Japan is fast becoming a major node of global cultural production. A host of Japanese cultural products have been created for domestic consumption, including animation, comics, film, music, and television (localization). The increasing export of these Japanese cultural products to Europe and North America underlines globalization is not merely a Western preserve but incorporates Japan (lo-globalization). As Japan has become part of this decentered globalization, it is, in turn, exporting cultural products to Asia (glocalization). However, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan are exporting their local cultural products to Japan (localization?). These developments raise a series of issues: how have local Japanese cultural products originated and changed over time; how have Japan's cultural products become popularized and insinuated themselves so effectively into Western culture; why has Japan been a latecomer in the export of cultural products to Asia; and how can the reverse process of exporting cultural products from South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other Asian economies to Japan be theorized? These issues are addressed by examining the origins and transformation of Japanese comics (manga), their export to the global market, the reasons for their delayed export to Asia and the reverse flow of comics from Asia to Japan.

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The animation and home video game industries represent two of the most widely-known contemporary Japanese cultural industries. Both industries share similar characteristics with high turnover ratio and locational concentration in Tokyo. However, they differ markedly in their detailed location patterns, labor markets, and inter-firm relationships. The distribution of animation firms is more concentrated on the national scale in Tokyo and in the western suburbs of Tokyo on the local scale than that of game ones. Workers in the game industry are employed through public advertisements, whether recruiting new graduates or mid-career staff, and they often move one firm to another because there is occasional serious deterioration in human relationships. Conversely, in the animation industry there is little apparent deterioration in human relationships. Most job leavers of the animation become freelancers, establish their own firms or leave the industry entirely. Game firms have fewer inter-firm relationships and less flexibility to alter their business partners than animation firms.
These differences stem from their peculiar distribution systems-the existence of the "legal oligopolistic" TV flagship stations of in the animation industry and "platform holders" in the game industry -and production processes- "waterfall process" in the former and "revised process" in the latter-, which not only influence each other at an industry level but also the behaviors of their individual component firms.

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India is the world's largest film produser. This essay discusses the multi-lingual diversity and socio-political dynamics of Indian commercial cinema in the age of globalization, The three great urban centers of movie production are identified: namely, Mumbai (or Bombay) in the West, Kokotta (Calcutta) in the East, and Chennai (Madras) in the South, each with its own characteristics and impacts, domestically and abroad.
Next, the focus is placed on the influence of the new middle class that have come to the forefront of Indian urban life after the economic liberalization. Attention is centered on the impact of technological developmants such as cassettes, CDs, DVDs, and satellite TV on Indian cinema. Finally, the recent influence of overseas Indians, including non-resident Indians and persons of Indian origin, on the nature and direction of Indian cinema is discussed.
To conclude, the new class of transnational cosmopolitan Indians are using the media, especially the cinema, to imagine and construct utopias for themselves in both India and the world. Conversely, the imagined Indian-ness is likely to transmute into nationalist feelings, especially Hindu nationalism. This "glo-calization" process emphasizes local (regional and national) identities in an age of globalozation.

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Hong Kong has one of the largest and most dynamic movie industries in the world. The paper aims to provide a short profile of the images of Hong Kong through the screen and to explain why and where those images have taken place. Michael Dear initiates the theory of "film-space" by outlining the place of production, production of place, film text, and performance consumption in space as the four sections or components in producing and consuming films. In this light, the paper, first of all, gives a profile of the place images of Hong Kong through the moves screened there. Next, it attempts to explain the boom of its movies since the early 1970s through the actors, directors and choreographers by tracing their background, paths of experiences, and roles played in Hong Kong filmmaking. Thirdly, movies of various genres like kung-fu (or action), ghost and horror, gangster, or city life, are used to exemplify the film culture in its formation and transformation. Moreover, the underlying factors that have attracted human resources and capital to Hong Kong are also considered. It concludes by looking into the localglobal interplay in Hong Kong film industry and their effects on film culture and production, and giving comments on Hong Kong's political-cultural role in Asia and prospects for further Asian co-production and cooperation.

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The Hanshin-Awaji Great Earthquake (17 January 1995) caused a lot of damage to Kobe's housing stock (mainly wooden rental houses, for example, wooden apartments and row houses), especially in the inner city area. Against the background of providing a safety net for many people who lost their homes, Kobe City and Hyogo Prefecture provided about 26, 000 recovery public housing units. In this paper, the author aims to clarify the locational process and the background of the Hanshin-Awaji Great Earthquake Recovery Public Housing (HAERPH) project provided in Kobe City. In particular, the author focuses on how Kobe City and Hyogo Prefecture were able to supply HAERPH in the built-up area according to the needs of the victims.
There are three methods of supplying HAERPH. The first is direct supply by local government, in this case Kobe City and Hyogo Prefecture. The second is based on local government supplying public housing which is leased from the Urban Development Corporation (UDC). The last method is that local government supplies public housing which is leased from the private sector and which is made possible by the Public Housing Act revision of 1996. This paper shows that each method succeeded in supplying HAERPH in the built-up areas in different ways.
Direct supply by the local government, particularly in Kobe City, was applied by using existing techniques of site acquisition of new construction areas, of rebuilding public housing, and of coordinating housing supply together with the urban redevelopment project.
The UDC launched its own project team for site acquisition for housing, and coordinated it with Kobe City and the Kobe City housing supply corporations. They were able to provide some housing in the inner city. Kobe City and Hyogo Prefecture leased some of these houses from the UDC.
All private houses leased by Kobe City are located in the built-up area. This is because Kobe City had set particular leasing standards towards private owners. These particular standards state that those private houses should be located near a train station in the built-up areas, especially in the west central area.

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More than two million Russian refugees resulted from the Russian Revolution in 1917. These refugees were termed "White Russians" ("Hakkei-Roshiajin" in Japanese) and did not accept the Soviet regime. For this reason, they escaped from their motherland and spread to many countries similar to a diaspora.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the way of life and the functions of White Russian society who chose Kobe, a former central city of White Russians living in Japan, as their domicile. This study is based on documents from the Diplomatic Record Office of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and oral data gained through fact-finding visits and interviews in the area.
Most White Russians in Japan lived in Tokyo and Yokohama before the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923. However, a large number of them migrated from the Tokyo area to Kobe, which provided shelter from the disaster. Thereafter, Kobe became one of the central settlements of White Russians in Japan, along with the Tokyo metropolitan area. In those days, many White Russians, more than 400 people at its highest point, settled in Kobe, particularly in the former Fukiai and Ikuta wards.
The term "White Russians" refers to all people from the territory of the Russian Empire, including Christians, Jews, and Muslim Tatars. Therefore, White Russians are a group that is diverse in terms of culture, ethnicity and religion. Consequently, their organizations were based on their religious affiliations in Kobe.
In the period after 1925, White Russians were categorized as stateless in Japan. They had the right to obtain a "Nansen Passport", issued by the League of Nations as identification cards, but their status was very uncertain. Moreover, many White Russians were peddlers and frequently travelled around. As a result, the Japanese authorities watched them closely as they were suspicious that White Russians were spies sent from foreign countries, especially from the Soviet Union. In fact, some White Russians were expelled from Japan in the 1920s. However, in the 1930s, chauvinistic nationalism arose among White Russians themselves, and some of them even provided donations to the Japanese government and army. This indicates that the White Russian society was subsumed within Japanese society in those days. In addition, there was some conflict over the attitude toward the Soviet Union in White Russian society.
After W. W. II, the number of White Russians in Japan suddenly decreased. This is because many people went abroad in order to avoid chaos after the war. In Kobe, there was also a rapid decrease in the population of White Russians, and their organizations gradually declined and eventually dissolved. Today, only "The Kobe Eastern Orthodox Church Assumption of the Blessed Virgin", "The Kobe Muslim Mosque", and "The Kobe Foreign Cemetery" remain in Kobe as remnants of former White Russian society.
These cases illustrate the disappearance of the ethnicity of White Russians in Kobe. There is a tendency for refugees to remigrate or for their families to disperse. Many White Russians were no exception, and this tendency is one of the reasons why White Russians disappeared from Kobe. In addition, the negative attitude of the Japanese state towards the inflow and settlement of foreigners is one of the major factors explaining their disappearance.

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