Koreaish: Aesthetics, Qualia, and the Sensory Emergence of Korea Among Young Japanese Women

Abstract A particular fashion and lifestyle aesthetic called kankokuppo (Koreaish) has gained popularity among young Japanese women in the early 2020s, who increasingly admire what they perceive to embody the “atmosphere ( fun’iki )” of South Korea. This article examines the semiotic rendering of a sensuous perception of Korea identified as “Koreaish” through aesthetically embodied practices and mediatized discourses. The analysis reveals the centrality of what I call a “soft unity”: softness that arises from ambiguated boundaries, taken up across discrete objects, practices, and social value regimes. Alongside growing calls to change Japanese society from a divisive to a borderless one, this softness is valorized as the quality of idealized sociality despite its association with highly normative femininity. The emergent “Koreaish” is emblematic of the postfeminist reformulation of the feminine ideal in neoliberal Japan, which manifests as a nexus of the demanifestation of differences and the reversion to conservative feminine values.