2015/09/02 by Yoshiharu Tezuka · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Asian American and Pacific Histories #Asian Culture and Media Studies #Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics
paper · doi:10.1080/10371397.2015.1118682
openalex publication_date 2015/09/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
Hawai`i occupies a special place in the imaginations of Japanese people. Ever since the end of World War II, Japanese media have portrayed Hawai`i as a paradisical dreamland. This does not mean the cultural meanings attributed to Hawai`i have remained constant over the past 70 years. Both the notion of ‘paradise’ and the content of the Hawaiian ‘dream’ have transformed along with changing socio-economic conditions and ideas about how Japanese people view themselves in relation to the outside world. This article examines Japanese films from the early postwar period to the present that portray Hawai`i as a ‘paradise’ in which ‘adoration’ and ‘yearning’ play out and ‘dreams’ are fulfilled. These cinematic discourses of ‘paradise’ and ‘dream’ first portrayed Japanese individuals as modern, wealthy national subjects during the postwar economic boom period that ended in the 1980s. In response to changing socio-economic conditions in the early twenty-first century, the dream of Hawai`i came to represent a more relaxed paradise and Japanese individuals were shown embracing an alternative ‘local’ lifestyle.