Ofra Goldstein-Gidoni

The Production and Consumption of ‘Japanese Culture’ in the Global Cultural Market

This article presents an unusual angle for the study of consumer culture in a case study of an explicit process of the production and consumption of ‘culture’, or more specifically, of a product, which carries the label: ‘Japanese culture’, and which crosses national borders. The general context is that of cross-cultural consumption and cultural globalization. Globalization cannot be easily described anymore as having ‘a distinctly American face’. There is more and more evidence for competing centers or multiple globalizations. Japan has no doubt become one of these centers. The case at hand is that of the re-production and consumption of ‘Japanese culture’ in Israel. The article emphasizes the significance of looking at local cultural discourses or discourses about culture both at the ‘exporting’ and ‘importing’ destinations in trying to have a deeper understating of the processes of cultural globalization. I show how the Japanese cultural discourse - largely through the extremely popular genre of writing detailing the essential qualities of what it means to be Japanese known as Nihonjinron!- yielded a global cultural product known as ‘Japanese culture’, which is delivered to the world through contemporary ‘global cosmopolitans’.

Spirituality as a Discarded Form of Organizational Wisdom: Field-Based Analysis

In this article, we examine what really happens when spirituality enters profit organizations. We suggest looking at workplace spirituality as a form of organizational wisdom. When surveyed, managers and consultants attested that spirituality improved their awareness at work, enhanced communication, and reduced stress. Yet our results show that workplace spirituality suggests alternative ways of thought and behavior that organization members perceive as threatening and thus reject or discard. The chief clash is related to assumptions about social order and social relationships. Our work adds value to translation research by giving more significance to the impact of core organizational ideas in the encounter with new wisdom. We also contribute to workplace spirituality literature and to the emerging field of organizational wisdom by analyzing the initial stages and essence of the encounter between existing and new wisdom.

The Making and Marking of The ‘Japanese’ and the ‘Western’ in Japanese Contemporary Material Culture:

This article uses the analysis of sets of contemporary Japanese cultural materials in order to explore the dynamics of the significant process of making and marking of the ‘Japanese’ and the ‘Western’ in contemporary Japanese culture. Through the observation of material culture - mainly food and clothing - in its public presentational arenas, it aims at reaching a better understanding of the processes in which the foreign and the local interact in this so-called era of globalization. Both the ‘Western’ and the ‘Japanese’ are illustrated as cultural constructs. The distinction between them is not based on objective classification. Their cultural making and marking is described on the background of the formation of the modern Japanese culture and cultural identity.

Producers of Japan in Israel: Cultural appropriation in a non-colonial context

This paper is concerned with the appropriation and re-production of Japanese culture by Israelis in Israel. The paper argues that both studies that locate processes of cultural appropriation in the context of a clear colonial or post-colonial relationship and studies that emphasize the free ‘global cultural supermarket’ cannot fully explicate the processes of cultural appropriation. Since the 1980s there has been a growing popular interest in Japanese culture in Israel. This Japan craze is characterized by the high involvement of local Israelis in the promotion of Japanese culture and by the obvious absence of Japanese in the ‘Japanese’ cultural projects and displays. The study sees the local brokers as ‘global cosmopolitans’, who act as if this unique objectified culture is their own. The case presented enables us to see yet again that cultural globalization is more about cultural difference than about the creation of a ‘world culture’. The paper also emphasizes the role of the Other itself in its own Othering by highlighting the role of Japan in the construction of a particular ‘Japanese culture’.

The Production of Tradition and Culture in the Japanese Wedding Enterprise

In this article I examine the production of culture in the contemporary commercial Japanese wedding. This is analyzed in relation to the theoretical discourse of ‘the invention of tradition’. However, while this ‘invention’ is usually related to political motivations, I discuss the invention of tradition and of culture for economic motivations. I offer a broader perspective of tradition and culture and show how flexible these two may be as they are manufactured, played with or imagined. The contemporary wedding consists of both ‘traditional-Japanese’ and ‘Western’ inventions. These are regarded here as cultural constructs which both play a significant role in the construction of contemporary Japanese cultural identity.

“The Joy of Normal Living” as the Promise of Happiness for Japanese Women and their Families

ABSTRACT “The Joy of Normal Living” is at once the motto and the ideology of Kurihara Harumi, Japan’s best-known charisma housewife and icon of domesticity. This article looks at the relationship between “normal living” and the promise of happiness, as formulated in postwar Japan. Beginning with the government’s promotion, in the early postwar period, of the idea of akarui seikatsu (bright new life) as related to the typical suburban middle-class family of salaryman husband and full-time housewife, the article goes on to look at the cultural idea of “being happy as a woman” in contemporary Japan. Based on in-depth interviews with full-time housewives, and an analysis of popular women’s magazines, this article seeks to decipher what constitutes the idea of happiness for these women and for their generation.