CHINESE FANS OF JAPANESE AND KOREAN POP CULTURE: Nationalistic Narratives and International Fandom

摘要

Popular cultures of East Asia have seen phenomenal developments in the past few decades, garnering increased attention from scholars based in various regions and disciplines. Joining this dynamic body of scholarship, Lu Chen's book Chinese Fans of Japanese and Korean Culture: Nationalistic Narratives and International Fandom makes a timely contribution to the field by connecting cultural studies with a critical interrogation of grassroots nationalism shaped by transnational fandom. This new investigation challenges the conventional wisdom that transnational circulation and consumption of global commodities will break down national barriers and cultivate a cosmopolitan vision among young consumers. Consisting of a brief introduction and eight chapters, this book focuses on a case study of Chinese fans' reception of Japanese and South Korean cultural products to shed new light on the intriguing entanglements of consumerism and patriotism in an age characterized by the seemingly impossible marriage of capital globalization and populist nationalism. While the inflow of foreign cultural products has attracted a large following of Chinese fans, their reactions to Japanese and South Korean popular culture have fluctuated with the shifting economic and diplomatic relationships between the three East Asian countries. Following this thread of inquiry, the short introductory chapter raises the central question of the book, that is "how Chinese fans of Japanese and Korean popular culture have formed their own nationalistic discourse since the 1990s" (1-2). Chapter 1 then offers a literature review of the existing scholarship on the intersection of popular culture, soft power, cultural imperialism, and nationalism. Chen adopts the central concept of "fan labor," which refers to "the immaterial labor consisting of obtaining information and interpreting texts that are esteemed by fans," to connect the in-depth analyses of "macro-structure and micro-behavior of individual participation" in the formation of the nationalist discourse (19).