A Study of Iwai Shunji’s Swallowtail Butterfly as a Work of Techno-Orientalist Minor Literature and its Representation of the East Asian Diaspora

This paper is an investigation of “Techno-Orientalism” in postmodern Japanese and global cultural genres and subcultures since the 1980s. It concentrates on the representation of the diaspora from East Asia in the film Swallowtail Butterfly (1996), directed by Iwai Shunji (1963-). This film criticized the expansion of neoliberalism after the collapse of the “Bubble Economy” in the years 1986 to 1991 from the perspective of the diaspora, suggesting a path for the reconsideration of the connection between postmodernism and global capitalism in 1980s Japan. A postmodern genre formed in which urban space in Japan was represented as “Techno-Orientalist”, in works such as Blade Runner (1982) by Sir Ridley Scott (1937-), Akira (1988) by Otomo Katsuhiro (1954-), and Ghost in the Shell (1995) by Oshii Mamoru (1951-). Oriental “Techno Pop” music by Sakamoto Ryuichi (1952-) was also produced in the same context, and it is possible to discuss Iwai Shunji’s Swallowtail Butterfly in this context. The most important point of this movie is that Japanese actors played the roles of those who were part of the diaspora from East Asia, and they speak “Fake Chinese” and “Fake English.” This paper discusses these fake and creole languages through the prism of the theory of “Minor Literature” elaborated by Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) and Pierre-Félix Guattari (1930-1992).