Cross-Cultural Nostalgia and Visual Consumption: On the Literary Adaptation and Japanese Reception of Huo Jianqi’s 2003 Film Nuan

Abstract

Although not warmly welcomed by audiences in modernizing China, Huo Jianqi’s nostalgic melodrama Nuan has proven hugely popular and been critically acclaimed in thoroughly modernized Japan. This contrastive reception invites investigation into the basis for the popularity of Huo’s rural films in Japan. Clearly we should situate it in social and discursive conditions. In the face of problems caused by its modernization, a cultural discourse of imaginary nostalgia can create an idyllic past that provides psychological refuge for anxiety-stricken Japanese. Thus, furusato has arisen as the embodiment of the eternal “Japanese hometown.” Drawing on Linda Williams’s theories of melodrama, I underline the melodramatic structure of both Japanese furusato movement and the Chinese film Nuan to argue that the melodramatic adaptation from the original story into the current film plays a central role in assuring a smooth assimilation of the cinematic representation of Chinese ethnicity into current Japanese discourses of nostalgia. Moreover, Japanese visual consumption of cross-cultural nostalgia in the form of Chinese film melodrama further echoes the trends of internationalizing and feminizing furusato tradition evident in Japan.