The Winter Sonata Boom / The Kanryu Wave

[JP Meyer]

With regards to star personna of Yon-sama and whether or not Japanese
audiences care about Korea or just issues of family, origin, etc., I
think that looking at how Untold Scanda fared in Japan might be an
interesting start.  While Untold Scandal was one of the biggest hits
of 2003 in Korea (behind only Silmido, Memories of Murder, and My
Tutor Friend, IIRC), it had only had somewhat modest receipts in Japan
compared to some of the bigger Korean hits of this year such as
Taegukgi and--from the initial results--Windstruck.

Untold Scandal might star Bae Yong-Jun, but it's just about as far
from Winter Sonata as you can get.  The opening credits probably say
enough, as there is a somewhat opening with a mischevious-sounding
narrator reading out of a book ("A Record of Lady Jo's Scandalous
Affair") while some Masterpiece Theatre-esque orchestral piece plays
as the narrator reads out lines like "The characters here are so
promiscuous that you almost can't believe that they're Koreans!  After
all, Korean men are proper gentlemen and Korean women are virtuous
ladies."  And then to underscore that, before the credits have even
finished, Yon-sama's Sebastian Valmont character has engaged in a
nudity-filled sex scene with the girl that he's just seduced.  I also
definitely seem to remember reading a fair number of newspaper
articles about how much this displeased the shufus that were
(presumably) the target audience.

Also, like I said earlier, Windstruck has just had a record opening
for a Korean film in Japan with a debut on about 300 screens (for
contrast, The Incredibles and Howl's Moving Castle are playing on
about 700 and 500, respectively) and that might serve as a good
comparison based on what Aaron said both on audience makeup and on the
film's values.  Kwak Jae-Young has bit influenced a bit by Internet
novels and that would seem that he has a better finger on the pulse of
younger audience.  But more importantly, that movie seems to embody
more of what Japanese audiences seem to "want" from Korea, with the
film's "lovers are tragically separated" undercurrent, rather than say
a more "real" Korean-ness in Untold Scandal's exquisite Chosun-era
costumes, PD, and dialogue.

Then again, it might also be the fact that Windstruck stars Jeon Ji-Hyun.

-JP

On Thu, 6 Jan 2005 08:27:30 -0500, Aaron Gerow <gerowaaron at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Thanks to Markus for bringing up the issue. There are several questions
> floating around here.
> 
> First, of course, is whether the kanryu wave really signifies any
> change in how the majority of Japanese view their nation in relation to
> Korea and the world. After years and years of sometimes virulent
> discrimination against Koreans, have Japanese finally overcome that
> prejudice? Is Japan now finally open to the world and to difference?
> Some connect the kanryu wave to earlier booms in Asian products, such
> as Hong Kong movies and singers (the Leslie Chan phenom), and then the
> World Cup. Korean movies were also getting quite popular before
> Fuyusona hit the airwaves and Kusanagi Tsuyoshi developed his Korean
> character long before Yon-sama appeared. But do these series of booms
> signal any real shift in national attitudes, or is this simply some
> surface manifestation of shifts in global flows of consumer
> consumption? Since I've already criticized such "international"
> Japanese films as Iwai Shunji's Swallowtail Butterfly in print before,
> I am still suspicious of the ways consumption and commodification can
> replace real encounters or self-criticism. What will those obasama fans
> of Yon-sama really do when their daughter comes home and says she wants
> to marry a zainichi or Korean man? Has the popularity of Korean drama
> had any effect on the box office of a much more critical film on
> Korea-Japan relations, Sai Yoichi's Chi to hone (are Yon-sama's fans
> seeing the film and if so, what do they think of this Korean man versus
> their ideal)? Is the kanryu boom intertwined so much with issues of
> family, masculinity, romance and melodrama that the fact these are
> Korean actually means very little?
> 
> Because of my suspicions of this form of consumption, I am more
> interested in what this boom has to say about the social and political
> functions of melodrama in Japan and issues of gender, masculinity, and
> romance, than about what it means internationally (though I don't want
> to ignore that). I don't think it is any coincidence that this boom is
> going on at the same time that there has been a revival in what some
> call more "traditional" tragic love-romances in both literature and
> film which have nothing to do with Korea. This involves anything from
> internet novels like Deep Love to the big live-action film hits of this
> year, Sekai no chushin ni, ai o sakebu (dir. Yukisada Isao) and Ima, ai
> ni yukimasu (dir. Doi Nobuhiro). Tear-jerkers are in, and if
> border-crossing is an issue, it's one where the appearance of a Korean
> and the appearance of a dead loved one (usually involving Takeuchi
> Yuko!) are not dissimilar. A full analysis of the content for Fuyusona
> is warranted, but my wife's general reaction upon seeing it was that it
> strongly reminded her of Japanese TV melodrama from the 1960s, 1970s or
> early 1980s (that is, before the trendy dramas appeared). Note also
> that remakes of dramas from that era are popular recently (Shiroi
> kyoto, etc.). Perhaps this tells us this is a rather reactionary or
> nostalgic phenomena, and explains the age of Yon-sama fans. But I
> personally don't think this is just an age issue, because many of these
> internet love stories have mainly teenage fans. (Though issues of
> reception are important: media commentators say that TV dramas are just
> not as popular as they used to be because of shifts in living
> patterns--perhaps middle-aged women are now the main TV drama audience
> and younger people are shifting to internet literature?) Given what
> Mitsu and others have written about the national functions of melodrama
> in the 1950s, what are we to say of it in the first decade of the
> 2000s? Given that Kinoshita Keisuke molded much of TV melodrama of the
> 60s and 70s, perhaps more research in his work is warranted?