Transnationalizing Culture of Japan in Asia: Dramas, Musics, Arts and Agencies
edited by Tito Genova Valiente and Hiroko Nagai

Globalization may have been the pervasive element in the order of world things but with it comes this phenomenon called the "deterritorialization of culture," or, in some writings, the "transnationalization of culture." Under globalization, this phenomenom is seen as picking up strength, and in its wake and wave, aspects of Japanese popular culture—comics, popular music and horror films composing just a short list—have been emerging in other Asian countries. These forms have had significant impact on youth culture of the region. Deterritorialized and transnationalized, elements of cultures regain boundaries and markers and lose them as easily. In the "lostness," TV drama series and music from Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea, on top of those from Japan, assume celebrity and popularity. In the academe, the process of the transnational seduces the gaze and attention of researchers. Cultures are not only pluralized but also popularized to form a new field in the Asian studies, new ways of looking, valuing, and measuring heritages and identities. This volume is an attempt to tackle the topic of transnationalization of culture of Japan in Asia in the domain of drama, music, and arts. Along the way, the contributors generate questions as they develop the themes of the hybrid and the reactionary, the localizing and accommodating in the films and arts, even a nostalgia for a place that imagined by strangers and outsiders, becomes a landscape and at once a performance stage.

Contributors Ricardo G. Abad, Benjamin Wai-ming Ng, Tricia Okada, Joshua M. Smith, Dinah Roma-Sianturi, Helen Yu-Rivera, Ricardo D. Trimillos

Editors Hiroko Nagai, PhD. teaches anthropology in the School of Social Sciences, Ateneo de Manila University, where she also serves as director of the Japanese Studies Program. Her research interests are in development and globalization in Asia.

Tito Genova Valiente is a public anthropologist and writer. He teaches Japanese cinema, arts and literature. He is the media and art critic of Business Mirror and is a member of Urian, the premier critics circle in the country.