JAPAN: Simply Irresistible ‘Yonsama’ Helps Cool Bilateral Tensions

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Dec 9 2004 (IPS) - Japan’s diplomacy with East Asia may have taken a turn for the worse recently but the whopping popularity of several Korean stars among the public here signals how arts can play a more important role than politics in easing bilateral tensions.

Take the comments of Kimiko Maruyama, 55, a company employee and mother of three grown up children. She claims to be ”stuck” in ”mind-numbing adulation” for South Korean soap opera idol Bae Yoon Joon – an experience that completely throws her off balance.

Japanese fans refer to Bae as ‘yonsama’ – a honorific term only used to address the most respected celebrities.

”I can’t believe I could ever behave like this,” says Maruyama referring to the countless magazines, photographs and videotapes of ‘yonsama’ that she has collected over the year. She also has purchased the kind of sunglasses and clothes worn by him.

Maruyama tells IPS that before the airing of the Korean romantic soap opera ‘Winter Sonata’, South Korea and Bae were ”so far way in my mind.”

”The impression of South Korea given by Japanese politicians is that the country is backward and the people have bad feelings towards Japan. But when I saw ‘yonsama’ and the TV show, I completely changed by mind,” she says.

In 2001, Japan angered South Korea and other Asian countries by approving eight middle school textbooks, including one written by nationalist scholars who deny Japan committed documented atrocities during World War II.

Seoul was upset by the failure of those textbooks to mention tens of thousands of Korean and other Asian women who were forced to serve as sexual slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War II. Anti-Japanese feeling runs deep, especially among older Koreans who vividly remember how they suffered during Japanese rule. They were forced to adopt Japanese names and banned from speaking Korean in school.

The 2002 soccer World Cup finals co-hosted by the two countries undoubtedly enlivened the mood of friendship. But for the past several years, many Japanese have had access to a tremendous amount of information about South Korea through the media, mainly related to food and travel. According to recent white papers on tourism, approximately two million Japanese travel to South Korea every year.

Bae, 32, who speaks softy, smiles beautifully and calls his fans his ”family” is easily the most popular Korean actor in Japan.

Indeed, his short visit to Tokyo last week-end to promote an exhibition featuring a collection of his sexy photos created headlines in the country as thousands of screaming women met him at the airport, gathered at dawn outside his hotel and disrupted traffic and buildings for more than ten hours to get a glimpse of their favorite star.

When he finally left, the crowd of female fans went even madder, shoving and pushing to see him off. A silver haired woman, clutching a huge bouquet of red roses, wiped her tears away at the airport, saying the ”the experience of seeing ‘yonsama’ was so deeply emotional” that she could not bear it.

Analysts trying to decipher the ‘yonsama’ fever that seems to have caused the usually staid middle-aged Japanese women to throw away their tightly controlled traditional social manners with a wild abandon that has raised male eye brows here, say the ongoing onslaught tells a lot about modern Japan.

”The huge popularity of the Korean actor is most welcome,” says Mitsuko Yamaguchi, spokesperson for Ishikawa Memorial Association, one of Japan’s oldest feminist groups.

”It depicts the hungering for romantic, innocent love by older Japanese women who were brought up during the era when these qualities were highly valued,” she explains. ”At the same time, the trend has helped boost Japan-Korea ties that has been tense thanks to Japanese politicians who refuse to make amends for our past colonization of our neighbours.”

Following Bae’s popularity, other young Korean actors, too, are winning the hearts of Japanese – an indication that their fixation with U.S. stars and Hollywood is slowly waning.

Actors like Lee Byung Hun, Jang Dong Gun, Won Bin and Choi Ji Woo, the heroine of ‘Winter Sonata’, can be seen on TV commercials every day in Japan.

”Postwar Japan believed the United States was everything. Defeated Japanese embraced Hollywood along with western looks. Being blonde was beautiful and having black hair was old fashioned,” says Koichi Ishiyama, a television commentator.

”But this has changed,” he adds. ”The Japanese are re-visiting Asia and finding out that fellow Asians are fashionable, their cities are modern and there is much to learn from a culture that is closer to Japan than the West.”

But what of the female adoration of ‘yonsama’?

Yamaguchi says with a smile that the ‘hotness’ for the Korean male actor could be a backlash against bossy older Japanese men who rarely say sorry to their wives and simply ignore the presence of older women.

”Perhaps the message women want to send is, ‘Japanese men wake up and change’,” she tells IPS. ”The crowds of fans are saying that older women can still love romance and find gentle caring Korean men irresistible.”