Part One: Culture, Modernity and Globalization

(4) Modernity and its futures: Globalization and domestication

I. Foreign words in the Japanese language: Copycat borrowing or "foreign-inspired vocabulary"?

"All Your Base Are Belong To Us": "How one awful Japanese-to-English translation in a 1989 cartoon-like space video game created such a stir online can best be attributed to the myriad of pop cultural references shared by Web geeks, gamers, casual e-mail checkers, tech nerds, musicians, artists, anyone with body piercings, and Gen-Xers and Gen-Yers alike. In 2001, years after Toaplan released Zero Wing, the mistranslation spread throughout the Internet community, bringing with it altered images, Internet-based movies, satirized advertisements and general mayhem, all focusing on the phrase 'All your base are belong to us...'"

Engrish.com: Do you think this site is innocent fun or nasty deprecation?

Some further New York Times stories about Japanese language and language use

1983. Lohr, Steve, "Japan Adds Flavor to English It Uses." July 5

1988. Haberman, Clyde, "Straight Talk Brings Down Japan House." February 14

1988. Haberman, Clyde, "Some Japanese (One) Urge Plain Speaking." March 27

1993. Sanger, David E., "Off to U.S., Japanese Pack Words, Like 'Police!'" January 10

1995. Kristof, Nicholas D., "Too Polite for Words." September 24

1995. Kristof, Nicholas D., "Japan's Favorite Import From America--English." February 21.

1996. Pollack, Andrew, "Happy in the East (^_^) Or Smiling :- in the West: Japanese Internet Users Adapt Symbols to Their Own Language and Culture." August 12

1997. Kristof, Nicholas D., "Stateside Lingo Gives Japan Its Own Valley Girls." October 19

1998. Kristof, Nicholas D., "A Man With a Plan? Japanese Prefer Premiers Who Speak Softly and Hold a Lot of Meetings." July 20

1999. Kristof, Nicholas D., "Help! There's a Mausu in My Konputaa!" April 4

1999. Kristof, Nicholas D., "Japanese Is Sorry He Called U.S. A Bully: A Long Tradition of Incendiary Statements, Followed By Retractions." January 6

2000. Passin, Herbert, "Enough With the Kompyuta! Let's Makuru!" August 26

2000. Vinciguerra, Thomas, "Roll Over, Shaq: This Rapper Puts the Stomp on the Chompy." July 23

2001. Mydans, Seth, "Nations in Asia Give English Their Own Flavorful Quirks." July 1

2002. French, Howard W., "To Grandparents, English Word Trend Isn't 'Naisu'." October 23

2003. Onishi Norimitsu, "Japanese Workers Get Word From on High: Drop Formality." October 30

II. Valentine's Day in Japan: Romance and revenge

A. What are modern holidays for?

B. Chocolate as "Weapons of the weak"

III. Is the world flat or is that globaloney?

A. What is globalization?

The general premise of our present fixation on "globalization" is that we are experiencing an acceleration in the volume, velocity, and density of flows that is qualitatively and quantitatively unprecedented. Moreover, what is globalizing is quite plural: the establishment of political and economic networks and territories (colonies, empires, ongoing markets), the expansion of supra-national organizations (the United Nations, FIFA, the IOC), the transfer of organizational templates (police systems, political constitutions, school systems, sports), the spread of ideas (democracy, Communism, free market, religious fundamentalism); the movement of commodities (agricultural, industrial, and consumer products, weapons) and financial instruments; the flow of human and animal populations; and the transmission of viruses, microorganisms, ocean currents, climatological patterns, polluting effluents, radioactive particles, etc.

Sidebar: What is the anthropology of globalization? See Arjun Appadurai, "Anthropology of Globalization," Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences [online edition]: 6266-6271 [2002] :

B. What is new about globalization?

Incorporating the outside is a long-standing dynamic in Japanese history.

C. Globalization always produces localization

Most things coming in from the outside are domesticated, not simply imitated. That is, they are "recontextualized."
Three synonyms: localization, domestication, indigenization
The concept of "mimicry"

D. Globalization does not have a single source. There are multiple centers of globalization.

Does Japan have "Gross National Cool"?

A small sampling of recent academic works on Japan and globalization:

Atkins, E. Taylor
2001 Blue Nippon: authenticating jazz in Japan. Durham: Duke University Press.

Befu, Harumi and Sylvie Guichard-Anguis (ed.)
2001 Globalizing Japan: ethnography of the Japanese presence in Asia, Europe, and America. London and New York: Routledge.

Bestor, Theodore C.
2001 "Supply-side sushi: commodity, market, and the global city," American Anthropologist 103 (1) : 76-95.
2000 "How sushi went global," Foreign Policy : 54-63.

Condry, Ian
2000 The social production of difference: imitation and authenticity in Japanese rap music. In Uta Poiger and Heide Fehrenbach, Transactions, transgressions, transformations: American culture in Western Europe and Japan. 166-184. New York: Berghan Books.

Cwiertka, Katarzyna J. (ed.)
2001 Asian food: the global and the local. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.

Eades, Jerry S., Tom Gill and Harumi Befu (ed.)
2000 Globalization and social change in contemporary Japan. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press.

Elger, Tony and Chris Smith (ed.)
1994 Global Japanization: the transnational transformation of the labour process. London and New York: Routledge.

Goldstein-Gidoni, Ofra
2003 "Producers of 'Japan' in Israel: cultural appropriation in a non-colonial center," Ethnos 68 (3) : 365-390.

Goodman, Roger, Ceri Peach, Takenaka Ayumi and White, Paul (ed.)
2003 Global Japan: the experience of Japan's new minorities and overseas communities. New York and London: Routledge/Curzon.

Hendry, Joy
2000 The Orient strikes back: a global view of cultural display. Oxford: Berg.

Iwabuchi Koichi
2002 Recentering globalization: popular culture and Japanese transnationalism. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Kawamoto Yuniya,
2004 The Japanese revolution in Paris fashion. Oxford and New York: Berg Press.

Mathews, Gordon
2000 Global culture/ individual identity: searching for home in the cultural supermarket. London and New York: Routledge.

Mitsui Toro and Hosokawa Shuhei (ed.)
1998 Karaoke around the world: global technology, local singing. London: Routledge.

Nakano Yoshiko
2002 "Who initiates a global cultural flow? Japanese popular culture in Asia," Visual Communication 1 (2) : 229-253.

Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko
1997 McDonald's in Tokyo: changing manners and etiquette. In James L. Watson, Golden arches East: McDonald's in East Asia. 161-182. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Reader, Ian and Marie S. Soderberg (ed.)
2000 Japanese influences and presences in Asia. Richmond, GB: Curzon.

Tobin, Joseph (ed.)
2004 Pikachu's global adventures: the rise and fall of Pokemon. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Watson, James L. (ed.)
1997 Golden arches East: McDonald's in East Asia. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Compare: Yumiko Ono, "Japan's Fast-Food Companies Cook Up Local Platters to Tempt Local Palates," Wall Street Journal May 29, 1992 (page B1)