1st Edition

Chinese Fans of Japanese and Korean Pop Culture Nationalistic Narratives and International Fandom

By Lu Chen Copyright 2018
    188 Pages
    by Routledge

    194 Pages
    by Routledge

    How can Japanese popular culture gain numerous fans in China, despite pervasive anti-Japanese sentiment? How is it that there’s such a strong anti-Korean sentiment in Chinese online fan communities when the official Sino-Korean relationship is quite stable before 2016? Avid fans in China are raising hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding to make gifts to their idols in foreign countries. Tabloid reports on Japanese and Korean celebrities have been known to trigger nationalist protests in China. So, what is the relationship between Chinese fandom of Japanese and Korean popular culture and nationalist sentiment among Chinese youth?

    Chen discusses how Chinese fans of Japanese and Korean popular culture have formed their own nationalistic discourse since the 1990s. She argues that, as nationalism is constructed from various entangled ideologies, narratives, myths and collective memories, popular culture simply becomes another resource for the construction of nationalism. Fans thus actively select, interpret and reproduce the content of cultural products to suit their own ends. Unlike existing works, which focus on the content of transnational cultural flows in East Asia, this book focuses on the reception and interpretation of the Chinese audience.

    Introduction

    Chapter 1: Understanding Popular Culture in China

    Chapter 2: Cultural Policy and Cultural Market in China

    Chapter 3: Methodology and Research Method

    Chapter 4: Japanese and Korean Popular Culture in China: The Dissemination, Reception and Formation of Fandom (Before 2011)

    Chapter 5: Offline Activities: Individual Fans, Fragmented Groups and Consumer Interests

    Chapter 6: Patriotic Education and Alternative Historical Narratives

    Chapter 7: Gossip and Tabloid News: Radicalized Online Anti-Fan Activities and Self-Patriotic Education

    Chapter 8: Conclusion: Party-State, Fandom and Nationalism

    Biography

    Lu Chen assistant professor in the Faculty of Journalism and Communication, Guangzhou University, China.