Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism SYNOPSIS
Globalization is usually thought of as the worldwide
spread of Western-particularly American-popular culture. Yet if one nation
stands out in the dissemination of pop culture in East and Southeast Asia, it is
Japan. Pokﾽmon, anime, pop music, television dramas such as Tokyo Love Story and
Long Vacation-the export of Japanese media and culture is big business. In
Recentering Globalization
, Koichi Iwabuchi explores how
Japanese popular culture circulates in Asia. He situates the rise of Japan's
cultural power in light of decentering globalization processes and demonstrates
how Japan's extensive cultural interactions with the other parts of Asia
complicate its sense of being "in but above" or "similar but superior to" the
region.
Iwabuchi has conducted extensive interviews with producers, promoters, and
consumers of popular culture in Japan and East Asia. Drawing upon this research,
he analyzes Japan's "localizing" strategy of repackaging Western pop culture for
Asian consumption and the ways Japanese popular culture arouses regional
cultural resonances. He considers how transnational cultural flows are
experienced differently in various geographic areas by looking at bilateral
cultural flows in East Asia. He shows how Japanese popular music and television
dramas are promoted and understood in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and how
"Asian" popular culture (especially Hong Kong's) is received in Japan.
Rich in empirical detail and theoretical insight,
Recentering Globalization
is a significant contribution to thinking about cultural
globalization and transnationalism, particularly in the context of East Asian
cultural studies.
About the Author
Koichi Iwabuchi is Assistant Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at
International Christian University in Tokyo. For many years he was a reporter
and producer for Nippon Television Network Corporation (NTV).
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
Ulf Hannerz
A very rich and subtle study. I predict that Iwabuchiﾽs book will quickly become a central reference in debates over the global organization of popular culture. — author of Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places
This book will be one of the most important in Japan studies to come out in a long time. The author's anaylsis, which theorizes and critiques Japan's position as a kind of intermediary between Western and Asian pop cultural formations, and the complex will to power that is being worked out under various consumerist guises, is smart and very much needed in the Japan field."-author of Women on the Verge: Japanese Women, Western Dreams
— Karen Kelsky
Ien Ang
Koichi Iwabuchi has given us a uniquely fascinating and empirically rich study of cultural globalization-Japanese style-as it evolved in the last two decades of the twentieth century. Eye-opening and insightful, this is an immensely readable book, adding considerably to the growing stock of non-western voices and perspectives in transnational cultural studies. — author of On Not Speaking Chinese: Living between Asia and the West
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