Riding the Black Ship: Japan and Tokyo Disneyland (Harvard East Asian Monographs)

Rating:
Summary: Co-Opting Disney...
Review: Like McDonald's, Coca-Cola and they other highly visible aspects of American culture, Disney has long been taken to be one of America's many types of "cultural imperialism" - a part of American culture forced on the rest of the world whether they like it or not that quickly gets absorbed like candy by most other countries. In "Riding the Black Ship", Aviad Raz makes a very compelling case for how Japan, in fact, reworks Disney to fit its own image in a very non-traditional way.

Drawing on visits to Tokyo Disneyland, interviews with current and former employees and comparisons with the American Disney parks and Japan's other theme parks, he looks at how Disney is presented, not only to Japan, but to the park's employees and to the country itself. He represents this as three aspects: "on-stage", "backstage" and "off-stage". He takes us through how employees are trained, how rides are conceptualized and how the people of Japan see the park - among other things.

From this he boils down his argument to essentially say that, while the illusion of being "just like America" is preserved at great lengths, Tokyo Disneyland subtly alters just about every aspect of the park to appeal to a more Japanese audience. More interestingly, this is mostly done by the Japanese management and can be used to show how Japan deals not only with cultural influences, but with the entire world.

I highly recommend this book for anyone with an interest in cultural anthropology, Japanese business practice or just a curiosity about Disney. In anthropology, arguments and perspectives like these are being used with greater frequency, but rarely are they exhibited as well as in Raz's book. It's very readable and it makes some fascinating - and important - arguments about how Japan sees and deals with the world today.

Rating:
Summary: Co-Opting Disney...
Review: Like McDonald's, Coca-Cola and they other highly visible aspects of American culture, Disney has long been taken to be one of America's many types of "cultural imperialism" - a part of American culture forced on the rest of the world whether they like it or not that quickly gets absorbed like candy by most other countries. In "Riding the Black Ship", Aviad Raz makes a very compelling case for how Japan, in fact, reworks Disney to fit its own image in a very non-traditional way.

Drawing on visits to Tokyo Disneyland, interviews with current and former employees and comparisons with the American Disney parks and Japan's other theme parks, he looks at how Disney is presented, not only to Japan, but to the park's employees and to the country itself. He represents this as three aspects: "on-stage", "backstage" and "off-stage". He takes us through how employees are trained, how rides are conceptualized and how the people of Japan see the park - among other things.

From this he boils down his argument to essentially say that, while the illusion of being "just like America" is preserved at great lengths, Tokyo Disneyland subtly alters just about every aspect of the park to appeal to a more Japanese audience. More interestingly, this is mostly done by the Japanese management and can be used to show how Japan deals not only with cultural influences, but with the entire world.

I highly recommend this book for anyone with an interest in cultural anthropology, Japanese business practice or just a curiosity about Disney. In anthropology, arguments and perspectives like these are being used with greater frequency, but rarely are they exhibited as well as in Raz's book. It's very readable and it makes some fascinating - and important - arguments about how Japan sees and deals with the world today.