Mock me if you will, but I've been looking into the possibility of doing a masters in Japanese Studies (my linguistic skills aren't strong enough to do one in straight literature, although my proposed primary focus would be on Japanese classical theatre such as noh, joruri, kabuki etc.)
The course I'm looking at offers a module on "Japanese Transnational Cinema: from Kurosawa to Asia Extreme and Studio Ghibli". I know nothing of media studies courses so I don't know if this is a particularly "standard" kind of thing - it seems like jolly good fun to watch a bunch of films and think about their international audiences, but not something I'd usually think of as particularly academic (yup, I'm a big snob).
Anyway, the particular statement it makes on the Ghibli part is as follows:
The internationalisation is clarified further:
Feel free to mock me for taking this seriously, but this seems like a severely limited view of Ghibli's output. While you might argue that the character art of Ghibli films, like virtually all anime, isn't specifically Japanese, I think you'd be hard-pressed to say that any of Takahata's output for the studio is "stateless", as so much of it deals specifically with Japanese experience or mythology (Grave of the Fireflies, Pon Poko, and the forthcoming Kaguya-hime spring to mind). I think you'd even be hard pushed to say that something like Spirited Away is "stateless", although its fantasy storytelling is perhaps more universal than something like Grave of the Fireflies. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what mukokuseki is.
Anyway, I thought this was interesting because it seems so narrowly focused on the one part of the anime movie industry that really has any kind of "internationalisation" (although the course does, of course, cover Akira, which Hiroki Azuma once claimed didn't count as anime!). I guess one could say that Hosoda's film work is similar in its broad appeal, but I don't detect any particular de-emphasis of the Japanese experience in his films (Summer Wars in particular).
I was going to reply to this earlier but I had class, and then I forgot. :V
I have a feeling that the class is concerned less with studying Japanese movies in general and more about using them to contextualize the idea of mukokuseki.
I'm reading through the sample of the book, and it seems that the argument around mukokuseki acknowledges that Japanese culture still finds its way into internationalized works. It's true that the argument for the stateless nature of mukokuseki animation is superficial, but I think an interesting aspect of the conversation is the idea that the popular mukokuseki animation reinterprets Western cultural influences in a Japanese way and presents it to an Asian and Western audience.
This blog raises a good point in that the anime style is influenced by Disney works, and the book itself mentions this:
"Such mukokuseki Japanese popular culture, Honda argues, unlike traditional images of Japanese culture and society, have a cosmopolitan appeal that articulates 'a sharp break from the traditional, prewar image,' and they will lead to '[erasing] the old, oppressive image of the country, especially among the younger generation'."
In this context, I wouldn't say that Ghibli movies aren't Japanese. I would say, rather, that Japanese culture might be scaled back to provide a more international appeal, and that is what these people are looking at.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I do agree with you that, in general, Ghibli incorporates a lot of Japanese culture. That being said, I think the idea of mukokuseki is interesting, and the book seems to be analyzing it in a larger scope than, "Is popular culture losing its Japanese identity?" It seems to also look at the idea of an authentic Japan and how mukokuseki might be used to promote Japanese interests.
Here's the link to the sample of the book. I'd definitely find the professor in charge of the class and see if I could have a discussion on it if I were you. At the very least, you can see if the class interests you.
Stuff being bannable has never stopped you before.
damn, lol
