Animated Subjects

8/11/2019 Animated Subjects

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Animated Subjects:

On the Circulation of Japanese Animation

as Global Cultural Products

Jiwon Ahn

Division of Critical Studies

School of Cinema-Television

University of Southern California

OCR by [CiN]

I. Introduction

In an interview performed at the end of the 1980s, Fredric Jameson elaborates

on

his notion of the disappearance of nature in the postmodern, the

disappearance

of the unconscious, in this case:

Today I think one of the characteristics of the postmodern isvery

precisely this penetration and colonization of the unconscious. Art

is

commodified, the unconscious is itself commodified by the forces of

the

media and advertising and so on, and therefore it is also in that

sense

that one can claim a certain kind of nature is gone And I think

its

proper to insist on that there is a certain freedom involved in

being

no longer constrained by traditional forms of human nature.

What Jameson means by this suggestion is highly ambiguous: especially, the

way

in which commodification of the unconscious results in the release of

human

nature from its traditional limits is not clearly explained. Jameson

himself

admits that he remains ambivalent on the concept of human nature itself, yet

he

goes on further arguing:


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instead of replacing those [the disappeared form of older,

inner

-directed personality, the acquisitive individual, the centered

subject,

etc.] with the rhetoric of psychic fragmentations, schizophrenia, and

so

on, one should return again to notions of collective relations,

but

collectivities of new types, not of traditional kinds. That would,

it

seems to me, be a way of looking at human nature as a social thing

that

would be in my opinion the most productive socially and culturally,

and

politically as well. (Jameson, 354)

Although deeply vague, it seems to me that Jamesons conceptualization of a

new

subjectivity that is both mediatized and emancipated in the

postmodernenvironments can be revealing about the cultures of globalization. That is,

to

the extent that postmodernism is considered as the cultural logic of

late

capitalism, which Jameson later relates more specifically with the

term

globalization,[1] his proposal on the disappearance of nature in the

postmodern

could be also used productively in thinking about our altered subjectivity

in

the process of globalization.

Besides, I find Jamesons basic theoretical premise in his major projects

-

that the interrelationship of culture and the economic is a

continuous

reciprocal interaction and feedback loopnot only provides a still

sensible

starting point in examining the current cultures of more

intensified

globalization. By being attentive to the intimate interrelation between

the

cultural and the economic, we can also recognize the fact that in the

current

phase of globalization, the relationship between the two realms becomes

so

extremely intertwined that now it is both ineffectual and impossible toconsider

the two separately. Thus, in this essay, I will examine the way in which

global

media products, produced through the complicated network of the cultural and

the

economic on an unprecedentedly transnational scale, circulate and interact

with

individuals and collectives at certain local junctures of global cultures.


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The case I tend to focus on in the present essay is the varied manners in

which

Japanese animation is circulated in different regional cultures, especially

in

the local cultural practices in South Korea. As a media product, I would

argue,

of a distinctively global nature, Japanese animation seems to bring

about

interesting interactions between production and consumption, infra and

supra

structures, public history and private memories, the real and the fantastic

and

most importantly, conscious and unconscious appropriations of the

cultural

texts. Indeed, there seems to me to exist not only consciously

organized

numerous fan groups of Japanese animation in different local cultures

worldwide.

There also appear to be imaginary communities that latently exist among

broader,

younger audiences across national boundaries, who share the collectivememories

of consuming the same media texts and the common nostalgia for their

childhood

viewing experiences. It is in this juncture where I find a new

subjectivity,

thoroughly penetrated by commercial media, yet at the same time released

from

the restrictive forms of traditional (modern) human subjectivity, can

be

imagined in a very real sense.

Further, the fan reception of certain animation texts, such as Hayao

Miyazakis

works, can be said to provide an illuminating example of the global

media

phenomenon that calls into question the existing theoretical frame works.

In

this essay, therefore, I will mainly discuss the way in which South Korean

fan

appropriations of Japanese animation challenge various critical paradigms

and

call for a new approach to the cultures of globalization. In order to

properly

explore the profoundly multiple dimensions of the question, I would

first

contemplate on the reasons why Japanese animation needs to be considered as

acultural product of the global conditions.

II. How Global Is Anime?


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As is well known, animation (called anime) and comic books (manga) are two

of

the mainstream forms of popular culture in Japan. To take only a few

examples:

about 23% percent of the entire printed materials in Japan are

reportedly

comics[2] more than 250 animation programs per week are aired on

television;

average 1700 (short or feature length) animation films are produced per year

and

about 2200 animated television programs produced per yearin other

words,

average 6 new works produced everyday--, which makes Japan a number one

producer

of animated video and television programs that comprise about 65% of the

world

production.[3]

The popularity of Japanese animation (anime, hereafter) has been

accordingly

phenomenal in Japan since the inception of the medium as a practicallypostwar

popular cultural trend[4] and has ever increased with the sophistication of

its

technical and literary languages. It is thus no wonder that tickets sold

for

anime films are estimated to reach about half the entire annual box office

sales

in Japan[5] and that Hayao Miyazakis 1997 record-breaking hit anime

Princess

Mononoke remains as the highest-grossing Japanese film to date.[6] Yet, what

is

more interesting about anime for the current discussion is its border-

crossing

appeal that has attracted numerous fans in many different regions of the

world.

While it is an intriguing question worth a separate critical investigation

how

such a local cultural development could translate to broad

international

audiences, it can still be said that anime texts travel abroad across

the

national-culutral boundaries as important media commodities. Certainly,

anime

has induced lively fan cultures all over the world, most noticeably in

South

Korea and Taiwan, the former colonies of the Japanese Empire, yet also aswidely

as in other Asian regions like Hong Kong, Thailand, other South Asian

countries,

in both Eastern and Western European countires and equally in North and

South

Americas including the United States. To take just one example, in Italy,

the

popularity of Yumiko Igarashis comic and animated series Candy Candy was

so


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enormous in the 1980s that, after the end of the original Japanese

series,

Italian producers had to hire local artists to continue the series.[7]

However, the global quality of anime does not simply lie in the scope

of

international fan cultures. More significantly, the process of anime

production

reveals its status as a global media product, through its close connection

to

the transnational capital and the Third World labor. Firstly, we need to

think

about the magnitude of the capital and industry involved in the production

of

anime. As a lucrative commodity produced in a highly developed media

industry,

anime can be more fully understood within the web of influences

organized

according to the successful media mix strategy. That is, there has formed

a

full circle of related industries around anime in Japan: in many cases,it

starts, although not necessarily in a chronological sense, from the

original

manga (comic book) series; then the manga is adapted to animation series

in

television or film or both formats; also video production of the animated

series

follows, while video series (called OAV, original animated video or

OVA,

original video animation), are often directly created from the original

manga,

too; then almost simultaneously, various goods related to the manga and

anime,

including original soundtrack CDs, paperback books, fanzines, and

numerous

character merchandises like action figures, toys, stationery

goods,

confectionary products, etc., are distributed in the market[8] also, the

release

of computer games based on the manga and anime follows, which in turn

increases

the sales of the original manga series, magazines, books and videos

and

encourages the creation of extended editions of the original manga and

anime.

These close relations among several different cultural and commercial

industrieshave been apparently very functional on a business level, contributing

to

inaugurating such Japanese TNCs as Sony and Nintendo as notable players

in

global economy. Yet, at the same time, the media mix policy has been

very

significant in terms of the dialogic influences on all the forms and contents

of


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the media products under the synergistic effect of the circle. For a

more

specific example, we can briefly digress to look at the case of the

recent

popular craze, the Pokemon series.

III. Pokemon, the Pick-pocketing Monster Idol of the

Global Culture

Pokemon, an abbreviation for poket monsters, originally started in Japan

in

1996 as a computer game for Nintendos Game Boy and has been quickly

morphed

into a global multimedia phenomenon of comic books, animated television

shows,

movies and videos, trading card games, collectibles and toys. The wholeseries

revolves around the adventures of a twelve year old boy who aspires to

be a

great Pokemon master, who trains various kinds of Pokemon

(biological

creatures with supernatural powers of an unknown origin) to defeat other

Pokemon

trainers and become a higher master.

Logically, the overarching theme of the series and games is to collect all

the

Pokemon, as is revealed in the consistently repeated catch phrase of the

series,

Gotta Catch em All. This phrase can be meaningful in a viewers real

life

too, since a viewer/player can also participate in the imaginary competition

by

consuming Pokemon products and become a trainer as in the diegesis,

who

captures each different Pokemon and uses it to advance to higher levels

of

mastery. Significantly enough, the most accessible, if not the only, way for

a

viewer to collect them all and become a great master is to spend more money.

In

this sense, it is no wonder and quite fitting that the detailed information

onthe several hundred kinds of Pokemonconcerning their names, fighting

abilities,

special features, various evolutionary stages, etc.-- requires such a

remarkable

amount of expertise from the collectors. For, to collect more and gain

more

knowledge, one needs to consume more of various products including books,

cards,

videos, and computer softwares.


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Therefore, the Pokemon series clearly exmplifies the way in which the

whole

circle of media products function in close relations with each other,

utilizing

smartly designed themes and narratives that motivate and reward

more

consumption. Further, we can find the influence of related commercial media

on

the Pokemon anime, not merely in its narrative or thematic concerns, but in

its

formal techniques as well. As is seen in the example of Pokemon the First

Movie,

which was commercially successful in both domestic and international

markets,

yet heavily criticized (mainly by adult viewers) for its lack of narrative,

the

Pokemon anime often has a highly fragmented narrative line, with each

fragment

only loosely connected to each other without any strong causality.

This rhetoric, although it may bore uninitiated viewers, can directly appeal

to

regular audiences, as home shopping TV shows do, presenting each product

more

powerfully with the sensory stimulation of excessively repeated visuals

and

utilizing narrative devises only secondarily. At the same time, we can find

a

remarkable parallel between the formal strategies of the Pokemon anime and

those

of its original computer games. To name just a few, the battle sequences in

the

anime seems to derive directly from the computer game format, with

devided

frames, stylized action choreography, and conventional musical

accompaniments.

Similarly, the often implosive, schizophrenic sensory appeals of the

Pokemon

series, which constantly distract viewers from the experience of any

coherent

narrativity, could be explained in terms of the influences of its

original

computer games. Also, the fluid identities of characters in Pokemon can be

said

to originate from the computer game genre, in which we can pick any pair

of

fighters for battles: therefore, there cannot exist an absolute enemy orvillan,

as is exemplified by the ambiguously evil characters, Team Rockets in

Pokemon.

As is discussed so far with the example of Pokemon, the circulation of anime

is

closely interconnected with varied kinds of media and other consumer

industries


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that function uniformly according to the logic of the transnational

capital.

Thus, an anime text could be best understood only when we take

into

consideration its status as a media product of global economy which

determines

not just production and distribution of anime, but affects its

communicative

dimensions as well. Another aspect of global quality of anime is caused by

its

connection to the Third World labor, which I will examine with a more

specific

example of South Korea.

IV. South Korea, the Surrogate Motherland of Anime

The labor intensiveness in the production of animated materials is hardly

unique

to the Japanese case: whether it is actually hand-painted or

mechanically

generated, (cell) animation in general entails the painstaking procedure

of

production in which thousands of animation cells are processed through

some

kinds of human labor practice. What is rather specific to Japanese animation

is,

though, that it is produced within a highly developed studio system with

a

rigorously rationalized division of labor.[9] Hence, it is not surprising

thatbecause of the high labor costs in Japan, since the 1980s only

preproduction

(script, storyboard, character design, etc.) and post-production (film

editing,

color timing, sound, etc.) of anime have been done in Japan and other jobs

of

the production such as coloring, inking, painting, background, and

inbetween

animation have been done in other less developed regions-- mainly in

Korea,

Taiwan and Hong Kong, but recently in Thailand and other South Asian

countries

as well[10]-- by delicate touch of largely young, female, low-wagedlabor

forces.

The South Korean case appears to be particularly interesting to think about

in

examining animes relation to the Third World labor. According to a

report

written in 2000, South Korea is the third largest producer of

animation


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worldwide, following Japan and the United States: yet, 95% of its output

is

manufactured by foreign order and none of the 400 animation studios in Korea

is

fully committed to making domestic shows. Around 1995, the Korean

government,

recognizing the commercial potential of animation, began to support

the

animation industry in order to increase the domestic production, by

granting a

number of incentives, such as a lower tax base, low interest loans, and a

viable

infrastructure. As a result, many studios, formerly produced foreign

works,

turned domestic, bringing out about six features and numerous shorts that

deal

with Korean folklore and traditional cultures. However, by the late 1990s,

the

boom quietened down as the international markets for Korean domestic

productions

were hard to find and as the interests of local audiences turned out to betoo

limited to continue the domestic production.[11]

It is still early, in my view, to make any conclusion about the situation,

which

nevertheless, provides us with a series of questions worth scrutinizing.

First

of all, it would be necessary to ask about how to understand the

seemingly

exploitative relations of anime production in which there appears to be no

way

out. Does this simply reflect a new world order in the age of

globalization,

when the division between core and periphery grows even more severe

and

permanent? Or is there any possibility of change or intervention in

the

relentless operation of transnational media conglomerates? Moreover,

considering

the intricate past history between Korea and Japan (especially, the 36

years

colonial rule of Korea by Japan in the early 20th century), which caused

the

former to ban most cultural imports from the latter for almost half the

century,

we need to contemplate the validity in reading the current situation simply

asmanifestation of an economic and cultural imperialism. In other words, it

would

be necessary to question whether it is appropriate and useful to map the

current

involvement of Korea in the production of anime in terms of new

colonial

relations of domination and subjugation. More importantly, there is at stake

the


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implication of anime fan cultures in Korea: what it means to be a fan of a

text

which is mass produced by the former colonizers culture industry through

the

compatriots labor practice. Indeed, it seems to me a significant question

to

ask what kind of meanings Korean (and other non-Japanese) anime fans

are

negotiating through the reception and consumption of the Japanese

animated

texts.

V. The Cultural Logic of Global Anime Kids

As is briefly mentioned above, the importation of almost all the

popularcultural materials produced in Japan has been prohibited by the

Korean

government for the past fifty years for apparently historical reasons. The

ban

was partially lifted only in 1998 and certain Japanese popular

cultural

products-- such as entertainment television programs and movies rated

for

viewers over 19 onlyare still not allowed for public exhibition in Korea.

Yet,

in spite of the strong nationalist policy of the government and

educational

authorities (or in a sense, because of them), there have been formed

ratherbroad underground cultural circles in which most renowned Japanese comics

and

animated materials were available for eager audiences.[12] Then, what it

meant

to watch anime prior to its legalization in Korea must have been very

different

from the implication of viewing anime in the current legalized environment.

Indeed, its banned status must have added a unique appeal to anime as

a

subcultural text, which was passionately embraced by the general public

whose

antigovernmental sensibility was visibly mounting against the dictatorialregime

of the 1980s. Looking back, it seems now quite bizarre and almost perverse

to

have utilized the light-hearted icons of Japanese commercial media, like

Totoro

(the adorable roundfigured imaginary animal in My Neighbor Totoro), in

making

serious political statements. However, it is certainly not accidental that

anime


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was one of the most popular and regular components, together with

political

films from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, in programs of college

film

festivals, which functioned as important venues for

antigovernmental

demonstrations in the Peoples Movement of South Korea in the 80s. Nor itwas

a

solely Korean phenomenon since the use of anime images as a symbol of

subversion

was witnessed in some other cases of socio-political turmoil as well.[13]

Anime,

in this context, can be said to have been appropriated to

disseminate

drastically alternative meanings of the culture, regardless of the

mainstream,

commercial origin of the text.

It is no wonder that by and since the time of the lifting of the ban in

Korea

(in 1998) the fan cultures of anime have become much more widespread, activeand

selfasserting. In fact, there exist thousands of anime fan clubs in South

Korea

currently operating through internet, grouped around specific shows,

characters,

genres, themes, creators, and so on. It is also understandable the

fan

activities of these younger generations do not necessarily have the same kind

of

political agenda as their predecessors projects did. Yet, I think it is

still

true to say that anime provides these young Korean fans valuable means to

build

communities with and share cultural vocabularies to express themselves with.

For

major fan activities of these groups are not simply confined to chatting

about

their favorite shows and sharing information about where to locate hard-to-

find

videos, but genuinely extensive, ranging from lively discussions on

various

current events to sharing and distributing their own creative works

including

drawings, anime works, diaries, novels, and so forth.

To take just one example, we can think about the practice of cosplay in

Korea,the fan activity that has become especially popular since the opening of

the

media market to Japanese popular cultural imports. Cosplay, which is a fan

term

originated in Japan as a shortened version of costume play, indicates

the

cultural practice of imitating anime or manga characters by creating the

same

costumes as in the shows and masquerading in


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the costumes for public display or picture-taking.[14] For the past

decades,

cosplay has been practiced mostly in Japan, where extremely

sophisticated

costumes and photo works have been produced: yet, with the increasing

popularity

of anime, manga, and comic conventions worldwide, cosplay has quickly

gained

more visibility in various local cultural scenes throughout the globe.

Then, what seems to me particularly remarkable in the Korean example of

cosplay

is that, in spite of the still remaining anti-Japanese sensibility

(especially

among older generations) and the consequent criticism against anime fans

for

mindlessly accepting the Japanese trashy media products, the participants

of

cosplay in Korea readily utilize the cultural vocabularies most available

intheir everyday livesthe vocabularies of comics and anime-- in order

to

negotiate and construct their own identities. In other words, this Korean

case

makes it clear that however low or illegitimate the status of anime in

the

existing cultural hierarchies may be, fans are willing to use it as a

precious

channel of cultural discourses as far as it plays a significant part in

their

daily existence as cultural beings. (In addition, it is fascinating to note

that

the Korean versions of cosplay are said to be more community-based and

more

geared toward group performances on stages and in competitions than

their

Japanese counterparts, which are supposed to be largely dependent

upon

individual works created by rather isolated fans/artists, often

called

otaku.[15])

I have so far discussed the fan activities in Korea that consciously

appropriate

anime to create cultural and political meanings that differ from the

dominant

readings of the texts. There exists, I would argue, yet anothersignificant

layer of anime fan culture we need to look at in Korea: for those now

adult

audience groups (mostly in their late 20s and 30s), while not

necessarily

participating in any fan activities like collecting video tapes, chatting

on

internet, joining in fan clubs, etc., could still be said to comprise latent

fan


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communities on a broader scale, by remembering the anime texts they watched

in

their childhood with strong emotional attachments and passionate nostalgia.

Of

course, it may not be new that people can develop a collective nostalgia

toward

certain popular cultural materials of certain historical times. However, in

the

case of the invisible fan communities formed around anime in Korea, there

seem

to be several noteworthy aspects that can help us better understand the issue

of

subjectivity in the cultures of globalization.

First, it seems to be appropriate to consider the specificity of the

cultural

context in which the aforementioned, less conscious fandom of anime has

been

formulated in Korea. That is, contradictory to the South Korean

governments

strong nationalist policy of banning theatrical release of any Japanesefilms, a

large number of Japanese animation series have been aired on the

Korean

television throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Surprisingly enough, there

have

been very few cases in which the broadcasting of Japanese animation

programs

became problematic: the networks, always in need of both cheap and

entertaining

programs such as anime, have convincingly pleaded that childrens

materials

retained universal values that had nothing to do with the Japanese

national

identity. As a result, younger viewers in Korea came to build rather

an

ambivalent relationship with anime, to the extent that they were enjoying

their

earliest cultural experiences through the Japanese animated programs at

home,

while learning about the evilness of the (national) origin of the texts

at

school. In other words, these younger generations must have developed

inevitably

split and radically fragmented subjectivity in the situation where

public

cultural identities were hardly compatible with private aesthetic pleasures.

Further, it is not difficult to imagine that there formed a sort of

rupture

between the cultural sensibility of these younger generation viewers and that

of

older generations who do not have the early memory of watching

Japanese

animation on TV. Unlike their seniors who had been educated in a

more


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traditional way, taught more of long-standing values and trained to

experience

culture in a more coherent and orderly manner, the young anime kids had to

learn

instead, how to negotiate between contradictory domains-- between

official

cultures and subcultures, between high art and cheap entertainment,

between

public history and personal memories, between reality and fantasy and so

on.

Also, it would be barely fortuitous that so many texts of anime, which

itself

started as a communicative medium for Japanese youth in the devastating

postwar

situation, reflect the break (and almost disavowal) between generations,

usually

featuring parentless protagonists.

Yet, even more importantly, it is said that this unintended reception of

anime

and its influences by younger viewers happened quite similarly in Taiwantoo,

where Japanese animated programs were widely shown, owing to the loosening

of

the ban on Japanese media imports since the 1980s. Consequently, there have

been

formed an unprecedented scope of anime fan cultures among young audiences,

both

on conscious and unconscious levels, almost equally in Korea, Taiwan and

Japan

(as well as in other regions). For example, the majority of young audiences

who

had spent their childhood in the aforementioned East Asian countries can

be

considered to hold the common early memory of watching some anime TV shows

by

Hayao Miyazaki, who can be, judging from the extent and intensity of

emotional

impacts of his works, plausibly regarded as a spiritual father figure of

these

anime kids.

While renowned in the West for his animation films that are considered to

be

classics, such as Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986), My Neighbor Totoro

(1988),

and Princess Mononoke (1997), Hayao Miyazaki has also contributed for

numerousTV anime series since 1963, mostly with the collaboration with Isao Takahata.

To

name just a few, Miyazaki has participated in the production of Gullivers

Space

Travels (1964), Little Witch Sally (1968), Animal Treasure Island (1971),

Ali

Baba and the 40 Thieves (1971), and World Masterpiece Theater since 1974,

which


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included literary animation series like Alpine Girl Heidi (1974), The Dog

of

Flanders (1975), Three Thousand Miles in Search of Mother (1976), Anne of

Green

Gables (1979), and so on. Also, Miyazaki has made his directorial debut with

the

television series Future Boy Conan in 1978, which has become immensely

popular

in many Asian regions in the 1980s.[16] Although these programs were,

generally

speaking, more realistic, less predictable, and had more complicated plots

and

themes than regular childrens materialsparticularly so when compared with

most

of the Disney animation--, to the extent that they still conveyed

strong

messages of hope and belief in humanity to which the anime kids

nostalgically

hold on, I would argue, Hayao Miyazakis television works and other

anime

programs have stimulated a kind of imagined communities of collectivemedia

consumption, or communities of sentiment in Arjun Appdurais terms.

The latent fans of anime can certainly be called imagined communities in

the

sense that, as communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-

face

contact (which thus needs to be imagined), they retain certain comradeship

based

on same sensibility-- same imagination, frustration, longing, memories,

etc.-

which is mobilized by anime texts. And, if Benedict Andersons schematization

of

imagined community effectively showed the way in which print capitalism

roused

the sense of community in replacing the antiquated cognitive framework

of

religion with the then fresh concept of nation-state, I would maintain

these

communities of anime sensibility clearly illuminate how the notion of

nation

state is now significantly challenged by the fluid cultural identities of

fans

across national boundaries. If communities are, as Anderson justly remarked,

to

be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in

whichthey are imagined, the communities of East Asian anime fans certainly need

to

be taken seriously since they are, in spite of their illegitimate and

scandalous

origins, imagined in a possibly subversive style. (Anderson, 6)

One example that shows the magnitude of these dormant fan communities could

be


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witnessed in South Korea in 1992 when a popular singer/song-writer

(Lee

Seunghwan) made a reproduction of the theme song of The Dog of Flanders (one

of

the television anime series aired in Korea in the early 1980s), which

became

extremely popular because, in my view, it smartly appealed to the

unnoticed

community of fans who share the yearning memory of watching the show in

their

childhood. Yet, the potential of the transnational anime fan communities can

be

speculated not just in terms of their commercially mobilized buying power

but

also in their evident influences in a broader discursive context. For

example,

we can think about the current trend in international art scene, broadly

called

Japanese Punk Art or poku (pop+otaku) art.[17]

Although it might be too recent a phenomenon to be fully acknowledgedand

grasped, the poku art seems to have been developed by a group of

young

Japanese artists who are, heavily influenced by anime, manga, and

comupter

games, committed to incorporating those popular cultural inspirations in

their

art works. This art movement, embodied both in the production of

commercial

merchandises like T-shirts and toys and in the creation of fine art

paintings

enthusiastically sought after in New York galleries, seems to me to reveal

the

profoundly mobile and versitile nature of the imagined communities of

anime

sensibility. In other words, the Japanese punk art proves both

geographically

and discursively, the imagined communities can be expanded to a truly

global

dimension, crossing boundaries of national identities and blurring

hierarchies

between fine art and popular cultures. For example, we can easily find

the

shared sensibility of anime communities in the following remarks of the

two

leading Japaense punk artists, Kenji Yanobe and Yoshimoto Nara, whose works

arewell received in various cultural sites outside Japan:

When I was a child, I saw TV animation, and got impression from them.

I

wanted to find the center of beauty from this [Japanese

popular]

culture.[18]


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people say, You have a big influence from Japanese animation. No.

I

have a big influence from my childhood. The animations gave

me

influence, but they are not animations you can now watch on TV.

The

animations I saw before when I was a child. Sometimes, people have

kind

of nostalgic from my paintings.[19]

VI. Concluding Thoughts on the Cultures of Globalization

As I have discussed so far, the complexities and dialectic dimensions of

anime

fan cultures in Korea appear to me to disrupt all the binary frames

ofunderstanding such as the colonizer and the colonized, core and periphery,

the

First world and the Third world, and so forth. Especially, it is worth

paying

critical attentions to questions concerning the imbalance between the

fans

cultural attachment to the texts and the underlying implication of

economic

exploitativeness of the whole phenomenon; also, the broad scope of

imagined

communities latently formed and possibly mobilized around the collective

memory

of watching the same anime texts; and finally, the ambivalent subjectivities

ofthe young (Korean) audiences who are deeply split between guilt and

pleasure,

between public imbuing of official history and private consumption of

forbidden

media texts. What is engendered in this juncture is apprently not

onedimensional

reflections of the logic of the transnational capital, but dialogic

discursive

contexts that can stimulate alternative cultural practices while

reinforcing

hegemonic power relations as well. In other words, an apprent point here is

that

the global communities of anime fans cannot adequently examined in simpleterms

of cultural or economic dominance and imperialism.

Exploring the similar questions on reception of Japanese mass culture in

Taiwan,

Leo Ching maintained, although there used to be certain historical contexts

in

which the discourse of cultural imperialism could be used functionallylike

the


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70s Chilean revolutionary situation which required anti-(American)

imperialist

manifesto such as Dorfman and Mattelarts How to Read Donald Duck:

Imperialist

Ideology in the Disney Comic (1975)--, now in a world of

transnational

corporations, telecommunication, information network, and international

division

of labor, the existing model of centerperiphery relations is no

longer

viable.[20] Pointing out the limits of both of the antiimperialist

diagnosis

and the deploticized, almost celebratory analysis of the prevalence of

Japanese

mass culture in Asia, Ching argued, Not only can the institution of

cultural

production no longer be isolated to a single center, but the passive

reception

of the periphery should also be questioned. Above all, the heterogeneous

ways

in which people use the dominant cultural texts in the periphery can neverbe

formulated effectively through any generalizing schematization:

If global mass culture represents the new configuration of a

changing

capitalist relations in which a nation-centered response or

resistance

is no longer adequate, we need, on the one hand, to recognize that

this

cultural process is spatially and temporally uneven and

discontinuous,

and on the other hand, to be attentive to the different, at

times,

contradictory and unintended, ways social agencies are articulated

and

empowered at every point of cultural practices. (Ching, 192)

Therefore, we can conclude, in examining such global media texts as

Japanese

animation, the necessity, and urgency indeed, to be attentive to

specificities

of each case has become unprecedentedly high. Only very local examples

could

shed lights on the blind spots of meta-narratives that have been so far

mostly

constricted to the topography of conflicting nation-states. As David

Morleyindicates, in globalization locality is not simply subsumed in a national

or

global sphere [but] increasingly bypassed in both directions: experience

is

both unified beyond localities and fragmented within them. (Morley, 9)

More importantly, the study of the individual and private patterns of

media


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appropriation is now, more than ever, closely related to political

questions.

For, a new subjectivity in the age of the global/postmodern, which is

thoroughly

penetrated by commercial media, yet at the same time, released from

the

restrictive forms of traditional human subjectivity, can be possibly imagined

as

political agency. It might be too soon to share Arjun Appadurais hopeful

vision

of the political future of the imagined communities of global media

reception,

which he believes to be capable of moving from shared imagination to

collective

action and of creating the possibility of convergences in translocal

social

action that would otherwise be hard to imagine. There still remain a series

of

critical questions to be answered, on how the border-crossing

imaginary

communities can be mobilized as political agency and how theindividual

subjectivity formed within the global media environments can be returned

to

collective relations, and the like. Nevertheless, the implications of

being

actively engaged with global media texts and participating in

discursive

communities by becoming the remembering/imagining subjects in a certain

style

could be political. For, being animated by global media texts like anime

is, I

would argue, the most personal yet social activity, and the most

schizophrenic

yet liberating experience in the context of globalization.[21]

[1] Repeatedly, Fredric Jameson insists on calling the current

material

conditions late capitalism instead of post-industrialism

or

multinational consumer capitalism to emphasize the continuity

rather

than the break between different historical phases of capitalist

system,

borrowed from Ernst Mandels tripartite formula. Whichever terms

Jameson

prefers to use, though, what he means by late capitalism seems

toparallel to the series of new phenomena, which is now generally

called

globalization: Besides the forms of transnational business,

its[the

new systems] features include the new international division of

labor,

a vertiginous new dynamic in international banking and the

stock


20/24

exchanges, new forms of media interrelationship, computers

and

automaton, the flight of production to advanced Third World areas,

along

with all the more familiar social consequences, including the crisis

of

traditional labor, the emergence of yuppies, and gentrification on

a

now-global scale (Quotes from Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic

of

Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991. p. xix)

[2] Frederik Schodt, Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. p. 4.

[3] Kwang-woo Noh, A Study on the International Manufacturing of

Korean

Animation.. p. 48.

[4] Of course, animation has appeared in Japanese film history as

early

as in 1917 as a form of avant-garde experiments and the firstcell

animation feature film (A Life of White Snake) was, although

arguably,

released for the public in 1958 (Rak-Hyun Song, 50 Years of

Japanese

Animation History Pink. September 1995). However, it seems to

me

reasonable to consider anime as a distinctly postwar cultural

phenomenon

since, let alone mangas development as a cheap and easily

accessible

popular entertainment form in the postwar situation, from which

anime

originated, the real break-through in anime came with Tezuka

Osamus

famous Astroboy Boy (Tetsuwan Atom) series in 1963.

[5] Richard Corliss, Amazing Anime Time 154 (22 November 1999), p.

94.

[6] Susan Napier, Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke. p.7.

[7] Frederik Schodt, Ibid. p, 148.

[8] For instance, In 1984/85, anime TV shows like Voltron, Defender

of

the Universe, Robotech, Transformers, and Gobots generated anastounding

boom in toys, coloring books, and even locally scripted and

drawn

comics. Hasbro Bradleys robot toys, Transformers (designed

and

manufactured by Takara) reaped $100 million in their first year

to

become the most successful toy introduction ever. Quotes from

Frederik


21/24

L. Schodts Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. Tokyo, New

York

and London: Kodansha International, 1997. p.156.

[9] Understandably, the rationalization of production and recruitment

of

the inexpensive Asian labor in animation production was first started

by

Hollywood studios since the 1960s, which have established

their

production facilities as many regions as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan,

the

Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, India,

Indonesia,

China, and maintained them to the extent that about 90% of

the

American television animation is still produced in Asia (John A.

Lent,

Animation in Asia: Appropriation, Reinterpretation, and Adoption

or

Adaptation, p. 6.). Nevertheless, the relationship between theAsian

labor force and the Japanese animation production, in my view, needs

to

be considered in a more elaborate way than that between the Third

world

labor and Hollywood studios. For, let alone the geographical

proximity,

we need to think about the complicated historical past

(Japans

colonizing project in the first half of the 20th century) and

the

intricate cultural present (the laborers attached relations to

anime

texts).

[10] Kwang-woo Noh, A Study on the International Manufacturing

of

Korean Animation. p. 48

[11] John A. Lent, Animation in Asia: Appropriation,

Reinterpretation,

and Adoption or Adaptation from Screening the Past, Issue 11

(Nov.

2000) (www.latrobe.edu.au/www/screeningthepast).

[12] Editorial, Korea Times (28 June, 2000), p. 2.

[13] The Japanese critic Ueno Toshiya is said to have been shocked

to

find an image of Kaneda, a juvenile delinquent character in

Otomo

Katsuhiros anime Akira, among the political posters in war-

stricken

Sarajevo, Serbia in 1993: other posters are reported to have

featured


22/24

the images of Mao Zedong and the Chiappas liberation group (A story

from

Susan Napiers Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke, p. 4-5.).

[14] Widya Santoso, What is Cosplay

on

www.nyx.net/~wsantoso/cosptext.html.

[15] Kim Ki-sun, Korean critic and host of a website on cosplay,

has

remarked that, after five years of practices, the cosplay in Korea

have

become to be characterized by group performances, differently from

the

Japanese version that still remains as a form of costume party

in

which individual players get together and display their separate

works

(From The Future and Possibility of the Korean Cos-Culture

on

www.cosnara.com).

[16] Filmography with Selected Manga in Helen McCarthys

Hayao

Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation: Films, Themes,

Artistry.

Berkeley, Calif.: Stone Bridge Press, 1999.

[17] Otaku is defined simply as an obsessive fan or collector of

anime

in the West, although the term has broader and often more

degrading

connotations in Japan. Takashi Murakami, one of the leading artists

in

the punk art trend, prefers to call his art poku (pop+otaku)

because

Murakami identifies himself with those isolated, discriminated,

and

hopeless subscribers of subcultures. (Takashi Murakami, an

interview

by Mako Wakasa in Journal of Contemporary Art, 2001. www.jca-

online.com

).

[18] Eric Nakamura, Protective Art: Kenji Yanobe Invades the US

with

His Art, Giant Robot. No. 8 (Summer 1997).

[19] Yoshimoto Nara: Kids, Dogs, and Knives on Canvas, an interview

by

Eric Nakamura, Giant Robot. No. 20, p. 26-27.

[20] Leo Ching, Imaginings in the Empires of the Sun: Japanese

Mass

Culture in Asia in Contemporary Japan and Popular Culture,

John

Whittier Treat, ed. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996.


23/24


24/24

Paik Nak-chung, Seoul, 28 October 1989, Global/Local: Cultural Production

and

the Transnational Imaginary. Eds. Rob Wilson and Wimal Dissanayake. Durham

and

London: Duke University Press, 1996. p. 348-371.

Lent, John A. Animation in Asia: Appropriation, Reinterpretation, and

Adoption

or Adaptation, Screening the Past, No. 11 (Nov.

2000).

(www.latrobe.edu.au/www/screeningthepast).

McCarthy, Helen. Filmography with Selected Manga Hayao Miyazaki: Master

of

Japanese Animation: Films, Themes, Artistry. Berkeley, Calif.: Stone

Bridge

Press, 1999.

Morley, David. Where the Global Meets the Local: Notes from the Sitting

Room,

Screen 21, no. 1 (1991).

Nakamura, Eric. Protective Art: Kenji Yanobe Invades the US with His

Art,

Giant Robot. No. 8 (Summer 1997).

Nakamura, Eric. Yoshimoto Nara: Kids, Dogs, and Knives on Canvas, Giant

Robot.

No. 20. p. 24-28.

Napier, Susan. Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing

Contemporary

Japanese Animation. New York: Palgrave, 2000.

Noh, Kwang-woo. A Study on the International Manufacturing of

Korean

Animation. (A Masters Thesis: Korea University, 2000).

Schodt, Frederik L. Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. Tokyo, New

York

and London: Kodansha International, 1997.

Wakasa, Mako. Takashi Murakami: an Interview Journal of Contemporary

Art,

2001. www.jca-online.com

Documents

Animated Subjects