I wish to begin this book with a simple assertion; that any film, in one way or another, is specific to the country that produces it. Whether it displays specific cultural images, articulates ânational issuesâ or is simply made in a particular location, a film carries with it an inherent nationality according to which it may be situated contextually. However, situating a given film in regards to its nationality is not always a simple task. Studying cinema on the basis of cultural and national specificity is fraught with complications, and may be complicated even further by numerous âtransnationalâ elements relevant to the study of film: international coproduction, multinational casts and crew, the appropriation of subject matter from one culture to another, films made specifically for audiences in other countries, and the globally interconnected nature of film industry practices. Cinema often appears as a multinational, transnational medium, a medium that can pass through different national and cultural contexts on its way towards public exhibition. Although most films are inherently national in some respect, and are thus identified with or attributed to a specific nation, they cannot always be analysed adequately on the simple pretexts of nation, nationality and cultural/regional specificity. Nor are national cinemas and film industries unique or self-contained institutions; they are, according to the dynamics of a global film industry, far more ambiguous than the term national cinema suggests.
With this book I would like readers to consider the cultural ambiguities of national cinemas and the flexibility shown by national film industries in representing a specific culture. Nationality, whether expressed as a collective identity or used as a cultural signifier, may be distinct, but it is by no means unchangeable. An individual, for instance, may lay claim to different nationalities and hold different passports due to a culturally diverse heritage. A nation may be defined as a physical space on a map by its borders and as a cultural entity by a flag, a national anthem, a shared language and a shared history, yet within its borders live people who may identify themselves according to other nationalities or regional and communal identities. By the same token, a film may have a nationality, but at the same time it may also represent other nationalities through its content and its production, for example, a film that has subject matter which pertains to a completely different national context from the one in which it was produced, or a film that is shared through international coproduction. What I am speaking of here is the ambiguity of nationality, in short, its paradoxical nature. Nationality in this regard can be simultaneously distinct (and therefore meaningful) and culturally ambiguous (and thus flexible in its meaning and how one might approach it intellectually).
Throughout this book I discuss films as culturally paradoxical texts in terms of their content and the industrial contexts that produced them. I have chosen to do this in relation to Japanese cinema in the twenty-first century because, as will be apparent, Japan is a fascinating case of a nation that has often adopted culturally paradoxical modes of representation in response to an expanding and increasingly diverse global film industry and film market. This does not mean that Japanese cinema has simply cast aside its culturally specific features. As I will argue, its distinctiveness in the global market is maintained through modes of representation and industrial practices that seemingly undermine this distinctiveness. This is my central contention and one that will be illustrated by an analysis of film content and industrial practices of production and distribution involving Japan. Much of Japanese cinema in the twenty-first century is culturally paradoxical, with film exports often emphasizing or de-emphasizing their inherent âJapanesenessâ according to the changing dynamics and expectations of a global industry as well as a more culturally diverse global audience. Maintaining a strong and distinctive cultural presence within this context requires a certain degree of flexibility in how one chooses to represent cultural specificity. In order to maintain a strong market presence in an increasingly competitive, diverse and interconnected industry, Japanese filmmakers, producers and studios have adopted and developed various ways of representing Japan to the world. At a time when creative and cultural industries have become vital to Japanese gross domestic product (GDP) in response to prolonged recession (1990sâ), flexible and ambiguous modes of representation have emerged in Japanese cinema.
In order to understand the paradoxical nature of cultural representation in film, I have identified two contradictory modes of representation: cultural concealment and cultural performance. Cultural concealment refers to a de-emphasis or, as in some cases, a removal of distinctive cultural features as part of a more culturally ambiguous and hybrid representation of Japan. For example, in Chap. 3, I discuss Sukiyaki uesutan jango/ Sukiyaki Western Django (Takashi Miike, 2007), a film in which the convention of Japanese language dialogue is eschewed in favour of English language dialogue. In addition, Sukiyaki Western Django is geographically ambiguousâthe film takes place in an American âWild Westâ town situated in rural Japanâand this draws attention to the malleability of Japanese national identity . Cultural concealment is also addressed as a strategy of cultural representation in the context of Japanese cultural production since the late twentieth century. Modes of representation, such as kokusaika policy and mukokuseki animation (both of which I will address in Chap. 2) de-emphasize culturally specific features in order to make cultural exports accessible to non-Japanese consumers. As a major characteristic of Japanese cultural production, concealment is also evident in contemporary cinema, particularly in the case of popular films such as the work of director Takashi Miike (Chap. 3) and Japanese horror (Chap. 4).
In contrast, cultural performance refers to a filmâs emphasis on distinctive Japanese features, an emphasis on cultural specificity that becomes central to the filmâs appeal. Cultural iconography, historical and geographical specificity and national stereotypes may be presented overtly in order to distinguish a film as a Japanese product. Jidaigeki, a genre of Japanese period film focusing on the Tokugawa/Edo era (1603â1868), is a prime example of cultural performance because it represents Japan in terms of historical and cultural specificity, i.e. a representation of a more âauthenticâ Japan that predates modernization and the influx of foreign influences during the Meiji period (1868â1912). The idea of cultural performance has its origins in theatre studies and the attempts of scholars since the 1980s to combine theatre and drama studies with anthropology. In this book I do not discuss cultural performance in terms of performance studies as certain scholars have done, namely J. Lowell Lewis (2013), who points out that the term performance is often too open, since almost anything can be seen as a performance (Lewis, 2013, p. 4). Instead I focus specifically on the use of film as a method of showcasing nationality in a way that can be understood as a form of performance. Performance, whether through the representation of iconography, cultural traditions or history, is not discussed in terms of anthropology so much as it is understood as a means of emphasizing oneâs nationality âThe noun performanceâ, writes F. G. Bailey, âcarries with it a notion of publicity, something exhibited, something that is stagedâ (Bailey, 1996, p. 2). As will become apparent in Chaps. 5 and 6, cultural performance fulfils the need to publicize and exhibit cultural specificity in a highly staged manner, thus distinguishing Japanese culture and, more specifically, Japanese cinema in a global market.
When viewed in parallel, concealment and performance disorientate stable images and ideas of Japan. The former presents Japaneseness as a highly malleable form interrelated with the âforeignâ, the âglobalâ and the ânon-specificâ, while the latter serves to distinguish Japanese cultural iconography and subject matter. When viewed in relation to transnational industrial practices such as film distribution, international coproduction and the use of foreign financial and production resources, these modes of representation appear highly contradictory. When considering such contrasting modes of representation, one is faced with an intriguing paradox: Japan is often difficult to situate firmly in its film exports, yet, at the same time, it becomes highly visible through film exports. I would argue that such a paradox is key to understanding the changing nature of nationality and cultural specificity in the context of early twenty-first century cultural and economic globalization . As Mika Ko and Koichi Iwabuchi have both illustrated, Japanese national identity itself has often been presented paradoxically. Focusing on various discourses used to define national identity since the emergence of a Japanese nation state, Ko describes types of nihonjinron (discourses of Japaneseness) that are varied and not always coherent: âSome of them are even conflicting or contradictory to each otherâ (Ko, 2010, p. 11). Yet, Ko points out that such discourses advocate the uniqueness of Japan, despite not always being coherent with one another; in order to legitimize Japanâs uniqueness, nihonjinron âhave kept changing their contentâ (Ko, 2010, p. 11). Similar to this, Iwabuchi discusses the presentation of a contradictory national self-image vis-Ă -vis the rest of the world:
Iwabuchi goes on to suggest that the appropriation and assimilation of foreign influences, which would appear to undermine a unique national self-image, actually help to reinforce Japanâs distinctive presence in the world, an âexclusivist notion of Japanese national and cultural identityâ: âIt is in this sense that I would argue that the Japanese capacity for cultural borrowing and appropriation does not simply articulate a process of hybridization in practice, but it is strategically represented as a key feature of Japanese national identity itselfâ (Iwabuchi, 2002, p. 53). Both nihonjinron and cultural appropriation serve as strategies through which Japanâs alleged uniqueness is presented, both to the rest of the world and in reaction to it. In the case of twenty-first-century Japanese cinema, cultural concealment and cultural performance function in much the same way; nationality is made indefinable, yet distinct, a source that can be concealed or evoked according to the audience or market that is being catered to. One could even suggest that such paradoxical forms of representation become characteristic of Japanese cultural production and export in the twenty-first century, a time in which film production and distribution appear less reliant on singular national industries.In the course of Japanâs modern history, in which West-centric transnational and cross-cultural encounters, conflicts and connections have been accelerated at various levels, a particular self-image of the Japanese national essence has been developed so as to construct a modern national identity in the face of Western domination. (Iwabuchi, 2002, p. 53)
There are, however, certain issues worth considering that arise from the discussion of Japanese films as culturally paradoxical texts. Part of what makes many of the films discussed in this book paradoxical is the fact that they are produced and distributed through industrial processes that are separate from a Japanese context. This includes the recontextualization of certain directors as international/global filmmakers when their work is promoted overseas (Chap. 3), the distribution of films through DVD (Chap. 4) and international film festivals (Chap. 5), and the use of coproduction strategy and foreign finance (Chap. 6). Because of the different national and transnational, contexts of contemporary film production, the influence of overseas consortia on Japanese films is considerable, so much so that it raises questions concerning the actual nationality of certain film productions, particularly those which are coproduced. However, though the influence of foreign consortia and a global audience has had a significant impact on cultural representation in many Japanese film exports, such factors also facilitate the global dissemination of Japanese films and Japanese popular culture in general. Just as foreign influences on, foreign appropriations of and foreign involvement in Japanese film productions contradict the uniqueness, as it were, and autonomy of those productions, they also contribute to it. In some cases Japanese filmmakers are able to access non-Japanese resources of finance, production and promotion, while the increased visibility of Japanese cinema across the globe enhances national film production, encouraging filmmakers to adopt new modes of representation.
Cultural concealment and cultural performance are symptomatic of an increasingly globalized film industry and how individual nations respond to its various challenges. As this book demonstrates, representations of Japan are often strikingly paradoxical in ways that are related to the wider market for Japanese cinema and popular culture in the early twenty-first century. An essentialist analysis of national cinema as an expression of a single cultural context is therefore unhelpful towards understanding the complexities of national film production. In the process of maintaining national/cultural distinctiveness, films continually engage in intercultural relations between texts and industrial processes which appear contradictory to that distinctiveness.
Scholarly Background
One of the primary motivations for this book has been the controversy, if such a word is apt, surrounding English language studies of Japanese cinema. I am referring here to a certain tendency in English language scholarship to essentialize the subject of Japanese cinema, to approach it as something unique, as something quintessentially Japanese. I am not suggesting that it is incorrect to take such an approach and focus specifically on the nationality of Japanese films; it is, after all, logical to study films in relation to specific national, cultural and historical contexts. Certainly, this book focuses specifically on Japanese cinema in the twenty-first century, albeit in relation to the external cultural and industrial factors that influence cultural representation. In this respect, it is worth taking note of Alastair Phillips and Julian Stringer âs argument that it is important to perceive Japanese cinema in terms of its âexternalâ and ârelationalâ dimensions: âJapan is not so much a bounded entity as an âideaâ dependent upon its imagined links to other outside communities for its very definition and meaningâ (Phillips and Stringer, 2007, p. 19). In the context of economic and cultural globalization, and the interconnections between nations, cultures and communities that characterize it, it becomes crucial to understand...