Consuming ‘America’: from Symbol to System

Abstract

Tokyo Disneyland (TDL) opened in a Tokyo suburb in 1983, stimulating a number of debates, and it continues to draw about 15 million people every year. TDL has come to symbolize the Japanese cities that formed during the ‘bubble economy’ of the 1980s. This means that TDL has become an extremely well designed example of the highly organized consumerism of Japan today. At the same time, this theme park has been spoken of as ‘“America” in Japan’. Its origins and successes are seen as the culmination of postwar Japanese ‘Americanization’. Yet, what kind of meaning does that ‘America’ hold? As we will see later, cultural Americanization started in the late 1920s and the images of Disney films and comics permeated Japan after the 1950s. But the phenomenal success of TDL in the 1980s seems to show that something different from the mere extension of this Americanization process has emerged. Here, I will focus on the cultural politics of TDL and reconsider the process of Americanization in contemporary Japan. I will also try to clarify the structural change of ‘America’ in Japan that took place from the 1970s. Moreover, I want to locate the process of developing and consuming ‘America’ in Japan within the contemporary global topography of identity.