Introduction

In this section I use a variety of disciplines such as semiotics, psychoanalytic theory, sociological theory and other methodologies that are commonly used in a multi-disciplinary approach to media and cultural phe nomena known as cultural criticism. This approach enables us to understand those iconic aspects of Japanese culture with which tourists most commonly come into contact as they travel through the country. This a nalysis, as I pointed out earlier, is modelled upon the kind of semiotic interpretation of Japanese culture found in Roland Barthes’ seminal book on Japan, Empire of Signs. The topics I deal with are signs and what I attempt to do is explain their relationship to covert Japanese cultural codes, their various connotations and their psycho-socio-cultural signifi cance.

A Brief Note on Semiotic Theory

When Roland Barthes titled his book on Japan Empire of Signs, he was announcing that he was offering a semiotic interpretation of certain aspects of Japanese culture that manifested themselves as signs. Semiotics is the science of signs, and signs can be defi ned as anything that can stand for something else. Words are the most commonly used signs, but so are facial expressions, hair styles, clothing, foods, objects and just about everything else. There are two founding fathers of the science, the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who called the science of signs semiology (literally words about signs) and the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, who used the term semiotics, which is the term most favoured by semiotic scholars.