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Postcolonial Studies
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De-Westernization and the governance of global cultural connectivity: a dialogic approach to East Asian media cultures
Koichi Iwabuchi Version of record first published: 19 Nov 2010.

To cite this article: Koichi Iwabuchi (2010): De-Westernization and the governance of global cultural connectivity: a dialogic approach to East Asian media cultures, Postcolonial Studies, 13:4, 403-419 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2010.518349

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Postcolonial Studies, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 403419, 2010

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De-Westernization and the governance of global cultural connectivity: a dialogic approach to East Asian media cultures
KOICHI IWABUCHI

The de-Westernization of media and cultural studies In the last two decades, we have witnessed dramatic developments in the production of media cultures and their transnational circulation in nonWestern regions. These developments have posed serious questions about the supremacy of American media cultures and the continuing plausibility of Euro-American cultural domination across the world. Thus they necessitate the de-Westernization of the study of media and cultural globalization, since an uncritical application of seminal theories derived from Euro-American experiences to these non-Western contexts and processes only partially grasps what is going on.1 East Asia is one of the key regions in which these alternative cultural expressions flourish, in which cultural mixing and corporate collaboration are intensifying, and in which intra-regional consumption has been set in motion. In recent years, a great deal of research has examined the dynamics of the production, circulation and consumption of media cultures in East Asia under the processes of globalization, much of it expressly aiming to theorize the socio-historically specific experiences that characterize East Asia as a region.2 There are, however, both impediments and caveats in the de-Westernization of media cultural studies. The first is related to the issue of how we learn from other experiences in a reciprocal manner. How*indeed, whether*the Western academy listens to and learns from the experiences of non-Western regions remains a grave concern. Although many intriguing studies have been carried out within non-Western contexts, it is still a matter of debate whether such research is seriously attended to in the Western English-language academy. Academic institutions often engage with non-Western situations and case studies as a means of displaying their internationalized stance; but this effort is sometimes more of a token gesture than the expression of a sincere desire to move beyond the existing Eurocentric hierarchy in the production of knowledge.3 Yet at the same time, de-Westernization should not be regarded as a blunt denial of Western theory either.4 While the one-way, axiomatic application of Western theory needs to be put aside now, creative acts of translation and appropriation still help us to understand what
ISSN 1368-8790 print/ISSN 1466-1888 online/10/04040317 # 2010 The Institute of Postcolonial Studies DOI: 10.1080/13688790.2010.518349

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is going on in non-Western regions. We all know that theories, concepts and methods which have been developed in a particular place and at a specific historical juncture must always be imaginatively translated when they are applied to other times and places (or to the same place but at a different time). Both the critical interrogation and the innovative application of theories derived from Western experiences remain useful strategies for opening up fresh perspectives in the analysis of non-Western experiences. This point, in its turn, is related to the question of the distinctiveness of East Asian experiences. If de-Westernization means the rejection of Western theory, it can all too easily reproduce a well-demarcated EastWest dichotomy and thus lend itself to infertile nativism, as was the case with the revival of essentialist discourses on Asian values in the 1990s. De-Westernizing perspectives should be accompanied by de-Asianizing ones too, for the simple reason that a comprehensive understanding of media and cultural flows in East Asia cannot be achieved via the methodologies developed for the study of traditional cultures. This is the case first of all because Western cultural influences are always and already deeply inscribed in media cultures across East Asia. But just as importantly, it is because*in the complexly interconnected world which we now inhabit*it has become ever more impractical to imagine uniquely authentic cultural experiences that belong within clearly demarcated locations. This is especially true of media cultures. Transnational perspectives are indispensable if we are to make sense of the distinct processes of production, circulation and consumption which shape media cultures. This includes media cultures in the West, too, which are themselves becoming more or less subject to global cultural formatting, to multilateral processes of cultural amalgamation, and to the operation of commodity marketization. A more constructive way of analysing issues of media and cultural globalization must locate these transnationally shared structural forces and their interactions*which often operate contradictorily but inter-constitutively*in terms of both homogenization/heterogenization and decentring/recentring. Rigorous examination is also required of the ways in which they are articulated in specific socio-historical local contexts in order to elucidate the latters distinctiveness. This approach to the processes of cultural globalization would also urge us to consider the extent to which the rise of East Asian media cultures challenges Western-centred configurations of power. While Euro-American players still exercise the most influence in the formation of global forces, we should neither neglect the involvement of non-Western players in this process nor assume any absolute centre located in a particular region. Rather, new configurations of global governance in the area of media culture are subtly superseding the WestAsia binary and permeating both Western and nonWestern regions. This article aims to analyse the rise of East Asian media cultures in terms of the governance of global media connectivity. It focuses in particular on how increasing regional flows are both promoting dialogic cross-border connections and simultaneously highlighting uneven power relations and exclusionary politics. In the following pages, I will first briefly sketch how the production, circulation and connectivity of media products in 404

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East Asia have enabled new perspectives on the globalization of media cultures. Homing in on the Japanese context, I will then discuss how the interplay of three modes of governance in global media culture puts critical limits on the ways in which these interlinked media cultures can enhance cross-border dialogue. Specifically, I will examine the collaboration of the media and cultural industries; the institutionalization of cultural internationalism; and the growing interest of states in branding the nation via media cultures. While the growing circulation and consumption of media cultures in East Asia have considerably facilitated connections among people in the region, points of contention remain. These include: the extent to which these developments fundamentally challenge uneven processes of globalization in the field of media culture; the precise nature of the cross-border dialogues produced; the ways in which Asia is linked up, and who is excluded from this new community; and whether this traffic encourages marginalized voices within the nation to express themselves, and find an attentive audience, within mediated public space. East Asian media cultures and corporate governance East Asia has become a key site for the proliferation of new digital media such as mobile phones, digital video games, internet discussion sites, and social networking services*particularly among young people. The production capacity of media products such as TV, films, and popular music has also been considerably boosted in recent years. Media culture markets in East Asia are now increasingly synchronized, as producers, directors, actors, and capital from around the region interact intensively across national borders, forming a range of collaborative partnerships. These developments are suggestive of a trend in media globalization whereby regional connections are enhanced as a way of bypassing the command of Euro-American media cultures, leading to the flourishing of local creativity and the formation of new connections among audiences in East Asia. East Asian media cultures have been hybridizing local elements and American cultural influences in highly dexterous ways for many decades now, but cultural fusion of this kind also occurs within the boundaries of the region itself. Remakes of successful TV dramas and films are a case in point. Televisual media texts from Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan are frequently remade in neighbouring countries, and Japanese comic book series are often adapted for TV dramas and films outside Japan.5 In studies of cultural globalization, the West and the Rest tend to be equated with the global and the local respectively. Even in discussions of cultural hybridization, the Rest is supposed only to receive, imitate, appropriate and/or hybridize the West, regardless of the vibrant local media cultures that are generated in the process. Thus while it is not a credible option to ignore the lingering influence of American media cultures in East Asia, dynamic and intriguing processes of inter-Asian cultural fusion and intertextual reworking urge us to move beyond crude paradigms in which the globe is inexorably Americanized. 405

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The circumvention of American media cultures is also notable in the circulation and consumption of media products in East Asia. American media products remain popular, of course, but products from diverse parts of East Asia are also finding unprecedented acceptance in the region. Although it is still an open question whether media culture consumption will engender an East Asian identity,6 it certainly promotes mutual understanding and selfreflexive dialogue within a transnational scope. As the mutual consumption of media cultures from different parts of the region has become more commonplace, people have acquired a wider repertoire for reflecting on their own lives and on broader socio-political issues. It has thus created opportunities for consumers of media to deepen their understanding of both their own society and culture and that of others*and even to ponder more deeply their home nations historical relationship with other parts of East Asia. What we might call compassionate viewing of Japanese or Korean TV dramas has, for example, encouraged audiences in various East Asian countries to meditate anew on gender relations, social justice, and the lives of young people through reflecting on both the spatio-temporal proximity and distance of their own society from that of other East Asian modernities.7 The mediated encounter with other Asian modernities has prompted many people in East Asia to realize that they now inhabit the same developmental time-zone as other nation-states in the region. This realization comes as they apprehend, in mutually reflexive fashion, the ways in which common experiences of modernization, urbanization, Westernization, and globalization are both similarly and differently represented in other East Asian contexts. The consumption of media cultures from other Asian countries often evokes a sense of nostalgia among audiences. And while it might reproduce Orientalist views of other Asians as not-quite-as-modern-as-us by equating their present with our past, nostalgia also works to stir up self-reflexive thinking. The nostalgic consumption of Hong Kong and Korean media cultures in Japan has even destabilized a historically constituted idea of Japans superiority over the rest of Asia*the notion that Japan is geographically and culturally in Asia, but at the same time always positioned above it.8 Furthermore, the everyday practice of media consumption engenders actual cross-border contact. Growing numbers of people take trips to other Asian cities, connect with people there, start learning local languages, and join transnational internet fan communities.9 In the case of the Korean Wave in Japan, many (mostly female) consumers even began to reacquaint themselves with the history of Japanese colonialism. Media cultures have thus connected East Asia in new, dialogic ways: dialogic in the sense of rethinking ones own life, society and culture at the same time as reflecting in critical fashion on ones socio-historically constructed relations with others. In this regard, it can be argued that travelling East Asian media cultures have engendered a cultural public sphere, which McGuigan defines as the articulation of politics, public and personal, as a contested terrain through affective (aesthetic and emotional) modes of communication and 406

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which provides vehicles for thought and feeling, for imagination and disputatious argument.10 The rise of East Asian media cultures and transnational connections thus demonstrates that it is no longer practical to interpret media and cultural globalization in terms of bipartite domination, with one-way transfers of media culture from the centre (West) to the periphery (Rest). However, and as suggested earlier, this does not mean that uneven power relations are no longer relevant. Analysis of the rise of East Asian media cultures cannot productively challenge Eurocentric views of cultural globalization unless it pays due attention to significant changes that have occurred in the forces which structure the cross-border circulation and connectivity of media culture. The rise of East Asian media culture needs to be considered in terms of how increasing corporate governance of global cultural production and circulation has caused uneven power configurations to become decentralized, dispersed, and interpenetrating across the globe. This new governance has been shaped chiefly by cross-border partnerships and collaborations among local and transnational media culture industries within various advanced countries, including non-Western regions; and this has promoted the integration of markets and capital on a global scale. But it is also part and parcel of the decentring process that has been sped along by extraordinary advances in individualized digital communication technology, advances which allow people across the world to link up instantaneously with one another. A further factor is the dynamics of local cultural indigenization, which downplay the blunt cultural power of the supposed country of origin, and thus help to engender the rise of non-Western media cultures. These factors have made the circulation and connectivity of global media cultures more complex and inconsistent, yet not in ways which radically transform the unevenness underlying them. This is because, as capital subtly exploits consumer sovereignty, it is capable of co-opting those forces which oppose further commercialization.11 In this context, it is dubious whether the rise of East Asian media cultures radically challenges existing configurations of global cultural power. The inroads that East Asian media and cultural industries have made into Hollywood, and the global diffusion of East Asian films, animations and video games, actually illustrate the advancement of corporate governance in the global cultural economy. Sony Corporations 1989 purchase of a major Hollywood studio was an early example of Japanese firms integrating themselves with the power structures and distribution networks of global culture. More recently, it is American distribution networks which help Poke mon (distributed by Warner Brothers) and the anime films of Hayao Miyazaki (distributed by Disney) to be released worldwide; and the Poke mon anime products watched by audiences around the world*with the exception of those seen in some parts of Asia*have been Americanized, a process that involves removing some of their Japaneseness to make them more acceptable to American and European audiences.12 To penetrate East Asian markets, Hollywood has become keen to employ directors and actors from the region, to re-make Japanese, Korean and Hong Kong films, and to 407

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(co)produce Asia-related films. In a sense, then, it could be argued that Hollywoods incorporation of East Asian films is clear proof of the uneven power relations that continue to exist between the US and East Asia, since Asian content needs to be modified to the taste and style of a Hollywood whose main target audiences reside in Euro-American countries. Yet the configuration of the global cultural economy is more entangled than this Manichean picture of American domination over Asia would suggest.13 While Euro-America still occupies a central position, the corporate governance of the global cultural economy facilitates the rise of East Asian media cultures through its strengthening of the mutually constitutive nature of Western and East Asian media cultures. The production and circulation of regional media cultures do not exist outside the command of corporate governance either. As exemplified by STAR TV, owned by News Corporation and MTV, global media giants are penetrating regional media flows by deploying subtle localization strategies. More recently, Hollywood studios have begun actively producing Asian media cultures by setting up local branches in prosperous cities. It should also be noted that the activation of regional media flows has also been masterminded by corporate governance, thus engendering a new international hierarchy with the rise of regional sub-centres such as Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, Taipei, Shanghai and Bangkok, amongst which transnational corporate partnerships and co-productions are vigorously promoted. Crucial issues regarding the political economy of media and cultural globalization* such as intellectual property rights and the international division of cultural labour14*are also coming under the spotlight across the region. The outsourcing of the basic labour of animation production by Japanese companies to Korea and China highlights the exploitation of cultural labour on a transnational scale;15 and the policing of copyright infringement in East Asian cities is being increasingly tightened as a means of favouring the corporate interests of major media and culture industries at the expense of the interests of cultural workers and audiences.16 A still more pertinent issue for this article is the question of whose voices and concerns are being excluded from East Asian cultural dialogues as the marketization of media cultures progresses apace. As mentioned earlier, the rise of East Asian media cultures shows both the de-Westernization of global media culture flows and the simultaneous de-Asianization of these products, as they rearticulate Asia not through traditional cultural forms but via globalized media cultures. Just as crucially, this rise also generates a process of reAsianization, since it highlights the exclusionary politics practised by corporate governance in its management of the connections that link regional media cultures. To be more precise, the connectivity of East Asian media cultures has brought about not just cross-boundary dialogues, but also crossboundary disparity, division, antagonism, and marginalization in a range of overlapping ways. Most fundamentally, disparity in the material accessibility to media culture remains a problematic area. Although the development of digital communication technologies, such as the internet and cheap (pirated) DVDs, has facilitated consumption of various media cultures from different 408

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parts of the world, vast numbers of people and places are unable to enjoy it due to economic restraints.17 Another key related question is the nature of the media cultures which are currently promoted for intra-regional circulation and consumption. Although, once again, digital communication technologies have diversified grassroots cultural expression and mediated cross-border connections*including those amongst marginalized people and the activists who campaign for them*we still need to ask what sort of mutual understanding is promoted and via what kinds of media texts. Such analysis is vital to ascertain which issues, and whose voices, are not being sufficiently attended to in the emerging inter-Asian public sphere. As market-orientated and corporate-driven connections between East Asian media cultures have come to the fore, an inter-Asian mass culture channel has been loosely institutionalized, in which nationally dominant media cultures are mutually promoted and consumed. The kinds of media texts that media and cultural industries promote for circulation in East Asia are chiefly those which are commercially and ideologically hegemonic in their countries of origin, and for this reason they do not tend to devote much representational space to socially and culturally marginalized voices within the nation (except for tokenized multicultural commodities from time to time). This is suggestive of both the dearth and the limitations of current scholarship on the connectivity of East Asian media cultures, most of which tends to focus on the self-reflexive consumption of other Asian media texts rather than on close critical analysis of the texts themselves.18 While there are plenty of nation-based studies which explore the media representation of queer cultures, ethnic minorities, and economic migrants, research into how these themes play out on the transnational level, and across a range of East Asian media texts, is still in its infancy. More rigorous analysis will be required to determine whether the emerging inter-Asian mass channel pays due attention to issues of inequality and marginalization in terms of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, region, class, migration/diasporas, and across the axes of political economy and textual representation. International governance of the media culture encounter This point exposes a pitfall in the de-Westernizing perspective: namely, that it tends to lose sight of cross-border unevenness. What is more, we are becoming increasingly likely to fall foul of this problem on account of another aspect of the governance of globally interlinked media cultures. This is its tendency to prop up the national framework through the development of internationalism. It has been argued that transnational cultural flows and connections do not displace the significance of the nation so much as highlight its reworking.19 What has become conspicuous is the rise of the international governance of media culture networks, in which the nation is considered the basic unit of global cultural encounter, and in which national cultures are mutually consumed through various internationalized cultural practices. 409

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International governance is closely associated with corporate governance since it is facilitated through processes of global localization, or glocalization, in which the logic of flexible capital, as suggested above, accommodates itself to seemingly opposing forces. Globalization does not promote a straightforward homogenization, but rather gives rise to the diversification of media cultural repertoires in many parts of the world. In this sense, it has been effecting a particular kind of cultural diversity, or a peculiar form of homogenization.20 This is clearly shown by the marketing strategies employed by media and cultural industries, in which the seemingly opposing forces of globalization/localization and homogenization/heterogenization are subtly combined. As glocalization has become a business buzzword, new configurations of global cultural power have begun to exploit locally specific processes of meaning-construction in tailored ways.21 The world is becoming more diverse through standardization, and more standardized through diversification. With the advancement of globalization, a series of cultural formats such as genre, narrative style, visual representation, digitalized special effects, marketing techniques, and ideas of coolness*all of which can accommodate cultural differences*have been disseminated, shared and deployed by media industries. In this respect, it would be pointless to deny the enormous power of American cultural influence, as demonstrated by the prevalence of television formats and movie re-makes;22 however, it is, once again, the emergence of transnational alliances among media culture industries in many parts of the world which has promoted the glocalizing enterprise of manufacturing tailored kinds of diversity.23 At the same time, the national market functions as the most profitable local market within the operations of glocalization, since it is the core unit of commercialized cultural diversity. Accordingly, the cultural specificity of the nation as the major local unit is more and more constituted by globally shared cultural formats. As Urry argues, nationality gets more constituted through specific local places, symbols and landscapes, icons of the nation central to that cultures location within the contours of global business, travel, branding.24 This has accompanied the development of what Urry calls the global screen, through which national cultures are mutually appreciated and global cultural diversity is pleasurably consumed. Since the 1990s, we have witnessed the substantial expansion of global media spaces through satellite and cable broadcasting and internet audiovisual sites, as well as an increase in global media events*such as sport events, film festivals, TV format trades, food showcases, and tourism expos*in which cultures from many parts of the world are introduced and exhibited. In the process, these cultures compete with each other and become mutually recognized as national brands in the international arena. The rise of East Asian media culture connectivity functions as a significant instance of this kind of international branding showcase. Billig has argued that the propagation of national feeling is more often than not facilitated and performed by mundane practices such as casually displaying the national flag in cities.25 An increase in internationalized encounters with people, cultures and images from different parts of the world, 410

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in which the participants take pleasure in displaying a particular national emblem, has created a range of mundane occasions in which the banality of national belonging is further reinforced by the emergence of a banal internationalism, which comprehends cross-cultural encounters as those occurring among mutually exclusive national cultures. Banal internationalism is predicated on the view that when one discusses international mobility, encounter and connectedness, one is apt to assume implicitly the cardinal existence of delimited national cultural boundaries which are then crossed in the process of exchange. Such a conception of the nation as an organic cultural entity not only endorses the essentialized ownership of national cultures via the notion of cultural DNA,26 but also fails to take into account the fact that national boundaries are discursively drawn in ways which suppress various socio-cultural differences within the nation itself and disavow their role as constitutive elements of it. Banal internationalism both sidelines marginalized voices and multicultural situations within the nation, and also overtly highlights them in a particularized manner. Multicultural situations, for example, are interpreted and represented by the media in an international framework within which cultural differences are recognized as originating in the space of the nation.27 Migrants and ethnic minorities are encouraged to express their difference in public only so long as they wear foreign national signs which sharply demarcate the boundaries between us (national citizens) and them (temporary foreign residents who will never be full members of the nation). A still more pertinent issue in relation to the rise of East Asian media culture connectivity concerns the ambivalence over the empowerment of diasporas and migrants as the economy and culture of their home countries grow in clout. As a researcher of Asian-Australian studies has noted in relation to the enduring stereotypes of Chinese diasporas in Australia: As we become more dependent on the dollars from the economies of Asia, I would hope that the vestige of 19th century orientalism will fade away.28 It might indeed be the case that the rise of the Chinese economy will not just improve the international image of China, but will also enhance the social status of those diasporas/migrants who identify themselves and are identified as Chinese in the host society. There is, however, a thin line between the empowerment of diasporas via their association with images of the home nation and the conflation of their identities and differences with those who actually live in the natal country. This is evident when we consider how international media cultures overwhelm and suppress local multicultural politics*a useful example being the way in which the popularity of Korean media culture has impinged on the social recognition of resident Koreans in Japan (the socalled Zainichi), who have long suffered discrimination as ethnic minorities. The enthusiastic consumption of the Korean Wave has led to an awkward muddling up of Korea itself with the Zainichi, most of whom were born and brought up in Japan.29 On the one hand, the positive reception of Korean media culture in Japan has greatly facilitated reflexive views of selfother relations among the audiences of these products. Many come to have an improved image of Korea, to realize that their earlier perceptions of Korea 411

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were biased, and to develop a keen interest in learning about Korean society and culture and about the history of Japanese colonialism. Furthermore, the popularity of Korean media culture has not simply improved perceptions of Korea, but of the Zainichi too. Previously, the problems they faced were neglected in the mediated public sphere; but more recently, the Japanese mass media*via TV drama series, for example*have begun articulating their voices and exploring their identity issues much more regularly than before. It should be noted, however, that the enhanced image of resident Koreans in public space has been achieved within an international framework, and at the expense of recognizing them as citizens constitutive of Japanese society. While the advance of media culture connectivity between the two countries allows the well-demarcated national and cultural borders between Japan and Korea to be crossed in positive ways, the stress on international cultural exchange between the two countries*both in terms of social discourse and of audience perception*tends to overlook the complicated in-betweenness that resident Koreans have experienced and struggled with in Japanese society. The positive reception of Korean media culture tends to conflate the existence and difference of resident Koreans with the people and culture of Korea itself, causing them to be perceived and represented as Korean nationals living in Japan. The recognition that resident Koreans are fellow citizens who live here is collapsed into the identity assigned to them as people who belong to another nation over there. As a corollary to this, the historic discrimination and identity distress that many resident Koreans have experienced in Japan have not been well understood, and their differences are not fully recognized as those of citizens who belong to Japanese society. These considerations highlight the necessity of going beyond the nation-centred framework, since the international governance of media culture connectivity is implicated in multicultural and postcolonial questions in ways that underscore the politics of inclusion and exclusion experienced by ethnic minorities within the nationstate. As such, this international governance hampers the dialogic potential of East Asian media cultures. State governance of brand nationalism Corporate and international governance of media culture connectivity are further endorsed by state governance of national branding, which is carried out for the purposes of promoting the international circulation of nationally produced media cultures. As culture has extended its role to other spheres and become a useful resource for various social actors, including marginalized people and NGOs, in their pursuit of assorted political and economic interests,30 the alliance of states and (transnational) media culture industries in the systematic promotion of brand nationalism has become particularly salient. This project aims to administer media culture in opportunistic ways for the enhancement of national interests in the international arena. For states, media culture has come to be regarded both as an important political strategy for boosting soft power and cultural diplomacy, and also as a 412

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crucial economic strategy for attracting capital and tourists and for developing creative industries. In East Asia, the most successful example is the Korean governments policy of selling Korean media culture, which contributed significantly to the development of the Korean Wave.31 Likewise, many national governments in East Asia*such as Japan, China, Singapore, Taiwan and India*are also eager to pursue policies of national branding. The ways in which policy-makers engage with the complex processes of cultural circulation and consumption need to be carefully examined, and we should not naively assume that brand nationalism is as effective in enhancing national images as policy-makers contend. Nevertheless, we cannot straightforwardly dismiss the rise of brand nationalism as an insubstantial and misguided policy. As a dominant social discourse, it has a wide public impact, not least since it has been accompanied by fiscal funding for the promotion of cultural exports. More importantly, it has also facilitated pragmatic discussion of the usefulness of (national) culture. What matters, I would suggest, is less the effectiveness of brand nationalism than the ideological closure it brings about. It does this by limiting public discussion of the promotion of media cultures to the narrow scope of national interests within the international arena, and by discouraging public discussion of issues related to corporate governance and the international governance of media culture connectivity. While the discourse on brand nationalism stresses the national interests which are being furthered by the smart uses of media culture by the state, it needs to be noted that brand nationalism itself is essentially prompted by the logic of capital. Capital knows no loyalty to national borders, even though it may benefit from state regulation as the latter smooths the marketization processes of media cultures.32 Brand nationalism, then, is not just an opportunistic nationalist policy discourse on the uses of media cultures. It also legitimizes, and is itself facilitated by, the neoliberalist mode of media and cultural globalization. It is in this sense that the states active backing of market-oriented globalization hinders rather than promotes public discussion about crucial issues of media cultural globalization and East Asian media culture connectivity. For example, Japanese discussions of national branding policy emphasize the development of creativity in the production of internationally appealing media cultures*yet these analyses tend to lose sight of how transnational media and cultural industries dominate the production and distribution of culture. This domination has exacerbated issues such as the concentration of ownership in a handful of global media conglomerates, their copyright monopoly, and the international division of new cultural labour.33 At the same time, brand nationalism interacts well with banal internationalism. As international media spectacles have come to the fore, and the associated policy discourse on the pragmatic uses of media culture for national interests has become entrenched, exclusive notions of national belonging and the idea of the nation as the unit of global cultural encounter have become even more pervasive and internalized. Although a recent policy statement issued by the Japanese government claims that the advancement of 413

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international cultural exchange, rather than the deployment of hard military power, will be key to the creation of a peaceful world*in which cultural diversity is mutually celebrated, and multilateral understanding and dialogue are promoted34*what brand nationalism actually endorses is a version of cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue which does not attend well to differences within the nation-state. In early 2006, for example, the development of an international broadcasting service became a serious topic of debate in Japan; and the service later commenced in February 2009 with the express aim of enhancing Japans national image in the world so as to promote its political and economic interests. The initial discussion, however, had been launched when foreign nationals residing in Japan complained to then Prime Minister Koizumi about the excessive monoculturalism of Japans broadcasting services, and the lack of programming aimed specifically at nonJapanese residents in Japan. The public duty of the broadcasting system to serve diverse ethno-linguistic backgrounds and to address the concerns of citizens from differing socio-cultural milieux has become an even more pressing matter as transnational cross-border flows intensify. Yet in the cabinet meeting a few days later, the project was mysteriously converted into a discussion of how to enhance national brand images in the world by developing an English-language international broadcasting service, which could stand alongside BBC World, CNN and CCTV International. This clearly demonstrates how brand nationalism suppresses a vital cultural policy engagement with hitherto marginalized voices as they attempt to express themselves in public space. Another pertinent issue to which brand nationalism does not devote sufficient attention is the promotion of cross-border dialogue on historical concerns. The representation of history has become one of the most contentious issues in East Asian media culture as an increasingly mediated connectivity often evokes feelings of national pride in highly reactionary ways. Recent Chinese criticism of the distorted views of history presented in the Korean drama series Jumong demonstrates the growing significance of media culture in disputes over the ownership of national culture and historical narratives. More serious is the issue of Japanese imperialism and colonialism in Asia. In China and Korea, resentment towards Japan still runs famously high because of unresolved historical issues. And while East Asian media cultures may often engage sensibly with both the present and the past, from time to time they are also drawn into both the anti-Japanese sentiments which circulate in China and Korea, and the reactive discourse against China and Korea which has emerged in Japan.35 Cross-border dialogues are essential if we are to progress from nationalistic antagonism to truth and reconciliation.36 Brand nationalism, however, attempts to use media culture to overcome historical problems in effortless, unreflective ways. In Japan, there has been an expectation that media culture will facilitate cultural diplomacy, particularly in terms of its capacity to improve Japans reputation and to overcome the nations historically problematic relations with other East and Southeast Asian countries. It is hoped that media culture will improve Japans image in the region by showcasing the open-minded 414

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and humane faces of post-war Japan, so much so that both the historical memories of Japanese colonialism and the perception that Japan is economically exploitative can be overcome.37 As the circulation of East Asian media culture intensifies and Japanese media cultures continue to be well received in the region, the significance of exporting Japanese cool/cute culture has been even more eagerly discussed as a means of advancing cultural diplomacy. This was especially the case during the recent rise of anti-Japanese demonstrations in China and Korea over issues such as history textbooks, official visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, and long-standing territorial disputes. As we see clearly in a White Paper published by the Economic and Trade Ministry in 2005, which states that without the spread of Japanese pop culture, antiJapanese sentiment would be much stronger in Korea, the increase in exports of media culture to Asian markets is naively believed to serve Japans cultural diplomacy. These exports will supposedly make the Korean (and Chinese) young people who consume Japanese media culture more sympathetic towards Japan, and thus more tolerant of Japans history of imperialism and colonialism in East Asia. Yet this belief neglects the hard fact that many of those who happily consume Japanese media culture in China and Korea consider historical issues both separately and critically. The co-existence of I love Japanese cute culture and I am concerned about what Japan did to our grandparents within the same persons mind constitutes no contradiction whatsoever.38 And even if the approving consumption of Japanese media culture has the potential to change images of contemporary Japan, this neither erases historical memory nor diminishes the importance of constant endeavours to bring about historical reconciliation on its own terms. Yet at the same time, although it emphasized the importance of disseminating Japanese media culture as a means of establishing harmonious relations with other countries, then Prime Minister Koizumis persistent visits to the Yasukuni Shrine eventually worked to shut down historical dialogue with China and Korea.39 The government also continued its uncritical commitment to the pragmatic use of media culture as a way of enhancing brand nationalism.40 As suggested earlier, media culture connectivity has facilitated mutual understanding in East Asia; but a significant lacuna in state governance of brand nationalism is any serious discussion of how to use such developments as a fruitful strategy for further enhancing cross-border dialogues. Such dialogues might be conflict-laden, but pursuing them is nevertheless a necessary route if we are to maximize the potential of media culture connectivity in East Asia. Towards de-nationalized public dialogue In a world of intense interconnection and enormous uncertainty, dialogue has indeed become a key word. To tackle the violence of global capital, widening economic gaps, acute environmental problems, the rise of various kinds of fundamentalism, intensifying transnational ethno-cultural flows, and growing cultural diversity in society, the practice of mutually learning from the 415

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experience of other cultures and societies and of discussing transnationally shared issues is more vital than ever. Media cultures can play a significant public role*affectively, communicatively and participatorily*in the promotion of cross-border dialogue. As this article has discussed, however, the interaction of three modes of governance*corporate, international, and statemanaged brand nationalist*operates in a way to discourage the dialogic potential of transnational media culture connectivity. In discussions of the deWesternization of media and cultural studies, too, dialogue between various Western and non-Western experiences should take priority over the de- phrase, since the latter carries a negative, eitheror inference.41 Yet given that the alliance between neoliberalist marketization and state cultural policy continues to govern cross-border dialogue in internationalized settings, we still need to pursue two further de- strategies in order to go beyond the current predicament and push for greater cross-border public dialogue. The first is de-nationalization. Unlike the post-national perspective, which tends to negate the relevance of the nation-state, a de-nationalized perspective* while it recognizes that the state and the nation still matter as local units of administration and regulation for the public good*aims to move our focus towards the transformation of the national in order to engage with the kinds of complicated issues which the existing national framework does not handle effectively.42 As Seyla Benhabib argues, The nation-state is, on the one hand, too small to deal with the economic, ecological, immunological, and informational problems created by a more interdependent environment; on the other hand, it is too large to contain the aspiration of identity-driven social and regionalist movements.43 Urgently required in the study of media culture globalization is a methodological de-nationalism, which strives to connect diverse voices, concerns and problems in various, unevenly overlapping public sites*sites where the national is the major formation but nevertheless does not take precedence over other public interests. At the same time, we need to de-academicize intellectual endeavours in order to create more public spaces and opportunities in which cross-border dialogue across various divides can be facilitated, thus creating a more inclusive society*locally, nationally, regionally, globally. This sounds akin to Saids representation of intellectuals as amateurs who are committed to social issues and who contest oppressive authority.44 Yet the public role of researchers should not be confined to offering denationalized interpretation and analysis of complex world situations in ways that remain essentially intangible. Alongside such critical interrogation, researchers should also strive to gain wide acceptance for their insights and to put them into practice so that real change can be accomplished. This requires researchers to pursue active roles in which they coordinate and collaborate with various social subjects such as governments, the mass media, activists, cultural creators, NGO/NPOs, and a range of citizens and groups who are divided by multiple boundaries, and who are energized by a commitment to promoting broad participation in cross-border dialogues about imperative concerns in media culture.

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James Curran and Myung-Jin Park (eds), De-Westernizing Media Studies, London: Routledge, 2000; John Nguyet Erni and Siew Keng Chua (eds), Asian Media Studies: Politics of Subjectivities, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005; Daya Thussu (ed), Internationalizing Media Studies, London: Routledge, 2009. For English-language studies on regional cultural ows and connectivities, see Chris Berry, Jonathan D Mackintosh and Nicola Liscutin (eds), Cultural Studies and Cultural Industries in Northeast Asia: What a Difference a Region Makes, Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Press, 2009; Youna Kim (ed), Media Consumption and Everyday Life in Asia, New York: Routledge, 2008. On the Korean Wave phenomena, see Chua Beng Huat and Koichi Iwabuchi (eds), East Asian Pop Culture: Approaching the Korean Wave, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008; Cho Hae-Joang, Reading the Korean Wave as a Sign of Global Shift, Korea Journal 45(4), 2005, pp 147182. On the popularity of Japanese media cultures, see Koichi Iwabuchi, Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002; Koichi Iwabuchi (ed), Feeling Asian Modernities: Transnational Consumption of Japanese TV Dramas, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004; Anne Allison, Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006; Joseph Tobin (ed), Pikachus Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Poke mon, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. On the rise of Chinese media cultures and markets, see Michael Curtin, Playing to the Worlds Biggest Audience: The Globalization of Chinese Film and TV, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007; Yuezhi Zhao, Communication in China: Political Economy, Power, and Conict, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littleeld, 2008. Thussu, Internationalizing Media Studies. Jan Erecrantzs, Media and Communication Studies Going Global, in Thussu, Internationalizing Media Studies, pp 7590; Tarik Salby, Media and Cultural Studies in the Arab World: Making Bridges to Local Discourses of Modernity, in Thussu, Internationalizing Media Studies, pp 196213. A prominent example is Meteor Garden (Liuxing Huayuan), a Taiwanese TV drama series adapted from an earlier Japanese comic series. It became very popular in East and Southeast Asia, and Japanese and Korean versions of the TV series were later produced. Regarding media co-productions in East Asia, see Jin Dal Yong and Lee Dong-hoo, The Birth of East Asia: Cultural Regionalization through Coproduction Strategies, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Communication Association, San Francisco, CA, 23 May 2007; Albert Moran and Michael Keane (eds), Television Across Asia: Television Industries, Programme Formats and Globalisation, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004. See, for example, Chua Beng Huat, Conceptualizing an East Asian Popular Culture, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 5(2), 2004, pp 200221. See, for example, Iwabuchi, Recentering Globalization; Iwabuchi, Feeling Asian Modernities; Kim, Media Consumption and Everyday Life; Chua and Iwabuchi, East Asian Pop Culture. See Iwabuchi, Recentering Globalization; Koichi Iwabuchi, When Korean Wave Meets Resident Koreans in Japan, in Chua and Iwabuchi, East Asian Pop Culture, pp 243264. Kelly Hu, The Power of Circulation: Digital Technologies and the Online Chinese Fans of Japanese TV Drama, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 6(2), 2005, pp 171186. Jim McGuigan, The Cultural Public Sphere, European Journal of Cultural Studies 8(4), 2005, pp 427443. See, for example, Stuart Hall, The Local and the Global: Globalization and Ethnicity, in Anthony D King (ed), Culture, Globalization, and the World-System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity, London: Macmillan, 1991, pp 1939; Jim McGuigan, Cool Capitalism, London: Pluto Press, 2009. Koichi Iwabuchi, How Japanese is Pokemon?, in Tobin, Pikachus Global Adventure, pp 5379; Anne Allison, Millennial Monsters. It can also be argued that those who are most offended by ongoing Orientalist representations in Japanrelated Hollywood lms*such as Memoirs of a Geisha and Lost in Translation*are less people in Japan than ethnic minorities of Japanese/Asian descent in Western countries, for example Asian Americans. See Koichi Iwabuchi, Lost in TransNation: Tokyo and the Urban Imaginary in the Era of Globalization, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 9(4), 2008, pp 543556. David Hesmondhalgh, Neoliberalism, Imperialism, and the Media, in David Hesmondhalgh and Jason Toynbee (eds), The Media and Social Theory, London: Routledge, 2009, pp 95111; Toby Miller, Nitin Govil, John McMurria, Richard Maxwell and Ting Wang, Global Hollywood 2, London: British Film Institute, 2005.

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Yoon Ae-ri, In Between the Values of the Global and the National: The Korean Animation Industry, in Berry, Mackintosh and Liscutin, Cultural Studies and Cultural Industries, pp 103115. See, for example, Laikwan Pang, Cultural Control and Globalization in Asia: Copyright, Piracy and Cinema, London: Routledge, 2006; Otsuka Eiji and Osawa Nobuaki, Japanimation wa naze yabureruka (Why Japanimation should be defeated), Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, 2005. Key Indicators for Asia and the Pacic 2009, which was issued by the Asian Development Bank, reveals that only 10 Asian countries have an internet usage rate of more than 20 per cent. In my own research on the regional consumption of Japanese and Hong Kong media cultures, I also tend to look at how audiences have become more critical of their own lives and societies, without closely analysing how gender or ethnicity are represented in the original texts. See Iwabuchi, Recentering Globalization; Feeling Asian Modernities; When Korean Wave Meets Resident Koreans. Ulf Hannerz, Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places, London: Routledge, 1996. Hall, The Local and the Global. Roland Robertson, Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity, in Mike Featherstone, Roland Robertson and Scott Lash (eds), Global Modernities, London: Sage, 1995, pp 2544. David Morley and Kevin Robins, Spaces of Identities: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries, London: Routledge, 1995, p 159. See, for example, Richard Wilk, Learning to Be Local in Belize: Global Systems of Common Difference, in Daniel Miller (ed), Worlds Apart: Modernity through the Prism of the Local, London: Routledge, 1995, pp 110133. John Urry, Global Complexity, London: Polity, 2003, p 87. Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism, London: Sage, 1995. See Koichi Iwabuchi, Bunka no taiwaryoku, Tokyo: Nihon keizai shinbun shuppansha, 2007, pp 3174. Koichi Iwabuchi, Multinationalizing the Multicultural: The Commodication of Ordinary Foreigners in a Japanese TV Talk Show, Japanese Studies 25(2), 2005, pp 103118. Jen Tsen Kwok, Tseen Khoo and Chek Ling, Chinese Voices: Tseen Khoo, Jen Tsen Kwok and Chek Ling Reect on the Political Culture of the Asian-Australian Community, Meanjin 63(2), 2004, pp 149160. For a detailed analysis of the following, see Iwabuchi, When Korean Wave Meets Resident Koreans. George Yu dice, The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. Shim Doobo, Hybridity and the Rise of Korean Popular Culture in Asia, Media, Culture and Society 28(1), 2006, pp 2544. Hesmondhalgh, Neoliberalism, Imperialism, and the Media. Iwabuchi, Bunka no taiwaryoku, pp 75119. A Report by the Discussion Group on the Promotion of Cultural Diplomacy (Bunka gaiko no suishin nikasuru kondankai ho kokusho), July 2005. A prominent example is the popularity of anti-Korean books in Japan. The most popular book is titled The Anti-Korean Wave; but its actual content is not so much a critique of Korean media cultures as a strong repudiation of Korean nationalism against Japan, and of those resident Koreans in Japan who allegedly support it. See Nicola Liscutin, Surng the Neo-Nationalist Wave: A Case Study of Manga Kenkanryu, in Berry, Mackintosh and Liscutin, Cultural Studies and Cultural Industries, pp 171193. Tessa Morris Suzuki, The Past Within Us: Media, Memory, History, London: Verso, 2005. Koichi Iwabuchi, Uses of Japanese Popular Culture: Trans/Nationalism and Postcolonial Desire for Asia, Emergences: Journal for the Study of Media and Composite Cultures 11(2), 2001, pp 197220. Iwabuchi, Bunka no taiwaryoku, pp 75119. Even Joseph Nye, a key advocator of soft power, points out that unresolved historical issues with other Asian countries are one of the crucial weaknesses of Japanese soft power, and he has publicly criticized Koizumis persistent visits to the Yasukuni Shrine for their negative impact on Japans position. See An Interview with Joseph Nye on Koizumis Visit to Yasukuni Shrine, Tokyo Newspaper, 22 October 2005. Referring to the 2006 BBC survey of national images, Taro Aso, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, actually boasted about how Japan was perceived as the most favourable nation in the world. He proposed further promoting national brand power by exporting more attractive Japanese media products (especially manga and anime). Yet he completely neglected the fact that two countries in the survey*namely, China and Korea*demonstrated quite negative responses to images of Japan. Salby, Media and Cultural Studies.

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Saskia Sassen, The Repositioning of Citizenship and Alienage: Emergent Subjects and Spaces for Politics, Globalizations 2(1), 2005, pp 7994. Seyla Benhabib, The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002, p 180. Edward Said, Representations of the Intellectual, New York: Pantheon Books, 1994.

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