Over the past few decades, East Asian pop culture has drawn a tremendous amount of attention
from not only regional producers and audiences but also academia: many scholars from Asia and
the West have contributed to the ongoing debates and discussions on this topic. It is particularly
noteworthy that Asian cultural studies scholars have been conducting their research in the cities
in which they live, based on their own experiences and those of their neighbors. The volume
and diversity of these experiences and discussions suggest that it is an opportune time to conduct
broader and more theoretical research on East Asian pop culture. As Chen Kuan-Hsing and Chua
Beng Huat suggest, we need to “work longer, further and deeper” (2007, 5) in order to better
understand East Asian pop culture and its significance as one of the major inter-Asian trends.
This chapter aims to historicize East Asian pop culture by tracing regional flows of pop cul-
ture, from Hong Kong films and Japanese animation, dramas, and pop music in the 1980s and
1990s to the Korean Wave and the emergence of Pop Culture China in the twenty-first century.
Rather than describing the genres, artists, and other innumerable historical details that make up
the pop cultures of East Asia, the primary purpose here is to develop a historical narrative of
East Asian pop culture vis-à-vis its influences, both American and those internal to the region.
I suggest understanding East Asian pop culture as a series of regional flows of popular culture,
which I will call “pop flows.” Constructed through consuming, copying, and referencing both
American and regional pop cultures, pop flows help us to articulate East Asian pop culture as
both the historical accumulation and temporal coexistence of these diverse influences. Finally,
the chapter attempts to delineate a distinctive element of East Asian pop culture, which I refer
to as “double inscription.”
In historicizing East Asian popular culture, I am particularly interested in raising fundamen-
tal questions about cultural theory and building new conceptual frameworks to address those
questions. Rather than applying Western-oriented concepts to East Asia, I attempt to develop
an alternative framework through historicizing regional cultural experiences, based mainly on
assessments and explications of critics in the region.^1 As Chen has contended, “What we need
are rather alternative frameworks for reference. ... The emergence of an inter-Asian public
sphere ... would be the beginning of that shift and multiplication of our frames of reference”
(2001, 86–87). In tracing the history of East Asian pop culture, this study revisits questions such
as “Can we overcome the dichotomy between Western theory and Asian reality?” and “Can Asia
be the location of theory?” (Shih 2010, 471).
rick simeone
(Rick Simeone)
#1