Asia Puts Some Pop Back Into Culture

A rising force is threatening the Western world’s lock on pop culture.

Asia.

All of a sudden, it seems, all things Asian are hip. Classic flicks from Hong Kong are touted by Quentin Tarantino and traded on the streets of New York; Japanese animation tapes are collected by suburban teens and twentysomethings; Americans are buying up Tamagotchi, a Japanese digital toy; Japanese musicians and deejays are injecting fresh flavor into pop.

Jeff Yang, a journalist in New York, says “this renaissance of Asian influence in pop culture is not a novelty but the latest wave in a cycle. We’ve always been a part of world culture.

“Japanese woodcuts influenced the Impressionists. Orientalism influenced classical music,” says Yang, who recently co-edited a book called “Eastern Standard Time: A Guide to Asian Influence on American Culture.” “Now Hollywood’s biting on John Woo’s two-fisted, two-gun acrobat style. It sets up a new beginning in the cycle.”

Indeed, Asia always has had a say in American postwar pop--the “Astro Boy” and “Speed Racer” animated series of the ‘60s, the kung fu flicks of the ‘70s. But there was something half-hearted about it all: “Astro Boy’s” Japanese roots were intentionally masked; the kung fu flicks were viewed for laughs.

In the U.S., there used to be “a condescending, Orientalist view of Asian culture,” says Darrell Hamamoto, associate professor of Asian American studies at UC Davis. But today, there seems to be a genuine, street-level enthusiasm for Asiana.

“Young people have grown up with ‘Kimba’ or ‘Speed Racer’ or ‘Gigantor’ or other Asian animation and comics and video games, so they’re open to Asian pop culture, because it’s been part of their early socialization experience,” Hamamoto says.

Bootleg copies of such classic kung fu films as “The One-Armed Boxer” and “The Five Deadly Venoms” are being sold for $10 apiece. And this time around, fans are studying the movements and philosophy of the flicks rather than the poor English dubbing.

“We take this genre seriously,” says RZA of Wu-Tang Clan, an African American rap group from New York City that samples kung fu movie dialogue and sounds in its music. “We know it as an art form.

“Everything strong,” he says, “comes out of Asia.”

A strong wave of modern action and drama directors is making its way from Asia, from Woo (“Broken Arrow”) to Japan’s Shohei Imamura (“The Eel”), co-winner of this year’s top prize at Cannes. Zhang Yimou’s “Raise the Red Lantern” (1991) and Chen Kaige’s “Farewell My Concubine” (1994) also impressed American audiences and critics.

Meanwhile, after the success in 1993 of “The Joy Luck Club,” an American production of a film by Wayne Wang, Western cinema is becoming enchanted with Asian themes and players.

TriStar Pictures is producing “Godzilla,” based on the classic Japanese monster movie series. Due next year, the project is being supervised by TriStar’s new production president, Chris Lee, the highest-ranking Asian American in Hollywood. And the new James Bond babe is none other than Michelle Yeoh, a darling of Hong Kong and action films (“Supercop”) who performs her own high-flying stunts.

“The industry realizes there is an audience for this out there,” says Norman Wang, a publicist in New York for several directors in Hong Kong. “Not just Asian, but white, black and Hispanic.”

There is a danger, as Hollywood’s history shows, of Asian film--and other media--becoming a flavor du jour. Latinos were touted as the Next Big Thing in Hollywood in the ‘80s, but today clearly are not. “We have yet to see our big crossover film on the Asian American experience,” one film industry insider notes.

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Japanese animation artists are building strong grass-roots audiences in America and the U.K. with the futuristic, fists-and-kicks style called “anime.” The genre grew up in a postwar Japan that couldn’t afford the high-priced special effects of Hollywood. So artists started making animated renderings of action film stunts that today are sometimes so realistic and/or fantastic, enthusiasts swear they never could be duplicated on film.

The story lines are psycho-sci-fi, and audiences are mature. Such animated flicks as “Akira” (1989) and “Ghost in the Shell” (1995) have helped anime gross $60 million a year in box office and video sales in the U.S. Mail-order anime is being peddled on MTV.

“The Japanese have taken animated art to a level of sophistication that is not found anywhere else in the world,” says journalist Yang. “The stories themselves are being woven out of experience and mythology and legend and tradition and fantasy that is 180 degrees out of phase from what we would expect in the West.”

The genre has caught the fancy of Disney, the world’s spigot of pop culture. In 1994, more than 40 Japanese anime artists signed a letter to Disney protesting the similarities between its “Lion King” and Osamu Tezuka’s earlier “Kimba” series. Last year, Disney bought the rights to anime director Hayao Miyazaki’s work, which has sold 500,000 copies in the U.S.

Anime often is based on comic books, called “manga,” consumed by all economic classes and age groups in Japan. Manga can come in the form of long, drawn out series with serious literary themes and almost cinematic artwork. Though it sells more than 2 billion copies a year in Japan, it is only now trickling into the U.S. through English translations. But manga’s fine lines and realistic aesthetic can be found in Western fashion and graphic design.

Hook-Ups, a 3-year-old concern in Huntington Beach, specializes in skateboards and clothes adorned with manga graphics, especially depicting sexy schoolgirls throwing out wicked punches and kicks. Owner Jeremy Klein, 25, says Hook-Ups’ T-shirts, pants, shoes, jackets and hats have propelled it into the top 10 skateboard culture companies in a crowded field.

“For the most part, American animation sucks,” says Klein. “We want to have Japanese animation--action-oriented graphics, crazy stuff--all over our gear.”

In high fashion, such Asian American designers as Vivienne Tam have injected Asian influenced silks and wraps into the runway mix. And Asian models are hot: “There’s a very severe lack of Asian models, men in particular,” says Spencer Salley of L.A.’s United Prima Omar Model Management. “The demand far outweighs the supply.”

Meanwhile, manga and Japanese-influenced images and character fonts have become hip in the world of graphic design. Dance club fliers, CD covers and print ads all have used futuristic Asian motifs. “It’s a huge influence on advertising, particularly fashion advertising,” says Andy Kner, art director of Print Magazine, a design journal in New York. “Asian graphic design is minimalist, pairing away the nonessential and getting to the heart of the message.”

This aesthetic has found its way to the American mall in the form of Sanrio, a Disney-esque gift company from Japan whose best-known mascot is a mouthless cartoon kitten called Hello Kitty. Kitty finds form as a purse, backpack and other knickknacks. Sanrio’s U.S. sales reportedly are $75 million a year and growing.

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Until recently, Asian pop music was a hard sell for Western markets because language got in the way. But such groups as Japan’s Cibo Matto and Pizzicato 5 have impressed critics in the West with their bilingual techno pop.

Japanese deejays--DJ Krush, DJ Honda--have fostered cult followings in the U.S. and U.K. by mastering hip-hop style turntable wizardry, using vinyl to create distinctive montages of sound that surpass the language barrier. And in the U.K., British producer Talvin Singh (Bjork, Massive Attack) has released a much-anticipated compilation called “Anokha: Soundz of the Asian Underground,” fusing his own study of ancient Indian tabla playing with manic, futuristic bass.

But the import of the day is Japan’s Tamagotchi, an egg-size, key-chain cyber-pet whose digital life and death depends on how well its owner pushes buttons for virtual food, water and other necessities. At $17.99, Tamagotchi is moving out the door by the tens of thousands at Toys R Us and F.A.O. Schwartz and through television retailer QVC. It has been called the Pet Rock of the ‘90s.

Japanese video games, of course, have become so popular in the U.S. that sociologists refer to subsets of America’s Generation X as the earlier “Atari wave” and the subsequent “Nintendo wave.”

But is there a true Asian strain in Western culture yet?

“This wave of Asian things that are cool is still exposed to a small segment of the American population,” says John Lee, editor of Yolk e-zine, an online magazine produced in L.A. for young Asian Americans. And, Lee adds, much of this Asian American exchange is more about currency than culture.

“If I drive a Toyota,” he asks, “does it mean I’m down with Japanese culture?”

But professor Hamamoto says there has been true impact here.

“This new wave of Asian pop deals with the shifting balance of economic and cultural power between Asian and Western countries. Because of the rising economic power of Asia, in its wake comes cultural power.”