越境するポピュラー文化と＜想像のアジア＞

Workshop Abstract

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 09:49:50 +0900

Asian Trends Back Home:

Reflecting the Collective-Selfhood via Pop Culture

Hiroshi Aoyagi

Workshop Abstract:

Quarter of a century had passed since Asia attained its fame as a sizzling socioeconomic zone in the global flow. Asia’s open regionalism, initiated by such intergovernmental organizations as Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), drew vastly developing countries in this region closer to each other through increased trade, international communication, and population movement. This created a cultural arena in which the identities and lifestyles of people living in Asia’s industrial economies are contested through marketing powers. Flows of Japanese, Chinese and Korean popular cultures, or “J-wave (日流),” “C-wave (華流),” and “K-wave (韓流)” respectively, in various parts of East- as well as Southeast Asia offer consumers of these areas with opportunities to construe and localize the urban lifestyle of Asia’s emergent middle-class.
With such a backdrop in mind, presenters of the current workshop will attempt to empirically examine how Asian trend-setters and trend-buyers (let alone critics) react to the emergent Asian trend back home. Kwaicheung Lo will explore manga as a window into a greater understanding of collective self reflexivity and national differentiation. Recent awarding of Hong Kong manga by the Japanese government, and intended demonstration of East-Asian unity thereof, may nevertheless represent Asia's internal national diversity from the perspective of Chinese manga reproducers. Laikwan Pang will discuss a transborder film project called "Focus First Cut" (2006), which includes 6 films from 6 new directors, who are all ethnically Chinese coming from different Asian regions: mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore. Focus First Cut represents a trend of similar film projects seen in recent years. These projects are producer-based, supervised by a strong and experienced producer, but featuring a combination of new directors from different Chinese cultural backgrounds. The specific director-producer package is characterized by an interesting set of tensions and collaborations between the two roles. The directors are young and fresh, often below thirty years old, and they tell stories around their own experiences, with a microscopic tendency exploring the everyday lives of a particularly group of people, sometimes even in a deliberately parochial sense. The producers, on the other hand, are experienced, cosmopolitan, and have elaborate finance and distribution connections. Hiroshi Aoyagi will scrutinize the Japanese indifference toward the popularity of her fame as the powerhouse of trend creation in Asia. He will propose potential causes for such a disinterest, connecting the attitude to some prominent aspects of modern Japanese nationalism, or what he calls "self-reflected national character." Not that the Japanese are unaware of their recent popular-cultural status in Asia, they nevertheless remain to be more concerned about doestic flows of trend than about situations abroad. Finally, Gavin Whitelaw will add critical comments to these presentations in order to seek possible ways in which the meaning of Asia -as an "imagined community," as well as the cross-culturally constructive role played by popular culture in enhancing the idea of Asia as a unified region ought to be reconsidered.
Each of these presentations illustrates significant behavioral aspects of local subjects that try to readjust, reproduce, and authenticate their collective identity in accordance with ways in which they perceive their popular cultural properties to be celebrated in a broader, multinational region in which they themselves take part. These aspects and perceptions may involve a pride of national demonstration, collective self-reflections with respect to overseas reactions, or a frustrating gap between expectations and recognitions abroad.

The current workshop is the second part of AJRC’s ongoing project that aims to map out through concrete instances, and theorize through interdisciplinary means, the manner in which cross-bordering popular cultures contribute to the cross-cultural construction and transformation of public spheres in Asia.

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Individual Abstracts:

Japanese Manga, Hong Kong Films and the “Unity” of Asia

Kwai-Cheung Lo

The new Prime Minister of Japan, Taro Aso, known for his love of comic culture, considered manga as Japan’s soft power to the world when he was still the Foreign Minister. He single-handedly created the International Manga Award and, for some reason, the awards have been given to Hong Kong comic artists in 2007 and 2008 consecutively. Given Japan’s fascination with Hong Kong hybrid culture and given the styles of the two Hong Kong winners are obviously under the influences of manga, there is no surprise why Hong Kong comics gain the favor of the Japanese adjudicators. However, if Japan under Aso’s new leadership continues to pursue a manga diplomacy, perhaps the award should be given to the comic artists in mainland China because the urgent task for Japan’s diplomats is to bridge its rift with the Chinese nation.

In his 2006 speech on cultural diplomacy given at Digital Hollywood University, Aso said he is aware of the influence of J-pop in China: “if you take a peek in any of the shops in China catering to the young otaku-type manga and anime fans. You will find the shops’ walls lined with any and every sort of Japanese anime figurine you can imagine.” But this does not necessarily mean the Chinese otaku would not join the anti-Japanese demonstrations when there is conflict between China and Japan. In other words, manga is able to connect people but it may not fulfill the political task assigned by Aso.

Like all foreign products imported to a different place, Japanese manga in Hong Kong also undergo a domestication process. Its Japanese elements that were imitated and accepted within the historical logic of a particular place are compelled to undergo change as a result of inconsistent interpretation and positioning. Those Hong Kong films based on manga, such as “Dragon from Russia,” “The Wicked City,” “City Hunter,” “Love on Delivery,” “Initial D,” “A Battle of Wits” and “Shamo” have somewhat betrayed the original comics in various ways and emptied out the Japanese elements by refilling with Hong Kong issues.

It is East Asia, not West Asia nor South Asia, that consistently makes use of and reproduces the word “Asia” today though the region is interconnected by hostile relations in recent history. The cultures of East Asia are unable to be self-sufficient and the region has gradually become a “community”; but it does not mean that the “unity” of East Asia or Asia can be sought at the level of thought or culture. Indeed, the credibility of this concept of “unity” immediately evaporates when concrete things are taken into consideration. Although manga culture does exist in various places in Asia, it does not necessarily play an identical role in the social and cultural set-up of those countries and cities. On the contrary, we may need to do away with this seemingly homogeneous precondition of Asia’s cultural commons in order to understand the multiplicity, difference and even contradiction that lie within the supposed “unity.” Perhaps the concept of Asia is indispensable to the understanding of contradictions within Asia. Similar to the mode of Hong Kong filmic adaptation of Japanese manga, the concept of Asia is not something to be inherited from an origin, but rather is the one that has to be re-created. To quote Sun Ge, a Chinese Japanologist, “uniformity and resemblance are certainly not the basis of unity, but difference and tension themselves can become the foundation of unity.”

"Focus First Cut" and the New Translborder Chinese Cinema

Laikwan Pang

Focus First Cut a new director project highlighting new Chinese directors from Hong Kong, Taiwan, the PRC, Malaysia, and Singapore. These six films, all released in 2006, include mainland China’s Crazy Stone (dir. Ning Hao), Taiwan’s The Shoe Fairy (dir. Robin Lee), Malaysia’s Rain Dogs (dir. Ho Yuhang), Singapore’s Love Story (dir. Kelvin Tong), as well as two films from Hong Kong, I’ll Call You (dir. Lam Tze Chung) and My Mother is a Belly Dancer(dir. Lee Gong-luk). All of these six filmmakers had already directed their first feature films before, and their names have been heard in the film festivals circuits and certain local circles. According to Danial Yu, the executive director of the project, First Cut was not motivated by simple good wishes to cultivate future talents for Hong Kong cinema, but it was a business decision of Focus Films, a small size local film company which was trying to establish itself anew in the worst time of Hong Kong cinema. In addition to Focus First Cut, there is a trend of new-director series being launched in the last few years: Peggy Chiao’s “Three Cities” project (2001 – 2004), Lola’s “Chinese New Cinema: The Yunnan Project” (2006 – ), Eric Tsang’s “Winds of September” project (2008), as well as the documentary project CNEX (2007 – ). They all emphasize a collection of films made by new directors coming from various Chinese regions, and the works collected are all relatively small budget films sponsored by smaller studios or a combination of independent sources. All these projects are producer-based, supervised by a strong and experienced producer, but featuring a combination of new directors from different Chinese cultural backgrounds. The specific director-producer package is characterized by an interesting set of tensions and collaborations between the two roles. The directors are usually young and fresh, often around or below thirty years old, and they tell stories around their own experiences, with a microscopic tendency exploring the everyday lives of a particularly group of people, sometimes even in a deliberately parochial sense. The producers, on the other hand, are experienced, cosmopolitan, and have elaborate finance and distribution connections. Although presented as a collective project, each of the Focus First Cut film maintains its own cultural identity and local distributions, and many of these films also emphasize their cultural embeddedness of the particular communities, in contrast to the co-production blockbusters which try to tap into as many markets as possible by one film.

Time for more formal proposal(?)

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 21:35:13 +0900

Dear All:

Thanks for your introductory entries so far! They all look great, and thank you all for your thoughts on thematizing our floor! All of your works sounds fascinating, and will definitely contribute to our workshop on cross-bordered pop culture -and what happens back home as the result. Any better way of expressing our common ground, anyone?

While we wait for Masa's entry, let us all work on an abstract at this time, no? Please send in one in, say 500 words or so. Please also attach your CVs, as I'd like to start preparing for your profiles.

Hiroshi

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:38:49 +0900

Hi, everyone, I would like to thank Hiroshi for organizing the workshop. I'm proposing to work on the relationship between Hong Kong cinema and Japanese manga by focusing on those films based on Japanese comics. Examples include “Dragon from Russia” (1990) based on “Crying Freeman” (Kuraingu furîman); “The Wicked City” (1992) on Yôjû toshi; “Story Of Ricky” (1992) from “Rikki-O”; “City Hunter” (1993) based on ShitīHantā; “Love on Delivery” (1994) based on Takashi Hamori’s King of Destruction; “A Battle of Wits” (2006) based on Hideki Mori’s Bokkō; “Initial D” (2005) adapted from Inisharu Dī by Shuichi Shigeno; and “Shamo” (2007) adapted from the manga with the same title. I believe they are not simply escapist products, but by appropriating the manga aesthetics, these movies attempt to reimagine Hong Kong identity in the postcolonial era and some of their cross-racial impersonation of one Asian national as another also produces some sort of otherness that offers a different perspective to reflect on the formation of identity itself.

Look forward to meeting you all in October.

K.C.Lo, from Hong Kong

Thanks to Gavin and Laikwan for your first shouts!

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:33:20 +0900

Looking good thus far! With Kwaicheung and Masaki's self-intro at hand, let us start up our setup discussions on our more overarching theme to look into, while I will ask our secretary, Maki Satoh, to assist you with each of your travel plans!

Cheers!

Hiroshi

hi from laikwan

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:19:20 +0900

This is Laikwan from Hong Kong. I am proposing to discuss in the workshop issues related to transnational cinema, and specifically I will examine a project called "Focus First Cut" (2006), which includes 6 films of 6 new directors, who are all ethnically Chinese but coming from different places: mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore. "Focus First Cut" represents a trend of similar film projects seen in recent years. These projects are producer-based, supervised by a strong and experienced producer, but featuring a combination of new directors from different Chinese cultural backgrounds. The specific director-producer package is characterized by an interesting set of tensions and collaborations between the two roles. The directors are young and fresh, often below thirty years old, and they tell stories around their own experiences, with a microscopic tendency exploring the everyday lives of a particularly group of people, sometimes even in a deliberately parochial sense. The producers, on the other hand, are experienced, cosmopolitan, and have elaborate finance and distribution connections. I would like to examine how such combinations fit into a specific transnational mode of production, and how the concept of "New Asian Cinema" is constructed accordingly.

Laikwan Pang, Professor, Dept of Cultural and Religious Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (email: lkpang@cuhk.edu.hk)

Introduction

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 21:31:41 +0900

Dear Fellow Participants,

Allow me to first thank Hiroshi for getting the collaborative ball rolling for the upcoming workshop at Kokushikan this October. I am very honored to be among the scholars invited to participate in this new initiative.

My name is Gavin Whitelaw. I will be taking up an assistant professorship at International Christian University (ICU) in Tokyo this September. Currently, I am in the last hours of a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University's Reischauer Institute.

My research interests are particularly focused on contemporary Japanese and American society, commerce, work, material culture, food, and globalization. For my doctoral dissertation, I conducted 18-months of "observant" participation as a convenience store clerk in Japan. In my subsequent writings based on that research, I have sought to describe the lifeworld of these stores and understand their cultural significance as industrial system, social arrangement, and personal practice.

I am very much looking forward to meeting all of you this October.