Kaneshiro Takeshi: Transnational Stardom
and the Media and Culture Industries
in Asia Global/Postcolonial Age

By Eva Tsai


Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 100-132


Taking Kaneshiro Takeshi as an exemplary mobile star in Asia’s global age, this paper seeks to explain the transnational stardom the movie star achieved in a little over a decade. Informed by the region’s dynamic global relations and entangled media culture, my research situates Kaneshiro’s stardom in (1) the cultural economies of pop idols in postcolonial Taiwan, (2) Hong Kong cinema’s phased adaptation to global integration, and (3) the pan-Asian media culture in Japan’s “return to Asia.” In this trajectory, which links the global media relations between Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Japan, Kaneshiro’s star mobility enables as it is enabled by an inter-subjective Asia. In the cultural construction of Kaneshiro’s public subjectivities, the networks of media production in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Japan are seen to negotiate their Asian/global positionalities in different but connected postcolonial circumstances.