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Recentering globalization

Duke University Press

Chapter One

No one would deny Japan's status as a major economic power. While its power has been relatively undermined by a prolonged economic and financial slump since the early 1990s, this only serves to highlight Japan's tremendous economic influence in the world, particularly in Asia. As Japan has become the second biggest economic power in the world, its external influence has come to be discussed in terms of the export of Japanese management and industrial relations techniques and Japanese organizational cultures (e.g., Bratton 1992; Oliver and Wilkinson 1992; Thome and McAuley 1992; Elger and Smith 1994). Such discourses started in the 1970s, when many Western scholars advocated that the West should learn lessons from the Japanese economic success (e.g., Dore 1973; Vogel 1979). Although not exclusively representing post-Fordism, "Japanization" of industrial relations and organizational cultures was discussed specifically in the search for post-Fordist industrial models, whereby "Toyotism" for example, attracted much attention as a more flexible production system than Fordism (Lash and Urry 1994; Dohse, Jurgens, and Malsch 1985; Waters 1995, 82-85).

However, it was not until the late 1980s that the significance of Japan in theglobal culture market began attracting wider international academic and media attention. It was a time when Sony and Matsushita were buying out Hollywood film studios and the animation film Akira was a hit in the Western markets. In the English-language world, many books and articles have been published on Japanese animation, computer games, and the Japanese advance on Hollywood since that time (e.g., Mediamatic 1991; Wark 1991, 1994; Morley and Robins 1995; Schodt 1983, 1996; Levi 1996). The Sony Walkman has even been chosen for analysis, as the most appropriate example of a global cultural product, by a British Open University cultural studies textbook, itself prepared for global distribution (du Gay et al. 1997).

Certainly, the emergence of such discourses on the spread of Japanese cultural products in the world reflects the fact that Japanese media industries and cultural forms are playing a substantial role in global cultural flows. It seems that Japanese cultural power may finally match its economic dominance. Yet crucial questions remain unanswered: what kind of cultural power (if any) is conferred on Japan? and how similar or different is it from American cultural hegemony? In this chapter, I will present a theoretical consideration of the recent rise in Japanese cultural exports and will explore how that rise might be situated within the study of cultural globalization. Rather than seeing an easy comparison between Japanese cultural exports and "Americanization," or dismissing this phenomenon as merely frivolous, I will instead suggest that it offers some new and significant insights into understanding the decentered nature of transnational cultural power.

Culturally "odorless" commodities

Even if the cultural dimensions of Japan's global influence have not been widely discussed until recently, this does not mean that Japan did not have any cultural impact before then. Rather, the hitherto assumption of Japan's lack of cultural impact testifies to a discrepancy between actual cultural influence and perceived cultural presence. The cultural impact of a particular commodity is not necessarily experienced in terms of the cultural image of the exporting nation. For example, in the realm of audiovisual commodities, there is no doubt that Japan has been a dominant exporter of consumer technologies as well as animation and computer games. From VCRS, computer games, karaoke machines, and the Walkman, to the more recent appearance of digital video cameras, the prevalence of Japanese consumer electronics in the global marketplace is overwhelming. This development has been based upon the adage "First for consumers" expressed by Ibuka Masaru, founder of the Sony Corporation (quoted in Lardner 1987, 38). After the Second World War, freed from the obligation to devote its research and development energy to military purposes, and with the support of the Japanese government, the Japanese electronics industry successfully inverted the idea of "scientific or military research first." Instead, technological development would henceforth be propelled by consumer electronics (Forester 1993, 4).

Japanese consumer technologies certainly have had a tremendous impact on our everyday life, an impact which is, in a sense, more profound than that of Hollywood films. To use Jody Berland's (1992) term, these are "cultural technologies" that mediate between texts, spaces, and audiences. New cultural technologies open new possibilities for the consumption of media texts by audiences. In turn, by promoting the market-driven privatization of consumer needs and desires, new cultural technologies open up new ways for capital to accommodate itself to the emergent communication space in the service of individual consumer sovereignty. For example, VCRS have facilitated the transnational flow of videotape-recorded programs through both legal channels and illegal piracy. This has given consumers, especially those in developing countries whose appetites for information and entertainment have not been satisfied, access to diverse programs which have been officially banned. In response, governments have changed their policies from rigid restrictions on the flow of information and entertainment to more open, market-oriented controls-for example, the privatization of TV channels (Ganley and Ganley 1987; Boyd, Straubhaar, and Lent 1989; O'Regan 1991). On the whole, this development has consequently encouraged global centralization of the distribution and production of software, as well as facilitating the further spread of American software. Despite the fear of profits being skimmed off by piracy, VCRS have helped Hollywood open up new markets and find ways of exploiting new technologies through video rental and export of TV programs to newly privatized channels (see Gomery 1988; O'Regan 1992).

At the level of the consumer, Japanese electronic technologies have promoted strongly what Raymond Williams (1990, 26) has called "mobile privatization." These consumer technologies give people greater choice and mobility in their media consumption activities in domestic, private spaces. For example, while TV and radio made it possible for individuals in their own living rooms to experience and connect with what was happening in remote places, the Sony Walkman conversely promoted the intrusion of private media into public spaces. VCRS allowed people to "time shift"-to record TV programs and watch them at a later, more suitable time. It is an interesting question why such individualistic, private technologies have been developed and have flourished in a supposedly group-oriented society such as Japan. Kogawa (1984, 1988) coined the term "electronic individualism" to characterize Japanese social relations and argued that Japanese collectivity is increasingly based upon electronic communication and therefore becoming more precarious. Although Kogawa views the contemporary Japanese situation somewhat pessimistically, he points out that it offers the dual possibilities of the emancipation of individuals via technologies and, alternatively, the sophisticated control of individuals. Indeed, as Chambers argues, the consumption of one of the most successful Japanese cultural technologies of the past decades-the Sony Walkman-is an ambivalent "cultural activity" that sways between "autonomy and autism" (1990, 2). Such an activity can be seen as a form of escapism that makes individuals feel a sense of atomized freedom from the constraints of a rigidly controlled society. It also has the possibility of substituting a privatized "micro-narrative" for collective "grand-narratives" (3). Speaking of the Chinese, Chow (1993, 398) argues that listening to a Walkman is "a 'silent' sabotage of the technology of collectivization" (for a more thorough analysis of the Walkman, see du Gay et al. 1997).

Despite the profound influence of Japanese consumer technologies on the cultural activities of our everyday life, they have tended not to be talked about in terms of a Japanese cultural presence. Hoskins and Mirus (1988) employ the notion of "cultural discount" to explain the fact that even though certain Japanese films and literature have had a Western following, the outflow of Japanese popular cultural products (particularly to Western countries) has been disproportionately small. Hoskins and Mirus describe "cultural discount" as occurring when "a particular program rooted in one culture and thus attractive in that environment will have a diminished appeal elsewhere as viewers find it difficult to identify with the style, values, beliefs, institutions and behavioral patterns of the material in question" (500). Cultural prestige, Western hegemony, the universal appeal of American popular culture, and the prevalence of the English language are no doubt advantageous to Hollywood. By contrast, Japanese language is not widely spoken outside Japan and Japan is supposedly obsessed with its own cultural uniqueness. Given the high cultural discount of Japanese films and TV programs, Hoskins and Mirus argue, Japanese cultural export tends to be limited to "culturally neutral" consumer technologies, whose country of origin has nothing to do with "the way [that they work] and the satisfaction [that a consumer] obtains from usage" (503).

Apparently, the notion of "cultural discount" does not satisfactorily explain a consumer's cultural preference for audiovisual media texts such as TV programs. Foreign programs, for example, can be seen as more attractive because they are "exotic," "different," or less "boring." The cultural difference embodied in foreign products can also be seen as less of a threat to local culture precisely because the imported products are conceived as "foreign," while those originating from culturally proximate countries might be perceived as more threatening (O'Regan 1992). The legacy of Japanese imperialism in Asia is a case in point. More importantly, Hoskins and Mirus's argument is highly West-centric. They are not aware that Japanese TV programs and popular music have been exported to East and Southeast Asia, if rarely to Europe or North America, though we also should be cautious not to mechanically explain this trend by employing "cultural discount" or "culturally proximity" in an essentialist manner (see Straubhaar 1991). I will return to this question in later chapters. For the moment, though, I will elaborate more on Hoskins and Mirus's discussion of the nature of Japan's major cultural export to the world (including Western markets).

Notwithstanding the argument about Japanese cultural export outlined above, the term "culturally neutral" seems misleading, too. The influence of cultural products on everyday life, as we have seen, cannot be culturally neutral. Any product has the cultural imprint of the producing country, even if it is not recognized as such. I would suggest that the major audiovisual products Japan exports could be better characterized as the "culturally odorless" three C's: consumer technologies (such as VCRS, karaoke, and the Walkman); comics and cartoons (animation); and computer/video games. I use the term cultural odor to focus on the way in which cultural features of a country of origin and images or ideas of its national, in most cases stereotyped, way of life are associated positively with a particular product in the consumption process. Any product may have various kinds of cultural association with the country of its invention. Such images are often related to exoticism, such as the image of the Japanese samurai or the geisha girl. Here, however, I am interested in the moment when the image of the contemporary lifestyle of the country of origin is strongly and affirmatively called to mind as the very appeal of the product, when the "cultural odor" of cultural commodities is evolved. The way in which the cultural odor of a particular product becomes a "fragrance"-a socially and culturally acceptable smell-is not determined simply by the consumer's perception that something is "made in Japan." Neither is it necessarily related to the material influence or quality of the product. It has more to do with widely disseminated symbolic images of the country of origin. The influence of McDonald's throughout the world, for example, can be discerned in terms of the bureaucratization and standardization of food; and the principles governing the operation of McDonald's can also be extended to other everyday life activities such as education and shopping (Ritzer 1993). However, no less important to the international success of McDonald's is its association with an attractive image of "the American way of life" (e.g., Frith 1982, 46; Featherstone 1995, 8). McDonald's, of course, does not inherently represent "America." It is a discursive construction of what is "America" that confers on McDonald's its powerful association with "Americanness."

Sony's Walkman is an important cultural commodity that has influenced everyday life in various ways. For this reason, du Gay et al. (1997) chose it as the cultural artifact most appropriate for a case study using the multilayered analyses of cultural studies. While taking note of the social constructedness of any national image, Sony's Walkman, they argue, may signify "Japaneseness" because of its miniaturization, technical sophistication, and high quality. Yet, I suggest, although such signs of "Japaneseness" are analytically important, they are not especially relevant to the appeal of the Walkman at a consumption level. The use of the Walkman does not evoke images or ideas of a Japanese lifestyle, even if consumers know it is made in Japan and appreciate "Japaneseness" in terms of its sophisticated technology. Unlike American commodities, "Japanese consumer goods do not seek to sell on the back of a Japanese way of life" (Featherstone 1995, 9), and they lack any influential "idea of Japan" (Wee 1997).

The cultural odor of a product is also closely associated with racial and bodily images of a country of origin. The three C's I mentioned earlier are cultural artifacts in which a country's bodily, racial, and ethnic characteristics are erased or softened. The characters of Japanese animation and computer games for the most part do not look "Japanese." Such non-Japaneseness is called mukokuseki, literally meaning "something or someone lacking any nationality," but also implying the erasure of racial or ethnic characteristics or a context, which does not imprint a particular culture or country with these features. Internationally acclaimed Japanese animation director Oshii Mamoru suggests that Japanese animators and cartoonists unconsciously choose not to draw "realistic" Japanese characters if they wish to draw attractive characters (Oshii, Ito, and Ueno 1996). In Oshii's case, the characters tend to be modeled on Caucasian types. Consumers of and audiences for Japanese animation and games, it can be argued, may be aware of the Japanese origin of these commodities, but those texts barely feature "Japanese bodily odor" identified as such.

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