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Camera Men: Techno-orientalism in Two Acts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 July 2017

DANIEL MCKAY
DANIEL MCKAY*
Affiliation:
Doshisha University, Kyoto. Email: dem52@uclive.ac.nz.
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Abstract

During the years of Japan's “bubble” economy, writers and artists in the United States became increasingly susceptible to “Japan-bashing,” a discourse that objectified Japanese for their trade practices, overseas purchases, and tourist presence. In the following article, I draw upon a range of cultural texts, from Truman Capote's novella Breakfast at Tiffany's to Michael Crichton's novel Rising Sun, in order to investigate how the trope of the camera-toting Japanese expatriate encapsulated the fears of the era. I then move to explore the ways in which Japanese Americans negotiated these tropes in their writings, paying particular attention to Ruth Ozeki's novel My Year of Meats. I hypothesize that Japanese Americans remained aware of the phenomenon of “Japan-bashing” throughout the era, yet did not confront it in a sustained fashion. Instead, tropes were either dismissed out of hand or, as in Ozeki's case, incorporated into a narrative before undergoing a process of gradual dismantlement.

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Articles
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , August 2017 , pp. 939 - 964
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2017 

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