Handbook of Japanese Media and Popular Culture in Transition

The Handbook of Japanese Media and Popular Culture in Transition brings together new research and perspectives on popular media phenomena, as well as shining a spotlight on texts that are less well known or studied. Organized into five thematic sections, the chapters span a diverse range of cultural genres, including contemporary film and television, postwar cinema, advertising, popular fiction, men’s magazines, manga and anime, karaoke and digital media. They address issues critical to contemporary Japanese society: the politicization of history, authenticity and representation, constructions of identity, trauma and social disaffection, intersectionality and trans/nationalism. Drawing on methods and approaches from a range of disciplines, the chapters make explicit the interconnections between these areas of research and map out possible trajectories for future inquiry. As such, the handbook will be of value to both novice scholars and seasoned researchers, working within and/or beyond the Japanese media studies remit.

FDr Forum Mithani is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow based at Cardiff University. Recent publications include the (co-edited) Handbook of Japanese Media and Popular Culture in Transition and “(De)Constructing Nostalgic Myths of the Mother in Japanese Drama Woman” (SERIES 5:2). Griseldis Kirsch is Reader in Contemporary Japanese Culture at SOAS University of London. She is the author of Contemporary Sino-Japanese Relations on Screen. A History: 1989-2005 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015) and co-editor of the volume Assembling Japan: Technology, Modernity and Global Culture (Peter Lang, 2015). Her research interests include nationalism, identity and memory in Japanese screen media and she has published widely on these topics. Marcos Centeno-Martin is Lecturer in Media Studies at Universitat de València and Honorary Research Fellow in Japanese Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, where he has been the Japanese program director. Before that, Centeno was Lecturer in Film Studies in the Department of Japan and Korea at SOAS (London) where he convened the MA “Global Cinemas and the Transcultural.” Centeno was also Guest Lecturer at Nanzan University in Nagoya and Ochanomizu University, and Research Associate at Waseda University and visiting researcher at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3 and Goethe Universität Frankfurt. His research interests revolve around Japanese documentary film, particularly issues related to memory and representation of minorities (mainly the Ainu people), diversity and transculturality in Japan. His research project “Japanese Transna_x0002_tional Cinema” was funded by several institutions including the Sasakawa and Daiwa foundations, Waseda University and the Japanese Ministry of Education. Jennifer Coates is Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies at the School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield. She is the author of Making Icons: Repetition and the Female Im_x0002_age in Japanese Cinema, 1945–1964 (Hong Kong University Press, 2016) and co-editor of Japanese Visual Media: Politicizing the Screen (with Eyal Ben-Ari, Routledge, 2021) and The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture (with Lucy Fraser and Mark Pendleton, Routledge, 2019). Her current ethnographic research focuses on early postwar film audiences in Japan. Rayna Denison is Professor of Film and Digital Arts at the University of Bristol, with a focus on contemporary Japanese animation and cinema. Her publications include the monograph Anime: A Critical Introduction and the edited collection Princess Mononoke: Understanding Studio Ghibli’s Monster Princess. She has also published a wide range of co_x0002_edited collections and special issues of journals, as well as having publications in leading journals including Cinema Journal, Japan Forum, Animation: An Interdisciplinary Jour_x0002_nal and the Velvet Light Tra Lyle De Souza is a Lecturer in the Department of English Language and Literature at Kyoto Notre Dame University and a JSPS KAKENHI Researcher at the Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University. His current research project, “The Literature of the Japa_x0002_nese Diaspora: Identity Beyond Japan,” combines his interdisciplinary expertise across the social sciences (Japanese Studies, sociology) and humanities (literary theory, cultural studies). His work aims to improve understanding of minority identities through analysis of processes of racialization. Irene González-López is Lecturer in Japanese Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, and Research Associate of the Visual and Material Culture Research Centre at Kingston University. Before pursuing a PhD in Film Studies at SOAS (University of London), Irene lived in Japan for eight years. Her research spans Japanese creative industries, with a spe_x0002_cial focus on postwar cinema and issues related to gender and sexuality, both in front of and behind the camera. Irene’s publications include Tanaka Kinuyo: Nation, Stardom and Female Subjectivity (co-editor together with Michael Smith, Edinburgh University Press, 2018); “Marketing the panpan in Japanese popular culture: youth, sexuality, and power” (2018); “In Search of the Authentic Japanese Taste: Solitary Gourmet and Cultural Tourism” (2018); and “The Profound Desire of the Goddess: Sexuality and Politics in The Insect Woman” (2017). Hilaria Gössmann is Professor for Japanese Studies at the University of Trier, Germany. The focus of her research and teaching is modern literature, television dramas and films. She has edited a book on gender and media in Japan and Germany together with Mu_x0002_ramatsu Yasuko (in Japanese: Media ga tsukuru gend?. Nichidoku no danjo kazokuz? o yomitoku, Shiny?sha, 1998) and a book on the Fukushima nuclear accident in media, popular culture and literature (in German: Schriften der Gesellschaft für Japanforschung, Band 4: Dokumentation, Trostspende oder Anklage? Die Atomkatastrophe von Fukushima in japanischen Medien, Populärkultur und Literatur, Gesellschaft für Japanforschung eV, 2021). Laurence Green is a 3rd year PhD Student at SOAS University of London. His current research focuses on the use of music within the Japanese animation industry, and his writ_x0002_ing has previously been published in both NEO Magazine and the Japan Society Review, as well as in the recent edited volume Japan beyond Its Borders: Transnational Approaches to Film and Media (Seibunsha, 2020). He is currently serving as Managing Editor of the journal Japan Forum and is a recipient of the Meiji Jingu Japanese Studies Research Scholarship, Japan Research Centre Fuwaku Fund and the British Association of Japanese Studies John Crump Studentship. Christopher Hood is a Reader in Japanese Studies at Cardiff University. He is the author of the books, Japan: The Basics; Osutaka: A Chronicle of Loss in the World’s Largest Single Plane Crash; Dealing with Disaster in Japan: Responses to the Flight JL123 Crash; Shink_x0002_ansen: From Bullet Train to Symbol of Modern Japan and Education Reform in Japan: Na_x0002_kasone’s Legacy. Connected to the chapter in this collection, he is the author of “Disaster Narratives by Design: Is Japan Different?” (International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, August 2020). He is also the author of the novels Hijacking Japan, Tokyo 20/20 Vision and FOUR. Homepage: http://hoodcp.wordpress.com Twitter: @HoodCP Hiroyuki Kitaura is Associate Professor of Film Studies in the Faculty of International Liberal Arts at Kaichi International University, Japan. He is the author of Terebi seich?ki no Nihon eiga: Media kan k?sh? no naka no dorama (Japanese movies during the growth pe_x0002_riod of television: The dramas in media interactions, Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai, 2018) and has written extensively in the area of Japanese film and television history Antonio Loriguillo-López is Assistant Professor at the Universitat Jaume I (Spain). He teaches courses on Audiovisual Communication, Video Game Design and Development, as well as the Master’s Degree in New Trends and Innovation Processes in Communication. He is a graduate of the first class of the Kadokawa Media Mix Summer Program organized by the University of Tokyo (2014). His interests focus on post-classical story_x0002_telling in contemporary audiovisuals and Japanese commercial animation. He is the author, editor and co-editor of several books and also author of scientific articles related to these topics in journals such as Animation, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Creative Industries Journal and International Journal on Media Management. Artur Lozano-Méndez has a PhD in Translation and Intercultural Studies and is a Serra Húnter Lecturer at the Department of Translation and Interpretation and East Asian Studies at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He teaches about Japanese politics, philosophy, popular culture and social issues in Japan. His research is focused on those same areas as a member of the InterAsia research group (UAB). His publications include: “Techno_x0002_Orientalism in East-Asian Contexts: Reiteration, Diversification, Adaptation” (chapter in Counterpoints: Edward Said’s Legacy, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010); editor of El Japón Contemporáneo. Una aproximación desde los Estudios Culturales (Bellaterra, 2016); “Mamoru Oshii’s Exploration of the Potentialities of Consciousness in a Globalised Capitalist Network” (in ejcjs – Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies 15:3, 2015); co-editor (with Blai Guarné and Dolores Martinez) of Persistently Postwar: Media and the Politics of Memory in Japan (Berghahn Books, 2019). Ronald Saladin is an Assistant Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Trier, Germany. In 2019, he published his monograph, Young Men and Masculinities in Japanese Media―(Un-)Conscious Hegemony, which is a qualitative and quantitative analysis of Japanese men’s magazines, with Palgrave Macmillan. In his research and teaching, he focuses on media, contemporary literature, gender and popular culture of Japan. Elisabeth Scherer is a Japanese studies researcher and e-learning professional at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. Her areas of research interest include popular culture, intermedia, rituals and gender studies. She is the editor of Reconsidering the Cultural Significance of NHK’s Morning Dramas (special issue of the East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, 2019). Elisabeth Scherer is a Japanese studies researcher and e-learning professional at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. Her areas of research interest include popular culture, intermedia, rituals and gender studies. She is the editor of Reconsidering the Cultural Significance of NHK’s Morning Dramas (special issue of the East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, 2019) Julia Stolyar is a PhD researcher at SOAS, University of London. Her research interests in_x0002_clude transnational media flows between Korea and Japan and transnational television more broadly, exploring notions of identity and national identity and the creation and circulation of national myths through television. Xinyu (Promio) Wang is an assistant professor in Cultural Studies at the Department of Contemporary English, Ibaraki Christian University, Japan. Xin’s research focuses on the transnational socio-cultural practices of Chinese digital migrants and Chinese queer digital migrants in the UK and Japan. Xin’s latest publications include “Digital Technol_x0002_ogy, Physical Spaces, and the Notion of Belonging among Chinese Migrants in Japan” in Asiascape: Digital Asia, 7 (2020) and “Chinese Migrants’ Sense of Belonging in Japan: Be_x0002_tween Digital and Physical Spaces” in Migration Research Series No. 61 [online] Geneva: International Organization for Migration. James White completed his PhD at the School of East Asian Studies at the University of Sheffield in 2019 with ESRC and Japan Foundation support. His thesis explored intellectual and critical definitions of gender in Japanese beer advertising across the postwar era. An initial year on the JET program morphed into eight years teaching across the archipelago pursued by earthquakes. During this time, he completed an MA in Japanese Language and Society from the University of Sheffield, followed by an extra MA (SOAS) in Japanese Studies. He is particularly interested in visual culture and narratives of gender, alcohol consumption, and identity.