Description

This presentation looks at the Hanryu, or Korea boom as it engulfed Japan. It explores the impact through popular culture of the tension ridden Japanese-Korean relationship. It addresses gender roles and how Japan’s ‘ethnic erotic economy’ suddenly shifted to a romantic interest in Korean men, including companies that arrange marriages between Japanese women and Korean men. It explores the statements being made by Japanese women through their espoused infatuation with Korean male stars, and the Japanese male-backlash through the ‘anti-Korea Boom’ movement. It shows the active drama tourism involvement of Japanese to Korea to visit the sites of Winter Sonata, looks at women’s associations booking tours to the drama sites as a new group travel option, at how fans form their own friendship associations to consume numerous new magazines devoted to Korean stars, and at how groups of Japanese engage in Korean language learning as part of the Winter Sonata boom. In focusing on the raging popularity of Korean dramas in Japan, and the corresponding Korea boom, the presentation attempts to ask larger questions of about persisting hierarchical concepts of nation, gender, ethnicity and race within Japan, the relative impact of planned political interventions and popular culture phenomena in shaping specific international relations, the impact of this boom on attitudes towards Korean residents of Japan, and the impact on discussions of gender roles within Japan including shifting understandings of Japanese women and men in relationship to society.

Dr. Millie Creighton is a Japan specialist and Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, where she also serves as a faculty member of the Institute for Asian Studies, and on the Executive Management Boards of the Centre for Japanese Research and the Centre for Korean Research. She has done extensive research in Japan on department stores, consumerism, tourism, popular culture, minorities, ethnicity, work and leisure, place, nostalgia and identity. She was awarded the Canon Prize for research on Japanese department stores and consumerism. She has conducted research in Korea on the Korean Wave, noraebang/karaoke, and gender.