Accuracy/Inaccuracy
       Yano tells us that reflecting their own diversity as an ethnic group, Nikkei's reaction to Sakura is far from uniform. Some enthusiastically embrace it as a realistic drama of a young Japanese American woman from Hawai`i who realizes her dream of becoming a go between for the US and Japan's mutual understanding and friendship. Some find the specific details of the drama rather unrealistic, yet still accept it just as an example of mass entertainment on television. "For many of them, television is always and only entertainment, and they do not think to question the veracity of what is presented on screen" (p. 9). Then, there are others who strongly object to the characterization of the protagonist Sakura and how the drama represents Nikkei in general. The most misleading aspect of the drama is its treatment of Japanese as an everyday language of Hawai`i's Japanese Americans. "Japanese is the language of the home in Sakura's family; not only do all family members speak it to teach other, but so, too, does her Caucasian fiance Robert, who spent part of his childhood in Japan" (p. 5). Sakura, played by a Japanese actress, speaks Japanese so fluently that her occasional mispronunciations and grammatical mistakes as a marker of her non-native status seem unnatural and concocted. Correlatively, as pointed out by Yano's Nikkei interviewees, Sakura's English does not at all sound like an English spoken by a Hawai`i-born fourth generation Japanese American woman. What Nikkei viewers see is not Sakura, a fictional character, but a native speaker of Japanese pretending to be a yonsei by mechanically reproducing Japanese stereotypes of Americans as "children in a candy shop, looking eagerly here and there with excitement written all over their faces" (p. 10). All these character traits, narrative settings, and iconographic details create a completely false image of Nikkei as Japanese in diaspora who speak fluent Japanese and maintain close ties to Japan as their homeland. Of course, Hawai`i remains an important topos in Sakura's narrative. The history of Nikkei and their toil and suffering during the plantation days is presented to mark an emotional high point of Sakura's family's trip to Japan. Toward the end of the drama, Sakura is torn between Hawai`i and Japan, Father and her Japanese boyfriend Katsuragi, the Nikkei community in Hawai`i and the people in the Hida Takayama region where she has taught English as an assistant teacher at a private middle school. But the Japanese American experiences that Sakura wants to study and make known more widely beyond the confine of the Nikkei community do not necessarily embrace "Nikkei who might pose any kind of threat to patriarchal, heterosexist stability: political activists, gays, homeless, criminals, female leaders" (p. 8). Sakura also excludes those who problematize the supposed obviousness of Nikkei as a "natural" category: e.g., "persons of part-Japanese descent,... Okinawan immigrants and their descendants, who often faced discrimination by other Nikkei from Japan's main islands of Honshu and Kyushu" (p. 8).
       Thus, based on her textual analysis of Sakura and Nikkei viewers' responses to the drama, Yano argues that the images of Nikkei in Sakura are peculiarly homogenized and "Japanized." According to Yano,

Nikkei who inhabit Sakura become mirror images of Japanese upheld as models of family life: a middle class urban family living in a three-generation household led by a male breadwinner. They engage in the practices of Japan: eating Japanese foods, speaking Japanese, espousing the values of a past era. These Nikkei become nothing less than Japanese who happen to live overseas, forever diasporic in their close ties to Japan. They are the prodigal offspring of Japan (p. 8).

Nikkei, who reject Sakura's representation of themselves "because it violates their everyday sense and experience of who they are and have been historically" (p. 13), have every right to demand NHK to explain why they are reduced to a mere instrument for reassuring Japanese viewers about Japanese national identity, and correct many inaccurate, stereotyped images of themselves. But what about scholars or media critics whose subjectivities are not directly affected by Sakura's objectification and representational strategy? Does the pair notion of accuracy/inaccuracy still provide them with the most productive way of critically talking back to Sakura?
       The so-called image study critiques the inaccurate image of what are often construed as symbols of otherness such as women, ethnic groups, and foreign cultures. It tries to show how socially oppressed or dominated groups and cultures are portrayed negatively by mainstream media which tries to legitimate the hegemony of a dominant group as an unmarked norm or standard. Although many students of film, television, and media have learnt a great deal about the politics of representation and the ideology of ways of seeing from it, the image study in the end falls short of precisely articulating what is at stake in debates on media representations. The problem with the image study is its implicit assumption that it is possible to produce undistorted, correct images when all ideological obstacles are removed. The images that are universally accepted as correct representations of history, culture, or people can never exist because film, television, and media are social institutions, not a mere technical instrument for reproducing reality objectively. Nor is there any absolutely neutral or infallible perspective from which the accuracy of images can be determined once and for all. Even the unanimous approval of the images by those who are the objects of those images does not guarantee the accuracy of representation. It is not so uncommon for a particular collectivity to be narcissistically absorbed in its own idealized image (a nation is perhaps a prime example of such collectivity). From a scholarly perspective, accuracy is a relative term, and the image study's attempt to correct the popular image's inaccuracy as a general strategy of combating the tyranny of dominant media often leads to a critical dead end. Then, how can we go beyond the image study without necessarily falling into a trap of absolute relativism?
       Here the Louis Althusser's idea of interpellation, which is rejected at the very beginning of Yano's paper as too hierarchical and deterministic, may turn out to have some use for us after all. Yano writes:

Louis Althusser's concept of interpellation thus falls short here because it depends upon a tight hierarchical relationship between producer and consumer with producers wielding power to interpellate consumers into certain sets of assumptions, practices, and subjectivities through an internalization of ideology (1971). Here, by contrast, at least one group of consumers reads these media texts at a distance from its producers and does so within shifting relationships and ambiguous hierarchies. The relationship between media text and its more distant overseas consumers is one which is not necessarily structured within relations of interpellation because of its transnational shift away from its primary audience (Japan) to this secondary one (U.S.) (p. 1).

Yet, a distance between Sakura and its overseas secondary audience does not necessarily make the concept of interpellation extraneous. No consumers' subjectivities are completely determined by media texts even if they are primary target audiences. Television viewers are already embedded in a complex web of social relations when they watch any particular media text, so that interpellation can never be a deterministic molding of their subjectivities but a process of negotiations and sometimes even contestation. Despite her criticism of the concept of interpellation, what is revealed in Yano's study of Sakura and its reception by Nikkei viewers in Hawai`i is precisely a partial "success" of an interpellation process. For the Nikkei viewers of Sakura, interpellation does not simply fail. If they were completely outside the purview of interpellation, many Nikkei viewers would not react against Sakura so strongly. They know - sometimes unconsciously - that they are hailed by Sakura as one of "us" Japanese. In Sakura, Nikkei are represented as Americans in terms of citizenship but culturally and spiritually authentic Japanese, in fact more Japanese than many contemporary Japanese who have Japanese citizenship. As Yano compellingly shows, this image of Nikkei is clearly false. Yet, the Nikkei viewers are, even when they are highly critical of the image's inaccuracy, drawn into a particular process of subjectivization. The moment the viewers recognize their own images on the television monitor, they are caught up in the process of interpellation, which is activated regardless of whether the images are accurate or inaccurate because the viewers' recognition of the images' inaccuracy does not occur unless they first accept those images as their own images. Without the viewers' initial acceptance/recognition, the images are not false but indifferent; that is, they have no direct connection to the viewers' subjectivities and lived experiences so that the issue of accuracy would not be the first question coming into their mind.
       We do not need to retain in the end the concept of interpellation to analyze the complex reception context of Sakura among Nikkei in Hawai`i, but there are at least two reasons for not discarding it too hastily. As briefly suggested above, the first advantage of the concept is that it allows us to shift the focus of debate away from the image's accuracy to the essential link between image and subjectivity. The problem with the image study is that it establishes a hierarchical relation between a (real) object and an image, in which the latter occupies a subordinate position as a mere copy or reproduction of the former. In such a hierarchical relationship, the original and the image forever remain external to each other in their autonomous spheres. But in reality, no image can exist without a subjective involvement of the viewer, whose subjectivity is in turn fundamentally mediated by images. The images of Nikkei in Sakura cannot be discussed simply in terms of accuracy vs. inaccuracy without lapsing into a trap of the image study. The Nikkei viewers' subjectivities are already mediated by television and other types of mass produced images, and this is precisely why so much is at stake in television and media representations of ethnic groups, social classes, and minority collectives.
       Another reason why the concept of interpellation should not be dismissed too quickly is that it reminds us of the structural aspect of the problem of media representation. The incorrect representation or appropriation of Nikkei in Hawai`i is not an isolated incident or mere mistake; instead, it is a particular manifestation of a much larger structural problem. According to Yano, NHK did not arrogantly create their fantasy image of Nikkei as an exotic other; instead, "the careful attention to detail and thought... went into NHK's production process" (p. 3) including a field research in Hawai`i and Japan to get things right. Does this mean that "the resultant product is not a function of ignorance or hastiness, but deliberate, informed choices made by producers" (p. 3)? If NHK's attempt to produce a "politically correct" morning serialized drama turns out not to be too successful, where can we find causes for this failure? Is it possible to see in the "deliberate, informed choices" not intentional arrogance but "ignorance or hastiness," i.e., the producers' ignorance about the reception context outside Japan and more importantly their own positionality as makers of a media text? Since producers do not try to offend or alienate any sub-group of viewers on purpose under normal circumstances, what they regard as permissible distortions reveal a great deal about how social reality is constructed in a national space where the television industry is located. Instead of discussing the accuracy of a televisual image, it is perhaps more productive to see all images as a site of negotiations among competing social forces over what counts or does not count as constitutive elements of social reality. Although we can never do away with producers' intention and responsibility, the study of televisual representation must probe into the structural causes underlying the production and popular reception of dominant images.

Postmodern Nationalism
       Sakura and NHK's other morning serialized drama (e.g., Oshin) can have a significant propaganda effect on non-Japanese viewers. However, for NHK the measure of success still remains a high domestic rating; that is, no matter how popular it may become among non-Japanese viewers, a morning serialized drama would be deemed a failure if its rating remains low in the domestic market. As long as the ratings rule as the holy grail of the television industry, the priority is given to the primary viewers' desire and unconscious wishes. There is therefore no surprise in the following comment by Yano.

Indeed, it is the unequivocal Japanese sense that comes through repeatedly for Nikkei watching the show [Sakura]. Although the drama revolves around Nikkei, it is strictly a Japanese story told by Japanese to Japanese. NHK, therefore, took the location (Hawai`i) and the look, but not the substance of Nikkei, which is far more complex and variable than the Sakura storyline allows. While few would argue that media is meant to truly capture life, it is the sense of appropriation, especially amidst much-touted on-location attention to research and detail, that makes this violation an affront for many Nikkei viewers. How, they ask, could NHK have gotten it so wrong? (p. 12)

In addition to "how," we can also ask "why." For what purpose did NHK misconstrue and misappropriate Nikkei and Hawai`i? As we already examined above, Sakura "Japanizes" Nikkei; that is, it transforms Nikkei into people who are "more Japanese than Japanese," positive models for Japanese who have temporarily lost sight of their identity, an exemplar of essential Japaneseness or "ur-Japanese" (p. 14). It is obvious that Sakura disseminates some type of nationalistic sentiment, but why is the homogeneously Japanized image of Nikkei in Hawai`i necessary for creating such sentiment? To answer this question, we need to pay attention to what kind of Japaneseness is constructed in the drama more closely.
       Sakura's Japaneseness is emphasized not only by her action and appearance but also by her blatantly nationalistic name: Elizabeth Sakura Matsushita. The middle name Sakura is, needless to say, a national symbol of Japan. According to Yano, it is very unusual for a fourth generation Japanese American like Sakura to be known by her Japanese middle name rather than by her English first name. The last name Matsushita reminds us of Matsushita Konosuke, the founder of the electronics industry giant Matsushita, whose products are marketed under such brand names as Panasonic and National. Whereas Sakura represents a spiritual core of Japanese identity, Matsushita is associated with a modern capitalist ethos, a miracle of high economic growth of the 1960s supported by hardworking Japanese (i.e., a Japan of NHK's hugely successful television series Project X). Even the non-Japanese first name Elizabeth has a nationalistic overtone: it is well known that the Japanese imperial household looked toward the British royal family as a model of modern monarchism. Elizabeth therefore becomes a displaced symbol of the emperor and the imperial family's attempt to refashion themselves as a modern - Western - institution without losing essential Japaneseness. Thus, combining three symbolic elements of Japanese spirituality, Westernization, and consumer capitalism, the protagonist Elizabeth Sakura Matsushita becomes more than just a repository of Japan's lost cultural values.
       These composite elements of Sakura's identity also appear as more concrete forms and iconographic motifs in the drama. The Hida Takayama region where the most of the drama takes place is strongly marked by Japanese spirituality and cultural traditions. Sakura and non-Nikkei foreigners who are regular customers at a restaurant with a "speak Japanese only" policy are the thematic extension of what the name "Elizabeth" stands for. Finally, capitalist development and an economic success are symbolized by the middle-class life style of Sakura's family in Hawai`i. If Sakura is presented as a symbol of the new Japanese national identity despite her being a fourth generation Japanese American, it is because she is, on the one hand, "more Japanese than Japanese," and yet, on the other, not Japanese but American. Sakura is not just an inaccurate image of a young yonsei woman from Hawai`i but also an ideologically contradictory combination of two semic elements, national insularity and international openness. Soft nationalism that Sakura propagates cannot sustain itself by tautologically asserting the Japaneseness of the Japanese when the global remapping of geopolitical boundaries, economic networks, and cultural landscapes does not allow any nation to keep its insular, homogeneous existence even as a fiction. Sakura chooses Nikkei as an imaginary solution to the problem of how to refashion the Japanese national identity, yet instead of solving it, ends up further accentuating the presence of the two irreconcilable elements which can never be merged into a coherent unity.

Nostalgia for the Postwar
       Following Darrell Hamamoto, Yano finds a complicity between the US and Japanese media's "anachronistic" representations of Nikkei.

As Darrell Hamamoto points out, even though Japanese Americans have been part of American society for four and even five generations, their media depiction in the United States remains frozen in time as newly arrived foreigners, producing a "symbolic containment [that] implies that Japanese Americans still occupy 'probationary' status within the larger society"... Nikkei, by these American media depictions are forever fresh off the boat, and thus always foreign and exotic. NHK's depiction of Nikkei agrees with that of American media, tying Nikkei to Japan, more than to the place of their American birth and lives. Both, in the words of James Clifford, position Nikkei as "not here to stay" in America.... This is a process not so much of making others, as of extending selves by incorporating Nikkei within the fold of Japan. These representations make Nikkei always and only diasporic, resting upon an underlying racialism that creates a blood tie of all those of Japanese ancestry (p. 12).

A type of complicity Yano points out definitely exists between Japanese and American media representations of Nikkei as "temporary guests." However, I wonder if we can simply observe in Sakura "a process not so much of making others, as of extending selves by incorporating Nikkei within the fold of Japan." Put differently, does Sakura abstractly mold Nikkei into a cookie-cutter image of Japanese? Or is there any historical specificity in the drama's representation of Nikkei as Japanese in diaspora?
       Sakura's grandmother and the principle of the middle school where she works as an assistant English teacher were in love with each other during the Second World War. He was sent to the front, and the grandmother was waiting for his safe return. But the circumstances beyond their control have separated them permanently from each other until Sakura arrives at the school. The make-believe wedding ceremony near the end of the drama provides the grandmother and especially the principle with a sense of closure, making it possible for them to come to terms with their twisted fate caused by the war. This narrative thread is quite significant because it functions as a general historical framework within which the representation of Nikkei is understood. For example, what Yano presents in the following begins to bear a quite different meaning when it is placed within this historical framework.

The drama also paints an historical picture of Nikkei as Japanese brethren who have undergone hardship. When Sakura's natal family visits her in Japan, her father is asked to speak to the students and teachers at the Japanese school. The speech he chooses to make highlights the pain and suffering that Japanese immigrants went through in their struggle to make a living in Hawai`i and elsewhere under harsh conditions. He describes their backbreaking labor and the debt he owes them. He turns hole-hole bushi, a work song and lament sung by Japanese immigrant women as they toiled in Hawai`i's sugar cane fields, into a Nikkei anthem iconic of that labor. And his speech, as well as a moving performance of hole-hole bushi by Sakura's grandmother, elicits tears from his audience, including Sakura and the rest of her family (Episode 59). Amidst this immigration story, Nikkei - in particular Nikkei women - emerge as heroic in their suffering (p. 8).