Uchi/Soto in Japan: A Global Turn

Abstract

This essay presents a method for reconsidering identities linked to place and the rhetoric used to construct them. Drawing from Jane Bachnik's “uchi/soto dynamic” and Kaori Chino's study of Tang-dynasty Chinese art's place in early Japanese regional identity, it introduces a theory of inside-outside positionalities for engaging the meaning-making potential within tropes of inside-outside, foreign-local, and traditional-modern. This theory building is followed by a reading of the “invented tradition” (Hobsbawm) of the Japanese Christmas cake, one of many symbols constituting post-war Japanese identity. The Christmas cake gains its significance simultaneously through overt reference to a supposed foreign origin and from less overt citation of older Japanese traditions—while marked as coming from “outside” local culture, the Christmas cake has strong local meanings specific to Japan, meanings unfamiliar in the cake's supposed place of origin. While this essay focuses on meaning-making in Japan, inside-outside positionalities functions broadly as a comparative methodology for rhetorical study.

Notes

¹For examples of such work, see Damián Baca's Mestiz@ Scripts, Digital Migrations and the Territories of Writing and LuMing Mao's Reading Chinese Fortune Cookie.

²In this sense, inside-outside positionalities parallels the workings of “common sense” ideology as explained by Norman Fairclough (77–108).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dominic Ashby

Dominic Ashby is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of English and is Coordinator of BUS102: Writing for Business Decision-Making in the Farmer School of Business at Miami University, 356 Bachelor Hall, Oxford, OH 45056, USA.