ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Koreeda Hirokazu’s Air Doll (2009), a film about an inflated sex doll that develops a soul. The film challenges the relationship between national identity and global spectatorship through its adaptation of a manga text, a medium that is globally circulated as Cool Japan popular culture. Highlighting the collaboration with internationally acclaimed talent such as Taiwanese cinematographer Lee Ping-Bin and Korean actress Bae Doona, Koreeda’s multinational production without international capital Air Doll transforms into an interplay of regional producers and global consumers, especially when considering the historical relationship between Japan, Taiwan and Korea, the former two colonies of imperial Japan. Moreover, casting Bae Doona as a sex doll raises critical question of the postcolonial female body, particularly in relation to the comfort women issue. This chapter analyses how Koreeda’s film complicates the postcolonial socio-historical deconstructions of wartime memories the region has experienced over the past two decades.
