Prevalencia de Babesia por Sexo (%)

The notion of cultural traffic or ‘traffic in culture’ began to figure prominently in anthropological works, such as those by James Clifford (in particular his Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, 1996) and George Marcus and Fred Myers (especially the edited volume Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology, 1995). The traffic metaphor also figures in the more recent volume edited by Iwabuchi, Muecke, and Thomas (2004), Rogue Flows: Trans-Asian Cultural Traffic, which focuses primarily on East and Southeast Asia. The emphasis on the mobility of cultural forms goes against the grain of earlier anthropological and ethnomusicological studies, in which forms of cultural expression were studied only within their originating cultural context. In fact, the distinguished anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s statement that “art and the equipment to grasp it are made in the same shop”⁹ was a view widely shared by ethnomusicologists working in the 1970s and 1980s. While Geertz’s view is eloquently stated and true in some senses, it ignores what was soon to become perhaps the main focus of the next generation of anthropologists, and ethnomusicologists: globalization. In the following Chapters, I am expressly concerned with art made in “a different shop,” one intending its product partially,

9 Clifford Geertz, “Art as a Cultural System” in Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology.

(New York: Basic Books, 1983) p. 118.

but not exclusively, for consumption in its country of origin. Moreover, I am concerned with the meaning surrounding its travel (being “trafficked”) to Korea.

The literature on globalization is now truly enormous. The word ‘globalization’ and its frequent companion (and apparent opposite), ‘localization,’ have appeared in the titles of hundreds of articles and books and in the pages of countless more. The spread of cultural forms, political systems, ways of thinking, ways of interacting, all fall under the rubric of

‘globalization.’ The process of such spread rarely occurs as a kind of homogenizing obliteration of local particularities, but instead through different processes of ‘localization,’ whereby what is spreading from one part of the world—most often the West, but increasingly from other places as well—does so as the receiving group develops new patterns of usage and meaning formation.

Very often the mass media are involved in these processes, particularly with regard to the globalization (and localization) of expressive cultural forms, such as films, televised dramas, and music.

Among the major studies theorizing these processes, Appadurai’s work stands out, particularly his landmark Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (1996).

The chapter “Disjunction and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy” (originally published in Public Culture, 1990) outlines a theoretical framework for understanding globalization and localization (or what he calls ‘indigenization’). He suggests understanding the global situation (the ‘global now’) in terms of five categories of culture, which he calls “-scapes”: ethnoscapes, technoscapes, mediascapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes. Of these the mediascapes and technoscapes are particularly relevant to the current study. These two “-scapes” involve not only the media content (TV shows, pop songs) and technological devices (televisions, CDs, computers) themselves, but the ways people construct meanings around them, the ways they

enable people to imagine their own lives and the lives of others.¹⁰ This dissertation addresses the techno- and media-scapes through which Japanese pop reaches Koreans and questions whether the process can be seen as “indigenization.”

These processes of experience increasingly occur outside the contexts in which the cultural forms are produced and intended for consumption. Thus, Appadurai talks of

‘deterritorialization’—the delinking of cultural forms from the places and the peoples responsible for creating them. This concept would seem to apply to the phenomenon of Japanese pop spreading to Korea and other countries, but one needs to look carefully at the extent to which the ‘deterritorialization’ of Japanese pop is planned and orchestrated by industry forces in Japan and elsewhere. Ella Shohat’s and Robert Stam also emphasize deterritorialization in their discussion of postcoloniality, along with the related trend in formerly colonized countries away from discourses of anticolonialism. ¹¹ While anti-Japanese discourse in Korea has by no means disappeared, it is markedly less prominent among young Koreans now than even a decade or two ago.

The term globalization overtly conveys the notion of worldwide spread, but in many cases, including the case under analysis in this dissertation, the spread is transnational, but still restricted mostly to one or several world regions rather than the entire globe.¹² In this context, two important books appeared in 2002. One is an edited volume clearly problematizing this notion in its title: Many Globalizations: Cultural Diversity in the Contemporary World (Berger and Huntington 2002). This work consists of an introduction laying out basic theoretical concerns for the understanding of the globalization/localization process, followed by a collection

10 Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996) p. 35.

11 Ella Shohat and Robert Stam. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. (London: Routledge, 1994) p. 38.

12 Appadurai (1996:32) is careful to point out that the indigenizing process may involve Westernization (or Americanization) but also “Japanization” (in Korea), “Indianization” (in Sri Lanka), etc.

of essays addressing cases around the world. Of particular interest is the distinction made by Berger in his introduction, differentiating “sacramental” and “nonsacremental” consumption. He points out the reverence with which consumers may approach a newly imported form, treating something that was “nonsacramental” in the originating culture, but “sacramental” in the new one. Moreover, he notes that the status may change, usually from sacramental to nonsacramental, over time. Related to this concept is the idea of “culturedness” discussed by Tamotsu Aoki in his article in this collection, pointing out how Japan had adopted fast-food hamburger eating by promoting this “’new Western culture’ as a fashion.” Simply put, to be fashionable (and, by implication, modern), one had to learn not only to consume what Westerners consumed, but also to do so “fashionably”—in the manner of Westerners. The issue of culturedness, or fashionability, in Korea’s consumption of Japanese pop, forms one dimension of my inquiry into what related aspects of Japanese behavior and belief are being adopted by Koreans.

The other book is Japanese scholar Iwabuchi’s landmark study of Japanese cultural forms in Asia: Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism, a work that focuses on the influx of Japanese popular culture to Taiwan, China, and Southeast Asia, but is ultimately a book about Japan’s changing sense of its own cultural self. Iwabuchi’s omission of Korea is acknowledged, but not accurately justified, as he fails to note the extensive illegal flow of Japanese popular forms into Korea. Nevertheless, his insights on globalization within Asia—or, more accurately, as he puts it in his subtitle “Japanese transnationalism”—are invaluable in shaping some of the basic questions I ask about Japanese popular music in Korea.

Already cited previously, and related to the notion of culturedness just mentioned in my discussion above of Aoki’s article in Berger and Huntington (2002), is Iwabuchi’s notion of cultural “odor.” Following the success of culturally odorless Japanese export products,

electronics and automobiles, Japan has expanded to forms that have clear cultural “odor”—

especially TV dramas and Japanese popular music. Iwabuchi’s cultural “odor” is comparable to my notion of cultural “presence,” and helps make clear the varying degrees of perceivable

“Japaneseness” in different products. Even within the category of Japanese pop, can some songs, or some performers, represent greater Japanese cultural “odor” (or presence) than others?

Also important in Iwabuchi’s work is the historically-informed discussion of Japan’s unique positioning of itself with respect to the rest of Asia and to the West. Iwabuchi suggests that Japan saw itself as “similar but superior” and “in but above” Asia.¹³ Japan saw itself as best equipped and most successful in modernizing “according to the Western standard”¹⁴ — successfully offering the “indigenization and domestification of foreign (Western) culture.”¹⁵ This established what Iwabuchi sees as the Japan-Asia-West “triad.” Though originating in the 1930s, this posturing of Japan still seems relevant today, as Japan exports its modern and postmodern forms to the rest of Asia, under the project known as Japan’s “return to Asia.” An important question unasked by Iwabuchi is the extent to which Korea is part of that “rest of Asia” and how it might differ from other Asian countries.

Iwabuchi and other scholars writing specifically about Japanese popular cultural flow in Asia are, naturally, concerned with identifying and theorizing about which particular qualities and characteristics contribute to its success abroad. Iwabuchi mentions the “visible [or audible?]

‘Japaneseness’” of popular music, TV dramas, as well as magazines¹⁶ and later invokes Baudrillard in talking about a postmodern image of Japan as a “’weightless artificial satellite,’

13 Iwabuchi Koichi, Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism. (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002) p. 8.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid. p. 10.

16 Iwabuchi, op. cit. p. 34.

which is concerned neither with origin nor authenticity.”¹⁷ However weightless or unconcerned Japanese pop may be, the question of audience perception remains: to what extent Koreans pay attention to these issues. Craig, in the introduction to his collection of essays on Japanese popular culture (in Japan and overseas) enumerates a number of reasons for the popularity of Japanese dramas, popular music, and other forms, including Japan’s reputation for quality (deriving from its reputation for electronics and automobiles), Japanese cuteness, the seeming approachability of its star performers, the kinds of themes (human relations) and optimistic, innocent, and unapologetic attitude pervasive in its dramas (and music). Some of these are also presented in Ogawa’s essay on Japanese popular music in Hong Kong.¹⁸ My efforts in this dissertation to identify particular traits of Japanese pop that appeal to Koreans include, but go beyond those mentioned by Ogawa and Craig.

When looking at processes of globalization/localization/indigenization, in addition to the questions about the accessibility or attractiveness of a cultural form “as is,” or as initially received, the question of adaptability and modification also arises, frequently under the general rubric of “hybridization.” Appadurai invokes this term in relation to his preferred

“indigenization.” Iwabuchi also deals with the issue of hybridization, particularly in relation to the Japanese notion of mukokuseki, a term “widely used in Japan in two different, though not mutually exclusive ways” to suggest the mixing of elements of multiple cultural origins, and to imply the erasure of visible ethnic and cultural characteristics.”¹⁹ In the scrutiny of Japanese pop in this dissertation, I will consider the issue of hybridity and mukokuseki both with respect to

17 Ibid. p. 62.

18 Ogawa Masahi, “Japanese Popular Music in Hong Kong: What Does TK Present?” in Refashioning Pop Music in Asia: Cosmopolitan Flows, Political Tempos and Aesthetic Industries, edited by Allen Chun, Ned Rossiter, and Brian Shoesmith. (New York: Routledge Curzon, 2004) pp. 144-156.

Japanese pop’s own mix of elements, as well as whatever kinds of accommodations have occurred as Japanese popular music moves from Japan to Korea.

Japan’s longstanding claims to being modern, and now post-modern, are addressed in a number of works, including Clammer 2001, Iwabuchi 2002, Morton 2001, Richie 2003, Thomas 2004, and are the primary focus of the 1989 volume edited by Miyoshi and Harootunian. This challenging work analyzes and “deconstructs” the conception of Japan as “uniquely postmodern and therefore superior to the West.”²⁰ It warns against the widespread notion of Japaneseness as an “irreducible essence…unchanging and unaffected by history”²¹ as a potentially dangerous new form of “cultural exceptionalism (Nihonjinron) which Japanese have always appealed to as a form of defensive reaction to distinguish Japan from the West” (and, I would add, from its Asian neighbors). The questions raised by Miyoshi and Harootunian concerning “Japaneseness”

relate directly to my own inquiry into Korean conceptions of Japaneseness (particularly the postmodern or, at least, non-traditional variety) as evident in Japanese popular music.

Dealing specifically with popular music throughout much of Asia, including Japan, the 2004 volume, Refashioning Pop Music in Asia: Cosmopolitan Flows, Political Tempos and Aesthetic Industries, edited by Chun, Rossiter and Shoesmith is an important contribution to transnational flows in Asia. Ogawa’s article considers the case of Japanese pop performer/promoter Komuro Tetsuya’s appearance in Hong Kong, while Yano’s article discusses the problematic position of Korean pop music and musicians in Japan in the 1990s. Chun and Rossiter’s introduction points to the “reterritorialization” of certain popular musics within Asia (cf. Appadurai’s “deterritorialization” and “indigenization” mentioned earlier). And like

20 Miyoshi Masao and H. D. Harootunian, eds. Postmodernism and Japan. (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1989) p. xvi.

21 Ibid. p. xvi.

Appadurai 1996, Berger and Huntington 2002, and Iwabuchi 2002, they argue against the idea of a single globalization, or Wallerstein’s idea of the “modern world-system.” ²²

Finally, another important concept I draw upon in this dissertation is the notion of

“aesthetic communities”—discussed with respect to popular music by Veit Erlmann,²³ but originating from the 19^th century philosopher Immanuel Kant. This concept is quite similar to what Appadurai calls “communities of sentiment”²⁴—involving a shared imagination of reality, very often built on their shared media experiences (pop music, TV, etc.). I am concerned with audience identity and sentiment in Korea as such communities form around the consumption of Japanese pop. Can one talk of a single international Japanese popular music community, consisting of all who consume this music, or are there multiple communities even within a single country, such as Korea, in which Japanese popular music is just one of a number of determinants for “membership”?