origin of "archetypical-Asian" melody

Cafe Society
1

There is a short melodic phrase, (riff?) consisting of around 9 notes that is commonly heard in soundtracks when an Asian theme is introduced. The phrase I mean can be heard in Turning Japanese. This link is to Amazon’s samples, and I find it about 11 seconds into the Windows Media Player version.

What is the origin of this phrase?

2

There have been a number of thread on this, and so far, the very first appearance of that specific melody has been found in the intro to Carl Douglas’s “Kung Fu Fighting” (1974).

3

see this thread