Revisiting Colonial and Postcolonial

Revisiting Colonial and

Postcolonial

ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES OF

THE CULTURAL INTERFACE

EDITED BY

HEUNG WAH WONG AND

KEIJI MAEGAWA

. , Bridge21 Publications Los Angeles

Table of Contents Contributors .................................................................................... 9

Preface .............................................................................................. 15 Heung-wah Wong & Keiji Maegawa Chapter I Dynamics of Culture in Interface-Theoretical Consideration ................................................................................. 21 Keiji Maegawa Chapter 2

Revisiting Colonial and Postcolonial: Anthropological Studies of the Cultural Interface Edited by Heung Wah Wong and Keiji Maegawa Copyright © 2014 Distributed by Transaction Publishers 10 Place South, Suite 102 Piscataway, NJ 08854 All rights reserved. Exclusive English language rights are licensed to Bridge21 Publications, LLC. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information contact Bridge21 Publications, LLC, 11111 Santa Monica Blvd, Suite 220, Los Angeles, CA 90025. Published in the United States Cover Design by Chi-Wai Li ISBN 978-1-62643·012-9 Paperback

There is no Simple Japanization, Creolization or Localization: Some Reflections on the Cross-cultural Migration of Japanese Popular Culture to Hong Kong ..................................................... 43 Heung-wah Wong Hoi-yan Yau Chapter 3 Constructing Self and Other in the New Guinea Highlands: Whiteness and Inter-Clan Competition in the Postcolonial Period ............................................................................................... 73 Hiroki Fukagawa Chapter 4

The Dilemma of Ordinary Muslims in Religious Revival:

A Case Study of Hui Society in Kunming, Yunnan Province,

China ................................................................................................ 97

Masashi Nara Chapter 5 Creating a New Meaning for Buddhist Rituals: Two Forms of Religion and Conversion among Contemporary Indian Buddhists in Nagpur City .............................................................. 131 Tatsushi Nemoto

Chapter 2 There is no Simple Japanization,

Creolization or Localization: Some

Reflections on the Cross-cultural

Migration of Japanese Popular

Culture to Hong Kong

Heung-wah Wong Hoi-yanYau

INTRODUCTION The general aim of this chapter is to reflect on "cultural interface," a notion conventionally understood as the very point at which two or more independent cultural forms corne into contact and interact. While this notion gives primacy to the articulation between forces of different cultural forms or the dialectical mediation between the global and the local, it tends to assume that the local wm respond uniformly to different forms of pop culture from the same external force, leading to the proliferation of ideas such as the Americanization ofJapan and South Korea (Park 2009, Yoshimi 2003) or the "Japanization ofAsia" (Iwabuchi 2002). We, however, argue to the contrary-that the local culture responds differently to different forms of pop culture even though they are from the same place of origin. In this chapter, we shall be using the cross-cultural migration of Japanese pop culture, including TV dramas, pornography and retailing business, into Hong Kong as our examples to reflect on cultural interface. We shall demonstrate that the Hong Kong

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Revisiting Colonial and Postcolonial

There is no Simple Japanizalion, Creollzatlon or Localization

consumers respond differently to Japanese TV dramas, Japanese adult video, and Yaohan, a Japanese retailing business, even though they are al....,gm Japan and unambiguously constitute a form of Japanese pop culture. They are so because, as Chun perspectively points out, the local culture "develop[s] and thrive[s] more as a function of its receptivity than its production" (Chun 2012: 499). That is to say, the fact that they all come from Japan does not guarantee that their reception by the local will be the same. Neither does the term "Japanization" cover all the cultural phenomena resulting from the interaction between Japanese pop culture and local Hong Kong geopolitics. The results of the interaction between local Hong Kong culture and external forces are always indeterminate. This indeterminacy implies that cultural interface should not be seen as a physical point where different cultural forms interact but a "third zone" where there is a complex fit or tension between the local sociocultural contexts and the foreign cultural form and that neither of them can determine the effects ofthis cultural articulation. This is crossed with what Sahlins calls the "historical conjuncture," which refers to "a set of historical relationships that at once reproduce the traditional cultural categories and give them new values out ofthe pragmatic context" (1985: 125). The rest of our paper is about such ethnographic discoveries. At one level, Japanese TV dramas, pornography, and retail businesses all entered into a peculiar historical conjuncture with the local culture when they migrated to Hong Kong. At another level then, we try to generalize, inspired by Foster (2005: 167), about a "range of relationships" the local Hong Kong consumers seek to establish with the foreign Japanese forces, or what we shall call the "identity marker," and "concretization of the local sexual ideal" and "supplements." But before we move onto these ethnographic case studies, we need to spell out the geopolitics of post­ war Hong Kong, the very important context with which various forms of Japanese pop culture interacted.

Socially, a large number of Chinese capitalists alongside ordinary farmers fled to Hong Kong in the midst ofthe Civil War (Wong, 1988: 20). The massive influx of Chinese refugees into Hong Kong continued well into 1949, leading to the sudden explosion of Hong Kong population. This situation was alleviated when the British Colonial Government finally passed the "Immigrants Control Ordinance 1949" and introduced the Hong Kong Identity Card to regulate the inflow and outflow of Chinese migrants into Hong Kong (Law & Lee, 2006: 219; Siu & Ku, 2008: 156). All of this means that the door to Hong Kong was closed. Hong Kong was completely from Mainland China. The territory suddenly became a heaven for those Chinese who desired freedom (Tsang, 2004: 80). Now as a bounded society, people there began to imagine their own identity, paving the way for the formation of"Hong Kong people identity." Politically, the founding ofthe PRC also changed the politics of Hong Kong. As Chun (1996a: 58) argues, the year 1949 "was a major turning point which transformed Hong Kong into a battlefield for contesting 'national' identities." Of those Chinese who migrated to Hong Kong during the late 1940S and 1950S, many of them were supporters ofthe right-wing KMT (Tse & Siu, 2010: 77). They were in sympathy with the KMT cause and opposed to the present government of China (Leung, 1996: 143). The pro-KMT China faction soon clashed with the pro-Communist China faction in Hong Kong, a thing which the Colonial Government had been attempting to avoid. The fact that there had not been a Hong Kong identity as such made Hong Kong a battlefield for contesting these 'different' Chinese identities. The intense conflicts between the two factions erupted in the 1956 riots and most (in)famously the 1967 IDots (Chun 1996: 58). The 1956 riots were sparked by a trivial thing: when the local pro-KMT residents in the Li Cheng Uk Estate were required to remove their KMT flags on October 10,1956, the National Day of the Republic ofChina (ROC) (Leung, 1996: 143). The 1967 riots were instead caused bypro-communist leftists in Hong Kong, inspired by the Cultural Revolution in the PRC, who turned a labour dispute into scale demonstrations against the British colonial rule (Leung, 1996: 145). Economically, the founding ofthe PRC likewise put Hong Kong, which was closely linked to China economically, in a very difficult position. Since the end of the 19th century Hong Kong had been integrated into a global capitalist economy under British colonial rule. Given this early integration, Hong Kong was definitely influenced by the changes to the international political economy after the Second World War. From the start of the Korean War, and the subsequent United Nations embargo on trade with

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THE GEOPOLITICS OF POST-WAR HONG KONG The immediate post-war Hong Kong was a state of chaos and poverty. This situation was further accelerated when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took over China and officially founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. The founding of the PRC can be seen as the single most important event in the period between 1949 and 1967, as Chun argues (1996: 58), because it had profound impacts on Hong Kong soCially, economically, and politically.

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Revisiting Colonial and Postcolonial

There is no Simple Japanization, Creolization or Localization

China in the early 1950s, Hong Kong's entrepot trade, at that time the major economic activity of the territory, suffered tremendously because China had been Hong Kong's largest trading partner. In addition, the newly established Communist China imposed a rigid control on its foreign trade, which made Hong Kong's entrepot trade decline further (Chiu, Ho, and Lui, 1997: 30-1). To survive economic setbacks owing to the Cold War tensions, as well as to steer Hong Kong away from the on-going national conflicts, the Colonial Government chose to transfonn Hong Kong into a free market port by turning to export-oriented industrialisation (Chun, 1996: 58). The export-oriented industrialization in the 1950S proved to be very successful in the following decade. Manufacturing's share of the GDP increased rapidly (Chiu, Ho, and Lui, 1997: 52). The rapid growth of the manufacturing sector increased the income of most Hong Kong workers. In the second half of the 1970S Hong Kong manufacturers faced keen competition from other newly industrializing countries, and at the same time suffered from protectionism in their export markets. Fortunately, China's introduction of open-door policies in 1978 helped to revive the territory's entrepot trade, while the influx of migrants from China helped to ease Hong Kong's labor shortage. Hong Kong manufacturers were thus able to maintain labor-intensive, low-wage, and low-profit-margin production in the early 1980s (Chiu, Ho, and Lui, 1997: 53-5). Since the mid-1980s, however, production costs in the manufacturing sector have risen rapidly because of the soaring property market, labor shortages, and rising wages. The Hong Kong government's ending of the touch base policy' in 1980 had dried up the constant supply of fresh immigrants for manufacturers to employ as low-wage labor (Chiu, Ho, and Lui, 1997: 55-6). In response, manufacturers relocated their production bases to the mainland to exploit the abundant supply of low-wage labor there. According to Chiu, Ho, and Lui, this relocation strategy had a two-fold consequence for Hong Kong's employment structure. First, the absolute number of persons employed in manufacturing fell. Second, within the manufacturing sector the proportion of production and related workers fell by a fifth, from 82.3 percent in 1981 to 68.2 percent in 1991, while that of professional, technical, administrative, and managerial workers tripled, from 3.8 percent in 1981 to 11.4 percent in 1991. These statistics, as Chiu, Ho and Lui (1997: 71-7) argue, show that a double-restructuring process was taking place. In the general economic structure, there had been a sectoral shift from manufacturing to finance, trading, and other services from the 1970S

onward. Meanwhile, manufacturing itself had moved from a production to a commercial orientation. The resulting occupational shift from production to commerce gave birth to a new middle class and changed the class structure of Hong Kong society.

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THE EMERGENCE OF THE NEW MIDDLE CLASS Lui and Wong (1992) conducted a mobility study in Hong Kong at the beginning of the 1990s. Based on the survey data, they constructed a complex seven-folded class scheme, along with a simplified three-fold class version. Lui and Wong (1992: 50) discovered that more than 60 percent of the rapidly expanding service classes did not originate from a service class background. In other words, a good number of people in Hong Kong managed to achieve upward mobility through education alongside hard work in the past twenty years. These new service class people formed Hong Kong's new middle class. From the analyses by Chiu, Ho and Lui (1997) and Lui and Wong (1992), we can see that most of the new middle class were born in the late 1950S and early 1960s, and had grown up in the 1970S. The 1970S was a very important period in modem Hong Kong history, as during this decade Hong Kong society changed rapidly and radically. Incomes and living standards improved considerably, with the result that working class children no longer needed to quit school early and work to support their families. Now, their families could afford to send them to secondary school and even to university. Most would be the first member in their families' history to enter university. Meanwhile, the sectoral shift from manufacturing to finance, trading, and services created opportunities for these well-educated young people to leave the working class and join the service class. However, the new middle class could only take shape insofar as they began to see themselves not as members of either of the two Chinas but as the "people ofHong Kong." Arguably, the abovementioned 1967 riots were instrumental in diverting local people away from the struggles between the two Chinese identities. Although many people in Hong Kong were sympathetic with the pro-Communist faction, they were equally upset, if not angry, with the 1967 riots for which the pro-Communist faction was mainly responsible (Cheung, 2000; 122). They found fault with the leftists for their overreaction, turning the trivial labor dispute into full-scale demonstrations against the British colonial rule, thus destabilizing the social peace of Hong Kong society, which they gradually deemed crucial to their own well-being (Cheung, 2000: 122-4).

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Revisiting Colonial and Postcolonial

There is no Simple Japanization, Creolization or Localization

The Cultural Revolution on the mainland during the 1960s where millions of civilians were violently persecuted as "capitalist roaders," further served to dampen the local people's interest in Communism (Chun, 1996: 58). As a result, the pro-Communist faction lost much of its momentum and influence in Hong Kong. People in Hong Kong became less involved in political affiliations and gradually alienated from the two Chinas (Chun, 1996: 58). In the wake of the 1967 riots, the Colonial Government began to implement a series of social policies aiming to improve the poor living standards of Hong Kong people, thereby relieving their anger and steering the local people away from further riots. These policies were instrumental in paving the way for the emergence ofthe new middle class in Hong Kong.

not only those 50,000 families, but also illegal squatters, was begun (Lee, 1999: 121-2). The resettlement blocks improved residents' lives by ending worries about personal safety. However, their washing, toilet, and cooking facilities were all communal, leading to interpersonal conflicts that became the hallmark of social life (Lee, 1999: 123). This harsh social environment helped cultivate survival strategies that could be summarised in the concept of shingmuk, which is a "Cantonese slang, meaning a combination of smartness, vigilance, swiftness, worldliness, assertiveness, agility, and independence" (Lee, 1999: 24). In short, living in resettlement blocks, one had to possess both ngei and shingmuk. Moreover, the new middle class people, born in the late 1950S and early 1960s, grew up in the resettlement blocks, but with new burgeoning opportunities to improve their lives through education or entrepreneurship. Unlike their parents, many adopted a forward-looking orientation described in Cantonese as pok (pro-activity and risk-taking, c.f. Lee, 1999: 133). It can be seen that the new middle class not only inherited from their parents the old attitude of negi, but also cultivated the new shingmuk surviving strategy in the H-shaped resettlement blocks and developed a pok orientation. Neither the new shingmukstrategy nor the pok orientation existed in their parents' generation. In addition, the series of government policies and institutions such as the ICAC inscribed the Western/modern values of fairness and justice and the sense of community attachment in the new middle class. Consequently, the new middle class developed a worldview that combined their parents' Chinese/traditional/old value system with their Western/modern/new one, which came to constitute the cultural logic of the identity ofthe new middle class.

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THE NEW MIDDLE CLASS: AN IN-BETWEEN GENERATION The 1970S saw the implementation of a series of social policies aimed at improving living standards, such as the Ten Year Housing Programme, initiated under Governor Murray MacLehose, who arrived in 1972. MacLehose also worked to make society fairer. For example, he established the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) to curb the corruption that was a general phenomenon in Hong Kong in the 1950S and 1960s. The ICAC proved to be very successful not only in curbing corruption but also in inscribing the British Western/modern values of fairness and justice, especially within the new middle class, through its many educational programs. The new middle class thus absorbed a British western/modern ethos of fairness and social justice, which did not exist in their parents' generation. However, they could not completely shed the influence of their parents' Chinese/traditional value system, which is why they are regarded as an in-between generation. In this regard, Lee's research (1999) on housing in Hong Kong is very illu strative. As mentioned above, more than sixty percent ofthe new middle class originated in the working and petty bourgeois classes. In the 1950S, most working class people lived in extremely congested old tenement blocks and squatter houses. These congested conditions fostered the concept of ngei (extreme endurance) and the craze for personal space among these working class people. During Christmas 1953, a fire in Shek Kip Mei destroyed the homes of 50,000 families and forced the government to make up its mind to implement a new housing policy: the mass construction of seven-storey H-shaped resettlement blocks to resettle

FROM THE MIDDLE CLASS IDENTITY TO HEUNG GONG YAHN (HONG KONG PEOPLE) IDENTITY We would suggest that the "in-betweenness" of the new middle class essentially amounts to what Sahlins (1999: 413) calls "structure," which is "[bluilt into perception, endemic in the grammer, working in the habitus," works as 'the organizaiton of conscious experience that is not itself consciously experienced." Hong Kong society, its people and various social phenomena are always described in terms of the blend between East and West, between traditional and modern, and between old and new. The theme that "Hong Kong is a place where 'East meets West: but where 'Chinese tradition' still holds sway," as Evans and Tam (1997: 5) have pointed out, has been the way whereby people in Hong

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Revisiting Colonial and Postcolonial

There is no Simple Japanlzation, Creolizatlon or Localization

Kong commonly construct their identity. They 5) have observed, "Hong Kong Chinese, when they encounter mainlanders, are able to explain their differences from them by their 'Westerness,' when they encounter expatriates they can explain their differences from them by their 'Chineseness.'" These observations demonstrate that the identity of heung gong yahn (Hong Kong people) lies somewhere between West and East, traditional and modern, and old and new. Consequently, the new middle class, unlike their parents, did not identify themselves as pure Chinese immigrants who tended to regard Hong Kong as a place of temporary shelter. On the other hand, they were influenced by an ever-growing sense of community attachment to Hong Kong and had gradually become suspicious about the unquestioned welcoming of western culture. They identified themselves with Hong Kong, their home. We suggest that the above identity of heung gong yahn constitutes an important background against which the venture of a Japanese retailer, Yaohan, into Hong Kong in the 1980s should be understood.

Instead of merging with other regional supermarkets or allowing Yaohan to be taken over, Wada Kazuo, however, chose to go overseas. Wada Kazoo made his first overseas investment in Brazil in the early 1970S (Itagaki 1990: 113-5). In spite of his subsequent withdrawal from Brazil in the second half of the 1970S, Wada Kazuo was determined to continue his overseas strategy, so that by 1995, Yaohan was operating fifty-seven stores in twelve countries and regions. One of the destinations was Hong Kong.

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YAOHAN AS THE IDENTITY MARKER OF HONG KONG PEOPLE Yaohan originated from a village grocery store in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. In December 1930 Wada Ry6hei, funded by his father-in-law Tajima Hanjir6 who was the founder of Yaohan, opened a branch store in Atami, a hot spring resort town fifty miles west of Tokyo (Wada 1988: 35-6). The store expanded to include product lines other than groceries as more of Wada Ry6hei's sons joined the company (Wada et al, 1994: 94). Almost at the same time, Wada Kazuo, at that time senior managing director of the store, went to the United States to study retail businesses. On his return; he persuaded his father to convert Yaohan into a modem supermarket. Wada Ry6hei was convinced and appointed Wada Kazoo company president, and he himself became its chairman (Tsuchiya 1991: 138-40). Wada Kazoo then started to build a regional "mnrTr1",rj,.,,,t opening ten stores within Shizuoka Prefecture from 1962 to 1970.

Globalizing Yaohan At the beginning of the 1970S, Wada Kazuo adopted a strategy for survival different from that of other regional supermarkets in the same region. During the 1960s, some national supermarket chains such as Daiei and Seiyu started to establish stores throughout Japan. This expansion threatened the survival of many regional supermarkets including Yaohan.

Yaohan's Arrival in Hong Kong At the beginning of the 1980s, the people of Hong Kong were facing a crisis of confidence caused by the diplomatic arguments between the Chinese and British governments in the Sino-British negotiations over the future of Hong Kong. A famous local property development company, Sun Hung Kai, was about to complete a large private housing estate named New Town Plaza next to the ShaHn station of Kowloon Canton Railway in the early 1980s, but could not find a large-scale retailer to operate an anchor store there because of the political uncertainties in the territory. The developer then turned to Japan. However, many giant retailers were worried about the future of Hong Kong and were unwilling to make such an investment. Finally, the project was brought to Wada Kazuo, the chairman of Yaohan who expressed an interest. In December 1984. Yaohan opened its first store in Shatin, a new town in the New Territories of Hong Kong.

FrOID Doing to Going Shopping: A New Shopping Cultnre The development of shopping facilities and the associated changes in the shopping experience among Hong Kong shoppers from the 19605 to present are closely related to the development of housing in Hong Kong. The typical pattern of retail facilities in the 1960s was that of small, run shops located on the ground floor of the seven-storey resettlement blocks, selling daily necessities to the residents and thereby dominating the market. These small family-rnn shops were complemented by open markets (gaisi) nearby selling fresh vegetables, meat, fish, and so on. Some of these open markets developed into street markets selling low­ end but comparatively modern styled clothing (Lam 1996: 23-4). The department store sector at that time was dominated by three major types of shops: Gwok fa gung si (department stores selling exclusively Chinese made products), local department stores such as

Revisiting Colonial and Postcolonial

There is no Simple Japanlzation, Creolization or Localization

Wing On, and foreign department stores such as Lane Crawford, Dragon Seeds, or Daimaru. All foreign department stores were located in high­ end core retail areas such as Central, Tshimshatsui, and Causeway Bay, while gwokfo gung si and local department stores opened their stores in both high-end and low-end core retail areas (Mong Kok and Yau Ma Tei), as well as residential areas such as Sung Po Kwong and Shamshuipo. The dominant pattern of shopping in the 1960s had been of housewives of low and lower-middle income groups, which constituted a majority of the territory's population, shopping for their daily necessities in the groundfloor shops oftheir residential blocks and buying fresh food in nearby open markets. In other words, they seldom did their shopping in department stores except on occasions such as Chinese New Year's Eve. Usually, parents went to gwokfo gung si with their children during the Chinese New Year's Eve season to buy new shoes and clothes for them, as well as special food stuffs for the new year. Teenagers seldom shopped because at that time they did not have much pocket money. Some of them shopped occasionally in low-end retail areas such as Mong Kok for a pair ofjeans or a pair of sports shoes when they saved up enough money. Well­ to-do customers went to shop in foreign department stores in the high­ end core retail areas. It can be said that shopping in the 1960s for most Hong Kong people was done predominatedly for practical rather than entertainment purposes. In other words, most Hong Kong people did rather than went shopping. Their main concerns were price and how long the merchandise would last rather than trends because at that time it was not unusual for young children to wear the clothes of their elder siblings in order to save money. The Ten Year Housing Programme mentioned above started at the beginning of the 1970S and aimed at improving the living conditons of most Hong Kong people. Shopping facilities in public housing estates were also modernized. Purpose-built multi-storey shopping centers that housed a wide variety of shops were built inside the new public housing estates. The first such shopping center was built in Lek Yuen Estate in Shatin new town in the second half of the 1970S (Lam 1996: 26). From that time on, many other similar shopping centers in new public housing estates could be found. Similar shopping centers were also found in private housing estates. With the emergence of shopping centers in both public and private housing estates, the meaning of shopping in Hong Kong started to change from doing to going shopping.

The development of New Town Plaza in Shatin and the presence of Yaohan as the anchor store in the Plaza in the first half of the 1980s turned out to be the most important mark of such changes. A:5 mentioned above, Sun Hung Kai Properties Limited was the property developer of New Town Plaza. New Town Plaza includes three phases, completed in 1984,1988, and 1990 respectively (Lam 1996: 27). In addition, Sun Hung Kai built two six -storey shopping malls to provide residents there modern shopping facilities. Yaohan was the mall's anchor store, occupying most of the space on the first three floors. Other stores included young fashion chains, specialty shops, herbal medicine shops, jewelery shops, fast food shops, cake shops, western restaurants, game centers, mini-cinemas, and so on. There were also three to four major Chinese restaurants inside the mall. The Plaza is connected to the Shatin station through a walkway so that customers can get access to the Plaza once they get off the train (Philips, Sternquist, and Mui 1992: 22). Yaohan in Shatin was very successful in the 1980s and its success attracted not only more and more Hong Kong shoppers both from Shatin area and other parts of Kowloon to shop there, but also families to move to live in the New Town Plaza or other private housing estates in Shatin. These families had to be middle-class, otherwise they could not have afforded to buy a flat there. But why could Yaohan attract Hong Kong middle-class families in the 1980s?

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The More People Shop at Yaohan, the More They Become Heung Gong Yahn One of Yaohan's attractive qualities for the new middle class lies in the fact that its business model matched the cultural logic of the new middle class identity. Until the arrival of Yaohan in 1984, all Japanese department stores in Hong Kong established their outlets in core retail areas such as Causeway Bay and Tsimshatsui, and considered their main customers to be Japanese tourists, foreign expatriates, and the local rich, to whom they could sell expensive European-brand goods (Nikkei Ryiitsu Shinbun 1993: 92). Yaohan however located its chain stores in the shopping centers of densely populated new towns and supplied daily necessities to local shoppers of the middle and lower middle classes (Nomura Research Institute 1992: 242). In addition, Yaohan ran more stores in Hong Kong than the other Japanese department stores. Through the merchandizing policy, locational strategy and clientele, Yaohan successfully differentiated its image from those Japanese department stores in Hong Kong.

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Revisiting Colonial and Postcoloniilll

There is no Simple Japanlzation, Creollzatlon or Localization

At the same time, Yaohan was different from the gwokfo gung si, local department stores, and supermarkets in terms of its business model and image. Yaohan could offer one-stop shopping to customers. Neither gwok fa gung sf nor local department stores and supermarkets could provide such a service for their customers. Local supermarkets only sold fresh food stuffs and daily necessities, while gwok fa gung sf and local department stores could only provide non-food merchandise. In addition, Yaohan's supermarkets were generally larger and cleaner, offered a wider range of merchandize, and were able to manage merchandise better than local supermarkets. Gwok fa gung sf did not have supermarkets and food arcades, and paid less attention to customer service than Yaohan. The differences in business models between Yaohan and gwokfo gung si, local department stores, and supermarkets lead to the differences in images. Gwokfo gung sihad a strong image ofChineseness, while Yaohan did not; open markets are closely related to tradition, while Yaohan is associated with modernity; and local department stores have an image of conservative and old, while Yaohan represents something new and advanced. Therefore, Yaohan represented something between Chinese and foreign/western, tradition and modern, old and new: an image that matched the cultural logic of the identity formation as heung gong yahn of the new middle class in the 1980s. The identity of heung gong yahn, as noted above, lies somewhere between West and East, traditional and modern, and old and new. This constitutes a happy parallel to the cultural logic of the identity of heung gong yahn. This parallel further renders Yaohan as what Sahlins (1976: 177) calls a modern totem for the heung gong yahn in the sense that the utility ofYaohan is determined by the social significance attached, on the one hand, to the company's contrasts among other Japanese department stores and foreign retailers as non-foreign/western; and on the other hand, to its differences from local department stores, gwok fa gung sf, supermarkets, and open markets as non-Chinese. This makes Yaohan a useful object to the new middle class people who are differentiated from other subjects in the same way as Yaohan is from other retailers in Hong Kong. Yaohan thus became the identity symbol ofthe class. It can be seen that Hong Kong people's interests in Yaohan and the shopping experience represented within its Shatin store were constituted by a logic of the local society which gave Yaohan an extraordinary symbolic value. Within that logic, shopping in Yaohan became the status symbol of the new middle class and the totemic marker of the young heung gong yahn, which in tum amplified the popularity of Yaohan in Hong Kong

in the 1980s by encompassing the company in the local competition for social status and identity marking. In short, the more people shopped in Yaohan, the more they, contrary to the cultural imperialism thesis would argue, became heung gong yahn. However, this specific relationship between Hong Kong and Yaohan does not guarantee that other forms of Japanese pop culture will have the same relationship with the lcoal agents or agencies. In what follows, we shall see while the coming of Yuki Maiko, a prominent Japanese adult video actress, into Hong Kong also has had much to do with the heung gong yahn identity, it ended up developing a totally different relationship with the local Hong Kong culture.

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YUKI MAIKO AS THE CONCRETIZATION OF THE LOCAL SEXUAL IDEAL

Elsewhere we have explored this case for different purposes and in different contexts (Yau and Wong 2009). Here we simply wish to briefly summarize the case to illustrate how different forms of Japanese popular culture can have different relationships with the local Hong Kong consumers. As we shall show, Yuki Maiko could garner huge interests among local men in Hong Kong because her image paralleled neatly with the new sexual ideal in the 1990S, which in turn resulted from the emergence of new heung gong yahn identity. As a result, the coming of Yuki Maiko in Hong Kong functioned more as a concretization ofthe lcoal sexual ideal than an identity marker. To understand the popularity of Yuki Maiko in Hong Kong, one must start with the changing sexual ideal in Hong Kong in the 1990S, as represented by the flourishing of Category III pornographic films,S which is itself a reflection of the emergent Hong Kong identity. The Hong Kong sexual culture is underlined by two local concepts: shun ching and yum jihn. The significance of the concepts of shun ching and yum jihn in understanding the sexuality of the Hong Kong Chinese comes from a larger and on-going project on the sexual culture in Chinese societies.' The indigenous concept of shun ching commonly refers to a woman who is moral, naive, pure, well-bred, wholesome, dignified, conscientious, and good-natured. In short, this concept prioritizes her moral character rather than her sexual aspect. A shun ching woman is always highly praised by Hong Kong Chinese men to the effect that it is regarded as the ideal type of woman to be their partner. By contrast, a libidinous woman who actively or even aggressively strives for sex is hardly positively evaluated in Hong Kong, though not sexually unattractive. Sexually demanding and

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lustful women are described as yum jihn. "Yum" refers to the excessive sexual desires while "jihn" denotes VUlgarity and cheapness. The term has traditionally been applied to women. Consequently, there are also terms such as "yumfu" (slut) and more recently "lang nu" (wild girl) (Ho, 2006: 553). These terms are generally used as an insult or offensive term of disparagement, and certainly, no woman in Hong Kong would like to be labelled as yumjihn. In short, shun ching woman is not sexual whereas yumjihn woman is utterly sexuaL Such dichotomization of female images perhaps explains why local porn actresses have long been marked by the yumjihn, "sexual-aggressive" style of women. Most of the porn actresses in 19605 and 1970S Hong Kong were portrayed as "'coquettish," "flirtatious," and "sexually aggressive." This specific female portrayal is further reinforced by local laws which have long censored the portrayal of graphic sex in pornographic movies. Local porn actresses were required to 'act out' their "lasciviousness," in order to compensate for the fact that actual sexual intercourses were absent (Yeh, 1997: 195). For instance, Hu Chin, a porn queen in the 1970S, is famous for her coquettishness and seductive gestures. In the nude scenes, Hu was in fact substituted by a stand-in and all she needed to do is to appear "coquettish" and groan "loudly" and "aggressively" (Hung, 2007). Di Na, another porn queen in Hong Kong, is known for her "aggressive" all-nude performance in the movie Warlord (1972). Equally, Tien Lie is widely famous for her sexy, coquettish '/engyan' (phoenix eyes) and Shaw Yinyin is well-known for her "moumei" (dainty and charming) on-screen presentation. On the other hand, local celebrities are characterized as a style of woman usually called shun ching yuk neui Oiterally ajade girl, who is as pure and innocent as jade). The most notable example is Vivian Wai-man Chow, a Cantopop singer and actress. Due to her good looks and genteel demeanour, she attracted a huge fan-base since the late 1980s (Sun, 1993). Her unfaltering beauty, elegance and kindred spirit even made the Hong Kong media dub her "Yuk neuijeung mum yan," a colloquial term that can be loosely translated as the "eternal maiden queen" (Sun, 1993: 149-53)· Equally popular is Charlie Choi-nei Yeung. At the age of 18 in the early 1990S, she became the new generation of yuk neui in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, there were also Taiwanese and mainland Chinese actresses such as Chen Te-rong, Lin Hsin-ru, and Zhao Wei gaining a foothold as yuk neui in Hong Kong. The debut of Cecilia Pak-chi Cheung in a TV commercial in 1998 immediately made her the new yuk neui icon in Hong

Kong (Huang, 2005). Cheung was signed to UMG music publisher in 1999 (Huang, 2005: 75)· Packaged as a yuk neui, her debut album Any Weather (1999) was a breakout hit (Huang, 2005= 103-4). More recent yuk neui in the Hong Kong entertainment industry include Stephy Tang Lai-yan and Fiona Sit Hoi-ki. However, the divide between innocence and sexualness has witnessed a gradual merge since the early 1990S, as local porn actresses were getting more and more sexually innocent. This merge occurred in 1991 when Yip Yuk-hing, the second runner up for the 1985 Miss Asia Pageant, debuted as a "Category III film" actress. While the Miss Asia Pageant is commonly regarded as secondary to the Miss Hong Kong Pageant, winners of the former are still seen as wholesome, dignified, educated, and elegant in the eyes of many Hong Kong people. Yip challenged this mainstream value by starring in adult films. Together with the fact that she came from a rather well-off family, her debut in the Category III film Take Me (1991) caused a great sensation in Hong Kong. In the same year, she starred in two other Category III films. All three films were huge commercial successes, establishing Yip as the Category III film queen in Hong Kong (Wang, 1995: 225). However, she differed from previous porn actresses in that she managed to make a quick transition from Category III films into mainstream entertainment (Yeh, 1997: 210). Between 1992 and 1997, she starred in some twenty mainstream movies, many of which were critically acclaimed in the Chinese film markets such that she was nominated for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress in the Gold Horse Film Awards (Yeh, 1997: 210). Yip's phenomenal success has given rise to a new trend in Hong Kong where mainstream actresses attempted to achieve fame through temporary appearance in Category III films. For instance, Yau Yuet-ching and Chan Bo-lin are both former Miss Asia Pageants contestants that took part in Category III films, achieving commercial box offices. Obviously, their success lies not just in their beauty, but also in the fact that they are "former" Miss Asia Pageant contestants (Wang, 1995: 225). But the more crucial message is that porn actresses are by no means the so-called "bad" women or women coming from the low-class. This message soon began to embrace a new element when Yung Hung debuted in Category III films. Yung rose to prominence not only because she was the winner of the 1989 Miss Asia Pageant, but also because of her special temperament and «innocent" outlook in the films, in which she was portrayed as a "fragile, gentle, and pitiful" woman (Yeh, 1997= 211). This new female image is even more obvious in the case of Lee Lai-chun. Lee first earned

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her fame by debuting as a young innocent girl in movies. In 1993, she made a daring decision by starring in the Category III film Spirit ofLove (1993), which opened the way for the "mei siu neui" (beautiful young woman) trend in Category III films (Yeh, 1997: 213). The fact that she has been famed for her the girl-next-door image and genteel outlook made this film a phenomenal success, attracting extensive media coverage not only in Hong Kong but also in Taiwan, mainland China, and Japan (Yeh, 1997:213). In the years that followed, while she continued to show her body in a few more Category III films, she nonetheless released an album titled Naivety (1994). We can see that the image Lee was attempting to establish is sexual and innocent. Lee's ultimate debut in Category III films was culturally significant because it completely overturned the mainstream taboo by offering an alternative female ideal: innocent mei siu neui with a genteel outlook could also be immensely sexual. The combination of these two contradictory images into one, as noted, made her a huge success in Hong Kong as well as many Asian societies. We can see that the local female sexual ideal has gradually moved from being sexual-aggressive to sexual-innocent by the 1990S. We argue that the combination of two contradictory female images as exemplified by Lee Lai-chun would find favor with people in Hong Kong in the early 1990S because her image straddles between the two opposing female images of sexual aggressiveness and sexual innocence. More crucially, her sexual-innocent image in fact straddles the East/West divide, because sexual aggressiveness is often seen as "Western" while innocence as "Eastern" by many people in Hong Kong. The image ofbeing not-Western but also not-Eastern thus precisely matched the cultural logic of heung gong yahn who tended to identify themselves with something between the West and the East. The changing sexual ideal in the early 1990S culminated in the phenomenal success of Yuki Maiko in the late 1990s. The images of Yuki Maiko are childish, virginally shy, cute, willful, and obedient but simultaneously approachable and sexually open. Her image thus differentiated her greatly from the two dominant female images in Hong Kong. As we have just mentioned, for a long time in Hong Kong, porn actresses are yum jihn whereas most mainstream female celebrities are shun ching jade girls. However, Yuki Maiko straddles the shun ching/ yum jihn divide. That is to say, her image is innocent and sexual. As a result, Yuki Maiko was very popular in 1990S Hong Kong.

We have to emphasise that the popularity of Yuki Maiko in the late 1990S is neither incidental nor accidental. Rather, she should be seen as the iconic example of the abovementioned general trend toward a new ideal sexual image of women among men in Hong Kong, a trend that is parallel to the identification process in which the identity of heung gong yahn has gradually emerged among the new middle class since the 1980s. Instead of serving as an identity marker for Hong Kong people, Yuki Maiko thus served to concretize the new sexual ideal that resulted from the emergent heung gong yahn identity. The case studies ofYaohan and Yuki Maiko all had to do with identity, especially the heung gong yahn idenitty. As Chun has pointed out, the 1967 riots not only sparked off the series of social policies which ultimately gave birth to the new middle class, but, together with the Cultural Revolution, contributed to "a peculiar kind of cultural consciousness and a distinctive kind of Hong Kong culture" (Chun 1996:58). This distinctive kind of Hong Kong culture, as Chun argues (1996:58), found its full manifestation in the proliferation of a media-oriented popular culture that was funded by a large capitalist culture industry, which neatly followed the utilitarian values of a free-market society. Notable examples of this media-oriented popular culture include kung-fu movies and absurdist comedies such as those by Stephen Chow. These media-oriented pop cultures all had roots in this self-propelled culture industry and thus had nothing to do with any previous ethnically based politics of identity. If the cultural identification of Hong Kong people with the two Chinas was weakened, and replaced with pop culture, then it is not unreasonsable to say that the cultural identity of Hong Kong people has been deeply rooted in popular culture, especially in mass media. However, this does not mean that all Japanese pop cultural items are related to identity politics. In this regard, the importation of Japanese 1V dramas is illustrative.

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TV DRAMAS AND HONG KONG TV INDUSTRY The history of the import of Japanese 1V dramas into Hong Kong dates back to the early 1960s when Rediffusion, the first 1V station though a cable broadcaster, made a decision to import and show Japanese 1V dramas. Rediffusion Cable was a black-and-white broadcast with only one channel and an initial four hours of airtime daily.s Nearly all of its programmes including dramas, documentaries, and news, were imported directly from Britain and therefore all were broadcasted in English (Cheuk 2008: 31). Only some news reports and weather reports were produced by the station. In 1962, it started to import Japanese 1V dramas (Wong

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2009: 102). After a few years of operation, the station made little headway among the public, since most of the local people were from Mainland China and thus did not understand the programs. The language barrier was further complicated by the prohibitively high-price ofthe Rediffusion subscription. As a result, there were therefore only 1,500 subscribers at its very beginning and many of whom were foreigners, and especially British expatriates (Wu 2003: 3). In 1963, Rediffusion launched a new Chinese channel, hoping to expand its subscription base among local people (Asia TV Limited 2003: 12). The Chinese channel incorporated a wide array of new programs such as cookery, games show, quiz shows, comedies, and news reports (Cheuk 2008: 32). Mandarin and Cantonese movies were screened to attract local audiences. Foreign movies and dramas were imported and dubbed with Cantonese (Zhang & Li 1997: 22). Japanese TV dramas were also, for the first time, dubbed into Cantonese and shown to local audience. The first such drama was Hidden Swordsman, shown in 1967 (Wong 2009:58). Although this drama was shown on the English channel in 1962, it managed to garner interests among the local viewers because it was the first time for local audience to come into contact with a drama situated in seventeenth century Japan (Wong 2009: 59). Audiences who had been used to watching the gunfight scenes in Western action dramas found the Japanese ninjas very impressive and exciting (Wong 2009: 58), The success ofthis drama encouraged ATV to further import Japanese TV dramas such as The Sequela/Hidden Swordsman and Darkness 5'h Rank in on the Chinese channel (Wong 2009: 59). Meanwhile, Rediffusion also produced their own dramas. The launch of the Chinese channel did help boost the number of subscribers, which had climbed from 35,573 in 1964 to over 90,000 in 1967 (Cited in Wong 2009:14). Financially, the station switched from suffering losses to making a surplus, making it possible to construct its broadcast building on Broadcast Drive in Kowloon (Cheuk 2008: 32). It is ofinterest to note that while Rediffusion had monopolized the TV broadcast market in Hong Kong for 10 years and attempted to re-orient the programmes towards local audiences by localizing its programmes, the fact that viewers still needed to pay, not to mention a high subscription cost, was the raison d'etre that it could not achieve a dominant presence in the local TV market. This problem was made even more acute when the first free-to-air television took shape in Hong Kong.

JAPANESE TV DRAMA ACHIEVED A HOUSEHOLD NAME IN

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HONG KONG TVB, the first free-to-air station, was established in 1967. Although TVB only ran six hours per day (from 6 p.m. to 12 a.m.) and the reception of signals was unstable in the early years of its broadcast, the estimated number of the local audience already reached 300,000 (Tse 1981: 8). The major difference of TVB from RTV is that TVB, from its inception, provided "wireless" and "free" TV broadcast to people in Hong Kong. To distinguish it from RTV, TVB has advertised itself as the "wireless TV," although there is more than one wireless free-ta-air television station now. Obviously enough, the advantage of viewing TVbroadcasted by TVB over RTV is that viewers did not need to pay subscription or license fees. All they had to do was get a TV set and an antenna. To most ofthe people in Hong Kong, buying a TV set permanently and watching free broadcast were therefore more economical than subscribing to RTV. This made TVB an overnight success and arguably a vogue among people in Hong Kong during the 1970S and 1980s. The craze oflocal people for TV was further accelerated in 1971 when TVB began to produce and transmit television programs in color, such as Enjoy Yourself Tonight (EYT) and Kao's Club (Cheuk 2008: 33; Wu 2003: 33). The switch to shows in color in 1971 made the shows all the more popular among the local public. More and more local people rushed to buy a TV set, and the popularity of TV even had TV suppliers offer instalment services (Wu 2003: 23). By the end of1972, more than 670,000 households owned a TV set and this number further rose to 800,000 in 1975, amounting to eighty-eight percent of the total household numbers (Zhang & Li 1997: 91). The rapid proliferation of TV set among Hong Kong households marked the success of TVB's strategy, which emphasized its "wireless" and "free" broadcasting mentioned above. Not only new TV users tended to subscribe TVB, but also many RTV subscribers terminated their contracts with RTV and switched to TVB. It must be emphasized that existing RTV subscribers would switch to TVB not only because of the price in the sense they were willing to, and could, afford if RTV could offer them something special, but also because TVB, since its inception, broadcasted Japanese TV dramas. In its formative years, TVB did not have any in-house production except news and weather forecasts and buying foreign programmes was a way-out. In view of the success of Hidden Swordsman and other dramas by RTV, TVB followed suit. TVB's initial of Japanese TV dramas was

Revisiting Colonial and Postcolonial

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an overnight success, not only attracting new audiences but also making many existing RTV subscribers turn to TVB, because TVB also offered Japanese TV dramas, but for free. In other words, the Japanese TV drama was no longer the trump card for RTV. Since TVB was a free-to-air station, its broadcast of Japanese TV dramas allowed them to penetrate into the ordinary people's daily life, making Japanese TV dramas a household name in Hong Kong in the 1960s and 1970S. According to Wong (2009), Japanese TV dramas shown on TVB during the 1960s and 1970S could be divided into five major themes, namely action, sports, youth, campus life, and love and romance (Wong 2009: 61-8). Vis the Sign was arguably the drama that marked the golden era of Japanese TV dramas in Hong Kong in the 1960s. Other notable titles included Beautiful Challengers, The Turn that Leads to Medal, Soul of Fight, Let's go! Attack, The Youth That Spends on The Court, A Little Love Story, Family of Three, Bright Future, Our Journey and so on (Wong 2009: 66-7). Despite achieving phenomenal successes in the 1960s and early 1970s, Japanese TV dramas soon lost their momentum in the mid-1970s.

deprived of the necessary "literacy" and cultural backgrounds to enjoy them (Wong 2009). These situations changed radically when Selina Chow Liang Shuk­ yee, alongside a large pool ofyoung, highly educated local talents, entered the local broadcast scene during the 1970S. Chow, herself a graduate in English at the University of Hong Kong, when appointed as the Assistant General Manager of drama production, looked to recruit fresh graduates from local universities as the backbone of her production team. This clearly implies her intention to bring in new blood and to base her dramas firmly on Hong Kong society. The intention of Chow to situate her television dramas firmly within Hong Kong society can be first seen in a situation comedy Seventy-Three produced by Chow in 1973. The show consisted of two series, each series had fifteen episodes, and each episode lasted thirty minutes (Cheuk 2008:33). The show proved to be a great hit, mainly because of its social overtones, light-hearted comedy, and novel presentations (Cheuk 2008: 33). But what was more indicative of Chow's intention to localize TV dramas in Hong Kong was Hotel, the first long­ running serial drama (totalling 129 episodes) directed by Chow, alongside Wong Tin-lam and Shek Siu-ming and screened on "Jade Theatre." Premiering in November 1976, Hotel revolves around people and things at a fictional hotel called "Rich Jade Hotel" which is owned by a millionaire in Hong Kong. Set in the transitional period of the rapid expansion of Hong Kong society in the 1970S, the show describes the growth and emergence of new middle class. The screenwriters paid particular attention to the tensions, conflicts, clashes, and deceptions among different characters, accelerating the dramatic effects of the show. In short, the 129-episode Hotel speaks volumes to the ups and downs of life, and the small community portrayed within Rich Jade Hotel reflects a "genuine" picture of society. TV audiences in Hong Kong, for the first time, could identify with the different characters and therefore "see" themselves in the drama. In a sense, the drama was a landmark in the history of television in Hong Kong, not only because it attracted a viewership of 1.9 million (Cheuk 2008: 38) but also because it created a mass culture, if not society, wherein people had extremely similar tastes. On the evening of the grand finale of Hotel, people were hurrying home to see the drama at 7 p.m.-students, white collar workers, factory workers and professionals had been discussing the finale since the afternoon (Chow 1990: 30). Encouraged by the huge success of Hotel, what followed in the next decade were many more highly rated serial dramas such as House Is Not a Home (1977), Tycoon (1980), This Land Is Mine (1980) and The Good,

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JAPANESE TV DRAMA AS SUPPLEMENTS OR STABILIZER Wong (2009) offered a convincing account of why Japanese TV dramas lost their momentum in the mid-1970s that we follow very closely here. Wong pointed out that while local TV dramas were first produced and promoted by ATV (successor of R1V), it was mainly dramas produced by TVB station that garnered huge interest among the local viewers and soon dominated the local TV scene. TVB started to have its in-house dramas in the late 1960s (Wong 2009: 25). However, these early dramas could not find great favor with local audiences because many of them were adapted from famous novels or operas, Eastern and Western alike. Obviously, these adaptations were not to everyone's tastes because the common audience in Hong Kong were still lowly educated in the 1970S and therefore did not possess the literacy to understand, let alone appreciate, the so-called "highbrow" culture. In addition, the background ofthe dramas was, as a result of adapting from foreign classics or novels, rarely set in the context of Hong Kong society in the 1970s, depriving them of real time sensibility. As many of these dramas were adapted from Western masterpieces or classics, the backgrounds portrayed in the re­ editions were therefore difficult for Hong Kong audiences to identify with. Even if the audiences found the re-editions interesting, they were often

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The Bad, and The Ugly (1979). One can observe that "Jade Theatre" in the second half of the 1970S became not only more "realistic" in terms of setting, props, filming method, but also more reflective of Hong Kong society. Instead of imbuing with a strong sense of Chinese or Western operatic styles, these long-running serial dramas followed closely the life and psyche ofthe ordinary people and mirrored the intricate development of the time in Hong Kong. For this alone, these dramas were profoundly meaningful, enmeshing themselves in the life of the ambitious young people of the time. During the late 1970S, "Jade Theatre" was a big success, being well received by critics as well as its audience. Throughout its hroadcast, it enjoyed exceptionally high ratings, having an average of 2.5 million viewers every evening, making it the best drama program by TVB ever since (Chow 1990). In this sense, the long-running serial dramas shown on "Jade Theatre" have already become the dramas of Hong Kong people. Given the overwhelming dominance ofthe local dramas, Japanese 1V dramas almost disappeared from the 1V schedule in the 1980s except during the non-prime time slot in the afternoon. Japanese 1V dramas only returned to Hong Kong in the 1990S when A1V imported Japanese dramas to counter the habitual viewing and dominance long enjoyed by TVB. As mentioned above, the Hong Kong 1V scene was dominated by TVB since its inception in the late 1960s. A1V (formerly RTV), which frequently recorded loses, had long been struggling to overturn TVB's habitual viewership and dominance. For instance, Lim Por-yan and Cheng Yu-tong, the joint owners of A1V between 1987 and 1989, invested more than ten billion dollars in A1V in the hope of overturning TVB's dominance, only to lose another ten billion in the next three years between 1989 and 1991 (Wong 2009: 88). Despite the enormous expansion and investment, yet another failure convinced the owners of A1V that it could not beat and compete with TVB in the conventional ways, for instance in the improvement of the in­ house dramas, but should try some other genres ofprogramme to stop the company from losing (Wong 2009: 88). It was against such background that A1V again resorted to importing Japanese 1V dramas. ATV's strategy of importing Japanese 1V dramas in the early 1990S was generally a great success in that it not only stopped A1V from losing money but also served to increase the rating points of A1V. Notable Japanese 1V dramas shown on A1V at that time included Tokyo Elevator Girls, Tokyo Love Story, Classmates, and The White Proposal of Asunara (Wong 2009: 90). Among them, The 101" Proposal and the Homeless Girl even achieved extraordinarily high ratings for A1V (Wong 2009: 91-2). Meanwhile,

TVB, being plighted by the declining rating points since the late 19805, also decided to import and screen Japanese 1V dramas again in 1994 (Wong 2009: 92). The broadcast of Under the Same Roofin 1995 marked the formal return of Japanese 1V dramas in TVB's major time-slots. What followed were some other well-known dramas such as Kindaichi Case Files, Kindaichi Case Files II and The Sushi ofShota. Meanwhile, STAR 1V, which commenced its service in 1993. was another important player in the proliferation of Japanese 1V dramas in Hong Kong in the 1990S. Initially, Japanese 1V dramas were shown only on the "Premiere Channel" and the number and variety of titles were rather limited. However, gradually both the YMC channel and Women Channel began to offer Japanese 1V dramas five days a week, covering a wide array of genres and contexts. By the mid-1990s, STAR 1V had become the powerhouse of Japanese 1V dramas in Hong Kong (Wong 2009: 94)· It is of crucial importance to point out that while Japanese 1V dramas returned to the local television scene. finding favor with the young audiences, their overall influence on the local drama scene was trivial in the sense that their rating points remained rather low and they could never compete with the locally produced Hong Kong dramas (Wong 2009: 95). Nevertheless, despite their less phenomenal success than the first wave in the 1960s, Japanese 1V dramas in the second wave managed to stay in the Hong Kong 1V scene rather than just waning away. That is to say, while finding favour only with a small segment of Hong Kong audiences, Japanese 1V dramas in the second wave now became part of the television culture. From time to time, you will find Japanese 1V dramas being screened on weekend evenings, although they are now gradually replaced with Korean 1V dramas. Wong's metaphor that paralleled the local Hong Kong dramas with a bowl of rice is instructive in making sense of the two waves of Japanese 1V drama booms in Hong Kong we just mentioned above. Wong (2009: 85-87) argues that while a bowl of rice (Hong Kong drama) is considered as an essential ingredient of the Hong Kong Chinese diet, yet a balanced and healthy diet cannot be maintained without dishes such as meat, egg, and vegetables from which other essential nutrition (dynamic scenes, sense of modernity, and diversification of genre) can be obtained. The problem of the local1V stations in the 1960s and 1970S was that they, for some reasons, failed to provide the "dishes." In order to make up this failure, it thus turned to Japanese 1V dramas for help by massively buying and screening Japanese 1V dramas. However, we have to emphasize

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that Japanese 1V dramas were (and are) never shown in prime time, on both TVB and A1V alike. That is to say, Japanese 1V dramas were never considered replacements for the local Hong Kong dramas. They were at best supplements or what Wong (2009: 85) called "vitamin pills," when the 10cal1V dramas could not, for some reason, provide a sufficient quantity of 1V dramas. Thus, once the 10cal1V stations managed to provide their own "dishes," the function of Japanese 1V dramas as supplements lost. As mentioned above, Japanese 1V dramas only returned to Hong Kong in the late 1990S. But as Wong (2009: 98) points out, Japanese 1V dramas were no longer functioning as supplements to the Hong Kong dramas. More importantly, even though Japanese 1V dramas could not garner the high rating points they had in the 1970S, they could now function as a "stabilizer," ensuring stable and steady rating points during fluctuations. We have to emphasize that stable and steady rating points of the non-prime time periods are essential to the survival of 1V stations. Both TVB and A1V, as free-to-air stations, almost completely relied on revenue from advertisements. However, as the advertisement buyers are bidding for the time-slot at least one month prior to the actual showing time, it is extremely difficult, if not totally impossible, to pre!iict the rating of a program that will only be shown one month later (Wong 2009: 98). As a result, the price offered by the bidder is based not on the forecast of the future rating of a particular program but on the received rating from the same showing period (Wong 2009:98). Both advertisers and 1V stations are more than eager to see steady and predictable ratings. A steady and predictable pattern of received rating enables advertisers to ensure that their advertisements would be exposed to an expected number of audiences (Wong 2009: 98). The same is also true for the 1V stations. 1V stations certainly make concerted effort to have impressive ratings in prime time, but they work even harder to stabilize the ratings in other non-prime time slots, for if the ratings fluctuate it will be extremely detrimental to their advertisement revenue (Wong 2009: 98). Saturday and Sunday evenings have been known as a period of low ratings because people tend to go out and dine out. As the past experiences show, the ratings of Japanese dramas or Korean dramas are very steady on almost all periods. TVB and A1V have been using the same strategy again and again by showing Japanese programmes on Saturday and Sunday nights. According to the research done by Wong (2009: 97), of the sixty-seven Japanese 1V dramas shown on TVB and A1V between 1994 and 2004, almost half of them were allocated to the weekend evening schedule. The rest of the programmes were shown at late nights on weekday or

weekend morning. Only two of them were shown on the traditional prime time schedule. This specific showing pattern once again confirms that Japanese 1V dramas are now given a new role in providing steady ratings in fluctuating periods.

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CONCLUSION The idea of this chapter is basically very simple. Although Yaoban, Yuki Maiko, and trendy 1V dramas all come from Japan, their receptions bythe post-war Hong Kong society are very different. Yaohan was received as the totem marker of the Hong Kong new middle class, Yuki Maiko as the concretization of the local sexual ideal by the men of Hong Kong, and 1V dramas as supplements and stabilizer by the Hong Kong television industry. Inasmuch as there is always a third zone in the cultural interface in which the local Hong Kong consumer seeks to establish various relationships with the foreign Japanese popular culture, these various relationships are so complex that "Japanization," "creolization," and "localization" are just several possible modes of cultural effects; but none of them is a sufficient ethnographic description of the total effect of the cross-cultural migration of Japanese popular cultural goods on Hong Kong society. The theoretical implication is that any cultural interface involves three analytical terms: local society, foreign culture, and a third zone where local society dialectically mediates with foreign culture. The existence of this third zone rejects any direct translation of the effect of foreign culture into local society as indicated in "Japanization" or the effect of local society into foreign culture as implied in "creolization" or "localization." Instead, analytical attention should be paid to the property of foreign culture, characteristic of local society, and their mediation played out in the third zone. It follows methodologically that we cannot conflate the result of the cross-cultural migration of a certain cultural good from a cultural origin with the general effect of that culture on local because as we have shown in this chapter Japanese retailers may have different effect from that of Japanese 1V or that of Japanese adult videos on post-war Hong Kong society. There is no simple Japanization, creolization, or localization.

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NOTES The authors have contributed equally to the paper and their names are shown in alphabetical order. 2. This policy stated that any illegal immigrant from Mainland China who could successfully reach the urban area of Hong Kong would be granted right of abode by the Hong Kong government. 3. In 1988, the Hong Kong government introduced a rating system which classifies films into a three-tier system. Since then, Category III has become an umb~ella term for pornographic films in Hong Kong. While considered graphic in local society, these films are at best on par with movies rated "R" or "NC17" in the United States and not "XXX: 4. This paper forms part of a larger and on-going project of the two authors since 1999, which investigates anthropologically and compares the pornographic and sexual cultures of various Chinese societies. 5. http://www.rthk.org.hkfbroadcast75/topic03a.htm. 1.

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