Tracing the Genesis of the Postwar Japanese Animation Field

• In Event: Global and Transnational Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 9. Digitalization & Transnationalism

Abstract

This study investigates the transnational nexus connecting Japan, Hong Kong, and Mainland China in the making of Legend of the White Snake (Hakujaden, dir. Yabushita Taiji, Toei Animation Studio, 1958), Japan’s first full-color animated feature. The film occupies a foundational place in the postwar Japanese field of animation production: Hayao Miyazaki, later a central figure of Studio Ghibli, repeatedly noted that watching Hakujaden inspired him to become an animator, and he subsequently began his career at Toei Animation. Although scholarship in Japanese film history has highlighted the work’s transnational dimensions—its initial conception as a Japan–Hong Kong co-production, the post-1949 migration of Shanghai film professionals to Hong Kong, and deeper roots in wartime Sino–Japanese collaboration—these connections have rarely been analyzed through sociological approaches to cultural production or global field theory. This article contributes in two ways. First, by reconstructing the film’s transnational genesis, it underscores the value of tracing cross-border sources even within ostensibly national cultural fields. Second, it demonstrates how national field structures refract, and strategically redeploy, transnational forces. While Hakujaden ultimately became a solo Toei project—a move partly shaped by competition with Toho’s rising Godzilla (1954) franchise—this shift served Toei’s broader global ambitions. Seeking to become the “Disney of the East,” as CEO Hiroshi Ōkawa declared following Disney’s 1950 debut in Japan, Toei reconfigured transnational linkages to position itself within emerging global markets. The case thus illustrates how national competitive dynamics intersect with, and actively reshape, transnational cultural flows.

Author

• Seio Nakajima, Waseda University