1. Global Adentity: Theorizations from Japan

2. Todd Joseph Miles Holden Mediated Sociology Dept. of Multi-Cultural Societies Tohoku University Sendai, Japan

3. Paper prepared for the Association for Cultural Studies’ Crossroads, 2006, Conference Istanbul Bilgi University, 20-23 July, 2006

4. Overview This presentation is based on numerous interlocked (theoretical) parts: Mediated Identity Adentity Global Career Sportsports

5. Basic Claim The melding of contemporary ads, globalization through sports, and the core position of sportsports in Japanese society has resulted in the re/production and conjugation of local identity.

6. Demonstrated Assessing scores of advertisements involving Japanese athletes, this paper reveals complex adentifications in Japan today, concerning: “we Japanese”, group affiliation, independence, individual achievement, freedom, self-esteem, gender, sexuality and the uniqueness of indigenous cultural values.

7. About “Mediated Identity” Definition here

9. About “Adentity” The mediation by advertising of Japanese images of self, group, nation, possibility and performance –It amounts to a phenomenon due to its ubiquity

10. Past Work on Adentity Scanning advertisements, one continually encounters product - mediated identifications. The product provides its user with an identity The product maintains or validates one’s «true» (core) identity The product assists the user in unleashing unexpressed identities

11. Past Work on Adentity Scanning advertisements, one can content analyze based on previously theorized categories. Thus, one finds: Dominance / Difference Group traits Signification Similarity / Difference

12. Adentity: A working theorization significations, conveyed in advertisements through representations of sameness and difference, and brought into relief by : 1.the relationship between people and products; 2.the depiction of relationship(s) between: 1.individuals (and/or) 2.groups; and 3. references to (socially constructed) group- based traits.

13. Adentity: Amendments in the working theorization Added to the previous would be: significations, conveyed in advertisements through representations of individual activity And the identifications (to self, group and nation) that accrue as a result The reason for this addition will become clear as we consider the next element in this discussion: “sportsports”

14. About “Sportsports” Sportsports is a two-fold phenomenon linked to – if not fueling – globalization. It involves the flow of sporting “goods” – in the form of games, players, practices and philosophies – both into and out of nations. This is a flow that is abetted, if not entirely propped up by media. –delivered via TV, newspapers, Internet, advertising, magazines and books

15. Effect This has effectively multiplied discourse about what it means to be Japanese in the contemporary world. Specifically, this has transpired via codification of sports information into conceptions of: inside and outside local (national) and global self and other.

16. Macro Level Analysis: “Global Career” This conceives of globalization as transpiring in stages or “careers” – distinctly expressed for various theoretically specifiable entities, epochs, and activities. In a nutshell, deciphering a nation’s career means distinguishing between the "import” and “export" of ideas, personnel, diplomacy, trade and military contact, to name but a few, at different historical moments.

17. Japan’s Past Careers Japan’s past careers have corresponded to the political, economic, and social sectors; today, however, it is the cultural sector that drives the country’s global career.

18. Specifically, it is the import and (especially) export of sport/stars – most often abetted by indigenous media such as television news, entertainment programming, advertising, the Internet and publishing. Although Japan’s popular cultural stage of globalization includes film, music and fashion, the most locally pervasive and influential is sportsports

20. About Japanese Television

21. The Role of Television “Binding Mechanism” –Not only linking citizen to State, but –Connecting a community through the inculcation, re/production of shared beliefs, practices and values The role of Japan’s sports exports in serving as an emotional unifier, as a binding mechanism, cannot be over- emphasized

22. Shunya Yoshimi (2003) Historical assessment of TV in Japan Argues that TV has been a “symbolic object linked to nation and gender” (2003: 475). Also it has “structured the horizons of people’s bodily sensations and experiences through its broadcasts.” (ibid.). “The intimate sphere of the Japanese household in its postwar form was itself created on a national scale through the medium of TV.” (ibid.:477)

23. Shunya Yoshimi (2003) Concludes that “TV was the central medium in the construction of this postwar nation state.” And… “although the nationalism forming the basis of TV has begun to disintegrate, on the level of ideology and program scheduling, nationalism is even stronger than before.”

24. TV’s Binding Function Japanese TV employs genre, form and content to elicit emotion, thereby creating a national family –a nation-wide uchi –See Holden and Ergul (“ Japan’s Televisual Discourses: Infotainment, intimacy, and the construction of a collective uchi, Forthcoming)

25. The Binding Function of Sports Television TV’s Re-import of Japan’s sports exports (in the form of advertisements, news stories, wide- show topics, and actual game footage) serve as: –an emotional unifier –a binding mechanism Supported by the News Routines, Tropes and Rhetorical Practices of the Media

26. About TV Advertising in Japan

27. Fractals of Identity Media Routines have created fractals that contain specific, consistent messages. One of the major messages speaks: (1) of Japan’s globality, and (2) Japanese achievement and ability under conditions of globality. “MOVE THE WORLD”

28. Japan’s Media Fractals and their Unified Refractions Looking at the daily stream of data from fixed formatic approaches in TV’s CMs, sports news, and morning and wide shows, one sees consistent frames: 1.Japanese out in the world 2.Japanese succeeding in the world 3.Japanese national teams 4.Japanese individuals representing the nation This basically amounts to the same unified frame

29. Fractal Defined A fractal is: any of a variety of extremely irregular curves or shapes for which any suitably chosen part is similar in shape to a given larger or smaller part when magnified or reduced to the same size

30. Simple Fractal These fractals most commonly come to mind

31. Complex Fractals But these profound structures are also fractals

32. Fractals as Societal Slices Fractals, then, serve as visual representations, which when removed from their totality, offer a microcosm of that world from which they are extracted

33. Fractals as Structure- specific The fractal analogy must be tempered by the understanding that, just as with a triangle or a snowflake, it is limited to representing a particular object or active field

34. Refraction: Defined Refraction is the bending of a wave when it enters a medium within which its speed then differs.

35. Refraction Thus, we can assert that a second kind of distortion engendered by media is “refraction”

36. Refraction: Distortion in Transmission Refraction is influenced by the speed of the medium through which it passes

37. Refraction: Distortion in Lens and Substance Distortion is measured by the “degree of bending” With light serving as communication (both as source and by analogy) Distortion depends on: substances that come in contact with the wave of light The lens through which that light passes

38. Applied to Contemporary Japan The medium through which light is being passed is actually the “media” News program, Wide Show, Advertising, Newspapers, etc. Where each of these reflect a different “substance” (akin to vacuum, water, gas, etc.) The speed which the communication passes through the medium is heightened by Internet’s 24 hour news cycle, as well as TV’s 20 hour cycle Supported by nightly news, morning “wake-up” and afternoon “wide shows” The light which is emitted is the communication The light emerges as vectors reflecting differently colored “light”. Examples include: Consumption Politics Internationality Popular Culture Nationalism

39. Refraction Exemplified 1.Commercial Refraction 2.Consumption Refraction 3.Political Refraction 4.International Refraction 5.PopCult Refraction 6.Gender Refraction 7.Nationalism Refraction

40. Commercial Refraction

41. Consumption Refraction

42. Political Refraction

43. International Refraction

44. PopCult Refraction

45. Gender Refraction

46. Nationalist Refraction

47. The Bridge Between Fractals and Refraction The connection between these two concepts is the Distortion engendered by underlying Structure: Political-EconomicPolitical-Economic Historical-CulturalHistorical-Cultural Social PsychologicalSocial Psychological

48. “Everyday Nationalism” and Social Reproduction In short, nationalism emanates (naturally, without opposition) from the world containing us. –Especially through Institutions like the state, but not only the state –The media is a major institution responsible for transmitting and reproducing social knowledge and “taken-for-granted reality” Result: nationalism becomes part and parcel of lived experience

49. “Everyday Nationalism” as “Common Stock of Knowledge” From Berger and Luckmann (1966:41-46) –CSK is inherent in the “givenness” of things such as institutions The institutions serve as bearers and perpetuators of social knowledge Their activity (embodying Point of View) also reproduces it –One example is the State, which is an extensive, external, objective entity often incomprehensible to human agents and resistant to their efforts at changing them (Berger and Luckmann 1966: 60-61)