a Chinese delegate if we showed that film. They did not participate in the film festival. I agree that if Chinese see the film, they would be offended. But the Dalai Lama is prohibited from going back to Rasa now and this a political situation is well-known all over the world. The film may not be exactly based on fact but it may not be so far from fact.
What I want to say is that it is difficult to find Asian values such as the good Tibet Buddhism and profound teachings of Dalai Lama among Asians, including a political message.
Hollywood takes away Asian values, robbing Asians of it.
And we find it in a film, in a piece of art. And although we say Asian values, we do not respect each other's values, which is a reality. So, in the case of culture it is easy to criticize that such Orientalism is an American movie version of Asia, a Hollywood version of Asia transformed by Americans to suit the Western people's taste. But we have to reconsider the reality that such value is still given by Hollywood.
America is often said to be the sole winner in the economic world. We wonder why America is so strong and then we realize that after all American strength lies in its culture.
The American lifestyle including movies can be seen everywhere in the world. People wear T-shirts, jeans, Nike's sneakers and listen to American music in Hong Kong, Taipei, Seoul, Djakarta etc. A whole family goes to McDonald's to enjoy fast food. Not only movies and music but also computers made by Bill Gates are presented to the world as a popular culture. The culture of Nike sneakers and the world of American computers used by us, the Japanese, are connected. They are presented to us as modern culture.
Japan has Fujitsu and other computers which give better performance in various aspects but we are inferior to America because we cannot distribute them as our culture to the world.
America has strong military and political power guaranteed and supported by its culture distributed all over the world, which gives America an overwhelming presence. Some may say it is simply the issue of the market, consumer culture, consumer economy or consumer market and that all is just revolving around the market. But America is making culture which meets the needs of the world market, representing the market. That is really an American way and we should not overlook that. Thus culture controls. Russia and China are also super powers but they do not show as strong a power as America because they cannot supply culture that we can share. That is their problem. There are many aspects of culture, so I will not mention it any more. Dr. Nandy and others touched upon culture. Cultural nationalism, or negotiation or fighting against democracy Dr. Reid mentioned is often the theme arising from cultural friction or cultural conflict. This is the first point I want to mention.
For example, last year's best-seller, "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy, was written in English by an Indian woman in her 30s living in Delhi. It was published by Random House and became a best-seller in America, England and Australia and awarded British Booker Prize which is said to be the most authoritative prize of the world now. The story is about most local episodes of four twin sisters in State of Kara. Because it was written in English, it was distributed to the whole world and awarded the British Booker prize. I wonder about the meaning of this. It is easy to say that it is exploitation of culture but the problem is whether we regret that Europe takes away Asian culture from us before we are able to evaluate it or whether we just accept that.
As to the creation of culture, as I said yesterday, our Asian culture is mixture of each native culture, great civilizations such as Asian, Indian and Chinese civilizations, the universal civilization, Western, modern culture and present culture.
If any of those elements are missing, present Asian culture will not exist. This is true everywhere. So mixed culture or mixed-breed culture is a big characteristic of our culture. However there is a new breeze in this Asian culture. About one week ago, an international symposium was held in Tokyo, where Professor David Woo of The Chinese University of Hong Kong said Japanese comic books are now spreading all over the world, Japanese comic books not translated into Cantonese, Chinese or English are "read" by foreign students. While they cannot read Japanese, he said that they understand the stories through pictures and styles drawn by the Japanese and feel sympathy toward them.
Some Japanese comic books are translated in various parts of Korea but there is also this phenomenon that they feel sympathy toward Japanese comic books written in Japanese through the pictures. Not only comic books but also music, movies, paintings, novels - literature may be a little difficult - but all these things are made in various forms going beyond national borders. For example, a Hong Kong producer makes a movie in Beijing using Taiwan money and it is developed in a stadium in Fuchu, Tokyo. I think we should not overlook this type of phenomenon where cultural cooperation goes beyond national borders. However, in many cases those products are distributed by an American distributor or
