East Asian Journal of Popular Culture - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2015

The aim of this study is to explore how translations function as an integral part of museum exhibitions. Specifically, this study argues that translators of museum texts and visitors who make use of them in museum exhibitions can actively engage in forming different interpretations of the exhibitions themselves. In both museum and translation studies, the producers and receivers of translations tend to be viewed as additions to the monolingual communication in the source language of the museum. Therefore, analyses of translations tend to search for potential errors by using the source text as the yardstick by which to measure how much the translations have deviated from the original and how much potential damage may have been caused to the interpretation as a result. This article draws on Clifford’s (1997) conception of museums as ‘contact zones’, through which objects stimulate ongoing dialogues rather than the site of their display being a final destination in itself. It further extends Clifford’s concept to include the multilingual museum exhibition. From this perspective, I explore how the different voices of object makers, source- and target-text writers and visitors take place in the museum and interact or exist in dialogue with each other.

This case study stems from an article written in 2005 by Laurie Cubbison, titled ‘Anime fans, DVDs, and the authentic text’. In her research, she states that English-speaking fans of Japanese animation (anime) pressured distributors to use the DVD medium to its full potential. This meant providing the choice of viewing anime with either a dubbed soundtrack or subtitles. However, this has not lessened the influence of distribution companies that affect how anime is viewed outside of Japan. This article will focus on this influence by looking at the extra features on anime DVDs, specifically using the English-language release of the Death Note TV series (Araki, Nippon Television Network, 2006–07) as a case study. Very few of the series’s DVD special features refer explicitly to the Japanese origins of the story. Interviews and making-ofs are included, as is the case with many DVDs of audio-visual media. But the Death Note series’s extras mostly illustrate the work of the cast and crew that recorded the dubbed English-language soundtrack. Applying approaches and concepts specific to the analysis of DVD special features means the intentions behind these decisions can be thoroughly explored. The extras for the Death Note series do not just provide an intriguing insight into the voice-recording process (for the TV series, as well as the media industry in general). They encourage viewers to see the value and work behind the dubbed version, meaning that the distributors are not just providing viewing-option choices for the anime. They are providing a frame which indirectly suggests how a media text should be viewed. The evidence presented in this case study will demonstrate how such frames, concerning dubbed translation within DVD media, can be used by the discs’ distributors.

Japanese director and producer of animated film, Miyazaki Hayao had long wanted to make an adaptation of the Mary Norton novel, The Borrowers (1952). The film Kari-gurashi no Arietti/The Secret World of Arrietty (Yonebayashi, 2010) at first look strikes one as a suitable fit for Studio Ghibli both culturally and ideologically, with its history of setting stories in imagined European landscapes and its established style of blending fantastic and realist narrative with imagistic elements, and indeed, Japan is itself not without legends of miniature people or Chibi Kobito. The film, however, manifests myriad ambivalences, many of which are derived from the limitations and contradictions inherent in adapting a geographically, historically and culturally ‘foreign’ text. Using Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2000) and their writings on globalization in their work Empire, this paper uses their concept of post-Fordian globalization: an era characterized by global awareness and cultural sensitivity, as a framework from which to analyse the film’s many ambivalences. This article examines cultural, aesthetic and ideological liminality inherent in the Studio Ghibli animated film adaptation of Mary Norton’s The Borrowers, a film which reflects its twenty-first-century production and at the same time, inevitably is pervaded by the cultural context of its nineteenth and twentieth-century antecedents.

In the field of contemporary Chinese cinema, the theme of filial piety has served as a key concept for a large number of Chinese-language films, covering various genres from melodrama to martial arts. Through a detailed narrative analysis of the cultural practices and identity politics in the filmic text, this article examines the way in which the traditional value of filial piety finds its powerful and subtle expression in Xiaolong Zheng’s lesser-known film The Guasha Treatment (2001), centring on Chinese family life in the United States. The theme of filial piety is particularly important for this film because it is situated at the centre of cross-cultural encounters and conflict. The film thus can be seen as an attempt to present how Chinese cultural beliefs, practices and products can generate problems when transplanted into an American setting. As such, it not only foregrounds the family and filial piety, but also addresses the issue of the western reception of Chinese culture and the experience of the Chinese diaspora.

Since the 1960s, Japanese artists have utilized manga as an effective platform for life writing. In the twenty-first century the genre has visibly evolved around the theme of the transnational/cultural experience of each author, developing a significant size of readership and cultural market in Japan. One of the most prolific authors is Yamazaki Mari (1967–), whose fame is attributed to the success of her manga on comparative bath cultures, Thermae Romae (2008–13). On the other hand, artists of the previous decades used to create their autobiographical work after establishing a reputation for a number of masterpieces. This normative pattern became obsolete, and instead more recent artists have focused on their personal history and cultural experience to appeal to the contemporary readership. Yamazaki’s autobiographical manga, including Mo-retsu Italia kazoku/Ferocious! The Italian Family (2006) and Italia kazoku fu-rin kazan/The Italian Family, Serene but Daring (2010), prominently illustrates the formation of this emerging genre, reflecting the diversity of transnational/cultural realities that Japan faces today.

Recently, ‘bimajyo’ (美魔女) came into focus in Japan. Bimajyo are women 35 and above who look much younger than their actual ages. They put on nice make-up, their hair is nicely arranged, and they are very fashionable. On top of that they maintain their skin very well, hardly have wrinkles and age spots, and keep their body fit. The term was coined by the Japanese magazine Bi-STORY (美 STORY) in 2009, and became more widely recognized because of a TV variety show that introduced the concept of this female figure. Bimajyo is an extreme example of women who want to stay young, but the author has observed that many Japanese women around 40 years old, regardless of their marital status and occupation, look very young. They try to be young not only in their appearance but also try to make the way they speak and the tone of their voice young. The article also argues that the recent phenomenon of the quest of keeping young-looking among Japanese women could be one of the causes of the postponement of maturity, which is also prevalent in Japanese society and can be related to various social problems.

Whilst the historical reality of the Long March is not to be questioned, many voices rise to question its details and the actual meaning of this myth-making page of Chinese history. This article analyses two complementary texts that offer compelling readings on the contemporary renegotiation of the national imaginary that the Long March informs. First, there will be a discussion of Wo de changzheng/My Long March (Zhai, 2005), a propaganda film celebrating the heroic retreat/expedition. This movie – among others – calls attention to the unfading genre of propaganda films that elaborate new and different forms of nation-building imaginary for the twenty-first century. I will later draw a parallel with the contemporary artist Feng Mengbo’s installation Long March: Restart (2009), contextualizing it in the movement of ‘art ludique’ or ‘entertainment art’ (as it has been brilliantly termed by Jean-Jacques Launier and Jean-Samuel Kriegk [2011]), which is both an individual and collective new art form redefining the boundaries between video game and museum, CGI special effects and comic books, and high- and low-brow consumption of cultural imaginary. What is particularly challenging in this parallel is that both the film and the installation could be viewed and appreciated in Beijing without censorship. The contemporary presence of both mainstream ‘main melody’ film and (possibly) subversive art, of state-sponsored entertainment and consumerist pleasure-driven art, has reshaped the field of visual culture in contemporary China, far from a clear-cut dichotomy of independent-official–propaganda-dissident.

This article first describes the distinctive characteristics of Jinhua Daoqing, a shuo-chang (speak-sing) genre, traditionally performed by blind male practitioners (with yugu drum and clappers) on urban streets and in teahouses, in village squares and at temple fairs, weaving together traditional folk tales and stories, with commentary on more recent and local events. As a result, Daoqing was often called ‘Singing the News’ (chang xinwen), a kind of minstrelsy, with a communication as well as an entertainment function.

The article moves on to present the genre’s historical narrative, which stretches from its supposed origins with Daoist Immortal Zhang Guolao, through the Republican period (1911–49), when it was exceeded in popularity in Jinhua only by the local opera. Practitioners of Daoqing survived into the Communist period (1949–present), and some achieved considerable renown prior to the Cultural Revolution (1966–78), by tailoring their messages to the circumstances of the ‘new society’. Despite suppression during the Cultural Revolution, ‘underground’ performances were said to have been held, and during the early period of economic reform, the genre experienced a vibrant revival. Daoqing performers came out of the backrooms to perform in public once again, and local cultural offices held classes to train up a new generation of ‘sighted’ performers. But the genre faces new challenges in the world of expanding and globalizing media, and may not survive another generation. This article concludes by placing Daoqing performers alongside the musings of Walter Benjamin (1955) about storytellers as communicators in an ‘artisan mode of production’, increasingly eclipsed and superseded, nay, overwhelmed by new forms of media and multimedia.

變形、象徵與符號化的系譜: 漫畫的文化研究 / The Genealogy of Transformation, Symbolism and Symbolization: A Cultural Study of Comics, I-Yun Lee (2012 first edition) Taipei: Daw Shiang Publishing, 274 pp., ISBN: 9789866078200, Paperback, NTD $280.

K-Pop: Popular Music, Cultural Amnesia, and Economic Innovation in South Korea, John Lie (2014) Oakland: University of California Press, Paperback, 248 pp., ISBN: 9780520283121 (paperback), £24.95.