This book explores the debate between those who argue that globalization is leading to worldwide cultural homogeneity, with American cultural goods predominating, and those who argue that cultural goods are always adapted and contextualized in the particular setting in which they are used. Based on extensive original research on how Japanese adult videos are consumed in Taiwan, it presents a rich picture of how Japanese adult videos are transformed into something Taiwanese, and how they are incorporated into both male and female Taiwanese sexual culture.

2. Japanese Adult Videos in Taiwan
This book explores the debate between those who argue that globalization is
leading to worldwide cultural homogeneity, with American cultural goods
predominating, and those who argue that cultural goods are always adapted and
contextualized in the particular setting in which they are used. Based on
extensive original research on how Japanese adult videos are consumed in
Taiwan, it presents a rich picture of how Japanese adult videos are transformed
into something Taiwanese, and how they are incorporated into both male and
female Taiwanese sexual culture.
Heung- wah Wong is Programme Director of Global Creative Industries at the
University of Hong Kong.
Hoi- yan Yau is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Humanities
and Social Sciences at University of Tsukuba, Japan.
Routledge culture, society, business in East Asia series
Editorial Board:
Heung-w ah Wong (Executive Editor), The University of Hong Kong, Hong
Kong, China; Chris Hutton, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China;
Wayne Cristaudo, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China; Harumi
Befu (Emeritus Professor), Stanford University, USA; Shao- dang Yan, Peking
University, China; Andrew Stewart MacNaughton, Reitaku University, Japan;
William Kelly, Independent Researcher; Keiji Maegawa, Tsukuba University,
Japan; Kiyomitsu Yui, Kobe University, Japan.
How and what are we to examine if we wish to understand the commonalities
across East Asia without falling into the powerful fictions or homogeneities that
dress its many constituencies? By the same measure, can East Asian
homogeneities make sense in any way outside the biases of East-W est
personation?
For anthropologists familiar with the societies of East Asia, there is a rich
diversity of work that can potentially be applied to address these questions
within a comparative tradition grounded in the region as opposed to the

3. singularizing outward encounter. This requires us to broaden our scope of
investigation to include all aspects of intra-r egional life, trade, ideology,
culture, and governance, while at the same time dedicating ourselves to a
complete and holistic understanding of the exchange of identities that describe
each community under investigation. An original and wide- ranging analysis
will be the result, one that draws on the methods and theory of anthropology as
it deepens our understanding of the interconnections, dependencies, and
discordances within and among East Asia.
The book series includes three broad strands within and between which to
critically examine the various insides and outsides of the region. The first is
about the globalization of Japanese popular culture in East Asia, especially in
greater China. The second strand presents comparative studies of major social
institutions in Japan and China, such as family, community, and other major
concepts in Japanese and Chinese societies. The final strand puts forward cross-
cultural studies of business in East Asia.
1 Youth and Internet Addiction in China
Trent Bax
2 Japanese Adult Videos in Taiwan
Heung- wah Wong and Hoi- yan Yau
Japanese Adult Videos in
Taiwan

4. Heung- wah Wong and Hoi- yan Yau
First published 2014 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2014 Heung- wah Wong and Hoi- yan Yau
The right of Heung- wah Wong and Hoi- yan Yau to be identified as authors of this work has been
asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by
any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.

5. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are
used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Wong, Heung-Wah, 1963–
Japanese adult videos in Taiwan / Heung-Wah Wong and Hoi-yan Yau.
pages cm. – (Routledge culture, society, business in East Asia series ; 2) Includes bibliographical
references and index.
1. Pornography–Taiwan. 2. Pornographic films–Japan. 3. Sex–Taiwan. I. Yau, Hoi-yan. II. Title.
HQ472.T28W66 2014
363.4'70951249–dc23
2013039092
ISBN: 978-0-415-81470-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-81877-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and
Wear
Contents
List of figures viii
List of tables ix
Acknowledgements x
Note on Chinese translation xi
Note on Japanese translation xii
1
Introduction
Analytical themes 3
Japanese AV as a cultural product 8
Japanese AV as a commodity 12
An unresolved challenge 15
Methodology: multiple mediations 18
How our story will be told 26
1
2 Adult videos as Japanese cultural product and Japanese

6. pornography
Introduction 29
Definition of Japanese adult video 30
Japanese adult videos as commodities 32
Japanese adult videos as pornographic texts 34
Japanese adult videos as cultural products 37
Conclusion 44
29
3 Japanese adult videos coming to Taiwan 46
Introduction 46
A brief history of Taiwan 47
Background of the emergence of the illegal disitai 48
Anti- porn policies, de- Japanization policies, and the desires of
Taiwanese people for ‘prohibited’ Japanese adult videos 52 Lee’s
bentuhua policies 56
vi Contents
Emergence of pirated Japanese AVs in Taiwan in the late
1990s 60
Conclusion 63
4 From Japanese AVs to Taiwanese A- pian: the (re )
production of Japanese AVs in Taiwan
Introduction 67
Reproduction of Japanese AVs as pirated pornographic VCDs/
digital files 67
Analysis of the Chinese subtitles of a Japanese movie clip 78
Conclusion 94
67
5 From Japanese AVs to Chinese gifts: the circulation of
Japanese AVs in Taiwan
Introduction 96
The circulation of Japanese AVs in Taipei 96
Japanese AVs as Chinese gifts 113
Conclusion 124
96

7. 6
The taste of Taiwanese men and women for pornography
Introduction 126
Sexual discourses in Taiwan 129
The sexual scripts of men and women in Taiwan 134
The narrative structure of Kawashima Azumi’s AV movies 141
The narrative structure of American pornography 144
Pornography viewing with men 149
Conclusion 154
126
7 The instrumental interests of Japanese AVs to individual
Taiwanese men
Introduction 157
Adrian Ma 157
Henry Hsieh 168
Conclusion 179
157
8 The instrumental interests of pornography to individual
Taiwanese women 181
Introduction 181
Liz Yen 181
Ruth Lin 193
Conclusion 203
Contents vii
9 Conclusion 204
The creativity of practice 207
Relation between cultural constitution of human acts and the
creativity of practice 211
Chinese glossary 215
Japanese glossary 218
References 220
Index 231

8. Figures
1.1 Network- based fieldwork 23
4.1 Front cover of Ayukawa Ami’s pirated VCD 69 4.2 Back cover of Ayukawa
Ami’s pirated VCD 70
4.3 Untitled pirated VCD bought in Keelung 72
4.4 Taiwanese- made pirated cover of Asakawa Ran 74
4.5 Original cover of Asakawa Ran 75
4.6 Discs 1 and 2 of Asakawa Ran’s pirated VCDs with invented
Chinese titles 76
5.1 Van- based pornographic premises in Taipei (1) 97
5.2 Van- based pornographic premises in Taipei (2) 98 5.3 Japanese youma
VCDs on Ah Yuan’s van (1) 100
5.4 Japanese youma VCDs on Ah Yuan’s van (2) 100
5.5 Front exit of Kwanghwa Market with Xinshenggaojia
immediately above in 2003 101
5.6 Floor plan of basement of Kwanghwa Market in 2003 103
5.7 TANet in Taiwan 106 5.8 FTP technology 107 5.9 P2P technology
108
5.10 Circulation of Japanese AVs in Taiwan 109
7.1 Formula for Henry’s use of pornography 171
Tables
4.1 Relationships among visual images, Japanese lines, and Chinese
subtitles 80

9. 6.1 The six binary pairs of sex 134
6.2 The sexual pleasure for Taiwanese men 138
6.3 Comparison between male sexual script in Taiwan and narrative
structure of American pornography 147
6.4 Comparison between male sexual script in Taiwan and narrative
structure of bishōjo AVs 148
6.5 The sexual pleasure for Taiwanese women 149

10. Acknowledgements
We are very grateful to Dr. Harumi Befu, the well- known expert in Japanese
studies, and Professor Emeritus of the Department of Anthropology at Stanford
University, as well as to Dr. Kam Louie, another well-k nown expert in Chinese
masculinity and professor, for reviewing the manuscript, in spite of their busy
schedule. Both of them made several important suggestions and comments on
this book without which this book would not have been possible.
Gratitude is also due to the many men and women in Taipei without whose
generous help this book, in particular Chapters 7 and 8, could not have been
written. They must be thanked for their patience in sitting with us for long hours
and speaking to a foreigner about their love, sex, and use of pornography. They
must also be thanked for truly treating us as their friends and offering emotional
support. Thanks also go to many police officers, and to the pornography retailer
in Taipei who allowed us an insider’s view of the pornographic industry there
and allowed us many experiences which would otherwise have been impossible.
We are also indebted to many people, including our own informants, in Taipei
who have shown us unfailing hospitality during our various periods of residence
there. Special thanks go to Wu’s and Chen’s families who helped us feel
grounded during our stay in Taipei.
Our special thanks also go to our publishers Routledge, where we have been
fortunate to have found a most competent publisher; particular thanks go to
Peter Sowden and Helena Hurd.
Last but not least, we are grateful to Asian Studies Review, East Asia and
Journal of Anthropology and Archaeology, National Taiwan University for
their generosity in allowing us to reuse parts of the published articles. We beg
forgiveness of all those who have been with us over the course of the years and
whose names we have failed to mention.
Note
The authors have contributed equally to the book and their names are shown in alphabetical
order.

11. Note on Chinese translation
In this book, we have used the standard Pinyin system to transliterate Mandarin
Chinese. Accordingly, titles of books and magazines, and names of
shops/boutiques and buildings all appear in the Pinyin romanization. However,
since Taiwan has used Wade–Giles for decades as the de facto standard,
personal names and most place names are left in original Wade–Giles
romanization, except those already in Pinyin. In additions, words or phrases
cited from interviews in Minnahua (or Taiwanese) are left in the original
Minnahua. Similarly to Japanese, Chinese personal names throughout the book
have the family name appearing first. Finally, all the translations are our own
and, except for personal names and place names, have been italicized
throughout this book.

12. Note on Japanese translation
In this book, we have used a modified Hepburn system, which employs macrons
to indicate Japanese long vowels. Japanese personal names throughout the book
have been written in Japanese order, with the family name appearing first.
Japanese words, other than place and personal names, have been italicized
throughout the book. However, place and period names which are familiar to
English- speaking readers, such as Shibuya, Shinjuku, and Meiji, have been left
in their English form, as have terms such as ‘samurai’ and ‘manga’ which have
entered the English language and are consequently not italicized. Finally, all the
translations are our own.

13. 1 Introduction
On a sunny day in the spring of 2003, we (one of the authors of this book) were
invited by one of our key informants, Lori, to join a barbecue gathering in
Zhongli, Taipei Prefecture, Taiwan. The barbecue was hosted by Michael at his
house. Lori and Michael along with the other fifteen attendees were all
substitute soldiers (tidaiyi)1
and they did not know each other until they became
comrades during the one-m onth training at Chenggong Ling2
in Taichung in
late 2002. When we arrived there, we at once noticed that there were another
five women attending the barbecue. Obviously, we did not share their lives as
tidaiyi, but we were purposely invited to participate in the Taiwanese youth
culture of arranged dating, lianyi (literally, ‘collection of friendship’). The
barbecue started at roughly 11 o’clock in the morning, and these ‘hungry’ men
started to feast on the food prepared by Michael’s girlfriend, Jen, who is a junior
chef at a local hotel. By the afternoon, everyone was sitting there with a full
stomach. While some men, including Lori and Michael, played mahjong,3
others took this opportunity to strike up relationships or at least to test out the
possibilities with the women they found attractive.
This get-t ogether eventually reached a point when one man suddenly took out
a dozen VCDs4
to give away to every man. This man seemed to us to be slightly
higher in status than the others. We were told that he had been given a certain
amount of power by the banzhang (‘class monitor’) during their one-m onth
training to allocate foodstuffs for his unit and could command the unit when the
banzhang was away or absent. This is why he was nicknamed as laoda (‘big
brother’). The VCDs seemed to us nothing out of the ordinary, but at their
appearance, the men there excitedly formed a scrum around laoda.
They immediately attempted to line up for the VCDs according to the number
they had been assigned during training. Since the gathering was held a few
months after the training, their attempts to form a queue proved futile. Yet laoda
immediately acted as the temporary ‘commander’, instructing these rowdy men
to form an ordered line. The women, however, were completely excluded, and
forced to witness the VCD- giving; they were not even asked whether they
wanted one copy.

14. We were curious about what these VCDs were and why the men there
were so excited. We asked one of the men who had just received some of the
VCDs

16. 2 Introduction
from laoda why they were so excited to receive the VCDs. This young man
replied without any hesitation:
Of course, the VCDs are nice things to men; they are ‘A- pian’ (literally
‘adult movies’, a general local term for pornography) laoda burned for us.
He downloaded the files from a Japanese website yesterday. The website
is very famous among Taiwanese men because the adult movies there
always feature beautiful, pure, cute Japanese young girls! We of course are
very excited about these A- pians. We cannot stand local A- pians because
of their poor quality. Neither can we take American A- pians because the
American porn girls are too aggressive. They are not our cup of tea!
We were very puzzled about the terms this young man used here: ‘A- pian’,
‘local A- pian’, and ‘American A- pian’. It took us hours to figure out that
Japanese bishōjo (‘beautiful young woman’) adult videos are so popular in
Taiwan to the extent that this single genre is conflated with and thus amounts
to the Japanese adult video as a whole. More surprisingly, Japanese adult video,
due to its dominant status in the pornography market in Taiwan, is further
conflated with A- pian, a general term to refer to the pornography in Taiwan.
Therefore, when Taiwanese people mention Japanese adult videos, they would
use ‘A- pian’; however, when they talk about American or local pornography,
they will add adjectives such as ‘American’ or ‘local’ before the term ‘A- pian’
to avoid confusion. Obviously, adult videos in Japan are symbolically
transformed into A- pian in Taiwan.
On a relaxing weekend of 2003 in Taipei, we were watching the TV news
which reported that a famous Japanese adult video girl was invited to attend a
big furniture show in Taipei as a VIP. Her attendance caused a huge sensation
in Taiwan. It was reported that many young Taiwanese people queued up to get
the girl’s poster and have their picture taken with her. It seemed to us that her
attendance had made the furniture show very successful. The organizer of the
show was interviewed by the TV news reporter; he explained that he had invited
the Japanese adult video girl to Taiwan in order to use her fame in the local
pornography market as a gimmick to promote the show. As he said to the
reporter: ‘The Japanese girl is a big porn star among local viewers. She has
commercial value for us. We can sell her to promote our show!’ (Chang 2003).
These two episodes are very important to this study because they point to the
multi- faceted nature of Japanese adult video (AV) in Taiwan. Japanese AV is
not just a pornographic movie made in Japan; it is also a cultural product; and
finally it is a commodity. We argue that this multi- faceted nature of Japanese
AVs should be taken seriously. We choose to treat Japanese AV in Taiwan not
only as a pornographic text but also as a cultural product and commodity, which
constitute three major analytical themes of this book. These three major
analytical themes require that Japanese AVs in Taiwan should be understood

17. Introduction 3
from the perspective of porn studies, cross-c ultural migration of cultural goods,
and the production/consumption of commodities.
Taking all these together, this book is a study of how Japanese pornographic
AVs spread to Taiwan as a cultural product, how they are reproduced as a
commodity, and how they are circulated and consumed as pornographic text in
Taiwan. Our main concern has been to understand the range of relationships
local people established with Japanese AVs when the latter migrated to the
Chinese society of Taiwan, which was a Japanese colony until the mid- 1940s
– a crucial historical background which will have a profound impact on how
Japanese AVs are received in Taiwan. However, this ethnography also provides
an opportunity to review the current theories in the study of the cross- cultural
migrations of cultural goods, pornography, and the production/consumption of
commodities. Finally, the study speaks to fundamental questions concerning the
relationship between global and local, centre and periphery, media text and
audience, production and consumption, and individual and society. Our analysis
has led us to conclude that anthropology as a discipline can not only contribute
much to the study of pornography by overcoming the cultural and individual
determinisms inherent in audience studies and pornography effects research
respectively, but also broaden the analytical themes and conceptual schemes of
porn studies.
Analytical themes
Pornography studies have long been preoccupied by the ‘porn wars’ or ‘sex
wars’ (Rubin [1984] 1993: 3; Duggan 1995: 5; Chancer 2000: 77), which refer
to the acrimonious debates within the feminist movement and lesbian
community in the late 1970s through the 1980s around the issues of feminist
strategies regarding pornography alongside other sex issues. The porn wars
have led to a division between two major camps: anti-p ornography and anti-
‘anti- pornography’. The divisions between them have been well- documented
by others (Wilson 1989; Duggan 1995; Segal and McIntosh 1992; Wingfield
and Scanlon 1992), and we will only briefly rehearse them here.
The anti-p ornography stance is represented by prominent American feminists
such as Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, Susan Brownmiller, and
Gloria Steinem (Ciclitira 2004: 282). They argue that pornography is degrading
to women and complicit in violence against women both in its production
(where, they charge, exploitation and abuse of women performing in
pornography is rampant) and in its consumption (where, they charge,
pornography eroticizes the domination, humiliation, and coercion of women,
and reinforces sexual attitudes that are complicit in rape or sexual harassment)
(Dworkin 1981: 20). Beginning in the late 1970s, these feminists founded the
campaign group ‘Women Against Pornography’ (WAP) that organized
educational events to raise awareness of the content of pornography and the
sexual subculture in pornography shops and sex shows (Ciclitira 2004: 282). In

18. 4 Introduction
brief, this stance seeks to limit the sale and production of pornography both by
legal and direct action initiatives.
The other side of the debate is represented by prostitute-r ights advocates, and
many liberal and anti-a uthoritarian feminists for whom free speech, sexual
freedom, and advocacy of women’s agency are central concerns. Known as the
‘sex-p ositive’ or ‘pro-s ex’ feminists (Willis 1992: 3), Ellen Willis, Pat Califia,
Gayle Rubin, Avedon Carol, and Wendy McElroy oppose legal or social efforts
to control sexual activities between consenting adults. They hold that feminist
anti- pornography campaigns are misdirected and threaten rights of free speech
and sexual freedoms in a way that would be ultimately detrimental toward
women, gay people, and sexual minorities (Ciclitira 2004: 283). They further
accuse the anti- pornography feminists of selective handling of evidence, of
being intolerant of sexual difference, of their censorship stance, and of
complicity with conservative defences of the sexual status quo (Rubin [1984]
1993: 28–29). To counteract the WAP, they organized the ‘Feminists Against
Censorship’ (FAC) with an agenda of arguing against censorship of sexual
materials and to defend individual sexual expression.
Briefly, the issue that has divided these two feminists’ camps was whether
pornography is the cause of women’s oppression or whether it is just another
expression of this oppression (Luff 2001: 80). In other words, anti- pornography
feminists have tended to see pornography as an essential constituent of
oppression, whereas anti-‘anti- pornography’ feminists have tended to see it as
reflective of oppression. To show that pornography is a constituent of female
subordination, anti-p ornography feminists have traditionally turned to
psychological laboratory researches alongside surveys and testimonies for
empirical support (Hardy 1998: 27; Boyle 2000: 187). These psychological
researches centre on questions such as ‘whether viewing pornography causes
men to be more sexually aggressive against women, whether it affects women
and men differently, and whether the circulation of pornography is linked to the
incidence of sexual crimes’ (Ciclitira 2004: 286). One can see that these
researches aim to find out whether pornography has negative effects on viewers,
in particular on the lives of women, and if it has, what are these effects?
Malamuth (1978) first pointed to the possibility that aggressive-
cumpornographic stimuli might facilitate aggression against women. His study
showed that those who were exposed to the aggressive pictorials in Penthouse
magazines and received disinhibiting communication showed a far higher level
of aggression against women than those who were exposed to non- aggressive
pictorials (Malamuth 1978: 7). Check and Malamuth (1985: 419) reported that
exposure to portrayals of women enjoying rape and other kinds of sexual
violence can increase the acceptance of rape myths in both men and women.
Continual exposure to sexually violent materials against women can even cause
viewers to become desensitized to female victims of actual violence
(Donnerstein et al. 1987; Linz et al. 1988). Zillmann and Bryant (1982: 11–15)
also reported varied negative effects of degrading pornography on viewers,

19. Introduction 5
including changes in attitudes and values towards sex and women, victim
desensitization, and a perpetual shift of sexual practices from uncommon to
common. In examining the effects of ‘massive exposure’ to pornography,
Zillmann and Bryant (1984: 117, 132) have shown that ‘heavy exposure to
common nonviolent pornography [not only] trivialised rape as a criminal
offence’, but also enhanced callous male sexual attitudes towards women. More
crucially, exposure to pornography can also increase the acceptance of male
dominance in romantic relationships (Zillmann and Bryant 1984: 121).
McKenzie- Mohr and Zanna (1990: 301–305) have shown that exposure to
nonviolent pornography can cause some men to view and treat women as sex
objects.
The laboratory findings of the effects research mentioned above led Dworkin
and MacKinnon to advocate laws that would define pornography as a civil
rights violation against women, and allow women who had been harmed by
pornography to sue the pornographers and distributors in civil court for
damages (Duggan 1995: 46). In 1983, they successfully pressed through the
Minneapolis Ordinances, which brought into American law a ‘feminist’
definition of pornography. Pornography was defined as a ‘form of
discrimination on the basis of sex’ (Duggan 1995: 65) in which:
women are presented dehumanized as sexual objects, things or
commodities; women are presented as sexual objects who enjoy pain or
humiliation; women are presented as sexual objects tied up or cut up or
mutilated or physically bruised or physically hurt; women are presented in
postures of sexual submission, servility or display; women’s body parts are
exhibited such that women are reduced to those parts; women are presented
as whores by nature; women are presented as being penetrated by objects
or animals; women are presented in scenarios of degradation, injury,
torture, shown as filthy or inferior, bleeding, bruised, or hurt in a context
that makes these conditions sexual.
( Dworkin and MacKinnon 1988: 36)
A number of problems with the effects model have been documented by various
scholars (Senn 1993; Hardy 1998; O’Toole 1999; Boyle 2000; Ciclitira 2004),
and here we would simply like to draw attention to three major problems of the
effects model which are related to the current study of Japanese AVs in Taiwan.
First, the agency of the viewer is denied in effects research. Pornography is
assumed in effects research to have direct and unmediated effects on the
viewing subject. While the degree of effects varies from one to another, sexually
explicit images ultimately affect viewers who can only react uniformly to the
sexual stimuli as if they have no agency at all. As Boyle (2000: 189) correctly
points out, ‘[t]o see pornography as the “cause” of yet- to-be-d etermined
effects, is to position pornography as the active agent and deny the agency . . .
and, crucially, the responsibility, of the individual men’. As a feminist, Boyle

20. 6 Introduction
rightly stresses the responsibility of ‘men’; but she also points out that this
denies the agency of viewers as if they were sitting ducks waiting to be affected
by the images. This study will demonstrate that our Taiwanese informants are
not passive dupes waiting to be sexually aroused by Japanese AVs. Quite the
contrary, each of them manages to establish a unique relation with pornography.
Our research will further show that their biographical experiences including
their family, love, and sex all allow them to relate themselves with Japanese
AVs uniquely.
Second, the logic behind the effects model is that sexual behaviour is seen as
genetically innate and thus motivated solely by sexual desire, for exposure to
sexually explicit materials can induce involuntary sexual-c um-aggressive
desires in viewers, which in turn are expressed in their masturbatory acts,
aggression to, or even rape of, women. Seen in this way, pornography use, as
one form of sexual behaviour, is also motivated by sexual desire and thus the
gratification of this desire. Yet our research in Taipei shows that Japanese AVs
can be motivated to satisfy sexual as much as nonsexual needs. As we shall try
to show in this book, our Taiwanese informants’ uses of Japanese AVs are not
purely initiated by an innate sexual desire, but also a sense of desperation to
deal with their immediate problems in life. This is so because how pornography
is used, as we shall see in this study, is not biologically motivated but mediated
by the biographical experiences of the users.
Third, while anti- pornography feminists are interested in how pornography
adversely affects viewers, no one bothers to ask important questions like ‘who’
uses it, ‘what’ it is used for, and ‘how’, ‘when’, ‘why’, and ‘where’ it is used.
Sahlins’ critique of a certain kind of functional explanation can serve as point-
for-point criticism of effects research. Sahlins (2000b: 160–167) once took
issue with those cultural theorists who dismiss culture as a ‘politics of
distinction’ and ‘a means of overvaluing order’. While these theorists fault
culture as superorganic, essentialized, primordial, and cohesive, no one bothers
to ask what culture is. Even culture has these kinds of effects; we still need to
know what culture is, and at least what culture as a way of life is. Invoking ‘the
Terror’ which Sartre (1968: 48–50) applies to the Marxist reduction of
superstructural facts to substructural determinations, Sahlins (1999: 407) argues
that this kind of criticism of culture is not only a functional explanation, but also
‘a project of elimination’. It is a functional explanation because the functions of
culture to make distinctions or overvalue order are taken as culture itself. This
subsumption of specific properties under general functions amounts to a project
of elimination because the properties of culture are destroyed accordingly.
In a very similar fashion, scholars of effects research seldom bother to find out
the character of pornography. By singularly focusing on the search for the
negative effects of pornography, they dissolve the character of pornography in
generic effects. Pornography is accounted for by its effects: objectifying
women, facilitating male aggression towards women, trivializing rape,
promoting desensitization to female victims, or rape myth or hate speech, and

21. Introduction 7
so on. The problem is: all of these effects that are supposed to explain the
character of pornography at issue simply cannot do so. They are at best
insufficient, even if correct, because they speak to the effects of pornography
rather than its characteristics (i.e. its history, its style of productions, how it is
produced, circulated and consumed, and so on). Since the late 1980s, the study
of pornography has undergone what Attwood (2002: 91) calls a ‘paradigm shift’
in which ‘porn studies’ have gradually moved away from effects research
towards the contextualization of pornography. Walter Kendrick (1987: x–xiii)
levelled a criticism against the feminist definition of pornography by pointing
out that the term ‘pornography’ has been traditionally used to label a wide array
of things. More crucially, he contends that pornography is constructed as a
‘special’ category and as a ‘secret’ to be kept from women, children, and the
lower classes. Linda Williams (1989) moves beyond the impasses of the binary
porn debate to analyse what hardcore feature length pornography is and does –
as a genre with a history, as a specific cinematic form, and as part of
contemporary discourse on sexuality. Lynda Nead (1992: 85) sees pornography
as a ‘realm of the profane and mass culture where sensual desires are stimulated
and gratified’. Richard Dyer (1992: 121) likens pornography to ‘the weepie and
the thriller, and also low and vulgar comedy’, thus considering pornography as
another genre which attempts to ‘move the body’.
In addition to redefining the nature of pornography, studies of pornography
since the mid-1 990s have begun to examine what pornography can possibly
contribute to society. Constance Penley (1997) and Laura Kipnis (1996)
contend that pornography can serve to transgress sexual norms. Penley (1997:
92) claims that pornography’s white-t rash aesthetic can challenge ‘the assumed
social and moral superiority of the middle and professional classes’. Kipnis
shares Penley’s interest in class resentment. In a piece on ‘fat porn’, Kipnis
rhapsodizes about chubbiness because she believes tubby, dimpled
protuberances flout bourgeois standards of attractiveness (Kipnis 1996: 102).
Far from being unself- conscious rubbish, she contends, pornography is a
political theatre (Kipnis 1996: 121).
The work of Jane Juffer (1998), Simon Hardy (1998), and David Loftus (2002)
can be seen as an attempt to fill out the long- missing ‘contexts’ of porn studies,
asking important questions like ‘who’ is consuming pornography and ‘how’,
‘where’, and ‘when’ it is consumed. Juffer (1998) explores how the traditional
modes of pornography production and marketing have discouraged, if not
limited, women’s interest in pornography, and how new media technologies and
the leaking of the erotic into other areas of domestic use in recent years have
made women more interested in pornography. Drawing on in-d epth interviews
with a group of young British men about their experience with softcore
pornographic materials, Hardy (1998) argues that the social contexts of
pornography use are correlated to both personal life-s tages from adolescence
to adult, and to the readers’ shifting perception of the meaning of pornography
within the context of sexual relationship with their partners (ibid.: 98, 113).

22. 8 Introduction
Loftus (2002) examines a group of American men through the internet; he sees
how they were first exposed to pornography and analyses how it has affected
their lives, revealing emotional responses ranging from pleasure to indifference
and disgust (ibid.: ix). The importance of contextualizing pornography studies
can be best summarized by a quote from Segal:
[I]t is never possible, whatever the image, to isolate it, to fix its meaning
and predict some inevitable pattern of response, independently from
assessing its wider representational context and the particular
recreational, educational or social context in which it is being received. . .
. Context really does matter.
( Segal 1993: 15, italics original )
What then are the relevant contexts of the spread of Japanese AVs to Taiwan at
issue? In our recent joint paper, we (Yau and Wong 2009) have contextualized
the popularity of Japanese AVs in Hong Kong. We argue that Yuki Maiko, a
prominent Japanese adult video girl, could find great favour among men in
Hong Kong in the late 1990s because her image as sexual- cum-innocent meets
the cultural logic of the emerging new middle class in Hong Kong. Growing up
in the endless confrontations between the modern and the traditional, the West
and the East, the new middle class has longed for something in between.
Japanese culture, which is neither Western nor Chinese, has become a symbol
of their identity. When Yuki Maiko, whose image is shy but sexual, came to
Hong Kong during the late 1990s, she thus immediately became a household
name. In other words, the success of Yuki Maiko in late 1990s Hong Kong is
the result of the mediation between Yuki Maiko and her AVs and Hong Kong
society.
The cross-m igration of Japanese AVs to Taiwan should similarly be
understood as the result of the mediation between Japanese AVs and Taiwanese
society. In what follows, we shall examine the current theories on the cross-
cultural migration of cultural goods in order to see what the relevant contexts
are.
Japanese AV as a cultural product
Japanese AV is not simply a pornographic text; it is also a cultural product. It
follows that the spread of Japanese AVs to Taiwan should be understood as
their cross-c ultural migrations. Contemporary analysis of cross- cultural
migrations of cultural goods, according to David Howes (1996: 3), can be
divided into two major paradigms: the global homogenization paradigm and the
creolization paradigm. The former paradigm addresses the hegemonic and
shattering effects of the global cultural goods that ‘cultural differences are
increasingly being eroded through the world-w ide replacement of local
products with mass- produced goods which usually originate in the West’
(Howes 1996: 3). This paradigm is clearly spun from a centrist standpoint,

23. Introduction 9
posing the Western influence as ‘above it all’ (Howes 1996: 7). As Iwabuchi
(2001: 54) points out, such a paradigm is based on ‘an assumption of unbeatable
western (American) domination and arguments are focused on how the rest
resist, imitate or appropriate the west’. In other words, the West stands as the
centre, unilaterally imposing its own cultural values and ideologies on the
periphery, that is, the rest of the world. All the people of the ‘periphery’ can do
is to react to the West. No matter if the reaction is in the form of resistance,
imitation, or appropriation, it is all directed at the Western force. Thus, the
‘peripheral’ peoples have no historical agency but are a function of Western, in
particular, American, domination (Yau and Wong 2008: 33).
We have argued in another joint paper that this paradigm is in fact a
cannibalism of local agency in the sense that it totally ignores the local/cultural
mediations, as if local people were cultural dupes without any agency.5
This
joint paper points out that many studies of the proliferation of Japanese popular
culture in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China have identified the various
ways in which local agency recontextualizes Japanese cultural products (Ching
1994; Lai and Wong 2001; Yau 2001; Yau and Wong 2008). This book will
investigate how local pirated VCD counterfeiters reproduce Japanese AVs
according to the ‘local’ sex role of men and women to maximize their profit.
From the vantage point of the local pirated VCD counterfeiters, Japanese AVs
can hardly be conceived as a hegemonic force imposed on them; rather, they
are a foreign cultural product easily and readily manipulated for their profit-
making business. More importantly, Taiwanese viewers likewise actively
embrace Japanese AVs, without any clear sense of cultural resistance. We can
see that local encounters with global cultural forces are in fact characterized ‘by
culturally informed processes of interpretation and adaptation’ that involve ‘a
positive valuation and selective integration of outside things, beings, and ideas’
(Sahlins 2005: 4). The key for the local agency is the existence of ‘schemes of
intelligibility’, which refer to ‘their own cultural ontologies, including their
concepts and values of themselves as social beings’ in reacting to foreign things.
In other words, ‘resistance of culture’ is a more accurate term than ‘the cultures
of resistance’ in describing the reception of global cultural goods (Sahlins 2005:
4). Seen in this way, ‘homogenization’, ‘hegemonic imposition’,
‘Americanization’, and the like, which tend to eschew local agency, may not be
a useful discourse to understand the import and celebration of Japanese AVs by
Taiwanese people.
The creolization paradigm, by contrast, stresses the recontextualization of
cultural goods in their cross- cultural migrations, arguing that ‘goods always
have to be contextualised (given meaning, inserted into particular social
relationships), to be utilised, and there is no guarantee that the intention of the
producer will be recognised, much less respected, by the consumer from another
culture’ (Howes 1996: 5–6). In short, creolization refers to a ‘cultural process’
in which the interaction between two discrete groups is ‘dictated by the

24. 10 Introduction
circumstances of society’s foundation and composition’, which gives rise to a
‘new construct’ ( Brathwaite 1971: 296).
We have again argued in the joint paper that although the creolization paradigm
comes as a remedy to the homogenization paradigm by recovering local agency,
it suffers from two other major problems. First, the creolization paradigm fails
to recognize the relevance of the form and character of global forces. For
instance, Mark Pendergrast (1993) documents how Coca- Cola is assigned new
meanings and uses in the receiving cultures that are very different from those
imagined by its manufacturer. It is believed that coke can smooth wrinkles in
Russia, can revive a person from the dead in Haiti, and can even turn copper
into silver in Barbados (Pendergrast 1993: 245–247). Similarly, Watson (1997)
examines how McDonalds is attributed new cultural meanings in the Asian
contexts of Hong Kong, Taipei, Tokyo, Beijing, and Seoul. While most of the
studies adopting this approach are sensitive and sympathetic to how foreign
products are made sense of and appropriated by the local people, they
nonetheless fail to give equal emphasis to the characteristic of Coca- Cola and
McDonalds, the global force. This study argues that we cannot treat ‘the global’

25. 11
Introduction as an anonymous force because, as we shall see, the form and
character of the global/foreign force does make a difference to the people on the
receiving end. Second, the creolization paradigm fails to appreciate
theoretically the nature of the creolization process. The creolization process,
according to Brathwaite, brings us a cultural hybridity, which refers to a new
construct of several cultural traits coming together; in other words, it is a
completely new third construct (Brathwaite 1971: 296). The third construct, as
Miller (1994: 154, italics ours) points out, is ‘a new tradition distinct from either
one, yet having elements of both’. In examining the proliferation of Japanese
‘trendy dramas’ in Taiwan, Lee and Ho (2002) argue that the resultant ‘Japanese
idol drama’ is a new TV programme genre in Taiwan, resulting from the
merging of Japanese trendy dramas and the Taiwanese socio- cultural contexts.
In marketing Japanese trendy dramas to local audiences, the Taiwanese TV or
channel operators ignore the original connotations embedded in the dramas, and
repackage these dramas ‘in the wrapper of Japanese idols’ to the extent that
these TV dramas should be seen as a new genre (Lee and Ho 2001: 35).
We have to emphasize that while the third construct emerges genealogically
from two or more sources as a hybridity, it does not mean that it is truly a third
thing. As Sahlins (1999: 412) has taught us, the so-c alled hybridity is not an
ethnographic description of what actually happens in cultural production. In real
life, the foreign objects must be culturally indigenized and structurally
incorporated as parts of the local culture, as we can see many such examples in
different ethnographic areas (Sahlins 2000b). That is why Sahlins (1999: 411)
asserts that the incorporation of foreign elements is a normal mode of cultural
production. It follows that ‘cultures are largely foreign in origin and
distinctively local in pattern’ (Sahlins 1999: 412).
We can see that a singular emphasis on either ‘the global’ or ‘the local’, as
exemplified by the homogenization and the creolization paradigms, could not
enable us to capture the complexity of the cross- cultural migration of goods.
As Grossberg notes,
Too much attention to the global often leads critics to the unearned,
pessimistic conclusion that the victory – of capitalism, of American
capitalism, etc. – is already sewn up. Too much attention to the local often
leads critics to lose sight of the fact that someone is winning the struggle
and, as we all know, it is rarely the periphery.
( Grossberg 1997: 20)
This book therefore pays particular attentions to the form and character of global
force, the ‘schemes of intelligibility’ of local people, and their mediations. We
shall start with the characteristics of adult videos in Japan. First, Japanese AVs
are a kind of softcore pornographic material. Second, all the Japanese AVs in
Taiwan are pirated because Japanese AV makers never intended to export their
products overseas. Third, the market of Japanese AVs has become rather

26. 12
sophisticated and thus diverse by the 2000s, with a wide array of genres catering
Introduction
to increasing niche desires. All of this will be shown to have profound impacts
on the indigenization processes of Japanese AVs in Taiwan.
We shall also briefly examine the nature of Taiwanese society. The cultural
policies of the Japanese colonial rule, the Kuomintang (hereafter KMT) regime,
and Lee Teng- hui’s government in the past century contributed to a cultural
landscape in modern Taiwan in which Japanese legacies and Chinese traces are
mapped onto different spheres of Taiwanese social life, which will heavily
inform and shape the reception of Japanese popular culture including Japanese
AVs in Taiwan. A more crucial feature of local society that concerns us in this
study is the local meanings of sex, sexual pleasure, and pornography. We shall
show that sex is itself a cultural or gendered category. Taiwanese informants
conceptualize sex in terms of six pairs of binary oppositions: biological vs.
cultural, physical vs. spiritual, ordinary vs. extraordinary, necessary vs.
unnecessary, uncontrollable vs. controllable, and animal vs. human. What is
more crucial is that our informants ultimately parallel these binary pairs with
the contrasts between man and woman. This gendered notion of sex will be
shown to give rise to male and female sexual scripts which resonate with local
‘manhood’ and ‘womanhood’. Seen in this way, the local meaning of sex, the
male and female sexual scripts, and cultural manhood and womanhood can be
seen as the above- mentioned schemes of intelligibility, which define them as
‘men’ and ‘women’ in Taiwan.
More crucially, since sex and sexual scripts mean different things to men and
women, it follows that the kind of pleasure they derive from sex must also be
different. That is to say, sexual pleasure is also gendered. These gendered sexual
pleasures, in turn, become the cultural basis on which the preference of men and
women in Taiwan for pornography is constituted. In other words, the different
sexual scripts and gendered sexual pleasures not only help explain why men and
women use pornography differently, but also clarify why they identify with
different varieties of pornography.
These gendered meanings of sex, sexual scripts, and sexual pleasure are, as will
be shown in this study, heavily involved in the appropriation of Japanese AVs
among Taiwanese pornography users at the moments of (re)production,
circulation, and consumption. Echoing feminist scholars’ call for the necessity
of addressing the production, distribution, and consumption of pornography
(Keith 2001: 127; Attwood 2002: 92; Paasonen 2007: 49), this study
investigates how the local meanings of sex, sexual scripts, and pleasures
reciprocally mediate with Japanese AVs in all three moments. First, the sex
roles of men and women will be shown to intervene in the (re)production
process of Japanese AVs in Taiwan such that Japanese AVs became Taiwanese
pornography. Equally, the circulation of Japanese AVs is mediated by the
cultural meanings of gender and sex, with the result that women are often
excluded from the circulation of AVs, because their use of pornography is itself

27. 13
mediated by men. Finally, the cultural meanings of sex, sexual scripts, and
sexual pleasure mediate the way Taiwanese men and women come into contact
with, perceive, watch, and select pornography, with the result that Taiwanese
men and women have entirely different preferences for pornography.
Introduction
Yet the culturally created preferences for pornography are by no means the
same as the diverse relations our informants have with pornography, in the sense
that the former cannot prescribe the latter; there is always a gap between culture
and individual behaviours. We shall show how the biographical experience of
individual informants, men and women alike, mediates the cultural preferences
for pornography to produce a unique relation between each individual
Taiwanese informant and pornography. We of course do not argue that the
biographical experience of individual informants is not cultural. We shall offer
a micro- sociology of how local family ethics, inter-g enerational relations
within the family, social values attached to education, gender roles and human
relations, and so on mediate with each other to produce the biographical
experience for each of our four Taiwanese informants, which further mediates
with pornography and configure their unique pornography use.
A similar process of mediations captured by the micro-s ociology mentioned
above is registered at the macro- level of the relation between Japanese AVs
and Taiwanese society too. We shall show how the ‘Japaneseness’ and the
‘pornographic’ nature of Japanese AVs mediate with the Japanese subjectivity
of the older generations of Taiwanese people lingering from the Japanese
colonial period, the cultural policies of the KMT regime, and Lee Teng-h ui’s
government, the habit of consuming things from Japan developed among the
younger generations of Taiwanese people, the development of cable TV in
Taiwan, and the advances in VCD technology and the internet to shape the
spread of Japanese AVs to Taiwan.
In short, our study will show that while the transnational Japanese AV cannot
dictate the historical process of its spread to, and its local configuration in,
Taiwan, such historical process and local configuration cannot be understood
either without paying sufficient attention to the form and character of Japanese
AVs.
Japanese AV as a commodity
Japanese AV is also a commodity produced for profit. A thorough
understanding of Japanese AVs therefore cannot be achieved without an
analysis of the production and consumption of Japanese AVs as a commodity.
In traditional analyses, especially in the field of sociology, consumption is
characterized as secondary, or derivative, of production. Therefore production,
as the source of all true value, has been the focus of academic attention (Pratt
2004: 519). It is for this reason that du Gay et al. (1997: 3) lament that most of
the analyses of cultural goods begin and end with the process of production. A

28. 14
representative example is the theory propagated by Theodor W. Adorno and
Max Horkheimer. They propose that culture not only mirrors but also shapes
society through the processes of standardization and commodification, creating
objects rather than subjects (Adorno 2001 [1991]: 99). The culture industry
claims to serve the consumers’ needs for entertainment, but in fact conceals the
way that it standardizes these needs, manipulating the consumers to desire what
it produces (Horkheimer and