Structure, Audience And Soft Power In East Asian Pop Culture
Pop Culture as a soft power. This is a phenomenon that I witnessed while growing up in the 1990s and early 2000s. I was first introduced to the faraway land of Japan as a child, and the idea of a futuristic Crystal Tokyo, which was a distance away from me, was unfathomable. These were thoughts running through my brain as a 5-year-old, knowing what Japan was before I could even attend elementary school. My mother was a single parent who fortunately could drop me off at my cousin’s nearby house while she went to work. Their house was like a magical playland for me. He and his parents had a computer and played the violent American game called “Doom,” a luxury that I could only enjoy 10 years later when my Grandfather bought me my first computer. However, it was one day I went over and saw the family surrounded by their small boxy TV, staring at the screen, while my cousin was rapidly tapping a strange-looking item in his hand attached to a wire, which I later discovered was a controller. This was my very first introduction to the Nintendo Home Gaming Console.
The Nintendo first reached America in the late ’80s, and by the early ’90s, they were in many middle-class households, along with their prized hero, Super Mario, or as my aunt would call him in an American accent, “Marry-o.” Not that my “Mar-rio” was the correct pronunciation either, but this was a decade before I would even hear Japanese as a spoken language. That’s how an American 5-year-old across the world, experienced his first feeling of success while the playable character on screen reached the end of the stage and slid into a green tunnel. It is also the first curse word that he would hear, as his aunt muttered “dammit” as her character got hit with a flying turtle shell, and lost.
By the age of middle school, I had a large collection of games for Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, and my favorite, the Sony Playstation. At school, I would become friends with classmates who shared the same interest in drawing characters from our favorite Manga and then catching episodes of my favorite anime, Dragon Ball Z, when I got home from school. Little did I know at the time, but the soft power of Japanese culture was slowly brewing in me. I did not know about any other countries in the world at the time, but I knew about the magical land of Japan.
“Political scientist Joseph Nye defines Soft Power as “[a] country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries—admiring its values, emulate- in its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness—want to follow it;” thus, “[s]oft power rests on the ability to shape the preferences of others” (Nye 2004: 5).
I can then very much testify that the idea of Japanese Soft Power worked on many households in America in the 1990s and 2000s.
My own country, The USA, was the first to engage in soft power, a few decades before Japan. This could be seen from the spread of Coca-Cola advertisements and McDonald's across the developing world, which has now transformed into Starbucks and fast fashion clothing companies.
“However, there are no guarantees that expending soft power resources will produce the desired influence on the target population; the success or failure of soft power is highly contextual and “attraction and rejection of American culture among different groups may cancel each other out” (Nye 2004: 13) (Chua 2012: 120)
As the above text points out, sometimes conflicting interests in history or politics can play a huge role in determining whether or not Soft Power is a success. In the case of Nintendo and Dragon Ball Z, once these products reach America, they can't control how people will react to them. The rules of the country also dictate how these cultural items are received. In the case of China, perhaps Japanese Culture is exported to them, but only very few things get through the censorship rules of the Communist Government. Continuing onto China, for example:
“The cognitive and ideological effects of Japanese and Korean pop music on their respective young audiences in Taiwan and China are encapsulated in the media labels harizu (哈 日族) and hahanzu (哈韩族)—a tribe that suffers from Japan/Korea mania/fever or a tribe that identifies with Japanese/Korean culture (Ko 2004: 108; Lee M.T. 2004: 133; Pease 2009: 158) (Chua 2012: 122)
These harizu and hahanzu are simultaneously rejecting Mandarin Pop and Dramas. I think this is very interesting and applies to me growing up in America as well. I first began listening to Japanese music when I befriended a mysterious classmate who was always sitting in the corner and listening to his portable CD player during lunch and recess breaks. Being labeled an outcast myself, I decided to talk to him and ask him what he was listening to. Once I put on the headphones, I realized that the band was singing in a language that I didn’t understand. “Who is this?” I asked. “It’s Malice Mizer. They’re from Japan,” he cheerfully replied. And this is what began my interest in Japanese Gothic Rock and Pop.
What I am describing were events that occurred in the early 2000’s. However, nowadays, one can very easily see similar instances in small towns in America, where a student asks a classmate whom they are listening to on their iPhone, and quickly they share a K-Pop album that they are listening to on Spotify, thus quickly begins a young person’s dive into the world of Korea, years before they would ever hear of America’s involvement in the Korean War, or that North Korea and South Korea are not the same, and that one of them have Nuclear Missles capable of reaching their small farm town in America.
In Chua’s book, the author mentions how Japanese housewives began watching Korean dramas, starting with Winter Sonata in the early 2000s. They realized that they were able to control the media with their viewership and also shape how the Korean Dramas are written and shown in Japan. Thus Japanese began to take an interest in Korea and travel to Korea for tourism. Japanese soon learned that Korea was more than just an ex-colony of Japan.
I think this is very interesting because, through Soft Power, our views of other countries can be shaped, along with previous views being changed. I believe that Soft Power can also be a tool to help engage in cultural sharing and partnerships, as well as engage in language exchange. For example, many of my friends in America started learning Korean while watching Korean Dramas and music. Then when I traveled to Taiwan and made friends with the Japanese and Taiwanese, I found that they also studied and learned Korean out of interest in watching dramas and listening to K-pop. There is something very endearing that I find about this cultural exchange.
“Although Japanese pop culture was the first wave to hit the region, Japan did not appear to try to capitalize on this to expand its soft power until the late 2000s” (Chua, 2012: 123)
Regarding the rise of Japan as a soft power, I find this to be a very interesting phenomenon. Although the spread of Japanese culture was very vibrant abroad in the 1990s, it was not thought by the Japanese government to use it as a tool, until the late 2000s. As the author mentions,
“Arguably, the reluctance of Japanese producers to aggressively export their products into the region may be due to lingering memories of the Japanese wartime atrocities in Asia, which acted as a check on Japan’s regional political ambitions. Furthermore, the Japanese belief that its culture is unique and its language impossible for others to master would imply a belief that its pop culture is unlikely to be accessible abroad.” (Chua, 2012: 124)
Although I can understand this, I think that they underestimated at least in America, the forgetfulness of this population, as well as the lack of education in the American population. I think at least for America, we would have been more reluctant to support anything from “Nazi” Germany, as we were mainly taught about the horrors of The Holocaust in our textbooks and history classes. Very little was ever taught about the atrocities that a militarized government in Japan committed at the time, which was certainly due to the good relationship that developed in the Post-War World between America and Japan, and perhaps due to our teacher's avoidance of the topic of what the Atomic Bomb was and what it did. That being said, I can certainly understand the Japanese government being careful not to make one of its former colonies a place to unthoughtfully export their culture.
By the time I was in my undergraduate studies, I was already well aware of several Japanese designers, musicians, artists, and authors. So when the idea of “Cool Japan” came around in the early 2010s, I was all ready to embrace this new source of available resources and information wholeheartedly.
The year is now 2024, and Chua’s book was written in 2012. This is over a 12-year difference. Since then, we have seen the decline in Japanese dramas and music, alongside the rise of Korean dramas and music. Now in Taiwanese households, they are no longer watching Japanese television, but now, Korean television.
As the author mentions by quoting Cho, “To the people of a marginal country,’ who had for so long lived under the oppressive culture of other countries, the news that their own culture was influencing other countries’ cultures could have been nothing other than amazing and wonderful” (Cho 2005: 173–174) (Chua 2012:129)
That being said, I do believe that Korean Nationalism is very strong, and this is a driving force in their ability to create such dynamic cultural items. Because Korea was traditionally not the aggressor, perhaps these items are accepted in Asia countries, even more than how Japanese culture was accepted.
However, as the author notes, no country likes to be invaded, whether soft or hard power. This is very true because we can see direct examples of when the Taiwanese musician held a rock concert and featured a rap song that was against the Soft Power invasion of Korean culture due to the recent popularity and also the arrival of Bae Yong-Joon in Taipei on the same day. Although one would be quick to say what Wu Bai did was not fair, I think it is because he felt defensive and was trying to protect the Taiwanese people and their culture. He seemed to have thought that while Taiwanese culture was being erased, Korean culture was being spread in Taiwan.
However, the author's example of the Anti-Korean Manga in Japan, I feel has absolutely no basis, because this was created by Historical revisionists who felt that the protests in Korea against Japan were not true, like Japan never did anything wrong in history. Besides it’s not like Japanese culture was in danger of disappearing, like how Taiwanese culture is in danger of being slowly erased.
In conclusion, I agree with the author and believe that Soft Power influences can give us the ability to travel to new lands without leaving our homes, learn about cultures at a very young age, and inspire a world that is more culturally diverse and connected. Soft Power can be a very great thing, however, we must always try to be careful what we are importing and exporting. For example, the recent export of the American film, Oppenheimer, about the creator of the Atomic Bomb, was met with protests and delay when Hollywood tried to import it into Japan. I think that Hollywood should have thought more about how it would be received, rather than blindly continuing to believe that American exceptionalism can export anything that it wants without considering the feelings of others, for example, the 200,000+ Japanese lives lost due to America’s use of the bomb. These very sentiments are things that producers should really consider and act upon carefully. It is now more important than ever to consider not only domestic, as well as international audiences. Soft Power plays a very important part in cultural dialogue and relationships. It can unite, as well as divide countries. The arrival of stars of Taiwanese stars in China can upset Chinese audiences, just as easily as they can unite, all based on how the news decides to portray them, or a comment the star says about whether or not China and Taiwan are the same. An apology to Chinese audiences can leave Taiwanese domestic audiences disappointed or betrayed. Not only producers but also stars have to tread carefully, for they are not only representing their new movie or album but also their country. Stars have become the new diplomats.
References:
1. Chua, Beng Huat (2012). “Structure, Audience and Soft Power in East Asian Pop Culture.” Amsterdam University Press
2. Cho, Hae-Joang (2005). “Reading the ‘Korean Wave’ as a sign of global shift,” Korea Journal 45 (4): 147–182.
3. Nye, Joseph (2004). Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. New York: Public Affairs