Research and publication: an overview of theses, research fund, books, and articles

Master and doctoral theses. A search of the ‘thesis’ catalogue of the Chinese University of Hong Kong library with the keyword ‘Japan’ between 1991 and 2010 comes up with 33 theses. Most of them are in the fields of management and finance, a few in international relations, and some in natural sciences. Only four are studies of Japan from the sociological and related perspectives, with two on the overseas Japanese communities and two on Japanese culture or popular culture (see Appendix I). A similar search of the University of Hong Kong library comes up with 29 theses, with some in the fields of finance and business, and a few in public administration and public policy. About ten can be classified as sociology and related studies. Among them, five focus on challenges to Japanese working women, whether at home or at work, two on popular culture, one on religious practice, one on culture, and one on business networks (Appendix I).

Projects funded by the research grants council (RGC). As mentioned above, the Research Grants Council is a statutory body established by the Hong Kong government in 1991 to fund basic, and later on, policy research. Its budget has expanded and its approach has become more aggressive over time. Between 1991 and 2010, 1,826 projects in the category of ‘Humanities, Social Sciences, and Business Studies’ were funded (UGC, 2010).Footnote ⁶ Among these, no more than 17 are concerned with Japan (Appendix II). Whereas ten of these projects address issues of business administration and two examine politics and international relations; no more than five projects are comparative studies that are concerned with aspects of culture, gender and marriage, and stratification in Japan.

Books, book chapters and international refereed journal articles. In a way similar to research funding examined above, the total number of publications on Japan written by Hong Kong-based scholars is rather limited. A search of the ISI Web of Science with the keyword ‘Japan’ in the SSCI and A&HCI databases between 1994 and 2010 has come up with a total of 228 journal articles.Footnote ⁷ Among them, only 18 are substantive essays (rather than book reviews) that can be considered to fall within the discipline of sociology and the related ones of anthropology and cultural studies (Appendix III).

However, apart from these SSCI and A&HCI journals, research findings on Japan by Hong Kong-based scholars have also been published as books, book chapters, and non-SSCI or non-A&HCI academic journals. An effort has therefore been made to search the list of publications of scholars teaching presently at departments of Japanese studies, anthropology, and sociology in major universities in Hong Kong. The search has come up with more publications, including 18 authored or edited books as well as 65 book chapters or non-SSCI and non-A&HCI journal articlesFootnote ⁸ (Appendix III).

Taken together, a wide variety of sociology and sociology-related topics on Japan have been examined by scholars based in Hong Kong. Broadly speaking, they include studies of (1) Japan's capitalist development and growth of individual business corporations, (2) a variety of cultural phenomena, including advertisements, films, pop music, TV drama, food, heritage, and tourism, and their social implications, (3) the intellectual dimension of culture, including the specificities of studying anthropology, philosophy, and other academic disciplines in Japan, (4) the educational system, (5) inter-racial marriages, (6) the gender aspect of work and employment, (7) the work ethics of particular professions, and (8) social problems and social welfare provisions (Appendix III).

As can be observed from Appendix III, the lion's share of publications on Japan concerns culture and popular culture, focusing in particular on their social ramifications, such as globalization, representation of gender, effects on identity formation, and impacts on lifestyles and worldviews. In turn, the second most studied topic concerns Japan's capitalist development and corporate growth, examining them from the perspectives of the world system and culture.

The study of Japanese society and culture: questions, concepts, methodsFootnote ⁹

Having provided a broad overview, this section will examine more closely some of the key questions addressed, theoretical and methodological approaches adopted, and arguments proposed. Space limit has prevented a thorough review of all the researches; only the more prevalent topics will be reviewed below.

Capitalist development and corporate growth. The miraculous economic development of Japan has intrigued scholars worldwide; researchers in Hong Kong are no exception. So and Chiu (Reference So and Chiu1996), for example, have approached the matter from the macroscopic perspective. They examine the massive development of Japan as part of the East Asian system, which in their analysis consists also of China, Taiwan, and the two Koreas. Borrowing the ‘world-system’ perspective pioneered by Immanuel Wallerstein and relying on the historical-comparative method, they have analyzed the importance of the geo-political context and its interaction with Confucianism, the state, and market forces.

But it has been more common for Hong Kong-based scholars to examine Japan's economic growth from the microscopic angle of corporate growth and management strategies. Wong (Reference Wong1999), Refsing et al. (Reference Refsing, Nakano and Wong2003), Nakano and Wong (Reference Nakano and Wong2005), and Nakano (Reference Nakano2009), for instance, have relied on the analysis of historical documents as well as the use of ethnography and in-depth interviews to study the emergence, institutionalization, and popularization of Yaohan in Hong Kong, on the one hand, and the growth of the Shun Hing Group, which has served as Matsushita's sole agent for National (later Panasonic) electrical products since the 1950s, on the other hand. Focusing more directly on corporations in Japan, Mathews (Reference Mathews, Mathews and White2004) and Davison et al. (Reference Davison, Martinsons, Ou, Murata, Drummond, Li and Lo2009) have also relied on in-depth interviews and the survey method, respectively, to examine the views on work and employment of Japan's younger generation as well as those of the information technology professionals.

A variety of themes has been explored by these studies, and globalization is one of them. For Nakano (Reference Nakano2009) and Refsing et al. (Reference Refsing, Nakano and Wong2003), Matsushita's global success in marketing its National rice cookers and other electrical products was facilitated in part by Shun Hing Group's effort to render them more suitable to the needs and aesthetics of the Hong Kong people (i.e. glocalization). Being the earliest importer of large items like refrigerators, Shun Hing also helped to improve the packaging of and logistics for the export of such products. The procedure (localization and indeed logistics), once tested out and established in Hong Kong, was used by Matsushita for markets in other parts of the world.

Business network is a second idea that has been given some attention. Relying on arguments proposed by sinologists, Nakano (Reference Nakano2009) highlights how business networks cultivated by the Chinese throughout the world have made possible the export of National products to Southeast Asia. Employees of Matsushita, for instance, recalled how they were surprised to find rice cookers in the Philippines and radios in Indonesia even before their company had records of such exports. According to Refsing et al. (Reference Refsing, Nakano and Wong2003), rice cookers were exported from Osaka to Hong Kong, Manila, and the rest of Southeast Asia, whereas FM radios were exported from Osaka to Hong Kong, Jakarta, and then the rest of Southeast Asia.

The notion of trust has also been explored to some extent by these studies. Again relying on the works of sinologists, Nakano (Reference Nakano2009) has documented how personal trust (vis-à-vis institutional trust) has facilitated the forging of business relationships between the Matsushita Group and Shun Hing Group. Importantly, although the Chairman of the Matsushita Group refused at the outset to give William Mong a written contract for his sole agency in Hong Kong, the relationship has been upheld for over 50 years. Similarly, William Mong later turned down the invitation by Sony's Chairman to serve as the company's sole agent in Hong Kong, despite the prospect of great profit.

Linked to the matter of corporate growth are the issues of Japan's unique management strategies. Wong's (1999) research on Yaohan in Hong Kong, for instance, has reexamined critically the so-called three sacred measures of life-time employment − seniority wage/promotion system, and enterprise union − as well as Japan's alleged consensual society and the monolithic individual. He introduces the idea of power, and documents ‘how the methods of organizing work, ranking, remuneration, and promotion all contribute to foster the social and economic dependence of [Yaohan's] employees on the company, as well as the dependence on their supervisors’ (1999: 8). Among other things, he examines the dual personnel system and some Japanese-only activities to understand the exercise of coercive and hegemonic power, and their ‘naturalization’ under the cover of ethnicity. His research has also led him to examine the issues of gender and marital status, and the ways they have mediated managerial control and identity formation among the employees (Wong, Reference Wong, Nakamaki and Hioki1997, Reference Wong, Befu and Guichard-Anguis2001). Focusing on the change of management strategies within Japan, Mathews (Reference Mathews, Mathews and White2004) has drawn upon in-depth interviews to explore the impacts exerted by the decline of lifetime employment on the country's younger generation.

Finally, stories of the Shun Hing Group and Yaohan have also been read from the angle of the rise of the middle class in Hong Kong. Importantly, if a rice cooker was considered a luxury for most Hong Kong families in the 1950s, advertisements, trial installation, and free courses offered by the Shun Hing Group have played a major part in rendering the rice cooker, microwave, refrigerator, television set, and washing machine necessities in present day Hong Kong, thus defining the ‘middle-class’ way of life (Refsing et al., Reference Refsing, Nakano and Wong2003). Similarly, although there is no lack of luxurious department stores in Hong Kong, Yaohan's business strategy allowed the lower middle class in Hong Kong to have a taste of shopping at a department store, which filled an important gap in Hong Kong (Wong, Reference Wong1999, Reference Wong and Lee2006).

Popular culture. Compared with Japan's capitalist development and corporate growth, the spread of Japan's popular culture to Hong Kong has captured even more academic interest. Lee (Reference Lee1998, Reference Lee, Hara, Chan and Wong1999) and Ogawa (Reference Ogawa, Befu and Guichard-Anguis2001, Reference Ogawa, Chun, Rossiter and Shoesmith2004) have both sought to understand the popularization of Japan's pop music in Hong Kong. While Lee (Reference Lee, Hara, Chan and Wong1999) has adopted a broadly historical approach and relied on the analysis of secondary studies to provide an overview, Ogawa (Reference Ogawa, Chun, Rossiter and Shoesmith2004) has in addition undertaken a case study of the Tetsuya Komuro (TK) band, using ethnography and interviews, to ascertain the gap between the creation of Japanese music and its reception in Hong Kong.

In turn, the dissemination of Japanese television dramas in Hong Kong has been studied by Nakano (Reference Nakano2002) and Fung (Reference Fung2007). Nakano (Reference Nakano2002) has relied upon document analysis and interviews to study the diffusion of television dramas designed for Japan's younger generation to Hong Kong and China. In turn, Fung (Reference Fung2007) has used a combination of textual analysis of three Japanese and three Hong Kong TV dramas, a telephone survey of 533 interviewees, and 20 in-depth interviews to study what he calls ‘homologies’ in Hong Kong and Japanese television soap operas.

Finally, the popularization of Japanese films in Hong Kong, and the mutual influences between Japanese films and the film industry and their Hong Kong counterparts have also been examined (H. Lee, Reference Lee and lee2006; P. Lee, Reference Lee2006; Yau, Reference Yau, Gene-fon, Pak-tong, Po-shek and Sai-shing2003, Reference Yau, Morris, Li and Ching-Kiu2005, Reference Yau2007, Reference Yau, Mito, Chi-ming and Miyazoe Wong2008a, Reference Yau2009b, Reference Yau2010a; Yeh and Davis, Reference Yeh and Davis2002). Relying on document analysis, H. Lee (Reference Lee and lee2006) has provided a historical overview of the screening of Japanese ‘artistic’ films between 1962 and 2002 in Hong Kong, highlighting the roles of magazines, arts centers, and other institutions in the films’ dissemination. Yau, in her decade-long study, has relied on the analysis of primary documents (Chinese and Japanese), interviews with filmmakers and scholars, and textual analysis to examine facets of interactions between the film industries in Japan and Hong Kong, as well as dimensions of cultural representation in the Japanese movies.

A variety of themes has been addressed by the fore-mentioned studies. In the first place, some scholars have made valuable contributions by providing historical surveys or reexamining controversial historical issues. Lee (Reference Lee, Hara, Chan and Wong1999) has primarily documented in stages the rise and decline in the reception of Japanese pop music in Hong Kong from the 1960s to the 1980s. The same kind of stage-by-stage overview of the dissemination of cover and original versions of Japanese pop songs from the 1950s to the 1990s has also been made by Ogawa (Reference Ogawa, Chun, Rossiter and Shoesmith2004). Yau's (Reference Yau, Gene-fon, Pak-tong, Po-shek and Sai-shing2003, Reference Yau, Morris, Li and Ching-Kiu2005, Reference Yau, Mito, Chi-ming and Miyazoe Wong2008a) studies of the musical and action movies in Japan and Hong Kong have likewise documented their exchanges from the 1940s to the 1990s, highlighting variations in the reception of Japanese movies in Hong Kong and vice versa, mutual influences in terms of artistic styles, and exchanges of personnel, including directors, technicians, composers, and movie stars. More significantly, Yau's doctoral thesis, which has been revised and published in Japanese, Chinese, and English, started by documenting the controversial history of Japan's efforts in the 1930s and 1940s to create a ‘Greater East Asian cinema’ and the resultant collaborations between Japan, China, and Hong Kong (Yau, Reference Yau2007, Reference Yau2009b). In her view, such collaborations laid the foundation for further exchanges between the film industries of Hong Kong and Japan in the post-war years.

The second theme explored by these studies concerns the changes in Hong Kong's social and demographic structures, configurations of its cultural industries, and the reception of Japanese films and pop music. Yau (Reference Yau, Morris, Li and Ching-Kiu2005), for instance, has attributed the rise of ‘new style wuxia pian’ (i.e. swordsmen's movies with ‘heavy stylistic influence from Japanese chanbara’) in part to the fact that, by the late 1960s, the post-war Hong Kong generation had reached young adulthood and replaced the older generation to constitute the big movie-goers. Similarly, Lee (Reference Lee, Hara, Chan and Wong1999) has noted the importance of Hong Kong's economic take-off in the 1970s and the emergence of a younger generation with disposable income for the rise of an audience with ears for Japanese or Japan-influenced popular music. In a slightly different way, Ogawa (Reference Ogawa, Chun, Rossiter and Shoesmith2004: 150) has noted that despite Hong Kong's small and intensely competitive popular music market, which requires ‘hits every three months’ in order to tap into the global Chinese market, the local record industry lacks the productive capacity and has been dominated by foreign record companies more interested in short-term gains than investing in creative innovation. This has generated the industry's interest in music pieces produced in Japan. In all three cases, Japanese popular culture has been sought out actively by Hong Kong's consumers and producers.

A third and related theme that emerges is the notion of globalization. Nakano (Reference Nakano2002) has critically evaluated the idea of ‘cultural imperialism’ by making observations similar to those advanced by Lee (Reference Lee, Hara, Chan and Wong1999), Ogawa (Reference Ogawa, Chun, Rossiter and Shoesmith2004), and Yau (Reference Yau, Morris, Li and Ching-Kiu2005). In her view, the flow of Japanese television dramas to Hong Kong has not been initiated by producers in Tokyo, but by ‘unforeseen consumers’ and ‘unauthorized intermediaries’ in Hong Kong (Nakano, Reference Nakano2002: 229; see also Ng, Reference Ng and Lee2006). Specifically, just as most TV programs in Hong Kong had targeted the main audience, that is women over 40 years old, and ignored the younger generation, the latter found resonance in J-dramas that addressed frustrations and hardships encountered by youngsters in Japan. Facilitated by the technology of producing VCDs cheaply and fueled by information provided by local newspapers and magazines, J-dramas circulated speedily in Hong Kong.

The theme of globalization has also been investigated from the angle of the complex mediation of meanings at the global, regional, and national levels. Relying on textual analysis of television dramas produced in Japan and Hong Kong, Fung (Reference Fung2007) has found remarkable similarities in the ‘narratives, plots, and relations’ as well as homologies in (and fine differences between) the ideologies of gender roles, marriage, city relations, as well as love and consumption thus portrayed. Instead of seeing the ‘reappearance or regeneration of Japanese episodes’ and the homologies of ideologies as indications of cultural imperialism or copycat behavior, he believes they could have occurred naturally. They suggest not only the strong influence of Japanese culture over Hong Kong, but also Hong Kong's cultural proximity with Japan and distance from the West. Above all, he believes the ‘regenerated text’ could also ‘transform into other meanings with new uses and take on political roles in the indigenous culture’ of Hong Kong (Fung, Reference Fung2007: 272).

The complex mediation of meanings has also been examined by Ogawa (Reference Ogawa, Befu and Guichard-Anguis2001, Reference Ogawa, Chun, Rossiter and Shoesmith2004) even though he has not used the terms ‘localization’ and ‘hybridization’ explicitly. Focusing on the flow of Japanese popular music to Hong Kong, he suggests that there exist considerable gaps between the images of Japanese singers and music originally portrayed and those perceived in Hong Kong. Apart from wide differences between the tones and structures of Japanese and Cantonese, the short-term profit orientation of Hong Kong record companies also dampened their concern with ‘whether the image of cover song and singer correlates with the image of the original singer and song’ (Ogawa, Reference Ogawa, Chun, Rossiter and Shoesmith2004: 152).Footnote ¹⁰

Finally, although this essay cannot provide more details, it has to be mentioned that researchers have also relied on textual analysis of Japan's popular culture to understand the portrayal of gender roles and identities of the self (L. Nakano, Reference Nakano2001; Yau, Reference Yau and Nault2008b, Reference Yau2009a, Reference Yau2010b).

‘Traditional’ culture: meanings and social ramifications. Apart from popular culture, Hong Kong-based sociologists and anthropologists have also paid attention to Japan's traditional culture. Two of the most prominent topics are the changing impacts of traditional culture on self-identity (Mathews, Reference Mathews1996a, Reference Mathews1996b) and the ‘Ainu’ culture (Cheung, Reference Cheung1996, Reference Cheung2000, Reference Cheung2003, Reference Cheung, Amoeda, Lira, Pinheiro, Pinheiro and Pinheiro2008; Ogawa, Reference Ogawa1998, Reference Ogawa, Hara, Chan and Wong1999; Refsing, Reference Refsing1996, Reference Refsing2000). Most of these studies have relied on either the ethnographic method or the analysis of first-hand or secondary historical documents.

In the first place, Mathews (Reference Mathews1996a, Reference Mathews1996b) has compared the ‘meanings of life’ for the Japanese and Americans, analyzing their changes over time and examining how they have been shaped by the culture as well as social and institutional structures of the two societies. While agreeing that the ikigai of most Japanese conform to their cultural prescriptions – namely the overriding importance of the group over self, and the importance of work/family for men and family/children for women – the ikigai of contemporary Japanese also tend to change with a person's life course, focusing increasingly on the individual self as the ‘social role’ attributed to an individual subsides with old age and retirement.

However, among the elements of Japan's ‘traditional’ culture, the ‘Ainu’ culture has attracted more extensive attention among the Hong Kong-based scholars. Importantly, Refsing (Reference Refsing1996, Reference Refsing2000) has edited a number of books on their language, religion, folklore, and history as recorded by various early European travelers. In addition, she has also sought to understand the issue of ethnicity by examining why Europeans have continued to classify the ‘Ainu’ as ‘white’ people even after they have classified the Japanese and Chinese as ‘yellow’ (Refsing, Reference Refsing and Mackerras2003). The issue of ethnicity has been picked up by Ogawa (Reference Ogawa, Hara, Chan and Wong1999), who studies the revival of interest in the Ainu culture around the mid-1990s. Through a detailed ethnographic study of the actions, beliefs, and interests of the leaders and followers of the ‘Ainu culture revival movement’, including different generations of ethnic Ainu people and ethnic Japanese, he tries to explain why the Ainu culture revival movement could gain such widespread support in a country that has always prided itself as a single-ethnic society.

Though also concerned with the Ainu culture, Cheung (Reference Cheung2003, Reference Cheung, Amoeda, Lira, Pinheiro, Pinheiro and Pinheiro2008) has focused on its changes over time. He has examined the transition of the Ainu culture, as it has been shaped by the changing requirements for Japan's state formation since the Tokugawa Shoganate (including the manipulation of ethnic identity for the purpose of boundary maintenance, racialization, land expropriation, etc.), the promotion of ethnic tourism in the 1950s, the effort to enact the Ainu New Law since 1984, and indeed Japan's internationalization.