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| 1 |
ID:
143816
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| Summary/Abstract |
In this article, I analyze changing preferences for either Okinawa or Hawai`i as tourist paradise by tracing the history of the Japanese ‘honeymoon boom’ that developed starting in the 1960s. Taking a honeymoon trip only became customary in Japan when postwar baby-boomers reached marriageable age. These young couples generally followed the recommendations of travel agents in planning their honeymoons, so tourist destinations became crowded with newlyweds. The more honeymooners traveled somewhere, the more those places became favored by other Japanese tourists, including retirees, unmarried travelers, and parents with children. The first honeymooning paradise in Japan was Miyazaki, a prefecture in southern Kyushu that, like Hawai`i and Okinawa, has a pleasant tropical climate. After the ideal of honeymooning on a tropical paradise was established in Miyazaki, newlyweds began traveling further south, seeking paradise in Hawai`i, Guam, and Okinawa. In this article, I investigate how Okinawa became constructed as ‘Japan’s Hawai`i’ after inheriting the honeymoon boom from Miyazaki.
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| 2 |
ID:
143815
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| Summary/Abstract |
Hawai`i occupies a special place in the imaginations of Japanese people. Ever since the end of World War II, Japanese media have portrayed Hawai`i as a paradisical dreamland. This does not mean the cultural meanings attributed to Hawai`i have remained constant over the past 70 years. Both the notion of ‘paradise’ and the content of the Hawaiian ‘dream’ have transformed along with changing socio-economic conditions and ideas about how Japanese people view themselves in relation to the outside world. This article examines Japanese films from the early postwar period to the present that portray Hawai`i as a ‘paradise’ in which ‘adoration’ and ‘yearning’ play out and ‘dreams’ are fulfilled. These cinematic discourses of ‘paradise’ and ‘dream’ first portrayed Japanese individuals as modern, wealthy national subjects during the postwar economic boom period that ended in the 1980s. In response to changing socio-economic conditions in the early twenty-first century, the dream of Hawai`i came to represent a more relaxed paradise and Japanese individuals were shown embracing an alternative ‘local’ lifestyle.
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| 3 |
ID:
143819
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article explores the historical significance of an incident reported in the international media in 2009 when Burakumin groups raised concerns about privacy and possible human rights abuses in relation to a new map service offered by Google. Reportage at the time indicated that historical maps containing references to outcaste settlements could be laid over contemporary maps to disclose the exact location of contemporary Buraku districts. A thorough examination of the incident, however, reveals a more complicated story. On the one hand the incident is clearly an example of ‘human rights activism’, an ongoing political strategy within the Buraku liberation movement to achieve permanent legal recognition of their status in the face of a state that has long resisted such demands. At the same time, however, the main features of this incident – silence, revelation, protest, and erasure – are also reoccurring themes within modern Buraku history that comprise what is described in the article as a taboo cycle. In their struggles for liberation, Burakumin have developed numerous strategies to combat the cycle as well as use it to their advantage.
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| 4 |
ID:
143817
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper investigates the popularity of hula in contemporary Japanese society in order to understand how Native Hawaiian images and traditions play a role in constructing the image of a ‘paradise’ in Hawai`i. By drawing on the personal experience of the author as a participant observer in hula lessons and performance in Tokyo, it argues that aiming for the sense of cultural authenticity is integral to the Japanese practitioners’ attraction to hula. It also shows how Native Hawaiian hula teachers and performers skillfully appropriate the Japanese desire to discover an ‘authentic’ Hawai`i for their cultural as well as personal gain. Today’s Japanese discourse of ‘Hawai`i as paradise’ derives from the contemporary socio-cultural context of a Japanese society that longs for the authentic culture of the indigenous ‘other’ as well as from the shrewd use of that longing by the ‘other.’
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| 5 |
ID:
143818
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines historical and contemporary Japanese attitudes toward the `ukulele (and Hawai`i) configured as paradisical objects of yearning and utopian desire. This is desire in the form of what I call a ‘plucked paradise’ – a form of music-making upon a stringed instrument, as well as the image of a flower being harvested for one’s use. Plucking a string produces a relatively delicate sound that decays quickly; plucking a flower is a small act of aesthetic appropriation. Both of these reference a paradise that is temporal, sensual, and aestheticized. This research asks, what kinds of meanings do participants give to the `ukulele and its music in Japan? How do infrastructural components, particularly Japanese Americans, facilitate the development of `ukulele culture in Japan? By analyzing multiple dimensions involved in the creation of that ‘plucked paradise’, I bring to bear the tensions, conflicts, and creative forces that shape the interaction.
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| 6 |
ID:
143820
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| Summary/Abstract |
In the 1960s and early 1970s a wave of Japanese programs were broadcast on Australian television. Among these were anime such as Astro Boy, Gigantor and Kimba the White Lion. For Australian viewers of these programs the Japanese connection was not obvious. However, in contrast and airing around the same time was the black-and-white series The Samurai. Clearly Japanese, it was a chambara-type period drama complete with samurai and ninja battling it out in the streets and countryside of Edo-period Japan and featuring backdrops of villages, shrines and castles. The Samurai was extremely popular, attracting a large audience of Australian viewers. However, the show also attracted controversy and criticism from the public. The show and the reaction it created provide an opportunity to explore and comment on aspects of Australian social history and Australia’s relationship with Japan. I argue that The Samurai was an early form of transnational popular culture, and it introduced a type of ‘oriental cool’ that spectacularly disrupted postwar Australia’s perception of Japan as a wartime enemy.
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