Hw Wong

The 'real core': the taste of Taiwanese men for Japanese adult videos

Inspired by Simon Hardy who sees ‘pornographic realism’ as the defining characteristic of pornography, this article argues that Taiwanese men identify more with Japanese adult videos (AVs) especially bishōjo (beautiful young woman) AVs, the prototypical genre in Japanese AV industry, than other varieties, because they appear to these men as more ‘real’. However, this article goes further to move beyond the reality–representation divide by arguing that the so-called ‘reality’ is also discursively constituted. We first demonstrate how the ‘proper’ sex act of men in Taiwan is discursively constituted through Simon and Gagnon’s notion of ‘sexual script’. We then show how this discursively mediated male sex in Taiwan parallels neatly with the structure of the narrative of nine Japanese bishōjo AVs featuring Yuki Maiko, a prominent Japanese AV actress. We conclude that Japanese AVs in general and bishōjo AVs in particular will garner huge popularity among Taiwanese men because they appear to these men very ‘real’. That is to say, the distinction between pornographic representations of sex and the ‘real’ sex vanishes not because pornographic representations are getting more ‘real’ as Hardy has argued, but because the so-called ‘real’ sex is also culturally constituted.

Japanese Adult Videos in Taiwan

1. Introduction 2. Adult Videos as Japanese Cultural Product and Japanese Pornography 3. Japanese Adult Videos Coming to Taiwan 4. From Japanese AVs to Taiwanese A-pian: The (Re)production of Japanese AVs in Taiwan 5. From Japanese AVs to Chinese Gifts: The Circulation of Japanese AVs in Taiwan 6. The Taste of Taiwanese Men and Women for Pornography 7. The Instrumental Interests of Japanese AVs to Individual Taiwanese Men 8. The Instrumental Interests of Pornography to Individual Taiwanese Women 9. Conclusion

Translating Japanese Adult Movies in Taiwan: Transcending the Production-Consumption Opposition

Abstract This paper is an attempt to reconsider the opposition between consumption and production in social sciences through a detailed analysis of the production of Chinese subtitles for a pirated Japanese adult video (AV) clip in Taiwan. We demonstrate that the way local pirate merchants provide Chinese subtitles is very much guided by the sexual roles of men and women, or what Sahlins calls a cultural code, in Taiwan because this makes Japanese AVs look “natural”, and thus sexually appealing, to Taiwanese viewers. More importantly, the same cultural code also serves as a model for Taiwanese viewers to consume Japanese AVs; otherwise, the reproduction of Japanese AVs will not be sexually appealing to them. Seen in this way, the relation of production and consumption is not as opposed as is commonly thought. It follows that arguments that either production or consumption offers a better mode of investigation of a cultural good are misleading, because they presume that production and consumption entail different lines of logic when in fact both follow the same cultural code.

Transnational Japanese Adult Videos and the Emergence of Cable Television in Post-war Taiwan

This article examines how transnational Japanese adult videos migrated to Taiwan and how such a migration “contributed” to the advent of cable television in post-war Taiwan. It argues that the relationship between the migration of Japanese AVs and the advent of cable TV is not automatic but needs to be qualified. There is a huge gap between the migration of Japanese AVs to Taiwan and the advent of cable TV there. The advent of cable TV in post-war Taiwan cannot be directly reduced to the transnational Japanese AVs. Nor are transnational Japanese AVs the sole reason for the advent of cable TV in post-war Taiwan. Instead, cable TV in post-war Taiwan is the consequence of a very complex process in which transnational Japanese AVs reciprocally mediated with socio-political factors in Taiwanese society. We argue that it is only when Japanese AVs were mediated by a number of local socio-political factors that they together contributed to the introduction and legalization of cable TV in Taiwan.

Family, Ethnicity And State In Chinese Culture Under The Impact Of Globalization

This collection of papers from a project of the National Museum of Ethnology in Japan, unites anthropologists in an international collaborative effort to reexamine the dynamics of family, ethnicity, and the nation-state in China and in overseas Chinese society. Using ethnographic fieldwork, this book sheds light on the interactions between state, society, and identity through a variety of channels, such as family, lineage, kinship or quasi-kinship network, national frameworks such as religion association, Minority Autonomous Regions, and ethnic dress. This research demonstrates that even for the same cultural phenomenon, the discourses at the common, the elite, and the institutional levels will be adjusted based on the needs of the social context, market economy, and global networks.

From Politics of Ethnicity to Politics of Cultures: When Kool Far East Group Took Over Shiranai International in Hong Kong

This chapter anthropologically investigates the culture of politics in a securities house in Hong Kong named Shiranai International. Originally a subsidiary of Shiranai Japan—a famous Japanese securities house—Shiranai International was taken over in the late 1990s by a Taiwanese conglomerate called the Kool Far East Group and renamed as Kool Far East-Shiranai International. This anthropological investigation examines how the culture of politics within the company changed when Shiranai International was taken over by the Kool Far East Group. I shall show that the culture of politics in Shiranai International changed from the politics of ethnicity to the politics of culture after the company was taken. In conclusion, I shall spell out the implications of the anthropological discovery made in this chapter to the study of mergers and acquisitions in particular and the role of culture or ethnicity in explaining cross-cultural management in general.

I Don't Like Watching Japanese Adult Videos Because You Like It: The Politics of Pornography Consumption in Taiwan

This article focuses on women’s use of pornography in modern Taiwan, with an eye to making sense their “claimed” preference for American pornography. Our research shows that men and women display vast differences in pornography use and pornography preference with men tending to identify with Japanese adult videos and women with American pornography. Such gendered use of pornography has been substantially documented and examined through multiple disciplinary lenses. While illuminating, these studies tend not to examine further how such gender differences come about. It fosters an impression that gender can be used to explain away the reasons that men and women will differ in pornography use and sex. Gender is thus seen as universally applicable and able to explain everything without providing any concrete explanations. From this vantage, the specific, concrete gender norms that gave rise to the differences in pornography use in different cultures are dismissed as just manifestations of their genders. This article therefore aims to recover the specific gender norms and politics in Taiwan, which are often lumped together and explained away as gender inclinations and see how these specific contents gave rise to gender differences in pornography use. To understand how these gender differences ultimately come about, one needs to first explore how and why men and women consume pornography, respectively. Elsewhere, we have explored Taiwanese men’s use of, and preference for, pornography. This article therefore aims to examine Taiwanese women’s use of pornography with reference to gender norms in Taiwan.

An Anthropology of 'Applied Anthropology' in Postwar Hong Kong

This article is an anthropological attempt to review the development of applied anthropology in postwar Hong Kong. Arguing that the relevance of anthropology is determined by the socio-historical order in the sense that the utility of anthropological knowledge is socially and historically specific, we have chosen to reframe the review as the study of the social ”relevance” of major anthropological studies and the ”utility” of anthropological knowledge these ”applied” anthropological researches produced in Hong Kong.We first examine how the socio-political settings of post-war Hong Kong have given rise to a specific character and form of applied anthropology in Hong Kong. But this examination also reveals that ”applied” anthropological work has never been popular among anthropologists nor considered as mainstream anthropological research in post-war Hong Kong. This is due not only to the institutional constraints in Hong Kong but also what Kuwayama (2004) calls ”the world system of anthropology,” in which there is a power inequality between the anthropological practitioners in the center (US, UK, and France) and their colleagues in the periphery. This power inequality not only accounts for the lack of enthusiasm among anthropologist in Hong Kong but also has profound impact on their research agenda. However, the development of applied anthropology in Hong Kong is not just the reproduction of the anthropology of the center. There is always a gap between the anthropology of the center and its counterpart in Hong Kong. This gap is created by the intervention of the legacy of the Taiwanese anthropological traditions in Hong Kong. To push this argument further, we shall argue that individual practitioners are not just bearers of the Taiwanese anthropological tradition either. Their anthropological enterprises would also deviate from the traditions, as a result of their biographical experiences.

Preface to this Special Series

The study of world history used to be, or perhaps still is, dominated by the globalization thesis, which preaches that along with the spread of capitalism to the world which takes place in terms of transnational migrations of goods, there is a homogenization of cultures. The migration of massproduced cultural goods including media products, especially those from the West, is going to replace local products so that the cultural differences between the West and the importing country or area vanish (Howes, 1996, p. 3). This homogenizing understanding of transnational migrations of cultural goods seems to exclude the historical agency of local people when the latter are facing the globalization of Western cultural goods, except as they “resist, imitate or appropriate the West” (Iwabuchi, 2001, p. 54). The West here is likened to the “centre”, unilaterally imposing its own cultural values and ideologies on the “periphery”, that is, the rest of the world. All that the people of the “periphery” can do is to react to the West. No matter if the reaction is in the form of resistance, imitation, or appropriation, it is all directed at the Western force. The conclusion is very simple: the “peripheral” people have no historical agency but are a function of Western, in particular American, domination. In the argument of the homogenization of cultures, local cultures are given up for the global capitalistic force. However, many recent studies of transnational migrations of cultural goods, especially the spread of Japanese popular culture to Asia, constitute