International Journal of Cultural Studies 2000 Takeshi 11 25

International Journal of Cultural Studies http://ics.sagepub.
com/
Cultural studies in Japan

Sat Takeshi and Hanada Tatsur International Journal of Cultural Studies 2000 3: 11 DOI: 10.1177/136787790000300102 The online version of this article can be found at: http://ics.sagepub.com/content/3/1/11
Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
Additional services and information for International Journal of Cultural Studies can be found at: Email Alerts: http://ics.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://ics.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations: http://ics.sagepub.com/content/3/1/11.refs.html
>> Version of Record - Apr 1, 2000 What is This?
Downloaded from ics.sagepub.com by mostafa keivan on October 30, 2011
ARTICLE
INTERNATIONAL journal of CULTURAL studies

Copyright 2000 SAGE Publications London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi Volume 3(1): 1125 [1367-8779(200004)3:1; 1125; 012045]
Cultural studies in Japan

q
Sat Takeshi
Preface
q
Professor Hanada Tatsur

Institute of Socio-Information and Communication Studies (ISICS), University of Tokyo
The following paper by Professor Takeshi Sat on cultural studies in Japan was originally presented at the symposium Dialogue with Cultural Studies, held at the University of Tokyo on 1821 March 1996, and organized by me as chair. The symposium consisted of ve workshops, in which almost 180 people participated. It was very successful and claimed a lot of attention from both academic society and the general public. We invited six scholars from the UK: Stuart Hall, Charlotte Brunsdon, Angela McRobbie, David Morley, Colin Sparks and Ali Rattansi. For the record of this fourday event, we had planned to publish both English and Japanese books. We nally published a long-awaited Japanese book in May 1999. In the meantime, however, we had to give up on publishing the English-language book owing to various delays. But Professor Sat was one of the few who faithfully kept to the deadline and nished the English translation for his contribution. To our great sorrow, however, he then passed away in October 1997. Professor Sat, author of a number of books on sociology and cultural studies, was, and in my opinion still is, one of the most distinguished scholars in the eld of media and cultural studies in Japan. He was one of
12
I N T E R N AT I O N A L journal of C U LT U R A L studies 3(1)
the rst scholars to introduce British cultural studies to the Japanese academic world. Against this background, after we nally decided not to publish the English book, we were recommended to submit Professor Sats paper to the International Journal of Cultural Studies as the most suitable journal to carry this superb work on Japanese cultural studies.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A B S T R A C T q The eld of cultural studies has had a major impact in Japan, where many of the seminal English-language texts have been translated and discussed. Even before the Second World War and immediately after, however, Japan had its own intellectual background which set the foundations for this development. This essay looks at that background through the writings of Tosaka Jun, Nakai Masakazu, Tsurumi Shunsuke and Kat Shichi. It then examines how British cultural studies made its way to Japan and how it was received there, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s. Finally, it points to the research areas in which Japanese cultural studies has found fertile soil and why. q KEYWORDS
q
Japan q journalism
Britain q cultural studies q economics Marxism q Second World War
globalization q
1. Critical research in the prewar and postwar eras To further research on cultural studies in Japan, let me rst offer up for examination several cases of critical cultural research (cultural studies) from before and shortly after the Second World War in Japan. These studies form an intellectual legacy for Japan which we shall call Cultural Studies, and without an investigation of them the subsequent development of cultural studies in Japan would be virtually impossible. First are Tosaka Juns (19001945) views on journalism and the masses. Tosaka Jun was a critical thinker who began his career as a neo-Kantian philosopher and who later as a Marxist philosopher fought continually against the tempest of prewar Japanese fascism. He focused on the principle of quotidianness (daily life as lived) and the principle of reality which can be found in common sense, and he considered them to constitute one of the foundations of materialism. He particularly emphasized the principle of quotidianness, which he viewed as a principle to defend the thought of the masses against metaphysics and idealism. According to Tosaka, journalism was a doctrine based in actual, everyday life; it was rooted in the principle of quotidianness. He viewed criticism as a function rooted in the principle of quotidianness of journalism. Thus, he argued that criticism took form on the basis of this principle of
Sat Takeshi q Cultural studies in Japan
13
quotidianness, which was characterized by a sense both of actuality and criticality. Tosaka advanced this point of view in the following manner. Journalism and hence, the press was rooted in quotidianness, and at its essence was a moment for conceptual, ideological movement within social life; it was, in short, an agent of ideology. In capitalist society, the press as a bourgeois press functioned as an agent of bourgeois ideology. To a certain extent, however, this ideology could indicate the level of its original freedom. Although he saw the special character of the bourgeois press in its possession of a degree of conceptual freedom, within this character was the complete social function of journalism, namely the bourgeois press in its ideological function. As to why this was the case, Tosaka argued as follows: What the masses possess is instinctively never of a bourgeois nature, nor can it be. Yet, it is the fate of the press to necessarily consider them as its readers (Tosaka, 1934/1966: 143). Thus, although Tosaka understood the bourgeois press as a function of bourgeois ideology, he also pointed out that it contained within it a contradiction, namely that the masses were perforce its readership. This point of view rejected the argument that bourgeois journalism was to be grasped as a monolith. What, then, did Tosaka mean by the masses? Critical of the concept of the masses in fascism and mass democracy, Tosaka argued that the masses were not simply the great majority of those who constituted society nor simply the rabble or a mob. In his view, the lack of recognition of their own organizational nature was the meaning of the concept of the masses under fascism. The masses unceasingly organized themselves, and he captured this in their qualities of activism, spontaneity and organization. In his depiction of the masses, Tosaka projected his own expectations and outlook and wrote articles describing this. In 1938 he was imprisoned by the fascist authorities with other resistant intellectuals. In 1945, shortly before the conclusion of the war, he died in prison. One of Tosakas closest friends, Nakai Masakazu (19001952), was active as a philosopher and scholar of aesthetics both before and after the war. He was inuenced simultaneously by the thinkers Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer, as well as by Marxism. Like Tosaka, Nakai advocated the active quality of the masses as subject. However, this was the posture of a projected subject. This did not treat seeing as the subjects simple static reections on the world. Rather, he took the position that in every instant the subject actively moved and continually linked the discontinuities of its actions. Seeing became a springboard to a place that faced the world actively. Why was this the case? In his 1937 article, Miru koto no imi (The meaning of seeing), he argued as follows: Everywhere we nd evidence that the capacity of the masses to see is victimized and perverted by commercialism and other even greater structures. No one nds this truly
14
enjoyable, as the people are all sucked into it together (Nakai, 1937/1981: 310). He was appealing to the masses to continue to preserve the surety of seeing and to recapture its surety. In November 1937, Nakai was apprehended for violating the Peace Preservation Act and underwent a period of great hardship. After the war, he worked hard at playing the role of an intellectual in pursuit of democratization. It was in this context that he developed his ideas about lm. In literature there is the copula of to be and not to be to link one representation with another. This is absent from linkages in lm. The subjectivity of the producer here cannot restrict his cuts. What links one cut with another is the mind of the viewing masses. The masses laments and their anger directly connect these cuts (Nakai, 1950a/1981: 192). In talkies or lms with subtitles there are passing, perfunctory copulas. However, another big copula lies in the whispers that the masses murmur in their minds, to be and not to be (Nakai, 1950b/1981: 196). For Nakai, what linked one image with the next lacking the copula was the mind of the masses. This was not only the laments and anger of the masses, but it was also the wishes and sense of deciency of the masses. These wishes and sense of deciency were also Nakais. His article cited previously was written in 1950 during the chaos which followed the end of the war and the beginning of the Korean War. Nakai argued that lm producers made their lms by entrusting the linkages between cuts to the historical quality of the masses (Nakai, 1950a/1981: 192). At the stage of encoding, the lm-maker, while repeatedly decoding the historical quality of the masses or the masses as a historical essence, ultimately produces the work by entrusting it to them. Amid the political, economic and cultural chaos of the immediate postwar period in Japan, constitutional law was established, and steps towards democracy and peace were begun. In the midst of all this, Tsurumi Shunsuke (b. 1922), who had been a student in the USA before the war, wrote about American philosophy and popular culture in Japan. Among Tsurumis works, the piece I shall focus on is his essay investigating the communications theory of John Dewey (Tsurumi, 1952). On the one hand, Tsurumi offered a positive evaluation of Deweys philosophy, and at the same time he saw communication itself as a blessing and discommunication (the distorted communication which arises when meaning is not accurately conveyed by communication) as an evil to be slighted or ignored. This was a critique of the utopianism of the communications myth concealed within Deweys theory of communications. Tsurumi offered the following case as one painfully concrete incident in which discommunication arose. Kan Sueharu (19171950) was interned in the former Soviet Union during the war and acted as an interpreter in the prison camp. When he was called before the Japanese Diet as a witness after the war, he came under a barrage of questioning from members of the
15
Diet. Tsurumi used the minutes of Kans testimony to put his main point here. The day after Kan gave his testimony, he committed suicide along the railroad tracks with a copy of the book Sokuratesu no benmei (The Defence of Socrates) in his pocket. His will included the following sentences:
In that incident, I only tried to explain the facts as facts without taking any sort of political stance whatsoever. However, the politicians did not allow me to succeed in this. I now die despairing of my weakness and stupidity at being incapable of preserving a single fact. (Tsurumi, 1952: 1601)
Tsurumi examined in detail the state of discommunication between Kan as witness and the Diet members who carried out the interrogation, and offered a number of conditions for why this may have come about. First, it was a case that certain political forces used to extend their own strength, and thus power relations were at work. Second, the social-psychological terms were preconceived by the Diet members. Third, there were differences in levels of understanding. Fourth, there was the Japanese communications practice of making ones group afliation the primary issue at hand. After he nished his analysis, Tsurumi argued as follows:
Communication, just as Dewey put it, is an essential activity for human beings. . . . [However,] the role played by discommunication in history is far greater than Dewey imagined. . . . Completely different images of the world are opened up by differences in living standards. . . . The problem is not only living standards, but between classes, ethnic groups, the sexes, husbands and wives, and nations. When there are more than two people present, discommunication will assuredly become deeply implanted. A basic condition for human beings is that there is more discommunication than there is communication. (Tsurumi, 1952: 1624)
Tsurumis views on discommunication suggest that the social context in which communication arises is, more than anything else, embedded within certain power relations and that it is also embedded in the conjuncture of class, gender, husbandwife and national relations. We have here a point of contact with the idea of articulation in contemporary cultural studies.
Discommunication is a condition from which we as human beings cannot escape. As democratization proceeds and seems to lead to revolution, it will not disappear. We choose a portion to gradually eradicate the most noxious elements within discommunication and bit by bit cover it up. (Tsurumi, 1952: 165)
These were Tsurumis nal words in his essay. The year 1955, three years after this piece by Tsurumi was published, is considered the year in which high-level growth began in the postwar Japanese economy. Japan was still, however, groping towards a cultural identity
16
and orientation. The critic Kat Shichi (b. 1919), who was active internationally and had a profound knowledge of Japanese culture, published an essay entitled Nihon bunka no zasshusei (The hybridity of Japanese culture) in 1955. In this piece, Kat argued that there had been a movement for the purication of Japanese culture by Japanese intellectuals from the Meiji period onward and that this could be schematically divided into two. The rst form it took was based on the desire to remove all that was unnecessary from Japan and westernize it. The second was, by contrast, the desire to eliminate all that was unnecessary from the west and leave what was purely Japanese. He claimed that although both of these attempts were deeply felt aspirations, they had no expectation of success; what should be argued, he felt, was that in recognizing the positive sense of cultural hybridity itself and breathing life into it, one asks what kinds of possibilities exist.
There is no reason whatsoever why we must lament the hybridity of Japanese culture. On the contrary, it allows us to experiment at what only we are capable of. . . . When Buddhism came [to Japan], our distant ancestors accepted it, but ultimately turned it into Japanese Buddhism. (Kat, 1955: 1617; 1969: 26)
Kats hybrid culture argument elicited a major backlash at the time. It challenged the conception of a pure Japanese culture, especially Japanese cultural ethnocentrism, and brought it to an abrupt halt. It was the instrument that enabled us today to articulate cultural studies, multiculturalism and critical multiculturalism, which have come to emphasize the importance of cultural hybridity. Its contemporary signicance is thus immense. Much was born in critical studies of the prewar and early postwar eras and continued as intellectual legacy. In my own 1973 article Ideorogii toshite no media (Media as ideology), I understood the mass media as one of the devices, together with educational institutions, of national cultural control and the process of legitimation. Furthermore, I described the ideological rivalries and contradictions surrounding the media as a conjuncture of the inside and outside of the media (Sat, 1973: 5178). This was one of the things I inherited.
2. The reception of cultural studies Cultural studies in Great Britain in its early years, as can be seen in the work of Raymond Williams, was simultaneously inuenced by indigenous British culturalism and by Marxism. In the case of Marxism, though, Williams put doctrinaire Marxist thought at a distance. While not placing culture in the superstructure, as it was termed in historical materialism, he continued to argue that it was relatively self-regulated from the base. Stuart Hall argued as follows:
17
We actually went around the houses to avoid reductionist marxism. We read Weber, we read German idealism, we read Benjamin, Lukcs, in an attempt to correct what we thought of as the unworkable way class reductionism has deformed classical marxism, preventing it from dealing with cultural questions seriously. (Chen, 1996: 499)
As noted earlier, the critical research of prewar and postwar Japanese philosophers and thinkers is rich in material which can today be articulated as cultural studies. These too were formed, to a greater or lesser extent, under the inuence of Marxism. However, they did not directly advocate breaking free of the reductionism or determinism seen in classical Marxism. In postwar Japan it was Maruyama Masao (19141996), the scholar of the history of political thought, who came forward to attack the reductionism in Marxism. This appeared in a 1956 article entitled Sutaarin hihan no hihan (A critique of the Critique of Stalin). In this piece he pointed out:
There is a tendency afoot to reduce and unify all questions to the basic structure which deeply regulates thinking for Marxists. The question of the dimension of individual systems is ultimately a question of the political superstructure as a whole, and fundamentally is returned to the question of substructure. If this augmentation is appropriate to the treatment of a scholarly position, then it leads to a reduction of the sort that moves from the various scholarly groups within the individual sciences, to pragmatism, to philosophy of the imperialist stage and nally to imperialist philosophy. (Maruyama, 1956: 349)
This critique of reductionism was tied to a critique of dogmatic Marxism, and thus shares a scholarly orientation with cultural studies in its early years. Furthermore, it revived the point that democracy in traditional Marxism was as a rule tinged with a three-layered reductionism: state reductionism, economic reductionism, and class reductionism (Kat, 1986: 79). In the 1950s, British cultural studies had not yet matured and, as a result, there were no introductions to its accomplishments. The work of British culturalism and the New Left, as represented by Raymond Williams, was introduced to Japan and, gradually from the 1960s, a number of works found their way into Japanese translations. Let me mention here the main single-volume works that were translated. These include: Tamura Susumu, ed., Bunka kakushin no vijon (A Vision of Cultural Change; translation of Anthology from New Left Reader); E.P. Thompson, ed., Atarashii sayoku seijiteki mukanshin kara no dasshutsu (The New Left: Escape from Political Apathy; translation of Out of Apathy); Raymond Williams, Komyunikshon (Communication); Raymond Williams, Bunka to shakai, 17801950 (Culture and Society, 17801950); Richard Hoggart, Yomikaki nryoku no ky (The Uses of Literacy); Raymond Williams, Kiiwaado
18
jiten (Keyword Dictionary; translation of Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society); Raymond Williams, Nagai kakumei (The Long Revolution); Raymond Williams, Bunka to wa (Culture); Paul E. Willis, Hamaataun no yardomo (The Guys of Hammertown; translation of Learning to Labour); John Fiske and John Hartley, Terebi o yomu (Reading Television); and John Fiske, Terebijn karuchaa (Television Culture). The introduction of cultural studies to Japan rst started with individual works, primarily the writings of Raymond Williams. In the 1980s cultural studies as a whole was introduced as a scholarly trend. I rst introduced cultural studies as a body of works in an essay written in 1984, Igirisu ni okeru masu komyunikshon kenky (Studies of mass communications in Great Britain).1 Unlike in the English-speaking countries of the USA, Australia and Canada, cultural studies was introduced rather late to Japan. In these English-speaking countries, however, because British cultural studies was a product of Great Britain and because of the various distinctive histories and cultural practices in these other countries, the way in which it was received and articulated differed. Graeme Turner argues as follows in the case of Australian cultural studies:
The privileging of class over gender or race in early British cultural studies, the Anglocentricity of much work on . . . ideologies of nationalism or the social function of subcultures, have been noted by cultural studies friends as well as its enemies. . . . Criticism of the subcultures research identied with Hebdige, Chambers, and, to a lesser extent, Paul Willis also raises the question of the relation between cultural theory and the specic historical conditions which produce it. . . . In all these instances, the critique of what is now a dominant set of theories and practices suggests they are more culture-bound than they themselves acknowledge. (Turner, 1992: 641)
Theory is linked to the historical and cultural background and conditions that produced it. Thus, in a sense it is only natural that the manner in which British cultural studies was received would differ according to the historical and cultural background and conditions of the various countries involved. The introduction of cultural studies to Japan has been a rather recent phenomenon, and thus it is difcult to get a handle on the overall picture of its reception and evaluation. However, because of the differences in the historical and cultural background of Great Britain and Japan, a number of doubts may be raised about the direct applicability of the theory, analytical devices and signicance of the results of cultural studies in Japan. For example, because working-class culture as a subordinate culture, as described by Paul Willis, is lacking in Japan, the apprehension emerges that the young workers in Japan may become tormented with a sense of inferiority being unable to nd a counter culture anywhere (Kumazawa, 1985: 390). Furthermore, although a working class continues to exist in Japan,
19
there is the critique that since the consciousness of belonging to a working class is low, it is a waste of effort to mechanically apply the three codes dominant code, negotiated code and oppositional code to class relations in Japan. Yet I believe that the conception of the codes and the discussion of preferred reading are highly signicant, and thus it is fully worth our effort to investigate this with a new methodological framework. In addition, there are signicant differences between Japan and the west concerning the views on gender and ethnicity with which recent cultural studies has been wrestling. In the latter half of the 1980s in Japan, gender and ethnicity studies became an arena lit by the spotlight of new scholarly concerns. Gender studies was reared in a sphere whose inuence could not be ignored in sociology. However, as for ethnicity unlike the USA, where black studies has taken shape as a eld of research, and Europe, which is now becoming a multiethnic nation in Japan the domestic minorities centring on the resident Korean population are apt to be quantitatively and linguistically invisible. Thus, there are reasons why ethnicity studies has been treated only as a problem concerning foreign guest labourers and has not become a major avenue for research as in the West. As Graeme Turner points out, even theory has to have some historical location, specic contexts within which it works to particular ends (Turner, 1992: 650). Cultural studies in Japan, too, has to give discipline to theory which may wander away from the specic contexts it has produced and make conceptual leaps; it continues to give birth to distinct cultural perspectives and, at the same time, using a global point of view, aims at a commonality of results within the ow of global debate.
3. The tasks for cultural studies in Japan Insofar as the term Japanese cultural studies has taken hold in Japan, cultural studies research has not been greatly fostered. As noted above, however, there is an intellectual legacy of scholarship which took a critical stance with respect to culture, and on the basis of this historical background the inuence of international cultural studies is now gradually beginning to appear in Japan. In my view, the tasks confronting cultural studies in Japan are many and varied. However, I have insufcient space here to discuss the numerous tasks that can be hypothesized. For present purposes I shall offer two such tasks which come to mind. From its very beginning, cultural studies criticized the reductionism of class, and now it seems to be rejecting the trend to privilege class by placing it above either ethnicity or gender. In order to deepen our analysis of this point, however, I believe we need to clarify substantively and theoretically the relations among class, ethnicity and gender. As
20
concerns gender, it is not necessarily the case that inequalities based on sex will be revealed through class inequalities. The task remains how class and ethnic relations are constructed with the intermediary of gender. It will be necessary to overcome the insufciencies of past Japanese studies of class when we deal with the substantive data on class relations in Japan. Earlier Japanese studies of class have at least the following lacunae: (1) they do not recognize the existence of a distinctive class or stratum, a new middle class, between the capitalist class and the working class, and they treat them as a salary-man stratum within the working class; (2) they do not recognize the existence of an independent class such as the old middle class, and stipulate that the great majority of the farmers and self-employed are an oppressed class or semi-proletariat; and (3) while conscious of the fact that class structure and gender are closely intertwined, they consider that the process determining class and class position is not fundamentally based on gender. Recently, efforts have been made to overcome past Japanese studies of class in an attempt to get at the mutual interactions between class relations and gender relations, and from there to clarify in a substantive way contemporary class society in Japan. Japanese society today is facing a new economic situation. The Japanese economy has been in a slump since the bursting of the bubble economy. A huge number of national bonds have been issued to cover the national debt; the rate of wage increases has declined; the overall unemployment rate reached 3.4 percent in November 1995; Japanese labour-management relations have begun to unravel; staff reductions have been carried out; and recently the problem of bad credit has unveiled new economic difculties. It is now uncertain whether the harsh realities of Japans class society, as noted by scholars in the past, can continue to exist. Furthermore, legal and illegal foreign labourers in Japanese society, according to an estimate of the Ministry of Labour, exceeded 480,000 in 1991. This gure is approaching that of approximately 700,000 permanent resident foreigners. Also, in late 1995, foreigners in Japan who registered as such reached a total of 1,362,371 persons. The labour power of these foreign workers gives rise to a dual structure of wage differentials as can be seen between Brazilian labourers of Japanese origin and labourers of Asian origin. On the whole the former earn lower wages and are situated at the bottom of Japans class structure, supporting Japanese enterprises. The fact that these foreign workers and their labour power have been integrated into Japanese industry, Japans class structure and local society has meant that the problem of foreign labourers has emerged as an issue of Japanese culture. Here I am referring to only one part of the class relations of Japanese society, and one of the tasks for cultural studies in approaching this issue will be to elucidate substantively and theoretically the various changing relations among class, ethnicity and gender in Japanese society. The second task I would like to mention concerns just what Japanese
21
cultural studies should learn from the criticism of cultural studies that has cropped up in the USA concerning its ties to multiculturalism the advocacy of a critical multiculturalism. In the USA, for example, David Theo Goldberg (in his 1994 edited work, Multiculturalism: A Critical Reader) develops the paradigm of multiculturalism in the context of identity and difference, which arose from the critique of the monoculturalism of the 1960s. He argues sharply:
The call to a sustained antifoundationalist and antiessentialist theoretical practice, informed by and informing political praxis, is reduced in the academicist exercise of some to the nominalism of occasionally empty and sometimes politically naive theoretical sloganeering: social construction, strategic essentialism, mobile subjectivities, phallocentrism, textuality, perhaps difference itself, and so on, literally ad nauseum. . . . Corporate and managed multiculturalisms have proved themselves effective tools for managing and maintaining a constriction of diversity. (Goldberg, 1994: 14, 29)
From a stance of critical multiculturalism, Goldberg himself shows what the goals of critical multiculturalism are to be:
The aims of (self-)critical multiculturalisms, of promoting multicultural conditions, are to undo the effects of repressive and constraining power. Polyvocal and insurgent multiculturalisms undertake to transform power and its values to commonly emancipatory ends and effects. So the point of instituting renewable multicultural conditions is to facilitate and promote incorporative heterogeneity through hybrid interaction and the production of hybrid effect. (Goldberg, 1994: 30)
He thus advocates the signicance of multicultural heterogeneity with a selfcritical diversity. In addition, Peter McLaren has examined the different forms that multiculturalism has taken conservative multiculturalism, liberal multiculturalism and left liberal multiculturalism in arguing for a critical, resistance multiculturalism. He argues that:
Resistance multiculturalism doesnt see diversity as a goal, but rather argues that diversity must be afrmed within a politics of cultural criticism and a commitment to social justice. . . . Critical multiculturalism interrogates the construction of difference and identity in relation to a radical politics. (McLaren, 1994: 53)
In this way the critique of multiculturalism and cultural studies linked to it emerges from within the advocacy of critical multiculturalism. What lessons ought Japanese cultural studies to take from this? At the time of the Gulf War, the Japanese mass media lost its autonomy vis-a-vis the US government and mass media in that it relied on reports on the military situation in the Gulf War produced by the US mass media, which
22
was itself controlled by the US Pentagon, and thus had lost the better part of its autonomy as journalism for its part. At present it still has not overcome this situation. By the same token, the Japanese media, having not yet fully pondered the reports concerning the countries of Southeast Asia during the Second World War, now backs Japans economic advance into Southeast Asia. Since the Gulf War, one section of it has called for Japan to make an international contribution in the form of acting as the leader of Asia and kindled Japans great state consciousness. At times, pronouncements by political leaders among the governments bureaucrats have been made that conceal the facts of the Japanese invasion of the Asian mainland during the Second World War and legitimize the war. It is safe to say that ethnocentrism in the Japanese government and mass media has not been completely swept away. Japanese cultural studies indeed, the Japanese people as a whole must learn much not only from critical multiculturalism but from multiculturalism alone. The same holds for anti-essentialism. At present, economic, political and cultural and international, global connections are growing ever closer, and the increase in the number of foreign workers and the development of the structure of dependency on labour in Southeast Asia can be seen in Japanese society. We feel the necessity for the perspective of a critical multiculturalism with ever greater urgency. In the globalization of reportage and culture today, one can hope for the emergence of a new alternative public sphere, a realm of discourse, but many problems can be expected. In order to surmount these problems, a major task for us is to rmly root the perspective of critical multiculturalism in a global stance and to deepen our theoretical investigation of this perspective. This task is, of course, not necessarily limited to Japanese cultural studies. I should add in advance that this is a task like the actual and theoretical elucidation of class, ethnicity and gender ties, the rst task I offered above. Our starting point might best be, as Stuart Hall has noted, theres no enunciation without positionality. You have to position yourself somewhere in order to say anything at all (Hall, 1989: 18; emphasis in original).
Note
This paper was translated by Professor Joshua Fogel of the History Department, University of California, Santa Barbara. 1 Sat Takeshi (1984: 16699). At this time, though, I translated cultural studies as bunkashugi (literally, culturalism). In my piece, Igirisu no masukomi kenky (Sat, 1975: 52), I introduced Stuart Halls piece, Encoding and Decoding the Media Discourse (1973 report paper). Most recently (1995), I have traced the evolution of cultural studies and discussed its tasks
23
in Chapter 10, entitled Karuchararu sutadizu no tenkai to sono rironteki isan (The development of cultural studies and its theoretical legacy).
References
Chen, Kuan-Hsing (1996) The Formation of a Diasporic Intellectual: An Interview with Stuart Hall, in David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen (eds) Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, pp. 484503. London: Routledge. Fiske, John (1996) Terebijn karuchaa (Television Culture, translated by It Mamoru et al.). Tokyo: Azusa shuppansha. Fiske, John and John Hartley (1991) Terebi o yomu (Reading Television, translated by Ikemura Rokur). Tokyo: Miraisha. Goldberg, David Theo (1994) Introduction: Multicultural Conditions, in D.T. Goldberg (ed.) Multiculturalism: A Critical Reader, pp. 141. London: Blackwell. Hall, Stuart (1973) Encoding and Decoding the Media Discourse, Stencilled Paper 7. Birmingham: CCCS. Hall, Stuart (1989) Ethnicity: Identity and Difference, Radical America 23(4) (Dec.): 920. Hoggart, Richard (1974) Yomikaki nryoku no ky (The Uses of Literacy, translated by Kchi Sabur). Tokyo: Shbunsha. Kat Shichi (1955/1969) Nihon bunka no zasshusei (The hybridity of Japanese culture), Shis (June). Reprinted in Kat Shichi, Nihon no uchi to soto (The Inside and Outside of Japan). Tokyo: Bungei shunj. Kat Tetsur (1986) Kokkaron no runessansu (Renaissance of Theories of the State). Tokyo: Aoki shoten. Kumazawa Makoto (1985) Yakusha atogaki (Translators Afterword), in Paul E. Willis, Hamaataun no yardomo (The Guys of Hammertown; translation of Learning to Labour). Tokyo: Chikuma shob. McLaren, Peter (1994) White Terror and Oppositional Agency: Towards a Critical Multiculturalism, in D.T. Goldberg (ed.) Multiculturalism: A Critical Reader, pp. 4574. London: Blackwell. Maruyama Masao (1956) Sutaarin hihan no hihan (A critique of the Critique of Stalin), Sekai (Nov.). Reprinted in Gendai seiji no shis to kd (Contemporary Political Thought and Movement, vol. 2). Tokyo: Miraisha. Nakai Masakazu (1937/1981) Miru koto no imi (The meaning of seeing), Kokumin geijutsu (April). Reprinted in Kuno Maki (ed.) Nakai Masakazu zensh (Collected Works of Nakai Masakazu, vol. 3). Tokyo: Bijutsu shuppansha. Nakai Masakazu (1950a/1981) Gendai bijutsu no kiki to eiga riron (Film theory and the crisis in contemporary aesthetics), Eiga bunka 1 (May). Reprinted in Kuno Maki (ed.) Nakai Masakazu zensh (Collected Works of Nakai Masakazu, vol. 3). Tokyo: Bijutsu shuppansha.
24
Nakai Masakazu (1950b/1981) Katto no bunp (The grammar of the cut), Shinario (July). Reprinted in Kuno Maki (ed.) Nakai Masakazu zensh (Collected Works of Nakai Masakazu, vol. 3). Tokyo: Bijutsu shuppansha. Sat Takeshi (1973) Mass Communication, in Kza gendai Nihon shihonshugi (Symposium on Contemporary Japanese Capitalism, vol. 4), pp. 5178. Tokyo: Aoki shoten. Sat Takeshi (1975) Igirisu no masukomi kenky (British studies of mass communication), Shinbun kenky (Oct.) 291: 4955. Sat Takeshi (1984) Igirisu ni okeru masu komyunikshon kenky (Studies of mass communications in Great Britain), Hsgaku kenky 34 (NHK, Sg hs bunka kenkyjo): 16699. Sat Takeshi (1995) Nihon no media to shakai shinri (The Japanese Media and Social Psychology). Tokyo: Shinysha. Tamura Susumu, ed. (1962) Bunka kakushin no vijon (A Vision of Cultural Change; translation of Anthology from New Left Reader). Tokyo: Gd shuppansha. Thompson, E.P., ed. (1963) Atarashii sayoku seijiteki mukanshin kara no dasshutsu (The New Left: Escape from Political Apathy; translation of Out of Apathy by Fukuda Kanichi, Kawai Hidekazu and Maeda Yasuhiro). Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. Tosaka Jun (1934/1966) Shinbun gensh no bunseki (Analysis of the phenomenon of the press), in Gendai tetsugaku kza (Essays on Contemporary Philosophy). Tokyo: Hakuysha. Reprinted in Tosaka Jun zensh (Complete Works of Tosaka Jun, vol. 3). Tokyo: Keis shob. Tsurumi Shunsuke (1952) Komyunikshon (Communication), in Tsurumi Kazuko (ed.) Dyi kenky (Dewey Studies), pp. 12969. Tokyo: Shunjsha. Turner, Graeme (1992) It Works for Me: British Cultural Studies, Australian Cultural Studies, Australian Film, in L. Grossberg, C. Nelson and P. Treichler (eds) Cultural Studies, pp. 64053. London: Routledge. Williams, Raymond (1969) Komyunikshon (Communication, translated by Tachihara Hiromoto). Tokyo: Gd shuppansha. Williams, Raymond (1974) Bunka to shakai, 17801950 (Culture and Society, 17801950, translated by Wakamatsu Shigenobu and Hasegawa Mitsuaki). Tokyo: Mineruva shob. Williams, Raymond (1980) Kiiwaado jiten (Keyword Dictionary; translation of Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society by Okazaki Yasukazu). Tokyo: Shbunsha. Williams, Raymond (1983) Nagai kakumei (The Long Revolution, translated by Wakamatsu Shigenobu, Se Gk and Hasegawa Mitsuaki). Tokyo: Mineruva shob. Williams, Raymond (1985) Bunka to wa (Culture, translated by Koike Tamio). Tokyo: Shbunsha. Willis, Paul E. (1985) Hamaataun no yardomo (The Guys of Hammertown;
25
translation of Learning to Labour by Kumazawa Makoto and Yamada Jun). Tokyo: Chikuma shob.
q SAT TAKESHI (19321997) was a professor of sociology at Hitotsubashi University and Dait Bunka University. He was the author of a number of books on sociology and media studies in Japan, including Nihon no media to shakai shinri (The Japanese Media and Social Psychology), Tokyo: Shinysha, 1995. This paper was originally presented at the symposium Dialogue with Cultural Studies held in March 1996 at the University of Tokyo, with the keynote speeches by Professor Stuart Hall and Hanasaki Khei. The symposium was organized and chaired by Professor Hanada Tatsur, Insititute of SocioInformation and Communication Studies, University of Tokyo. (Address: 731 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 1130033, Japan. [email: hanada@isics.u.tokyo.ac.jp]) The record of this symposium has been published in Japanese: Cultural Studies tono Taiwa (A Dialogue with q Cultural Studies), Tokyo: Shinysha, 1999.

International Journal of Cultural Studies 2000 Takeshi 11 25

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

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

International Journal of Cultural Studies 2000 Takeshi 11 25

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

International Journal of Cultural Studies http://ics.sagepub.

Cultural studies in Japan

>> Version of Record - Apr 1, 2000 What is This?

Downloaded from ics.sagepub.com by mostafa keivan on October 30, 2011