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The Asian accent may be profound or subtle. In pop music it may stare you in the face (like the tunes and videos of the Asian trio Shonen Knife, who bop around like '60s teens -- Japanese Beatles) or caress the back of your mind. This summer the two queens of pop have imported the style. Janet Jackson's music video If is set in a Chinese nightclub studded with Buddha statues and paper lanterns; Madonna's Rain, which last week won an MTV Music Video Award for its sleek art direction, has the star posing for a Japanese film crew led by singer-composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. "I wanted Rain to have a clean, Zenned- out minimalism," says director Mark Romanek. "And I love Japanese fashion, especially Rei Kawakubo, who designs Comme des Garcons' clothes."
In Rain Madonna wears the Maoists' stark variation on Chanel's little black dress. She could be in the style vanguard again: last week Women's Wear Daily announced that "designers are pulling out the fine China this season." Couture connoisseurs agree. "The Orient-inspired look might be the important silhouette for the '90s," says Kal Ruttenstein, senior vice president for fashion direction at Bloomingdale's. "We expect to see it in full force in the spring collections: Oriental shapes like Mao jackets and mandarin-collared dresses luxurious fabrics like Jacquard silks and lightweight brocades."
In bookstores the fiction shelves are bursting with works by Asians and Asian Americans. Tan, with The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God's Wife, has been joined by Cynthia Kadohata (The Floating World), Fae Myenne Ng (Bone), David Wong Louie (Pangs of Love), Gus Lee (China Boy) and Gish Jen (Typical American). Tan sees home-and-office reasons for the popularity of these artists and fashions. "People now more than ever are likely to know a person or a co-worker who is Asian American," she says. "They've had experiences beyond eating chop suey -- which isn't even a Chinese dish -- and probably know the differences in Szechuan, Hunan and Cantonese food. People have an interest in Asian culture but also in their own immigrant past. We're at a time when family has become more important to people." Tan wants all this newfound interest to spread beyond exotic chinoiserie: to show, on the screen, "Asian Americans who are not emperors, not martial artists, not servants in rich houses."
Can Western views of East Asia be dragged out of the mythic and into the everyday? That is a daunting challenge, because China and Japan still represent fear and fascination to Americans. They are both our wizened ancestors, being among the oldest civilizations, and our presumed successors. If the East now has the power, it has long emitted potent metaphorical odors: the spiritual mystery, the sexual kink. In Rising Sun a Japanese gangster makes an American call girl dip her nipple in sake -- baptism by force in the waters of the future. But one needn't go to Hollywood to find directors investigating bizarro sex. Many Japanese filmmakers do; porno is a popular genre there. One example is director Ryu Murakami's Tokyo Decadence (now in U.S. release), which lovingly details the sexual subjugation of Japanese prostitutes by Japanese businessmen.