Saluveer imaginary Japanese film: a creation of western technoorientalism, Japanese soft nationalism and narcissism

Abstract

For the last decade or so, Japanese popular culture and media products, especially animation and film, have been enjoying increasing popularity in the West. The tendency is highlighted by both, successes at the box office and film industry level, the latter in the form of several awards from Oscars and leading film festivals, such as Cannes International Film Festival. The same period has also marked the evolution of a new form and discourse of perceiving moving images from Japan by Western audiences – the imaginary Japanese film. This paper, broadly inspired by Anderson’s theory of imaginary communities, argues that imaginary Japanese film is a phenomenon, the emergence of which on the one hand can be attributed to a desire of Western film audience for the techno-orientalist “Other,” as discussed by Morley and Robins, and, on the other hand, to the marketing strategies of film distributors to create economically successful Asian cult film products. The imaginary Japanese film can be characterized by the combination and enforcement of stereotypical notions about Japan and its culture along with techno-orientalist features, such as violence and dehumanization. The latter aspects are revealed in the narratives of these films as excessive on-screen violence and the portrayal of characters as emotionless and machinelike. These features will be discussed in the article alongside Iwabuchi’s notion of Japanese cultural soft nationalism and narcissism. Thus further the work debates that the increasing engagement of Japanese film industry in the production of imaginary Japanese films can be viewed from the perspective of satisfying the demand for the exotic cult films in the West, but also reinforcing the Japanese film industry’s culturally narcissistic aspiration for the status of a key cultural-economic player in the world’s media markets.