FARAVID 34/2010
 

Summary:

Olavi K. Fält, Unfamiliarity has no boundary – the impact of globalization on the image of Japan in Finland in the late 1990s

In this article I examine the image of Japan in Finland and the impact of globalization on that image by analyzing articles about Japan which appeared in 1998 in Aamulehti, the independent nationally significant Tampere newspaper that was known as an organ of the Coalition Party until 1992. In 1998 Finland had just become a member of the EU and Japan had been plagued by years of economic decline. Thus, both countries felt the pressure of large global systems. By globalization I mean the continuous increase in worldwide mutual dependence and community.

The main topic areas covered in the Aamulehti articles on Japan were sports (20), the economic recession (20), the exotic culture (16), bureaucracy (7), features that link Finnishness and Japaneseness (6), technology (6), and politics (5). In the article I published in 2008, the main features of the image conveyed by Aamulehti in 1994 were features that linked Finnishness and Japaneseness (23), the exotic culture (12), Japan’s economic power (9), and the corrupt domestic policy (5). The significant share commanded by sports in 1998 and the growing interest in Japan in general were largely due to the immense interest awakened by the Winter Olympics held in Nagano.

Thus, purely from the perspective of the topic areas, the change appears to be quite significant. While the most popular topic in 1994 was the features that linked Finnishness and Japaneseness, its significance was noticeably smaller in 1998. The image of an exotic culture had kept its place, but the image of Japan as an economic miracle had been replaced by an image of a country suffering from a deep recession.

In all, the image of Japan conveyed by Aamulehti reflected the significant impact of globalization. Even though in principle we were at the boundary of a foreign culture, the boundary was crossed continuously, at times it disappeared, or then it moved from place to place, either in part or as a whole. Most important is to notice how Finnishness and Japaneseness were linked to each other in all the themes. The positive and negative images of the foreign culture reinforced the cultural identity considered to be Finnish, although as a matter of fact as a result of globalization the cultural unfamiliarity had become a part of the culture we considered our own. In keeping with the definition of globalization, mutual communion and dependence had increased to the extent that unfamiliarity in the image of Japan could only be experienced as our own unfamiliarity.  

Faravid 34/2010

 

04.09.2011