Popular culture and politics: re-narrating the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute

Abstract

Narrative, we argue, can (re)construct social reality. Alternative imaginaries of 'being in the world' can lead to alternative ways of 'doing in the world'. We discuss the current dispute between China and Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands as an example. Westphalian logic would have the two countries come to blows, if not go to war, over the Islands. The Westphalian account of the dispute centres on the key principle of sovereignty. But what if we utilized a different imaginary to re-narrate the conflict? We turn to popular culture in both Japan and China as a guide, and juxtapose two anime, Appleseed and Time of Eve, with one Chinese TV drama, Nirvana in Fire. Each of these upends conventional analyses of the Islands dispute and offers alternative conceptions of sovereignty. We conclude by considering the implications of such alternative imaginaries for the study, if not practice, of international relations. 1 In September 2012, the Japanese government purchased eight uninhabited islets from private ownership, calling them the Senkaku Islands. However, China also claims sovereignty over the same islands, calling them the Diaoyu Tai (Global Times/Xinhua 2012). See Drifte (2003, 2014) and Hunt (2017). 2 Rumours claim that rich oil reserves lie underneath these islets. Others cite the islets' 'strategic location' in the middle of international shipping lanes and fishing grounds (The Economist 2013). 3 Beijing and Tokyo have each increased their military budgets due to tensions in the East

Narrating the South Pacific in and Beyond Great Power Politics

“…While there has been a growing body of literature that focuses on strategic narrative in general and its relevance to understanding international relations in places such as China, Europe, East Asia and the Indo-Pacific [ 4 , 8 , 24 , 33 , 41 , 46 , 57 , 58 , 62 , 69 ], studies on international relations narratives concerning the South Pacific are still relatively rare [with exceptions such as 21 , 64 ]. To some extent, this Special Issue aims to fill this gap.…”

Long live pacifism! Narrative power and Japan’s pacifist model

“…However, counter-narratives may exist even in situations where one narrative is dominant, and challenge the apparent naturalness of dominant narratives (see Currie 2011). As suggested below, a pacifist counter-narrative could promote an alternative model and engender less conflict-prone international politics (see Chen and Shimizu 2019;Ling and Nakamura 2019). Certainly it would be very difficult for such a counter-narrative to become dominant, but a necessary first step would be to construct it.…”

Morality and progress: IR narratives on international revisionism and the status quo

“…7 Attempts at such vocabularies so far problematize either geographical/historical or conceptual boundaries and binaries. In his call for a global IR, for example, Acharya (2014) urges scholars to look beyond the Westphalian model of order to those of historical periods and regions, as well as different frameworks of relations including alternative forms of regionalism (see Ling and Nakamura 2019;Chen and Shimizu 2019). Critiquing IR for overlooking peaceful interactions and bidirectional learning between the West and non-West, Acharya points to a resulting loss of mutual respect (Acharya 2014, 656).…”