Embracing Differences: Transnational Cultural Flows Between Japan and the United States: 36 Paperback – 15 March 2014
by Iris-Aya Laemmerhirt (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars 1 rating
The omnipresence and popularity of American consumer products in Japan have triggered an avalanche of writing shedding light on different aspects of this cross-cultural relationship. Cultural interactions are often accompanied by the term cultural imperialism, a concept that on close scrutiny turns out to be a hasty oversimplification given the contemporary cultural interaction between the U.S. and Japan. ?Embracing Differences? shows that this assumption of a one-sided transfer is no longer valid. Closely investigating Disney theme parks, sushi, as well as movies, Iris-Aya Laemmerhirt reveals a dialogical exchange between these two nations that has changed the image of Japan in the United States.
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Review
A superb introductory textbook to its subject, and I would not hesitate to recommend it to undergraduate students and any other scholars seeking a comprehensive overview of the considerable body of literature on transnational cultural flows between the United States and Japan.
About the Author
Iris-Aya Laemmerhirt teaches American Studies and British Studies at TU Dortmund University where she is a post-doctoral candidate. Her research interests are the literature of the 1940s, Transnational Studies, and representations of Hawaii in the media. Currently, she is teaching as a Fulbright SIR at UVA Wise.
Publisher : *Columbia University Press; 1st edition (15 March 2014)
Language : English
Paperback : 262 pages
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Frances S.
4.0 out of 5 stars Gain new insights into cultures!Reviewed in Germany on 20 December 2014
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I bought this book before a guest lecture by the author in order to gain an insight into the topic for myself beforehand.
I had never dealt with Japanese culture before, only American, so the book gave me a lot of new insights into both cultures.
I really enjoyed reading this book and I can only recommend it to everyone
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Embracing Differences: Transnational Cultural Flows Between Japan and the United States
by Iris-Aya Laemmerhirt
it was amazing 5.00 · Rating details · 2 ratings · 0 reviews
The omnipresence and popularity of American consumer products in Japan have triggered an avalanche of writing shedding light on different aspects of this cross-cultural relationship. Cultural interactions are often accompanied by the term cultural imperialism, a concept that on close scrutiny turns out to be a hasty oversimplification given the contemporary cultural interaction between the U.S. and Japan. �Embracing Differences� shows that this assumption of a one-sided transfer is no longer valid. Closely investigating Disney theme parks, sushi, as well as movies, Iris-Aya Laemmerhirt reveals a dialogical exchange between these two nations that has changed the image of Japan in the United States. (less)
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EMBRACING DIFFERENCES: Transnational Cultural Flows between Japan and the United States | By Iris-Aya Laemmerhirt
Culture & Theory. Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript Verlag; New York: Columbia University Press [distributor], 2013. 261 pp. US$50.00, paper. ISBN 978-3-8376-2600-1.
On January 5, 2015, the American film production company DreamWorks announced that it had cast Scarlett Johansson in the leading role of a live-action blockbuster adaptation of Ghost in the Shell. The movie is slated for release in 2017. Ghost in the Shell, a globally recognized multimedia franchise originating with a Japanese manga series of the same name by Masamune Shirow, focuses on the action-packed adventures of Motoko Kusanagi, cyborg member of a counterterrorist government agency in a futuristic, alternate-universe Japan. Although rumours of a Hollywood remake have been circulating since 2008, the revelation that a white, fair-haired American woman would be playing the part of a notionally Japanese-ethnic protagonist was, unsurprisingly, controversial. Indeed, it could easily be taken as but the latest in a long history of complicated—and potentially troubling—transnational cultural flows between Japan and the United States.
Enter Iris-Aya Laemmerhirt, currently a lecturer in American Studies and British Studies at Technische Universität Dortmund in Germany. According to her university’s staff profile, she is interested in researching literary and popular culture and transnational cultural flows between Japan and the United States and Japan and Germany. Embracing Differences: Transnational Cultural Flows between Japan and the United States is her first monograph, based upon a PhD thesis completed in 2008 at Ruhr-Universität Bochum and published, in English, by the German academic press Transcript Verlag in 2013.
In Embracing Differences, Laemmerhirt challenges the view that cases such as Scarlett Johansson’s forthcoming star turn as Ghost in the Shell’s Motoko Kusanagi ought to be interpreted as the latest example of American cultural imperialism and argues instead for a more measured, transnational approach: “while globalizing processes may lead to the availability of cultural products outside their original national spheres, a homogenization of cultures is not necessarily implied by these processes. Instead, differences can be emphasized and/or goods can be localized in their new surroundings and through these processes new versions of an original are developed” (29–30). Furthermore, she writes, “different cultures should be granted agency in the way they deal with cultural imports” (30). In other words, cultural export does not necessarily imply cultural power of, or domination by, the sending country, and ultimately, consumers have the authority to accept, reject, or demand modification of cultural goods.
Drawing upon anthropologist Arjun Appadurai’s theory of “scapes” in Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (University of Minnesota Press, 1996), the book analyzes cultural flows between Japan and the United States across the fantasyscape, the foodscape, and the mediascape. After an overview chapter of the history of cultural contact and exchange between the two countries, one chapter is devoted to case studies for each of these scapes in turn. The first is a cultural analysis of Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea; the second explores the development and popularization of sushi in America. The third and final empirical chapter provides close readings of three recent Hollywood films set in Japan, The Last Samurai, Lost in Translation, and Letters from Iwo Jima.
As implied by the range of cultural content analyzed, the great strength of this book is its thoroughness and breadth. One of the requirements of any PhD is to demonstrate mastery of previously published literature in one’s field of expertise, and Embracing Differences provides an excellent overview of relevant theoretical frameworks related to cultural imperialism, Orientalism, globalization, and hybridity, along with careful, exhaustive reviews of the literature on Japanese-US cultural exchange, particularly as these relate to Disney products, food, and film. I was particularly impressed by the chapter on Disney in Japan; in the acknowledgements Laemmerhirt confesses to dragging her Japanese aunts on numerous occasions to Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea, and this extensive fieldwork shows in the vivid richness of her description of the parks.
Unfortunately, this impressive descriptive detail is not paired with any new major finding or theoretical contribution. The book’s method is to read culture and its attendant practices as if it were a text, but it would be a logical fallacy for researchers to infer from their own personal cultural readings about the lived meanings and practices collectively experienced by others. Arguing against the durable power of cultural producers and for the authority and autonomy of cultural consumers cannot work without studying the people themselves, and that this book does not do. The overarching thesis is not, therefore, particularly convincing. After all, just because a Japanese person eats at McDonalds does not mean that people who choose to eat there have complete freedom to choose any one cuisine over another; sometimes McDonalds may just be the least-worst option.
In sum, then, Embracing Differences cannot be considered a particularly good research monograph. It is, however, a superb introductory textbook to its subject, and I would not hesitate to recommend it to undergraduate students and any other scholars seeking a comprehensive overview of the considerable body of literature on transnational cultural flows between the United States and Japan.
Casey Brienza
City University London, London, United Kingdom
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