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Paper short abstract

This presentation analyzes the mutual portrayal of Japan and South Korea in local musicals, focusing on how these representations shape national perceptions. It addresses historical tensions and evaluates musicals' potential to enhance mutual understanding through cultural representation.

Paper long abstract

This presentation examines portrayals of Japan in South Korean musicals and of South Korea in Japanese musicals. Combining music, text, and image, musicals emerged as a powerful soft-power instrument that forms the image of the Other among local and foreign audiences. The presentation centres on how Japanese and South Korean musical theatre becomes a performative platform for cultural auto-images (self-images) and hetero-images (images of the Other) in connection with Japan–South Korea relations, which have been characterised by a colonial past, wartime antagonisms, post-war identity building, as well as the contemporary pop culture exchange. Through a comparative approach, drawing on elements of imagology and collective memory theories, by examining several musicals featuring explicit or implicit references to their respective neighbouring countries, I will aim to explore technical and artistic differences in the conditions of articulation of the historically shaped images of the Other. I will also argue that although Japanese and South Korean musicals reinforce several stereotypes, they also prove that well-implemented auto- and hetero-images may favourably influence the image of a given nation.