The Production and Consumption of ‘Japanese Culture’ in the Global Cultural Market

Abstract

This article presents an unusual angle for the study of consumer culture in a case study of an explicit process of the production and consumption of 'culture', or more specifically, of a product, which carries the label: 'Japanese culture', and which crosses national borders. The general context is that of cross-cultural consumption and cultural globalization. Globalization cannot be easily described anymore as having 'a distinctly American face'. There is more and more evidence for competing centers or multiple globalizations. Japan has no doubt become one of these centers. The case at hand is that of the re-production and consumption of 'Japanese culture' in Israel. The article emphasizes the significance of looking at local cultural discourses or discourses about culture both at the 'exporting' and 'importing' destinations in trying to have a deeper understating of the processes of cultural globalization. I show how the Japanese cultural discourse -largely through the extremely popular genre of writing detailing the essential qualities of what it means to be Japanese known as Nihonjinron -yielded a global cultural product known as 'Japanese culture', which is delivered to the world through contemporary 'global cosmopolitans'.

A cosmopolitan return to nature: how combining aesthetization and moralization processes expresses distinction in food consumption

“…This colonialist heritage of cosmopolitanism (Thompson and Tambyah 1999) often coexists with a genuine willingness to discover novel food, a form of cultural cosmopolitanism (Johnston and Baumann 2015). Following up on previous research, this paper separates cultural colonialism from cultural cosmopolitanism by studying foodies' adoption of a 'white' food trend such as New Nordic Food (Andreassen 2015), understudied when it comes to the consumption of cultural diversity (Goldstein-Gidoni 2005).…”

Touring Consumption

“…(However, in the last group, these themes are generally reflections of the Western European or American manifestations of cultural globalisation; the phenomenon of multiple globalization, as highlighted by Goldstein-Gidoni (2005), has not really reached the mainstream Hungarian cultural festival market yet). (However, in the last group, these themes are generally reflections of the Western European or American manifestations of cultural globalisation; the phenomenon of multiple globalization, as highlighted by Goldstein-Gidoni (2005), has not really reached the mainstream Hungarian cultural festival market yet).…”

“They’re Taking Us for Fools” – When Ethnic Spectacles are Perceived as Dystopias

“…A main "faux pas" consisted in categorizing race or physiological features as a homogeneous target through an essentializing perspective of ethnicity (Lindridge, 2003;Ö zcaglar-Toulouse et al, 2009). Given that aside from being entertaining and ludic (Kozinets et al, 2004;Pen˜aloza, 1998), retail spectacles can also display contempt for or domination of the exhibited cultures (Goldstein-Gidoni, 2005;Pen˜aloza, 1998), we therefore address ethnic minorities' responses.…”