Exploring the broad circulation of Japanese pop culture, Iwabuchi's quintessential work Re-centering Globalization posits Japan not as a vapid copycat following a supposedly American paradigm in its strategy for global recognition, but a powerful contender in its own right, utilizing its unique positioning in Asia as a purported quasi-cultural intermediary that bridges both Western and Eastern sensibilities, allowing it to remain in a perpetual state of transnational co-creation and reinvention.
More intriguing still, however, is Iwabuchi's assessment of the nature of Japan's power, which he defines as 'reconfigured' in a way that challenges traditionally spatial approaches: negotiating through different cultural-linguistic boundaries and constructing its own meta and paranarratives in a way that is at once fluid, diffused and inter-referential. This is especially true, according to Iwabuchi, in the way the rest of East Asia consumes Japan's cultural products, which are hybridized to fit the local landscapes, yet which retain an ineffable core of Japaneseness.
On the whole, Iwabuchi's work sums up the information gleaned from the classroom, with the impressive volume and immense dissemination of Japanese pop flows functioning almost as a two-way valve that reflects and encourages specific forms of connectivity between different nations. These can take different and paradioxical forms, from seamless to disjointed, intimate to othered, yet what stands out is how Japan's fascinating strategy of repackaging external sources with a distinctly local twist allows them to resonate across not only East Asia but the rest of the world – reworking "modernity", as Iwabuchi notes, in a way that highlights how much its contemporaneity is and continues to be shaped by its rich historical and cultural traditions.
Comments