Torn Between Two Lovers: Retrospective Learning and Melancholia among Japanese Women

• Published in: Korea observer Vol. 42; no. 2; pp. 223 - 254
• Main Author: Oh, Ingyu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Seoul Institute of Korean Studies 01.07.2011; 한국학술연구원
• Subjects: Belgian literature; Colonialism; Consumption; Cultural identity; Cultural values; Ethnic Identity; Ethnicity; Females; Food; Foreign language learning; French literature; Husbands; Identity; Japan; Japanese; Japanese culture; Japanese language; Korean culture; Korean language; Kristeva, Julia (1941- ); Language culture relationship; Learning; Melancholy; Middle age; Motion pictures; Motivation; Music; Popular Culture; Popular music; Postcolonialism; Society; South Korea; Subversive activities; Television; Transnationalism; Whites; Women; Womens groups; 정치외교학; New York; Asia; United States > US; China; Japan; Taiwan
• ISSN: 0023-3919; 2586-3053

The objective of this paper is to analyze the psychological motivation behind the retrospective learning that is integral to the consumption of popular culture produced by former colonial countries. In particular, the paper addresses the question of retrospective learning involved in the consumption of Korean popular culture called "Hallyu" by some Japanese women. A cultural genre that includes Korean TV dramas, popular music, films, food and drink and language, Hallyu began receiving the attention of Japanese women in the mid-2000s; its consumption has now transformed into a broad-based popular trend among young and mature generations of women in Japan. I focus on retrospective learning patterns that surface only after members of a certain culture feel alienated from or frustrated with progressive learning efforts promoted earlier by Western cultures. On this basis, I argue that the motivation among middle-aged Japanese women to retrospectively learn about the somewhat nostalgic or even backward Korean popular culture is derived from their sense of lost identity as Asian women, sense of separation from their traditional Japanese values caused by the Westernization of their culture, or the feeling that they are masquerading as honorary "white" women. Rediscovering their lost identity through Hallyu allows their gendered and racialized melancholia to manifest and motivates them to engage in retrospective learning in an effort to recover their old identities. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]