Maari Sugawara
What Cyborgs Can( ’t) do about Japanese Identities: Japaneseness as a Product of the Internalized Euro-American Gaze
This art-based research project problematizes constructed postwar Japanese identity by unraveling the links between Japan’s Eurocentrism, the country’s active invitation of the Orientalist gaze, and the artificial amnesia of its colonial aggression towards other Asian countries.
Needing to take advantage of Orientalist projections by dominant Western powers, postwar Japanese national and cultural identity resorted to self-Orientalism. The “Japan Brand” Strategy— the government-owned production site of “Cool Japan” imagery and cultural policy, — not only created a “liberated and humane”[1] image of postwar Japan globally, it was devised as a mechanism to induce a “collective amnesia”[2] that allowed Japan to disregard its colonial past and engender a “soft nationalism”[3]. This narcissistic discourse celebrates the rise of the Japanese economy, affirming the country’s superiority while distancing itself from the imaginary “impoverished” continent of Asia. Through time, Japan’s self-defined “pure originality”[4]—which emerged as a counter-narrative to Japan’s being infamous for its ability to imitate to the West—became internalized by the Japanese, along with the new marketable versions of Japaneseness. Japan’s self-Orientalism was an unexpected side-effect of playing US’s “Japan” (a “subordinate’s double identification”[5]) and its dependence on the dominant West.
Using shanzhai (meaning “fake” and the idea that nothing is original), my art project aims to rethink constructed Japanese identities as delinked from the idea of “originality” and devoid of internalized Orientalism. Employing speculative fiction tropes to communicate the contingency of Japanese identities, my art project defamiliarizes current discourses surrounding Japanese identity. Contributing to the fields of Japanese studies and visual cultures, my art project is a visual assemblage employing photography, videography, contemporary digital media, stock materials, and speculative fiction narratives to create a speculative world.
[1] Iwabuchi, Koichi. "Pop-Culture Diplomacy in Japan: Soft Power, Nation Branding and the Question of ‘international Cultural Exchange’," International Journal of Cultural Policy: CP 21, no. 4 (2015): 448.
[2] Michal Daliot-Bul, “Japan Brand Strategy: The Taming of 'Cool Japan' and the Challenges of Cultural Planning in a Postmodern Age,” Social Science Japan Journal, vol. 12, no. 2 (2009): 254.
[3] Iwabuchi, "Pop-Culture Diplomacy in Japan,”451-455.
[4] Tom Forester, “Consuming electronics: Japan's strategy for control,” Media Information Australia 67 (1993): 4-16.
[5] John Caughie, Playing at being American: Games and tactics In Logics of television, ed. P. Mellencamp: (London: British Film Institute, 1990), 44-58.
Keywords: Japaneseness, Decolonization, Japanese Studies, Speculative Fiction, Alternative Futurity, Digital Media, Eurocentrism, Nationalism
Website: maarisugawara.com
Instagram: @maari_sugawara_
Link to MFA Thesis Exhibition: https://my.matterport.com/models/cvTqYoA8WMv?organization=p131cjrdCZ9§ion=media&mediasection=showcase
