Hybridity and distinctions in Japanese contemporary commercial weddings

Abstract

By looking at modern Japanese wedding patterns and at recent changes in the wedding ceremony, this paper seeks a better understanding of the processes in which the foreign and the local interact in this so-called era of globalization. My alternative approach emphasizes distinctions. The commercial Japanese wedding, which is a combination of Japanese and Western styles, has the appearance of a chaotic cultural pastiche. However, in an interpretive and dynamic approach to anthropology and culture, one finds that it is in fact a very clearly distinct text. Combinations of the indigenous and the vanguard, the traditional and the modern are often regarded by theorists as examples of the failure of modernization. But if we abandon a post-modern paradigmatic view of the 'natives', what appears as disorganization and disorder is found to be not less systemic and systematic.