Abstract
AbstractTurkey and Japan have comparable histories of modernization beginning in the nineteenth century. They have since then produced modernities that are considered a mix of “Eastern” and “Western.” Over recent decades, both faced the question of what comes after modernity and began manufacturing their versions of authenticities and cultural exports. This paper comparatively locates two symptoms of this process. “Neo-Ottomanism” refers to the increasing cultural consumption of Turkey’s imperial past while “Cool Japan” emphasizes popular products in entertainment, fashion, youth culture, and food, intending to shift Japan’s image to a “cool” place. Both projects, in different ways, are sponsored by the state; yet their reception in popular culture illustrates the vexed relationship between the state and culture: while states endeavor to colonize culture for their own interests, popular culture provides avenues to outwit the state’s attempts. Popular culture’s autonomy in both contexts has to do with the collapse of traditional hierarchies, which has paved the ways for the promotion and export of new identity claims. Local and global representations of neo-Ottomanism and Cool Japan differ. Internally, they are fragmented; externally, they are linked to international “soft power,” and offer alternatives modernities in Turkey and Japan’s regional areas of influence.
Highlights
Popular culture in Turkey and Japan has witnessed a great degree of commercialization and freedom from state control since the 1990s
Both Turkey and Japan have manufactured and exported their versions of cultural authenticity: neo-Ottomanism and Cool Japan, two attempts to rewrite the past in the contemporary context of alternative modernities and neoliberal transformations
Turkey and Japan formed a complex relationship with modernity and identified the West both as a model to follow in pursuit of modernity and an intruder to avoid in protecting national identity
Summary
Popular culture in Turkey and Japan has witnessed a great degree of commercialization and freedom from state control since the 1990s. In both Turkish and Japanese contexts, the reevaluation of the past and marketing the country for domestic and international audiences represent renegotiations with modernity and the question of what comes after modernity In this process, both Turkey and Japan have manufactured and exported their versions of cultural authenticity: neo-Ottomanism and Cool Japan, two attempts to rewrite the past in the contemporary context of alternative modernities and neoliberal transformations. We intend to show how neo-Ottomanism and Cool Japan offer overlapping responses to the anxieties of modernization, neoliberal commercialization of culture, and exigencies of crafting and presenting an appealing national identity for domestic and global audiences in the contemporary world of branding nations. We discuss the significance of modernity as an image to be both consumed locally and exported globally
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