Specifically designed for use in a range of undergraduate and graduate courses, while reaching specialists and general readers, this second edition of Introducing Japanese Popular Culture is a comprehensive textbook offering an up-to-date overview of a wide variety of media forms.
It uses particular case studies as a way into examining the broader themes in Japanese culture and provides a thorough analysis of the historical and contemporary trends that have shaped artistic production, as well as politics, society, and economics. As a result, more than being a time capsule of influential trends, this book teaches enduring lessons about how popular culture reflects the societies that produce and consume it.
With contributions from an international team of scholars, representing a range of disciplines from history and anthropology to art history and media studies, the book covers:
- Characters
- Television
- Videogames
- Fan media and technology
- Music
- Popular cinema
- Anime
- Manga
- Spectacles and competitions
- Sites of popular culture
- Fashion
- Contemporary art.
Written in an accessible style with ample description and analysis, this textbook is essential reading for students of Japanese culture and society, Asian media and popular culture, globalization, and Asian Studies in general. It is a go-to handbook for interested readers and a compendium for scholars.
1. Introducing Japanese Popular Culture: Serious Approaches to Playful Trends
Part 1: Characters
2. Kumamon: Japan’s Surprisingly Cheeky Mascot
Debra J. Occhi
3. ’Hello Kitty Is Not a Cat?!?’: Tracking Japanese Cute Culture at Home and Abroad
Christine R. Yano
Part 2: Television
4. The Grotesque Hero: Depictions of Justice in Tokusatsu Superhero Television Programs
Hirofumi Katsuno
5. Tokyo Love Story: Romance of the Working Woman in Japanese Television Dramas
Alisa Freedman
6. The World Too Much with Us in Japanese Travel Television
Kendall Heitzman
Part 3: Videogames
7. Nuclear Discourse in Final Fantasy VII: Embodied Experience and Social Critique
Rachael Hutchinson
8. Policing Youth: Boy Detectives in Japanese Visual Novel Games
Tsugumi (Mimi) Okabe
9. The Cute Shall Inherit the Earth: Postapocalyptic Posthumanity in Tokyo Jungle
Kathryn Hemmann
Part 4: Fan Media and Technology
10. Managing Manga Studies in the Convergent Classroom
Mark McLelland
11. Thumb Generation Literature: The Rise and Fall of Japanese Cellphone Novels
Alisa Freedman
12. Purikura: Expressive Energy in Female Self-Photography
Laura Miller
13. Cosplay Everywhere: Costume Diplomacy at the World Cosplay Summit
Emerald L. King
14. Hatsune Miku: Virtual Idol, Media Platform, and Crowd-Sourced Celebrity
Ian Condry
Part 5: Music
15. Electrifying the Japanese Teenager Across Generations: The Role of the Electric Guitar in Japan’s Popular Culture
Michael Furmanovsky
16. The "Pop Pacific": Japanese American Sojourners and the Development of Japanese Popular Music
Jayson Makoto Chun
17. AKB Business: Idols and Affective Economies in Contemporary Japan
Patrick W. Galbraith
18. In Search of Japanoise: Globalizing Underground Music
David Novak
19. Korean Pop Music in Japan: Understanding the Complex Relationship Between Japan and Korea in the Popular Culture Realm
Eun-Young Jung
Part 6: Popular Cinema
20. The Prehistory of Soft Power: Godzilla, Cheese, and the American Consumption of Japan
William M. Tsutsui
21. The Rise of Japanese Horror Films: Yotsuya Ghost Story (Yotsuya Kaidan), Demonic Men, and Victimized Women
Kyoko Hirano
22. V-Cinema: How Home Video Revitalized Japanese Film and Mystified Film Historians
Tom Mes
Part 7: Anime
23. Apocalyptic Animation: In the Wake of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Godzilla, and Baudrillard
Alan Cholodenko
24. Toy Stories: Robots and Magical Girls in Anime Marketing
Renato Rivera Rusca
25. The World According to Ghibli, or How a Small Japanese Animation Studio Became a Global Phenomenon
Susan Napier
26. Condensing the Media Mix: The Tatami Galaxy’s Multiple Possible Worlds
Marc Steinberg
Part 8: Manga
27. A Jew and a Nazi Walk into an Izakaya: Tezuka Osamu’s Holocaust Manga
Ben Whaley
28. Gekiga, or Japanese Alternative Comics: The Mediascape of Japanese Counterculture
Shige (CJ) Suzuki
29. The Beautiful Men of the Inner Chamber: Gender-Bending, Boys’ Love and Other Shōjo Manga Tropes in Ōoku for Yoshinaga Fumi
Deborah Shamoon
30. Cyborg Empiricism: The Ghost Is Not in the Shell
Thomas Lamarre
Part 9: Spectacles and Competitions
31. Hanabi: The Cultural Significance of Fireworks in Japan
Damien Liu-Brennan
32. Kamishibai: The Fantasy Space of the Urban Street Corner
Sharalyn Orbaugh
33. Making A Game of Their Own: Baseball as Japan’s National Sport
Paul Dunscomb
34. Pop Go the Games: Japanese Popular Culture and Politics at the Olympics
David Leheny
Part 10: Sites
35. Shibuya: Reflective Identity in Transforming Urban Space
Izumi Kuroishi
36. Akihabara: Promoting and Policing ‘Otaku’ in ‘Cool Japan’
Patrick W. Galbraith
37. Japan Lost and Found: Modern Ruins as Debris of the Economic Miracle
Tong Lam
Part 11: Fashion
38. Cute Fashion: The Social Strategies and Aesthetics of Kawaii
Toby Slade
39. Made in Japan: A New Generation Fashion Designers
Hiroshi Narumi
Part 12: Contemporary Art
40. Superflat Life
Tom Looser
41. Aida Makoto: Notes from an Apathetic Continent
Adrian Favell
42. The Art of Upcycling in the Set Inland Sea
James Jack
Biography
Alisa Freedman is a Professor of Japanese Literature, Cultural Studies, and Gender at the University of Oregon, USA. Her books include Japan on American TV: Screaming Samurai Join Anime Clubs in the Land of the Lost (2021) and Tokyo in Transit: Japanese Culture on the Rails and Road (2010).
