Identity Construction and Negotiation in Japanese Entertainment, Fashion, and Advertising

Sponsor: Japan-U.S. Communication Association

Fri, 11/20: 12:30 PM - 1:45 PM

Rio Conference Center

Room: Lambada C

This session examines Japanese identities constructed and reconstructed in various media products and platforms, including a TV program, an anime, blogs, and TV advertising.

Chair

Edwin R. McDaniel, San Diego State University - Contact Me

Respondent

Rose G. Campbell, Butler University - Contact Me

Sponsor/Co-Sponsors

Japan-U.S. Communication Association

Presentations

Embracing Opportunities Among “YOU” in Japan: Discourses of Internationalization in Japanese Television

Because of the increasing number of people traveling from other countries to Japan2013 (Japan National Tourism Organization, n.d.), the interaction between Japanese citizens and foreign visitors are becoming more common than ever. Recognition about the commonality of interactions could be beneficial, not only for Japanese society and individuals who already have firsthand interaction with foreign visitors, but also for those who may have an interaction at some point in their future. It is significant to focus both on how Japanese people perceive foreign visitors and how they visualize the actual and potential interactions with them. The mass media can be influential in explaining how Japanese people perceive foreign visitors, because media can "produce…representations of the social world, images, descriptions, explanations, and frames for understanding how the world is and why it works as it is said and shown to work" (Hall, 1981, p.35).

Thus, this paper takes an examination of a particular Japanese television program, titled "YOU ha nanishini Nippon he? [Why did YOU come to Japan?]". This program interviews foreign visitors at Japan's international airports and documents their visits in Japan. A total of four episodes (two episodes in March and April of 2014, and two episodes in March of 2015) are analyzed in this paper. Ultimately, through discursive formation analysis, this study interrogates how this television program regulates and emphasizes particular interactional patterns (i.e., key images, words, and expressions) between Japanese people and foreign visitors. In other words, the goal of this analysis is revealing patterns in the show and analyzing how these patterns shape the knowledge and understanding of the world among the Japanese audiences, especially about the foreign visitors in Japan. In addition, patterns from different years were examined: Do they have similar emphasis about foreign visitors in 2015 as they did in 2014? If so, how are they similar? If not, what has changed?

As a result, three patterns emerged while analyzing how the television program framed the non-native Japanese individuals. The first pattern was familiarity of Japanese culture such as language, traditional festival, and martial arts. The second pattern was the prevalence of English language, over other foreign languages. The third pattern was the repeated portrayals of White individuals. In addition, the documentary portion of the show emphasized the family relationship. At the end, this paper discusses potential social problems which these patterns could cause, because these problems may become obstacles in the process of embracing opportunities among "you" in Japan.

Author

Emi Kanemoto, Bowling Green State University - Contact Me

Re-Fashioning the Agriculture: "No-gal" (Farming Gals) and Positive Youth Development in Japan

The "no-gal" (farm gals) subculture in Japan provides an interesting case study that challenges the general anxiety about the role of fashion in the development of the youth. These Japanese "gals," whose subculture identity revolves around anime-inspired makeups, bleached hair and flamboyant outfits, connected their obsession with fashion and trend with agriculture, the "uncool" industry that has been struggling to attract young generation. This paper examines the no-gal subculture in order to explore the processes of identity development among the Japanese youth. In particular, we pay attention to Shiho Fujita, the icon and the initiator of the "no-gal project," by reading her blog posts and publications. By applying the theory of Positive Youth Development, we will illustrate how Fujita's no-gal project engages in the positive youth development and creates an empowering social environment that offer a space for the youth to imagine their impact on the society.

Author

Mariko Izumi, Columbus State University - Contact Me

Co-Author

Naomi Kagawa, Shimane University, Japan - Contact Me

Shaggy Sherlock in Shizuoka: Holmes as Hound in Miyazaki’s TV Anime

This paper focuses on a much less well-known selection from Hayao Miyazaki's oeuvre-his final work in television anime, thirty years ago, in 1984-85: the animated cartoon series Meitantei Holmes (literally, Famous Detective Sherlock Holmes, but known in English as Sherlock Hound), which featured an anthropomorphic canine detective. We suggest that Meitantei Holmes' place in cross-cultural/transnational entertainment deserves closer attention as an often-obscured, yet pivotal global media artifact. One of the most remarkable features of this long-ago Miyazaki work is the characterization of Holmes' landlady as a 19-year-old widow who, in Victorian England, appears to be Holmes' near-equal in intellectual and physical prowess and derring-do. In explicating four of the 26 Holmes episodes, it becomes easier to understand Miyazaki's tendencies to portray girls and women as heroic protagonists in his later, and greater, films.

Author

Rick Kenney, Georgia Regents University - Contact Me

Co-Author

Kimiko Akita, Aichi Prefectural University - Contact Me

You Are What We Tell: The Construction of Japaneseness After 3/11

On 11 March 2011, the largest earthquake in Japan's history ripped through northeast Japan, triggering a catastrophic tsunami and level-7 nuclear reactor meltdown. While commemorating the national disaster, Japanese media not only mourned for the dead but also told what the living should do. Focusing on the AC Japan's TV advertisements, this research explored how the Japanese media (re)construct and transform hegemonic Japaneseness at the time of national crisis. Through a textual analysis, this study discovered four inter-related discursive themes: a) the homogeneity of Japanese people; b) a collective past/present/future; c) the social and national unity; d) dual feelings toward gaijin (foreigner).

Author

Jaehyeon Jeong, Temple University - Contact Me

Japan-U.S. Cross-Cultural Comparisons and Intercultural Contacts

Sponsor: Japan-U.S. Communication Association

Sat, 11/21: 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM

Rio Conference Center

Room: Lambada C

Papers in this session compare the Japanese and the U.S.-Americans to illuminate how culture affects interpersonal interactions, language use, self-perception, and online behavior through the lens of communication theories. The session includes one of this year's two Top Papers.

Chair

Donald Jung, Southeast Missouri State University - Contact Me

Respondent

Michael David Hazen, Wake Forest University - Contact Me

Sponsor/Co-Sponsors

Japan-U.S. Communication Association

Presentations

Cultural Discourses of Privacy: Interrogating Globalized Workplace Relationships in Japan

This study extends research regarding ways in which forces and processes of globalization influence intercultural relationships. Using Carbaugh's (2005, 2007) cultural discourse analysis and Petronio's (2002) Communication Privacy Management (CPM) Theory, this study highlights four cultural premises, or common sensical understandings, that garner intercultural privacy management between foreign English language teachers (ELTs) and Japanese co-workers (JCWs) in Japan. As part of a larger study on intercultural privacy management between ELTs and JCWs, this study examines 77 participants' (39 ELTs and 38 JCWs) interview discourses. The analysis revealed that at work ELTs: (a) expected to not be a "free space" for privacy inquisition by JCWs, and (b) expected voluntary reciprocity in (egalitarian) workplace relationships. On the other hand, JCWs viewed: (a) privacy inquisitions as acts of kindness/caring, and (b) soliciting help from a supervisor provides opportunities for better care. This study calls for attention to intercultural privacy management and extents CPM's cultural context by highlighting the importance of examining cultural premises. Petronio (2002) does not provide a way in which to uncover, examine, and understand cultural expectations. To fill this gap, this study shows that using CuDA in combination with CPM enlarges the landscape. Rather than looking at symptoms of cultural expectations of privacy, identifying cultural premises gets closer to the root of privacy boundary formation. In other words, by uncovering cultural premises researchers gain a better understanding as to why privacy rules exist. Further, this study underscores that privacy boundary management in intercultural workplaces needs to be taken more seriously.

Author

Nathaniel Simmons, Ohio University - Contact Me

Which Way Is the Speaker Oriented for? Linguistic Strategies to Make Presentations Attractive

There are a large amount of presentations have been delivered every day and everywhere not only in the business field but also in schools. Thus, how many presentations have succeeded to grab the audience's heart?

The purpose of this study is to research the elements for an effective presentation and propose. Therefore, this study is to demonstrate the use of the milestone from some presentation by the former CEO of Apple, Inc., Steve Jobs. The reason is why he has been called not only the great manager but also the great communicator. His presentations attracted millions of people around the world than just in the United States and also published hundreds of books introduce his presentation and it translated into worldwide. However, most of all the books just simply introduce his techniques about making the presentation slides and illustrate of the elements of non-verbal communication include gesture.

Therefore, try to discuss the presentation in term of verbal communication because presentation has rarely been studied from a dynamic perspective of verbal communication. The author collected some examples from online videos of Steve Jobs, Japanese CEOs, and some university students.

The perspective has the consequence that the important elements for make an attractive presentation is not oriented for the speakers but the audience. Furthermore, the author analyzed the ways of presentations and found the importance of rapport-talk elements which building relationship with speaker and audience (similar concept of "uchi" in Japanese context) in addition to report-talk that transfer of information from speaker to audience (similar concept of "soto" in Japanese context).

Author

Akiko Nojima, Ritsumeikan University - Contact Me

Effects of Cultural Orientations, Self-Esteem, Collective Self-Esteem on Well-Being Among College Students in the Mainland U.S., Hawaii, and Japan

This study examined a theoretical model of individual self-esteem and collective self-esteem in a sample of college students from mainland U.S., Hawaii, and Japan. Specifically, the mediation of the effects of independent and interdependent self-construal by individual as well as collective self-esteem on well-being was explored. Results indicated that the hypothesized model fit well. This study found the role of interdependent self-construal on well-being was mediated by collective self-esteem as the hypothesized indirect and direct effects. Collective self-esteem was a significant mediator in the relationship between interdependent self-construal and well-being as the hypothesized indirect effects. Collective self-esteem was also related to well-being as the hypothesized direct effect. The effect of interdependent self-construal on collective self-esteem was stronger in Japan, than in the mainland U.S. and Hawaii. Understanding both universal and culture-specific aspects of collective self-esteem in the development of well-being will be essential for sound theory, future research, and effective prevention and intervention efforts across three cultural groups.

Author

Ayano Yamaguchi, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies - Contact Me

Co-Author(s)

Min-Sun Kim, University of Hawaii, Manoa - Contact Me

Satoshi Akutsu, Hitotsubashi University - Contact Me

Atsushi Oshio, Waseda University - Contact Me

Partying and Drunk Picture Posting Practice on Social Networking Sites (SNSs) and Personality: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Between Japanese and American College Students (*Top Paper II)

Previous literature documented college students' problematic online behavior such as posting partying and drunk pictures on social networking sites (SNSs). The present study further investigated the associations among culture, SNS platforms, personality, and such behavior based on survey data collected in both the US (N = 583) and Japan (N = 496). The results revealed that extroverted SNS users posted significantly more partying and drunk pictures regardless their culture (i.e., American and Japanese) or SNS platform (i.e., Facebook and Mixi). Similarly, the level of introvert was a strong predictor of social compensation motive across cultures and SNS platforms. However, cultural differences became evident in terms of perception of disinhibition. Data found American college students perceived disinhibition significantly more than Japanese college students. In addition, the results of mediation analyses provide additional evidence of cultural influence on the role of perception of disinhibition.

Author

Kikuko Omori, St. Cloud State University - Contact Me

Embracing Historical Reference Points in Japanese/Japanese-American Communication

Sponsor: Japan-U.S. Communication Association

Sat, 11/21: 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM

Rio Conference Center

Room: Brasilia 6

Papers in this session explore historical or contemporary discourses presented by or related to a now-defunct postwar Japanese local newspaper, nihonjinron, Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, and the Japanese-American internment photographical archive to examine rhetorical possibilities and limits of each discourse. The session includes Top Student Paper and one of this year's two Top Papers.

Chair

Rick Kenney, Georgia Regents University - Contact Me

Respondent

Akira Miyahara, Seinan Gakuin University - Contact Me

Sponsor/Co-Sponsors

Japan-U.S. Communication Association

Presentations

As the Matter of ″International (Mis-)Understanding″: The Praxis of Cultural Segregation and Ironic Essentialism in Japan's Education Discourse

This essay will attempt to interrogate into a troubling concept of "international (mis-) understanding" for the critique of its power that may account for hegemonic practice of cultural segregation and essentialism in the contexts of Japanese public education. In this essay, I will first provide a theoretical guidance to "international (mis-) understanding" derived from literature on nihonjinron and critical scholarships on Japan studies. Then, I will discuss how cultural ambivalence between fear and aspiration can be reified through ELT (English language Teaching) practice at public schools concerning the impact on ALTs (Assistant Language Teachers) and JTEs (Japanese Teachers of English). Third, I will closely examine the historical contexts of MEXT's now defunct educational initiative yutorikyouiku (relaxed education) for the critique of administrative deliberation on political maneuver over 2003 PISA scores panic and its afterward. In conclusion, I will provide my further implication on the discourse of "international (mis-) understanding" that could give powers-that-be rhetorical ammunition to promote nationalism across the border through recent political move for historical revisionism under the PM Shinzo Abe administration.

Author

Ken Watanabe, Texas A&M University - Contact Me

The Possibilities of Human Rights Photography: Absence and Opportunity in the Japanese American Internment Archive (*Top Student Paper)

This essay investigates how absence enables opportunities for human rights photography. It claims that the Japanese American internment's photographs expand iconic and human rights photographical criticism. Specifically, the internment's photographs reveal how absence fosters activist possibilities in Denshō, a digital archive that champions against racial discrimination in the U.S. through permeating the internment's memory. In terms of absence, although the internment incites memories of xenophobia, its photographical archive obfuscates the U.S. government's xenophobic regime with portrayals of smiles and everyday activities. Within this visual paradox, the essay explores the iconicity of "a famous evacuation day photo" with rhetoric's intersections between visual culture and memory. The photograph depicts Fumiko Hayashida, a recently deceased Japanese American internee whose distraught image established her role in activism against racial discrimination in the U.S. The essay proposes that a famous evacuation day photo's iconicity is not from only public popularity, but an ability to supplement oppression's absence within the internment's photographical archive. The essay unpacks it claim in rhetoric and archival invention, and holds that how the internment's photographs appear alongside a famous evacuation day photo in Denshō's archive allow images of smiling internees to participate in discourses on human rights violations. From this, the essay contributes that public memory enables the imagination to counter visual absence by complementing a particular historicization that the internment's photographs circulate under. Here, the imagination takes the form of a lingering referent that the spectator projects onto the photograph to visualize the absent oppression in the internment's photographs. As such, it is in a famous evacuation day photo's ability to be a rhetorical device of supplementation that distinguishes its iconicity. The essay concludes that photography, absence, and archives produce both a productive relationship between memory and history, and enable human rights photography to depict violations beyond atrocious, overt images.

Author

Albert Rintrona III, University of Iowa - Contact Me

Lost in Postwar Japan: What "Proactive Pacifism" Is and Means

Since politics always involves conflict, passion, self-interest and irrationality, political arguers seek not only to resolve a dispute but to resolve it in their favor. Under the slogan of his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), "Nippon wo, Torimodosu" (Take Japan Back), Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo called for returning to an idealized past. By calling not for reconstruction, but for restoration, Prime Minister Abe sought to shape such nationalistic sentiment into strong reasoning that the government should allow the Japanese-called Self-Defense Forces (SDF) to fight with allies under and beyond the United Nations (UN) Charter. Without taking a time-consuming legislative mandate, he made a fundamental change of the 1947 pacifist constitution. This actually set a precedent for further destruction of the basic tenets of Japan's pacifism exemplified by Article 9 of its constitution. By examining how political argument functioned for the whole rather than how it worked in a particular case, this study explores the way in which means of strategic maneuvering gave rise to Abe's revisionist move.

Author

Hiroko Okuda, Kantogakuin University - Contact Me

Embracing the U.S. Democracy: Rhetoric to Raise Demos After Honjo Case, 1948 (*Top Paper I)

This study explores the status of democratic citizens or demos on a local newspaper _Saitama Times_ published in Honjo Town, Saitama Prefecture, Japan, in the early post-World War II period. The paper was published soon after a monumental town assembly with a mass of townspeople, which resolved that all violence should be excluded from the town, following a national press _Asahi_'s scandalous disclosure that yakuza-related members hijacked town politics and civic-service positions. These series of events are now memorized to Japanese people as Honjo Jiken, or Honjo Case. Yet, recent researches have revealed that both the _Asahi_'s press campaign and the town assembly were first of all enabled by strong supports from the American army of occupation.

Understanding that the _Saitama Times_ was born in a particular discursive space between American control of democratizing Japan and the efforts of local people aftermath of the Case, this critical study scrutinizes what kind of citizenship and democratic ideal the newspaper explored in this particular period. In so doing, the study firstly reviews the ideas of democracy and demos from contemporary political theorists. Out of their works, I draw an idea that democracy is innately a body of citizens empowered to govern themselves, and that demos is the people equipped with this capacity. Given that, the study secondly argues that the idea of demos was very well demonstrated on the _Saitama Times_. By reading the articles, I claim that, unlike the main press around this time, the _Saitama Times_ fulfilled a unique pedagogical and political purpose of growing good democratic citizens in the town. Thirdly, however, the study points a few important factors that inhibited it from actualizing the idea in Honjo. Besides material-economic factors that disabled the press to deliver their intentions to their citizens, the study remarks a rhetorical limit that Marxian-Leninist ideology invariably contained within themselves against the local climate of Honjo. Even though this study focuses on a local newspaper published a long time ago, rhetorical possibilities and limits of the _Saitama Times_ inform important lessons to currently a contested status of democracy as well as contemporary citizens living in democratic countries like Japan and the United States.

Author

Noriaki Tajima, Kanda University of International Studies - Contact Me