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Lost in TransNation: Tokyo and the urban imaginary in the era of globalization

2008; Routledge; Volume: 9; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14649370802386446

1469-8447

Kōichi Iwabuchi,

Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics

Abstract Abstract The 2003 film Lost in Translation has attracted both acclaim and critique concerning its representation of the urban imaginary of Tokyo. Examining both the film representation and the critical responses to the imaginary, this paper discusses how they illuminate some of the emerging issues that Tokyo and Japan face in the era of globalization, such as the loss of the idiosyncratic status of non‐Western modernity that Japan has long enjoyed; post‐(self)Orientalist cultural othering; and the transnational alliance of media and cultural industries in a global cultural economy of branding the nation through media and consumer cultures, all at the expense of the issue of intensifying migration and multicultural situations in the urban space. It will be suggested that both the film and Japanese critiques of the film are lost in the actuality of Tokyo (indeed, of Japan) and its populace, which is being radically transformed by intensifying transnational flows of people, capital, and media imagery. Keywords: Lost in Translation post‐(self)Orientalism and transnational indifferencebrand nationalismcool Japanurban multiculturalism and exclusionary politics Notes 1. See for example ABCdane.net (2004 ABCdane.net. 2004. ‘Lost in Translation’ 20 February, http://abcdane.net/archives/000877.html [Google Scholar]), and the website: http://www.jtnews.jp/cgi‐bin/review.cgi?TITLE_NO=6374ABC for various Japanese viewers’ comments. For critical reviews, see for example Yoko Asahi (n.d.) and indieWIRE: movies (n.d.), which have critical responses from American viewers including Asian/Japanese‐Americans. 2. These are in a sharp contrast to another American film, Yakuza (1974), starring Robert Mitchum and Ken Takakura, which shows a great effort towards an inter‐cultural understanding. Thanks to Peter Seelig for this suggestion. 3. This is not to say that ‘Asia’ has no cultural significance in the construction of Japanese national identity. While Japan’s construction of its national identity through the complicity between Western Orientalism and Japan’s self‐Orientalism is conspicuous, ‘Asia’ has also overtly or covertly played a constitutive part. While ‘the West’ played the role of the modern Other to be emulated, ‘Asia’ was cast as the image of Japan’s past, a negative picture that tells of the extent to which Japan has been successfully modernized according to the Western standard. 4. According to Asahi Shinbun’s database, the number of articles using the word ‘international’ dropped from 1104 in 1990 to 436 in 2002, while those using the word ‘global’ rose from 42 to 510 in the same period. 5. For example, see JICC Shuppankyoku (1990 JICC Shuppankyoku. 1990. “‘Nihon ga taminzoku kokka ni naru hi’ ”. In Bessatsu Takarajima 106 [Google Scholar]).