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12 Diffusion and Change in Salsa Dance Styles in Japan Kengo Iwanaga S alsa dancing is now performed in daily life around the world, whenever salsa music is heard. This form of everyday salsa dance, often called “street salsa,” is distinguished from the stylized type of dance discussed later. Sheenagh Pietrobruno argues, “Since many people who grew up dancing to salsa music started as children, they have acquired their dance tradition through numerous years of experience and practice” (2006: 117). Thus, it follows that it is impossible for people living in a cultural context in which street salsa dancing is not practiced to dance in the same way. It is also difficult to teach the style because “salsa learned in a lived context does not distinguish between the steps and turns of the dance and how the total body moves in dance” (Pietrobruno 2006: 125). In contrast to street salsa, “studio salsa,” which originated in the 1980s in the United States and in other countries, is a more elaborate form based on social dance styles that is gaining popularity around the world (see also Chapter 2). Salsa music was brought to Japan concurrently with its birth in the 1970s. However, salsa dancing did not gain popularity there until the 1990s. Earlier studies on the migration of salsa have examined salsa dancing in European cities such as London and Paris and in the Canadian city of Montreal. All these studies focus on cities where immigrants from Latin America lived and on how they brought salsa into the local communities. In contrast, in Japan the acceptance of immigrants has been limited to a small number of Latin Americans of This chapter is a substantially altered version of Kengo Iwanaga, “Changing Salsa: How Salsa Dancing Was Assimilated into Japan,” Journal of Latin American Studies 37 (2009): 13–21, a publication of the Institute for Latin American Studies at Rikkyo University. Diffusion and Change in Salsa Dance Styles in Japan 201 Japanese descent who arrived in Japan following changes made in the Japanese immigration laws in 1990. It is clear that the impact of immigrants on Japanese society, culturally and economically, proceeded in a substantially different way from what was experienced by the countries investigated in other studies. Salsa dancing’s diffusion in Japan would also have been different from that in other countries owing to the rarity of physical contact in Japanese culture. Couple dancing involving a man and a woman is commonly found in Western cultures. In other words, pair dancing is part of the Western cultural habitus, or shared bodily practices and customs. In contrast, in Japanese culture there is little physical contact in public in daily life. The Japanese have few opportunities to witness social dances involving couples.1 In this chapter I analyze the diffusion of salsa dance outide its original cultural context, examining the popularization of salsa dance in Japan through the application of Pierre Bourdieu ’s methodology and concepts of field and habitus. Definitions of Terms According to Bourdieu’s concept, habitus is “necessity internalized and converted into a disposition that generates meaningful practices and meaninggiving perceptions” (Bourdieu 1984: 170). The field is “a network of objective relations (of domination or subordination, of complementarity or antagonism)” (Bourdieu 1996: 231). Bourdieu conceptualizes the “literary field,” which is a structure that includes authors, editors, publishers, and literary works. In the field of cultural production, those who participate in a particular field compete regarding how to differentiate themselves from others and how to relocate themselves into a higher position of that field to obtain legitimacy. However, according to Yojiro Ishi, the measurement of legitimacy is neither constant nor absolute and may change with the social space.2 In Distinction (1984), Bourdieu argues that Bach’s music is seen as aesthetically legitimate among listeners of a high social class, but if his music is popularized, it would then be outside their index of legitimacy. In this study, I apply these concepts to salsa dance in Japan. We can assume that the “salsa field” includes those who conduct or take lessons, salsa events and studios, informative magazines, and relevant Internet information. Those who dance in the salsa field also fight for legitimacy in the field. Salsa Dancing and Habitus Studio salsa dancing was invented by incorporating the movements of social dance into a more formal framework. Since then, various salsa dance styles have been created and performed worldwide. They are named after the place of their birth, such as New York style...

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