to its Methodology.
Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
LexisNexis (database). Retrieved from http://www.lexisnexis.com/enus/gateway.page
Niskanen, W.A. (1993). Reaganomics. In The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.
Library of Economics and Liberty. Retrieved fromhttp://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/Reaganomics.html

25

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Schlesinger P. (1987). Putting 'Reality’ Together. (2nd edition), London: Methuen.
Tang, L. (2012). Media discourse of corporate social responsibility in China: acontent analysis of newspapers. Asian Journal of Communication, 22:3, 270-288.
Trew, T. (1979). Theory and Ideology at Work. In R. Fowler, B. Hodge, G. Kress, &T. Trew, (Eds.) Language and Control. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Warner, M. (2010). 10 Types of Blog Comments. National Catholic Register.
Retrieved fromhttp://www.ncregister.com/blog/matthewwarner/10_types_of_blog_comments_part_1_of_2
Wei, J. (2012). Blog Comments Classification using Tree Structured Conditional
Random Fields. M. Sc. Thesis. Department of Computer Science. University of
British Columbia.

26

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Confucius Institutes and the Network
Communication Approach to Public Diplomacy
Terry Flew, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Falk Hartig, Frankfurt University, Germany
Abstract
Discussions of public diplomacy in recent years have paid a growing amount ofattention to networks. This network perspective is understood to provide insights into
various issues of public diplomacy, such as its effects, credibility, reputation, identity
and narratives. This paper applies the network idea to analyze China’s Confucius
Institutes initiative. It understands Confucius Institutes as a global network and argues
that this network structure has potential implications for the operation of public andcultural diplomacy that are perhaps underestimated in existing accounts of Chinese
cultural diplomacy. In particular, it is noted that the specific setup of Confucius
Institutes requires the engagement of local stakeholders, in a way that is lesscentralized and more networked than comparable cultural diplomacy institutions. At
the same time, the development of a more networked for of public cultural diplomacy
is challenged in practice by both practical issues and the configuration of China’s
state-centric public diplomacy system informed by the political constitution of theChinese state.
Keywords: Political Communication, Government Communication, Confucius
Institutes, Public Diplomacy, Soft Power, Culture; Network Society

27

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Introduction
The Chinese culture belongs not only to the Chinese, but to the whole world.
(Chinese President Hu Jintao, address to the Australian Federal Parliament,
October 2003).
In 2002, the Chinese government began to consider setting up institutions to promote
Chinese language and culture overseas. One of the key elements of this policy of
promoting Chinese language and culture internationally has been Confucius Institutes(CI). Modeled on institutions such as the British Council, France’s Alliance Française
and Germany’s Goethe Institutes, the growth of China’s Confucius Institutes has been
one of the most important developments in 21st century public diplomacy. Between
2004 and 2012, China set up over 900 Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms
in 108 countries to promote Chinese language and culture. China now has the thirdlargest number of national cultural institutes operating in other countries, after theUnited Kingdom and France.
Despite the rapid worldwide growth of Confucius Institutes, there is a lack of detailed
analysis of their roles and functions, with a common assumption being that they aresimply propaganda arms of the Chinese party-state. The American Association of
University Professors (AAUP) issued a statement in June 2014 expressing concern
about the presence of Confucius Institutes on North American campuses, arguing that
‘Confucius Institutes function as an arm of the Chinese state and are allowed to ignore
academic freedom’ (AAUP 2014). Such concerns find echoes in the academic
literature on Confucius Institutes, with Brady (2008: 159) describing Confucius
Institutes as ‘China’s foreign propagandists’, while Niquet (2012: 81) has argued that
Confucius Institutes are ‘a part of efforts to modernize China’s propaganda apparatus’.
Critiquing the decision of the University of Chicago to establish a Confucius Instituteon its campus, the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins argued that through such links,
U.S. universities ‘have become engaged in the political and propaganda efforts of aforeign government in a way that contradicts the values of free inquiry and humanwelfare to which they are otherwise committed’ (Sahlins 2013).
This paper adopts a different approach, arguing that the rise of Confucius Institutes
can be understood as occurring at the intersection of three debates, which have beenof vital importance both internationally and within China: the significance of theconcept of ‘soft power’ in international relations; the role of cultural diplomacy as anarm of public diplomacy and international communication; and the implications of
new forms of network communications. In doing so, we note the inherent tension thatarises in public diplomacy as to ‘whether government-sponsored activities aremanipulative “propaganda” or valid “public diplomacy”’ (Zaharna 2004: 219). While
our perspective is not a ‘neutralist’ one, presenting propaganda as a necessary evil in acomplex global system of states (Taylor 2011), we would argue that an excessive
focus upon the distinctiveness of China’s form of government vis-à-vis other nations
that engage in such public diplomacy on a large scale can obscure the degree to which
the rise of Confucius Institutes is also associated with innovations within the field of
public diplomacy, which have implications for its practice around the world.
This paper focuses on Confucius Institutes, which operate primarily through face-toface interactions, and on cultural diplomacy rather than mass media or networked

28

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

communications. At the same time, it aims to illustrate ways in which these Institutes
facilitate message exchanges and information flows, and can demonstrate a networked
communication strategy in action, which involves the co-creation of credibility,
mastering narratives, and identities by using - rather than simply disseminating information (Zaharna 2010). Drawing upon case studies of Confucius Institutes inAustralia and Germany, this paper discusses the network structure of Confucius
Institutes, their network synergies and network strategy. It also considers the extent towhich their success in achieving public diplomacy objectives is based around building
relationships, identifying potential synergies between CIs and their host institutions,and incorporating diversity and flexibility into their everyday operations.
The paper draws upon a series of interviews conducted by the researchers withManagers and Directors of Confucius Institutes in Australia and Germany during
2009-12, which coincided with site visits to these Institutes. While sources have been
anonymized in order to maintain confidentiality, interviews took place with the
Directors of five Australian CIs, all of which were in the elite ‘Group of Eight’universities. In Germany, interviews and site visits were conducted with
Directors/Managers of five Confucius Institutes, at universities that all had a
Department of Sinology or China Studies, and two of which are a part of the German
Federal Ministry of Education and Research’s Excellence Initiative. Information on
the interviews conducted is provided in Appendix 1.
The paper outlines these core debates, and considers the role, functions and future of
Confucius Institutes through in-depth case studies of Confucius Institutes in Australia
and Germany, particularly those established in partnership with host universities.
These two countries provide useful sites for case studies as both countries have strong
and fast-growing economic relations with China. Germany is China’s largest trading
partner in the European Union, and China is Germany’s second largest trading partner
after the United States, while China has now surpassed the United States and Japan as
Australia’s largest trading partner. These close economic relations, driven by hightechnology manufacturing in the German case and minerals, energy and agriculture in
the Australian case, have a variety of cultural and other spillovers, including growth intourism, research collaboration, and educational exchanges. The two countries also
have important differences that range from language to history, geography, foreign
policy orientation and population composition, which inform their relations with
China. For example, Germany has had a formal presence in China dating back to the1860s, although the number of people of Chinese descent in Germany today is nothigh. By contrast, Australia had little formal contact with China prior to the 1970s, but
has a large Chinese-Australian population, with about 5 per cent of Australians havingsome form of Chinese ancestry (including people of Taiwanese, Hong Kong and
Macau backgrounds) (ABS 2012).
Soft Power and Cultural Diplomacy
China’s commitment to bolstering its connections with the rest of the world has beena strong feature of its economic and foreign policies since 1978, after the death of
Mao Zedong and the rise to power of Deng Xiaoping. Medeiros (2009) has argued
that the concept of a ‘peaceful rise’ has a strong basis in China’s international
behavior, reflecting both the sense that strong international links are advantageous toChina’s rise as an economic power in the world, and the sense that China has a

29

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

historic mission to restore its status as a leading regional and global power, after thelong history of depredations at the hands of foreign powers and the relative isolationof the Mao years. There is also the need to counter negative perceptions in theinternational community that the rise of China constitutes a threat to other nations,
whether through concerns about its enhanced military power, or its growing economic
significance as measured through trade and foreign investment (Broomfield 2003).
The concept of soft power has had considerable influence in China. First proposed by
the Harvard University international relations theorist Joseph Nye, soft power refers
to ‘the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or
payments’; it ‘arises from the attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideas, andpolicies’ (Nye 2004: x), and ‘rests on the ability to shape the preferences of others’(Nye 2004: 5). For Nye, ‘soft power’ is associated with culture and values, in contrast
to the ‘hard power’ of military force or economic might. Soft power initiatives arethus an important element of a nation’s public diplomacy, or ‘a country’s engagement
and communication with foreign publics’ (Wang 2011: 3) and the promotion ofnational interests in international arenas. Cull (2008: 32-35) has observed that thepractice of public diplomacy can be divided into five elements that he refers to as:
1. Listening: collecting information on international opinions, whether by legal or
covert means i.e. spying and intelligence gathering;
2. Advocacy: promoting particular policies, ideas or interests to foreign publics,
typically through one’s own embassies in other countries;
3. Cultural diplomacy: promoting a nation’s cultural resources overseas and/or
facilitating cultural transmission abroad;
4. Exchange diplomacy: promoting reciprocal exchanges of people with othernations e.g. as students;
5. International broadcasting: the use of news bureaus, radio and television
broadcasting, and Internet communication to engage with foreign publics.
Although the soft power concept was first designed as a guide for U.S. foreign policy
strategies (Sparks 2014), it has had considerable influence in China. One reason forgrowing interest in China with the soft power concept has been the manner in which it
addresses the apparent contradiction between China’s growing economic centrality
and its relative lack of influence in international relations (Ding 2008; Wang 2011;
Blanchard and Liu 2012; Li and Hong 2012). Rawnsley has observed that ‘China hasembraced the concepts of soft power and public diplomacy with an enthusiasm rarely
seen in other parts of the world’ (Rawnsley 2012: 126). Brown (2010) has associatedthe growing interest in soft power in China with the rise of concepts such as ‘peacefulrise’, ‘peaceful development’ and a ‘Harmonious World’ among the Chinese
Communist Party leadership in the 2000s, while Cabestan (2010: 3) has observed that‘the key objective of this new discourse has been to change the outside perception ofChina for the better, and build a positive image of China’s contribution to the world’.
Public diplomacy has been seen in China as a means of countering the ‘China threat’
thesis, by projecting images of the ‘real China’ internationally, promoting afavourable image of China in other nations, and projecting China’s national interests
in international relations (Qiu 2009; Zhang 2009; Zhao 2012). China has invested
heavily in cultural diplomacy over the last decade through arts and cultural exchanges,
Confucius Institutes, the very large numbers of Chinese students abroad, growth in the30

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

number of students from other countries studying in China, and the creation of foreign
language services for China Central Television (CCTV), China Radio International(CRI) and the Xinhua News Agency. The hosting of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing aswell as the 2010 Shanghai Expo could also be seen as exercises in cultural diplomacy
and the projection of Chinese soft power throughout the world (Rawnsley 2009; Xin
2009; Brown 2010; Huang 2012).
At the same time, China possesses a significant problem in projecting its soft power
through public diplomacy, arising from the perceived lack of distance between its
media and cultural institutions and the government, in a one-party state that is seen as
authoritarian by other nations. The perception of government control over the output
of CCTV, the Xinhua News Agency or Chinese cinema constitutes an importantbarrier to the capacity of such institutions to have international influence. Cull has
observed that ‘like all forms of communication, the effectiveness of each form of
public diplomacy hinges on credibility … international broadcasters know that the
impression of an editorial connection to government runs counter to credibility [and]cultural organizations are able to flourish in places where a formal arm of the state
would have no credibility’ (Cull 2008: 34-35). An example of the problems China has
faced in this regard is seen with the understanding of propaganda. In China, theconcept has historically had a relatively neutral connotation, akin to terms such as
publicity or public relations, whereas in the West it is ‘associated with manipulation
and … implies the secret exercise of power that is beyond our immediate control’(Rawnsley 2000: 69). Sparks (2014) has observed that perceptions of a lack ofgovernment transparency and media freedom constitute barriers to greater recognitionof China as an emergent international leader, and the significance of such negatives isborne out in popular indices of ‘soft power’ such as those developed by the U.K.based Institute for Government (McClory 2010).
Public Diplomacy and Networks
One of the major discussions in public diplomacy in recent years has been around thesignificance of networked approaches to public diplomacy. The concept of networks
has been the subject of a growing debate in the public diplomacy literature (Brown
2010; Cowan and Arsenault 2008; Hocking 2005; Hocking et. al. 2012; Zaharna 2005,
2007, 2010; Zaharna et. al. 2013). Hocking (2005, 2008) has argued that there now
exists ‘two worlds’ of public diplomacy: the traditional hierarchical approach,centered on intergovernmental relations and top-down communication; and the
network-based approach, where ‘public diplomacy [is] one facet of an environment inwhich international policy is increasingly conducted through complex policy networks’(Hocking 2008: 64). The network model of public diplomacy is seen by its advocatesas providing ‘a fundamentally different picture of how diplomacy works in thetwenty-first century’ (Hocking 2005: 37), emphasizing horizontal communication as
well as multidirectional flows and exchange of information.
The two models of public diplomacy derive from different models of media andcommunication. The traditional approach draws from the mass communications
tradition and the sender-message-receiver model, being based upon on what Zaharna
has described as ‘carefully crafted messages disseminated via mass media vehicles toa target audience with the goal of changing attitudes or behavior’ (Zaharna 2010: 94).
Publics in this setting are understood as the receivers of messages and images from31

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014the ‘sending’ nation, rather than as partners engaged in dialogue with respective
governments and its agencies (Hocking et. al. 2012: 39). By contrast, the networked
communication approach is derived from technological developments associated with
the Internet and social media, as well as new forms of modeling relations in both thenatural and social sciences: as Newman et. al. (2006: 1) have argued ‘networks are
everywhere … the imagery of the network pervades modern culture’.
The sociologist Manuel Castells has contributed a highly influential series of works
on the network society as ‘the social structure characteristic of the Information Age’(Castells 2000: 5) where:
The diffusion of Internet, wireless communication, digital media, and a variety oftools of social software has prompted the development of horizontal networks ofinteractive communication that connect local and global in chosen time … [and]people (the so-called users) have appropriated new forms of communication …
[and] built their own systems of mass communication (Castells 2009: 65).
For Castells, network communication gives rise to new modes of mass selfcommunication, It is mass communication as ‘it processes messages from many tomany, with the potential of reaching a multiplicity of receivers, and of connecting toendless networks that transmit digitized information around the neighbourhood oraround the world’, but is also self-communication because ‘the production of themessage is autonomously decided by the sender, the designation of the receiver isself-directed and the retrieval of messages from the networks of communication isself-selected’ (Castells 2012: 6-7).
A key implication of network communication models is that it is increasingly difficult
for central agents, such as national governments, to control communication networks
or to manage information flows. As Castells argues, ‘mass self-communication isbased on horizontal networks of interactive communication that, by and large, aredifficult to control by governments or corporations’ (Castells 2012: 7). At the sametime, public diplomacy theorists such as Cull have argued against a negative or‘defeatist’ perspective on networked communication, arguing that new media
technologies can ‘not only wrong-foot the powers-that-be’, but can ‘create more
opportunities … for public diplomacy, especially if the public diplomat is mindfulof … the necessity for thinking in terms of building relationships’ (Cull 2008: 53).
Cowan and Arsenault have identified network communication as enabling ‘a thirdform of engagement’ based around ‘collaboration—defined … as initiatives in whichpeople work together on a joint venture or project—[as] an equally critical and, incertain cases, more effective approach to engaging with foreign publics’ (Cowan and
Arsenault 2008: 11). Similarly, Hocking (2008: 74) has argued that since 21st century
public diplomacy is ‘conducted in an environment where national and international
knowledge networks are proliferating’, there is a need for those engaged in public
diplomacy to know ‘how to connect to them, build alliances, and utilize these
networks to exercise effective advocacy in support of policy objectives’ (Hocking,2008: 74).
Advocates of networked approached to public diplomacy, such as Zaharna (2010,2012), have associated a network communication approach to public diplomacy withthree inter-related dimensions: network structure; network synergy; and network

32

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

strategy. Network structure is about facilitating message exchange and information
flow, because networks can enhance the flow of information and therefore increase
the overall effectiveness of the whole network. Network synergy is concerned with thebuilding of relationships and incorporating diversity into the network. Synergy occurs
when individual efforts of the network members are combined as a force multiplier:
the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. This happens through the
combined processes of cultivating relationships and incorporating diversity in two
ways. Firstly, internal relationship building through bonding among network members
helps to transform a loose group of individuals into a dynamic team. Secondly,
external relationship building, through bridging, is about coalition building that
expands the network’s resources and reach. This internal and external relationshipbuilding not only incorporates diversity, but also generates synergy. Finally, network
strategy focuses on bringing together the diverse elements of the network in such a
way that a shared narrative can emerge, not as a top-down construction, but out ofprocesses of co-creation of knowledge (Castells 2005). In this regard the strategy
generates appeal and momentum in order to engage and retain network members,
attract new members, and hence enable the network to grow.
Chinese Public Diplomacy and the Growth of Confucius Institutes
Confucius Institutes became a central part of Chinese public diplomacy initiatives inthe early 2000s. In 2004, the Office of Chinese Language Council International(Hanban), an organization under the authority of the Chinese Ministry of Education,
began to set up Confucius Institutes around the world. According to the General
Principles of the Constitution and By-Laws of the Confucius Institutes:
Confucius Institutes devote themselves to satisfying the demands of people fromdifferent countries and regions in the world who learn the Chinese language, toenhancing understanding of the Chinese language and culture by these peoples, tostrengthening educational and cultural exchange and cooperation between China
and other countries, to deepening friendly relationships with other nations, topromoting the development of multiculturalism, and to construct a harmonious
world (Hanban n.d.).
Confucius Institutes have been among a number of initiatives undertaken by the
Chinese government in the 2000s to enhance its international standing through public
diplomacy. Observing that ‘communications capacity determined influence’, Li
Changchun, the Chair of the Propaganda Committee of the CCP from 2008 to 2012,
argued that:
Strengthening the setup of our domestic and international communication capacity(jiaqiang guonei guoji chuanbo nengli jianshe) is related to the overall situation ofChina’s reform and opening up and modernization; it is related to China’s
international influence and international status (woguo de guoji yingxiang hediwei); it is related to the upgrading of our nation’s cultural soft power (woguo
wenhua ruanshili de tisheng) and the role of our nation’s media in theinternational public opinion structure (woguo meiti zai guoji yulungejuzhong dediwei he zuoyong) (Li, C. 2008).

33

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Among the range of other public diplomacy and international communication
initiatives undertaken by China during the 2000s were:
•

•
•

•

•

Development of the English-language CCTV International 24-hour news channel,
as well as channels broadcasting in French, Spanish, Russian and Arabic
languages (Rawnsley 2012; Huang 2012);
China Radio International (CRI) now broadcasting in 59 languages worldwide;
Xinhua News Agency expanding its international news agency services, andproviding subscribers with news in eight languages, as well as having over 1000
correspondents in 180 bureaus worldwide (Xin 2010; Wang D. 2012);
Support for Chinese Culture Centres Abroad, as well as cultural exchange
programs, including China Culture Years, such as the ‘Year of Chinese Culture
2011-2012’ in Australia, and the ‘Year of Chinese Culture’ in Germany in 2012,both sponsored by the Ministry of Culture;
International education exchange initiatives, including rapid expansion of the roleof the China Scholarships Council (CSC) in promoting Chinese doctoral study
abroad, and the China Education Association for International Exchange (CEAIE)
promoting student and academic exchanges.

In terms of their fundamental tasks and services of teaching language and culture topeople in other nations, Confucius Institutes are comparable to international agencies
such as The British Council, Alliance Française, the Goethe Institute and Spain’s
Alliance Cervantes. These institutes typically address a mainstream public audiencethat normally does not have any special knowledge about the country in question,
through activities such as language courses, cultural events such as exhibitions andscreenings, and public talks (Hartig 2012). Some debate exists as to whether
Confucius Institutes are appropriately seen as being involved with the projection ofChinese soft power. As noted earlier, there also exist concerns about whether they
constitute a threat to academic freedom. Paradise has noted that ‘as Hanban and othereducation officials ventured out into the world, they found some resistance to the ideaof setting up Confucius Institutes on university campuses because of concerns about
Chinese interference in foreign academic life’ (Paradise 2009: 659).
One important structural difference between Confucius Institutes and similar
European institutions is their decentralized organizational structure. Rawnsley (2009:285) points out ‘Confucius Institutes are joint ventures, are located within a university,and the partner school in China sends teachers to participate’. This differs from theEuropean institutes, which are typically stand-alone entities supported entirely by
their home governments. Entities such as the British Council or Germany’s Goethe
Institute operate on the basis of a hub or star network, where network members
communicate through a central position or hub which, as Zaharna (2010: 99) has
noted, ‘effectively controls the exchange of information’. The center of the network –the London headquarters of the British Council or the Goethe Institute headquarters in
Munich – provides leadership, develops structures to plan and coordinate work,
recruits and manages members, solicits funds, and channels resources. Confucius
Institutes, by contrast, are most often a partnership between the Hanban, a Chinese
university and a foreign university, where the Chinese side normally offers teachingmaterials, language teachers, a co-director and a share of the budget, whileinternational partners provide facilities and local staff, as well as contributing tooverall funding (Hartig 2012). It is this aspect of Confucius Institutes as involving

34

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

cooperative arrangements between Chinese and international partner organizations
that is unique and important in terms of considering network approaches to public
diplomacy.
Drawing upon Zaharna’s (2010) three-fold typology of networked approaches topublic diplomacy, we can evaluate Confucius Institutes in terms of their approaches to
network structure, network synergy and network strategy. Confucius Institutes havebeen described as as ‘a highly networked public diplomacy initiative’ (Zaharna 2010:208), and their organizational distinctiveness as compared with the European cultural
institutes has been noted above, particularly in relation to their active engagement ofhost country institutional partners. This analysis draws upon empirical case studies
obtained through field research in Australia and Germany over a period from 2009 to
2012, and the aim here is not to discuss differences between Confucius Institutes indifferent countries in depth, but to provide a mapping of their operations on the
ground as viewed through the tripartite formation of network structure, synergy andstrategy.
The network structure of Confucius Institutes
Confucius Institutes appear at first glance to take a similar hub-and-spoke form tocomparable cultural organizations, with Hanban (Confucius Institute Headquarters) in
Beijing as the hub and the individual CIs around the world as the nodes. In thisstructure, Hanban is responsible for circulating and exchanging information and for
coordinating and monitoring relevant information across the distributed network ofindividual institutes. In the case of CIs, however, this simple hub-node structure iscomplicated by the joint venture structure involving foreign universities, so that the
network becomes a potentially multi-directional one, complicating the flow of
information from the hub to the nodes.
One way in which the resulting communication challenges are addressed is throughregional and global Confucius Institutes Conferences. The first global CI conference
was held in 2006 in Beijing, and these have become annual events held in December
for individual CI Directors to ‘meet like-minded others, share experiences, andexchange ideas … represent[ing] the addition of direct interpersonal communication
in a global stakeholder engagement process’ (Zaharna 2012: 11). Through such events
Hanban serves as an indirect link for CIs around the world to connect with each other.
One Australian director observed that ‘even though there is a lot of Hanban in [these
conferences], there is on the sideline a lot of opportunity for the directors to talk toeach other’ (I-A1), while a German director has described the annual conferences as a‘mini version of the United Nations’ (I-G1). At the 8th annual conference in 2013, forexample, there were over 2,200 attendees from over 400 Confucius Institutes inattendance.
While Hanban can spread and collect a lot of information via these conferences, theflow of information from the hub to the nodes on a daily or regular basis does notwork that smoothly (Hartig 2012: 264). One Australian interviewee complained that‘[w]e don’t ever really receive any communication about the status of our applications
and the timeframe for receiving our funding. That makes trying a program, trying tostick to a budget more complicated than it needs to be. Practically speaking, this isquite a challenge’ (I-A1). In the Australian case, it was also notable that different CIs

35

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

had asked in various internal documents for better and more frequent communication
and better guidance from Hanban in relation to a range of operational matters. Reports
from the 6th Confucius Institute Conference held in Beijing in 2011 reveal that the
newly-established La Trobe University Confucius Institute sought ‘more guidancefrom Hanban, and [to] share experiences and lessons with other Confucius Institutes’,
while the University of Queensland Confucius Institute asked for continued support
from Hanban for its programs and activities, such as research internship study tours to
China, and CI fellowships to support staff exchange between the university and China(CICRM 2011).
Zaharna is correct pointing out that theoretically there is an intensive inter-weaving ofrelations because international partners are not only linked to Hanban and theirChinese counterparts, but also to other CIs in their home country or to otherinternational organizations as they may have the same Chinese partner. For example,
the CI at Heidelberg University in Germany has the same Chinese partner university
as the CI at the University of New South Wales, namely Shanghai Jiaotong University.
Similarly, the CI at the University is Sydney is partnered with Fudan University inShanghai, as are the CIs at Frankfurt University and Hamburg University. At the sametime, interviews with CI Directors suggest that this has not necessarily led to more
intense communication or even exchange or cooperation between Confucius Institutes.
One Australian CI Director described the process as follows:
We are talking to each other, complaining about what’s going on. We arehaving the same kinds of challenges in some way or the other. There is a little
bit of networking, a little bit of knowing each other, and thinking of each otherevery now and again does pay evidence. It does happen, but on a fairly lowkey kind of basis. (I-A1)
Another interviewee explained that ‘there is no formal structure for institutes to work
together and cooperate. It is happening more on a personal basis’ (I-A2). Examples ofcollaboration identified by interviewees in Australia and Germany included common
invited speakers (I-A2, I-A3, I-G2) and, in the case in Germany, a punk rock band to
perform at two Institutes (I-G2). In Australia, some coordination happens in cities
with more than one Institute in order to avoid competition and promote cooperation
between individual institutions but, once again, this is not proposed by Hanban, but
occurs more organically because key local personnel know one another andcoordinate activities.
It can be said, then, that the overall structural setup of the CI project has the potential
to make these institute a prime example of networked public diplomacy. In reality,
however, a number of circumstances prevent the network structure to unfold its fullpotential. First of all, the CI network is simply too big: by the end of 2013, there were
440 Confucius Institutes and over 640 Classrooms all over the globe. As a result,Hanban has ongoing problems with disseminating information to all network nodes
appropriately. Second, the CI network is more complex than similar organisations as
its individual nodes are more complex due to the inbuilt cooperation between Chinese
and international partners. If this cooperation functions well, this contributes to theoverall network of CIs; if there is limited cooperation between the two partners (forexample because the local and the Chinese co-director do not get along well with eachother), this weakens the individual institute and thereby the whole network. Third, as

36

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

there is no institutionalized mechanism to bring the nodes together except the annual
world conferences and more irregular regional conferences, the capabilities of thisnetwork potentially get lost.
The network synergy of Confucius Institutes
One of the perceived benefits of network structures is that they can enable network
synergies to emerge. Network synergies are defined as arising from the interaction orcooperation of two or more elements in a network to produce a combined network
effect that is greater than the sum of the individual parts (Newman et. a,. 2006: 23436). For network synergies to emerge, one would expect to see evidence of: (1)building relations within the network; (2) building relations outside of the network, asothers are attracted to the network which should incorporate diversity into the network(Zaharna 2012). With regard to building relations within the network, CIs can engage
in internal bonding and team building, as they are involved in both teaching andcultural activities.
Looking for the potential synergy effects, the cases of CIs in both Australia andGermany illustrate important limitations. In some instances, the scope to achievesynergies arising from the pairing of language teaching and cultural activities isundermined by particular Institutes not offering both these activities. At least two
Australian CIs did not offer their own language courses and saw their role more as a
facilitator for other organizations to teach Chinese, either their own university or
schools in the surrounding community. Moreover, many of the Chinese teachers andco-directors only stay for short periods of one to two years, which hampers ongoingteam-building opportunities.
More generally, while network members contribute to relationship building and thus
strengthen the network in most CIs, it is however not found in every single institute.
In Australia, we found that not all CIs had language teachers sent from China at thetime of the interviews, and some CIs not having a Chinese co-director (I-A4, I-A3, IA5), while in Germany there was at least one institute which had a Chinese codirector only located in China (I-G5). This lack of dispatched staff from China clearly
limits the synergy potential of individual institutes. Another aspect limiting thesynergy effects became obvious in Germany where not all teachers from China spoke
German (I-G3, I-G2), which again would negatively influence the assumed possibilityof network synergy. The difficulties in achieving cooperation with outsideorganisations because of cultural differences was noted at the 8th Global Creative
Industries Conference in December 2013 when Xu Lin, the general-secretary of
Hanban, pointed out that about 110 CIs do not hold the required annual Board of
Directors meeting, and that various Chinese co-directors complained about theirpersonal situation abroad, mainly due to a lack of communication with local directors.
With regard to building external relationships, a particularly important issue for CIs
has been to establish links to local communities. We found some evidence of thisfrom case studies in Australia and Germany, with Confucius Classrooms being
developed in cooperation with local schools, as well as enrolment in Confucius
Institutes courses by interested public from the community, as well as staff andstudents form the host institutions. Another important set of external relations werewith local businesses, and CIs in Australia had developed tailored language courses

37

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

for business people (I-A3), and also worked with local companies to be externalsponsors for their programs (I-G2, I-A3).
The network strategy of Confucius Institutes
The third dimension of the network communication approach concerns network
strategy, or the co-creation of credibility, master narratives and identity. One of thefundamental differences between the mass communication approach to public
diplomacy and the network communication approach is that the first ‘begins with apre-determined message’ whereas the latter ‘ends with the message or story’ (Zaharna
2010: 111). In this setting, ‘networks first establish the structure and dynamics for
effective communication channels, then members collaborate to craft the message.
Because the message or story is co-created across cultures, it is not tied to any one
culture. Rather than acting as a barrier or impediment, culture is incorporated into
network dynamics and becomes a rich source of team-coalition synergy’ (Zaharna
2010: 111 – emphasis in original).
It is precisely this assumption that networks may refine overall public diplomacy‘messages’ that is of importance in the study of Confucius Institutes. Recalling that it
is not enough simply to have a network of cultural institutes that disseminate topdown communication determined message from a central headquarters, there has to bea structure that enables collaboration in order to more effectively craft messages. This
makes it important to study the joint-venture structure of CIs, which makes CIs aprime example of collaboration in public diplomacy, defined as ‘initiatives thatfeature cross-national participation in a joint venture or project with a clearly definedgoal’ (Cowan & Arsenault 2008:10).
Having both local staff and staff dispatched from China, Confucius Institutes aretheoretically predestinated to establish the structure and dynamics for effective
communication channels with members collaborate to craft the program, and thereby
the message, of individual institutes which is co-created across cultures. When a CI isin the position that is has both local and Chinese staff who work together very well,this cooperation helps to set up an appealing program with a variety of events andtopics discussed. However, there are at least two broad limitations here. First, as
mentioned above, not all Confucius Institutes actually have staff dispatched from
China all the time which influences both the potential synergy effects within
individual CIs but also the strategy. Taking this into consideration, it becomes clearthat while Confucius Institutes have more potential to co-create a narrative than othercomparable cultural institutes, what is also apparent is that this capacity very muchdepends on the actual situation on the ground. The fact that the CI network is still
growing generates ongoing difficulties in resourcing individual CIs and in strategic
coordination.
The second limitation concerns the question of credibility with the messages comingfrom Confucius Institutes. While it is undoubtedly the case that CIs have the potential
to emphasise the value of learning Chinese and getting in contact with Chinese culture,
the aspect of being the leading Chinese language teaching institution needs
clarification. Not all CIs actually teach Chinese, and those that do often experience
practical issues related to teaching materials and methods which may hamper CI
credibility. It can also be noted that in most major cities, Confucius Institutes are only

38

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

one of a number of providers of Chinese language teaching. In these places CIs
actually compete with sometimes long-established and well respected institutions inthis field, and the fact that CIs are related to the Chinese government does frequently
undermine their credibility, whether justified or not.
The bigger issue in terms of credibility however concerns the content provided by
Confucius Institutes, especially through non-language events. Next to their task of
introducing Chinese language to people abroad, Confucius Institutes also introduce
Chinese culture and provide information about China. In order to do this, Confucius
Institutes offer various cultural classes such as paper cutting, cooking courses orcalligraphy, and organise film screenings, song contests or seminars and lectures
dealing with various China-related topics and issues. In this context, it is apparent thatsome topics, such as the future status of Taiwan, the Dalai Lama, Falun Gong or the
Tiananmen events of 1989 are normally off-limits for Confucius Institutes. As one
Australian director put it, ‘There are no restrictions, but obviously if I would pay the
Dalai Lama to come to Australia with Hanban money they would not be happy. You
don’t have to be a genius to know that’ (I-A3). The statement that Hanban does not
restrict the daily work is made throughout many CIs, and in general terms that is an
accurate observation. There are, however, instances where Beijing’s long arm in formof local Embassies Consulates reaches for Institutes. In Germany, one director
admitted that ‘Our independence is limited regarding precarious topics. If topics like
Tibet or Taiwan would be approached too critical, this could be difficult’ (I-G2).
Another director is sure that ‘as long as I don’t do anything anti-communist or pro
Falun Gong, I don’t think my Chinese co-director would intervene in anything I do’(I-G4).
Conclusion
There cannot be any doubt that public and cultural diplomacy have to be aligned withmodern communication dynamics which favor horizontal, many-to-many
relationships and exchange through networks, over one-directional and one-to-many
mass communication approaches, where information was presumed to be sent tolargely passive audiences in order to win their hearts and minds. Relational andnetworked approaches to public diplomacy clearly provide a new direction in thisregard, however, as the case studies of Confucius Institutes illustrates, even theseapproaches are not a panacea. One promising way to go beyond top-down, one-way
mass communications approaches lies in the networked structure of Confucius
Institutes, which requires the engagement of local stakeholders who can much better
contribute to programs offered by CIs. Nevertheless, as pointed out, this innovative
approach of incorporating local parties is not automatically promising and in the caseof China’s cultural outposts this is hampered by two broader sets of issues.
On the one hand there are several practical components that limit the network
dimension, including the outlined human resources issues that concern the network
synergy or problems of teaching materials and methods affecting the credibility. On
the other hand, there are limitations resulting from the political constitution of theChinese state, which bear on the content of CIs and thereby also the credibility of thewhole network. Although due to their unique structure one can describe Confucius
Institutes as ‘the most open-minded institution China has ever had’ (Liu, H 2008:31),
nevertheless CIs and people in charge are at times reminded that China’s overall

39

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

public diplomacy system is still largely a state-centric endeavor and this innovative
approach to include both local and Chinese staff in order to create a suitable programand narrative for these cultural institutes stretches its limits due to the authoritarian
Chinese state which does not wish to discuss certain topics in public, a fact thatpartially affects the credibility of the whole project. And as credibility is an importantsource of soft power, as Nye reminds us (Nye 2004:106), this drawback cannot be
offset by even the smartest approaches to public diplomacy.
Appendix
List of interviewees
Interview
number
I-A1
I-A2
I-A3
I-A4
I-A5
I-G1
I-G2
IG-3
IG-4
IG-5

Position and Affiliation

Date of interview(s)Director, Australian CI
Director Australian CI
Director Australian CI
Director Australian CI
Director Australian CI
Director, German CI
Director, German CI
Director, German CI
Director, German CI
Director, German CI

20 April 201129 April 2011
12 May 2011
4 April 2011
2 May 201113 December 201130 June 2011, 12 January 201216 January 2012
27 October 2009
11 May 201040

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

References
American Association of University Professors (2014). On Partnerships with Foreign
Governments: The Case of Confucius Institutes.
http://www.aaup.org/report/partnerships-foreign-governments-case-confuciusinstitutes. Accessed 4 August, 2014.
Australian Bureau of Statistics (2013). QuickStats: Country of Birth.
http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/censushome.nsf/home/quickstatscob?opendocume
nt&navpos=220. Last updated 19 December. Accessed 4 August 2014.
Blanchard, J.-M. & Lu L. (2012). Thinking Hard About Soft Power: A Review andCritique of the Literature on China and Soft Power. Asian Perspective, 36/4, pp. 565590.
Brady, A.-M. (2008). Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in
Contemporary China. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Broomfield, E. (2003). Perceptions of Danger: The China threat theory. Journal ofContemporary China, Vol.12, No.35, pp.265-284.
Brown, R. (2010). Diplomacy, Public Diplomacy and Social Networks. Paper
Prepared for the International Studies Association Convention, February 2010, New
Orleans.
Cabestan, J.-P. (2010). Introduction: China’s New Diplomacy: old wine in a newbottle? Breslin, Shaun (ed.) A Handbook of China’s International Relations (pp.1-10).
London/New York, Routledge.
Castells, M. (2005). The Network Society: from Knowledge to Policy. Castells, M &Cardoso, G (Eds.), The Network Society: From Knowledge to Policy (pp.3-21).
Washington, DC: Johns Hopkins Center for Transatlantic Relations.
Castells, M. (2010). Communication Power. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Castells, M. (2010). The Rise of the Network Society. Second edition with a new
preface. Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell.
Castells, M. (2012). Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet
Age. Cambridge, Polity.
CICRM (2011). The 6th Confucius Institute Headquarters Reference Materials.
Beijing, Hanban/Confucius Institute Headquarters.
Cowan, G. & Arsenault, A. (2008). Moving from Monologue to Dialogue toCollaboration: The Three Layers of Public Diplomacy. The ANNALS of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science, 616(1), pp. 10-30.
Cull, N. (2008). Public Diplomacy: Taxonomies and Histories. The ANNALS of theAmerican Academy of Political and Social Science, 616(1), pp. 31-54.

41

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Hanban FAQ (n. d.). What is Confucius Institute? Hanban.org, online at:
http://english.hanban.org/node_7577.htm
Ding S. (2008). The Dragon’s hidden wings – How China rises with its Soft Power.
Landham, Lexington Books.
Hartig, F. (2012). Cultural Diplomacy with Chinese Characteristics: The Case of
Confucius Institutes in Australia. Communication, Politics & Culture, 45, 256-276.
Hocking, B. (2005). Rethinking the “New” Public Diplomacy. In J. Melissen (Ed.),
The New Public Diplomacy: Soft Power in International Relations (pp.28-43).
Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
Hocking, B. (2008). Reconfiguring Public Diplomacy: From Competition to
Collaboration. In J. Welsh and D. Fearn (eds.), Engagement: Public Diplomacy in a
Globalised World (pp. 62-75). London: Foreign & Commonwealth Office.
Hocking, B., Melissen, J., Riordan, S. & Sharp, P. (2012). Futures for Diplomacy:
Integrative Diplomacy in the 21st Century. The Hague, Netherlands Institute ofInternational Relations.
Huang, A. (2012). Beijing: a media capital in the making. Chinese Journal ofCommunication, 5(2), pp. 178-193.
McClory, J. (2010) The New Persuaders: An international ranking of soft power.
London: Institute for Government.
Li, C. (2008, December 23). Nuli goujian xiandai chuanbo tixi tigao guonei guoji
chuanbo nengli [Vigorously build a modern communication system in order toimprove domestic and international communication capabilities], Retrieved fromhttp://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2008-12/23/content_10545118.htm
Liu H. (2008). Die chinesisch-afrikanischen Beziehungen aus dem Blickwinkel derKultur – Die Dynamik der chinesischen Kulturdiplomatie in Afrika. China aktuell
3/2008, pp. 10-44.
Medeiros, E. S. (2009): China’s International Behavior: Activism, Opportunism, andDiversification. RAND Project Air Force, Santa Monica, RAND Corporation.
Newman, M., Barabasi, A.-L. and Watts, D. (2006). The Structure and Dynamics of
Networks. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Niquet, V. (2012). “Confu-talk”: The Use of Confucian Concepts in Contemporary
Chinese Foreign Policy. In A.-M. Brady (ed.), China’s Thought Management. New
York: Routledge, pp. 76-98.
Nye, J. S. (2004). Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. Cambridge,
MA: Public Affairs.

42

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Paradise, J. F. (2009). China and International Harmony: The Role of Confucius
Institutes in Bolstering Beijing’s Soft Power. Asian Survey, Vol.49, No.4, pp. 647-669.
Qiu H. (2009). Public Diplomacy: China’s Grand Foreign Strategy. Public Diplomacy
Magazine, 1/2009, pp. 72-74.
Rawnsley, G. (2000). Taiwan’s Informal Diplomacy and Propaganda. Basingstoke,
Palgrave Macmillan.
Rawnsley, G. (2009). China Talks Back: Public Diplomacy and Soft Power for the
Chinese Century. Snow, N & Taylor, P M (Eds.) Routledge Handbook of Public
Diplomacy (pp.282-291). New York, Routledge.
Rawnsley, G. (2012). Approaches to soft power and public diplomacy in China andTaiwan. Journal of International Communication, Vol.18, No.2, pp. 121-135.
Sahlins, M. (2013). China U. The Nation, 29 October.
http://www.thenation.com/print/article/176888/china-u. Accessed 4 August, 2014.
Sparks, C. (2014). Deconstructing the BRICS. International Journal ofCommunication, 8 (2014), pp. 392–418.
Sun, H. (2012). Internet Policy in China: A Field Study of Internet Cafes. Lanham,
MD: Lexington Books.
Taylor, P. M. (2011). Public Diplomacy on Trial? In A. Fisher & S. Lucas (eds.),
Trials of Engagement: The Future of U.S. Public Diplomacy. Leiden: Martinus
Nijhoff Publishers, pp. 19-32.
Thomas, N. (2004). 30 Years of Engagement. In N. Thomas (ed.), Re-Orienting
Australia-China Relations: 1972 to the Present. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University
Press, pp. 1-14.
Wang, D. (2012). Das westliche Meinungsmonopol knacken. KulturaustauschZeitschrift für Internationale Perspektiven, III/2012, p.71.
Wang, J. (2011). Introduction: China’s Search of Soft Power. In J. Wang (Ed.), SoftPower in China: Public Diplomacy through Communication (pp.1-18). New York,
Palgrave Macmillan.
Xin, X. (2012). How the Market is Changing China’s News: The Case of Xinhua
News Agency. Lanham, Lexington Books.
Zaharna, R. (2005). The Network Paradigm of Strategic Public Diplomacy. Foreign
Policy in Focus Policy Brief, 10(1), pp. 1-4.
Zaharna, R. (2007). The Soft Power Differential: Network Communication and Mass
Communication in Public Diplomacy. The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 2(3), pp.
213-228.

43

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Zaharna, R. (2010). Battles to Bridges. U.S. Strategic Communication and Public
Diplomacy after 9/11. New York, Palgrave Macmillan.
Zaharna, R. (2012). Analyzing China’s Confucius Institutes as a Network Public
Diplomacy Initiative. Paper prepared for International Studies Association, San Diego,
CA, April 1-4, 2012.
Zaharna, R. (2013, March 20). Culture Posts: Four Fallacies of Network Public
Diplomacy [Web log message]. Retrieved fromhttp://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/index.php/newswire/cpdblog_detail/culture_posts_four_fallacies_of_network_public_diplomacy/.
Zaharna, R., Arsenault, A. & Fisher, A. (2013). Relational, Networked andCollaborative Approaches to Public Diplomacy: The Connective Mindshift. New
York, Routledge.
Zhang Z. (2009). China’s Public Diplomacy Institution: Its Development, Challenges
and Prospects of Its Practices. IO Journal, 1(3), pp. 12-17.
Zheng, Y. (2008). Technological Empowerment: The Internet, State, and Society in
China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Zhao Q. (2012). How China Communicates: Public Diplomacy in a Global Age.
Beijing, Foreign Languages Press.

44

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Global Politics and a Cinema of Localism: Contemporary Taiwanese Film
Robert Hyland, Bader International Study Centre,
Queens University, Canada
Abstract
In the opening sequence of Wei Te-sheng’s Cape No. 7 (Hai Jiao Qi Hao) (2008), thelead character Aga smashes a guitar against a lamppost while shouting ‘Fuck you
Taipei.’ He then leaves the city on his motorbike and turning his back on themetropolis, heads down Highway Number One toward the southern county of
Pingtung. This is a brief moment of populist politics in the film, and Aga’s rejectionof a ‘false’ Taipei identity in favour of a more ‘true’ local identity relates tocontemporary Taiwan’s contested political identity.
The People’s Republic of China, which officially considers Taiwan a province of themainland, insists that the world deny Taiwan independent nation status ininternational venues, considering Taiwan as encompassed by China under a ‘One
China, Two Systems’ policy. In Cape No. 7, Aga’s cry becomes a means of denyingthat reductive imago of Taipei as province of China/Taipei as representative of all
Taiwan. By translocating its story to Pingtung’s ethnically diverse and linguisticallypolyglot local communities, the film articulates a comprehensive and encompassing
conception of Taiwan that is posed in opposition to Mandarin speaking ‘Chinese
Taipei’. The film promotes a Taiwanese identity that consists of a diversity ofpolitical and cultural forms: Han Chinese as well as Hokklo, Hakka, aboriginal andimmigrant. This paper explores the search for ‘the local’ in contemporary Taiwanese
populist cinema.
Keywords: Taiwan, sovereignty, nationalism, cinema studies, politics, localism,
zhonghua studies

45

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Introduction
In the opening sequence of Wei Te-sheng’s Cape No. 7 (Hai Jiao Qi Hao) (2008), thelead character Aga smashes a guitar against a lamppost while shouting ‘Fuck you
Taipei.’ He then leaves the city on his motorbike and turning his back on themetropolis, heads down Highway Number One toward the southern county of
Pingtung. This moment of rage against Taipei struck a chord with contemporary
Taiwanese, as it symbolized in the film the character’s splitting allegiance fromcosmopolitan Taipei to a more rural/local experience of Taiwaneseness. This is abrief moment of populist politics in the film, and Aga’s rejection of a ‘false’ Taipei
identity in favour of a more ‘true’ local identity relates to contemporary Taiwan’scontested political identity.
The People’s Republic of China, which officially considers Taiwan a province of themainland, insists that the world deny Taiwan independent nation status ininternational venues, considering Taiwan as encompassed by China under a ‘One
China, Two Systems’ policy. Lowell Dittmer (2004) discusses Taiwan’s contested
status:Taiwan’s case is distinctive, for despite having some of the features of a nation-state,its quest for sovereignty has been vigorously contested by the People’s Republic ofChina (PRC), which claims the island as a long-lost Chinese province.
Dittmer continues, citing Beijing as being ‘unhappy with Taiwan’s quest for national
identity” (475). Part of this denial of Taiwan’s quest for national cultural identity, is
to insist on the depiction of Taiwan in international venues as a subordinate provinceof China, called Chinese Taipei. Such was the case in the 2008 and 2012 Olympics
in Beijing and London respectively. Taiwan was even forced to substitute the flag of
the Republic of China (ROC) with a dedicated Chinese Taipei sports flag. The
imposed term, Chinese Taipei has the double function of reducing the entire island toa single city and then subsuming that city into greater Chinese national and cultural
identities, thereby denying Taiwanese cultural specificity. Under such rhetoric,
Taiwan becomes stripped of political national identity and cultural mythos.
In Cape No. 7, Aga’s cry becomes a filmic means of challenging the orthodox
presentation of Taipei as synecdochic of the entire country of Taiwan. Taiwanese
news media during the time of the Olympics became dominated by the debate
regarding Taiwan’s right to a national identity, and the population became agitated bythis diminishment of Taiwanese cultural autonomy in the international arenas of sportand pageantry. In Cape No. 7, Aga’s cry becomes a means of denying that reductive
imago of Taipei as province of China/Taipei as representative of all Taiwan. Bytranslocating its story to Pingtung’s ethnically diverse and linguistically polyglot local
communities, the film articulates a comprehensive and encompassing conception of
Taiwan that is posed in opposition to Mandarin speaking ‘Chinese Taipei’. The film
promotes a Taiwanese identity that consists of a diversity of political and culturalforms: Han Chinese as well as Hokklo, Hakka, aboriginal and immigrant. Throughits focus on the local experience of a diverse group of Taiwanese identities, the film
contests the enforced signification of Mainland China’s one nation, two systems
ideology as perpetuated by the totalizing Chinese Taipei moniker.

46

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Taiwan is currently at a crossroads, a not-quite-a nation, with two potential identities.
Domestic politics can be split neatly into two ‘camps:’ the Kuomintang (KMT) party
and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The two camps have differing
ideologies regarding Taiwan’s status, which can be roughly characterized in thefollowing way. The first, favoured by the KMT, is that Taiwan is a political entity
officially known as the Republic of China (ROC) which was politically separated
from the Mainland during the Communist revolution of 1949 and should beconsidered as historically and culturally contiguous with China. The second,favoured by the DPP, is that the island should be considered an autonomous politicalentity known as Taiwan, and which has a modern history and culture that is uniqueand distinct from that of Modern China. But the question of reunification is
problematized by cultural affiliation, and while the KMT has a propensity to favour
Mandarin Chinese cultural identification, the DPP has promoted a more pluralistic
conception of Taiwaneseness that includes Hakka, Hokklo and aboriginalidentifications. The film Cape No. 7 while avoiding overt politicization, through its
emphasis on the pluralism engendered in Taiwan’s local communities, ultimately
engages in a discourse of identity politics. The film, because of its popularity,
triggered a number of subsequent films that similarly investigate Taiwanese pluralism
by siting their stories in local communities outside of the Metropolis Taipei.
Cape No. 7, produced after the DPP era of Taiwan-centric campaigning, struck achord with local audiences and went on to become the highest grossing Taiwanesefilm. According to the Taipei Times, Cape No. 7 generated domestic revenue of 530
million Taiwanese dollars – approximately $17 million US (“Night Market Hero to
Wow China.” 2013, p. 2). The film failed to replicate that same success in either the
Mainland or Chinese communities of the diaspora, in large part, because much of thefilm’s politics seems to appeal predominantly to elements of Taiwanese society that
do not similarly appeal to other Chinese speaking or Chinese heritage communities. It
seems the film, in its attempt to articulate a specifically Taiwanese local experience,
failed to appeal to non-Taiwanese, Chinese language communities. The film’s
domestic success was big enough, however, that it triggered a small flurry of films
that similarly occur outside of Mandarin Chinese speaking Taipei and have a concern
for local issues among rural Taiwan’s culturally and linguistically heterogeneous
population.
Cape No. 7 and the several similar films produced in its wake, if not posing a case forpolitical sovereignty, belong to a movement that attempts to articulate Taiwanesenational/cultural identities as distinct and separate from those of the mainland. This
paper argues that an emphasis on pluralism and localism in Taiwanese culture is partof a discourse of localism that is in direct opposition to the global community’s
insistence on Taiwan’s undefined political status. As Beijing promotes a global mythof Taipei/Taiwan as part of a One China policy, this new cinema of localism is part ofa proto-nationalist Cinema that emphasizes a uniquely Taiwanese set of
national/cultural tropes derived from (shared) local experiences that exist outside of
the metropolis of Taipei. In many of these films, Taipei is seen as the centre of theKuomintang Sinicization policies and it is outside of the administrative capital that agrassroots campaign promoting Taiwanese local identities is being mounted. Muchcontemporary Taiwanese cinema, made in the aftermath of the administration offormer President Chen Shuei-Bian (2000-2008) and the Democratic Progressive
Party’s emphasis on Taiwanese localism, is highly political in its construction of47

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Taiwaneseness and articulation of Taiwan as a pluralistic cultural entity separate anddistinct from the mythic homogeneity promulgated by both mainland China and theprevious and contemporary Kuomintang governments. This article explores theimagined Taiwanese local identity as expressed through a series of films released after
Cape No. 7, most notably No Puedo Vivir Sin Ti (Bu Neng Meiyou Ni / Cannot Live
Without You) (2009) Monga (2010) and Night Market Hero (Ji Pai Ying Xiong)(2011).
Taiwan is Not a Sovereign Nation
On Saturday June 29, 2013, the former Premier of the Republic of China Hau Pei-tsun,
speaking at a forum organized by the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy addressed
the room and boldly declared that ‘Taiwan is not a sovereign nation,’ ultimately
rejecting the name Taiwan and insisting that unification between The People’s
Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan) was an inevitability. The
insistence that Taiwan is not a sovereign nation is a contentious one because Taiwan
is a de facto sovereign political entity with democratically elected leadership and asovereign economy. While Taiwan does indeed enjoy both economic and politicalautonomy, Taiwanese ‘nationness’ is problematized because Taiwan is not recognizedby the United Nations and is yet to achieve officially approved nation status within
the global community. Sigrid Winkler (2011) reports that Taiwan’s 23 million people
have only been granted observer status by the World Health Organization and do notcontribute to global health policy, as do other recognized nations (1). The Taiwanesepolitical identity is one that is routinely diminished in global fora, with mainland
China insisting on Taiwan being considered a special administrative region, but nonethe-less a province of China. Wang and Liu (2004) discuss the reunification question.
Unlike the Korean and the German models of unification in which each side treats theother substantially as an equal, the PRC model, known as ‘one country two systems,’
considers Taiwan only as a local government under Beijing’s command, like Hong
Kong and Macao, but one that will enjoy a high degree of autonomy. (568)
But this ambiguous political status is not only contested in international arenas, butalso by factions within the island itself and is regularly made manifest in charged
political debate, as evidenced by Hau’s contentious statements. Lowell Dittmer
argues there are three possible futures for democratic Taiwan:(1) The formation of a national identity as an independent and sovereign Taiwan,
eventually a Republic of Taiwan with its own constitution and flag.
(2) The retention of the identity of the Republic of China, tracing its legitimacy (andsovereignty) back to the 1911 Xinhai Revolution. While no longer claiming to be
the sole representative of ‘China’ in the world, this option continues to adhere tothe ‘one-China principle,’ in the sense that there is said to be only ‘one Chinese
nation’ but, for the time being, two separate states, whose reunification might
eventually be negotiated under mutually acceptable conditions.
(3) The status quo, which is no real ‘solution,’ but merely a protraction of the current
identity crisis, consisting of de facto autonomy without either reunification or
independence. (Dittmer, 2004, p. 477)
The Kuomintang government has long promoted the second option and has
similarly promulgated the one China two systems policy that posits eventual re-48

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

unification as not only a desired goal, but as an inevitability, a position vocalized
by Hau.
Hau, in his lecture continued, arguing that to call the Republic of China, Taiwan, andto insist upon its political sovereignty were both ‘forms of self-depreciation’(Shih,2013, p.1). In his speech, Hau argued that the world does not recognize Taiwan as asovereign nation, and that any such campaigning toward sovereignty would
undermine cross-strait unification, the end goal of the previous Kuomintang
administration under Chiang Kai-shek, and often feared by the Taiwanese nationalists
to be the final motive of the current KMT administration under President Ma YingJeou. Hau is quoted as stating “There is no democratic country in the world that has
two different democratic systems. When people of both sides of the Strait have aconsensus on their political system, unification will come to fruition naturally” (Shih,2013, p.1).
For the 95 year old Hau, his conception of the ROC is rooted in the ideology of theKuomintang party as promulgated by former dictator Chiang Kai-shek and his son
Chiang Ching-kuo that posited the People’s Republic of China under Mao Tse-tung
was an illegitimate government and that Taiwan was the seat of the ROC in exile.
Such an argument also posits both historical and cultural superiority of Han Chinese
over those who are born as indigenously Taiwanese, arguing that to promote
Taiwanese distinctiveness or to reject the one China principle are to ‘deprecate theself.’ Hau’s language is a language of hierarchies, in which Chinese politicalaffiliation and consequently Chinese cultural affiliation are superior to local identities,
thereby himself deprecating Taiwanese Aboriginal, Hakka or Hokklo identifications,
identifications that Cape No. 7, as does much contemporary Taiwanese cinema,celebrates. Hau’s is a conception of Taiwan that stems from the Chiang Kai-shek eraof an enforced Sinicization program.
For Hau and the KMT, the Republic of China is understood to be a nation that is
culturally and historically contiguous with that of the mainland, but this is not the casefor many Taiwanese. For many Taiwanese who speak the southern dialect Hokklo, aderivative of Hokkien and a language that is not homologous with Mandarin Chinese,
cultural identification comes from a Taiwan centric ideology. Further, Taiwan also
comprises Hakka, who migrated from Guangdong, and many aboriginal peoples who
do not identify with a Mandarin based Sinocentric ideology. Such a diversity ofpeople appears in the film Cape No. 7, with representative Hakka, Hokklo, Aboriginaland Christian characters. The film creates a contrastive conception of Taiwan that is
opposed to the reductive Sinocentrism promoted by Hau and old-guard KMT. While
Hau is correct in identifying the problem of Taiwan’s political status as being
contingent on approval by the global community – and indeed Taiwan does not enjoy
Nation status – his conceit of Taiwan being politically at one with China predicateshis (mis)conception of Taiwan as a cultural entity which is concomitantly
morphologically at one with the Mainland. His discourse is to actively deny the local
cultural distinctiveness of Taiwanese pluralism, pluralism which contemporary
Taiwanese cinema aggressively promotes through characterization and celebration of
local identity and custom.
Hau’s conception of Taiwanese nationalism as a form of ‘self-deprecation’ is one thathas become anachronistic and no longer conforms to the beliefs of the majority of the49

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

nation, but is one that is still held by many in the Kuomintang party. Under the
Democratic Progressive Party administration of former President Chen Shui-bian(2000-2008) Taiwan was swept by a nationalist movement that spread awareness ofthe need to create greater political and cultural sovereignty. Writing in that period,
Wang and Liu contend that desire to assert cultural and political independence from
China, a new Taiwanese national identity has been engendered, stating “this identity
rejects the idea that Taiwan and China are one nation and that all ethnic Chinese mustbe ruled by a single government within the same state.” (2004, p. 570)
In 2004, Wang and Liu conducted a survey of current trends in self-identification in
Taiwan with a telephone survey of 1, 115 respondents, asking the respondents
questions of self-identification. In their research, Wang and Liu conclude that while
many Taiwanese identify as culturally descended from Chinese, concluding that most
don’t identify as politically Chinese with only one fourth viewing Taiwanese culture
as distinct and different from Chinese culture (p. 575). However, despite the feelingof shared cultural heritage, the majority of Taiwanese do not feel politically affiliatedwith the mainland:
Despite intensive efforts to re-Sinicize the island’s residents in the 1948-1988 period,
very few of the island’s residents currently subscribe to the idea of greater Chinese
nationalism. The majority of the populace now sees the island as an independent
political entity from the Chinese mainland. More important, half of the island’s
residents now carefully distinguish their political identification from their culturalorientation. (p. 578)
While the majority see Taiwanese culture as descended from Chinese culture, aquarter of the population feels otherwise. And though most contemporary Taiwaneseare happy to acknowledge a common Chinese heritage, they identify themselves aspolitically Taiwanese. Further, there is a significant proportion of the society that
does not identify itself as of Chinese heritage at all, and instead identify as aboriginal
and who belong to one of the fourteen recognized aboriginal tribes. Wang and Liu
conclude their findings:
This research has shown that Taiwan-centered national identities, including both the
Taiwanese nationalist identity and the pro-Taiwan identity, are now dominant on theisland. While those who hold such identities are divided in views of their cultural
heritage, they all exhibit a psychological attachment to a political community known
as Taiwan that is separate from the Chinese mainland. More important, a substantial
number of island residents now believe they can be both Chinese culturally andTaiwanese politically. (Wang &Liu, 2004, p586)
Contesting Taiwan: One Nation, Two Systems / Separate Histories, Separate
Nations
Taiwanese political and cultural affiliations have been contested continuously forseveral centuries. Taiwan is a small island off the coast of mainland China, whose
indigenous people can trace their roots to present day Malay tribes-people. Ming-Yeh
T. Rawnsley (2011) writes that it wasn’t until the 13th century that Chinese
settlements appeared in Taiwan. The island was claimed by the Portuguese in the 16th
Century, who named the island Isla Formosa and who were followed by the Spanish

50

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

and the Dutch, all of whom were ejected in 1662 by Zheng Chenggong who washimself at war with the mainland Qing dynasty. Taiwan became a part of the Qing
Dynasty with the defeat of Zheng Chenggong in 1683, but did not become an official
province of China until 1875. Only twenty years after that, Taiwan was ceded to theJapanese in 1895, where it was administered by Japanese colonial rule for the next
fifty years (197). Prior to the arrival of the Japanese, the Chinese inhabitants of
Taiwan had emigrated from the Southern provinces and spoke a language derived
from Hokkien, a language that was not homologous with the official Mandarin of the
Qing court. With the Japanese colonization of Taiwan, the island became further
linguistically and culturally separated from Mainland China.
The Japanesemodernized agrarian Taiwan and brought with them industrial farming practices andheavy machinery. They also built technological and transportation networks andimposed Japanese education, language, customs and culture. In 1945 the Japanese
occupation came to an end and Taiwan was ceded to the Mainland, which had
recently come under Kuomintang rule lead by Chiang Kai-Shek. This transition,
however, was fraught with difficulties. Rawnsley describes disappointment in thepeople, when “the Nationalist government appointed people from the mainland toalmost all administrative and managerial posts in the provincial government”(Rawnsley, 2011, pp. 197-198). Wang and Liu (2004) characterize the transition to
Chinese Governance.
The mainland troops sent to take control of the island were viewed by the locals as
beggars and thieves. KMT officials in turn viewed the islanders with suspicion,owing to Japanese colonial rule of Taiwan for half a century. After all, they had beenon different sides during the war. By 1947, the animosity between the KMTgovernment and Taiwan’s residents culminated in an island wide uprising, known as
the ‘2/28 incident,’ during which thousands of local people were massacred by KMTtroops. This outbreak of violence solidified the local perception of the KMT as a newalien occupying force, and the ethnic cleavage between ‘mainlanders’ (waishengren)and ‘Taiwanese’ (benshengren) became the major division within society. (571)Compounding the local/mainland divide were linguistic and cultural differences. The
benshengren had been educated in Japanese as the official language, but in privateand domestic spheres spoke the southern Hokklo dialect; whereas the KMT military
personnel and government administrators, coming from the Mandarin speaking
mainland, could speak neither of the local languages. This ideological/culturaldivision was further compounded in 1949 with the KMT on the mainland being
defeated by the communist troops, resulting in Chiang Kai-shek leading an army oftwo million further weishengren to Taiwan to establish the seat of the exiled ROC
government in order to retrench and prepare their armies in the attempt to recover the
mainland. Wang and Liu argue:
Taipei’s ruling elite imposed harsh authoritarian rule, coupled with intense
propaganda efforts to ‘re-Sinicize’ local residents. A variety of measures were
enforced to foster a ‘greater China identity,’ in an attempt to make local residents
accept the view that both Taiwan and the Chinese mainland were parts of China andthat China was their motherland. (2004, p572)
Wang and Liu argue that among the measures of fostering China centred ideology
were the imposition of China-related curriculum in schools, a prohibition against the51

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014teaching and speaking of local languages and the restricting of television and radio
broadcasts to Chinese Language programming and were practices that continued until
the lifting of Martial Law in 1987.
Daniel Lynch makes reference to Chang Yen-hsien, who argued that the Sinicization
project had the further effect of peripheralizing the Taiwanese subject. Lynch writes“Chang argues that by means of political, economic, and cultural peripheralization,
the Qing, Japanese, and Republican Chinese rulers were able to cultivate precisely thepassive and ‘tragic’ mind-set among the Taiwanese” (2004, 513-514). The depictionof Taiwaneseness as secondary to China and Japan, it was feared, would inculcate andindoctrinate the Taiwanese into a hegemonic mindset that would cause willing
subjectification to further colonial interests. The Sinicization propaganda campaign
was wide-spread and far reaching and such Sino-centric attitudes are still evident
today in certain factions of the contemporary KMT, as evidenced by the former
Premier Hau Pei-tsun’s speech to the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, that any
ideology other than a China-centric belief was to self deprecate.
With the lifting of Martial Law in 1987 and the transition to democracy, cameincreased debate about identity politics. Wang and Liu report ‘When Lee Teng-hui
became the first native-born president in 1988 and later the chairman of the KMT,
exiled advocates of Taiwanese independence were allowed to return to the island andopenly espouse an independent Taiwan” (2004, p.572). The increased debate about apolitically autonomous Taiwan triggered debates about cultural identity and minority
rights. The researchers state that to “maximize electoral votes” and “mitigate theethnic tension” KMT politicians advocated communalism and harmony with simple
sloganeering, championing the ‘collectivity of common fate’ and ‘the rising new
nation’ (xinxing minzu) (572), concluding that “This discourse integrated all residents
on the islands into the more ethnically inclusive identity of ‘the new Taiwanese’ (xin
Taiwanren)” (Wang & Liu, 2004, p. 572). This new Taiwaneseness was promulgatedby the newly formed DPP, who targeted the disenfranchised and incorporated
Taiwanese cultural pluralism into its electoral campaigning, arguing that Taiwan’s
pluralism and history are independent of China.
The policies of de-Sinicization eventually made their way into education reform in
the1995, with a committee approving a new high school history curriculum titled‘Knowing Taiwan’ (Renshi Taiwan) (Lynch 2004 p. 516), in which ‘Greater Han
chauvinism’ was replaced with a Taiwan focussed curriculum (2004, p.516). Thesechanges to curriculum challenged the primacy of the mainland and inevitably createda Taiwan centric ideology and local identity founded on minority discourses including
Taiwaneese, Hakka and aboriginal concerns. Lynch makes reference to Lee Chiao,
President of the Taiwan Pen association, who implores the Taiwanese people reject
Sinocentrism, jettisoning it outright in order for a new Taiwanese culture to be erected
in its place. “The primacy of this task results from the fact that accepting Chinese
culture by definition peripheralizes and dwarfs (aihua) Taiwan,” (Lynch, 2004, p.
520). While Lee’s insistence on the total eradication of Sinocentrism is not shared by
the majority of the Taiwanese as demonstrated by Wang and Liu’s survey, Lee’s
insistence that Taiwan invest in cultural and ideological distinctiveness had aprofound effect and much contemporary Taiwanese cinema is invested in cultural
excavation and promoting indigenous heritage and cultural product.

52

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Lynch argues that for Taiwanese nationalists, through the process of imagining andarticulating Taiwan as a culturally autonomous entity, it would follow that Taiwan
would become a politically autonomous entity and nation status would inevitably be
granted. Lynch (2004) argues:
The Taiwanese nationalist project is uniquely ‘Post-Andersonian’ in that its
proponents pursue their quest in the transformed intellectual terrain that developed in
the wake of the 1983 publication of Benedict Anderson’s contemporary classic,
Imagined Communities. In this extremely influential book, Anderson argued that nonation is essential and all are constructed through processes of collective imagining.
Such a conception of nation-building gives politically engaged Taiwanese
intellectuals and other activists’ unusually strong self-confidence in their ability totransform Taiwan into a bona fide nation-state. (p. 513)
In short, if nations are themselves an imaginary construct, the Taiwanese should be
able to imagine themselves into a national identity. Through harnessing a population
with a shared conception of imagined Taiwaneseness as culturally blended, diverse orpluralistic; in direct opposition to the sinocentric policies of the KMT, the DPP hoped
to galvanize support for a campaign of political sovereignty. The current film
movement is exactly such a project to construct a contrastive iteration of
Taiwaneseness as culturally distinct and separate from the Mainland, throughfocussing on local identities and the pluralism of the cultural landscape outside of
Sinocentric Taipei. Indeed, Lynch makes reference to Shih Cheng-feng, a politicalscientist, who goes so far as to state “the Taiwanese Nation (Taiwan minzu) refers to
all people who love Taiwan, identify with Taiwan, and are willing to struggle for
Taiwan regardless of race, ethnicity, or provincial background; the stress is on loving
Taiwan, not on the blood and cultural ties of ‘the Chinese Nation’ (Han minzu)”(Lynch, 2004, 526). This sentiment appears clearly in the film Cape No. 7, which has
Taiwanese, Hakka, Hokklo, and Mandarin speakers as well as the character Tomoko,a Japanese expatriate who is seen initially working on a photo-shoot, barking orders in
English to a group of Anglo-European models working in Hengchun. Through thecourse of the film, all the characters learn to love Taiwan and the film ends with aconcert that is itself a spectacle of pluralism and cultural blending, incorporating
indigenous instruments, Japanese and Taiwanese folk music, and the band’s diverse
people are brought together in song. The film posits that it is precisely this pluralismthat comprises the New Taiwan.
No Puedo Vivir Sin Ti tells the story of a Kaohsiung single father Li Wu-Hsiung, adock worker and diver who raises his daughter outside of ‘legitimate’ society. In
order to register himself as the girl’s father, he requires the signature of the motherwho had disappeared many years earlier. Li makes several unfruitful visits to both the
Kaohsiung and Taipei registration and council offices to plead his case. Faced withthe prospect of his child being taken by social services, Li attempts a protest
demonstration and climbs a bridge that spans a busy intersection. He threatens tojump off the bridge, taking the child with him, if the administrative blocks aren’t
removed. He is arrested and jailed while the child is taken to be raised by social
services. The film ends with a coda in which Li spends two years searching for the
girl. The film ends at the point of their reuniting.

53

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Despite the apparent melodramatic narrative, the film is highly political in its
construction of alternative Taiwanese local identities. Li is a Hakka who lives on
Cijin Island in the southern county of Kaohsiung. His existence within Taiwanesesociety is continually being tested and he exists on the periphery of approved‘Taiwaneseness.’ As a part of the Hakka community on harbour edge of Kaohsiung
he is situated on both the physical and cultural periphery of Taiwanese society; but
this also causes linguistic liminality. He speaks both the Hakka and Hokklo
languages used in his local neighbourhood, but his Mandarin Chinese is limited
creating a further barrier to his ability to navigate the bureaucratic systems of official
Taiwanese society, symbolized by his fruitless meetings in Taipei. He lives in an
illegal squat and because of the nature of his seasonal and occasional work he iseconomically deprived, forced to live on the margins of fiscal security. This
peripherality threatens to pass to the future generation through his daughter, who isunregistered and faces a similar future of linguistic, cultural and economic liminality.
But the film becomes highly political in the construction of Taipei as officious,
restrictive and unsympathetic to the needs and concerns of Taiwan’s diverse
population of local peoples: Taipei is constructed as insensitive and ultimately failingin its adherence to ‘Policy’, policy which doesn’t recognize or fully appreciate thecomplexity of contemporary Taiwanese with multiple competing cultural, linguistic or
political identifications.
The film opens by establishing several binary oppositions that are fundamental to theunfolding of narrative events. The film begins with an off-screen voice, speaking in
officious Mandarin providing a television breaking-news broadcast. The announcer
states that in Taipei a man is holding a child hostage on a bridge. The image track,
however, shows a diverse crowd of workers in the southern city of Kaohsiung,smoking and watching the news broadcast on a small television. They begin
commenting on the Mandarin news broadcast. In contrast to the audio track, the men
are speaking in Hokklo and making bets on whether or not the man will jump. The
film then cuts to the bridge in Taipei as he prepares to jump, as reporters andspectators mill about watching the terrified man shouting ‘this is an unfair society’.
While the scene is unfolding, the sound fades to temple drums beating and the film
then cuts to black and a title card stating ‘Kaohsiung, two weeks earlier.’ The film
fades into a scene in Kaohsiung where Li and another man performing a trance danceas part of a ritual ceremony to bless a new boat. The two men self-flagellate while
dancing in a trance mode as fireworks explode against their bare skin. Through theirdance, they channel the spirits of gods who have come to bless the boat. The opening
immediately sets a number of oppositions: Taipei is shown as a middle class media
capital, while Kaohsiung comprises powerless working class observers; the Mandarinnews broadcast is contrasted with the Hokklo news receivers; and there is also acontrast in the two scenes between diverse forms of knowledge – there is the
television broadcast as a knowledge dissemination system, contrasted with the local
knowledge inherent in the spectacle of the religious ceremony.
The performed trance dance is a significant moment in the film. While Li ispowerless to navigate the official channels of registration and law in Taipei – his pleas
to council offices and social workers fail to be heard, and he has difficulty
understanding their official mandarin, further obstructing his progress – the boat
blessing ritual sequence demonstrates Li’s powerful local knowledge. As part of afishing community, the deadly threats of the ocean and of the Goddess Matsu are held

54

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

in high esteem. Li’s ability, through dance and knowledge of local custom, allows
him to channel the gods and appropriately bless the ship ensuring for the fishingcommunity, safety and prosperity. His is a local knowledge of religion and custom,
but one that is alien to the Sinicized administrators of ‘legitimate’ knowledge inbureaucratic Taiwan. Indeed, they don’t ‘speak the same language,’ literally or
metaphorically: His is a world of ritualized custom, cultural practice and magic
whereas theirs is a world of bureaucracy and law, and these two Taiwanese existences– urban versus local – are here proven fundamentally incompatible.
These cultural divides becomes crystallized in the figure of the daughter, who thoughraised by the father does not understand the Hakka language. Li acknowledges to aformer classmate Lin, a Hakka who is now a government Legislator, that he stopped
using that language as it no longer has any function in his daily life. Further, when hespeaks to his daughter, she responds to his Hokklo speech with Mandarin Chinese.
Her ability to speak Mandarin is contrasted with the father, who has a child’scommand of Mandarin – he has no difficulty understanding the daughter’s responses– who is often bewildered when encountering the bureaucratic language of the social
workers and councillors’ obfuscating discourse. As part of a generation that is
schooled in Mandarin, the bilingual daughter intuits that the Mandarin language ofsociety has more purchase than the Hokklo language of her domestic space, alanguage that becomes a private but near obsolete discourse between her and herfather. The film suggests that like Hakka has become for Li a defunct language,
Hokklo too is threatened, reduced to a language of the market place but with little
currency in the increasingly industrialized world of Modern Taiwan and it too is
becoming a defunct language for the future generation. Significantly, when thedaughter is seized by the social workers, she stops talking and becomes a mute. This
becomes symbolic resistance, as the daughter understands that Mandarin is thelanguage of the bureaucratic system that had oppressed her father and broken her
family, and by refusing to speak she refuses to participate in the culture of thebourgeois oppressor. Her muteness becomes a form of political resistance against theforces that are deaf to the needs of Taiwan’s culturally diverse population. By tellingstories of minority oppression, the film becomes a part of the Taiwanese localism
movement. It is through highlighting Taipei’s deafness to the needs of Taiwan’s nonMandarin speaking communities (symbolically through the complacent system of
bureaucracy) that the film resists Sinocentric policies. The film poses a case forreconsidering Taiwan as envisioned by proponents of the One China policy, a policy
which inappropriately denies that such pluralism in Taiwan exists. The film suggeststhat such a one China Sinocentric ideology denies the Taiwanese cultural specificity
that the sovereignty movement campaigns for.
Is Taiwanese Cinema a National Cinema when there is no Nation?
Several writers have characterized Taiwanese cinema as a National cinema. Douglass
Kellner (1998), writing about the product of Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang and Ang
Lee, describes New Taiwan Cinema as ‘a Cycle of national cinema,’ arguing that thefilms rebel against genre cinema and attempt to ‘explore the realities and problems ofcontemporary Taiwanese society (101). Mette Hjort and Duncan Petrie, in their work
The Cinema of Small Nations, include a chapter on Taiwan, although they preface
their definition, stating:55

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

In this case, one has to qualify the terms ‘nation’ or ‘national’ with quotation marks.
Taiwan may function, act and in many ways even thrive like a small ‘nation’ should,
but most countries in the world do not recognize the island as an independent nationout of geopolitical obsequiousness towards its neighbouring behemoth, the People’s
Republic of China (PRC). (2007, p. 144)
They argue that the films of Taiwan do reflect a national character and are concernedwith local identity and identity politics in a way that is akin to a national cinema, but
are not particularly comfortable in their definition and are reluctant to emphasize
Taiwanese ‘nationness’ because of its contested political status. Zhang Yinjing uses
Crofts’ typology of national cinemas in an attempt to highlight the difficulty of
categorizing Chinese language cinema.
Chinese cinema, like Australian cinema, ‘is a messy affair,’ not the least because
Chinese cinema is ‘fundamentally dispersed’ – historically, politically, territorially,
culturally, ethnically and linguistically. The messy state of Chinese cinema meansthat the question of the ‘national’ will not go away if we substitute ‘national cinema’with ‘nation-state cinema’. Indeed the association with the nation-state is precisely
what makes the term ‘Chinese cinema’ problematic. (p. 2)
Zhang’s work subsumes Taiwanese cinema into a greater Chinese cultural practice,and diminishes and denies Taiwanese cultural and political autonomy, but hisargument is sound in that Taiwan is a defacto, but contested, national identity but its
cinema does not conform to the various codified definitions or characterizations ofnational cinema as do other conventional National cinemas. For Zhang, it is precisely
because Taiwan, and for that matter China too have contested political boundaries thatchange and undermine their ‘nation-ness. Jason Ho Ka-Hang (2012) goes further,
problematizing ‘Asianness’ too as a contested, poorly defined categorization.
It is not easy to define Asianness, not to mention the term itself is subject to ongoingrefinement and redefinition. Alongside changes, globalization, and Asianness, thenation and nationalism are two very much related terms that are subject to constant reexamination. (p. 2)
Again, for Ho it is precisely because of the various re-negotiations of what constitutes
a national identity and even what constitutes Asianness itself, that analysis of
Taiwanese cinema as belonging to specific cultural or political movements or
identifications becomes problematic. He continues, stating “The newness inscribed incontemporary East Asian films precisely overrides and goes beyond the national
cinema model, and trespasses or even transgresses the national and postcolonial
discourse” (Ho, 2004, p. 2). Ho bypasses the problematic nature of “the National,”arguing contemporary Taiwanese cinema to be a Post-National cinema, a cinema
which looks beyond questions of the national to examine indigenous and minority
concerns, issues that he argues are evident in Cape No. 7. “I assert that what is
emerging is something less nationalistic/political and more humanistic/personalized in
the form of belonging to a community” (2004, p. 2). In Ho’s conception, the postnational text “dialogues with nationalism and reacts critically to globalization” andsuch responses “forge alternative approaches” and evoke “a different kind of
individuality” (2004, p. 2). Ho argues that the local identity is the post-national self,
and that ‘if the national is beginning to fall apart, the local is able to recapture its

56

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

importance and gain substantial space in the search of a communal identity –Taiwaneseness in our case” (Ho, 2004, p.p. 2-3).
Ho is very astute in his reading of Cape No. 7, and in the global context of Postnationalism, such sentiments are certainly felt within contemporary Taiwanese cinema:
but Ho is too quick to conceive Taiwanese cinema as looking for the breakup of thenation. Rather, Taiwanese cinema should be considered a proto-nationalist cinema,
which, borrowing the ideologies of localism inherent in post-nationalism, is part of acultural sovereignty movement. In short, the contemporary cinema movement seems
to view localism as Taiwanese. While it is looking to detach from the greater Pan
Chinese nation and calling for the breakup of the ROC: it is hoping to re-constituteitself as a sovereign national identity (Taiwan). It is precisely a form of prenationalist cinema, in that it is calling for a redefinition of the Taiwanese nation,
detached from pan-Chinese cultural chauvinism and fixated on questions of local
identity as part of a reconstituted Taiwaneseness that is separate and distinct from the
ROC’s conception of the one China two systems policy. It is a cinema that is part of agreater movement which, as Daniel Lynch argues, is attempting to imagine for itself a
new national identity – new Taiwaneseness. While Ho’s argument and reasoning arecorrect – that is, Taiwanese cinema is certainly informed by the discourse of Postnationalism, and contemporary Taiwanese cinema is contesting ‘Taiwaneseness’ – itcannot be seen as a post-national cinema (a cinema that moves beyond nationness),because a newly envisioned nationhood, nationhood that encompasses non-sinocentric
history and culture, still remains the end goal. This contemporary Taiwanese cinema
of localism is not hoping to maintain the status quo, that is, to ignore the question ofsovereignty, but rather is derived from the post Chen Shui-bian nationalist era and isincreasingly attempting to envision and articulate the Taiwanese nation as opposed tothat of The Republic of China.
Proto-Nationalism in a Taiwanese Cinema of Localism
The night market has become a common trope in a number of contemporary popularTaiwanese films. The night market is an important site in contemporary Taiwaneseculture, as it is a familiar space to contemporary Taiwanese, but also becomes a filmic
shorthand for cultural blending. It is in the night market that Hokklo, Mandarin,
Hakka and Aboriginal cultures meet and mingle, and it is particularly among the foodstalls that night markets express Taiwanese cultural pluralism, with aboriginal, Hakka,
Taiwanese and Chinese foodstuffs being offered in equal measure. The film Monga,
set in the summer of 1987, unfolds in the old Temple/market quarter of Monga, Taipei.
While the film occurs within the city of Taipei, the setting of a 1980s working classquarter becomes a nostalgic local space, inhabited by a diverse mix of marginalized
peoples, who discover security in gang life. The period setting of 1987 is significant,as it marks a symbolic moment of change from the martial law era and the dynastic
rule of Chiang Ching-kuo, to Taiwanese fledgling democracy. The period marks amoment imbued with the potential to detach from old guard Chinese cultural
superiority as exemplified by imposed rule under KMT dictatorship, to democratic
local politics. However, the film provides a new external threat: The Taiwanesegangs of the Monga district are threatened by a new gang of wealthy and organized
Chinese mainlanders with links to the Triad drug trade, symbolically substituting
political Chinese hegemony as embodied by Chiang Ching-Kuo with economic
Chinese hegemony, embodied by Shanghainese drug money.

57

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

The film begins with a depiction of the Monga district as a rough and tumbleneighbourhood of diverse people from different ethnicities, though predominantly
Hokklo speakers, who have minor squabbles and fights between competing gangs thathave subdivided the Monga district into separate territories. The film starts with a
new boy, the weishengren (mandarin speaking) Wenze, being invited into the Monga
temple gang after he successfully fights off a group of bullies. The gang arethemselves a group of benshengren (local Taiwanese) misfits: Monk, the son of a
Buddhist devotee; Dragon, the mixed race son of the leader of the Temple gang; A-Po
the son of a local butcher; and monkey, the son of a grocer. The film begins with abucolic evocation of the past and a presentation of the streets of Monga as a cozywarren of temples, restaurants and shops, where the local community come together
to live and to settle their differences. While the society is steeped in a culture ofviolence and perpetual fistfights, such ructions are seen as a means of solidifying
brotherhood and testing and confirming loyalties among the community. The gangs
have learned there are rules to maintaining an uneasy peace between the different
factions and there is harmony in this violence. The uneasy status quo is challenged
with the coming of a new gang of weishengren led by the Mandarin speaking Grey
Wolf who has close links to the mainland drugs industry and introduces guns into theneighbourhood.
The film reaches a crisis with the Chinese gangsters, hoping to consolidate power
throughout the Monga district, make the myriad local gangs subordinate to theirambitions. Grey Wolf plants seeds of sedition among the different gangs and the film
ends with all out war and bloodshed. Even the members of the Temple gang aren’t
immune to Grey Wolf’s manipulations and they too fight amongst themselves. Whilerough and with ructions the Monga district had been stable when left to its own
devices and had found a solution that allowed for the pluralistic local society tomaintain stability. However, it is with the introduction of the Chinese gangsters whoseek domination with the importation of their ideologies of divide and rule that causes
the film to inevitably end in tragedy. The message could not be clearer: Taiwan was
better left to self rule and to sort out its own problems (as rough as that may have been)than with the intervention and imposition of Chinese rule that has no consideration for
local needs and promotes dissention and bloodshed among the population. The film
becomes a symbolic echo of the entrance of postwar Kuomintang rule and the 2/28
incident, but it can also be seen as allegorical for contemporary Taiwan which too isin an uneasy moment of status quo, with regular within the population and with thelooming threat of Chinese intervention. The film seems to ask, what new bloodshedwould reunification bring?
A final example of indigeneity in the contemporary Taiwanese cinema of localism isfrom the 2011 film Night Market Hero. This film too is set in a night market, which
again is constructed as a bucolic site of cultural blending. Predominantly composedof benshengren, harmony is at first threatened with the introduction into theircommunity of a young female weishengren middle class reporter who is immediately
coded as an outsider and unwanted interloper into the benshengren cultural space.
After a disastrous accident, she is forced to work in the night market as a form ofcommunity service, where she learns that she too can become a vital part of thispluralistic society and that she is in fact a welcome and productive member of thecommunity, echoing Shih Cheng-feng’s statement that “the Taiwanese Nation refers
to all people who love Taiwan, identify with Taiwan, and are willing to struggle for

58

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Taiwan, regardless of race, ethnicity, or provincial background” (Shih in Lynch, 2004,
p. 526). The night market is seen as a site where the diversity of the Taiwanese
population can all come and participate in Taiwanese culture, weishengren andbenshengren alike. In the night market, there are two local cooks, Madam Fried
Chicken and Madam Beef Steak who are in constant battle for epicurean supremacy,
peppering their language with Chinese, Taiwanese and Japanese idioms. Both are
represented by a popular Taiwanese street snack and both consider their food to be
representative of the best of Taiwan. There is a brief sequence that relates tocontemporary China-Taiwan relations. A tour group of Chinese nationals visits thenight market (Taiwan had only recently approved visas for Chinese tourism) toexperience an authentic Taiwanese environment. The workers of the night market
fawn all over the Chinese guests, falling over themselves and trying to impress andplease the Chinese visitors, hoping for the Chinese to try the cuisine which they all
consider to be the best that Taiwan has to offer and to empty the deep pockets of theChinese tourists. Madam Beef Steak and Madam Fried Chicken in particular insist
the Chinese customers try their product. The Chinese state ‘You Taiwanese are sohonest in your business practice’ (a statement that the night market workers are happy
to agree with, although they are aware they can at times stretch the limits of that‘honesty’). The Chinese customers are encouraged to try the peppered steak first, andthey marvel approvingly over its deliciousness, stating ‘it’s unlike anything that canbe found in China.’ They are then encouraged to try Madam Chicken’s fried Chicken
which they duly taste, at which point the Chinese diners fall into a dreamy state while
the sound track plays a nationalist song with the lyrics ‘Taiwan’s great, Taiwan’s truly
great! Taiwan’s such a great island, blessed with the warm ocean breeze and the great
ocean wave and the beauty of A-li Mountain.”
The night market workers then load the Chinese up with armfuls of Taiwanese
products to take with them on their return to the mainland. In this sequence, China
becomes an invited guest that discovers the beauty and quality of Taiwanese cultural
product and cultural distinctiveness (‘There is nothing like this in China’), where even
the Chinese visitors consider Taiwan a foreign nation. The film looks to a future inwhich China and Taiwan can interact with each other as two nations do, with the
Chinese guests enjoying what Taiwan has to offer, but ultimately afterwards, goinghome. The Chinese guests are coded as foreign, unlike the Taiwanese locals, who arecoded as pluralistic and diverse but united by their deep love of Taiwan in its totality.
The film becomes part of a movement of Taiwan centric cultural identity politics,
promoting and developing Taiwanese pluralism as a cogent and unified politicalentity once again encompassed by the umbrella of loving Taiwan.
Contemporary Taiwan is still in a period of status quo, being neither an autonomous
political entity, nor a part of greater China. That liminal position must come to an end.
Increasingly, Taiwanese cinema seems to be looking to put the Republic of China as apolitical entity, to the past, and focus on Taiwan-centric political and cultural
identities. This new populist cinematic movement, borrowing the politics of post
nationalism and its focus on localism, is in fact a proto-nationalist cinema, imagining
for Taiwan a coherent independent cultural identity founded on the Democratic
Progressive Party’s emphasis on pluralism and localism, and in opposition to theprevious Kuomintang era of enforced Sinicization, an ethos which continues to haunt
the KMT to this day.

59

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

References
Dai, Leon. (Director). (2009). No Puedo Vivir Sin Ti (Bu Neng Meiyou Ni / Cannot
Live Without You) [Motion Picture]. Taiwan.
Dittmer, L. (2004). Taiwan and the Issue of National Identity. Asian Survey. 44(4),475-483.
doi: 10.1525/as.2004.44.4.475
Hjort, M., &Petrie, D. (2007). The Cinema of Small Nations. Edinburgh, GreatBritain: Edinburgh University Press.
Ho Ka-Hang, J. (2012). Enlivening New Taiwan Cinema: In search of
Taiwaneseness and the Postnational. Tresspassing Nation: An Online Journal of
Trespassing Art, Science and Philospophy. ISSN: 2147-2134
Kellner, D. (1998). Exploring Society and History: The New Taiwanese Cinema.
Jump Cut, 42. 101-115.
Lynch, D. (2004). Taiwan’s Self-Conscious Nation-Building Project. Asian Survey.
44(4), 513-514.
doi: 10.1525/as.2004.44.4.513
Niu, Doze. (Director). (2010). Monga [Motion Picture]. Taiwan.
Rawnsley, Ming-Yeh T. (2011). Cinema, Historiography, and Identities in Taiwan:
Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s A City of Sadness. Asian Cinema, 196-213.
doi: 10.1386/AC.22.2.196_1
Shih Hsiu-chuan. (2013, June 30). Taiwan is Not a Sovereign Nation. Taipei Times.
Page 1 -2. Web
Retrieved fromhttp://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2013/06/30/2003565974
Staff Writer, CNA. (2011, July 8). Night Market Hero to Wow China. Taipei Times,.
Page 2. Web.
Retrieved fromhttp://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2011/07/08/2003507711
Wang T. Y. & Liu I. (2004). Contending Identities in Taiwan. Implications for
Cross-Strait Relations. Asian Survey. 44(4), 568-590.
doi: 10.1525/as.2004.44.4.568
Wei Te-sheng (Director). (2008). Cape No. 7, (Hai Jiao Qi Hao), [Motion Picture].
Taiwan.
Winkler, Sigrid. (2012). Biding Time: The Challenge of Taiwan’s International
Status. Brookings. Taiwan US Quarterly Analysis. 7. Web.
Retrieved fromhttp://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/06/20-taiwan-un-winkler

60

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Winkler, Sigrid. (2012). Taiwan’s U.N. Dilemma: To Be or Not To Be. Brookings.
Taiwan US Quarterly Analysis. (9). Web.
Retrieved From
http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/06/20-taiwan-un-winkler
Yeh, Tien-lun. (Director). (2011). Night Market Hero, (Ji Pai Ying Xiong) [Motion
Picture]. Taiwan.
Zhang, Yingjin. (2004). Introduction: National Cinema and China. Chinese National
Cinema. London, England: Routledge.

61

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

62

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

“Gotta Catch ‘Em All!” Pokémon, Cultural Practice and Object Networks
Jason Bainbridge, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
Abstract
The Pokémon franchise is over seventeen years old, a networked assemblage ofheterogeneous elements (manga, gaming, toys, anime) that is also constitutive of new
knowledges around both consumerism and commodification. This paper explores how
all of the elements of this franchise, from the brand, to the various media platforms, tothe Pokémon trainers, to the pocket monsters themselves (the non-human objects) as
well as the designers and the consumers (the humans) function as objects in theconstruction of a social network. In so doing it seeks to understand not only how the
franchise functions but also how the objects in this franchise (particularly the nonhuman Pokémon creatures and trainers) work in tandem to connect audiences to very
specifically Japanese ideas of the “national imagination” (folklore, spiritualism, thesupernatural) and environmental concerns (biodiversity, the struggle between
conservation and containment) through the larger consumerist framework ofacquisition and play structured as cultural practice. In this way, it is argued, that the
Pokémon object network functions as a gateway into Japanese culture more broadly
and a channel through which Japanese culture is itself mainstreamed internationally.
Keywords: Japanese culture - Pokémon – franchise – networks – popular culture

63

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

“I raised Pokémon, which is why I feel a particular bond with it”(Kubo Masakazu of Shogakukan Inc, responsible for turning the Pokémon
Game Boy into manga and overseeing the anime television and movie
versions, qtd Allison, 2006, p. 193)
Introduction
In the January 2005 issue of Nature, Pier Paolo Pandolfi of the Memorial SloanKetterling Cancer Centre in New York referred to the POK erythroid myeloid
ontogeniuc gene that causes cancer by the contraction “Pokémon” (Maeda 2005). The
metaphor was fairly explicit - the “Pokémon” gene was thought to act as a switch forcancer, responsible for the proliferation of cancer through surrounding cells. Similarly
in 2005, Pokémon seemed just as prolific. As Hatakeyama and Kubo note, in theirfive-hundred-page book on Pokémon, “in the sense of its international commonness
and the spectacular speed as well as breadth of its worldwide circulation, we could
say that the phenomenon of Pokémon is unprecedented in human history”(Hatakeyama & Kubo 2000, p. 8). Indeed, by March 31 2013, more than 172 Million
units of the video game alone have been sold since its debut in 1996. The total
number of licensed and merchandised pocket monsters (Nintendo’s Poketto Monsuta,
abbreviated to Pokémon, that give the franchise its name) appearing in cartoons, toys,
comics and clothing have increased from 151 to over 700.
Naturally where Pokémon went many would follow, rivals and imitators who adapted
the idea of a world where wild creatures exist to be collected, trained and battle with
one another in different ways. Perhaps most importantly then, the incredible successof Pokémon in the West has acted as something of an “on-switch” for more anime
products to be screened on American, British and Australian television, from Sailor
Moon, Gundam and Teknoman to that cycle of Pokémon-imitators Digimon, Monster
Rancher, Duel Masters, Bakugan and Monsuno, each with their own attendant
licensing and merchandising campaigns.
Distressed by the flood of “Pokémon causes cancer” headlines that followed therelease of Nature, Pokémon USA threatened legal action and the contraction was
dropped, with the gene being referred to by the less-catchy zbtb7 in all subsequentmaterials (Dennison 2005). However, this idea of Pokémon as a living network, an
on-switch, aggressively expanding and proliferating throughout the mediasphere,
remains a potent one that I want to explore in this paper.
Anne Allison has previously suggested that “encased in the form of popular culture,[Pokémon] is a vehicle of and for the national imagination transmitted through acurrency of superpowers and lovable characters” (Allison 2006, p. 194). This isbecause the franchise is built on the concept of monozukuri “literally ‘thing-making’”
but defined in more detail by Roland Kelts as “a primary emphasis on tiny details, alove of production for its own sake, and a constant drive to find innovative ways ofcrafting the product itself” (Kelts 2007, p. 89). These ‘non-human’ ‘things’ operate as
some of the most important elements in the social network that Pokémon constructs.
This is because both the development of and engagement with the franchise (throughplay, spectatorship or some other form of consumption) is necessarily informed by theidea of sodateru (child raising) referenced in the quote that heads this paper: “anability to relate personally, almost spiritually, with a product/mass-produced

64

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

imaginary” (Allison 2006, p. 193). This ‘personal, almost spiritual’ relationship with amass-produced imaginary is what constitutes Pokémon’s social network, connecting
both Pokémon’s creators and its audience not only to the national imagination ofJapan itself but also to the particular concerns of that nation, its relationship to theenvironment and its larger place in the world.
All of the elements of the Pokémon franchise then, from the brand, to the various
media platforms, to the Pokémon trainers, to the pocket monsters themselves (thenon-human objects) as well as the designers and the consumers (the humans) function
as objects in the construction of this social network. Building on the arguments that
Pokémon develops “multiliteracies” for democratic participation (Cope & Kalantzis
2000), or teaching through “learning how to learn” (original emphasis, Buckingham& Sefton-Green 2003, p. 395), I want to understand not only how the franchisefunctions but also how the objects in that franchise (particularly the “non-human”
Pokémon creatures and trainers) work in tandem to plug audiences into the national
concerns of Japan. I want to explore how this “vehicle” functions and I suggest that
one of the ways in which the Pokémon franchise’s “currency of superpowers andlovable characters” can be analysed is as an object network of “cultural practice”(Buckingham and Sefton-Green 2003, p. 379).
Pokémon’s networked assemblage
Pokémon is currently seventeen years old. On the eve of its tenth anniversary in 2006
Pokémon, Inc. had made $25 billon internationally “the annual GDP of Bulgaria”(Kelts 2007, p. 89). But even more important than the profits it generates is “theinfluence Pokémon exerted in the domain of cultural production”, for as was noted inJapan itself, the success of Pokémon was an indication that Japan was on “the road tobecoming a character empire” (Kyarakuta okoku no michi qtd Kelts 2007, p. 89).
Pokémon co-constructs and affects the creation of new social-technologicalconfigurations where the franchise itself is an assemblage of heterogeneous elements(manga, gaming, toys, anime) as well as constitutive of new knowledges aroundconsumerism and commodification.
In this way, Pokémon functions not just as cross-media merchandising or ‘integrated
marketing’ (“Pokémania” 1999, Kinder 1991, Sieter 1993) but rather as a truly
immersive multimedia franchise, an exemplar of what Henry Jenkins terms“transmedia storytelling” running across computer games, anime, manga, toys andtrading cards. By way of example, the first Pokémon television series sets up theevents of the first Pokémon movie and the second Pokémon movie introduces newelements that are featured in subsequent seasons of the TV series (Pokémon GS) and
the Game Boy releases Pokémon Gold and Silver (Patten 338). Pokémon therefore
develops as a fully functioning multiplatform ecosystem, developing complexity
through the addition of new layers of narrative, new challenges in gaming and newmerchandising opportunities. The network grows as a child would grow, plugging theaudience into an increasingly larger and more complex networked assemblage ofartefacts.
As Kelts goes on to say, it is important to note that “the ideas, the beauty, theconcepts, and the messages are somehow secondary to the finished product” (Kelts
2007, p. 89); anime and manga may be the “core products” when we think of65

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Japanese popular culture but they are “not necessarily the most lucrative ones, andcertainly not the most successful when it comes to getting a global audience addicted”(Kelts 2007, p. 89). For Pokémon, it is these non-human objects - the character goods
licensed through toys, cards and computer games that are the most “lucrative” and“successful” texts; the anime just fills in the textual details (the names, relationships
and motivations of characters, similar to the function of Masters of the Universe andother toy-generated cartoons of the 1980s). Takazou Morishita, the head of Toei
Animation’s international division, confirmed the importance of these character goods
when he noted that it was “the merchandising links between Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokémon[that] took it to the mainstream” (Kelts 2007, p. 101). This is what the theorist John
Law might term the “relational materiality” of the franchise (Law 1992) or thesocializing nature of things in practice (Van der Duim 2007) – things that require“doing” on the part of the audience. This is because the Pokémon are active things,
things that encourage some sort of investment on the part of the audience, not justtime or money, but activities around collecting, battling, evolving and learning aspectsof the Pokémon and their world.
Kelts reads the model as working this way: “The anime was the market research, andthat was what Nintendo, Bandai, and the others learned in Japan. The viewing figures
and the toy sales are part of the same analysis. The characters that work will return for
future episodes; the failures do not, making way for new species” (Kelts 2007, p. 97).
This is natural selection in the Pokémon world those objects which function well inplugging audiences into the network survive. Those that do not are discarded.
However, it is the internet that remains the key point of convergence here “enabling
new generations of American fans to graduate from TV series and collectible cards tohardcore anime otakudom” (Kelts 2007, p. 179) or as author Patrick Macias puts it “ageneration of kids… went from Pokémon to Gundam Wing hentai in a single mouseclick” (qtd Kelts 2007, p.179)i. Pokémon therefore operates as both a gateway into
Japanese culture and “a play that goes beyond the world of the game itself” (Allison
2003, p. 199). For Buckingham and Sefton-Green this means that Pokémon is“not merely a set of objects that can be isolated for critical analysis, in thecharacteristic mode of academic media studies. It might more appropriately bedescribed, in anthropological terms, as a “cultural practice.” Pokemon issomething you do, not just something you read or watch or “consume”. Yet
while that “doing” clearly requires active participation on the part of the“doers”, the terms on which it is performed are predominantly dictated byforces or structures beyond their control…. By the work of their [card andgame] designers – and, indeed, by the operations of the market, which madethese commodities available in particular ways in the first place” (379).
Pokémon is therefore a “discursively charged space” (Allison 2006, p. 206), drawing
on the Foucaultian definition of discourse as “the cartography by which the world ismapped by values, relationships and power(s)” (Allison 2006, p. 206). This discourse
is not only articulated through the guidebooks and texts Nintendo and its affiliatedcompanies produce, but also through the interactive and communicative spaces
Satoshi Tajiri built into his creation, the playground discussions and Game Boy
exchanges, the taxonomies Foster (2008) refers to (see below) and the websites
devoted to Pokémon discussion and explanation. We can therefore liken the franchiseto what Pickering (1995) might refer to as “material performativity” in which things

66The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

“act” or “do” - in that they encourage action on the part of the consumer (throughplay, trade, knowledge) - but also in their gateway function, encouraging consumers
to interact and engage with other elements of Japanese popular culture too. Just as thecharacter goods (the Pokémon) function as objects networking Pokémon to themainstream so too do they network audiences into Japanese culture more broadly,
networking that into the mainstream as well.
The Pokémon Trainers
The most prominent and familiar aspects of Pokémon franchise’s narrative come fromthe anime, revolving around a ten-year-old boy, Ash Ketchum (loosely modelled on
Red from the games). His first name, Ash reflects an ongoing interest in nature(replicated in the names of the Pokémon professors, Samuel Oak, Felina Ivy, Elm andBirch) whereas in Japan he is called Satoshi, named after Pokémon own creator,
Satoshi Tajiri. In the English dub his surname, Ketcham, has the franchise’s firstslogan, “catch ‘em” built into it. He is intended to be a surrogate figure for the
Pokémon consumer, largely absent of much in the way of motivation or development.
But Allison also sees Ash as a somewhat more allegorical figure for Japan in the newmillennium “one whose goals, more ambitious now, have moved from the domestic…
to the global (becoming the “world’s greatest Pokémon trainer”)” (Allison 2006, p.
96).
Ash is accompanied by his friends (11 year old) Misty (Kasumi in Japan, later
replaced by May and then Dawnii) and (15 year old) Brody (Takeshi in Japan),
together with Ash’s primary Pokémon (and mascot of the franchise), the ‘electricmouse’ (Patten 2004, p. 337) Pikachu, who stores electricity in its cheeks and releases
it when attacking. As Kelts explains this is an “onomatopoeic term… Pika is a sudden
extremely bright light, such as lightning, and don is a thunderous blast, like fireworks
exploding, or something very heavy falling to the floor” (Kelts 2007, p. 39).
Interestingly, the Japanese word for the bomb that devastated Hiroshima (what theAmericans referred to as Little Boy) was pika-don. It is the same pika that forms theprefix of Pikachu, referring to his ability to fire lightning bolts from his tail and thebasis of his language “pikapika”. The chu is “Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound ofa mouse” (Kelts 2007, p. 39).
Opposing Ash and his friends are the largely camp and ineffectual Team Rocket –James, Jesse and their Pokémon Meowth – whose criminal mastermind boss Giovanni(like the James Bond villain Blofeld) remains largely off-screen and unseen, stroking
his large feline Pokémon, Persian. All children in this world compete to capture andtame wild Pokémon in Poké balls; the Pokémon is then under the control of theirmasters to wage non-lethal battles against other Pokémon in what Allison terms a“bond” that “is a mixture of service and friendship” (Allison 2006, p. 195). It is thisbond that is perhaps most instructive for Patten claims that “Ash set[s] out at first to
grab these Pokémon for fame and glory, but through his developing friendship with
Pikachu he gradually comes to recognise the animals as living creatures rather thanmere possessions” (Patten 2004, p. 337). This is the major form of character
development Ash demonstrates, a deepening appreciation of the Pokémon and theworld he is a part of, leading to him being christened “the one who will bringbalance” (in the third Pokémon film) and linked to the mythical Pokémon hero Aaron(it is claimed he has the same aura or “soul” in the eighth Pokémon film).

67

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Allison notes that the “organising trope” for this narrative is “travel… the juniorPokémon trainers are constantly in motion” (Allison 2006, p. 196); Pokémon sutures
the pleasures of travel to indoor entertainments, the virtual “play spaces” Henry
Jenkins (1998) describes of computer games and watching television. Similarly, thestory engine that promotes this travel is one that is shared by both the consumers andthe central characters, the desire to acquire; while other Western franchises havethrived by building a desire to acquire into their fan bases (most prominently, Star
Wars), Pokémon was one of the first franchises to make acquisition a central part ofits narrative; those who acquire a full set of Pokémon (see below) also acquire the titleof Master Pokémon Trainer.
In Japan, this is is the concept of getto suru (“getting”), becoming “gotta catch ‘emall” in the US translation (Allison 2006, p. 197), informed by a strong ideology ofcapitalism – where Pokémon are “both thingified (valued economically) andpersonalised (cute monsters inspiring affection, attachment and love” (Allison 2006,
p.197). This is what Allison calls “(only half facetiously) Pokémon capitalism… inwhich commodities double as gifts and companions” (Allison 2006, p. 197). It is eveneasier to think of these creatures as objects given the fact that they lack both gender(almost all Pokémon are simply referred to as “it”) and speech (almost all Pokémon
simply repeat aspects of their name, understandable to other Pokémon but only rarely
to humans; Team Rocket mascot Meowth is a notable exception here, having
sacrificed a fighting ability to learn how to speak). To drive the acquisition analogy
home, Pokémon are “got” in a spherical Pokéball modelled after the Japanese
gashopon balls that can be bought in machines, usually containing some small toy ormass produced “collectible”; indeed, as the Pokémon film Arceus and the Jewel ofLife makes clear, the invention of the Pokéball is what makes these creatures “pocket”
monsters. Before the Pokéball they were regarded as “magical” or “mystical” rather
than natural.
Roland Kelts views Pokémon as being a central element in what he refers to as “athird wave of Japanophilia – outsiders’ infatuation with Japan’s cultural character”(Kelts 2007, p. 5)iii. This infatuation centres around what he terms “the eccentricities,
spastic zaniness, and libertarian fearlessness of Japan’s creators of popular culture –and of the mind boggling acquisitive Japanese consumers of that culture” (Kelts 2007,p. 6). Pikachu and his brethren therefore become iconic totems of Japanese culture
just as sumo, sushi, bushido samurai and ikebana have been before them –emblematic of both the design aesthetics and consumptive practices that inform thisthird wave. Thus the materiality of the Pokémon (in cards and toys), their design andthe design of the DVD collections, the films and manga series, all stimulate and order
fan mnemonics of and in Japan. It is the object (the pocket monster, the trading card,
the plush toy) that thereby becomes the nexus of fan sensibilities, needs and desires,the most important part of a network of goods and services.
The Kawaii Aesthetic of Pokémon
Pokémon: The First Movie (dir. Kunihiko Yuyama and Michael Haigney) was
released in Japan in the summer of 1997, coinciding with the commencement ofcoverage of Pokémon in the west with a series of articles entitled “Pokémon sends
children to the hospital.” These related to the airing of the “Computer Soldier
Porygon” Pocket Monsters episode in Japan on December 16, featuring a flash/strobe

68The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

lighting effect that caused some 700 children to have seizures (and later parodied byboth The Simpsons and South Park). As Fred Patten (2004) notes, the response in
America was largely dismissive of anime; Cartoon Network’s vice president ofprogramming Mike Lazzo reassured the American public that their children were safe
as anime was not shown in America:“CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox, UPN and WB don’t air… ‘anime’. Nor do the major
cable outlets for cartoon: Nickelodeon, The Cartoon Network and theDisney channel… Japanese animation is so different from what airs here. It’s
far edgier, adult and violent. Anime isn’t very story-based and is driven byintense movements. The story is hard to follow” (qtd Patten 2004, p. 109)iv.
Despite this, the only Westernization Pokémon underwent was being translated into
English in time for its simultaneous launch in America in September 1998 as a GameBoy video game and a weekday syndicated series (debuting September 8, 1998).
According to Ishihara this was despite market research conducted in the U.S prior to
the games’ release that found:“the characters were too childish to catch the fancy of Americans. However,
we decided to introduce Japanese-designed characters without any
modifications, which in fact captivated American children. This means that
we cultivated demand that had gone unnoticed until then. Pokémon had thepower to change the market” (qtd Kelts 2007; 93).
And it did. As Patten notes: “As soon as the entertainment industry noted the megapopularity of Pokémon and all its licensed merchandise, the criticism abruptly
stopped. The same TV networks and cable channels that “don’t air… ‘anime’”hastened to sign up the American rights to Pokémon and such imitators as Digimonand Monster Rancher” (Patten 2004, p. 108). The moral panic around Pokémon – andanime as a whole – was replaced by a desire to become part of its success and the firstindication of this was the series’ move from syndication to the Kids’ WB! Network
six months later. Pokémon home videos started appearing in the US in 1998 andPokémon: The First Movie (released in the West in 1999) “set new records for a
November theatrical release, earning over $50 million in its first five days” (Patten,
2004: 336).
Given these figures, it is clear why Sanchez credits “Pokémon’s rocket-like
propulsion to the top of the mainstream culture… [as helping] lay the groundwork forthe promotion of the anime medium, and has shown the possibility of its future
integration into the culture” (Sanchez 2013). Kelts similarly credits the Pokémon
franchise with “delivering” Japan to the U.S. market. He identifies three ways inwhich this happens: familiarization with Japanese anime aesthetics and themesv; thegradual introduction of new characters week by week (somewhat debateable given thesimilar strategies used in toy-based cartoons like Masters of the Universe, GI Joe andTransformers in the 1980s) and the idea of the “undying saga… both optimistic andpessimistic” - the sense that there will always be another monster, another master,
another enemy to defeat (Kelts 2007, pp. 90-91).
It is the first of these that is perhaps the most important, this idea that Pokémon not
only serves as a gateway activity into Japanese popular culture (a network that taps

69

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

into a greater cultural imaginary and set of related concerns, as noted above) but thatit actually overturned preconceptions around anime to make it a more palatable,
mainstream experience (a network that taps into the mainstream itself). It does thisthrough its two story engines: the idea of collecting (which is a central part of its
narrative, enacted by the trainers) and (as Kelts notes) the ongoing introduction of
new species of intricately designed Pokémon, that draw on design elements frommythology (dragons), nature (horses, dogs), science (magnets), animation (ghosts)
and occasionally witty one-liners; by way of example, Psyduck is a duck who rather
than being psychic (as his name implies) simply has the ability to appear and sighmelodramatically.
In some respects, Pokémon are monsters in the yokai tradition (Japanese folkloric
monsters and supernatural beings but more often used to describe any supernatural or
unaccountable phenomena). This is true of animal creatures like Vulpix and Meowth,
who resemble the henge (shapeshifters) of folklore like Kitsune (foxes) or Bakeneko(cats). But it is perhaps best exemplified by the class of Legendary Pokémon that havevast spiritual or supernatural power (such as Lugia, Mew and Celebi) introduced ineach of the Pokémon feature films. Allison notes that Pokémon is therefore a“borrowing and reinvention of a Japanese cultural past (gift exchange, supernatural
spirits, otherworldly aestheticism)” (Allison 197). Michael Dylan Foster (2008)
similarly links Pokémon to the yokai tradition, not just in terms of individual
characters, but in the way success is based on knowledge about these creatures:“handbooks and catalogs list, illustrate, organise, and describe these creatures inclassic hakubutsugaku-style: “Pokémon of the prairies”, “Pokémon of the mountains”,“Pokémon of the forests”, and the like” endowing the Pokémon world with its own
history and even an academic discipline reminiscent of yokaigaku, appropriately
called “Pokémon-gaku”, or Pokémon-ology.” (Foster 2008, p. 214)This taxonomy is even built into the franchise in the form of the Pokédex, anelectronic device listing Pokémon ’s statisticsvi. For Foster, Pokémon becomes acollusion of ludic and encyclopaedic modes fostering a desire towards a kind of
Linnaean taxonomyvii of categories, powers and abilities:“through which the denizens of an otherworld are named, located, defined,
described, and made to come alive… By applying real-world signifying
practices to things as elusive as yokai, we create an authentic, authorised
systems in which they can reside: a doppelganger universe, fully rendered andcomplete but somehow separate from our own” (214).
This cultural practice of Pokémon therefore encourages its audience to think in termsof world-building, filling in the gaps, nurturing the universe, creating canons that linkthe various platforms of Pokémon together. But more importantly it connects its
audience to the larger cultural imaginings and concerns of Japan, drawing them intolarger frameworks of folklore and supernaturalism. Like Buckingham & SeftonGreen (2003, p. 388) and Allison (2006, p. 207), Foster argues that Pokémon is as
much about collecting knowledge as it is collecting species – classification strategies,
transferring knowledge between media platforms and discussing the details of thisworld (Buckingham & Sefton-Green 2003, p. 388-389), “directed to a fantasy world
premised far more now on the invisible and unseen – what must be learned andcharted through data” (Allison 2006, p. 207). Such knowledge is always contingent

70

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

upon objects, the Pokémon themselves; it is a series of embodied knowledges,
embodied by creatures like Jigglypuff, Charmander, Mew and Pikachu, hybridisedcreatures that similarly inhabit a hybridised world of Japanese mythology, pure
imagination and occasional real-world locations (as the Pokémon territories in each
new expansion are based on a variety of locations in the real world)viii .
Taking Pikachu as his case study, Kelts notes that the yellow Pokémon is unlike any
Disney iconix because he is not a conventional animal (be that mouse, duck or dog).
Rather, he is “an animated representation of precisely nothing we know in ourphysical world” (Kelts 2007, p. 17) – the very definition of yokai -“unnatural”, “outof the ordinary” (Foster 2008) and igyo no mono (“nonnormal things”). The closest
equivalent, Kelts notes, would be the “animated inscrutability” of the Belgian-born
Smurfs by Peyo (Kelts 2007, p. 17). But the major different between Pikachu and the
Smurfs is that Pikachu is “but one of 395 [now over 700] different species, all of themfictional. Loosed from the gravity of realism, or even a finite fictional world,
Pokémon’s producers have been able to create what is now known as the multibillion
dollar Pokémon media franchise” (Kelts 2007, p. 17). This is in part true, but the
Pokémon do retain recognisable elements of mice, deer and even other cartoons to
inform their design, making them at once familiar yet strange. Pokémon may therefore
be better thought as an abstraction of the real world through which we can rethink theworld and the organisms that inhabit it; as a seven-year-old-girl from the UnitedStates interviewed by Allison puts it: “the creators took ideas from nature, but theyturned nature around. People care a lot for their Pokémon, but they also use them tofight other Pokémon” (Allison 2006, p. 205).
These asymmetries in both the design of the Pokémon and their world (strange but
familiar, natural but unnatural, cute but violent) are part of their diegetic design (onthe individual object level) but also part of the extradiegetic operation of the franchise(the network as a whole). Investment in the world of Pokémon requires significant
amounts of money (for the games, the cards the toys). Similarly Pokémon operates asa global franchise, but remains informed by a very Japanese sensibility. It therefore
operates as a network between the very Japanese imaginary and the consumerist
mainstream.
For example, the continuous expansion of the world and its Pokémon is a fundamental
part of the Pokémon model. As Tsunekazu Ishihara, president of Pokémon Co,
describes it (to Nikkei Shimbun in April 2006) “the basic concept of Pokémon games
has remain unchanged since the first release in 1996. But we have always strived to
add new characters and upgrade games so that Pokémon fans will never feel they areapproaching an end. That is the reason for the prolonged popularity” (qtd Kelts 2007,
p. 17). Through this endless introduction of new locations, new species and newchallenges, Pokémon offers what Buckingham and Sefton-Green term “a kind of
economy of scale: the more there is, the more unavoidable it becomes, and so themore one seems obliged or compelled to pursue it” (Buckingham & Sefton-Green, p.
385). Pokémon therefore remains asymmetrical in its expansion.
More importantly, the “hyperbolically cute” (Hertz 1999) Pokémon rewrites some ofthe elements of yokai culture as kawaii culture, the “loveable”, “adorable” or “cute”
culture that has become a recurrent feature of Japanese popular culture since the1970sx. Kawaii culture began as an underground literary trend in youth culture,

71

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

incorporating burikko ji (fake child writing) and koneko ji (kitten writing) that wasthen commodified by Sanrio, most notably in Hello Kitty (Kinsella 1995), andproliferated so that each Japanese prefecture and company today now has its own
yuru-kyara (“funny mascots”), that “take part in cuteness competitions observed byexpert judges” (Windolf 2009, pp. 124-125).
Ethnologist Konrad Lorenz suggested back in the 1940s that “infantile characteristics– big head, big eyes, the very round face – stimulate caretaking behaviour” (Windolf
2009, p.119). But kawaii here refers not just to design aesthetics (like a large head,stunted appendages, large eyes, small or no mouth, no nose and a disproportionately
small body, see Allison 2003 or Kinsella 1995) but also to emotional qualities ofamae (sweetness) and yasashii (gentleness). These are aesthetics and qualities thatrecur in most (if not all) Pokémon – and ones we can certainly identify in characterslike Pikachu and Jigglypuff or Celebi and Shaymin. As Okada Tsueno notes, cutenesstherefore registers for all people (Allison 2003); it becomes an important way ofmaking Pokémon palatable as objects in these networks, both in terms of theireconomics and the ideas they present in part because they evoke a nostalgia for amore childlike and simple way of being. Cuteness therefore simultaneously becomes“something one both buys to consume and also cultivates in and as part of the self”(Allison 2003, p. 385); in this way cuteness is “not only a commodity but also equatedwith consumption itself” (Allison 2003, p. 387) reinforced by the possessive
consumption of Pokémon’s narrative – that first narrative story engine - “gotta catch‘em all”.
As being cute also equates to puerility, an exhibition of kawaii culture is also an
exhibition of a “yearning to be comforted and soothed” (Allison 2003: 387). This
makes kawaii impliedly redemptive. By way of example, evolutionary biologist
Stephen Jay Gould noted the metamorphisis of Mickey Mouse in a 1979 Natural
History article from “cackling rodent… to the high-voiced, plump-headed figure of
the 1950s… as the Walt Disney Company grew more powerful and profitable, itspublic face grew cuter” (qtd Windolf 2009, p. 119). Cute culture can therefore serve
as a kind of apologia for success. But more fundamentally Jim Windolf suggests that“social misery and cuteness are linked… A cuteness craze got started [in Japan]… inthe defeated nation’s bleak postwar culture of the 1940s and 1950s” (Windolf 2009, p.
122). Quoting Roland Kelts, Windolf goes on to argue that:“one theory, which has been proposed by a lot of Japanese artists andacademics, is that, after the humiliation and emasculation of Japan in the
postwar years, Japan developed this quasi-queer position of ‘little brother’ or‘little boy’. If you become’little brother’ or ‘little boy’, the only way you canget big brother’s or fat man’s attention is by being so cute or puppy-like that
he has to take care of you… [a desire to] show the face of dependency”(Windolf 2009, p. 124).
To make the point clearer, Windolf points to the way America came up “with cuteproducts and images to express its own sense of need in the wake of the hard times
and lousy decisions of the go-it-alone Bush administration” (Windolf 2009, p. 124). I
have previously suggested that in the present context, the kawaii aspects of Pokemon
can be read as an apology for the environmental injustices and oversights in relation
to biodiversity that have occurred in the past (Bainbridge 2013), where the cute face72

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014of Jigglypuff can be read as indicative of a larger strategy behind Pokémon, to talkthrough often quite complex issues of environmentalism, biodiversity and control.
In a sense then, the yokai-like taxonomy of Pokémon identified by Foster is also an
adaptation of E.O. Wilson’s Biophilia hypothesis that “humans have an innate desire
to catalog, understand, and spend time with other life-forms. This in turn provides a
powerful aesthetic argument for combating the present extinction crisis” (Balmford
2002, p. 2367). Just as the narrative of Pokemon interrogates the balance between
development and conservation (the very essence of sustainable development) so too
does the Pokemon model articulate the very concerns to which Andrew Balmfordrefers, the notion that “as industrialization and urbanization reduce our directinteractions with nature, our interest in the variety of living things is perhaps
becoming redirected towards human artifacts, with potentially grave consequences forbiodiversity conservation” (Balmford 2002, p. 2367).
Patten suggests that in this way “Pokémon uses the mania to be ‘in’ with the latest
electronic games to steer children towards a deeper relationship with animals andnature, as well as an appreciation for the responsibility of caring for pets and theimportance of ecological awareness” (Patten 2004, p. 337). Here again, the network
taps into the mainstream (“to be ‘in’”) while maintaining a connection to Japaneseimaginings and concerns. Given the enormous investment that fans place in the
franchise - economically, temporally and emotionally and more generally the“activity” (outlined above) that accompanies Pokémon consumption and engagement(Buckingham & Sefton-Green 2003, pp. 396-7) it is possible to view the users ofPokémon as, in Henry Jenkins’ terms, a “learning community” (Jenkins 1992).
Pokémon therefore becomes a way of theorising to children about environmental
concerns through a multiplatform media franchise. More importantly, as this is a
networked assemblage, the Pokémon franchise creates in them an embodied practice,for Pokémon offers a:“systematising of nature [that] carries this image of accumulation to a
totalized extreme and at the same time models the extractive,
transformative nature of industrial capitalism and ordering mechanisms thatwere beginning to shape urban mass society” (Pratt 1992, p. 36).
I would therefore argue that an important aspect of this Pokémon network is that it
uses its media power to provide a virtual model for the environment thatsystematically celebrates, critiques and comments upon environmentalism,biodiversity, materialism and consumer culture (Bainbridge 2013).
Conclusion
The importance of the cultural imaginary was something that Oscar Wilde recognisedover a century earlier when he stated that: “The whole of Japan is a pure invention.
There is no such country, there are no such people” and supported by Roland Kelts
when he used Wilde’s epigraph to open his book on Japanamerica: How Japanese
Pop Culture has invaded the U.S. in 2007 (Kelts 2007, p. vii). Most significantly
popular representation was recognised by the Japanese government itself a year
before, when Japan’s foreign minister Taro Aso unveiled his government’s new
campaign to actively promote their pop culture abroad through Japan’s global

73

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

embassies (Kelts 2007, p. 113), finally embracing Japan’s “Gross National Cool”,
first suggested by American journalist Douglas McGray in his influential 2002
Foreign Affairs article.
In this way, Japan has turned away from manufacturing trades to cultural products –and because these products are cultural products they function not only as “softpower” (as Joseph S. Nye would suggest) but also as networks; for millions ofchildren the world over, the world of Pokémon is Japan-as-metaphor, simultaneously
as real and unreal as Oscar Wilde first suggested. As Allison describes it, “identity has
become shifting and mobile in/for Japan, tied less to the geographic boundaries ofplace (and the customs and bloodlines attached to it) than to the production andcirculation of virtual landscapes” (Allison 2006, p. 196). Pokémon therefore serves as
the ultimate symbol of “Japan-as-metaphor” for “folded into a tale about imaginary
beings… is an ideological one about Japan’s place in the world, tallied on the basis ofa science devoted to playthings: a commentary on Japan’s rise to global prominence
as producer of (“evolved”) kids’ goods” (Allison 2006, p. 208). Even more
specifically, just as Linnaeus’ System of Nature (1735) provided a taxonomic gridthrough which “Europeans could apprehend more of the planet as a whole” (Allison
2006, p. 212), what Pratt termed a “planetary consciousness” (1992, pp. 15-37) in its
reflection on the environment, both textually and in the taxonomic model that it
offers, Pokémon similarly provides its networked audience with a set of discursive
tools to both reflect on and challenge prevailing notions of the environment,
biodiversity, materialism and consumption (Bainbridge 2013).
Understanding the franchise as an object network of cultural practice enables analysisof the textual nuances of Pokémon and the way it uses its media power to articulatecompeting ideas of consumerism, nature, the popular imaginary and the national
concerns of Japan. Crucially my goal here was to map the functioning of themultiplatform Pokémon franchise through textual analysis of several elements: toprovide an affective and performative resonance of its constituent parts and the way
they function as vehicles of cultural expression, interaction and media power. If a
modern understanding of such media franchises assumes a well-defined distinction
between individuals and institutions and their concomitant degrees of agency, thesomewhat pre-modern approach of network theory allows recognition and critique ofthe hybridized objects that are becoming increasingly characteristic of popular media
cultures in contemporary society.
As “a vehicle of and for the national imagination transmitted through a currency ofsuperpowers and lovable characters” (Allison 2006 194), the Pokémon franchise
operates as a complex network of objects - “lovable characters” - connecting very
specifically Japanese ideas of the “national imagination” (folklore, spiritualism, thesupernatural) and environmental concerns (biodiversity, the struggle between
conservation and containment) to the mainstream through a larger consumerist
framework of acquisition and play structured as cultural practice. In this way the
Pokémon object network functions as a gateway into Japanese culture more broadly
and a channel through which Japanese culture is itself mainstreamed internationally.

74

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Endnotes
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
As Kelts notes, this can also become a problem. See Kelts 2007, pp. 106-108.
ii
Misty subsequently appeared in the spin-off anime series Pokemon Chronicles on
Japan’s “Pokémon Sunday”. Dawn was based on the female protagonist of the
Pokémon Diamond, Pearl and Platinum games.
iii
Kelts suggests “[t]he first wave occurred in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
when European artists discovered a uniquely Japanese aesthetic, and the second in thelate 1950s and early 1960s, when beatnik writers and poets were drawn to Japan’s
acetic spiritual traditions” (Kelts 2007, p. 5).
iv
The original article quoting Lazzo appeared in USA Today December 19, 1997, p
D1.
v
Kelts provides a detailed list of these aesthetics and themes, some of which again
seem debateable given the prevalence and popularity of anime earlier, like Speed
Racer, Kimba and Astroboy but the list includes “the hairstyles, the big eyes, the stopframes, the complete visual transformation of facial expressions during emotional anddramatic peaks, and the attentiveness to minute details… the acceptability of theillogical and the ambiguous, the hero’s sense of duty above all else, the concepts ofchild as hero and of unending quest, the undependability of a happy ending, and thefact that no individual episode ever satisfactorily ties up the various and addictive
narrative threads” (Kelts 2007, pp. 90-91).
vi
In the games, players add Pokémon to their Pokédex when they are caught. In the
manga and anime the Pokédex is a form of exposition describing Pokémon statistics
before they are caught.
vii
From Linnaeus’s System of Nature (1735).
viii
Bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net notes that since Pokémon Heroes (the fifth film,
released in the US in 2003) animators for the films have based them on a real-world
location outside Japan.
ix
With the possible exception of the alien Stitch, from Lilo and Stitch, himself so
popular in Japan he has a Japanese-specific female equivalent. Interestingly, anotherpopular Disney character in Japan is the white kitten Marie from The Aristocrats, one
assumes, because of her stylistic similarity to Hello Kitty.
x
For more on this idea see Nakazawa Shin’ichi whose book Poketto no naka no yasei(Wildness in the Pocket, 1997) is cited by Allison as suggesting “pocket monsters
anchor this space as entities that hover between the known and unknown, visible andinvisible, real and fantastic… these beings exceed phenomenal existence and fill in,
imaginatively for its lapses and lacks (Allison 223; Nakazawa 1997:90)
	  References	
  iAllison, A (2003) ‘Portable monsters and commodity cuteness: Pokémon as Japan’s
new global power.’ Postcolonial Studies. 6:3, pp. 381-395.
Allison, A (2006) Millenial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination.
California: University of California Press.
Bainbridge, J (2013) “It is a Pokémon World”: The Pokémon franchise and theenvironment” International Journal of Cultural Studies, published online 25 October
2013

75

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
http://ics.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/10/25/1367877913501240
Balmford, A, L Clegg, T Coulson and J Taylor (2002) “Why Scientists Should Heed
Pokémon.” Science. Mar 29 295(5564), p. 2367.
Buckingham, D and J Sefton-Green (2003) ‘Gotta Catch ‘em all: Structure, Agency,
and Pedagogy in Children’s Media Culture.’ Media Culture & Society. 25, pp. 379399.
Cope, B and M Kalantzis (2000) Multiliteracies: Literacy, Learning and the Design
Society. 25, pp. 379-399.
Dennison, J A (2011) “Switching Off ‘Pokémon’ Gene May Block Cancer-Cell
Formation.” Daily News Central. January 21.
http://health.dailynewscentral.com/content/view/00316/31/
Foster, M D (2008) Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of
Yokai. California: University of California Press.
Hatakeyama Kenji and Kubo Masakazu (2000) Pokémon sutōrī. Tokyo: Nikkei Bpsha.
Hertz, J C (1999) ‘Game Theory: Digital Theme Park Where Pokémon Roam.’ New
York Times. September 2.
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/02/technology/game-theory-digital-theme-parkwhere-pokemon-roam.html
Jenkins, H (1992) Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture.
London: Routledge.
Kelts, R (2007) Japanamerica. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kinder, M (1991) Playing with power in movies, television and video games: frommuppet babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Berkely: University of California
Press.
Kinsella, S (1995) “Cuties in Japan” in Women, Media and Consumption in Japan.
Brian Moeran and Lise Scov eds. Hawaii: Curzon and Hawaii University Press.
Law, J (1992) ‘Notes on the theory of the actor-network: ordering, strategy, andheterogeneity’, Systems Practice vol 5, no 4, pp. 379–393.
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/sociology/papers/law-notes-on-ant.pdf
Maeda, T, R M Hobbs, T Merghoub, I Guernah, A Zelent,
C Cordon-Cardo,, J Teruya-Feldstein and P P Pandolfi (2005)“Role of the proto-oncogene Pokémon in cellular transformation and ARF repression”
Nature 433, 20 January, pp. 278-285.
Patten, F (2004) Watching Anime, Reading Manga: 25 Years of Essays and Reviews.
Berkely: Stone Bridge Press.

76

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
Pickering, A (1995) The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency and Science, The
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
na, ‘Pokémania’ (1999) Time. 22 November, pp. 16-20.
na, “Pokémon Franchise Sells More Than 172 Million Units” (2013) My NintendoNews
http://mynintendonews.com/2013/08/18/pokemon-franchise-sells-more-than-172million-units/ (August 18)
Pratt, M Louise (1992) Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London:
Routledge.
Sanchez, F (2013) Anime and Mainstream Culture
http://web.archive.org/web/20020106064559/http://www.animeinfo.org/animeu/socl1
02-p.html (September 3)
Sieter, E (1993) Sold Separately: Parents and Children in Consumer Culture. New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Van der Duim, R (2007) ‘Tourismscapes: an actor-network perspective’, Annals of
Tourism Research, vol 34, no 4, p. 961-976.
Windolf, J (2009) “Addicted to Cute.” Vanity Fair. 592 November, pp. 118-125.
	
  
	
  

77

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

78

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Asian Identity: Regional Integration and Collective Memoryof the Pacific War in Contemporary Japanese Society
Maciej Pletnia
Tokyo University, Japan
Jagiellonian University, Poland
Abstract
Ever since late 1980s possibility of strengthening intraregional integration andestablishing common Asian identity have become one the reoccurring themes
discussed in the region. Japan, due to its un-preceded economic success and its strong
ties with Western countries, seemed like a natural leader. However, rise of China andslow decline of Japan’s power have made relations in the region much more difficult.
Japan is no longer widely considered a regional leader, and its cooperation with China
has recently become strained. It seems impossible to imagine further Asian integration
without participation of both China and Japan. There are of course numerous factors
which influence international relations between those two countries and Japan's
position in the region. However, in this paper I would like to explain how collective
memory of the Pacific War in contemporary Japanese society, combined with Japan’s
deeply rooted conviction of being a natural leader in Asia, creates tension in theregion, which is affecting any possibility of further regional integration.
European Union is often brought up as a model of successful cultural and economic
integration, which led to creating common cultural identity in spite of region’s tragic
past experiences. Despite the numerous regional and trans-regional economic forums
such as APEC, ASEAN or ASEM, situation in Asia seems to be much more
complicated. What seems to be particularly important is the memory of the Pacific
War in contemporary Japanese society, which manifests itself by Yasukuni
controversy, Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute, and discussion regarding history textbooks,
among others. However, it seems that these controversies are mere manifestations ofmuch wider phenomena, which I believe can be traced back to initial years after theend of the war. Japanese perception of its past, combined with its deeply rooted
conviction of being a natural leader in Asia, creates a tension in the entire region,
particularly in international relations with China and Korea. Overcoming it throughcooperation and discussion with regional partners might make future integration
possible. However, how to achieve such reconciliation is a question that still remains
unanswered.
Keywords: Collective memory, collective identity, the Pacific War, nationalism,
contemporary Japan, international relations.

79

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Despite the most recent difficulties in international relations between Japan and
China, the concept of strengthening Asian integration based on “Asian identity” and“Asian values” is a reoccurring theme when discussing the future of the Far East.
Japan initially seemed to be a natural leader in the region, partially due tounprecedented economic success and partially due to strong ties with leading global
powers such as the United States. It was Japan who along with Australia initialized
the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum, and has since been a crucial member.
However, the rise of China and slow decline of Japanese power have strained
relations in the region. Japan is no longer considered a natural leader, and its
cooperation with China has become increasingly difficult in recent times. Although it
seems that the dream of “Asian integration” is still alive, it has recently started tofade. It is impossible to imagine further regional cooperation without the participationof both China and Japan. There are of course numerous factors which influenceinternational relations between the two countries and Japan's position in the region. In
this paper I would like to focus on one often neglected factor which I believe is ofparticular interest. I would like to analyse how collective memory of the Pacific War
in contemporary Japanese society, combined with its deeply rooted conviction of
being a natural leader in Asia, creates tension in the region. This is strongly affecting
any possibility of not only further economic and cultural regional integration, but alsoof any cooperation which might lead to establishment of a common “Asian identity”,
based on a shared set of “Asian values”.
When discussing regional integration based on common values and economic
cooperation it is impossible to abstain from mentioning the European Union. Despite
the fact that numerous scholars believe that European style institutionalization isnecessary in order to achieve legitimate integration (Breslin, Higgot, Rosamond,
2002, p. 13), I believe that drawing any direct comparisons would mean adopting a
Eurocentric viewpoint, which should be avoided. There is no reason to assume thatany further Asian integration would follow European style institutionalization. As
Peter Katzenstein notes: “Theories based on Western, and especially West European
experiences, have been of little use in making sense of Asian regionalism” (1997,
pp.3-5). Despite this, the European Union is still the best example of successful
economic and political integration, and is often brought up as an example even by
Asian scholars. Naturally, it is not my intention to dwell upon the history of European
integration. However, I believe that it is particularly important to mention one fact. It
could be said that the European Union (or more precisely the European Coal and Steel
Community as it was initially called, later renamed the European Economic
Community before adopting its current name) was a child of its times. In many ways,
it was the horrors of World War II which initialized integration. One of the crucial
aims of the European Coal and Steel Community was to avoid the risk of any future
conflicts at the core of Europe, particularly between France and Germany. Jean
Monnet and Robert Shuman suggested initiating integration with two basic industriesof coal and steel. They believed that if the mines and steel factories of both Franceand Germany were under international control, it would become impossible for those
two countries to go to war with each other. Apart from France and Germany, theEuropean Coal and Steel Community also initially included Belgium, Luxemburg,
Italy and the Netherlands (Thody, 1997, pp. 1-4; Salmon, Nicoll, 1997, pp. 41-47). It
is worth noting that right from its humble beginnings the European Union was not
limiting itself only to economic integration, but also had a very clear political agenda.
Furthermore, common culture and shared history played an important role in80

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

facilitating institution-building processes which in turn have promoted cooperationand peace in the region (Friedberg, 1993-1994, p. 13).
When discussing any possible further integration in the East, it is important tomention already existing frameworks, which have already, at least partially,
contributed to regional cooperation, but which also signify problems making suchcooperation difficult. Japan’s economic success was unprecedented in the modern
history of the Far East. Japan was the first industrialized economy in Asia and its
direct investments in the region had been expanding since the late 1960s. Therefore it
was natural that Japan became a leader in promoting trade liberalisation and it had
taken a very active role in promoting new Asian economic cooperation (Sang Ho,
Wong, 2011, p. 157). As a result, Japan along with Australia initiated APEC, which at
first included 12 other states. Due to political turmoil APEC initially excluded China,
but since joining in 1991 became a crucial partner for all countries involved(Klintworth, 1995, pp. 488-490). That being said, even at that time Japan seemed tobe divided between Asian identity and “western aspirations”. At first it seemed thatJapan would become a mediator between Eastern and Western members of APEC.
This however, turned out to be problematic. Despite being one of the founding
members of APEC, and a strong advocate of steady economic cooperation in theregion, Japan’s position has been challenged by what could be referred to as“legitimacy deficit”, which is not only firmly connected with cultural differences in
the region, but also with its troubled historical past. Moreover, Japan’s strong ties
with western powers, particularly with the United States have been sometimes
understood as proof of lack of its dedication to Asian affairs (Klintworth, 1995, pp.
494-499).
Nevertheless, Japan’s possible role as a leader in the region became visible again
during ASEM meetings. ASEM was created as a forum to encourage trade relations
with Europe, and it offered a further means through which information between Asianand European Union countries could be exchanged and discussed on a regular basis.
Japan was initially reluctant to participate, partially due to prominence of ASEAN
countries, which were responsible for creating this initiative (Gilson, 1999, p. 737;
Gaens, 2008, p. 1). However, more significant for the Japanese government was thefact that the United States was quite obviously excluded from this new forum. Only
after the Japanese government was persuaded by US to participate did it begin to playa more active role. ASEM has been described by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign
Affairs as an opportunity for Japan to get to know its neighbours better. Due to its
international position and economic success Japan became a natural leader in ASEM
structures. During the Asian crisis, perception of Japan in the region changed due to
its role in ASEM. Asian countries started to perceive Japan again as a natural leader
who should take a greater political and economic lead, and were supportive of anincreased role for Tokyo in the region. According to Julie Gilson, ASEM cooperation
helped Asian states to realize that they have numerous common interests, and thatstrengthening cooperation in the region might lead to creating a common identity as
well (Gilson, 1999, pp. 741-750). It is also worth mentioning other forums such as
APT (ASEAN Plus Three), which is the most significant economic framework
including only Asian countries. In addition to 10 ASEAN members it also includes
Japan, China and South Korea. The first leaders’ meetings were held in 1996 and1997, and were connected with ASEAM talks. APT grew in importance during the
Asian Financial Crisis, and initiated discussion regarding The Asian Currency Unit as

81

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014a means of stabilizing the region’s financial markets (Stubbs, 2002, pp. 448-449).
However, it is worth noting that while China has been pushing to strengthen
cooperation within APT, Japan on the other hand has been more in favour of the socalled East Asia Summit, which also includes the United States, Russia, India andAustralia among others (Dent, 2008, p. 20).
Politics in the Far East has changed significantly since the late-1990s. The rise of
China and stagnation of the Japanese economy significantly affected international
relations in the region. Even if we assume that further regional integration based oncommon identity, understood as so called “Asian values” is possible, it is hard to
imagine it without the inclusion of both China and Japan. There are of course
numerous problems connected with that kind of integration. Most importantly; whichcountries should be included in that kind of framework? What should be understoodas “Asian values”; and what purpose would that kind of integration have? However, I
would like to focus on seemingly minor issues that influence Japan’s position in theregion, as well as its cooperation with China. That would be the collective memory of
the Pacific War in contemporary Japanese society and the deeply rooted conviction of
being a natural leader in the region. As I will hopefully prove, both of these issues arevery strongly connected and shouldn’t be treated as being separate. However, it is ofcourse necessary to introduce the concept of collective memory itself. Maurice
Halbwachs, who is widely regarded as being responsible for suggesting this idea,
noticed that when individuals recollect events from the past, they do so within social
boundaries. The process of individual recollection is strongly conditioned byinteractions with other member of society. Those other members somehow stimulate
each other to remember certain event from the past and forget others simultaneously.
Halbwachs stated that we are constantly dealing with social boundaries of memory,which affect the way we remember the past in a very significant way (2008, pp. 3-8).
Building on Halbwachs ideas Jan Assmann introduced the concept of “cultural
memory”, which tries to incorporate into one theory three elements: memory, culture,and the group. According to Assmann cultural memory preserves knowledge fromwhich the group draws its awareness of unity. Moreover, the objective manifestationsof cultural memory can take the form of group self-identification, both in a positive
sense (describing what the unique characteristics of a group are), or in a negative
sense (what a group is not). He also noticed that cultural memory has a capacity toreconstruct, which means that it always relates its knowledge to an actual andcontemporary situation (1995, pp. 126-127). Michel Foucault summed it up by stating
that, historical memories are socially acquired and collective, and are constantly
refashioned to suit present purposes. Individual memories gradually fold together intoa collective memory of the group. Embedded in the social fabric, they become
idealized memories and their ability to survive in the face of alternative memories, orcounter memories, depends on the power of the group that holds them. Seen in thislight, history and memory are in a fundamental state of tension (1980, p. 144).
Furthermore, collective memory is strongly connected with national identity andnational myths. The concept of national myth that I would like to introduce here
should be understood as described by Anthony D. Smith, as half-truth narratives andbeliefs about the origins, identity and purposes of a nation, which form an integral
part of the ideological and spiritual foundations for nation and nationalism (1999, p.
9). National myths, along with collective memory, as well as other factors such as

82

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

common territory and culture, constitute what is referred to by Smith as national
identity (1999, p. 14). Taking this into consideration, collective memory, as a sociallyconstructed phenomenon and as an important element of national identity, can beunderstood as a factor influencing normative and ideal structures which determine theinterests of the actors according to constructivist theory of international relations.
Constructivist theory stresses that such elements as cultural norms, ideas, andcollective identities are changeable (Jackson, Sørensen, 2006, pp. 270-272). It is
worth mentioning that according to Alexander Wendt constructivist theory is moreinterested in human consciousness and its role in international politics (1992, pp. 403404).
When discussing collective memory of the Pacific War in Japan it is quite common torefer to Yasukuni shrine controversies, comfort women issues, discussions regarding
history textbooks, or more recently, Senkaku/Diaoyu disputes. However, it seems thatthese controversies are mere manifestations of much wider phenomena, which I
believe can be traced back to initial years after the end of the war. Conservative elitesof that period, which due to the rise of the communist threat gained support from
American occupying forces, were not interested in dealing with the past. Instead, they
managed to create three main national myths that embodied a minimalistic approachto Japanese war guilt. First was the “myth of the military clique” which held only asmall group of military leaders responsible for the war and claimed that the rest of thenation (including the Emperor, the majority of the conservative ruling class, andordinary Japanese people as well) were nothing more than innocent victims of thewar. Second, was the myth that Japan was the only country responsible for opening
hostilities in the East. Third was the idea of “sacrifice as heroic”, which gave Japanesesoldiers special honour due to the fact that they sacrificed their lives for the nation.
Since the end of the war until the end of American occupation, Japanese conservative
elites were in control of the most important institutional tools, and were able topopularize these self-glorifying and self-whitewashing myths. Their actions weresuccessful largely because their intention of historical mythmaking was in accordancewith the American strategy of supporting a stable conservative government in Tokyo.
The occupation authorities promoted the so-called Pacific War View of History(Taiheiyō Sensōkan) that emphasized the overwhelming superiority of American
military power as the main cause of Japanese defeat and held only the Japanesemilitary clique responsible for the war (Orr, 2001, pp. 24-35; Yinan, 2006, pp. 71-72).
The first publication of photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki right after the nuclear
bombings, which took place in 1952, only strengthened the myth of the Japanesenation as victim, as well as the view of Pacific War as a mainly Japanese-American
conflict (Buruma, 1994, pp. 106-109; Saito, 2006, pp. 364-367; Willson, 2001, p.
130). This view of war history was not challenged until the 1970s, when numerous
Japanese scholars, intellectuals as well as journalists drew attention to victims ofJapanese Imperialism in Asia, as well as to numerous war crimes committed during
this period (Wakabayashi, 2000, pp. 318-320).
Of course the construction of collective memory of the Pacific War in Japan has notbeen simple. There were controversies, such as the visits of Prime ministers Nakasone
and Koizumi to Yasukuni shrine (Hardacre, 1991; Safier, 2001; Breen, 2008), butthere were also numerous apologies, the most important of which made by Prime
Minister Murayama (Togo, 2013; Yamazaki, 2006). In fact, I believe that one of themost significant characteristics of Japanese discussion regarding its war time past is83

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

inconsistency. It seems that there is no consensus among political elites regarding
interpretation of these historical events. Another characteristic worth mentioning is
the still deeply embedded conviction that the Pacific War was essentially a conflict
between Japan and the United States, and Japanese aggression in the Far East is often
described as colonization, and not as occupation. This interpretation is also strongly
connected to understanding of Japan’s role in the East. The so called revisionists
prefer to promote the point of view which argues that past military actions werenecessitated by the threat posed to national existence by other great world powers;that Japan in certain ways destroyed the “myth of white supremacy” and prepared theway for the liberation of East Asia from Western colonial rule; and that Japaneseimperialism was in many ways an improvement upon Western modes due to its
emphasis on modern economic and social development (Hughes, 2008: p. 45).
Still, the biggest question remains, how this understating of the historical past isaffecting Japanese cooperation in the region, and how it influences any possible
regional integration. Firstly, there is still ongoing debate regarding Japan’s belonging
to the Far East. As mentioned before, when discussing possible regional economic
cooperation, Japan is strongly advocating inclusion of countries which are not usuallyassociated with the East, such as Australia, Russia or United States. This sentimentcan be partially explained by the will to balance the power of China, if such aframework were to become reality. However, I would argue that there is also anotherexplanation. Japanese identity seems to be strongly divided between the East and theWest, and is strongly connected with the concept of hierarchy of civilizations, which
can be traced back to the Meiji Period and to such intellectuals as Fukuzawa Yukichi.
At that time, he described Japan as more “civilized” than other Far East countries, but
not as civilized as Western powers. Moreover, according to Fukuzawa and othersimilar intellectuals, Japan should become more like those western empires (SchadSeifer, 2003, pp. 50-52). Successful modernization which took place in the 19th andearly 20th century, along with striking victory over China and then Russia, only
strengthened and popularized the myth of cultural superiority over other countries in
the region. One of the misconceptions regarding Japanese imperial policy, which was
also an important part of Japanese propaganda of that period, was that Japan’sintervention in the East was not only aimed at stopping western colonialism, but also
to help other countries to become more developed and more “civilized” (Stronach,
1995; Paine, 2003; Rowe, 1939; Padover, 1943; Kushner, 2007). Even though thisbelief has been seriously challenged at least since the 1970s, due to the economic
success of Japan which became especially prominent in the 1980s, belief in Japan’s
superiority over other Asian countries had been strengthened. Due to several
misconceptions regarding migrant workers, Japanese people still tend to perceive
foreigners from other Asian countries as belonging to the so called “lower class”,
while most Japanese themselves belong to the “middle class”. Moreover, John Lienotes that the idea of Japanese superiority over other Asian nations is still present, andis visible in attitudes toward migrant workers (2001, pp. 32-34). As Lie sums it up“although outright expression of chauvinism occurs from time to time, what is morestriking is the ways in which cultural confidence is often expressed indirectly andunintentionally” (2001, p. 45).
Japan's unique position in the region could be seen as an advantage, as it was during
the first years of APEC or during ASEM meetings. However, this is contrasted by thestill strong conviction of cultural superiority over other nations in the Far East, even if

84

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

it is expressed indirectly, just as Lie suggested. Even though this belief predates the
Pacific War, I would argue that it is strongly connected with collective memory of thisconflict, and how Japan perceives its intervention in the East. Therefore, it should not
be surprising that even today there is a strong conviction among Japanese elites, thateven though Japan is a natural leader in the region, it also has more in common withthe so called West. Hence Japan’s aspirations as a leader have been challenged by“legitimacy deficit”, which is connected with Japan's imperial legacy in the region, as
well as its strong ties with the West, especially with the United States. Furthermore,since the mid-1990s Japan’s position in the region has been constantly challenged by
the rise of China.
It is difficult to imagine any successful regional cooperation without the inclusion ofboth China and Japan. Unfortunately, relations between two countries are strongly
affected by collective memory of the Pacific War. However, it wasn’t until the 1980s,
due to changes in strategic agendas as well as domestic power struggles in bothcountries that collective memory in both Japan and China had significantly changed.
Conservative historiography, which promoted a more right–wing view of history andwhich emerged as a backlash against the progressive narratives, gained prominence atthat time as well. Since the 1980s, the right-wingers have passionately attacked thegovernment for making concessions to foreign countries, by for example including
accounts of Japanese war atrocities in history textbooks. They believed that such a“masochistic” view of the nation’s history would hurt national pride. Many neonationalist politicians during the last three decades have made unintentional mistakes
which glorified Japan’s involvement in Asia during the war, declaring that in reality
Japan’s engagement in the region was good and just, and that it was aimed atliberating Asian colonies from the West. The same groups have been very critical of
the Tokyo War Crimes Trials as well (Yinan, 2006, pp. 76-77). Naturally, the most
famous examples of right-wing views of Pacific War history are Yasukuni and thehistory textbooks controversies. At the same time, memory in China was also
undergoing reconstruction. The new official focus on Japanese brutality and Chinese
misery during the war simulated victim consciousness among the Chinese. Many evenfeel bitter about their government’s previous concealment of Japanese war crimes andwere offended by official propaganda, which promoted friendship between China andJapan. Even though the distinction between Japanese militarists and ordinary Japanesepeople is still present in official Chinese historiography, common understanding of
the war has significantly blurred this difference (Yinan, 2006, pp. 81-83).
Initially Japanese public opinion reacted reluctantly to the rise of the Chinese
economy. Japan’s decade-long economic stagnation endangered its position as theleader among developing Asian economies, and led to a decline in confidence inJapan maintaining its position as the second economy in the world. Initially Japan was
reluctant to acknowledge the astonishing developments in China. Many believed that
it would take a long time for China to achieve a level of development equal to that ofJapan. However, by 2001 it became obvious that China had become one of theworld’s great economic powers. As a reaction, numerous books that presented China
as a threat were published in Japan. Furthermore, the increasing possibility of China
creating an East Asian community with itself as a crucial member was also perceived
as a threat to Japan’s position in the region and its security (Noriko, 2006, p. 61).
Prime Minister Koizumi’s visits to the Yasukuni shrine, combined with anotherhistory textbook controversy caused massive outrage in China, resulting in numerous

85

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

anti-Japanese protests. It should come as no surprise, that the reception of China inJapan and Japan in China changed significantly during that period. This change can beseen in a survey conducted in 2004. Over 58% of respondents in Japan felt “notfriendly” toward China, while 53.6% of Chinese respondents felt the same about
Japan. It is worth noticing that in a similar survey conducted in the 1980s mostJapanese respondents felt “friendly” towards China (Ryōsei, 2006, pp. 21-22).
Even though there were clear signs of improvement in China-Japan relations during
Shinzō Abe’s first term as the Prime Minister, it seems that he decided to take aharder stance regarding Japanese relations with China and to return to a morenationalistic narrative regarding the Japanese war time past. It is worth mentioningthat relations between both countries became so strained that commemorations of the50th anniversary of the establishment of official international relations between China
and Japan had been cancelled. The Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute also affected cooperation
between them during the APEC summit, where both countries held no formal talks
despite the fact that such a meeting had been scheduled (People’s Daily, 2012;
Pinghui, 2012; BBC News, 2012). Abe’s insistence on revising Japan’s constitution
will without a doubt have an impact on Japan’s relation with other Far East countries,
particularly with China and South Korea.
The burden of history is still affecting relations in the region. To achievereconciliation between China and Japan, the two parties crucial to any successful
regional integration, both superpowers would have to recognize each other’s genuine
concerns and tackle the issues that have affected or may affect their bilateral relations.
Their cooperation is also essential to regional stability. If they manage to overcome
mutual distrust regarding each other's intentions, it might be possible for the two ofthem to establish some sort of co-leadership in East Asia. In particular, they should
confront history-related problems rather than avoiding them or treating them as
matters of internal politics, which often seem to be the case in Japan. Christopher
Dent presented various possible configurations of regional leadership. As one of thepossible patterns, he mentioned the possibility of general co-leadership. That would
mean that China and Japan form an alliance similar to that of France and Germany in
the European Union, which would focus on further advancing East Asian regionalism
and representing East Asia in multilateral forums (2008, pp. 23-24). However, thiswould be only possible if China and Japan developed stronger and more harmonious
relations. It seems that without resolving issues connected to collective memory of the
Pacific War, such cooperation will not be possible. Moreover, without broad
discussion regarding this topic within Japan, it will not be possible for the Japanesepeople to fully acknowledge its historically determined position in the Far East, as
well as to understand what role Japan might play in the future. Another question still
remains - is there any possibility of developing regional integration based on so called“Asian identity”? Even though Japan tended to attribute its economic success in the
1980s to certain Asian values, which were not present in the other regions of theworld, it is still difficult to define what those values might be. Despite certain efforts
to construct a sense of shared identity, nations in Asia lack not only recent memory ofcooperation, but also a certain tradition of thinking of themselves as members of alarger cultural entity. Furthermore, the ongoing debate regarding Japan’s belonging to
the East or the West, not only undermines its position in the region, but makes further
discussion regarding potential common values more difficult.

86The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

During his speech at Tokyo University, Professor Tsai Tung-Chieh from the Graduate
Institute of International Politics of National Chung-Hsing University in Taiwan
stressed the importance of developing a new Asian identity, which would focus onwhat he described as “Asian values”. This goal could be achieved by further
strengthening cultural, political and military cooperation, instead of focusing only on
the economic dimension (2012). However, how to overcome political issues in theregion, which recently became even more prominent, is a question that still remains
unanswered. However, it is safe to say that such a process would be impossible
without developing mutual trust and strengthening the will for cooperation between
China and Japan. Nonetheless, developing such trust without solving historical issues
first seems to be impossible. This is of course a task for all nations in the region, but I
believe that due to its historical burden, Japan has a special role to play in thisprocess.

87

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

References
Assmann J., 1995. Collective Memory and Cultural Identity. New German Critique,65, pp. 125-133.
BBC News, 2012. APEC summit: Clinton warns Asia leaders over disputes BBC
News, [online] 9 September. Available at: < http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia19538066> [Accessed on 10 May 2013].
Breen J., 2008. Yasukuni, the war dead and the struggle for Japan’s past, New York:
Columbia University Press.
Breslin Sh., Higgot R., Rosamond B., 2002. Regions in Comparative Perspective. In:
Sh. Breslin, Ch. W. Hughes, N. Phillips, B. Rosamond, eds. 2002. New Regionalism
in the Global Political Economy. London: Routledge, pp. 1-19.
Buruma I., 1994. Wages of Guilt. Memories of War in Germany and Japan, London:
Vintage.
Dent Ch. M., 2008. What region to lead? Developments in East Asian regionalism andquestion of regional leadership. In: Ch. M. Dent, ed. 2008. China, Japan andRegional Leadership in East Asia, Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing Inc., pp. 333.
Foucault M., 1971. Nietzsche, Genealogy, History. In: D. F. Bouchard, ed. 1980.
Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Select Essays and Interviews with Michel
Foucault, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp. 139-164.
Friedberg A. L., 1993-1994. Ripe for Rivalry. Prospects for Peace in a Multipolar
Asia. International Security, 18(3), pp. 5-33.
Gaens B. ed., 2008. Europe-Asia International Relations. A Decade of ASEM.
Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited.
Gilson J., 1999. Japan’s Role in the Asia-Europe Meeting: Establishing andInterregional or Intraregional Agenda. Asian Survey, 39(5), pp. 736-752.
Halbwachs M., 2008. Społeczne ramy pamięci. Translated form French into Polish by
Marcin Król. Warszawa: PWN.
Hughes Ch. W., 2008, Japan’s policy towards China: domestic structural change,
globalization, history and nationalism. In: Ch. M. Dent, ed. 2008. China, Japan andRegional Leadership in East Asia, Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing Inc., pp.
37-51.
Hardacre H., 1991. Shintō and the state, 1868-1988, New Jersey: Princeton University
Press.;

88

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Jackson R., Sørensen G., 2006. Wprowadzenie do stosunków międzynarodowych.
Teorie i kierunki badawcze. Translated from English into Polish by Aleksandra
Czwojdrak. Kraków: WUJ 2006.
Katzenstein P., 1997. Introduction: Asian Regionalism in Comparative Perspective.
In: P.
Katzenstein, T. Shirashi, eds. 1997. Network Power:Japan and Asia. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, p. 1-44.
Klintworth G., 1995. China’s evolving relationship with APEC. International
Journal, 50(3), pp. 488-515.
Kushner B., 2007. The Thought War. Japanese Imperial Propaganda. Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press.
Lie J., 2001. Multiethnic Japan, Harvard University Press, Cambridge: Harvard
University Press.
Noriko K. 2006. Japanese writings on post-1945 Japan-China relations. In: L. PengEr, ed. 2006. Japan’s Relations with China. New York: Routledge, pp. 50-68.
Orr J., 2001. The Victim as Hero. Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in
Postwar Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Padover S. K., 1943. Japanese Race Propaganda. The Public Opinion Quarterly, 7(2),pp. 191-204.
Paine S. C. M., 2003. When Japan Become World Power: the Sino-Japanese War of
1894-1895. New York: Cambridge University Press.
People’s Daily, 2012. Tokyo 'must realize this is serious'. People’s Daily, [online] 10
September. Available at: < http://english.people.com.cn/90883/7942140.html>[Accessed on 10 May 2013].
Pinghui Z., 2012. China postpones commemoration of diplomatic ties with Japan.
South China Morning Post, [online] 24 September. Available at: <http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1045271/china-postpones-commemorationdiplomatic-ties-japan> [Accessed on 10 May 2013].
Rowe D. N., 1939. Japanese Propaganda in North China, 1937-1938. The Public
Opinion Quarterly, 3(4), p. 564-580.
Ryōsei K., 2006. The shifting nature of Japan-China relations after the Cold War. In:
L. Peng Er, ed. 2006. Japan’s Relations with China. New York: Routledge, pp. 21-36.
Saito H., 2006. Reiterated Commemoration: Hiroshima as National Trauma.
Sociological Theory, 24(4), pp. 353-376.

89

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Safier J., 2001. Yasukuni Shrine and the Constraints on the Discourses of Nationalism
in Twentieth-Century Japan, Boca Raton: Disertation.com.
Salmon T. and Nicoll W. eds., 1997. Building European Union: A Documentary
History and Analysis. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Sang Ho L. and Wong J. eds., 2011. APEC and the Rise of China. Singapore: World
Scientific Publishing.
Schad-Seifer A., 2003. Constructing National Identities: Asia, Japan and Europe inFukuzawa Yukichi’s theory of civilization. In: D. Stegewerns, ed., 2003. Nationalism
and Internationalism in Imperial Japan, New York: RoutledgeCurzon, pp. 45-68.
Smith A. D., 1999. Myths and Memories of the Nation, Oxford, New York: Oxford
University Press.
Stronach B., 1995. Beyond the Rising Sun. Nationalism in Contemporary Japan.
Westport: Praeger.
Stubbs R, 2002. ASEAN Plus Three. Emerging East Asian Regionalism? Asian
Survey, 42(3), pp. 440-455.
Thody P., 1997. An Historical Introduction to the European Union. New York:
Routledge.
Togo K., 2013. Post-War Asia: The Murayama Statement and Its Implications.
Palgrave Macmillan, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Tsai T. Ch., 2012, December 5. Asian Community and Asian Cultural Identity.
Lecture presented in Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, Tokyo
University, Japan.
Wakabayashi B. T., 2000. The Nanking 100-man Killing Contest Debate: War Guilt
Amid Fabricated Illusions, 1971-75. Journal of Japanese Studies, 26(2), pp. 307-340.
Wendt A., 1992. Anarchy is what States Make of it: The Social Construction of Power
Politics. International Organization, 46(2), pp. 391-425.
Willson S., 2002. Nation and nationalism in Japan, London: Routledge Curzon.
Yamazaki J., 2006. Japanese Apologies for World War II: A Rhetorical Study. New
York: Routledge.
Yinan H., 2006. National Mythmaking and the Problems of History in Sino-Japanese
Relations. In: L. Peng Er, ed. 2006. Japan’s Relations with China. New York:
Routledge, pp. 69-91.

90

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Popular Culture: Islands of Fandom in East Asia
Seiko Yasumoto, The University of Sydney, Australia
Abstract
This paper investigates and evaluates pan-Asian exports of Japanese TV drama in avariety of formats within the domain of popular culture. This component of media
trade has allowed Japan’s image to become attractive constituting a shift away fromthe negative image of an aggressor nation. The study argues that the regional
distribution of Japanese media popular culture has contributed through fandom, toregional harmony in East Asia. Audience research has been applied, utilisingquestionnaires and ensuing focus group interviews to ascertain the extent of media
influence of television drama in Taiwan, Japan and Korea, representations of Japan,
and cultural proximity. Participants in the research comprised Taiwanese, Japaneseand Korean university students studying in Australia. The study further argues thatpolitical changes in South Korea has created a step change in regional media flows
towards the Korean Wave and its antecedent Hallyu, further reinforcing the process ofregional fandom. The findings provide a gauge to ascertain the longer-term prospects
for a consolidation of emerging regional harmony driven by a commonality of interestand values juxtaposed by historical antipathy.
Keywords: Japanese TV drama, popular culture, fandom, East Asia, Korean wave,
regional harmony

91

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Introduction
This paper investigates and evaluates pan-Asian exports of Japanese TV drama in avariety of formats within the domain of popular culture. This component of media
trade has allowed Japan’s image to become attractive constituting a shift away fromthe negative image of an aggressor nation. The ensuing audience reception andfandom has a positive sociological impact in the region. The study searched for
representations of Japan and cultural proximity and argues that Japanese popular
culture has contributed to regional harmony in East Asia. Harmony, in the context of
this paper, is a sharing of cultural values across national divides with mutual respectand empathy. Audience research utilising questionnaires and focus group interviews
has been used to ascertain the extent of media influence on a cohort of participants.
The impact, within the confines of the study, is measured by the extent of sharedvalues derived from cultural exchanges.
The study further argues that political changes in South Korea (hereafter Korea) has
created a step change in regional media flows towards the Korean Wave and its
antecedent Hallyu, further reinforcing the process of multilateral cultural exchanges.
This counterpoise to the dissemination of Japanese popular culture has similarly
reinforced the interaction of media trade in popular culture to the cross-cultural
enjoyment of media content. Cultural flows and politics are not necessarily
harmonised. Korean Japanologists, Lim and Park, interviewed in 2014 brought
forward a conjoint opinion that cultural influences and political influences are treatedon different platforms (Lim, 11 July 2014, interview; Park, 11 July 2014, interview).
This opinion provides a gauge to ascertain the longer-term prospects for a
consolidation of emerging regional harmony, driven by commonality of interest andvalues, juxtaposed by national political imperatives of the day overlaid with historicalantipathy.
Japanese popular culture
Japanese popular culture is very diverse and in a constant state of flux. Television
drama is a small but significant part of media trade within the Japanese content
industry 1 . The domestic media industry, known in Japan as content industry(kontentsu sangyô) belongs to the realm of cultural entertainment, or accomplishment,
created through human activity. Content includes television programs, films, music,
drama, literature, photographs, manga, animation, computer games, lettering, shapes,
colours, sounds, movements or visual images, or the combination of these, orinformation on them (METI, 2014). Popular culture has played a significant role inJapan and across Asia in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A number ofscholars have written about the 1990s, suggesting that this decade was important in
the development and distribution of Japanese texts in a plethora of content andformats (Chua, 2012; Nakamura & Onouchi, 2006; Sugiyama, 2006). Iwabuchi, in
posing the question: ‘Waning affection for Japan?’ (Iwabuchi, 2002, p. 122), reflects
on the pessimism of Japanese media industries in that period while noting that thepessimism was ill founded, a view which is supported by many researchers andcommentators. He drew on the Taiwanese-American scholar Leo Ching, who noted
1

The definition of content industry, from a Japanese legal perspective, is in the Act on Promotion ofCreation, Protection, and Exploitation of Content (Content Promotion Act promulgated in June 2004).

92

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

‘throughout Asia, Japan is in vogue’ (Iwabuchi, 2002, p. 123). Ching points out in thelate 1970s and early 1980s, that Japan’s popular culture was becoming influential in
the East Asia region. This influence has proved to be a precursor to the 1990s decade,the period in which Japanese popular culture grew and increasingly crossedinternational borders. This early development can be observed as the platform which
has created the opportunity from which islands of commonality, through the processof fandom, across East Asian national borders has emerged. Iwabuchi points out a‘gradual tilt towards Asia’ (Iwabuchi, 2004, p. 151), the extent of this characterisationis arguable. Hara (2004) brings forward statistics from research carried out by the
NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute that illustrates, in the segment of
television programs exported from Japan, that television output towards Asia wasmore dramatic than a tilt. The statistics showed 4,600 hours of television programs
exported in 1980, growing to almost ten times the 1980 exports in the early twenty
first century, with almost half directed to Asia (Hara, 2004). In 2001, 82 per cent of
the output was in animation and drama, with animation predominant at 59 per cent(Hara, 2004).
Iwabuchi notes that globalisation in the 1990s resulted in asymmetrical cultural
relations between Japan and other Asian nations coming into focus (Iwabuchi, 2002).
Japan was aware that its growth rate in commercial media was greater than its East
Asian neighbours. The dramatic growth in the export of television programs fromJapan at the time added to this asymmetry. Since then there has been a rebalancing
with counter flows from Korea into Japan, in particular the Korean Wave and, withmusic in the genre of popular culture increasing the volume of media trade. An
example of this is ‘Seven South Korean popular artists took top spots in the list
announced by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) for the Japan Gold
Disc Awards 2013, an annual award started back in 1987 to highlight the best-selling
artists in Japan for the year’("K-Pop stars shine in Japanese music awards," 2013).
Historical impediments to media trade: An awakening.
The official distribution in Korea of Japanese popular culture has not always
presented itself in the second half of the twentieth century. Taiwan also imposed
restrictions on media transfers; this landscape has now changed dramatically. During
the early part of the second half of the twentieth century, Korea actively discouraged
friendly relations between itself and Japan. Japan annexed Korea in 1910 andmaintained occupation until 1945. At the end of Japanese imperial policies in 1945and since the partitioning of Korea into two countries in 1948, residual ill feelingbetween Japan and Korea has kept relations at a distance. As a result, there was little
interaction between Japanese and Korean media for four decades. Prior to the 1990s,
Korean government legislation restricted the import of television, music and film
productions. However, from the 1990s, government legislation responded totechnological changes and recognition of unofficial consumption of Japanese popular
culture in Korea.
In 1973, during a visit to Japan, the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA),taken back to Korea and imprisoned, seized Kim Dae-Jung (Kim), who later became
the President of Korea from 1998-2003. In his publication Jail Correspondence,

93

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

written while he was in prison, he formulated his three hans2: 1) Opposition toadverse feelings towards the Japanese; 2) Opposition to the use of military force, and
3) The use of a harmonious approach towards Japan (Maeda, 2007). I interviewed
Maeda Yasuhiro, a former correspondence of Daily Mainichi in Seoul and aninternational journalist. He confirmed the significance of Kim Dae-Jung’s vision tomove from antipathy to acceptance of Japanese culture (Interview with Maeda, 2011).
Kim was instrumental in leading the way to improved relations between Korea andJapan. He instigated four steps to open up the Korean door to Japan, leading to theentry of Japanese popular culture into Korea for the first time in 1998, andprogressively in 1999, 2000 and 2003/4 (Ishii, 2001; Maeda, 2007; Yasumoto, 2013).
This initiative has proved over time to be revolutionary in changing the balance ofauthorised media trade between Japan and Korea, progressively allowing the legal
importation of Japanese media and cultural products into Korea for the first time. Kim
was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000, confirming international recognition of
the significance of his political leadership. Kim was a visionary with regard to therelationship between Korea and Japan confirmed by the outcomes deriving from his
progressive trade initiatives.
In 1995, the then Japanese Prime Minister, Murayama, released his statement‘Apologies to Asian nations who suffered under the Japanese military’. This was a
singularly important announcement from Japan and was an important precursor to thethawing of relations between Japan and its regional neighbours. Arguably thisstatement should have been made much earlier by the Japanese government but it did
confirm that Japan was facing up to the consequences of its past colonial and military
excesses.
Methodology: Audience analysis
Texts without an audience may be seen to have no attributed meaning. I haveconducted a survey of age segmentation drawn from blog analysis in respect to theJapanese television drama Hana Yori Dango. This drama was selected because it
retains ongoing audience appeal in Asia and beyond, confirmed by successive
remakes for national audiences (Yasumoto, 2013). This information provided ameasure of relevance of my selected cohort for audience analysis in respect to age inthe context of the study. The predominant age group expressing their thoughts andviews on Hana Yori Dango via the internet constitutes those in the age range of 10-14
years-old. The number of samples, with minor variations, decreased steadily from thisage group to the oldest age group. Almost 25% of blogs were by people in the agegroup 20-29 years old. Gender was heavily weighted to females; of the 429 blogs,
only three were male.
The research framework is illustrated in Diagram 1. Some of the data collected was
beyond the scope of this paper and is not included in the findings. The research
procedure comprised two stages.
• Stage 1: summaries of findings from the research questionnaires completed bythree participant groups and ensuing focus group interviews.
• Stage 2: Discussion and conclusions drawn from questionnaires and focus groupinterviews.
2

Korean expression for a feeling of oppression or isolation.

94

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Diagram 1 Research framework for audience analysis.
I administered the audience analysis by survey questionnaires, and focus groupinterviews. I was moderator for all data collection and focus group interviews forming
the kernel of the methodology. Participants in the research comprised three tranches,
being respectively Taiwanese, Japanese and Korean university students studying inAustralia. Focus group interviews were commenced shortly after completion of thequestionnaires. The age of the participants in the surveys and focus group discussions
ranged from 18 to 30 years old falling across the 25% blog profile previously outlined.
All participants remained anonymous.
Participants within each group shared a common ethnicity, the differentiation used
was male and female participants who were coded M and F respectively. A

95

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014questionnaire was provided for each of the group participants at the commencementof the investigatory process. Each group was given forty-five minutes to complete thequestionnaires; they were allowed to make notes if they so wished, as an aid for thesubsequent focus group discussions. The participants in the focus groups wereencouraged to talk freely, I asked questions from time to time to maintain continuity.
Morgan, Krueger and Vaughn et al, informed the structure of each focus group. Theysuggested that the ideal number of participants in focus groups should be no fewer
than six and no more than ten. (Morgan & Krueger, 1998; Vaughn, Schumm, &Sinagub, 1996). Sternberg notes that it is better if participants know each other before
the interviews so that they feel relaxed and can talk freely during the limited time of
the interviews (Sternberg, 2005). I used the natural social setting of my study for theinterviews, enabling a relaxed and intimate environment in order to solicit a natural
response.
It is important to use focus groups if only to ascertain how people make sense of
programming. Livingstone and Lunt note:
A common assumption is that people are not critical of television programmes in any
informed or informative sense. They may be either accepting or rejecting, but notcritical. However listening to ordinary people watch television programs shows thatthey routinely make a wide range of critical comments about what they see.
(Livingstone & Lunt, 1994, p. 71).
Findings from audience survey
Group one: Taiwanese
The surveys elicited views about Japan and Japanese popular culture. Eight of the tenparticipants (3M + 5F) were fans of Japanese television drama and were regularviewers of it; the other two male participants were not fans but had seen Japanese
television dramas. One of the female respondents claimed to be an avid fan: ‘I watch
heaps of shows such as Nodame Cantabile, Hana yori Dango, Hanakimi, Gokusen,
Nobuta, etc.’ Another female respondent had watched Hana yori Dango, Meteor
Garden and Nobuta. What was striking about the television drama series, in whateverformat they were viewed, watched by the participants was that they were mostly
derived from manga that were remade into the television dramas. Some examples
were Nodame Cantabile, Hana yori Dango, Hanakimi, Meteor Garden, Gokusen andTeam Medical Dragon. The Taiwanese participants had access to the Japanese manga
as well as the first remake, Meteor Garden, and subsequent remakes, the JapaneseHana yori Dango and the Korean Boys over Flowers. Seven of the participants had
seen remakes of the manga Hana yori Dango, closely followed by Nodame Cantabile.
Six participants said they had seen this. One male was not interested in Japanese
television dramas and had only seen the Korean television drama Winter Sonata. All
participants, with one exception, declared that they watched dramas on television.
Two of the participants had seen Hana yori Dango on film, computer and video/DVD.
In determining elements of fandom for popular culture emanating from Japan, anumber of core elements emerged. All participants were attracted to the story; theyalso deemed humour and characters as important. There was clear overall enthusiasm

96

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

for the dramas. Some participants expressed negative opinions, such as the dislike ofparticular actors, predictability of story, unpersuasive plots and fake dialogue,
exaggerated storylines and rushed endings. Another response, illustrating the transfer
and sharing of feelings from Japan to Taiwan, was how the audience became
emotionally involved with the content and that they discussed it with their friends. All
participants who had watched Hana yori Dango confirmed their emotional
involvement with the story. One respondent said that she regularly talked about
dramas with her friends. Discussion between friends was reported by otherparticipants, which supports Livingstone and Lunt’s finding that audiences are
critically engaged with the content of television dramas (Livingstone & Lunt, 1994, p.
71).
When questioned about representations of Japan, both regionally and globally, a wider
appreciation of the relationships between Taiwan and Japan emerged. Female
participants, in particular, noted the positive effects of popular culture including theinfluence of television programs and anime on multiculturalism and current social
issues. Other comments included: ‘Japanese popular culture has been influential for along time, not only in Asia’: ‘Japanese culture is in every culture’. There was lessfocus by males on popular culture and identified Japan’s electronic products, its
cinema, and even a perception of a ‘positive strong country playing a significant role’.
The ensuing focus group interview reaffirmed findings from the questionnaires.
Group two: Japanese
The eight participants in the survey (5M, 3F) were all consumers of Japanese originaland remade television drama. From the surveys, I found that all had seen Hana yori
Dango, while Nodame Cantabile and White Tower were also popular. The male
respondent had viewed Meteor Garden, the Korean remake of Hana yori Dango andthe Korean television drama Winter Sonata. The primary appeal of the dramas was theinteresting stories, with characters also noted. Factors considered unappealing to thefemale respondents were: ‘Too structured, can guess how the story ends’; ‘I can guessthe story development’ and ‘More focus on the celebrities than the story’. The male
respondent did not like vague endings to television drama. Despite the negative views,
audience engagement with the dramas was significant. The two female respondents
reported emotional involvement with television dramas. One female noted ‘Interesting
stories makes me feel close to the characters’. They all looked forward to ensuing
episodes, with the end of an episode drawing them in to watch the next episode. The
male respondent commented on Hana yori Dango that he had become obsessed andemotionally engaged with the drama, always awaiting the next episode. Interestingly,
he was not interested in other dramas.
The focus groups brought out more findings about cultural proximity. Participants
were engaged with the East Asian region. One female responded: ‘Yes, I feel
friendliness towards Taiwanese because they watch Japanese dramas and know
Japanese celebrities and we can share conversation’. Another said: ‘I think an ideal
character of a heroine is culturally proximate. The dedicated gentle women’s type islikable in Japan and other Asia countries’. The male respondent drew attention to a
global perspective in a regional context: ‘Compared to American and European
dramas I feel much closer to Korean and Taiwanese dramas’. One of the female
respondents noted a lag in Korea compared to Japan in respect to television drama

97

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

content, from a cultural perspective, perhaps reflective of media regulation in Korea
compared with contemporary Japan. She stated ‘Parents often interfere with sons’ anddaughters’ love relations in Korean drama’.
In respect to regional deregulation of popular culture trade, the survey comments
recognised that Korean government policy had accepted a regional reality, withunauthorised media flows already occurring. Cultural exchange was viewed positively
in improving regional relationships. A female respondent noted ‘Cultural exchange
brings mutual benefits. I think it is playing an important role in improving thehistorical negative image of Japan, from a Korean perspective’. She also drewattention to the importance of Japanese drama in creating regional harmony, noting
the audience that it is created to serve: ‘There is a generational gap between audiencesfor Japanese popular culture’.
The surveys mentioned representations of Japan viewed from outside of Japan inmedia content and production quality. A female respondent commented on “cuteculture”, such as the Sanrio character and anime and how production uses high quality
technique for the creation of media content. The male noted how Japan has diversity
in entertainment media production. Views were expressed in respect of Japanese
popular culture affecting the regional and global markets, how Japanese culture ismaintaining its identity among Japanese overseas through anime and manga and how
Japanese media products portray Japanese society and social issues. The male
respondent raised a significant issue in respect to the potential for television drama tocontribute to the reshaping of a society: ‘Japanese society is too formed, structured,and is a group society. With television drama, people can use their imagination andexpress their dreams. Scriptwriters and producers can create a world of utopia in theirstories’.
The ensuing focus group, despite the non-attendance of the male participant, wasreinforced by latecomers – one female and two males. The focus group confirmed therange of interest in Japanese original television drama as well as manga remade into
television drama. One female respondent mentioned an example of media trade from
Korea to Japan, ‘The Korean Winter Sonata, it’s my mother’s influence. I got tired
after a while and I didn’t think it was as good as people say’. One male respondent
illustrated the influence of Winter Sonata in Japan by saying, ‘… it’s very muchtalked about and my mum liked it very much’. When participants watched television
dramas, they became emotionally involved. A male respondent said, ‘Yes, I get totally
gripped; I cannot stop watching’. A female respondent agreed:
I start watching a drama because it is a topic of conversation with my friends or it isbecause of the actors and entertainers who appear in it. I start getting emotionallyinvolved, if I feel empathy with relationship problems and the way they view love.
An emotional response to television drama was evident in both female and maleparticipants, witnessed by the reactions to One Litre of Tears by a female respondent:‘I couldn’t stop crying’, and by one of the males who had joined in: ‘It’s embarrassing
to admit, but I cried’. Humour is also an important ingredient of television drama. One
female respondent said: ‘Many of the dramas I watch are comedy; they all havesomething in them that makes me laugh’.

98The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

The discussion then turned to representations of Japan through popular culture. The
female responses included: ‘My American friend said that because Japan excels in
robot culture and robotic technology there are many animation movies with a robot,
such as Doraemon and Astro Boy’ and ‘I think it is wonderful that Japanese culture,such as animation movies, go to other countries for exchange of different cultures andinternational mutual understanding’. Finally, from the female viewpoint:
I also feel very happy about the way people outside of Japan accept Japanese culture.
Now that we have these cultural exchanges, the young people (outside of Japan) holda very good image about Japan. Countries like Korea, especially among the older
people, have a bad image about Japan, so I think there is a gap there. When we havecultural exchanges, we can have a good image towards each other’s country.
The male participants were less forthcoming but one male respondent said, ‘I feelvery happy when a non-Japanese friend knows about Japanese productions’.
Group three: Korean
The six female Korean participants were all fans of Japanese television drama. The
surveys found there were overall positive opinions of dramas; for example, in
response to Hana yori Dango one of the respondents nominated the ‘luxurious
lifestyles that all audiences admire. In addition, their age is from 16–18 years, highschool, which enhances fresh young concepts.’ Another respondent said: ‘It wasn’t
another love story but contained academic struggle and classical music. Cinderella
emerged in the context of Hana yori Dango’. Another called it ‘a modified version of
Cinderella in modern times.’ One respondent stopped watching Hana yori Dango
towards the end of the drama because ‘it strayed too far from the manga’. Anotherwas somewhat critical of the Korean remake Boys over Flowers saying, ‘They put too
much scenes on the love story. Many boring parts’. The responses point towards
emotion as an important element of the drawing power of drama. One respondentcommented, ‘The humour contributes to comical relief but also is a true reflection of
our lives, in that there are always moments of relief between periods of tension.’
Another replied ‘I did get emotional. I cried when the heroin, Tsukasa, was bullied
and assaulted by people’. Television was the participants’ prime viewing source, andshowed a mixed audience preference for the Japanese and Korean versions of Hanayori Dango.
Cultural proximity was evident; for instance, in the portrayal of romance in Japan and
Korea, and respect for the elderly. I detected a softening attitude towards Japan fromthe focus group participants, though there were still unresolved issues between Japanand Korea, which participants saw as important.
There are many cultural flows, but I am aware that Japanese history textbook issues
exclude many issues that have left Koreans hurt and frustrated. I believe forgivenessand a hope in the future is the only attitude that can change this.
It can be changed; political relationship is based on cultural history. Unless there is an
official announcement about history, political relationship cannot improve.

99The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

I am in favour of the cultural exchange. Korea has been known to be the prey of“Japanisation”, but with Winter Sonata and popular idols like Toho Shinki the cultural
exchange is becoming bi-lateral and it is good to see, as a Korean.
Representations of Japan and Japan’s standing in the regional/global arena from a
Korean viewpoint were very clear and positive.
Japan’s impressive display of technologies and popular culture, such as anime, manga,
sends a very clear message that, such things advance the country, [which] is becoming
more confident and more embraced by others. They represent themselves as stronger,
enthusiastic and confident, [with] an active interest in entertainment. Some cultural
displays involve the integration of technologies in normal day-to-day lives and viewson romance, [which] have [been] dramatically transformed.
Other comments were:
It is amazing that Japan focuses on media to show their beauty and culture to othernationalities. Their oriental tea, manga, traditional cultures, all came towards us [asan] extremely fresh, new thing. In Korea, despite the fact of awkwardness in terms ofpolitical issues, teenagers love Japanese culture.
I think Japanese popular culture plays a big role in both globalisation andregionalisation, but in different ways. Manga and anime are major exports on the
global stage, but these are texts that have been diluted of Japanese culture and values
to appeal to a wider audience. On the other hand, dramas, TV formats and movies
have been popular in the Asian region predominantly, as they portray Japanese values
and ways of thinking, customs, etc., that are similar to those of the Asian countries,
thereby strengthening the regional culture and relationship through consumption ofsimilar products.
The focus group interviews confirmed interest in Japanese television drama. Further
discussion covered differences in Japanese and Korean stories, such as those that
portrayed homosexuality and bullying; Korean dramas tend to avoid such issues.
These aspects were subject to editing through the remaking process to contextualise
the issues in accordance with current Korean standards. As one participant said, ‘I was
supportive of Japanese popular culture content as it is more detailed’. However, whencommenting on Korea media censorship said, ‘Every time it’s remade, they always
water down or cut down something. It takes away a lot of things that I appreciate in
the original’.
Japanese cultural values also excited discussion and drew out the significant role ofJapanese culture in global and regional markets.
Manga and anime are not specifically culturally Japanese, like… all the hair is blond.
They do not depict Japanese values… They appeal to the global audience, whereas
dramas (TV) and movies are more culturally specific.
Even though anime and manga do not specifically talk about culture, they imply theinterest in culture. I know many fans of anime and manga and they want to know

100The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

where all this is coming from. It means that as they are more interested they will end
up liking Japanese culture.
Reception and Influence of Japanese Popular Culture
Replies to the survey questionnaires and focus group interviews were analysed in thelight of Livingstone and Lunt’s perspective that people ‘are’ critical of television
programmes. Cues were also observed from non-verbal communication to better
understand the discourse during the focus group interviews (Hall, 1990). Replies tothe survey questionnaires and focus group interviews were analysed in the light ofLivingstone and Lunt’s perspective that people ‘are’ critical of television programmes.
Cues were also observed from non-verbal communication to better understand thediscourse during the focus group interviews (Hall, 1990). As Chua has noted from theperspective of Japan: ‘It has a tendency to place the rest of Asia at a culturallyhistorically “backward” position’ (Chua & Iwabuchi, 2008, p. 80). This view isreflective of a historical reality fuelled by the benefits to Japan derived from the Meiji
Restoration ‘being in Asia but not part of Asia’ (Chua, 2008, p. 80). Looking to the
future, from the findings in the present, the majority view of the Japanese research
participants was more pragmatic and regionally embracing, discounting the notion ofsuperiority. Chua’s observation is that ‘a cultural-historical temporality defined by thelevel of development in capitalist modernity’ (Chua, 2008, p. 80) is becoming evident
in Japan. The research findings confirmed that the temporality is now finite and Japanis re-engaging with Asia. The spectacular modernisation of Taiwan, Korea hascontributed to respectful perceptions of each other and the development of capital intoa regional commonality.
The study confirmed the popularity of Japanese popular culture in Korea and Taiwan
and illustrates a commonality of regional core values. ‘Japaneseness’ is not readily
defined but its characteristics are understood by receptive audiences confirmed byopinions expressed through the research process.
In the focus group interviews that further explored issues arising from thequestionnaires, it was apparent that the participants from Taiwan and Korea wanted toknow more about Japanese culture and were very interested in what was happening
among Japanese youth.
The study found remarkably similar opinions among the participants. This supports
the idea that people in these countries share a sense of modernity that is linked to
cultural proximity. The participants saw positive commonalities of interest in
storylines and actors in television dramas. Some viewers saw predictability as anegative outcome. Koreans liked Japanese humour, which was not so evident in
Korean drama productions. Emotional involvement in the popular television dramas
was commonplace in the region. However, the Taiwanese appeared to be morecircumspect, as their involvement depended on the story.
Fandom was strongly evident in all groups; viewers eagerly awaited the next episodein a drama and sustained a common interest in peer conversation. The Koreansparticularly liked the freshness of Japanese television dramas, and the fewer episodes
and faster moving stories. The influence of popular culture on participants was moresignificant and was evenly distributed across ethnicity. This, in part, confirms the101The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

point made by Chua: ‘This empirically highly visible cultural traffic allows for the
discursive construction of an East Asian Popular Culture’ (Chua, 2004, p. 202).
Advertising, usually on the internet, influenced the viewing habits of the Japanese andKoreans. In one Korean example, blogs were a prime source of information.
Television was the preferred means of viewing drama. There was a consensus on
cultural proximity. About popular culture products, the change in government policyin Korea was seen as beneficial. The Koreans saw it as a positive for cultural
exchange and as confirmation of illegal and unauthorised access to Japanese media
products. Later in the interview process, one of the Taiwanese respondents
volunteered the view that Korean dramas were in Taiwan and that they had beenplaced in a later time slot to protect Taiwanese dramas. This may be seen as anadverse decision from a regional perspective given the progressive elimination of
restriction on media culture flowing into Korea. As one Korean respondentcommented, ‘leave politics to the politicians’. The Japanese textbooks issue was aconcern for both Korean and Taiwanese respondents, both pointing to the need forJapan to review this matter for the sake of regional harmony. The word forgivenesswas used. The acceptance of the Korean production Winter Sonata by Japanese
respondents was a very positive outcome for improved relations between Korea andJapan.
Impressions of Japan by the Korean and Taiwanese respondents included suchconcepts of cute culture, popular culture, technology, electronic products, beauty andcultural traditions, politeness and respect for seniors. Their perception of Japanesepeople was strong, enthusiastic and confident. There was a common opinion that
Asian popular culture had piqued global interest. The responses suggest that the youthof three cultures are willing and open to embrace change and move on from historicalprejudices.
Ang states that ‘popularity is an extremely complex phenomenon.’ (Ang, 1985, p. 5).
The respondents demonstrated enthusiasm for Japanese popular culture. In this regard,
popular culture is having beneficial outcomes in harmony, cultural exchange andmutual goodwill in the region. Youth acceptance of East Asian popular culture hasbrought a new awakening in Japan; the Japanese government has slowly appreciatedthe prospects for Japanese culture, not only in East Asia but globally.
Conclusion
One of the findings was that the combination of replies to questionnaires, allied withsubsequent focus group interviews, was a valuable methodology for researching theinfluence of Japanese original and remade media in East Asia. The questionnaires
elicited individual views, and the focus group interviews allowed for free flowing
discussion which, while predominantly confirming the survey findings, drew out
additional insights for me in what was discussed and also in non-verbal
communication. These findings were not only popular culture related but also touchedon regional issues.
There are two primary factors at work in Asia in respect to the dissemination ofJapanese popular culture. One factor is the historical impact on consumers’
perceptions of Japan in Taiwan and Korea as a result of past Japanese colonisation

102

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

passed on through generations. This has left unresolved issues which surface fromtime to time. The second is the attractiveness of Japanese popular culture in Taiwan
and Korea and regional composite counter flows. Based on my findings the culturalmilieu in East Asia is undergoing a change process where the move is from regional
acrimony towards regional harmony bound by cross border influence of popular
culture. The main finding of the study is the similarity of critical comment across theethnic spectrum of Taiwanese, Korean and Japanese participants. This outcome
confirmed Livingstone’s view (2005) that audiences are not trivial and passive.
Shared cultural elements far outweigh contrasting ones while not exhibiting adiminution of national identity. There was a commonality of enthusiasm for Japaneseoriginal and remade television serial drama and cultural interchange, particularly withfemale participants, although much less so with the males. There is a definitive
reinforcement of Japan’s identity in East Asia.
Overall, positive feedback on representations of Japan in Taiwan and Korea far
outweigh the negative ones. Popular culture confirmed by study outcomes has aninnate capacity for reducing prejudice based on nationality. The overall opinion ofmale participant opinions, bound by stereotypes of past Japanese military excesses,
differentiated themselves from female opinion. Female participants, while notdisregarding history, put past Japanese militarism and all that is good about
contemporary Japan into a holistic perspective. Japanese popular culture positively
influenced females, more so than males. The female research participants exhibited amore embracing and forgiving regional view. They also have a strong desire to move
forward rather than dwelling in the past. I would argue that women would reshape
East Asia in the future. East Asia is rebalancing, from not only media trade, and theJapanese need to revaluate their East Asian neighbours.
Japanese popular culture is an important component of the Asian century, andtelevision drama can provide an important contribution to regional harmony,particularly when reinforced by regional media trade and, in particular, counter flows
into Japan. The paradigm shift in relations between Korea and Japan was a key
ingredient in freeing up media trade in East Asia and enabled a regional rebalancing
of production resources. Much of the credit for this rests with Kim for progressively
instigating four steps to open up the Korean door to Japan, leading, in 1998, to theentry of Japanese popular culture into Korea for the first time. The counterpoise
benefits for Korea have been significant and have enabled the Korean Wave toprosper in Japan and migrate to the world. The rapidly increasing success of South
Korean popular music sales in Japan, particularly from 2009, can only serve toimprove cultural relationships in East Asia and in turn contribute to regional harmony.
Online media networks are reinforcing the opportunity for enhancing this process andseparating the political and cultural platforms.

103

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

ReferencesAng, I. (1985). Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination (D.
Couling, Trans.). New York: Routledge.
Chua, B. H. (2004). Conceptualizing an East Asian Popular Culture. Inter-Asia
Cultural Studies, 5(2), 203.
Chua, B. H. (2008). Structure of Identification and Distancing in Watching East Asian
Television Drama. In B. H. Chua & K. Iwabuchi (Eds.), East Asian Pop Culture:
Analysing the Korean Wave (pp. 73-90). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Chua, B. H. (2012). East Asian Pop Culture. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University
Press.
Chua, B. H., & Iwabuchi, K. (2008). East Asian TV Dramas: Identification,
Sentiments and Effects. In B. H. Chua & K. Iwabuchi (Eds.), East Asian Pop Culture:
Analysing the Korean Wave (pp. 1-12). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Hall, E. (1990). The Silent Language. New York: Anchor Books.
Hara, Y. (2004). Import and Export of Japanese Television Programs. 13th JAMCO
Online International Symposium. Retrieved May 15, 2010, fromhttp://www.jamco.or.jp/2004_symposium/en/index.html
Ishii, K. (2001). Higashi Ajia no Taishuu Bunka. Tokyo: Sososha.
Iwabuchi, K. (2002). Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and JapaneseTransnationalism. London: Duke University Press.
Iwabuchi, K. (2004). Time and the Neighbor: Japanese Media Consumption of Asia in
the 1990s. In K. Iwabuchi, S. Muecke & M. Thomas (Eds.), Rogue Flows:TransAsian Cultural Traffic (pp. 151-174). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
K-Pop stars shine in Japanese music awards. (2013). Retrieved 23 August 2014,
2014, from http://japandailypress.com/k-pop-stars-shine-in-japanese-music-awards0821050/
Lim, C.-S. (11 July 2014). Japanese Popular Culture influence VS Political issues. In
S. Yasumoto (Ed.).
Livingstone, S., & Lunt, P. (1994). Talk On Television: Audience Participation andPublic Debate. New York: Routledge.
Maeda, Y. (2007). Kindaichu Daitoryo no Tainichi Taishu Bunka KaihoSeisaku no
Rekishiteki Imi. Otsuma Joshi University Higher Education, 37, 45-57.
Maeda, Y. (2011). About Kim Dae Jung In S. Yasumoto (Ed.).

104

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

METI. (2014). Kontentsu sangyo no genjyo to kongo no hatten no houkousei
Retrieved 6 August 2014, fromhttp://www.meti.go.jp/policy/mono_info_service/contents/downloadfiles/1401_shoka
njikou.pdf
Morgan, D., & Krueger, R. (1998). The Focus Group Kit (Vol. 1-6). California:
SAGE Publications.
Nakamura, I., & Onouchi, M. (2006). Nihon no Poppu Pawaa (Japan Pop- Power).
Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha.
Park, J.-Y. (11 July 2014). Japanese Popular Culure influence VS Political issues in
Korea. In S. Yasumoto (Ed.).
Sternberg, J. (2005). Young People, Generation X and News Media. (PhD PhD ),QUT, Brisbane.
Sugiyama, T. (2006). Kuuru Japan: Sekai ga Kaitagaru Nihon (Cool Japan: Japan
Being Wanted by the World). Tokyo: Shodensha.
Vaughn, S., Schumm, J. S., & Sinagub, J. (1996). Focus Group Interviews in
Education and Psychology. California USA: Sage.
Yasumoto, S. (2013). Korean Wave:Towards Regional Cultural Diffusion. Journal of
Literature and Art Studies, 3(2).

105The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

106

The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies

Volume I – Issue I – Winter 2014

Submission Guidelines for the Open-Call Peer Reviewed Papers
IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies
The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies is a progressive new journal that welcomes
scholarship from the late twentieth century into what is being called the Asian
Century. It aims to explore social, economic, political and cultural trends in thegrowing connectivity across cultures in Asia. The cultural citizenship that is evolvingfrom this convergence of cultures embraces a regional empathy and conviviality ofharmony, or hybridism. The journal is interested in presenting views on cultural
mobility, cultural arbitration and understanding, citizenship beyond borders,migration and identity (national, cultural and diasporic), belonging and sharing, media
trade, national branding, ‘soft-power competition’ and popular culture. It is peer
reviewed and aims to give a voice to scholars considering a wide range of emerging
aspects of Asian studies.
iafor.org/asianstudiesjournal
The full article for review should be submitted in Word (not PDF) to the Editor, Dr.
Seiko Yasumoto, seiko.yasumoto@sydney.edu.au.
Please follow this checklist:
Style sheet APA.
Cover page to include title, author(s), affiliation(s), contact information, and the topic
of the submission.
Include an abstract (Maximum 250 words) as page 1.
12-point Times New Roman font single-spacing throughout the document.
Double space (instead of indent) to designate a new paragraph or section.
Top, bottom, and side margins 2.54 cm.
Manuscript not to exceed 6000-7000 words (excluding tables, figures and references).
Manuscripts longer than 7000 words will be returned for editing.
Graphs and visuals can be reproduced electronically.
Seiko Yasumoto, Jason Bainbridge and the Editorial team

107

t
h
ei
a
f
or

j
ou
r
n
a
l
ofa
s
i
a
ns
t
u
di
e
s

I
S
S
N:
2
1
8
7
6
0
3
7