Electronic Identities in East Asia
Media, Culture and Diasporas
Conference Abstracts
Morris Low : Electronic Media and Identity in East Asia
This paper will examine how identity formation in Asia and elsewhere
seems to be increasingly blurred. It investigates the relationship
between various new technologies and the construction of identity
in East Asia, with a special focus on Japan. It raises many issues
which will be explored in greater depth by other papers presented
at the workshop.
Jennifer Brewster : Electronic Media as a Voicepiece
for the Aged in Japan
This short paper first examines some of the social welfare policies
introduced by the Japanese government to help prepare the country
for the expected peak in the number of elderly citizens early
next century. It then goes on to examine the role, both actual
and potential, of the electronic media in helping to achieve one
of the government's aims - that of keeping the elderly both mentally
active and self-sufficient.
Jeremy Taylor : "Bar Singers and Hometown Girls - Gender
and National Identities in Taiwanese Pop"
"Following the end of martial law in 1987, repressive laws which
restricted the broadcasting of anything but Mandarin language
music and media have been gradually withdrawn in Taiwan. Taiwanese
language pop music, once all but banned by the KMT authorities,
is now heard everywhere from the myriad of satellite and cable
television channels to the thousands of karaoke parlours in major
urban centres tHR noshadeoughout the island.
Like all genres of popular music, Taiwanese language pop, or
Taiyu ge, carries with it a set of precise values and ideals.
Female gender roles, for instance, seem only to exist within a
narrow and conservative framework when presented in music video
clips or other media associated with this music. Female artists
are commonly categorised into the roles of innocent and obedient
rural girls, or adversely as sexually experienced bar-girls (
chiu-ka lu ). Such roles owe their historical development to an
earlier era, when Taiwanese pop was for the most part created
by local men and consumed by an expatriate Japanese audience.
As Taiwanese pop has become increasingly politicised over the
last decade, co-opted by pro-independant forces in particular,
the gender identities contained in this music have come to the
fore, and have at times been put forward as possible national
identities for a Taiwanese nation state. This has led to some
fascinating results and contradictions. Can a progressive political
movement really suggest that authentic Taiwanese national identity
be epitomised in conservative caricatures of Taiwanese women?
In this paper I would like to examine the problems involved
in applying the values of a pre-televsion media to the very televised
world of Taiwanese nationalism of the late 1990s. I will look
particularly at visual images (such as those in music video clips)
and possibly at audio materials in my discussion."
Iwabuchi Koichi : Japanese Pop Culture in Taiwan and
Hong Kong Pop Culture in Japan
I will compare Japanese pop culture in Taiwan with Hong Kong
pop culture in Japan, and how they constitute a transnational
cultural flow in East Asia.
Mandy Thomas : "FantAsia - East Asian Popular Culture,
Media and the State in Vietnam"
Popular culture in Vietnam is presently documenting a momentous
upheaval in the relations between the public, the media and the
state. The social and cultural transformations that are taking
place are potently manifest in the eager response of the public
to East Asian popular culture in the form of Taiwanese soap operas,
Hong Kong videos, Cantopop and Japanese cartoons. In Vietnam these
cultural products mark out a terrain for unexpressed popular protest.
Protest is unrealisable in overtly political domains yet in
popular culture it is creolised to occupy a crucial space for
the negotiation of political and social meaning in a rapidly transforming
society. East Asian popular culture in Vietnam signifies the possibilities
and desires for affluence, accumulation and personal freedom and
in doing so, conjures up new forms of society in a nation experimenting
with its response to the suddenly expanding role of the media.
The coalescence of popular culture and journalism with modernity
and mass consumption in Vietnam has released a storm of desire
for the products and consumer cultures of East Asia. The accessibility
and abundance of East Asian cultural products means that these
easily eclipse both local products and those from Europe and America.
At the same time the specificities of the engagement of the
Vietnamese public with East Asian popular culture indicates that
these products are indigenised in culturally meaningful ways to
dynamically express cultural and social worlds in the making.
Prof. Yoshimi Shunya
University of Tokyo
"Formation and Re-formation of the Image of "Electronic Nation''
Prof. Shunya delivering the evening lecture at the conference.
Yoshimi Shunya is Associate Professor in the Institute of Socio-Information
and Communication Studies at the University of Tokyo. His recent
books have included studies of the social history of popular entertainment
in Tokyo, the role of telecommunications in society, and the politics
of Tokyo Disneyland.
In this presentation, he will analyze how the nationalistic
image of electronic technology was constructed and changed in
Japan after W.W.II. His analysis is mainly on the sources from
advertisements of home electric appliances, discources in popular
magazines and TV program. He will try to elucidate especially
the genderlized imaginary relationship around the image of electronic
technology. Also, he will consider how and why this relationship
has reformed after the 1980s.
Tessa Morris-Suzuki and Peter Rimmer : "Virtual Memories:
Japanese Historical Debates in Cyberspace"
Japanese historical debates are continually being recast with
the introduction of new media. In recent years these debates have
been conducted not only in the pages of books and academic journals
but also tHR noshadeough such media as television talk-shows and manga.
In this paper interest is centred on the evolving historical revisionist
debates on the Internet. In exploring the use of this unconventional
medium for historical controversies in Japan and overseas, attention
is focused particularly on the debates concerning the issues of
the "comfort women" and the Nanjing Massacre. We hope to explore
ways in which both sides in the controversy (both within and outside
Japan) use the Internet as a means to influence a public audience
who might not normally participate in historical controversies.
The paper also reflects upon the fragmentation of information
offered and the way in which the particular medium constructs
the message. This reflection raises issues about how participants
judge between rival claims, how they assess historical evidence
and how they construct an image the nature of Japanese history
and history in general.
Nanette Gottlieb : "Keeping Up With The Tanakas: The
Social Impact of Wordprocessing Technology in Japan."
This paper examines aspects of the social impact of word processing
technology in Japan in the late 1980s and early 1990s, at the
height of the national fascination with the new aid to writing.
It discusses the place of the word processor in the consumer profile
of the period and some lifestyle consequences for its users.
Linda Wallace : "net.art"
Will discuss recent net.art developments, with particular focus
on Taiwanese/New York artist Shu Lea Cheang, and Lawrence Chua's
project "Buy One Get One" at Tokyo's NTT/ICC Biennale: flesh presence
with digibento suitcase.
CHR noshadeis Berry and Fran Martin : "Virtual Communities:
Queer Internet Deployment in Taiwan and South Korea"
Our presentation will outline the preliminary findings of an
informal research project comparing lesbian/gay/queer ( LGQ )
internet use in South Korea and Taiwan. The project addresses
the ways in which internet technology is currently shaping the
identities and practices of gay/lesbian/queer communities and
individuals in South Korea and Taiwan. Our hypothesis is that
the form of public space made accessible by this technology has
become a determining factor for the imagining and construction
of sexually dissident personal and community identifications,
and the organisation of LGQ activities on and off the net. Our
research deploys survey and interview techniques to test this
hypothesis and compare its manifestations in the two socities.
In both Taiwan and South Korea, internet has become available
at a rather early stage in the cultural imagining of LGQ identities,
meaning that it has not arrived as a tool to be deployed by already
formed individuals and communities but come to play a crucial
part in their initial construction.
Our presentation will address the questions of what kinds of
space are made possible by these new communications technologies
for LGQ individuals and groups, and of how these new spaces are
used and to whom they are available and useful. We will consider
the relation of the local to the global in East Asian LGQ cyberspaces,
as well as questions of gender and class limitations, and the
roles of state regulation. The question of anonymity is particularly
meaningful in this discussion; our presentation will also consider
the complex relationship between the anonymity of internet users
and the idea of "coming out".
Geremie Barme : "The Sino-Japanese Cybertown and CD-ROM
Selves"
This paper will discuss primarily the creation of a new form
of internet exchange and cultural contact between China and Japan
that is, in turn, becoming globalised. It will also use the Beijing-based
computer artist Feng Mengbo's latest computer-generated images
and material from his Cultural Revolution-inspired CD-ROM game
to comment on the growth of cultural alternatives and export art
in Mainland China today.
Enquiries
Leena Messina, Programs Manager, Humanities Research
Centre, ANU
Email: Leena.Messina@anu.edu.au
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