''Mukokuseki'' (Japanese: ) is the

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

term for "statelessness" or "nationlessness". The term is sometimes used to describe fictional characters depicted without a concrete

ethnicity An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they Collective consciousness, collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, ...

or nationality, particularly in

anime is a Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, , in Japan and in Ja ...

and

manga are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long history in earlier Japanese art. The term is used in Japan to refer to both comics ...

. It is commonly invoked in criticism of

Japanese media The mass media in Japan include numerous television and radio networks as well as newspapers and magazines in Japan. For the most part, television networks were established based on capital investments by existing radio networks. Variety shows, ...

. It is thought to be particularly significant in the context of foreign influences on Japanese entertainment properties as well as the subsequent marketing of such properties towards non-Japanese audiences.Bîrlea, Oana-Maria. "Soft Power: 'Cute Culture', a Persuasive Strategy in Japanese Advertising." ''Trames'': A Journal of the Humanities & Social Sciences, vol. 27, no. 3, July 2023, pp. 311–324. EBSCO, Notable examples of ''mukokuseki'' characters include

Hello Kitty , also known by her real name , is a fictional character created by Yuko Shimizu, currently designed by Yuko Yamaguchi, and owned by the Japanese company Sanrio. Sanrio depicts Hello Kitty as a British anthropomorphized white cat with a red ...

Light Yagami is the main protagonist of the manga series '' Death Note'', created by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata. He is portrayed as a brilliant but bored genius who finds the Death Note, a supernatural notebook that allows the user to kill anyone by ...

,Altiok, Revna.
What Is Mukokuseki in Anime – And Why Is It Important?
from ''

Comic Book Resources ''CBR'', formerly ''Comic Book Resources'', is a news website primarily covering comic book news, comic book reviews, and comic book–related topics involving movies, television, anime, and video games. It is owned by Valnet, parent of publicat ...

'', 24 June 2022. and

Mario Mario (; ) is a Character (arts), character created by the Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. He is the star of the ''Mario (franchise), Mario'' franchise, a recurring character in the ''Donkey Kong'' franchise, and the mascot of the Ja ...

,Zhang, X., & Song, H. (2023). The Mukokuseki Strategy and the Application of Pivot Translation in the Localization of Japanese Games. ''Games and Culture'', 0(0). and the term has also been applied to writers like Murakami Haruki akin to a

literary genre A literary genre is a category of literature. Genres may be determined by List of narrative techniques, literary technique, Tone (literature), tone, Media (communication), content, or length (especially for fiction). They generally move from mor ...

.Strecher, M. (2011), At the Critical Stage: A Report on the State of Murakami Haruki Studies. ''Literature Compass'', 8: 856–869.

History

Implications of the term in visual media can vary considerably between artstyles, either employing culturally neutral elements or hybridizing multiple disparate cultural influences.Ruh, Brian. "Conceptualizing Anime and the Database Fantasyscape." Mechademia: Second Arc, vol. 9, 2014, pp. 164–275. . Accessed 13 Dec. 2023. One author nonetheless argued that " closer inspection ..the communication of cultural markers and characteristics is far more intricate than the mere display of Japanese facial features."Kato, Hiloko and Bauer, René.
Mukokuseki and the Narrative Mechanics in Japanese Games
. Narrative Mechanics: Strategies and Meanings in Games and Real Life, edited by Beat Suter, René Bauer and Mela Kocher, Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, via

De Gruyter Walter de Gruyter GmbH, known as De Gruyter (), is a German scholarly publishing house specializing in academic literature. History The roots of the company go back to 1749 when Frederick the Great granted the Königliche Realschule in Be ...

, 2021, pp. 113–150.

Asian studies Asian studies is the term used usually in North America and Australia for what in Europe is known as Oriental studies. The field is concerned with the Asian people, their cultures, languages, history and politics. Within the Asian sphere, Asian ...

scholars Birlea Oana-Maria and Christine Yano analyzed ''mukokuseki'' as closely related to the aesthetic of ''

kawaii ''Kawaii'' is a Japanese cultural phenomenon which emphasizes cuteness, childlike innocence, charm, and simplicity. ''Kawaii'' culture began to flourish in the 1970s, driven by youth culture and the rise of cute characters in manga and anime ...

'', an abstract concept of "cuteness" or "loveliness" considered central to the marketing and international appeal of Japanese artistic and commercial properties like ''

''.Oana-Maria, Birlea. "Hybridity in Japanese Advertising Discourse", '' Acta Universitatis Sapientiae: Philologica'', Vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 55–71, December 2019. Yano identified the cosmopolitan success of Hello Kitty in the 1970s as a trailblazer of the ''mukokuseki'' style and an indicator of a marketing strategy she coined as ''Pink

Globalization Globalization is the process of increasing interdependence and integration among the economies, markets, societies, and cultures of different countries worldwide. This is made possible by the reduction of barriers to international trade, th ...

'', but argued that rather than separating the subject from established ethnic categories ''mukokuseki'' was instead "imbued with Euro-American culture or race", summarized by a commentator as a discourse in which "anything but a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant is considered 'ethnic culture' by most people." One postulated reason for the rise of ''mukokuseki'' as a style is the desire to market Japanese products worldwide without making it obvious that they are Japanese, due to enduring

anti-Japanese sentiment Anti-Japanese sentiment (also called Japanophobia, Nipponophobia and anti-Japanism) is the fear or dislike of Japan or Japanese culture. Anti-Japanese sentiment can take many forms, from antipathy toward Japan as a country to racist hatr ...

in the United States as well as many neighboring Asian countries, particularly as a result of

Japanese war crimes During its imperial era, Empire of Japan, Japan committed numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity across various Asian-Pacific nations, notably during the Second Sino-Japanese War, Second Sino-Japanese and Pacific Wars. These incidents ...

in World War II. The ''mukokuseki'' fiction of Murakami was noted as transgressing historic divisions like those between Japan and China, achieving a level of popular culture ubiquity in both the mainland and Taiwan and becoming the first Japanese author to be widely considered in the latter following a diplomatic row between Japan and the Republic of China over Japan's 1972 recognition of the People's Republic of China. Murakami, a self-described "black sheep" of the Japanese literary establishment, has made similar headway in the historically hostile South Korea and is credited with inspiring a trans-national movement of other East Asian writers across the region.

Impacts and influences

In addition to the increased international appeal of culturally neutral properties, Brian Ruh paraphrased

Susan J. Napier Susan Jolliffe Napier (; born October 1955) is a professor of the Japanese program at Tufts University. She was formerly the Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Literature and Culture at the University of Texas at Austin. She also worked as a visit ...

in describing ''mukokuseki'' as "a way for contemporary Japanese to playfully escape their own concepts of Japan and their own feelings of Japaneseness... fantasized ''mukokuseki'' anime bodies can be free from the cultural and societal baggage of physical bodies." Other popular narratives have stated that, due to their fictionalized or aestheticized settings and "abstracted" representations of the human body, manga and anime are inherently divorced from real-life categories of ethnicities and that their characters are therefore all naturally ''mukokuseki''. A ''Language Awareness'' study of Japanese popular media found traits such as blonde hair and marked speech were widely used as shorthand for depicting foreign characters, described as a "quintessential" image of foreigners, with Americans being the most affected nationality.Rika Ito & Megan Bisila (2020) "Blond hair, blue eyes, and 'bad' Japanese: representing foreigner stereotypes in Japanese anime", ''Language Awareness'', 29:3–4, 286–303 Retrieved 25 March 2024. Asian studies scholar Laura Miller noted the increasing prevalence of light-colored hair and blue eyes as cosmetic choices in

J-pop J-pop (often stylized in all caps; an abbreviated form of "Japanese popular music"), natively known simply as , is the name for a form of popular music that entered the musical mainstream of Japan in the 1990s. Modern J-pop has its roots in trad ...

scenes and other fields of

Japanese youth culture Japanese society hosts a number of popular youth cultures. Fashion subcultures among children and teenagers include Japanese idol, visual kei, Gothic Lolita, Nagoya kei and gyaru. History A distinct youth culture began in the mid-1980s with th ...

, emphasizing the impacts these aesthetics have on conventional perceptions of race and nationality.Miller, Laura. "Deracialisation or Body Fashion? Cosmetic Surgery and Body Modification in Japan." ''Asian Studies Review'', vol. 45, no. 2, June 2021, pp. 217–237. EBSCOhost, .

Criticism

''Mukokuseki'' has particularly received some criticism in the context of the

soft power In politics (and particularly in international politics), soft power is the ability to co-option, co-opt rather than coerce (in contrast with hard power). It involves shaping the preferences of others through appeal and attraction. Soft power is ...

it does or does not afford Japanese culture in the Western world, with the lack of distinct Japanese values described as rendering the

cultural capital In the field of sociology, cultural capital comprises the social assets of a person (education, intellect, style of speech, style of dress, social capital, etc.) that promote social mobility in a stratified society. Cultural capital functions as ...

of Japanese media "nothing but an illusion". A writer for ''

'' also criticized Western film adaptations for taking ''mukokuseki'' characters as an opportunity to

whitewash Whitewash, calcimine, kalsomine, calsomine, asbestis or lime paint is a type of paint made from slaked lime ( calcium hydroxide, Ca(OH)2) or chalk (calcium carbonate, CaCO3), sometimes known as "whiting". Various other additives are sometimes ...

lead roles in works such as '' The Last Airbender'' (2010) or ''

Death Note ''Death Note'' (stylized in all caps) is a Japanese manga series written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata. It was serialized in Shueisha's Shōnen manga, manga magazine ''Weekly Shōnen Jump'' from December 2003 to ...

'' (2017).

References

{{reflist Advertising in Japan Anime Anime and manga terminology Manga

History

Impacts and influences

Criticism

See also

References