Returning to Asia : Japan in the cultural dynamics of globalisation, localisation and Asianisation

This thesis explores the re-articulation of Japan's cultural connections with Asia in the1990s through popular cultural flows. This is a time when the ascent of Asian economic power has encouraged Japan to stress its Asian identity again, and the forces of media globalisation have facilitated intra-regional cultural flow in Asia. In this context, popular culture, particularly TV programmes and popular music, which arguably embody the ongoing formation of Asian cultural modernity through cultural indigenisation of Western cultural influence, has become a key site where Japan's historically constituted ambivalent relation with other Asian nations has been newly articulated. I shall look at various facets of Japan's 'return to Asia' through the analysis of Japanese discourses on its international cultural influence; through the empirical examination of the promotion, production and reception of Japanese popular music and TV programmes in East and Southeast Asian markets; and through the analysis of Japanese media representation of Asian societies and Japanese fans' reception of Hong Kong popular culture. 'Asia' in the 1990s has evoked Japan's repetitious nationalist desire for a trans-Asian expansion of its cultural imaginary. However, as popular cultural flows have made Japan's encounter with Asia more immediate and concrete, Japan's cultural nationalist project has been reconfigured within a transnational framework which increasingly capitalises on the regional cultural resonance in Asia. In the process, the asymmetrical power relationship between Japan and Asia and Japan's condescending sense of being 'in the above Asia' have been renewed, ruptured and refracted in complex and contradictory way