Resilient Borders and Cultural Diversity: Internationalism, Brand Nationalism, and Multiculturalism in Japan by Koichi Iwabuchi (review)

Resilient Borders and Cultural Diversity: Internationalism, Brand Nationalism, and Multiculturalism in Japan. By Koichi Iwabuchi. Lexington Books, Lanham, Md., 2015. x, 137 pages. $75.00, cloth; $74.99, E-book.

Why does the Japanese government and large parts of its society continue to insist that Japan is a homogeneous nation despite evidence to the contrary? Why do these claims continue to resonate in the only developed country with a fourth-generation incorporation problem? Why has the globalization of media not disrupted this myth and forced the government and society to confront the history of difference in Japan and the country’s growing multiculturalism? Koichi Iwabuchi’s Resilient Borders and Cultural Diversity: Internationalism, Brand Nationalism, and Multiculturalism in Japan confronts these questions with an argument supported by a cultural studies analysis of global media culture including film (Lost in Translation), television drama (Winter Sonata, Tokyo Love Story, Meteor Garden, Tōkyō wankei, All About Eve), and variety shows (Kokoga hen dayo Nihonjin) and of the Japanese government’s policy initiatives. This book focuses on cultural globalization processes with specific attention to the intersection of two seemingly unconnected global flows: the cross-border movement of people and media culture. Iwabuchi’s sharp analysis of the intersection of these two flows demonstrates how, in a world of intense globalization, significant border crossing serves to reinforce—not displace—national cultural borders.

Issues of multiculturalism and difference in Japan are most often taken up in studies of national policy that focus on efforts to control and constrain immigration and in studies of domestic social movements that fight for the rights of foreigners in Japan. This scholarship is often preoccupied with why the Japanese government insists on restrictive immigration policies and why it insists on denying the existence of minority communities within its borders. Why does the government seem unable to recognize not only that there are diverse communities in Japan but that more are needed if the nation is to survive its declining birth rates? Centering attention on national government and “why” questions has done little to advance our knowledge on these issues. In fact, they often shift attention away from multicultural communities, instead making government and politicians subjects of the research and effectively obscuring the existence of already marginalized communities of difference. Resilient Borders and Cultural Diversity addresses “how” questions with its focus on process—in this case, the process of media and population flows. It bypasses the singular focus on national-level politics and policy and reveals the connection between the global and the local. This does not discount the importance of the state and national actors, but the reorientation to the global-local analysis gives us clearer insight into the role of these actors—especially the state-industry alliance—in facilitating the global spread of media culture and the marginalization of multicultural communities.

Banal internationalism, nation-based cultural diversity that ignores difference within the nation, and brand nationalism, the development of cultural policies to advance narrow international interests, interact to suppress and marginalize issues of multiculturalism in Japan. The author demonstrates that contrary to what we might expect in an increasingly globalized world where border crossing has become mundane, the nation-state remains important, as boundaries between us and them are reinforced by the increase in market-driven cultural globalization. This work illuminates processes whereby both national distinctiveness and cross-border cultural connections result from market-driven cultural globalization that relies on selling an essentialized notion of culture that is consumed at home and abroad. These processes have far-reaching social and political implications. On the domestic level, the focus on developing, packaging, and selling an essentialized notion of Japanese culture further suppresses marginalized communities within Japan.

Market-driven cultural globalization has also shaped the development of an increasingly important aspect of Japan’s foreign policy. To demonstrate this, Iwabuchi attends to the Japanese government’s interest in and development of soft power, cultural and public diplomacy, and creative industries as a core of foreign-policy strategy known as “Cool Japan.” Iwabuchi’s insightful...