Texts in Context: Intertextuality, Hybridity, and the Negotiation of Cultural Identity in Japan

Based on insights collected during eight months of fieldwork recently conducted in rural southern Japan and the urban center of Kyoto, this article explores how Western cultural texts are adopted, adapted, and interpreted within the Japanese popular cultural environment. It first examines the theoretical development of the concept of Western cultural influence—from discourses of cultural imperialism to more recent interpretations of culture as hybrid and ever changing—and its particular significance to Japanese culture. It then attempts to locate Western texts and Western imagery within the larger Japanese cultural, historical, and media environment into which such texts are exported and consumed.