Iwabuchi - Complicit Exoticism - Japan and Its Other

This article was downloaded by: [New York University]
On: 12 May 2015, At: 08:46

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number:
1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street,
London W1T 3JH, UK
Continuum: Journal of
Media & Cultural Studies
Publication details, including instructions for
authors and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccon20
Complicit exoticism: Japan

and its other
a
Koichi Iwabuchi
a
Doctoral candidate in the School of
Humanities , Murdoch University , Perth
Published online: 18 May 2009.
To cite this article: Koichi Iwabuchi (1994) Complicit exoticism: Japan and
its other, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 8:2, 49-82, DOI:
10.1080/10304319409365669
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10304319409365669
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all
the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our
platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors
make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy,
completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any
opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and
views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor
& Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and
should be independently verified with primary sources of information.
Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,
proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities
whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in
connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study
purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution,
reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any
form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access
and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-
conditions
Downloaded by [New York University] at 08:46 12 May 2015
Koichi Iwabuchi
COMPLICIT EXOTICISM:
Japan and its Other
Who Imagines 'Japarteseness'?: Orientalism, Occidentalism and Self-

Orientalism
The steady, systematic work to which we Nordic people were edu-
cated is unknown here on the average. (Eggert 1891, quoted in
Linhart271)
The Japanese worker is hardly willing to submit himself to the
military discipline which according to our standards must rule the
modern factory. He takes his holiday whenever he likes, he comes
andgoesas hepleases.and ifheis scolded for such behavior, he leaves
the company. (Paalzow 1908, quoted in Linhart 271)
T hese western observations of Japan are both familiar and unfamiliar.

Made by German missionaries around the turn of the century, these
remind us of a familiar colonial discourse which draws a sharp distinction
between "us" and "them" ("their" otherness is always spoken about in terms
of the difference from us"; "our" superiority is unmarked by marking "their"
inferiority). These observations can be read as western Orientalist dis-
course on Japan; after all, they are strikingly similar to those discussed by
Richard Minear. Drawing on Said's Orientalism, Minear argues that
western observers of Japan (like Chamberlain, Samson and Reischauer)
shared ontological assumptions about the West and the exotic but inferior
Other, Japan. They were fascinated with some exotic parts of Japan, and
lamented the loss of "authentic" Japanese tradition in the process of moder-
nisation. But, they were all quite sure that Japan's future was to be
modelled on western civilisation:
49
Iwabuchi
All the causes which produced the Old Japan of our dreams
have vanished...Old Japan is dead, and the only decent thing
to do with the corpse is to bury it. (Chamberlain, quoted in
Minear509)
"Their" present laziness is "our" past, and "their" future is "our" present
diligence.
But equally, nothing could convince us more about the artificiality,
historicity, partiality and falsity of "Japaneseness" than precisely these
observations of Japanese indolence and incapacity for systematic work.
After all, diligence, loyalty and systematic work are now widely acknow-
ledged as national cultural "traits" of the Japanese and are expected as such.
These now unfamiliar observations suggest that such national "traits" are
cultural constructs in dynamic process rather than a static set of given
essences. National identity is not authentic so much as a battleground
where various social groups compete with each other to define the mean-
ing of the "national".
To construct a unified nation, various ideologies, myths and 'invented
traditions' (Hobsbawn and Ranger) have to be represented and dissemi-
nated. In Japan, the process through which the dominant ideologies or
myths have constructed "Japaneseness" since the mid-nineteenth century,
has been one of 'samuraisation' (Befu Japan 50). The Confucian values of
the samurai (warrior) class which composed only six per cent of the popula-
tion were massively disseminated through education and the workplace.
Such values included loyalty from below, benevolence from above, respect
for hierarchical order, diligence, and the low status of women. The obser-
vations of those German missionaries eloquently testify to the unnatural-
ness and imperfection of 'samuraisation'. They also indicate a fragmented
Japanese social formation that is by no means homogeneous.
Japan's constructed and celebrated unity has never been a monolith but
is precarious. However, debunking the myth of "Japaneseness" is quite
different from understanding the symbolic power of national identity. In
spite of the easily-known falsity of a unified "Japaneseness", and of the
inequalities which exist in the "real" national society, why and how are
'imagined communities' (Anderson) maintained? The crucial issue here is
how the differences 'stitch up'...'into one identity7 (Hall "Question" 299).
Hodge argues that national stereotypes which can be read in multi-
farious ways within the nation, serve to construct 'unity while sustaining
difference within the national groups' and to 'mark off those who belong
50
Continuum 8:2 (1994)
to the nation from others through their possession of the secret... to read
it'(443). Thus, it can be argued that internally, the 'imagined community'
may be supported by people's diverse and complicated readings of
ideological constructions of national identity. At the same time, this am-
biguous inclusion is sustained by unambiguous exclusion, and
the critical factor for defining the [national] group therefore
becomes the social boundary which defines the group with
respect to other groups...not the cultural reality within those
borders. (Pistoi, quoted in Schlesinger 235).
Purity cannot mark itself through itself. Only impurity marks purity.
I would argue in the same vein that "Japaneseness" has maintained its
precarious unity not only by differentiating itself from an "Other" but by
being differentiated by the Other. Both the Other and the Self deploy the
same discursive strategy, and the 'reciprocal recognition of others'
(Schlesinger 237) solidifies each identity as somehow factual, confining
internal divisions and differences to the realm of the domestic secret. In the
eyes of the Other, the complicated and contradictory reality of Japan,
where a dialectic between the ideological construction of "Japaneseness"
and people's diverse readings of and resistance against it is always at play,
disappears. Japan tends to be represented only as an entity, no matter
whether the people are described as "lazy" or "diligent". And this, together
with Japan's self-representation, confirms in its turn the distinct otherness
of Japan to the Japanese. It is this interaction between Japan and its Other
that makes it possible for Japan to differentiate itself from other nations in
a more or less unambiguous manner. "Japaneseness" has to be "imagined"
by the Other as well as by its own members, though differently.
The western Orientalist discourse on Japan has supported the construc-
tion and maintenance of "Japaneseness": Japan's own construction of
"Japaneseness" has successfully utilised the difference from the "West". It
is what Miller calls 'self-Orientalism':
It is rather as if the Japanese were—determined to do it to
themselves and to their own culture before others can do it
for and to them...what Said calls establishing the Other...in the
case of Japan, we have to deal instead with the rare spectacle
of a culture vigorously determined to Orientalise itself. (209)
In the process of Japan's self-Orientalisation, the geographically and
culturally imagined entity of the "West" has been discursively created in a
quite systematic way. Although this has been done intensively in the last
51
Iwabuchi
fifty years, even around the turn of the century we could discern the
construction of the "West". As Gluck argues, what had mattered was the
idea of the West that the Japanese had created for the purposes of self-
definition. The real West was irrelevant (137).
Images of the West for this purpose were contradictory; on the one hand,
western nations were imagined as superior, enlightened and civilised
entities to be emulated, but on the other hand, they were condemned as
individualistic, selfish and cold-hearted (Dower War, Robertson "Japan").
Both positive and negative images coexisted as two sides of the same coin,
and either side was emphasised, depending upon circumstances.
Even if Japan has developed such a dehumanised discourse of "the

West", Japan's self-Orientalism cannot be seen as Occidentalism which
Said rejects as 'the answer to Orientalism' (328). This is because Japanese
self-Orientalism lacks the power to dominate the West. Moreover, Japan
talks about the Self, while the West talks about the Other.
However, it is simplistic to see Japan's "self-Orientalism" as a passive
strategy of the inferior. Japan's strategy to construct and self-assert its
national cultural identity has been the active exploitation of "the West"
which effectively counters Orientalism. Especially when Japan got ahead
of most western countries, at least in terms of economy and technology,
and developed an institutionalised style of thought based upon a binary
oppositioning of Japan and the West, self-Orientalism stopped being a
merely defensive dichotomising tendency (Morley and Robins, Robertson
"Japan"). Ironically, it is the very change of supposed "Japaneseness" which
western Orientalists anticipated about the future of "pre-modern Japan"
that makes "Japan" quite scandalous to "the West", and Japan's "self-Orien-
talism" problematic to Orientalism. In this sense, the observations by
German missionaries also confirm the subversiveness of "Japan" against
the "West".
But it would be also misleading to see Japanese self-Orientalism as a
serious challenge to western Orientalism. On the contrary, the relationship
between the West's Orientalist discourse on Japan and Japan's discourse
on itself is characterised by a profound complicity. Both tend to use the
Other to essentialise the Self and to repress the heterogeneous voices
within. This perspective opens up a dimension of power/knowledge
alliance within the nation and between nations; how the discursive construc-
tion of dehumanised Others has been subtly utilised by the power bloc to
instill nationalist sentiment into people's minds; how the heterogeneous
52
voices of people within the nations have been repressed through the
homogenising discourses of an imaginary "us" versus "them".
As for Japan, in the path to Japan's modernisation, the emphasis on
"Japaneseness" has been crucial for the power bloc as a means of mobilising
the people. This strategic "Japaneseness" is something which maximises
national interests and minimises individualism, consisting of traits such as
loyalty to or devotion for the country. As Gluck noted
in the imagined West, people were incapable of loyalty and
filiality, and this was sufficient to define these traits as essen-
tially Japanese. (137)
Thus "the West" has been utilised to counter "undesirable" consequen-

ces of modernisation such as the rise of individualism or labor unionism,
which give priority to people's rights. For example, it was when social
movements like labor unionism became popular in the 1910s that ie
(household) ideology was intensively advocated (Crawcour). This ideol-
ogy stressed the traditional values of paternalism, through which Japan
itself and companies were compared with families. Clearly, this myth of
"Japaneseness" was utilised to repress people's demands for "democracy"
or human rights, by attributing social conflict and dissent to western
"disease".
Through selective comparisons with key significant Others, self-Orien-
talism also unmarks the exclusion of the voices of the repressed such as
minority groups like Ainu, Koreans and burakumin (Japanese Untouch-
able) which make up four per cent of the population, and women or the
working class. By asserting "we Japanese" as opposed to "them, the
westerners", the discursively constructed "Japaneseness" is reified. Kano
has argued that the strength of the concept of "the Japanese" lies in its
all-inclusive meanings and that the concept of "the Japanese" implicitly
includes all aspects of land, inhabitants, language, race, ethnicity and the
nationality, all of which have not been historically differentiated from each
other (quoted in Nishikawa 226-7). Any discourse of "Japaneseness" tends
to start with taking such an ambiguous definition of "the Japanese" for
granted. Thus, Japan's self-Orientalism has been quite selectively
manipulative and repressive. Self-Orientalism obscures the fact that
Japan's particularism is actually hegemonic within Japan. "The West" is
necessary for Japan's "invention of tradition", the suppression of
heterogeneous voices within Japan, and the creation of a modern nation
whose people are loyal to "Japan". Self-Orientalism is a strategy of in-
53
(wabucW
elusion through exclusion, and of exclusion through inclusion. Both

strategies cannot be separated from each other and work efficiently only
when combined together.
Japan's particularistic view of itself colludes with Orientalist discourse
in that it defines the West as the universal referent. Both complement one
another (Sakai). No matter how willingly Japan tries to differentiate itself
from the West in order to represent itself on its own terms,
this is nothing but the positing of Japan's identity in Western
terms, which in return establishes the centrality of the West
as the universal point of reference. (487)

The more eagerly Japan attempts to talk about itself in its own language,
the more seriously Japan is represented in western terms.
But Japan and the West 'are never in real conflict'. The universal center
marks its own position by unmarking itself; it only has to confirm its
superiority by speaking about 'the Other". By contrast, the particular marks
its own position by using the universal frame of reference, without which
it could not even speak about itself, much less assert its superiority. In
short, Japanese particularism and western universalism demand each
other.
Last but not least, in its views of other non-western countries, Japan
shares the Orientalist discourse of the West. Combined with self-Orien-
talism, Japan has developed an "oriental" Orientalism through the uncriti-
cal acceptance of the hierarchy of civilisations constructed by Orientalism,
as a slogan of the Meiji era, "Datsua-Nyuo" (escape from Asia, enter the
West) shows. After all, Japan has been the only non-western imperial
power in modern history. Japan's defensive strategy of speaking about
itself is never innocent. Japan's imperialist aggression manifested in World
War II, suggests that the rhetoric of Japanese national identity not only
helped it catch up with the West, but helped it become the centre, at least,
of Asia.
More recently, this manifests itself in the facts that Nihonjinron (theories
of "Japaneseness") hardly deals with relations between Japan and other
non-western countries. Indeed Japan is surprisingly insensitive to how
these other nations look at it. Japan does not have to mark its position in
relation to the non-West, because it is absolutely certain about its supe-
riority. Inferiority to the West could be compensated by superiority to the
non-West (Russel). Japan's challenge against the western hegemony
tended to lead less to the deconstruction of western hegemony than to
54
changing the dichotomy of "the West" and "the rest" into the trichotomy of
"Japan", "the West" and "the rest" without changing the binary logic. "The
rest" has changed from the "marked" inferior to the "unmarked" inferior.
Nihonjinron Discourse as Complicity between Orientalism

and Self-Orientalism
Nihonjinron is a non-fiction genre of literature consisting of theories of
"Japaneseness". Most works are based upon the construction of binary
oppositionsbetween "Japan" and "the West", particularly "the USA". Many
excellent works have been done concerning the history and criticism of
Nihonjinron (Mouer and Sugumoto Images and "Cross-currents",

Kawamura "Historical", Befu "Ideorogii, Aoki), and below I will follow the
periodisation basically developed by Kawamura and Mouer and
Sugimoto, in order to show how the interplay of "Japan" and "the West"
has supported the continuity of stereotypical representations of "Japan".
Nihonjinron literature emerged in the 1930s as a genre (Mouer and
Sugimoto Images, Kawamura "Historical"), when Japan gradually moved
towards World War II. Japan's imperialist expansion was carefully
scrutinised by the Western powers, and Japan was becoming isolated from
and aggressive towards the West as well as Asian countries. In this context,
the power bloc and those intellectuals who were disillusioned with the
West, searched for a distinctive Japaneseness in "indigenous" theories
which could explain Japanese society, through various fields such as
climatology or the vertically structured family system (Mouer and
Sugimoto 41-44, Kawamura 46-49). A romanticised and narcissistic
"Japanese essence" was sought after in a systematic manner to contrast it
overtly and covertly to the idealised West. Common assumptions were to
see 'Japanese society as an integrated and harmonious whole and...that all
or most Japanese possess the same national character' (Mouer and
Sugimoto 43-4). These essentialist assumptions are the core of Nihonjinron
discourse.
In this same period, naked racism became conspicuous on both sides,
Japan and the West, particularly the United States. The American govern-
ment actively promoted national character studies of Japan, most of which
tended to 'reinforce a whole series of assumptions about the Japanese that
were also commonplace to racist thinking' (Dower War 122). In contrast,
the Japanese national character studies concentrated upon the search for
its own uniqueness. But a huge amount of racist portraits of the United
55
Iwabuchi
States and Britain appeared in the Japanese mass media and through the
government's propaganda. If western racism against Japan was based
upon an orientalism, Japanese racism was 'embedded in an occidentalism
which centered upon claims as to the selfish individualism, materialism,
decadence and arrogance of westerners (particularly Americans)'
(Robertson "Japan" 192). The status of imperial power allowed Japan to
speak actively and dismissively about "the West".
In spite of the sharp confrontation, however, there was an interesting
collusion in the way both sides looked at each other. Both saw "Japan" as
collectivistic and "the West" as individualistic. What differentiated one side

from the other was the valuation of the stereotypes. Especially, the Allied
Forces appropriated the Japanese self-images promoted by the Japanese
government's patriotic propaganda to portray the Japanese as 'an obedient
mass with but a single mind' (Dower War 31). More importantly, not only
Japan but also the Allied Forces enthusiatically emphasised Japanese
"uniqueness", although in quite opposite ways. These bipolar views on
"Japan" and "the West" have not changed since then. It is this reciprocal
recognition of Japanese "uniqueness" that has made Japanese self-Orien-
talisation solidly hegemonic.
Since World War II, the valuation of "Japan" has been intermittently
shifting. Immediately after the defeat of the war, many aspects of supreme
"Japaneseness" were regarded as "feudal remnants", obstacles to Japan's
democratisation. Although the dominant evaluation of "Japaneseness"
changed from positive to negative in Japan itself, there was a continuity in
that Japanese society remained to be seen as a culturally integrated whole
(Mouer and Sugimoto 44-47, Kawamura 49-52). Theorists of democratisa-
tion such as Maruyama or Kawashima still tended to rely upon 'static
description and popular theories tied to the premodern-modern
dichotomy' (Kawamura 50), by idealising western democracy and in-
dividualism and deploring Japan's failure to produce "modern democratic
individuals".
An important political and cultural trait in the postwar period was the
strong influence of the United States on Japan. In this context, it was Ruth
Benedict's study of Japan through its POW's in US detention camps, The
Chrysanthemum and the Sword, that has most strongly influenced and sup-
ported Nihonjinron in both Japan and the United States in the postwar
period. Benedict begins her book with the statement that
56
The Japanese were the most alien enemy the United States
had ever fought...Conventions of war which Western nations
had come to accept as facts of human nature obviously did
not exist for the Japanese'. (1)
In this work, a fundamental assumption for the comparison was that the
USA is modern, democratic and rational, while Japan is feudal, un-
democratic and inconsistent; the USA is characterised by individualism,
Japan by collectivism; the USA by a culture of 'guilt', Japan by a culture of
'shame'.
She argued that Japanese behaviors are characteristically paradoxical
in that two contradictory traits can be discerned in them, as symbolised by

the title of her book:
the Japanese are both aggressive and unaggressive, both
militaristic and aesthetic, both insolent and polite, rigid but
adaptable, submissive and resentful of being pushed around,
loyal and treacherous, brave and timid, conservative and
hospitable to new ways (2)
In short, chrysanthemum and sword. This paradoxical view of "Japan"
has dominated western discourse on "Japan" since then (Glazer).
Although the book was criticised in Japan for treating Japan like a small
community where all people share common cultural traits and values, and
although its purpose was to help the USA know the hated enemy, it has
long been appreciated by the used-to-be-enemy, the Japanese themselves.
This is because many Japanese have thought that the work sharply pointed
to the weakness and essence of "us", the Japanese (Yoshino ch.6, Aoki).
While this was the beginning of a marriage between politics and academic
theory in the field of Nihonjinron in the West, especially the United States,
the importance of the work also lies in its persuasive endorsement of
Japanese otherness, all of which could be reduced to Japan's "unique
culture". This time, the national character of Japan was endorsed not by
nationalist ideologues but by a "democratic" American intellectual who
had never been to Japan. The defeat of the war pushed the Japanese people
back to being hyper-sensitive to how Japan is seen by "the West". Benedict's
work nicely matched such a trend in Japan. Since then "the West", par-
ticularly the USA, has been seen as the positive point of reference. As long
as Japan admitted its inferiority to the West, the myth of Japanese unique
otherness satisfied the needs of both Japan and the West.
57
Iwabuchi
The political nature of Nihonjinron became clearer in the 1950s when

Japan was selected as an honored student of the American version of
modernisation in the Cold War era. Japan's modern history was presented
as a positive model of capitalist development in opposition to the Com-
munist bloc. The defeat of the war made the Japanese Left quite powerful
and active. In order to repress the Japanese Left and to mobilise the
Japanese towards an ideal capitalist development, the United States tried
to implant a sense of superiority against the Communist countries in the
Japanese. John Foster Dulles, who was assigned to negotiate the peace
treaty with Japan argued in 1950 that
it might be possible to capitalise on the Japanese feeling of

racial and social superiority to the Chinese, Koreans and
Russians, and to convince them that as part of the free world
they would be in equal fellowship with a group which is
superior to the members of the Communist world, (quoted in
Dower Norman 40).
For this purpose, Japan's traditional values and structures and its modern
history were for the first time positively defined and valued by the West.
The rapid economic growth of Japan also lent itself to Japanese scholars'
recovering confidence in their society. The peculiarity of Japanese in-
dustrial relations such as lifetime employment, seniority wages and
enterprise unionism, came to be emphasised as the secret of successful
modernisation. This tendency increased especially in the late 1960s when
Japan's economic power became much stronger. From the perspective of
modernisation theory, Japan's "miracle" could not be totally explained
because western experiences of modernisation and the Japanese one did
not entirely converge. Thus, reasons were sought in the realm of culture.
The cultural characteristics which had been regarded as feudal remnants
came to be evaluated positively 'as the driving force behind Japan's
economic miracle' (Mouer and Sugimoto Images 49). This led to a revival
of a positive emphasis on Japanese uniqueness which was so strong in the
1930s.
Anthropologist Chie Nakane's work Tate Shalai no Ningen Kankei (Inter-
personal Relationships in a Vertically Structured Society 1967) marked the
beginning of a Nihonjinron boom. (The English version of this book,
Japanese Society was published in 1970.) Her work was quite similar to
Aruga of the 1930s and Benedict in that it treated Japan as a culturally
holistic unity and emphasised group-orientation and vertical structure as
58
core cultural values, although she does not mention these previous works
(Mouer and Sugimoto Images, Kawamura "Historical"). Nakane em-
phasises the importance of 'vertical relationships' in institutions rather
than 'horizontal relationships' within classes in analyzing Japanese
society. She argues:
Even if social classes like those in Europe can be detected in
Japan, and even if something vaguely resembling those clas-
ses that are illustrated in the textbooks of Western sociology
can also be found in Japan, the point is that in actual society
this stratification is unlikely to function and that it does not
really reflect Japan's social structure. In Japanese society it is

really not a matter of workers struggling against capitalists or
managers but of company A ranked against company B.
{Japanese 87)
The fatal flaw in Nakane's work is the neglect of power relations. She
regards vertical relationships as a static and ahistorical cultural
phenomenon. It is true that Japanese social relationships are predominant-
ly vertical or hierarchical, but this is not a cultural given. We should pay
attention to how this verticality has historically developed and been main-
tained and by whom. Nakane, however, just insists that because Japanese
society is basically vertically structured, Japanese social relationships are
vertical.
What makesNakane's work so powerful in spite of these shortcomings,
is its appeal to a cultural relativism. At the beginning, she argues that one
cannot judge Japanese society with a western yardstick, but only with an
indigenous Japanese yardstick, kujirajaku (whale measure) {Tate 11-14).
This call for cultural specificity is a challenge to eurocentric modernity and
suggests the possibility of alternative ways of theorising modernisation,
without regarding the western experience as the model path to the modern
stage.
However, Nakane's discourse does not escape the idealised
dichotomisation of "the West" and "Japan". Her implicit assumption is that
western social theory completely fits the West, where people are supposed-
ly completely individualistic and rational, and that modern Japan is essen-
tially and absolutely group-oriented and emotional (Mouer and Sugimoto
Images). And this leads her to searching for a Japanese 'informal structure'
which governs human relations {Tate 185-6). As the subtitle of her book,
Tan'itsu Shakai no Riron (A Theory of a Homogeneous Society) clearly
59
Iwabuchi
shows, the presumed homogeneity of Japan is the unquestioned basis

upon which her theory is constructed. Nakane argues that 'there seems not
to exist such a homogeneous society as Japan in the contemporary world'
(188). And in such a homogeneous society as Japan, the similarities within
the society are much more important than the differences.
It is not surprising that the power bloc welcomed and disseminated this
view. The fact that Nakane's work was frequently quoted by members of
Japanese elites and was promoted to be published overseas by the govern-
ment, shows how it was seen as ideologically useful for supporting the
status quo in Japan (in that it naturalises the group-orientation displayed
by many Japanese and their relative lack of class consciousness

(Kawamura "Historical" 55, Mouer and Sugimoto Images 177)).
To do justice to Nakane, I must admit that she neither "admires" the
verticality of Japanese society as the secret of economic success nor "in-
tends" to contribute to the government's strategy of ideological manipula-
tion of Japanese people. However, what is at isuue is that Nakane's
discourse on "Japan", like many other Nihonjinron 'tends to minimise the
importance of or need for control and coercion', by mixing up culture and
ideology (Mouer and Sugimoto 403). Under the disguise of cultural
relativism, Japanese "culture" was reified as "essential", free from power
relations and historical changes. Thus, the Japanese self-assertion of its
own uniqueness is necessarily an ethnocentric "Japaneseness" and the
national self-confidence aroused by the economic "miracle" adds a sense
of superiority to this uniqueness.
Following Nakane, a number of books which tended to essentialise the
Japanese collectivist "culture", using varying approaches such as psychol-
ogy, anthropology, management studies or biology, were published in the
1970s. They were consumed to such an extent that Nihonjinron became a
popular commodity (Befu Ideorogii). In the 1980s the number of Nihonjinron
books published in Japan decreased. This may be because Japan's im-
proved status internationally has reduced the need to stress constantly the
uniqueness of Japanese society in order to establish an acceptable national
identity' (Mouer and Sugimoto "Cross-currents" 9). Yet, this does not mean
that Nihonjinron is disappearing; Nihonjinron is still well-received (5) and
more sophisticated theories are emerging such as exploring the ie
(household system) as a continuing norm in Japanese society or the unique
pattern of Japanese civilisation (Murakami et al). No matter how seemingly
sophisticated, the fundamental assumptions olNihonjinron are still shared,
60
namely homogeneity, group-orientation and intuitive comparison with a

supposedly monolithic West (Mouer and Sugimoto "Cross-currents" 5-9).
These developments of Nihonjinron in the 1980s have much to do with
the Japanese government's support for the search for Japaneseness. In
order to circumscribe Japanese "uniqueness" and to disseminate the correct
image of "Japan" in the world, several official research centers were estab-
lished. In 1979, then prime minister Ohira Masayoshi started the research
programme of B unka no Jidai (Age of Culture), declaring that time had come
for "us" to reevaluate Japanese 'traditional' culture and values, lost in the
path to modernisation. Japanese 'tradition' was seen as the key to restore
'warm human relationships in the family, workplace and local regions'

(quoted by Harootunian 462).
Along the same line, the government of Nakasone Yasuhiro established
an International Centre for Japanese Studies in Kyoto in 1986 where many
scholars are engaged with research on Japanese "essence", including the
Emperor system. As Japan's economic power became stronger, the connec-
tions between the power bloc, Nihonjinron and the official construction of
national identity became obvious. The purpose of such official and institu-
tional support for the discourse of Nihonjinron is to disseminate the essen-
tialist view of "Japaneseness" not only among the Japanese but also
throughout the world, so that "Japaneseness" would be 'properly' recog-
nised by Others (Mouer and Sugimoto "Cross-currents").
Japan's "economic miracle" also changed western views towards Japan,
because Japan has emerged as a strong competitor. However, the secret of
its success was still sought less in terms of modern rationality than in the
cultural otherness of Japan. As a threat to western power, the future of
Japan's economic power was the main focus of concern in "the West".
Around 1970, there was a clear ambivalence in western commentaries on
Japan's "miracle". An optimistic view was expressed in Kahn's The Emerg-
ing Japanese Superstate, in which Kahn referred to Japan as 'Japan Inc.',
declaring that the twenty-first century would be the Age of Japan. A more
pessimistic view however paints the dehumanised image of the Japanese
as 'economic animals'. As Wilkinson argues, "'Japan Inc." is more easily
understood as an echo of the age-old fear of "Oriental Despotism'", which
'is a negative image easily evoked at a time of war, and one which satisfies
the emotional need to identify a single malefic enemy' (139).
Glazer points out that American images of Japan have not fundamen-
tally changed since Benedict. Americans continued to see Japan as
61
Iwabuchi
paradoxical, alien, unpredictable and unstable. Moreover, he argues that

'the American image of Japan I have described is based in large measure
on Japanese images of Japan' (166). As a result of the efforts of the Japanese
power bloc to disseminate Nihonjinron overseas, books such as Nakane,
which I discussed above, have been influential on the shaping of American
images of Japan. And, in turn, Japan's own image of itself has been
influenced by the American view. Here we see clearly the complicit
relationship between Japan and the West.
As Japan's economic status became firm and American economic
power relatively declined, some scholars in the West, mainly the United
States, advocated learning from "Japan" (Dore, Vogel). Although Vogel's

Japan as Number One, in which he advocated 'yokon-wasai' (western spirit,
Japanese technology) awakened a great reaction both in Japan and the
United States, the book must have had opposite appeals. The reciprocal
Self-Other relationship has been constructed as a kind of zero-sum game:
when Japan gains points, the West loses. Unlike the 1930s, "the West" had
now lost so many points that it began to speak about itself. As Robertson
argues,
the decade of the 1980s was one which witnessed the emer-
gence of something like an American equivalent of nihonjin-
ron with much debate about the ways in which American
national culture could be enhanced and protected from global
relativisation. ("Japan" 189)
At the same time, against the essentialist view of the uniqueness of
Japanese culture, which is produced in Japan and the West alike, a consid-
erable amount of criticism has appeared in Japan and the West since the
1980s (Mouer and Sugimoto Images, Kawamura Nihon, Dale, Befu Ideorogii,
Lummis). Many such works try to demystify notions of the uniqueness of
Japanese society, instead of hypostatising cultural attributes. These works
deny Japanese exceptionalism and attempt to pull "Japan" back to the rest
of the world.
However, there is a thin line between this kind of debunking and a more
aggressive criticism which is vehemently anti-Japanese, contaminated
with the interest of "the West". Around the mid-1980s, many scholars,
together with the power bloc in the West, mainly the United States, began
to blame Japan for unfairness in playing the trade game. These so-called
revisionists, interestingly, share with the Japanese Nihonjinron theorists the
view that Japan and the West are irreducibly different (Fallows, van
62
Wolferen). Although they rightly criticise Japan for utilising cultural uni-
queness as an excuse for Japan's trade surplus and as a legitimation for
Japan's underdeveloped democracy, they still treat the Japanese 'system'
as 'alien' or totally different from the West. As a result, this view easily
leads to western ethnocentrism. As Morley and Robins argue,
The comparative lack of success of the European and North
American economy must then be a consequence of abiding
by universal principles and moral code. Through such
reasoning, it is possible, even in the face of competitive
failure, to reaffirm the essential (that is, civilisational)
supremacy of western culture. (152)

Ironically, however, Nihonjinrorfs strength was only reinforced by the
aggressiveness of Japan-bashing, because of its strong emphasis upon the
difference between "Japan" and "the West". In response to Japan-bashing,
the Japanese power bloc stressed that Japan was used as a scapegoat to
justify the decline of western economic power. The more Japan was
criticised as a homogeneous cultural unity, the more the differences be-
tween "us" and "them" were absolutised, and the better the defensive
nature of Nihonjinron worked. Here came America-bashing.
'No' to Ieru Nihon (The Japan That Can Say No) written by right wing
politician, Ishihara Shintaro and Sony chairman, Morita Akio became a
million-copy bestseller in Japan in 1989. As a popular Nihonjinron, it marks
an important shift from defense to aggression. Ishihara's arguments boast
especially of Japan's superior technology, condemning the racist tendency
in Japan-bashing and declaring the opening up of a new era where Japan
will share world leadership with the West.
According to Ishihara, Japan is of the future; it is riding on the
crest of a great historic wave and will shape the next age, a
more human age beyond western modernity. (Morley and
Robins 138)
Japan has begun to speak about the Occident again and Nihonjinron is
becoming a weapon in the economic war between Japan and the West,
mainly the United States, in the 1990s (for details of Japan-bashing and
America Bashing, see Morley and Robins and Miyoshi). Japan's economic
power made its self-assertion of uniqueness no longer merely a matter of
the construction of Japanese national identity, but also the construction of
the western Other (Morley and Robins, Robertson "Japan").
63
Iwabuchi
It should be stressed, however, that in spite of considerable historical,

political, economical and cultural changes in both Japan and the West and
in the relationship between the two, we can see how the construction of
Japan as a "unique" cultural entity has remained essentially the same. The
'intriguing overlay of hostile stereotypes and positive self-stereotypes'
which Dower (War 31) observes in the propaganda of both sides during
World War II, has never really stopped. And Japanese Otherness, in turn,
confirms the western universal Self. Both need each other in order to define
themselves.
A complicit relationship between Japanese self-Orientalism and
western Orientalism comes in sight when the previously unmarked supe-

riority of "the Occident" has to mark itself, when the boundary between
the dominant and the subordinate is blurring. In the age of globalisation,
which increases the political, economical and cultural interconnectedness
of the world, this tendency will be intensifying. It is to the inter/national
context of the complicit relationship between Japan and its western Other
that we will now turn.
Kokusaika: Exoticism and Inter/Nationalism in the

Age of Globalisation
The popularity of Nihonjinron has been inseparable from the discourse on
kokusaika (internationalisation) which has accompanied the impact of
globalisation in Japan. In the discourse on kokusaika in Japan, Japan's
"backwardness" in internationalisation has been repeatedly lamented and
the necessity of promoting it strongly stressed. In so doing, however,
globalisation is subtly substituted for inter/nationalism, the other side of
nationalism. Japanese self-Orientalism transforms global homogenisation
into domestic homogenisation by appropriating the western gaze through
which Japan's otherness is defined. It may be that "Japan" is now most
fascinated with its own "exotic otherness", which can be somehow shared
among many inter/nationalising Japanese.
Since the defeat of World War II, Japanese elites have always advocated
a popular slogan. Minshuka (democratisation) in the 1950s, kindaika
(modernisation) in the 1960s and kokusaika (internationalisation) since the
1970s. Each slogan has been closely related to the political circumstance
and discourse of Nihonjinron, serving as 'a new symbol and torchlight to
guide the people' (Befu "Internationalisation" 262). Of all these, kokusaika
has been the most popular and lasted the longest. Although the precise
64
period of its emergence cannot be determined, kokusaika seems to have

appeared and become popular around 1970 (232-3). Since then, it has been
a dominant guiding principle.
What is kokusaika7. How does it relate to the historical processes of
globalisation? Hall argues that globalisation refers generally to
those processes, operating on a global scale, which cut across
national boundaries, integrating and connecting com-
munities and organisations in new space-time combinations,
making the world in reality and in experience more intercon-
nected. ("Question" 299)
The main characteristic of globalisation can be described as 'time-space

compression' (Harvey), through communication technologies, transna-
tional corporations and the massive trans-border flow of people. Although
the resulting forms of interconnectedness are too complex for a single
definition, and 'for convenience can be summed up under the term
"globalisation1". (Hall "Question" 299)
Kokusaika can be seen as a Japanese version of the discourse of globalisa-
tion. The emergence of the term kokusaika almost paralleled the acceleration
of the globalising process which is generally agreed to have taken place in
the 1970s. By the 1970s, Japan had become an economic superpower. It had
achieved its earnest wish to catch up with the West economically and
joined the First World club as the only non-western member. It was time
for Japan to change its role from a mere importer of western technology
and ideas to 'an exporter of Japanese technology and ideas' (Mouer and
Sugimoto "Cross-currents" 19). What distinguished internationalisation
from westernisation for Japan was the prominent status and role of
Japanese multinational corporations in the modern world system. The
ultimate purpose oi kokusaika has been, thus, to promote national interests;
the other side of internationalism is nationalism (Yamamoto).
This overtly nationalistic purpose tends to be softened by the positive
connotations of the ambiguous term, kokusaika. It does not have an exact
meaning, but sounds attractive, because it implies the rise of Japan's
economic status, affluence and cosmopolitanism. In addition to this, there
is another sort of ambiguity concerning kokusaika. Mouer and Sugimoto
(Images) found that when asked what kokusaika meant to them, most people
could not point to its purpose, although they associated it with various
means of achieving kokusaika, such as learning English', learning about
foreign countries' or 'stop behaving like an economic animal' (380-1). In
65
Iwabuchi
other words, most of respondents evaluated kokusaika positively as 'a

desirable process of change' towards 'an undefined goal' (380).
It might be that these two dimensions of positive ambiguity have made
kokusaika so popular and hegemonic in Japan. The term manufactures an
empty space within the dominant ideology, into which people can invest
their own desires differently but positively. The empty space is being filled
with "how to" internationalise Japan and the Japanese "correctly". The
popularity of Nihonjinron since the 1970s has to be understood in this
context of kokusaika. Nihonjinron tends to function as a "manual" for
kokusaika.
The Nihonjinron boom was enormous. According to a survey by

Nomura Sogo Kenkyusho, at least seven hundred Nihonjinron books were
published between 1945 and 1978. The number of books published annual-
ly doubled around 1970, and in 1977 there were five times as many books
as in 1960.1982 estimates have Nakane (Tate) selling over 760,000 and Doi
{Amae) over 1,250,000 copies. Vogel and Reischauer have also sold more
than 400,000 copies (Mouer and Sugimoto Images 86-7). Japan's self-Orien-
talism is no longer a monopoly of intellectuals. In the kokusaika period, it
became a part of popular culture. No longer a mere ideology it offers
reading pleasure to many Japanese. How, then, should we understand the
enormous popularity of Nihonjinron in the context of kokusaika?
The reason for this popularity is often connected to the search for
identity. Befu ("Internationalisation"), for example, argues that massive
westernisation and globalisation have given rise to cultural insecurity and
identity crisis among the Japanese. Some argue that the excessive interest
in its national character is itself a part of the Japanese national character or
reflects a psychological trait of the Japanese (Minami). Kano argues, for
example,
psychologically, a Japanese tends to be insecure, uncertain of
his [sic] relationship with others around him, his relative
position in the community or the group(s) he belongs to. This
tendency...creates a national hyper-sensibility about interna-
tional reputation and image. (157)
This kind of explanation is typical of Nihonjinron discourse itself, and
displays an upside down logic of cause and effect. However, "I like what
I get" and "I get what I like" is not the same. As a popular commodity, most
Nihonjinron are written for commercial purposes, on the principle of 'corn-
modify or die' (Morris). To this end, audiences are 'imagined' (see Ang,
66
Audience) as having an identity crisis, and wanting to know how they are
seen by and are different from "the West" in the age of internationalisation.
Of course, the popularity of Nihonjinron must have to do with something
people can identify themselves with, but before taking for granted that the
Japanese have an insatiable hunger for national cultural identity, we
should ask whether they are really in an "identity crisis" in the first place.
Perhaps the question is not posed properly. We should not start with an a
priori assumption about the influence of globalisation in weakening
Japanese national cultural identity.
Yoshino's ethnographic study of Japanese educators and businessmen
[sic] on the reception oiNihonjinron and the perception of Japanese national

identity shows this tendency. He finds that although there are diverse
reasons for reading Nihonjinron and diverse reactions to it, many people
readNihonjinron for practical reasons rather than for the search for identity,
as we shall see in detail shortly. Moreover, Yoshino discerned a strong
tendency that Nihonjinron makes readers more actively conscious of
abstract Japanese identity. By 'abstract' he means 'the more intangible
aspects of culture' such as 'cultural ethos, national character or modes of
thinking and behaving that exist and are believed to exist behind objec-
tified institutions and practices' (113). Many respondents associate
"Japaneseness" with interpersonal communication (contextualism),
groupism, homogeneity and active emulation and innovation of foreign
cultures (114), all of which are the main themes of Nihonjinron. Indeed, the
massive publication of Nihonjinron functions as a self-fulfiling prophecy
(Mouer and Sugimoto Images 186-8).
The construction and maintenance of national identity is a precarious
project which constantly has to reproduce abstract "naturalness" out of
inherent incoherence. National identity might be most stable when it is so
taken-for-granted that it does not have to be clearly marked. The globalisa-
tion process which tends to make people encounter foreign people and
cultures more often and more directly than before, may activate a con-
sciousness of "Japaneseness". However, the discourse on kokusaika did this
before people "really" experienced the effects of globalisation on their own
lives. As Yoshimoto ("Postmodern") argues, the purpose of kokusaika is 'to
transform the real into the imaginary or to establish a discursive space in
which the distinction between imaginary and real is not preserved even as
an imaginary one' (22). Kokusaika tries to erase 'any direct encounter with
Others' and instead encourages people to meet abstract "Japaneseness".
67
Iwabuchi
As mentioned before, the strength of a concept, "Japaneseness", lies in

its multiple meanings which cover ethnicity, race, language and nation.
Nihonjinron starts its argument with unmarking this myth and kokusaika
reinforces this unmarking by emphasising inter/national differences. It
takes for granted and romanticises the "coherent" national community, all
members of which presumably share the same ethnicity. That is to say,
kokusaika tends to evoke a nationalist sentiment while encouraging people
to become internationalist. As Martin-Barbero argues concerning Latin
American countries,
identity not only has to face up to the blatant homogenisation

at the transnational level but also to another, disguised, form
of homogenisation which comes from the national level as it
acts to negate, deform and de-activate the cultural pluralism
that constitutes these countries. (453)
But it would be misleading to attribute the latter form of homogenisa-
tion, which could be the Nihonjinron boom in Japan, totally to the con-
spiracy of the power bloc. As I mentioned before, the boom was not only
forged out by the collusion between Japan and the West but also based
upon the capitalist logic of marketing. Cultural industries were also play-
ing a significant role in it. As Robins argues, globalisation 'exploits local
difference and particularity' (31). Cultural otherness sells in the age of
globalisation.
The Japanese case seems similar to what Hall ("Local") calls 'the world
of the global post-modern' in which 'exotic cuisine' and traditionalism
coexist. On the one hand, global differences are softened and consumed
pleasurably in the affluent local, and, on the other hand, traditionalism is
also keenly advocated. What is significantly conspicuous in Japan is that
its own traditionalism is exoticised and becomes a part of the range of
postmodern, international cultural commodities available to the domestic
consumer. This is internationalism through nationalism and nationalism
through internationalism. Both are strengthening one another; inter-
nationalism masks and tries to absorb all domestic diversity and
nationalism makes internationalism less threatening and more
pleasuf able. In so doing, the gaze of Others appreciating Japanese other-
ness or exoticism sells perhaps most to the Japanese themselves.
The myth that Japan is too unique to be understood by others exploits
"the western gaze": how we are seen by "the West". The popularity in Japan
of books written by westerners such as Vogel is an indication of this. Some
68
Japanese Nihonjinron authors are believed to pretend to be western, using

western names (Ben-dasan). Furthermore, Japanese mass media repeated-
ly report on how stereotypical images of Japan circulate in western
countries. The most well-known image is a paradoxical combination of
traditionalism - samurai, geisha etc. - and high-technology, which can be
seen in Hollywood films such as Bladerunner or Black Rain. This image of
paradoxical alienness has a long history since Benedict, and suggests a
western desire to enclose the otherness of Japan with "knowable" mysteries
in order to control it. This is what Morley and Robins call Techno-
Orientalism'.
The Japanese response to this "postmodern" stereotype is first of all one

of frustration: "we are misunderstood; we have to make an effort to
disseminate correct images of Japan". Many Nihonjinron are written about
how "we" are misunderstood, particularly in the late 1980s when Japan-
bashing became harsh (Kawatake, Ayabe).
But, many people read Nihonjinron for practical reasons, to get advice
on how to communicate with westerners smoothly as an internationalised
person. As kokusaika reaffirms the notion that Japan as a nation is not
internationalised, because it is a "homogeneous mono-racial" country and
too unique to be understood by foreigners, one of kokusaika's purposes is
conceived in terms of the need to explain the cultural differences between
Japan and its Other (the West) in order to reduce international cultural
friction.
Some large corporations publish books whose original purpose is to
educate employees who do business with foreigners. Two books published
by the Nippon Steel Corporation became quite popular. Their attractive-
ness lies in their concise explanation of Japanese "culture", in Japanese and
English. Following the popularity of Nippon: The Land and its People which
sold more than 400,000 copies (Yoshino 176), Nippon: Talking about Japan
uses the form of practical conversation between a Japanese and an
American. For example, the Japanese explains Japanese uniqueness as
follows (J:Japanese, A:American):
J: Foreigners often criticise us Japanese for not giving clear-cut
yes or no answers. This is probably connected to our being
basically a homogeneous society and our traditional tenden-
cy to try to avoid conflicts. (405)
J: I believe they [reasons for Japan's high quality products] are
all closely related to characteristics of the Japanese people.
69
Iwabuchi
A: Thaf s interesting! I'd like to hear more about that. (255)

A: Why then are there so many people working overtime and
coming to work on non-working days?
J:...This comes from the long-term employment policy of
Japanese companies, which gives the employees a sense of the
company being 'their company'. There is also the group
mentality that we Japanese have. (417)
Apart from essentialist explanations offered here, what is interesting is the
"imagined" but "realistic" attitude of the American. He or she is portrayed
as someone who is puzzled by the otherness of Japan. Interestingly, this

kind of book also clearly recommends readers not think of Japanese culture
as too unique. However, the very problematisation of Japanese par-
ticularity also lends itself to instilling and endorsing the abstract
knowledge that Japanese culture is unique, to the extent that "uniqueness"
itself becomes one of the abstract features of "Japaneseness".
This suggests that the stereotype of paradoxical alien strengthens a
feeling that "they" cannot understand "us". It is unusual for people to be
worrying about contradictory aspects of their own society. No matter how
westerners stress what they see as the paradoxes of Japan, the Japanese do
not experience them as paradoxical, but as "natural". This leads to the
decisive difference between Orientalism and self-Orientalism. While
Orientalism enjoys the mysterious exoticism of the Other, self-Orientalism
exploits the Orientalist gaze to turn itself into an Other. It is something like
declaring that Japanese possess "the secret and ability to read the
stereotype". "Japan" is not an inferior orient any more, and, no less impor-
tantly, has become "pleasurably exotic" to the Japanese themselves.
In 1984, there appeared a massive campaign of domestic tourism by the
Japan National Railways, called 'Exotic Japan'. This was the second cam-
paign, following the 'Discover Japan' campaign in the 1970s. TDiscover
Japan' was a nostalgic campaign. The copy was written in English, sug-
gesting that "lost tradition" as a result of westernisation was to be "dis-
covered" in the countryside. Caucasian-like young female models were
used together with "typical" Japanese countrywomen in the campaign to
stress Japan as a westernised modern nation. This was when Japan had
achieved its "economic miracle" and when "Japaneseness" was reevaluated
positively, as indicated by the Nihonjinron boom.
In contrast, 'Exotic Japan' was written in katakana as 'ekizochikku japan'.
Katakana is square Japanese syllables used mainly for words borrowed
70
from foreign languages. The use of katakana both signifies an indigenisation

of the foreign and marks a difference from Japanese tradition. Katakana-
written "japan" signifies that "Japan" has indigenised westernisation to an
extent that there is no longer a traditional Japan anywhere. The difference
between the urban and the rural has disappeared. So, in order to promote
domestic tourism, the "exoticism" of the countryside has to be "invented"
(Kogawa).
However, as Ivy points out, this invented "exoticism" is based upon
western stereotypes of Japan, such as geisha or Fuji-yama (Mt Fuji). Such
images are playfully and stylishly exploited in the campaign. Ivy argues
that here we can see an interesting coexistence between 'the non-Japanese
seen through Japanese eyes' and 'Japan as seen through Western eyes' (26).
It seems that this is a moment of declaring the triumph of an Orient which
is no longer "Other", and has indigenised both "tradition" and "the
western". "We" have both "tradition" and "modernity", while "they" have
the only latter, because "their tradition" has "melted into air". The struggle
with westernisation is over.
This is a self-confident self-Orientalisation, which boasts about its own
cultural "hybridity". Ang ("Chineseness") urges westernised overseas
Chinese, who are often called "banana" (which means yellow skin, white
content), to take their hybrid identity positively (13). What is happening in
Japan may be a similar celebration of hybridity. But the decisive difference
is, of course, that while the cultural hybridity of people of the Chinese
diaspora would serve to deconstruct essentialist notions of "Chineseness"
Japanese hybridity tends to essentialise "Japaneseness". Japanese cultural
hybridity has a long history to an extent that it has become part of the
essence of Japanese identity (see Robertson Globalisation ch 5), and is often
related to the secret of the Japanese economic "miracle". And there is a thin
line between self-confident self-Orientalism and arrogant cultural
nationalism.
Many observe the emergence of neo-nationalism in Japan. For example,
Tsukushi Tetsuya refers to Nihon wa Saiko Sindoromu (Japan is best
Syndrome) (quoted in Goodman 222). Also Nishikawa found that the
majority of university students mention Japan as their most favourite
country, responding to a question about favourite countries (35-6). This is
a recent phenomenon and suggests the resurgence of nationalist senti-
ments (ibid.) (but Nishikawa does not mention the exact year when Japan
became "the most favorite country" for Japanese themselves). At the same
71
Iwabuchi
time, interestingly, Japan ranks high as a disliked country as well (37-8).

On the one hand, this ambivalence towards Japan reflects an anguished,
divided self, torn between Japan and the West. On the other hand, how-
ever, it also suggests a narcissistic obsession with one's own national
identity.
The Japanese word "Japan" is usually written in Chinese characters and
is pronounced as nippon/nihon. Recently, however, "Japan" is frequently
written in katahma, "nippon"/ "nihon ". This usage suggests, like "japan ", that
Japan has indigenised westernisation and has been internationalised to
such an extent that there is emerging a new "Japan". The use of katakana
also connotes "Japan" seen through the Other's gaze and its distance from
the "real Japan" known only by the Japanese. But the use of katakana,
"nippon" I "nihon" unlike "japan", also reflects a cultural confidence that
Japan's economic status is increasing the number of those foreigners who
speak Japanese and appreciate Japanese "culture", thus making "nip-
pon"I "nihon" a universal term. It signifies the Japanisation of the world.
The title of a popular film of 1993 in Japan was Sotsugyo Ryokb: Nihon
kara Kimashita (A Memorial Travel on Graduation: I came from Nihon). "Nihon "
is written in katakana. The story is about a male university student who
becomes a pop star in a fictional Asian country. He travels to the country
where people are immersed in a "Nihon boom" and is scouted as a pop
singer. The film is described as 'cultural gap comedy', and the media refer
to the story as 'quite likeh/ (Shukan Posuto, 1993 July 30:26). It does not
seem improbable any longer that Japan's "artificial" exoticism is profitable
to Japan itself as well as to the West.
However, in this film, the object of exploitation of Japanese otherness
is Asia, not the West. It suggests Japanese hegemony over Asia and
reminds me of Miyoshi's argument about the aggressiveness towards the
West of Ishihara's book, The Japan that can say No!;
the danger of Ishihara's challenge is that his anti-
Eurocentricity is always on the verge of being transformed
into a perverse program of alternative hegemonism, propos-
ing Japan's leadership in Asia. (92)
The film claims that as Japan has admired the western culture, other Asian
countries are now worshipping "Japaneseness".
It is also possible, however, to read the film in a different way. What is
"worshipped" as exotic is not Japanese tradition per se but the hybridity of
modern Japan, postmodern Japan. It is less the "westernised" Japan than the
72
"Japanised" West that matters; any country can be westernised, but cannot
indigenise the West like "us". Such a reading, however, would reflect not
only pride but fear: the fear that "we" are being caught up with by other
Asians, are being indigenised by the Other as Japan has done to "the West",
and are losing a "halo" of Japanese particularism; the difference between
"nippon "I "nihon" in katakana and that in Chinese characters, or "Japan" seen
through Others and "real Japan" understood only by the Japanese, is
disappearing. "Japan" is being multifariously simulated and is becoming
beyond the reach of the Japanese themselves.
As Japan's economic status became stable, other countries, particularly

Asian countries, began to try to emulate the Japanese model which is
supposed to be based upon "unique" Japanese culture. Malaysia's govern-
ment policy, 'Look East' is a good example. But the Japanese themselves
have displayed ambivalence about this export of abstract "Japaneseness".
While many Japanese think that traits of "Japaneseness" like groupism,
which are thought to be the secret of the "economic miracle", are worth
imitating, they believe they are still exclusively Japanese and that others
cannot acquire it perfectly (Yoshino 126, Breger 190). Indeed, there is no
guarantee that "Japaneseness" will ever 'melt into air' in the age of
globalisation. I would argue that Asian countries, not the West will be in
a position to deconstruct Japan's self-exoticism. One reason for this is that
they are too well familiar with Japan's hidden ambition of becoming the
centre of Asia through their experience with Japanese imperialism earlier
in the century.
It seems true that Japan's power has reached the point where the notion
of hegemony has to be reconsidered to understand the relationship be-
tween Japan and the West (Brannen). However, Japan's challenge against
the West has not changed the status of other non-western countries. The
otherness of the non-West, particularly of other Asians and blacks as
inferior others is still an indispensable basis upon which both Japan and
the West can assert their cultural superiority. For Japan, the supremacy
over the non-western Other is a crucial psychological buffer to secure the
collusion with the West, because, as Russel argues concerning the black
Other, the non-western Other 'serves...as an uncomfortable reminder of
the insecurity and ambiguity of Japanese racial and cultural identity vis-a-
vis an idealised West' (22). It might be precisely this uneasiness that most
urges Japan to foster its complicity with the West.
73
Iwabvchi
Towards Anti-Orientalist Secularisation

As Japan has become an economic world power, kokusaika has fortified it
by softening the cultural impact of globalisation. Kokusaika successfully
utilised western Orientalist discourse on Japan. "Japaneseness" has become
a "universally" acknowledged particularism, as "Japan" and "the West"
alike image the Japanese as exotic. Kokusaika urges the Japanese to
transcend this particularism by becoming actively conscious of it. Japan-
bashing in "the West" only strengthens the mysterious alienness of Japan
and Japan's sensitivity to how it is seen through the western gaze. It seems
a vicious circle.
The "Japaneseness" which most Nihonjinron point out and many
Japanese identify with concerns characteristics having to do with social
relations and communication, such as groupism and contextualism. These
"cultural traits" have been crucial to Japanese national identity, because of
their supposed inexportability and their persuasiveness as binary op-
posites to western "individualism". In the age of globalisation, which tends
to deprive all "things" of their origin and makes them hybrid, "quasi-
natural" cultural traits would be the last resort in the claim to an exclusive
national identity. This is what is called a 'new racism' which 'has taken a
necessary distance from crude ideas of biological inferiority and supe-
riority and now seeks to present an imaginary definition of the nation as a
unified cultural community' (Gilroy 53).
Yoshino's ethnographic study among Japanese business people and
educators shows that most respondents seem to think about the "unique-
ness" of Japanese in terms of what Yoshino calls the 'racially exclusive
possession of particular cultural characteristics' rather than 'genetic
determinism', though he strangely attributes the latter to western racism
(see chapters 2 and 6). This suggests that many Japanese still link racial
homogeneity to distinctive Japaneseness. It might be argued that Japanese
racism is more "primordial" than the new racism, as exemplified by the
then Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro's 1986 assertion of the low intel-
ligence of coloured Americans such as Blacks, Puerto Ricans or Mexicans.
Because he stressed that the superiority of Japan was due to it being
mono-racial and homogeneous, Nakasone's remark was not only directed
against coloured Americans but also against minori ty groups in Japan such
as Koreans, Ainu or foreigners... However, as Mouer and Sugimoto point
out, many Japanese did not think that Nakasone's remarks were racist at
all ("Cross-currents" 21).
74
Nevertheless, "fortress Japan" is becoming more and more precarious.

Increasingly its "reality" can only be found in representation. This is a
"reality" of which people have to be actively conscious, with the help of the
Other's gaze and whose plausibility is based upon a presumed Japanese
homogeneity. However, the very popularity of Nihonjinron seems to prove
how Japanese identity is neither homogeneous nor coherent. Japaneseness
always faces challenges both from the inside and the outside.
For Arjun Appadurai, global cultural flows can be analysed in five
dimensions: ethnoscapes (people), technoscapes (technology), medias-
capes (image and information), ideoscapes (political ideas) and

finanscapes (money). Appadurai emphasises the disjuncture between
these. Indeed the globalisation of ethnoscapes is the most "undeveloped"
in Japan. It cannot remain so undeveloped as "Japaneseness" becomes
emulated in the West and the East alike, and as the diversity of the people
living in Japan becomes more conspicuous, due to the massive influx of
foreign labor, the increasing number of Japanese either living abroad and
or married to foreigners and the existing and long-standing minority
groups (Koreans and Ainu). They are all challenging the taken-for-gran-
tedness of who is or is not Japanese. In this respect, the katakana-writlen
word, "nippoti"/"nihon" also reflects a profound transformation of
Japanese society in terms of the hybridity of people.
"Foreigners" who speak fluent Japanese, live their everyday lives with
Japanese food and in "Japanese" ways are, gradually but definitely, chang-
ing the meanings of the "Japanese". Such foreigners used to be called
"hen'nagaijin " (strange foreigners). The increasing number of such foreign-
ers is making that phrase more and more out of date. In the sports scene it
is an Hawaiian, Akebono, who represents the Japanese national sport, sumo
wrestling, as the first foreigner yokozuna grand champion. A Brazilian-
Japanese soccer player, Ramosu Rui, is a popular representative of the
national team. His significance lies in the fact that he plays soccer for the
nation, not only for the money. Ramosu often emphasises this and even
urges other Japanese soccer players to be proud of wearing a uniform with
the Japanese national flag - 'the most beautiful in the world' (Shukan
Bunshun 1993 October 14).
The threat to "Japaneseness" from inside is represented by the
kikokushujo (returnees) who lived and were educated for several years
overseas (mainly in western countries) due to the transference of their
fathers to an overseas branch of corporations. This kikokushijo problem has
75
Iwabuchi
attracted public attention since the 1970s, because all of them have been
categorised as problematic youth who are too 'westernised' and
'individualistic' to adapt themselves to Japanese society (Goodman). They
are thought to have to 'peel off their foreignness' (Befu "Internationalisa-
tion" 247). Recently, however, the status of kikokushijo has significantly
improved. Globalisation dynamics have placed pressure upon Japanese
corporations to employ 'internationalists' who are supposed to be creative
and fluent in English (Goodman). Princess Masako who married Prince
Naruhito this June is also a kikokushijo who graduated from Harvard and
worked for the foreign ministry. She is the symbol of an internationalist
who serves Japan in the age of kokusaika. Kikokushijo has emerged as a new
elite class (Goodman).
Of course, we should not applaud these examples without reserve.
They might equally be read as a process of domestication and hegemonic
incorporation of "non-Japaneseness" into the existing structure of
"Japaneseness", through exaggerating discursively constructed entities
such as "foreigners" or "kikokushijo". As for the latter, over 40% of Japanese
children overseas now attend Japanese schools, where they are educated
to acquire "Japaneseness". They live in Japan outside "Japan" so as to be
accepted in Japan. Significant changes of "Japaneseness" might be limited
within the field of entertainmant or be gendered (Interestingly, a recent
survey by a private preparatory school of lower high-school students in
Japan shows that females tend to be more "pro-internationalism"; 83% of
female students want to be a friend with foreigners as opposed to 59% of
the male students; about 60% of the female students want to study abroad
as opposed to about 40 percent of the male (Asahi Newspaper 15 March
1993)). Even Ramosu's emphasis on 'for the nation' can be read as a new
Nihonjinron in which "Japaneseness" is evoked by a non-Japanese Japanese
who wants to be accepted in Japan. After all, they are the elite which
constitute a small part of Japan's neglected diversity. No doubt there still
exists considerable discrimination against minority groups and foreigners
in Japan.
But, at least, those example show that Japan is neither static nor
homogenous and closed as a society. The crucial next step for demystifying
"Japaneseness" would be to find ways of recognising this irreducible
diversity and the heterogeneous experiences it represents in terms of their
own specificity, transcending "natural boundaries" and resisting their
incorporation into the categories of (self-)Orientalist discourse. As Tobin
76
points out, the boundary between Japan and the West, 'though vigilantly
maintained and universally ackowledged [is] continuously shifting' (26).
What has made the shifting boundary keep its rigid line is the complicity
between "Japan" and "the West".
As long as the logic of identity is based on the binary opposition
between self and other, we will always categorise the world into the
dominant cultural map. In response to the rise of Japanese power, some
western left critics tend to be too preoccupied with self-criticism to par-
ticipate in global critical discourse. In criticising western Japan-bashing,
Morley and Robins argue that 'we should be less concerned with what we
think it [the Japan that can say no to "the West"] reveals about "them", and
more attentive to what it could help us to learn about ourselves and our own
culture (155, emphasis added). A well-intentioned critique, but it
reproduces the "us" versus "them" logic.
Anthropological criticism further encourages this tendency. Geertz
recently reevaluated Benedict, arguing that the exaggerated differences
between Japan and the United States result less in emphasising Japanese
mythical alienness than in deconstructing 'occidental clarities' (121).
'Benedict dismantles American exceptionalism by confronting it with
that...of a spectacularised other' (122). According to Geertz, historical and
political circumstances deprived Benedict's work of its subversiveness.
Now the time has come for Americans to see the Self rather than the Other
in her work.
It is true that "Japan" is offering an opportunity for "the West" to
abandon the binary opposition between the modern "West" and "the
pre-modern others". Modernity is no more a monopoly of "the West". It is
time for "the West" to recognise the Other 'as truly Other, that is, the Other
in its own Otherness...The Other that does not just serve the purpose of
being a foil or contrast to the Western self (Zhang 127). However, Japan's
challenge against western hegemony suggests that Zhang's remark must
be directed to the modern non-West, that is: Japan and increasingly other
Asian countries such as South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan as well.
Indeed, it is all too tempting to see Japanese exoticism as a corollary to
western domination, and to raise the question of 'whether Japan is control-
ling or being controlled by westernisation' (Savigliano 251). But this kind
of question, which has haunted Japanese intellectuals for more than a
century, not only essentialises "Japan" and "the West" but also obliterates
attention to Japanese domination over other parts of the non-West. Al-
77
Iwabuchi
though Japan's self-Orientalism proved effective in countering western

Orientalism, it cannot recognise the heterogeneous voices of those in other
non-western countries, in Japan and indeed the West itself.
If we want to transcend eurocentric Universalism of "the West" and
ethnocentric Particularism of "the non-West", criticism must eschew the
collusive, binary opposition of self/other and be directed towards
deconstructing this complicity itself. Japan's self-Orientalism and western
Orientalism strengthen and require each other. They are the opposite sides
of the same coin. If we want to disenchant ourselves from the essentialist
view of national cultural identity, we have simultaneously to debunk
reciprocal imaginings of other communities as monolithic entities, and

recognise the fragmented, multiple and mobile nature of all identities. We
have to ask 'what process rather than essences are involved in present
experiences of cultural identity' (Clifford 275).
This project is one of anti-Orientalist secularisation. It releases us from
any abstracting categorisation of "lived reality" and takes the specificity of
heterogeneous voices all over the globe seriously. Differences are always
within "us" and "them". Similarities are always between "us" and "them".
Any identity is always becoming, not fixed. We have to start authorising
such diversity to transgress rigid national cultural boundaries, in favour
of people-to-people rather than nation-to-nation, speaking and listening to
each other rather than speaking exclusively about the self and the other.
Yoshimoto ("Difficulty") argues that 'the Other cannot be mis-
represented, since it is always already a misrepresentation' (257). And the
same must be true of "the self. Anti-Orientalist securalisation does not
mean the total suppression of culturally specific ways of life or thought,
but the 'decoupling of ethnicity from the violence of the state' (Hall "New
Ethnicities" 257). Even if we still tend to cling to any "ontological security"
which provided existential meaning for people in "traditional" society,
such sentiments do not have to be exploited by exclusivist "imagined"
nations. Anti-Orientalist securalisation can release all of us from the prison
of complicit exoticism which has positioned us into the closed space of the
nationally unified identity, and urges people to speak to each other from
their own specific, different experiences, without 'marginalising, dispos-
sessing, displacing and forgetting other ethnicities' (Hall "New Ethnicities"
258).
78
This is a shortened version of my Honours dissertation. I owe much to my

supervisor, Ien Ang who has patiently supported me and made critical
comments on the original version. I am also greatly thankful to Tom O'Regan
and Stephen Frost for productive advice on this version.
Works Cited
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983.
Ang, Ien. Desperately Seeking the Audience. London: Routledge, 1991.
. "Migrations of Chineseness: Ethnicity in the Postmodern World".
Span 34 (1992) & 35 (1993): 3-15.

Aoki, Tamotsu. Nihon Bunkaron no Henyô (The Transformation of Theories of
Japanese Culture). Tokyo: Chûô Kôronsha, 1990.
Appadurai, Arjun. "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural
Economy". Public Culture 2:2 (1990): 1-24.
Aruga, Kizaemon. Nihon Kazoku Seido to Kosaku Seido (The Japanese Family
System and Tenant System). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1943.
Ayabe, Tsuneo. Ed. Sotokara Mita Nihonjin: Nihonkan no kôzô (The Japanese
Seen From Outside: How Foreign Images of Japan Have Been
Constructed). Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1992.
Befu, Harumi. Japan: An Anthropological Introduction. San Francisco:
Chandler, 1971.
. "Internationalisation of Japan and Nihon Bunkaron". The Challenge of
Japan's Internationalisation: Organisation and Culture. Ed. Hiroshi
Mannari and Harumi Befu. Tokyo: Kôdansha International, 1983.
232-266.
. Ideorogii to shite no Nihon Bunkaron (Nihon Bunkaron as Ideologies).
Tokyo: Shisô no Kagakusha, 1987.
Ben-dasan, Isaiah. Yudayajin to Nihonjin (The Jew and the Japanese). Tokyo:
Yamamoto Shoten, 1970.
Benedict, Ruth. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. Boston: Houghton
Miffkin, 1946.
Brannen, Mary Yoko. "'Bwana Mickey': Constructing Cultural Consumption
at Tokyo Disneyland". Re-Made in Japan: Everyday Life and Consumer
Taste in a Changing Society. Ed. Joseph J. Tobin. New Haven: Yale U P,
1992. 216-234.
Breger, Rosemary. "The Discourse on Japan in the German Press: Images of
Economic Competition". Ideology and Practice in Modern Japan. Ed.
Roger Goodman and Kirsten Refsing. London: Routledge, 1992.
171-195.
Clifford, James. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography,
Literature and Art. Cambridge: Harvard U P, 1988.
Crawcour, Sydney. "The Japanese Employment System". Journal of Japanese
Studies. 4:2 (1978): 225-45.
Dale, Peter. The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness. London: Croom Helm, 1986.
Doi, Takeo. Amae no kôzô (The Anatomy of Dependence). Tokyo: Kôbundô,
1971.
79
Iwabuchi
. The Anatomy of Dependence. Trans. John Bester. Tokyo: Kôdansha

International, 1973.
Dore, Ronald P. British Factory - Japanese Factory: the Origins of Diversity in
Industrial Relations. Berkeley, Cal.: U of California P, 1973.
Dower, John W. "E.H. Norman, Japan and the Uses of History". Origins of the
Modern Japanese State: Selected Writings of E.H. Norman. Ed. John Dower.
New York: Panthenon Books, 1975. 3-101.
. War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. New York:
Panthenon Books, 1986.
Fallows, James. "Containing Japan". The Atlantic Monthly. May 1989.
Geertz, Clifford. Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford:
Stanford U P , 1988.
Gilroy, Paul. "The End of Anti-Racism". Race, Culture and Difference. Ed.
James Donald and Ali Rattansi. London: Sage, 1992. 49-61.

Glazer, Nathan. "From Ruth Benedict to Herman Kahn: The Postwar
Japanese Image in the American Mind". Mutual Images: Essays in
American Japanese Relations. Ed. Akira Irie. Cambridge: Harvard U P,
1975. 138-168.
Gluck, Carol. Japan's Modern Myth: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period. Princeton:
Princeton UP, 1985.
Goodman, Roger. Japan's International Youth: The Emergence of a New Class of
Schoolchildren. Oxford: Oxford U P, 1990.
Hall, Stuart. "The Local and the Global: Globalisation and Ethnicity".
Culture, Globalisation, and the World-System. Ed. Anthony King. London:
Macmillan, 1991. 19-39.
. "The Question of Cultural Identity". Modernity and its Future. Ed.
Stuart Hall et al. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992. 273-326.
. "New Ethnicities". Race, Culture and Difference. 252-259.
Harootunian, Harry D. "Visible Discourse/Invisible Ideologies". South
Atlantic Quarterly 87:3 (1988): 445-473.
Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989.
Hobsbawn, Eric J. and Ranger, Terence. Eds. The Invention of Tradition.
Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1985.
Hodge, Bob. "National Character and the Discursive Process: A Study of
Transformation in Popular Metatexts". Journal of Pragmatics 13 (1989):
427-444.
Ishihara, Shintarô. The Japan That Can Say No!: Why Japan Will Be First Among
Equab. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991.
Ivy, Marilyn. "Tradition and Difference in the Japanese Mass Media". Public
Culture 1:1 (1988): 21-29.
Kahn, Herman. The Emerging Japanese Superstate: Challenge and Response.
Eaglewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1971.
Kano Tsutomu. "Why the Search for Identity?". The Japan Interpreter 8:2
(1973): 153-158.
Kawamura, Nozomu. "The Historical Background of Arguments
Emphasising the Uniqueness of Japanese Society". Japanese Society:
Reappraisals and New Directions, A special Issue of Social Analysis, 5-6
(1980): 44-62.
. Nihon Bunkaron no Shûhen (Some Arguments on Theories of
Japanese Culture). Tokyo: Ningen no Kagakusha, 1982.
80
Kawashima, Takeyoshi. Nihon Shakai no Kazokuteki Kôsei (The Japanese

Family System). Tokyo: Nihon Hyôronsha, 1950.
Kawatake, Kazuo. Nippon no Imêji: Masu Media no Kôka (Foreign Images of
Japan: The Impact of Mass Media). Tokyo: NHK Books, 1988.
Kogawa, Tetsuo. "New Trends in Japanese Popular Culture". Ed. Gavan
McCormack and Yoshio Sugimoto. Modernisation and Beyond: The
Japanese Trajectory. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1988. 54-66.
Linhalt, Sepp. "From Industrial to Postindustrial Society: Changes in
Japanese Leisure-Related Values and Behaviour". Journal of Japanese
Studies 14:2 (1988): 271-309.
Lummis, C Douglas. Uchinaru Gaikoku (The Social Construction of Foreign
Realities). Tokyo: Jiji Tsûshinsha, 1982.
Martin-Barbero, Jésus. "Communication from Culture: The Crisis of the
National and the Emergence of the Popular". Media, Culture and Society
10:4 (1988): 447-465.
Maruyama, Masao. Gendai Seiji no Shisô to Kôdô (Thought and Behavior in
Modern Japanese Politics). Tokyo: Miraisha, 1956.
Miller, Roy Andrew. Japan's Modern Myth: The Language and Beyond. New
York: Weather Hill, 1982.
Minami, Hiroshi. "The Introspection Boom: Whither the National
Character". Japan Interpreter 8 (1976): 159-84.
Minear, Richard H. "Orientalism and the Study of Japan". Journal of Asian
Studies. 30:3 (1980): 507-517.
Miyoshi, Masao. Off Center: Power and Culture Relations Between Japan and the
United States. London: Harvard U P, 1991.
Morita, Akio and Ishihara, Shintaro. 'No' to Ieru Nihon (The Japan That Can
Say No). Tokyo: Kôbunsha, 1989.
Morley, David and Robins, Kevin. "Techno-Orientalism: Futures, Foreigners
and Phobias". New Formations 16 (1992): 136-156.
Morris, Meaghan. "Banality in Cultural Studies". Discourse. 10:2 (1988): 3-29.
Mouer, Ross and Sugimoto, Yoshio. Images of Japanese Society: A Study in the
Structure of Social Reality. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986.
. "Introduction: Cross-currents in the Study of Japanese Society".
Constructs for Undestanding Japan. Ed. Ross Mouer and Yoshio
Sugimoto. London: Kegan Paul International, 1986. 1-35.
Murakami, Yasuaki, Kumon, Shunpei and Satô, Seizaburô. Bunmei to shite no
Ie Shakai (Ie Society as a Pattern of Civilisation). Tokyo: Chûô
Kôronsha, 1979.
Nakane, Chie. Tate Shakai no Ningen Kankei: Tan'itsu Shakai no Riron
(Interpersonal Relationships in a Vertically Structured Society: A
Theory for Understanding a Homogeneous Society). Tokyo:
Kôdansha, 1967.
. Japanese Society. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970.
Nippon Steel Corporation, Personnel Development Office. Nippon: The Land
and its People. Second ed. Tokyo: Gakuseisha, 1982.
Nippon Steel Human Resources Debvelopment Co. Ltd. Nihon wo Kataru:
Talking about Japan. Tokyo: ALC, 1987.
Nishikawa, Nagao. Kokkyô no Koekata: Hikaku Bunkaron Josetsu (The Way to
Transgress National Boundaries: An Introduction to Comparative
Cultural Studies). Tokyo: Chikuma Shobô, 1992.
81
Iwabuchi
Nomura Sôgo Kenkyûsho. Nihonjinron: Kokusai Kyôchô Jidai ni Sonaete

(Theories of the Japanese: the Groundwork for an Era of International
Corporation). A Special Issue of Refarensu, 1978.
Reischauer, Edwin. Za Japaniizu (The Japanese). Trans. Masao Kunihiro.
Tokyo: Bungei Shunjû, 1979.
Robertson, Roland. "Japan and the USA - the Interpenetration of National
Identities and the Debate about Orientalism". Dominant Ideologies. Ed.
Nicholas Abercrombie et al. London: Unwin Hyman, 1991. 182-198.
. Globalisation: Social Theory and Global Culture. London: Sage, 1992.
Robins, Kevin. "Tradition and Translation: National Culture in its Global
Context". Enterprise and Heritage: Crosscurrents of National Culture. Ed.
John Corner and Sylvia Harvey. London: Routledge, 1991. 21-44.
Russel, John G. "Race and Reflexivity: The Black Other in Contemporary
Japanese Mass Media". Cultural Anthropology. 6:1 (1991): 3-25.

Said, Edward. Orientalism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978.
Sakai, Naoki. "Modernity and its Critique". South Atlantic Quarterly. 87:3
(1988): 475-504.
Savigliano, Marta E. "Tango in Japan and the World Economy of Passion".
Re-Made in Japan. Ed. J. Tobin. 235-52.
Schlesinger, Philip. "On National Identity: Some Conceptions and
Misconceptions Criticised". Social Science Information. 26:2 (1987):
219-264.
Tobin, Joseph J. "Introduction: Domesticating the West". Re-Made in Japan:
Everyday Life and Consumer Taste in a Changing Society. Ed. Joseph J
Tobin. New Haven: Yale U P, 1992. 1-41.
Van Wolferen, Karel. The Enigma of Japanese Power. New York: Knopf, 1989.
Vogel, Ezra. Japan as Number One. Cambridge: Harvard U P, 1979.
Wilkinson, Endymion. Japan versus The West: Image and Reality. Revised ed.
London: Penguin Books, 1991.
Yamamoto, Mitsuru. Nihon ga Kokusai Shakai de Ikiru Jôken(Some Conditions
for Japan's Survival in the International Community). Economisuto
January 2 (1981). 10-16.
Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro. "The Postmodern and Mass Images in Japan". Public
Culture 1:2 (1989): 8-25.
. "The Difficulty of Being Radical: The Discipline of Film Studies and
the Postcolonial World Order". Boundary 2 18.3 (1991): 242-257.
Yoshino, Kôsaku. Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan. London:
Routledge, 1992.
Zhang, Longxi. "The Myth of the Other: China in the Eyes of the West".
Critical Inquiry 15:1 (1988): 108-131.
82

Iwabuchi - Complicit Exoticism - Japan and Its Other

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Iwabuchi - Complicit Exoticism - Japan and Its Other

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

This article was downloaded by: [New York University]

On: 12 May 2015, At: 08:46

Complicit exoticism: Japan

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10304319409365669

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Who Imagines 'Japarteseness'?: Orientalism, Occidentalism and Self-

T hese western observations of Japan are both familiar and unfamiliar.

Even if Japan has developed such a dehumanised discourse of "the

Thus "the West" has been utilised to counter "undesirable" consequen-

elusion through exclusion, and of exclusion through inclusion. Both

as the universal point of reference. (487)

Nihonjinron Discourse as Complicity between Orientalism

Nihonjinron (Mouer and Sugumoto Images and "Cross-currents",

collectivistic and "the West" as individualistic. What differentiated one side

in that two contradictory traits can be discerned in them, as symbolised by

The political nature of Nihonjinron became clearer in the 1950s when

it might be possible to capitalise on the Japanese feeling of

really reflect Japan's social structure. In Japanese society it is

shows, the presumed homogeneity of Japan is the unquestioned basis

by many Japanese and their relative lack of class consciousness

namely homogeneity, group-orientation and intuitive comparison with a

'warm human relationships in the family, workplace and local regions'

paradoxical, alien, unpredictable and unstable. Moreover, he argues that

States, advocated learning from "Japan" (Dore, Vogel). Although Vogel's

supremacy of western culture. (152)

It should be stressed, however, that in spite of considerable historical,

western Orientalism comes in sight when the previously unmarked supe-

Kokusaika: Exoticism and Inter/Nationalism in the

period of its emergence cannot be determined, kokusaika seems to have

The main characteristic of globalisation can be described as 'time-space

other words, most of respondents evaluated kokusaika positively as 'a

The Nihonjinron boom was enormous. According to a survey by

[sic] on the reception oiNihonjinron and the perception of Japanese national

As mentioned before, the strength of a concept, "Japaneseness", lies in

identity not only has to face up to the blatant homogenisation

Japanese Nihonjinron authors are believed to pretend to be western, using

The Japanese response to this "postmodern" stereotype is first of all one

A: Thaf s interesting! I'd like to hear more about that. (255)

as someone who is puzzled by the otherness of Japan. Interestingly, this

from foreign languages. The use of katakana both signifies an indigenisation

time, interestingly, Japan ranks high as a disliked country as well (37-8).

As Japan's economic status became stable, other countries, particularly

Towards Anti-Orientalist Secularisation

Nevertheless, "fortress Japan" is becoming more and more precarious.

capes (image and information), ideoscapes (political ideas) and

though Japan's self-Orientalism proved effective in countering western

reciprocal imaginings of other communities as monolithic entities, and

This is a shortened version of my Honours dissertation. I owe much to my

Span 34 (1992) & 35 (1993): 3-15.

. The Anatomy of Dependence. Trans. John Bester. Tokyo: Kôdansha

James Donald and Ali Rattansi. London: Sage, 1992. 49-61.

Kawashima, Takeyoshi. Nihon Shakai no Kazokuteki Kôsei (The Japanese

Nomura Sôgo Kenkyûsho. Nihonjinron: Kokusai Kyôchô Jidai ni Sonaete

Japanese Mass Media". Cultural Anthropology. 6:1 (1991): 3-25.

You might also like