Short Answer 1:
Please explain why you would like to participate in your number one choice roundtable from the previous page. What are your expectations, what can you contribute, and what do you hope to gain both academically and culturally?
I lived in the United States as a foreign national for a number of years, and, consequently, I can appreciate the nuance in nationalism. It can turn all too easily into chauvinism or ethnocentrism, and in times of war, the state or the media can easily exploit national identity and turn it into aggression.
At the same time, I do not accept the cosmopolitan creed to transcend national identity and become a “citizen of the world”. I find it not only unrealistic but also undesirable. One way to ground ourselves in the dislocation and change created by globalization is through a shared national narrative. More importantly, I am interested in how East Asian societies have chosen to modernize, and nationalism, as a relatively modern phenomenon, is inevitably a part of the story. I would like to gain a more complete perspective on the evolution of nationalism, and this conference will be a particularly rich opportunity because Japan, by harnessing national identity at various points in the twentieth century, has reaped both sorrow and gain. In return, I can offer insights on diaspora and a more general discussion on the phenomenon of nationalism that is no longer related to geographical boundaries.
Short Answer 2:
Briefly describe today’s global society as you see it. How do you think the Japan-America partnership can actively promote positive change within that global society?
Even as the U.S. is debating over how to end its most recent war, I choose to believe that the next great global conflict will no longer take place in the battle arena. Or, at least, such a conflict will no longer be fought by hard power. Instead, countries will compete over their abilities to influence not just other heads of states but the people of these states. In this scenario, economics may matter, media will matter, and pop culture will matter most of all.
And is that not already the case? Culture wars prompted by Hollywood and McDonalds rage, as much in the U.S. as anywhere else in the world. But I am beginning to find, to my immense pleasure, that America no longer holds a monopoly on global pop culture. With the possible exception of India’s Bollywood, Japan is the only country capable of contending with America in the global export of pop culture. It would be facetious to argue that anime alone will bring some sort of global resolution in all the fronts that worry politicians and NGOs, but there is a certain comfort in knowing that the world of mass culture – in all its superficiality and spectacle – is not subject to military might or political maneuverings. It is a spontaneous expression of taste, desires and insecurities, voiced by the young to the bewilderment of the older generations.
The opportunities in such a cultural democracy, as it were, bear tremendous potential, in part because they have been given so little consideration. Pop culture is transmitted effortlessly and reverberates endlessly; it creates its own self-renewing lexicon, which offers a completely different – and completely privatized – way of describing the world. At the least, it gives the world an alternative way to communicate and understand each other, and this very pluralism is heartening.
I am afraid of the time when politicians will realize the strength of this unmediated pool of ideas and try to regulate it. If we look at pop culture as more than just a fanciful entertainment for the young, if we accept it as a means of linking people together in completely novel ways, then we have the obligation to protect it from tampering of governments or multinational companies. Perhaps the most that Japan and the United States will be able to do in this aspect is acknowledge that a marketplace of ideas exists – decked out in flashing neon and movie marquee – and mutually refrain from repressing it.
0 comments:
Post a Comment