The Myth of East Asia on Popular Narratives: The Case of Idol Dramas in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Mainland China

Idol drama, so-named because of its cast of super idols with beautiful faces and its storyline of romance among young urban professionals as potential social exemplars, is a special genre of television drama in Asia. Led by Japanese trendy dramas, South Korean mini series, and Taiwanese idol dramas, this “non-typical” genre has gained immense popularity in mainland China, Hong Kong, and other Asian countries. Several remarkable indications give rise to a sense of the presence of “East Asian pop culture” in the Asian and even the global entertainment market, such as Hari (Japanese fanatic) and Hallyu (Korean Wave), enabling the construction of “pan-East Asian identity” as an object of analysis. This study attempts to provide some preliminary materials and analytic notes on this object, delineated by latent narrative structures and cultural representations. Through the Proppian function sequence and Levi-Straussian binary opposition analysis of 100 typical dramas (Japan: 30, South Korea: 30, Taiwan: 20, and mainland China: 20), the essay aims to decode the myth of “East Asia” and to interpret how these dramas construct and represent separate national identities and Confucian cultural traditions by choosing and organising the structural elements of text based on three dimensions, including narrative functions, characters, and binary oppositions.