Koichi Iwabuchibetween the recent anti-Korean wave and anti-Japanese movements (Liscutin 2009; Sakamoto
in this volume), the cultural connections fostered by the East Asian media are eclipsed in public
discourse by this more conspicuous jingoism and racism. In Japan, for example, the amount of
mass media exposure given to Korean popular culture has significantly decreased over the last
several years. While this is partly due to the rising costs of Korean popular culture products in
the international market, this trend has also been influenced by the rise of anti-Korean move-
ments, which have been responsible for anti-Korean Wave demonstrations as well as racist attacks
against resident Korean communities in Japan. Such events have not resulted in the complete
demise of the Korean Wave in Japan, and many people still regularly consume Korean popular
culture in private. Thus, how people who are disposed to positively and self-reflexively consume
Korean popular culture perceive and react to the growing anti-Korean movement in Japan is
an intriguing question left unexamined in relation to this trend. Some may be indifferent to it
and continue to consume Korean popular culture; some may stop consuming Korean popular
culture to express their dissatisfaction with the anti-Japanese movement in Korea and even
support anti-Korean movements in Japan; or some may express opposition to the jingoistic
anti- Korean movements through the Internet or social media and participate in the counter-
movement against escalating racist attacks on resident Korean communities in Japan. In any case,
research on how vicious cycles of East Asian nationalism have impacted people’s consumption of
popular culture from other parts of East Asia and how people who consume that popular culture
respond to such regressive movements would clarify how resilient the mediated self-reflexive
dialogue and mutual understanding cultivated in East Asia actually is.
Inter-national administration of popular culture connection
The advancement of transnational popular culture connections is accompanied by renationaliza-
tion, which generates a governing force that strengthens the resilience of the national framework.
It is argued that transnational cultural flows and connections do not displace the significance of
the nation but rather highlight its reworking (see Hannerz 1996). What has become conspicuous
is the rise of the inter-national administration of popular culture connectivity—a hyphen
between “inter” and “nation” for the nation operates as the unit of global cultural exchange and
it is national cultures that are mutually consumed in various inter- nationalized cultural encoun-
ters. Market-driven cultural globalization does not promote a straightforward homogenization
but rather gives rise to the diversification of cultural repertoires in many parts of the world
through a “peculiar form of homogenization” (Hall 1991). The world is becoming more diverse
through standardization and more standardized through diversification. This is evidenced by the
common marketing strategy in the media and cultural industries of subtly combining seem-
ingly opposing forces, such as globalization-localization or homogenization-heterogenization.
A variety of cultural formats such as genre, narrative style, visual representation, digital special
effects, and marketing techniques, through which various differences can be adjusted have been
disseminated, shared, and deployed in this way by media industries.
In the process of global–local interpenetration, the national market functions as the most
profitable level of commercialized cultural diversity and hence the cultural specificity of the
national is more and more constituted by globally shared cultural formats. As Urry (2003, 87)
argues, “nationality gets more constituted through specific local places, symbols and landscapes,
icons of the nation central to that culture’s location within the contours of global business,
travel, branding.” This is accompanied by the formation of what Urry calls the “global screen,”
through which national culture is mutually appreciated and global cultural diversity is enjoy-
ably consumed. In introducing the concept of “banal nationalism,” Billig (1995) argues that