What is the smell of your culture?

Done by: Yap Voon Pin           

           No, we are not talking about the literal sense of smell of your culture but rather about its global impact, leaving footprint in other’s mind about your culture.

           With the help of new communication technologies that results in transnational flow of economy, culture, human movement and so on, every continent now, not only comprises of its own native culture, but is also impacted with different cultural smells from other parts of the world (Lindell, 2008). This economic phenomenon, which is a culturally defined lifestyle of consumerism, enables developed countries to maintain their own culture and ideology (Straubhaar, 2007). 

       Generally speaking, one would normally think of America when it comes to globalization domination effect on the world (Straubhaar, 2007). However, the economic emergence of Japan in the past few decades redefined its cultural influences on other countries and thus its global cultural distribution should be equally reflected with that of America. Even though so, why could not ‘Japanization’ challenge the acclaimed global American hegemony?

            In ‘Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism’, Koichi Iwabuchi expressed recognizable culture as an ‘odour’ and with that, he described Japan’s culture as ‘odourless’, explaining that Japanese-made products are missing the sense of its nationality. To justify this, Japanese goods have been regarded as clones to that of America’s. Thus, what we experienced from Japan is not considered ‘originally Japanese’.  This is called, to quote Iwabuchi,  “Americanization of Japanization”. He further mentioned that cultural presence should consists of power and message to deliver a country’s cultural status or in other words, making them recognizable (Iwabuchi, 2002). Subsequently, he elaborated that Americanization has reached a significant level of operation that runs as a form rather than content (Iwabuchi, 2002). In his article, he also agreed with, and to quote, Sklair, “Americanization itself is a contingent form of a process that is necessary to global capitalism, the culture-ideology of consumerism” (Iwabuchi, 2002) and with the need to benefit or boost global economies, other nations was lead by U.S.‘s hidden asset which is its global capitalism, and adapt with this U.S-styled capitalism (George, 2007).

            Another reason why Japanization could not challenge the acclaimed global American hegemony is because like Mike Featherson mentioned, also quoted by Iwabuchi in his article, “unlike American commodities, Japanese consumer goods does not try to sell back on a Japanese way of life”. Iwabuchi also corresponded with Joseph Nye’s saying that this nation is one with “one-dimensional economic power” and is absent of characteristics to disseminate a global hegemony similar to that of America (Iwabuchi, 2002). 

                   Let’s take into example the renowned Hollywood films and famous Japanese animations. Hollywood projects incorporated affluent, middle-class materialistic cultural and ideological influences to reflect its pursuit of democracy and the American life. On the contrary, famous Japanese animations do not reflect an obvious sense of its nationality as their cartoon characters lack of Japanese feature, making them looked more like Caucasian or ‘Mukokuseki’. According to Straubhaar (2007), this phenomenon is regarded as ‘de-localization’, whereby Japanese’s intention to sell internationally caused them to suppress local origins and cultures. Also, because of international market, Japanese media works use America as their presentation stage. This causes great Japanese masterpiece unable to shine through the shadow of “Americanization” that dominates the global distribution of mass media and consumer culture, and only allowing Japanese media and technology products to be known as global media player.

Left: 'Original' Japanese features, Right: Caucasian-liked features

            Nonetheless, it is unfair to underestimate Japan’s potential of cultural export to the world. Over the last decades, even though Japanese cartoon characters were called to be Caucasian-liked, Japanese popular animation culture in manga and video games were able to flood into the international market with significant successes (Lunning, 2006). These international successes can be explained with the distant uniqueness found in Japanese animation and comic books. Being an Japanese cartoon culture fan myself, no doubt when the word ‘Anime’ or ‘Manga’ comes up, the thought of Japan surface sequentially. Despite the fact that most of their cartoon characters have blond hair and/or blue- or green-coloured eyes, undoubtedly, hints of Japanese nationalism could still be found, such as the traditional Japanese settings, Japanese-styled humours, unique graphical styles and its distinctive and unusual story line. Unlike Western cartoons, ‘Anime’ and ‘Manga’ are targeted towards wider market audiences, including both kids and adults, due to a broader range of sub-genres (Lunning, 2006). These, thus, breed one’s interest on Japan and inspiring others to be part of its culture (Lunning, 2006; Saarela, 2007).

Japanese anime versus American cartoons

            In short, Iwabuchi concluded the sunset of Americanization and that leading nations, such as Japan, are now spreading their cultural power to other parts of the world, slowly leaving footprints in one’s mindset, which may in turn affect one’s lifestyle. In my opinion, Japan has potential in global cultural impact, equivalently assisting its global capitalism. Thus, I foresee culture hybridization to be the future trend and suggest the understanding of foreign culture according to its relevance to the person, location, situation and more. At the same time, hoping global mass media will be able to feature a multi-layered cultural identity that consist neither global homogenization nor authentic local culture.

Reference List

George, B. (2007, August 5). The U.S.‘s Hidden Asset: Global Capitalism. Retrieved August 20, 2013, from http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2007-08-05/the-u-dot-s-dot-s-hidden-asset-global-capitalismbusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice

Iwabuchi, K. (2010). Taking ‘Japanization’ seriously: Cultural Globalization Reconsidered. In International communication: a reader (ed) D. K. Thussu, (pp. 410–427). New York: Routledge.

Lunning, F. (2006). Emerging Worlds of Anime and Manga. Bristol: University of

Minnesota press

Lindell, J. (2008). Japanization? - Japanese Popular Culture among Swedish Youth. (Student paper).

Straubhaar, J.D. (2007). World Television – From Global to Local.  Los Angeles:  Sage

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