HKU Bulletin December 2014 (Vol. 16 No.1)

“Japanese pornography derives from this basic structure. The man wants to prove he is pure, so the woman is depicted as problematic – she doesn’t enjoy sex. The man transfers all his impurities to her by committing violence and evil against her, so she becomes the scapegoat. In the process the man gets sexual satisfaction and transforms the woman to perfect, meaning she now enjoys sex. “I see this pornography as a myth and delineate the basic structure to link it to traditional culture. The fact that it is pornography is irrelevant, it is just a text.” The Taiwanese link These are provocative ideas, but Dr Wong pointed out that the scapegoat structure could be seen in other cultural products from Japan. He and his co-researcher, Dr Yau Hoi-yan of Lingnan University, are studying this structure Pornography is a challenge for scholars, who must overcome the difficult nature of the material. But Dr Dixon Wong in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures has persevered, spending years analysing the basic structure of Japanese pornography as myth. Taking his lead from French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss’s examinations of myth, Dr Wong has drawn parallels between the storylines of Japanese pornography videos, which are characterised by sadomasochism, and Japanese cosmology. He has co-authored several books and research papers on Japanese pornography and its globalisation. “In Japanese cosmology, humans are the mirror of the gods. They have a dual nature of good and evil and one way they purify themselves of evil is to transfer all their impurities to a scapegoat. In traditional Japanese culture this scapegoat was a monkey,” he said. in Japanese television dramas, and he even argues that Japan’s occupation of Taiwan and invasion of other Asian countries in World War II could be another representation. “The Japanese colonial government spent a lot of money building infrastructure in Taiwan and teaching Taiwanese people the Japanese language. A lot of people say this is a colonial policy and in a way it is. But there is also the Japanese idea that they invaded China in order to save it from the hegemony of western countries. That’s why they had the Co-Prosperity Sphere in Asia: I invade you in order to save you. “I don’t know how far I can go with this concept but I don’t think it is confined to pornography.” Interestingly, the Taiwanese are keen consumers of Japanese pornography, although with their own cultural take on the material, as Dr Wong and Dr Yau discovered in separate research on Japanese pornography consumption in Taiwan. Taiwanese subtitle writers leave out musings by male characters on art and philosophy, which are peculiar to Japanese pornography, and instead inject their own cultural ideas about male and female sexuality. “The Taiwanese regard man as physical, someone who thinks sex is ordinary, whose desire is uncontrollable and who is an animal. Woman is seen as cultural and spiritual, she thinks sex is extraordinary, even unnecessary, and she can control her sexual desire; she is human. The job of man is to try to transform woman into something animal so animal has sex with animal. The man’s pleasure derives from this transformation. The thing that is similar with Japanese pornography is that man is the transformer, but it’s for different Dr Dixon Wong has been studying Japanese pornography from an academic perspective, which means looking past the titillation to examine archetypes, how they echo in society, and how consumers interpret them. THE MYTHICAL ORIGINS OF JAPANESE PORNOGRAPHY reasons,” he said. This interpretation was confirmed in in-depth interviews with more than two dozen Taiwanese. Globalise or shrivel Adapting Japanese pornography comes rather easily to Taiwanese, given their long-term exposure to Japanese culture. But Dr Wong said the US$1 billion industry faced difficulties because Japanese pornography producers had made little effort to globalise. “The Japanese cultural industry as a whole does not know how to promote its products in other countries, so most of the globalisation of that industry, including pornography, is through piracy. People make illegal copies and sell it. “They need a new invention, they need to find a way to go overseas, it’s the only way they can survive. But they need good local partners and culturally intelligible translations. I always encourage them to try to export their products in Asia at the least.” Dr Wong also sees potential for a greater presence of pornography studies within academia. “You cannot find a chimpanzee that can have its own pornography. Understanding pornography can be a way of understanding how we perceive and deal with the world,” he said. Understanding pornography can be a way of understanding how we perceive and deal with the world. Dr Dixon Wong Japanese Adult Videos in Taiwan , co-authored by Dr Dixon Wong of the University of Hong Kong and Dr Yau Hoi-yan of Lingnan University. A Japanese adult video shop in Taipei. A poster of a Japanese adult video girl at a street corner in Taipei. 22 | 23 The University of Hong Kong Bulletin | December 2014 Research