ABSTRACT
Japan's internationalization in the post-WWII era was more complex and nuanced because the global village became more connected with various technological and political developments. The transferential desire of the populist and cosmopolitan Japanese middle class is a globally structured phenomenon of 'gaze', an intricate dance of gazing and being gazed at and a power contestation of whose gaze is desired. The Japanese embodiment of transferential desire, as a form of their internationalization, is a desire to use the Western/US-American gaze in evaluating and constructing their new Japanese identity. Orientalism is not really about the Orient; it is about sustaining the West and its interest in upholding Occident-Orient power dynamics. Theoretical balancing of both Orientalism and strategic hybridism in our analysis, theoretical cross-fertilization, offers a more complex and nuanced picture of Japan's contemporary Kokusaika.
