Annie Hau-nung Chan

Consumption, Popular Culture, and Cultural Identity: Japan in Post-colonial Hong Kong

Introduction

Cultural identity has become a preoccupation with writers on Hong Kong culture in recent years.This is not surprising given the unique socio-political situation of Hong Kong in the late twentieth century.The return of sovereignty to China in 1997 was a deadline that had created much anxiety, ambiguity and confusion amongst Hongkongers.Given this deadline, “Hong Kong culture” has become an area of struggle and contest, in which the (re)discovery of a unique Hong Kong identity becomes a preoccupation.Cultural forms are not only consumed and practiced for the purpose of expressing, articulating, or even just groping for cultural identity; they are also consumed and practiced for pleasure, and are constitutive and reflective of aspects of social formation and social structure.This paper looks at recent trends in popular culture in Hong Kong, specifically the increasing influence of Japanese cultural forms, and discusses these in relation to issues of cultural identity in post-colonial Hong Kong.These trends are also examined in the context of the socio-structural characteristics of Hong Kong society, such as its dense urban environment, the relationship between Hong Kong and Japan, the perception of Japan in the eyes of Hongkongers, and the growing convergence between popular culture and consumer culture in both Japan and Hong Kong. 

Colonial Hong Kong – Did East Meet West?

The distinctiveness of Hong Kong as a colony stems from the fact that it was colonized on the condition of a “lease”; its status as “borrowed space” on “borrowed time” was always inherent and semi-explicit. Since the British administration officially set foot on Hong Kong as a Crown Colony in 1841, there had been few attempts to impose the British way of life on the Hong Kong Chinese unlike, for example, the experience of Taiwan and Korea under Japan’s colonial rule, nor were there attempts to replace the Chinese population with the British in contrast to the plight of native Americans in North America and aborigines in Australia.Since trade was the most important reason behind of Britain’s colonization of Hong Kong, direct oppression and coercion of the colonial subject—which might lead to social and political unrest—was not a preferred option.

The “administrative absorption” strategy employed by the British co-opted local elites into the administrative machinery and offered them lucrative rewards and high social status (King).The “co-opted” Chinese were easily the most westernized in terms of lifestyles and tastes, but the same could not be said about their mentality and values. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, eating Western meals, wearing Western style clothes and the use of English language were signs of modernity, sophistication, pecuniary prowess, and cosmopolitanism. Despite all this, the Hong Kong Chinese remained Chinese in all but superficial ways.From diet to religion to family ideology, Hong Kong, like Taiwan, was considered “Chinese enough” to become a favorite field for Western anthropologists (in lieu of the genuine article—i.e. mainland China) to scrutinize and document the Chinese way of life (Evans and Tam).The government’s “positive non-intervention” policy towards economic development parallels that towards local culture. It is perhaps because of these and other reasons that the cliché of Hong Kong as a place where “East meets West” remains omnipresent, and that Hong Kong’s identity as presented to the outside world is still dominated by this discourse.

The cliché of“East meets West” contains some truth but not enough to render it a faithful reflection of reality, as various writers have noted that the Hong Kong Chinese are Westernized only superficially (Baker, Wong, Lau and Kuan). Frequent rehearsal of the ideological discourse of “East meets West” has resulted in a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy which contributes to the subjective cultural identity of Hongkongers.Evans and Tam suggested that this simply binary structure of the “East meets West” discourse conveniently accommodates the ambivalence of cultural identity among Hong Kong Chinese:

When [Hong Kong Chinese] encounter mainlanders, [they] are able to explain their differences from them by their “Westernness,” when they encounter expatriates they can explain their differences from them by their “Chineseness.”Expatriates on the other hand quickly recognize Hong Kong’s modernity as a familiar “Westernness,” while all differences can somehow be accounted for perhaps by “traditional Chineseness.”And so on.(Evans and Tam 5)

While the instability of the meanings of “Westernness” and “Chineseness” may be obvious to academics, the notion of “East meets West” has become how many Hongkong Chinese describe their home to outsiders.The bilingualism of Hong Kong, the large number of multinational corporations present in the territory, and the buzzing night life of Lan Kwai Fong, an entertainment quarter of Central Hong Kong characterized by upscale bars, clubs, and restaurants patronized by an affluent, “multicultural” clientele, may be used to demonstrate the presence of the West.The presence of the East is shown by temples and shrines throughout the city, and Chinese traditional festivals are celebrated round the year. The value of filial piety, the dominance of the family over the individual, even organized crime in the form of triads, the “love of gambling” and the “Chinese work ethic” are regularly evoked to demonstrate the East in Hong Kong.

The co-existence of elements of East and West in Hong Kong culture is, however, a far cry from “East meets West,” where “meets” suggests interaction, communication, possible mutual influence, and perhaps even the creation of something new altogether.The influence of the West on the Hong Kong Chinese is much more evident than the other way round.Also, the “expatriate” and the local community have always been highly segregated socially and physically. “Expatriates” tend to be active in certain areas where the use of Cantonese is not a necessity.Cinemas, shops and restaurants that do not accommodate non-Cantonese speakers, for instance those in older districts and new towns, rarely see Western patrons.Residentially, Westerners tend to concentrate on midlevels of Hong Kong Island and Discovery Bay, a residential development of the outlying island of Lantau.The number of truly bilingual Hong Kong Chinese is small, and bilingual Westerners are even more rare—statistically nil.International corporations may have their offices in Hong Kong, but the directors are likely to be Westerners, while the line managers and receptionists are Chinese.Nightlife districts like Lan Kwai Fong, Wanchai and SoHo (South of Hollywood Road) mostly cater to Westerners and their tastes, whereas one can find few Western faces in areas like Mongkok, which also boasts a buzzing nightlife.Temples and shrines are visited by middle aged and elderly local Chinese folk, and the indigenous Taoist religion, along with other things Chinese, remain little more than exotic attractions for Westerners.Although the extent of spatial and social segregation between the East and the West has lessened from the time when the Victoria Peak, perhaps the best known tourist attraction in Hong Kong, was once off-limits for Chinese people, and only Western style houses were allowed to be built there, Hong Kong’s image as “East meets West” remains more ideological than real.

In Hong Kong the distinction between the East and the West is not institutionalized in language, as is the case in Japan (Tobin 24-26), but the identity of Hongkongers has always been more Chinese than British.The ambivalence only resolves into sharper focus when it comes to issues of citizenship. For example, the Hong Kong-born Chinese used to travel the world under the title of “British Dependent Territory Citizen” BDTC—now she has become a “British National (Overseas)” or BNO. Hongkongers who were born in China hold no such documents; they simply travel using the Certificate of Identity, CI—neither Chinese nor British citizens and are subject to much more stringent treatment by many receiving countries; visas are frequently required, questioning at the immigration counter more likely, and other conditions of stay that do not apply to their BDTC or BN(O) counterparts are likely to apply.The differences may seem subtle, but the BDTC and BN(O) hold documents that are exact replicas of the genuine British passport, at least until the cover is turned and the fine print read.Much like the strategy of “administrative absorption,” issuing look-alike passports to local born Chinese gives the illusion of Britishness by separating one from the “real” Chinese, the “mainlanders.”This on-going strain between “Hongkongers” and “mainlanders,” if anything, has intensified rather than lessened since the handover, as exemplified by a popular television program in which the separation of Hongkongers (“Heung gong yan”) and mainlanders (“Dai luk yan”) becomes obvious, with the former frequently depicted as uncivilized, unsophisticated, greedy and ignorant (Ma).Although some change in this depiction has been observed, tension still exists between the identity of Hongkonger and that of mainlander, particularly after the recent right of abode episode, whereby a Court of Final Appeal Ruling virtually gave instant citizenship to mainlanders who were born of at least one Hong Kong parent.This ruling was overturned by the PRC, which was supported by the general public, but severely criticized by the legal profession and human rights observers in Hong Kong.

The Post-colonial Generation—Neither British Nor Chinese

For the younger generation born in and after the 1970s, issues of national and cultural identity are even more problematic.For them, reasons for elective identification with Britain are few.The decline in English language abilities, largely as a result of rapid educational expansion, renders it difficult for youngsters to consume Western culture.English is still used widely but is increasingly localized or domesticated into the Cantonese vernacular.Liberal use of English words, pronounced according to Cantonese intonation—such as fan-sze (fans),yau feel (have feeling), ku (cool), day oah-fu (day off) and kik (click)—is commonplace even amongst those who cannot speak English.One consequence of the decrease in English language proficiency is its effects on the Hong Kong youth’s ability to consume western popular and mass culture.The popularity of British and American pop music and magazines, for example, lags way behind that of local and even Japanese ones.

When the Sino-British Joint Declaration was signed in 1984, the fate of Hong Kong was officially sealed; when Britain flatly refused to grant Hong Kong citizens full British passports, Hong Kong’s abandonment by Britain became unalterable.Post-1997, there are even fewer reasons for Hong Kong people to admire and respect things British. The colonial subject’s “perverse and self-defeating longing for the conqueror” (Leela 22) can no longer be justified after this humiliating abandonment, while the emigration craze in the late 1980s and early 1990s shows that for many middle class Hongkongers, the prospects of Chinese rule did not look promising either.To secure residency overseas, millions of dollars were invested in countries like Canada and Australia, and tens of thousands of middle class professionals left behind their families and careers (Skeldon). The younger generations’ perceptions of what would happen after the handover were largely shaped by their parents’ and grandparents’ version of history, one which they found moving yet incredible. Despite the crushing experience of Tiananmen Square in 1989, all signs pointed to the fact that Deng Xiaoping’s promise of “fifty years of arrested change” will be honored. The older generation’s fears, so readily translated into direct action (i.e. emigration), remain distant and irrelevant to Hong Kong’s youngsters.

As such, for Hong Kong’s younger generation, the past consists of stories told and retold by parents and relatives, rehearsed in documentary films, stylized on cinema and television screens; it is rarely discussed with passion, barely mentioned in classrooms. It is therefore no surprise that they feel little affinity towards British/Western culture or Chinese culture. The only indigenous form of culture that youngsters readily identify with, is perhaps the dedication to pecuniary gain and a keenness to accumulate material objects of desire in place of economic, cultural and political security.

Popular Culture, Urban Consumption, and Cultural Identity 

Writing three years prior to 1997, Chan observed that “at heart, Hong Kong is by and large a society devoid of a unifying cultural foundation” (447).This observation echoes Abbas’s notion of Hong Kong culture as one of “disappearance.”I would add that it is also a culture that actively negates particular unifying cultural foundations – namely that of British-ness and Chinese-ness.Abbas wrote that “A culture of disappearance gives us identities to take away our subjectivity, emotions to take away our affectivity, a voice to take away representation” (Abbas 14).Torn between abandonment, colonization and modernization on the one hand, and fear, nationalism and pride on the other, Hongkongers are unwilling to be Chinese, as much as they are unwilling to uncritically accept the West.The result is a constant and relentless search for alternatives, for sites on which to position one’s subjectivity and of gauging cultural identity without succumbing to “unifying cultural foundations” already in existence.Abbas is right in saying that the culture of disappearance is not just a threat, it is also an opportunity.The persistence of the discourse of “East meets West” proves that there have been few alternatives apart from identifying oneself with this pragmatic catchall label, this (non-)identity that is chock full of contradictions.In “post-colonial” Hong Kong, however, even this handy binarism is beginning to look unconvincing, forcing the Hongkonger into re-thinking the subjectivity which has been thrown off balance by recent historical, social and political events set off by the appearance of the 1997 deadline and its aftermath.

Chan observes that “the only socio-cultural arena that comes closest to providing overarching cultural framework of some form is the arena of popular culture,” because “by its nature, popular culture does not actively shape or construe the deeper dynamics of cultural imperatives, and thus can paint over but not resolve, the fragmentary ground upon which it stands” (448).He calls it the “key dynamic agent in embodying as well as shaping the social, cultural, and political mentality of Hong Kong,” and “the primary sphere of consciousness and sentiment where the concerns, anxieties, and foreboding of society as a whole find their expression” (449). While popular culture could be all these and more, the main characteristic of popular culture in Hong Kong is that it takes the form of consumption, or more specifically, of a culture of consumption.The significance of consumption as a way of life in Hong Kong, and its importance in understanding Hong Kong society, cannot be underestimated.

Hong Kong is by definition a city and urban living characterizes the everyday lives of nearly the whole of its population, standing at 6.7 million in 1999. The physical characteristics of the Hong Kong landscape—mountainous, surrounded by water, and a total of just under a thousand square kilometers, 40% of which are designated country-parks—and the government’s policy which artificially restricts land supply means that it is a city with an overwhelming sense of constriction.To “get away from the city” usually means to travel abroad – to neighboring south-east Asian countries or to mainland China – for going to the “countryside” on a weekend could be just as congested as spending the day in a shopping mall. As mentioned earlier, the cosmopolitanism of Hong Kong (“East meets West”) is superficial and engages only a very small minority of the population. This, coupled with the characteristics of Hong Kong’s landscape, which is very much engulfed in its own urbanity, to some extent accounts for the city’s parochial mentality and perhaps even xenophobic attitudes.Leisure activities mainly take place indoors and in urban areas, and common leisure activities are predominantly consumption related—going to cinemas, shopping malls, karaokes and dining out—particularly for the young and better educated(Ng 267-270).

As a society in which there are few moral challenges to consumption activities, Hong Kong’s rich and poor alike are eager to embrace goods and services that provide pleasure in any shape or form.Unrestrained consumption is re-packaged as a necessity for the economy’s well being, whereas environmental and social consequences, when serious enough to render attention, are ultimately considered consumers’ responsibilities. The government plays a minimal role in regulating consumption, and this further exacerbates the decadence with which Hongkongers consume (Abbas).While different categories of consumers may engage with consumption activities according to different logic (e.g. price, exclusiveness, fashionability), information relating to trends, new products, prices and so on travel fast, and the density of the city compels consumers to look, to compare, to judge, to evaluate as well as to imagine one another’s consumption choices and patterns.It is a society of the flâneur/flâneuse (idler)(Clarke 230), but also one where individuals are part of a crowd, or long to be part of one.The fear of being isolated, of standing out, or even worse, of being left behind or missing out, drives the Hong Kong consumer deeper into the logic of consumer society.Thus, latest trends in consumer culture and news of innovative product designs travel across the city at high speed, so as to satisfy the compulsion to be part of whatever it is that is “happening.”The type of “groupism,” often masked as individuality (which is itself very much a characteristic of fashions in general) is pronounced in Japan and suits the psychological needs of the Hongkonger. 

Much time and energy are thus channeled into consumption activities, which are in effect time and energy not spent on other things, most significantly political participation.The absence of genuine democracy, an executive led government, the absence of sovereignty means an effectively de-politicized population.Like Japan, Hong Kong is a society where political ideals are displaced by economic goals, where wealth creation, and spending that wealth, are examples of the few areas where subjective autonomy can be, at least in theory, achieved (Clammer 53).Popular culture, as Chan observed, is therefore a fertile ground in which the articulation of colonialism, nationalism, post-coloniality, modernity, and capitalism takes root.

Japanese Influences in Hong Kong’s Popular Culture

Japanese influence in Hong Kong has a relatively long history. Japanese occupation of Hong Kong for the three years and eight months after Christmas Day 1941 still mark the memories of many Hong Kong Chinese.Large numbers of Hongkongers were forcibly repatriated to China during the early days of the occupation, but for those who stayed, many suffered and witnessed the brutality of Japanese imperialist militarism.However, Hong Kong’s collective memory is a selective one when it comes to issues of nationalism and national identity.The image of Japan as aggressor is not denied, but this image has limited power in pulling Hongkongers closer towards a Chinese national identity.Calls for boycott of Japanese goods have been spur of the moment actions and typically yield only limited support from the masses.Demonstrations in protest at Japan’s denial of its brutalities during “the rape of Nanking,” at its refusal to honor military currency notes issued in Hong Kong during the occupation, and over its actions around the Diayou Islands are always staged by a familiar five to ten activists, most of whom took part in student movements during the 1970s. Ask any Hong Kong youth about Japan as aggressor and they are likely to answer with a shrug of shoulders and a “so what?”This entirely detached stance—held most evidently by young people but also found amongst the middle-aged—reflects the inability, lack of interest, and perhaps unwillingness to identify oneself with the burdens of China’s painful history.In particular, this suggests a detachment from the humiliations, the sufferings and the pain that their parents and grandparents witnessed and lived through.

Japanese influences in Hong Kong today are results of globalization, not from wartime occupation.Japan’s tremendous recovery from the war was accompanied by the rapid growth of its economy.Since the first Japanese department store, Daimaru, landed in Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay district in November 1960, only fifteen years after the Japanese surrender, other Japanese stores quickly followed its footsteps and set up branches in Hong Kong, including Matsuzakaya, Mitsukoshi, Sogo, Tokyu, Jusco, Seiyu, Yaohan and more recently Seibu and Loft. These stores introduced to Hong Kong fashionable Japanese clothing, footwear, household goods and foodstuffs.For many Hongkongers who grew up in appalling housing conditions in the 1940s and 1950s, accompanied by poverty and hardship in the 1960s and 1970s, the aestheticization of everyday life, which so characterizes Japanese goods, is highly attractive. Prior to the arrival of Japanese consumer culture via these department stores, local department stores mainly sold products from Britain and the U.S., whose prices tended to be high.Japanese stores introduced reasonably priced goods that were at once exotic and familiar. Japanese pop music—in particular the market for teen idols—also attracted many of Hong Kong’s youngsters in the late 1970s and early 1980s before “Cantopop,” the predominant pop music genre in Hong Kong, took off.Products targeted at children and teenagers, in particular stationary and household items by the Japanese company Sanrio, which typically bear the image of a cartoon characters such as Hello Kitty and Little Twin Star, were, and continue to be, popular in Hong Kong.

Although the heyday of Japanese Department stores in Hong Kong has been on the wane since the economic recession set in 1997, Hong Kong people’s eagerness to embrace Japanese styled consumer culture continues today, a trend that is showing few sign of dying down. Apart from the influence of department stores, Hong Kong’s Chinese language television stations had always bought Japanese cartoons, children’s programs, teenage drama and sci-fi programs and broadcast them in their dubbed versions.In the 1980s, Hong Kong imported a total of 391 hours of television programming from Japan, exceeded only by the U.S. (1,357 hours) and Italy (768 hours) (Stronach).Cartoon programs such as Doraemon, and the more recent Chibi Maruko-Chan and Pokemon are staple diets of children’s television. Tear-jerking drama such as Oshin, and the annual music program Kohaku Uta Gassen (Red-and-white Song Contest) suit more grown-ups tastes, while the recent obsession with Japanese serial drama such as Long Vacation and Tokyo Love Story demonstrates that the attraction of Japanese popular culture is prevalent across the age spectrum.Japanese comics, apart from being a billion-dollar industry in Japan itself, also have a big audience in Hong Kong.Although local comics still dominate the market, more expensive but higher quality Japanese comics (translated into Chinese), which have a much broader range of themes¹ , continue to receive support from Hong Kong’s youngsters and adults alike.

Japanese popular culture has had a long and enduring influence on Hong Kong, but in recent years its influence is spreading: anything from magazines to comics, karaoke to fashion, advertising to retailing, TV programs to the sex industry. The domestication of Japanese culture is evident everywhere. In the following paragraphs I look at two forms in which Japanese popular culture shows its influences in Hong Kong, in naming and in objects of desire, and ask what this can tell us about Hong Kong’s post-colonial cultural formation.

Naming

Most young people in Hong Kong have more than one name: the Chinese name given by their parents (in Chinese script), the anglicized version of this (in English), and an English name.²  The English name is often one chosen by the individual, although it could also be chosen by one’s parents or teachers.In early colonial years having an English name (Peter, Anthony, Rosemary) appears to have served two purposes—to enable Westerners who cannot speak Chinese to address oneself, and to identify oneself with the Western elite class and lifestyle.Both purposes are indicative of the colonial subject.To the Westerner, Chinese names “all sound the same” and are impossible to pronounce or write.Given that the myth of Chinese (Cantonese in particular) being an impossible language to learn is so widespread and deeply rooted amongst not only colonizers but also the colonized (so much so that any Westerner who speaks some Chinese will be greeted with admiration and be the cause of much entertainment), the obvious solution is for Chinese people to have an English name.

In the later half of the twentieth century, having an English name became a matter of course—even for those who had no contact with Westerners at all.Chinese names were associated with being old-fashioned, traditional, and not up-to-date.An English name became another way of expressing oneself, a chosen identity rather than one given by one’s parents. The types of English names chosen, therefore, are a good indicator of subjective cultural identification.More traditional names such as Winnie, Josephine, Peter, John, and David, which were common during the 1960s and 1970s, have gradually given way to Cally, Psyche, Collis, Karl, Romano, and GiGi in the 1980s and 1990s. Recently the trend towards making up one’s own English name is even more prevalent.Names no longer bear resemblance to English names.Instead, made-up words, Japanese names and a combination of the two result in names such as Yuki, Zany, Eona, Ranma, Juko, Sanni and Taki.The deliberate borrowing of nonsensical names from a variety of languages and used as one’s own verges on the comical to the outsider’s eyes. For instance, the names Windy, Baton, Fritz, Bebeanna, Boniface, Dis, Benz, and Amen were found on a list of winners of a lucky draw, published in a local daily newspaper.This trend is by no means restricted to youngsters picking their own names; names of chain stores also hint at blatant disregard of the rules and meanings of the English language. Women’s clothes stores called “Wanko” and “Veeko” are cases in point.

This drifting away from proper English naming practices is accompanied by the increased borrowing of Japanese language in popular magazines, newspapers, TV programs and promotional flyers for retailers.The use of kanji (Japanese script originated from Chinese writing) in the mass media can be widely seen, even though katakana (Japanese phonetic script used to signify foreign names) and hiragana (“true” Japanese scripts) are also used.Words and phrases such as bento (lunch box), mizugi (swim wear), soshin (slim), ziro jiro (beautiful and white), ninki (popularity) have become regular part of Cantonese speech.As such, elderly Hongkongers and those who have little resources or inclination to participate in popular culture could well find themselves looking at what seems to be Chinese scripts but not knowing what they mean.

Objects of Desire

The popularity of things Japanese in Hong Kong is an uncontested fact.Japanese gadgets, from electronic appliances and audio-visual equipment to apparently “useless” objects of kitsch, can be found featured, and their news updated, in mass circulation magazines and newspapers.What is trendy and fashionable in Japan, from household goods to face creams to clothing, is reported in the local mass media, and many of these items are quickly counterfeited and available in street stalls and night markets.For many of Hong Kong’s young people, visiting Japan—preferably armed with considerable amounts of cash or credit—is a dream come true.While Japanese tourists flock to Hong Kong to buy duty free Louis Vuitton and Gucci, Hong Kong tourists go to Japan for its food, gadgets, clothes, magazines, and above all the experience of high modernity.Japan provides the ultimate consumer paradise.

Apart from purchasable gadgets, consumable objects of desire also include the Japanese erotic.Japanese pornography in the form of videos, VCDs (pirated or otherwise), comics and magazines are popular in Hong Kong and can be readily purchased.The myth of Japanese men as “perverts” and Japanese women as sexually liberal and eager to please is a complex issue, but there is little doubt that the mass media in Hong Kong played an important role in perpetuating the myth. The repressive nature of the eroticism and the appeal of voyeurism in Japanese pornography seem to attract a considerable audience in Hong Kong.Popular daily publications regularly feature blown-up pictures of nameless Japanese women, scantily clad, looking innocently seductive.Even local TV stations resorted to the appeal of Japanese-style soft porn when it comes to ratings wars.For example, unknown Japanese starlet-wannabes were flown in to feature in last year’s Miss Asia beauty pageant, whose only function seem to be to draw audiences keen to gaze upon Japanese women in bikinis.

Japanese TV shows have had considerable success in Hong Kong, and the game show Ganbare, which features numerous challenges to contestants, was one of Asia TV’s (one of the two local stations) highest-ratings shows of the year.While directly buying these shows and broadcasting them in Hong Kong with Cantonese commentary started out as the trend, there are now signs that the formats of these shows are being domesticated.Contestants being made to eat very hot food (e.g. wasabi, a horseradish paste) or large quantities of food (e.g. ramen or rice balls) is a long-standing Hong Kong favorite.A currently running game show features segments in which pre-school children are made the object of tolerance and endurance tests, or where children are made to complete arduous shopping tasks, also originated from Japanese television.

Another consumable is food, which features as prominently as sex in Hong Kong’s popular culture.Japanese food in Hong Kong, from the supermarket sushi pack to expensive Japanese restaurants, continues to be popular.Japanese cuisine in Hong Kong has the reputation of being expensive, but more significantly it is seen as sophisticated and delicate compared to Cantonese cuisine.The attention paid to presentation, packaging, and general appeal to the visual senses is one of its big attractions.In contrast, Cantonese stir-fry, hot pots and Western slabs of meat with boiled potatoes just do not rate the same kudos.

Fashion is another area where Japan has considerable influence on Hong Kong.So keen are Hong Kong youth to consume Japanese fashion and Japanese styles of fashion that fashion magazines such as Non-no, Cutie, McSister and Popeye, which used to be available only in Japanese Department Stores, can now be bought on most newsstands.Such magazines typically contain plenty of pictures of clothes and accessories, with guides on style co-ordination, step-by-step make-up tips and “street fashion” pages, where pictures of “average youngsters” are taken on the streets and their clothing described.These imported magazines are of course in Japanese, which means that most people buy them for the pictures rather than the text.Although local magazines have been quick to follow the trend of turning the magazine into a product catalogue, style and “how-to” guide, they do not have the same exotic appeal as Japanese ones.

Japan as Object of Emulation, Consumption, and Deprecation 

Despite Hong Kong people’s fascination with Japanese things and their readiness to absorb and domesticate forms of Japanese popular culture, there remain deeply rooted and complex ambiguities in Hong Kong’s relationship with Japan, which is in some ways not unlike Japan’s relationship with the West.While Japanese goods, lifestyles, popular culture and economic success are much admired by Hongkongers, Japanese people are more often than not talked about in a derogatory manner.The term lorh-bak tau, which translates as “turnip head,” can still be heard, while yat buen tsai and yat buen mui, terms for “Japs,” or gah tsai and gah mui (gah as a mockery of Japanese speech, tsai and mui meaning boy and girl respectively) are widely used instead of the term yat buen yan, which means “Japan person.” Deep-rooted stereotypes of the Japanese as brutal, perverse, and repressed exist alongside the domestication and admiration of Japanese popular culture.

The affinity that Hongkongers feel towards Japanese culture can in part be explained by the sharing of an East Asian identity, which is increasingly becoming a geopolitical reality, with its (alleged?) common roots in Confucian culture and Buddhism.The sharing of ideograms in Japanese and Chinese language makes it easier for Hong Kong people to feel an affinity to Japanese culture, despite the fact that the same characters may have completely different connotations in the two languages.The relative similarity in physical appearances of the Japanese and the Chinese could be another reason, but perhaps the similarity exists only in the eyes of Westerners; Hongkongers can always tell the difference.Japanese fashion, for instance, is more popular amongst younger people, especially youth oriented brands such as Ice Fire, whose cuts are considered more suitable to the Chinese physique than those of, for example, Levis.By extension, Japanese cosmetics, hair care and skin care products such as Kanebo, Kose and Shiseido are also believed by many younger Hong Kong consumers to be more suitable than Revlon, Clinique, or Yves Saint Laurent.Last but not least, the geographical proximity between Hong Kong and Japan makes it easier and quicker for cultural intermediaries to speed up contacts and transfers of news and cultural forms.

Needless to say, domesticating elements of foreign culture is not merely a matter of convenience or racial and cultural compatibility.The economic prowess of Japan, in particular its status as the first non-Western nation to achieve high levels of economic prosperity and reach modernity/post-modernity is highly significant.The fact that the Hong Kong tourist abroad feels ambivalent when mistaken for a Japanese brings out the complexity of feelings which include both humiliation and pride, and exemplifies the various categories of cultural identification involved.Japanese domestication of Western culture, especially in the use of English, images of Western lifestyle and the use of Western models in the promotion of consumer goods, can also be found in Hong Kong.T-shirts with unintelligible English sentences, liberal use of English in pop songs and everyday speech, advertisements featuring medieval castles and cowboys, blue-eye blondes promoting consumer products are all still common and even prevalent.However, in recent years there is, increasingly, unintelligible Japanese blazed across T-shirts and rucksacks, and magazines that borrow the layout and even contents of Japanese fashion magazines have become more and more evident.

How do we explain the growing domestication of elements of Japanese culture in Hong Kong’s pop cultural environment?More importantly, what does this tell us about the cultural identification of the Hong Kong Chinese?As discussed earlier, the issue of cultural identification is basically a problem for all Hong Kong Chinese, but this issue is particularly problematic for the younger, post-colonial generation; it is also amongst the young where we could find the most passionate embrace of Japanese forms of popular culture. Unlike the older generation, who had knowledge and experience of China’s past, Hong Kong’s youth of today display neither patriotism nor fear towards China; unlike the previous generation who had grown up feeding on the notion that they were proud to be British subjects, they have little interest in striving to learn the language or to know its culture; unlike the émigré who opted for the identity of Chinese Canadian, Chinese Australian or Chinese American, there are few reasons for the Hong Kong youth, who grew up as an abandoned child of the British empire, to identity with the West.With no attachment to historical burdens of China’s painful past, young people are drawn to the pleasures of Japanese objects of desire, which are neither East nor West, but ultra-modern and post-modern at the same time.Here the domestication of Japanese popular culture by Hong Kong’s young people is not merely a matter of cultural identification, but also identification with and the embracing of consumer culture, of signs, images, and of abandonment and, perhaps, of decadence.

The many apparent similarities between Japanese and Chinese culture, in their writing systems, diet, religion and conceptions of the self, probably to a certain extent account for the popularity of Japanese popular culture in Hong Kong.But perhaps a more distinctive feature draws the Hong Kong consumer to things Japanese, a quality deeper, more abstract, and more admirable than those usually attached to consumer artifacts.It is the quality of nationhood, of strong national identification, of the collective energy that Japan commands from its people that is so obviously lacking in Hong Kong.This ability to direct energy towards a national project, for instance nation building after defeat in the Second World War, which has succeeded so brilliantly and is something that is secretly admired by many Hong Kong Chinese.Technologically Japan is regarded by Hongkongers as superior to the West when it comes to innovations and gadgets; aesthetically Japanese consumer products are more sophisticated and in resonance with Chinese culture than Western ones; morally, they seem superior in the triumph of the collective over the individual, which so successfully transformed the country from its defeat during the war to world economic giant.At the same time the Hong Kong Chinese feel the Japanese can, with their perceived “perversions and obsessions,” still be ridiculed.If Japan is totally invincible, its appeal to Hong Kong Chinese is diminished.Japan, which has borrowed culturally, technologically, and aesthetically from China, now excels the older civilization in all these areas.For Hong Kong’s Chinese, to acknowledge this superiority would be a humiliation. More importantly, to acknowledge Japan’s invincibility and uncritically accept its superiority would defy the cultural logic of Hong Kong as one which negates “unifying cultural foundations.”The Hong Kong consumer wants/needs to embrace and to ridicule at the same time, as this is at the heart of her attraction to Japanese popular culture.

Deadlines and Cultural Identity

Hong Kong’s history is one marked by one deadline after another:the ninety-nine years of lease, the countdown towards 1997, and the fifty years of arrested change.Fifty years is a long time in Hong Kong’s history, a period whose impact is yet to be seen in the Hong Kong psyche.Given the general direction that China is going—its gradual but definite inclusion into the world capitalist system—current consensus is that in fifty years’ time it will be China that has become more like Hong Kong, rather than the other way around.In terms of popular culture, there is clear evidence to support this conjecture.Hong Kong pop stars, movies, mass media and ways of life have made a distinct impact in the mainland.But as the “deadline” begins to make its urgency felt, there is no way of knowing whether Hongkongers’ cultural identification will gravitate towards China or look further away from it.If the adoption of Western fashion in the 1960s was Hong Kong’s way of proclaiming its modernity, and the use of Japanese popular cultural forms in the 1990s its way of asserting its distance from both its “biological” (mainland China) and “adoptive” (Britain) parents, then the development of the PRC—her place in the world stage, her socio-political and socio-economic affairs—will have critical bearing on the cultural forms of Hong Kong, a society that remains perpetually in search of an identity.

Annie Hau-nung Chan

Department of Politics and Sociology

Lingnan University

Tuen Mun, N.T.Hong Kong

 

Notes

¹Hong Kong comics are dominated by “triad” related themes, most of which tend to contain ample violence, sex and foul language in their contents.In contrast, Japanese comics are much more varied, including both girls’ comics (shojo manga), boys’ comics (shonen manga) as well as those for young men (seinenshi).

² Hongkongers also have their names in the more degrading form of Chinese Commercial Code, which consists of a series of four-digit numbers, listed on their passports. As Hong Kong now issues the People’s Republic of China Special Administrative Region (PRC-SAR) passport, the need for such humiliation has ceased to exist.

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