Acta Orientalia Vilnensia

Vytautas Magnus University

This issue discusses cultural aspects of modern Japan and Korea seen through various media. Media in this issue is not simple mass media like newspapers, journals, and TV, but media in a much broader meaning. According to Helen Katz, media has two roles: to inform and to entertain. Newspapers inform but also entertain readers. Literature could also be considered a medium to entertain readers. Autobiographic literature or non-fiction literature informs a kind of reality. Fashion could be also
considered a medium for a human being to transmit information (occupation, taste, identity) and entertain (for example, the fashionable style of singers permits them to entertain TV spectators). In this issue, we approach some cultural aspects of modern Japan and Korea as seen through several types of media from popular culture, film, fashion and newspapers to cultural media as a tool of public diplomacy. Our topics are as follows.

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Nanzan University

Abstract
This study examines the way in which Tokyo has exploited the atomic
bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a symbolic means of inducing post-war
Japanese collective identity. To consider an effort on Tokyo’s part to integrate A-bomb
memories into the country’s victim consciousness rather than to overcome the past, the
study compares the A-bombed cities written with different Japanese forms, the peace
parks, and the peace memorials. It also analyses the news coverage by two national
daily papers on the A-bomb memorial days. By doing so, the study shows how the
nation has been guided in its memory by the government.

University of Hyogo

Abstract
This paper examines how Japanese contemporary fashion has been accepted globally, especially in the case of London. The popularity of Japanese fashion in the West started in the 19th century with kimono-style dressing gowns, but for the true
design influence known as Japan-shock, we had to wait for the appearance of the avantgarde Japanese fashion designers who participated in the Paris collection in the 1970s and 1980s. A new keyword for ‘fashionable Japan’ today is kawaii, the notion of cute. This is intimately linked to street fashion and subculture and has been established and received as part of ‘cool Japan’ through the worldwide popularity of Japanese manga and anime. Moreover, it could be said that Japan is fashionable and the Japanese are thought of as fashionable people, but who is described as fashionable, and by whom? To reflect upon this statement, ‘the Japanese are fashionable’, as ideology, picking up the globally popular Japanese street fashion magazine FRUiTS, I would like to investigate the double meaning of fashion in the present and also what it means to be fashionable.

Ritsumeikan University

Abstract
This paper examines how five Godzilla films illuminate the complicated relationship between Japan and the United States over the use of nuclear weapons. The United States dropped the first atomic bombs on Japan and created the first nuclear monster film, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), which inspired the Godzilla series. The popularity of these Godzilla films derives from skilfully grappling with the political, social and cultural problems created by the use of nuclear weapons and
science/technology, both inside Japan and in relations between Japan and the United States. This paper takes a historical perspective and shows how the Godzilla characters reflect these attitudes across time, moving from a scapegoat for the Americans to a saviour of the Japanese.

Vytautas Magnus University / Mykolas Romeris University

Abstract
In our paper, we discuss how French fashion was acculturated in Japan after WWII, a period in which Japan rushed to modernise/occidentalise. Through an analysis of the dominant discourse of Japanese fashion magazines, we focus on the following
French fashion trend that spread throughout Japan: a long, flared skirt inspired by a Paris fashion. The skirt was a new look by French fashion designer Christian Dior just after WWII. The other focus of this paper is on the soaring popularity of European brand Louis Vuitton in 1970 and 1999. Modernisation in the fashion realm following WWII could be said to be the localisation of the French fashions followed by Americans; the manner by which French fashion was acculturated in Japan after WWII changed according to the Japanese social context. Articles in the dressmaking fashion magazine Soen promoted the new style blindly. In the 1970s when great economic growth was realised, Japanese travellers shopping for real Louis Vuitton bags in France were attempting to belong to middle class society. Featured articles on Louis Vuitton in 1999 presented several ways of localising the usage of this bag for all generations of women to find belonging in their own groups.

Vytautas Magnus University

Abstract
Korea, with insufficient natural resources and a limited consumer market, began to take notice of the cultural content industry in the 21st century. This means that the cultivation of this industry has not taken place for a long time compared to Japan,
the USA or Hong Kong. Yet Korea has obtained an astonishing outcome in a short time. The popular culture of South Korea, with the appellation of hallyu, boasted of an enormous strength initially in the Asian market and subsequently stretched to markets in other countries, too. Seeing that Korean cultural archetypes do not play a successful role in the cultural content business of Korea in general, the position of shamanism is truly trivial among the others. I would like to analyse and discuss the meaning, function and potential of Korean shamanism in the field of the Korean cultural content industry.

Vytautas Magnus University

Abstract
This paper analyses the development of post-war Japan’s cultural diplomacy since 1945, dividing it into four stages. It raises questions about what government institutions have been conducting cultural diplomacy, what the main international challenges have been, what communication tools have been used, and what kind of cultural discourses were prevalent during a particular stage. Special emphasis is put on the division of traditional versus popular cultural discourses within the cultural diplomacy of Japan, mainly concentrating on the important shift in this aspect that occurred at the beginning of the 21st century. This shift was marked by the government’s increasing shift towards popular culture discourse and the deliberate exploitation of that to promote Japan in the world.

Vytautas Magnus University

Abstract
South Korea’s experience wielding soft power is usually associated with the Korean Wave, which swept the Asian region off its feet predominantly during the first decade of this century. In this article I will however argue that the phenomenon of the Korean Wave has never been intended as a calculated attempt on the part of the South Korean government to enhance the overall South Korean image worldwide and thus increase South Korean international might and prestige. To prove the validity of this hypothesis, I will provide a concise historical overview of the inception, development and spread of South Korean popular culture, while at the same time tracing its underlying soft power implications. I will likewise attempt to discuss the popular reception of the Korean Wave in three East Asian countries, i.e. Mainland China, Taiwan and Japan, and one European country, i.e. Lithuania. The scope of the endeavour has been largely restricted to the cinematic aspect of the Korean Wave, for I consider the creation of motion pictures and drama serials to be by far the most precious, influential and revealing form of art.

Guy Podoler. Monuments, Memory, and Identity: Constructing the Colonial Past in South Korea, Welten Ostasiens. Worlds of East Asia. Mondes de l‘Extrême- Orient 18, Bern: Peter Lang AG, 2011, 272 pp., num. ill. ISBN 978-3-0343-0660-7 (hardbound), € 52.80

Pauline C. Lee. Li Zhi 李贽, Confucianism and the Virtue of Desire, SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture, Albany: SUNY Press, 2012, pp. 202. ISBN 978-1-4384-3927-3 (hardcover), $75.00

The editors of the Acta Orientalia Vilnensia, in co-operation with the Oriental library at Vilnius University, highly welcome a regular exchange of scholarly periodicals publishing on Asian and Middle Eastern studies. For exchange proposals, please contact the secretary of the editorial board. Journals or serial publications received under the programme in 2012:

• Acta Asiatica. Bulletin of the Institute of Eastern Studies
• Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute
• Archív Orientální
• Asian Ethnology
• Asian Studies Review
• Asiatische Studien/Études Asiatiques
• Brahmavidya: The Adyar Library Bulletin
• Bulletin of the Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute
• Cracow Indological Studies
• Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy
• East and West
• Folia Orientalia
• Indologica Taurinensia
• Japanese Journal of Religious Studies
• Journal of Sukrtindra Oriental Research Institute
• Journal of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai
• Journal of the International College for Postgraduate Buddhist Studies
• Journal of the Oriental Institute, M.S. University of Baroda
• Linguistic and Oriental Studies from Poznan
• Monumenta Serica. Journal of Oriental Studies
• New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies
• Orientalia Suecana
• Pandanus
• Philosophy East and West
• Religion East and West
• Rocznik Orientalistyczny
• Studia Indologiczne
• Studia Orientalia
• Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens
• ZINBUN