Co-opting the nation brand: The politics of cross-cultural co-production

Abstract

This paper analyzes the political implications of aesthetic mimicry in the popular mobile game, Onmyoji. Created by the Chinese company, NetEase, Onmyoji takes advantage of the expansive network of signifiers revolving around the historical Japanese figure, Abe-no-Seimei, and co-opts this network to display a recognizable Japanese popular aesthetic. By remixing elements of Japanese culture, Onmyoji presents a commodifiable and mediated image of Japanese cultural authenticity that is recognizable globally. Mimicry and the co-opting of another nation’s cultural signifiers initiates a negotiated process of ambivalent national self-empowerment that has since resulted in shifting labor flows within the digital entertainment industries in East Asia. The malleability of cultural signifiers allows for the purposeful framing of global media texts. Such multivalent encodings of recognizable symbols emerge from the provocative slippages between media boundaries. This, in turn, engages with the dialectical processes of nation branding within the framework of transnational co-production models.

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