Cute logics of the multicultural and the consumption of the Vietnamese exotic in Japan

Positions

Volumn 12, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 401-429

  Carruthers, Ashley ^a  

^a AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33845699155     PISSN: 10679847     EISSN: 15278271     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/10679847-12-2-401     Document Type: Article

References (68)

1. "Yasui kawaii zakka paradaisu Vietnam e" (literally, "Cheap cute [handmade] things paradise Vietnam to"), Mediax Mook 181 (2001)
2. Graham Huggan, The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins (New York: Routledge, 2001)
3. Andrew Lam, "'Pho' Goes Global Thanks to the Vietnamese Diaspora," Jinn Magazine, April 17-28, 2000
4. This research was conducted in Ho Chi Minh City and Tokyo in 2001
5. Edward M. Bruner, "Tourism in the Balinese Borderzone," in Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity, ed. Smadar Lavie and Ted Swedenburg (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 160
6. Stuart Hall, "Conclusion: The Multicultural Question," in Un/Settled Multiculturalisms: Diasporas, Entanglements, Transruptions, ed. Barnor Hesse (London: Zed, 2000), 211
7. See Stanley Fish, "Boutique Multiculturalism," in Multiculturalism and American Democracy, ed. Arthur M. Melzer, J. Weinberger, and M. Richard Zinman (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998). While its intention is critical, this last version shares a popular perception that "shallow" modes of white liberal multicultural behavior constitute the first steps on a path that leads toward "deep" ones
8. Ghassan Hage, "At Home in the Entrails of the West: Multiculturalism, 'Ethnic Food,' and Migrant Home-Building," in Home/World: Space, Community, and Marginality in Sydney's West, ed. Helen Grace, Ghassan Hage, Lesley Johnson, Julie Langsworth, and Michael Symonds (Sydney: Pluto, 1997)
9. Ghassan Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society (Annandale, VA: Pluto Press/Comerford and Miller, 1998)
10. Arif Dirlik, The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997), 35
11. See John Clammer, Contemporary Urban Japan: A Sociology of Consumption (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 86-95
12. Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Re-Inventing Japan: Time, Space, Nation (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998)
13. John Lie, Multiethnic Japan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001)
14. Mike Douglass and Glenda S. Roberts, "Japan in a Global Age of Migration," in Japan and Global Migration: Foreign Workers and the Advent of a Multicultural Society, ed. Mike Douglas and Glenda S. Roberts (London: Routledge, 2000), 29
15. Barnor Hesse, "Introduction: Un/Settled Multiculturalisms," in Un/Settled Multiculturalisms, 2
16. Koichi Iwabuchi, "Complicit Exoticism: Japan and Its Other," International Journal of Urban Labour and Leisure 2.2 (2000): 18
17. Koichi Iwabuchi, "Pure Impurity: Japan's Genius for Hybridism," Communal/Plural 6 (1998): 71-85
18. Clammer, Contemporary Urban Japan, 53
19. Iwabuchi, "Pure Impurity," 72
20. Harumi Befu, Hegemony of Homogeneity: An Anthropological Analysis of Nihonjinron (Rosanna, Victoria: Trans Pacific, 2001)
21. Hesse, "Introduction," 17
22. Japan's immigration legislation is called the Immigration Control Act
23. The figures provided in this paragraph are Do Thong Minh's. He has been an avid watcher of the Vietnamese "otherness business" in Japan for over fifteen years and frequently writes about it in his monthly magazine, Mekong. His own research is drawn from the Japanese media and from restaurant and shop visits and interviews
24. A Tokyo travel agent estimates that "90% of the clients he sends to Vietnam are women in their 20s and 30s." Mutsuko Murakami, "It's My Party and I'll Buy If I Want To," Asiaweek.com, May 25, 2001, 30
25. Japanese female tourism reflects the spending power of young single working women, known as office ladies or OLs. See Fumiteru Nitta, "Shopping for Souvenirs in Hawai'i," in Re-Made in Japan: Everyday Life and Consumer Taste in a Changing Society, ed. Joseph J. Tobin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 206
26. Joseph J. Tobin, "Introduction: Domesticating the West," in Re-Made in Japan, 12
27. Koichi Iwabuchi, "Return to Asia? Japan in Asian Audiovisual Markets," in Consuming Ethnicity and Nationalism: Asian Experiences, ed. Kosaku Yoshino (Surrey: Curzon, 1999)
28. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), 63
29. Ulf Hannerz, "Cosmopolitans and Locals in World Culture," Theory, Culture, and Society 7 (1990): 237-51
30. Do Thong Minh reports that he frequently makes such sales in his Mekong Shop
31. Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, "The Postmodern and Mass Images in Japan," Public Culture 1 (1989): 8-25
32. cited in Mary Yoko Brannen, "'Bwana Mickey': Constructing Cultural Consumption at Tokyo Disneyland," in Re-Made in Japan, 218
33. Jean-Marc Philibert and Christine Jourdan, "Perishable Goods: Modes of Consumption in the Pacific Islands," in Cross-Cultural Consumption: Global Markets; Local Realities, ed. David Howes (London: Routledge, 1996), 55
34. Constance Classen, "Sugar Cane, Coca-Cola, and Hypermarkets: Consumption and Surrealism in the Argentine Northwest," in Cross-Cultural Consumption, 52
35. Zakka is a 3,000-billion-yen industry, of which nearly half the total market value is imported goods, especially from Asia. According to the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), these Asian products, "not surprisingly, seem to provide a special feeling of naturalness and simplicity among the Japanese." JETRO Japanese Market Report, "Household Products: Including Sundries, Novelty Gift, and Gift Items," 55 (March 2001)
36. Lan Ai Trinh and Kaori Shoji, "Haute Chic Minh," Asiaweek.com, July 27-August 3, 2001, 16
37. Tobin, "Introduction: Domesticating the West," 8
38. A. David Napier, Foreign Bodies: Performance, Art, and Symbolic Anthropology (Berkeley: University of California Press), xxiii
39. See Allison James, "Cooking the Books: Global or Local Identities in Contemporary British Food Cultures," in Cross-Cultural Consumption
40. Iwabuchi, "Complicit Exoticism: Japan and Its Other," 12-13
41. Thomas R. H. Havens, Fire across the Sea: The Vietnam War and Japan, 1965-1975 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 247
42. Mandy Thomas, "Proscribing Desire: The Vietnamese State and East Asian Popular Culture," in Intra-Asian Cultural Traffic, ed. Koichi Iwabuchi, Stephen Muecke, and Mandy Thomas (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, forthcoming)
43. Iwabuchi, "Return to Asia?" 196
44. David G. Marr, Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 96-107
45. Havens, Fire across the Sea, 17
46. Wolfgang Herbert, Foreign Workers and Law Enforcement in Japan (London: Kegan Paul International, 1996), 125
47. Hiroshi Komai, Migrant Workers in Japan, trans. Jens Wilkinson (London: Kegan Paul International, 1995), 245
48. Do Thong Minh, Nhat Ban Duoi Mat Nguoi Viet: Ky Niem 30 Nam O Nhat Ban (Japan through Vietnamese Eyes: A Memoir of Thirty Years in Japan), vol. 2 (Tokyo: Nha Xuat Ban Tan Van, 2000), 718-19
49. Lie, Multiethnic Japan, 20
50. See Michiyo Yoshida, "Settlement Services: The Experience of Three Vietnamese Refugee Women in Japan" (paper presented at Asian Diasporas and Cultures: Globalization, Hybridity, Intertextuality, National University of Singapore, 2001)
51. and Yoshida, "The Socio-economic Integration of Vietnamese Women in Australia and Japan: A Citizenship Perspective" (proceedings of the Joint Conference, Institutes of Australian Geographers and New Zealand Geographical Society, 2001)
52. Do, Nhat Ban Duoi Mat Nguoi Viet, 728-35
53. Herbert, Foreign Workers and Law Enforcement in Japan, 48
54. These observations come from my field notes, Tokyo, August 2001
55. Hiroshi Komai, Foreign Migrants in Contemporary Japan, trans. Jens Wilkinson (Melbourne: Trans Pacific, 2001), 16
56. Yoshio Kawashima, "Japanese Laws and Practices on Indo-Chinese Refugees," Osaka University Law Review, 38 (1991): 1-12
57. Koichi Iwabuchi, "Political Correctness, Postcoloniality, and the Self-Representation of 'Koreanness' in Japan," in Koreans in Japan: Critical Voices from the Margins, ed. Sonia Ryang (London: Routledge, 2000)
58. Sangjung Kang, "Post-Colonialism and Diasporic Space in Japan," Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 2 (2001): 137-44
59. Singapore is another place in which the "subjectless" presentation of Vietnamese food is the norm. See Ashley Carruthers, "Indochine Chic: Consuming the Indochinese Exotic in Singapore, Tokyo, and Sydney," in Foodscapes: The Cultural Politics of Food in Asia, ed. Lisa Law and Daisy Ng (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, forthcoming)
60. Reviews are sent anonymously in Japanese and English to the editors of the Zagat Survey Tokyo Web site, who translate the Japanese comments into English and edit them. Although the Web site is in English only, Zagat's Tokyo guides are published in both Japanese and English, and we may safely assume that the majority of comments appearing there come from Japanese correspondents. (For the Zagat Survey Tokyo Restaurants 2000, 1,800 Tokyoites voted on 1,100 restaurants.) Soraya Conway of Zagat Survey, personal communication, August 7, 2002
61. See www.zagat.com
62. Duong Tuan Kiet owns Bougainvillea, Nguyen Thi Giang, Gang's, and Nguyen Thi Diep, Huong Viet. Do Thong Minh notes that Vietnamese restaurants run by Japanese are more "proper" (nghiem chinh) and more expensive than those run by Vietnamese. Personal communication
63. "Good Tokyo Restaurants," Zagat.com. Saigon Dep Lam is actually owned by a consortium of Japanese businessmen, who also own a café catering to Japanese backpackers in Ho Chi Minh City, Café May Man/Oshin (Lucky)
64. Brannen, "'Bwana Mickey,'" 219
65. Millie R. Creighton, "The Depato: Merchandizing the West While Selling Japaneseness," in Re-made in Japan, 44
66. Slavoj Žižek, "Multiculturalism; or, the Cultural Logic of Multinational Capitalism," New Left Review, no. 225 (1997): 28-51
67. Lauren Berlant, "National Brands/National Body: Imitation of Life," in Comparative American Identities: Race, Sex, and Nationality in the Modern Text, ed. Hortense J. Spillers (New York: Routledge, 1991)
68. Befu, Hegemony of Homogeneity, 20-23