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(★)(Cartoons and comic books, TV dramas and pop music stars, fashion trends and crooning businessmen --until two decades ago such familiar and fun areas of life would have been unlikely entries in the journal of images commonly associated with Japan. For the greater part of this century, Japan presented two very different faces to the outside world. One was the exotic Orient, a land of sword-wielding samurai, kimono-clad geisha, and Zen Buddhism whose fascination and charm lay in its distance --geographic, temporal, and cultural-- from our own everyday worlds. The other was Japan the power, first military and later economic, whose impact on our lives was closely felt, formidable, and not always pleasant. In the arena of popular culture, a sphere that is both part of our everyday lives and a source of pleasure, Japan was a very minor player, unless one counts the televisions, stereos, and videocassette recorders that Japan produced so efficiently and that brought us the cultural products of Hollywood, Disney, and our various home countries. Although Japan´s own postwar pop culture had in fact been creative, vibrant, and commercially successful domestically, this was a fact that few people outside Japan were aware of. In the international consciousness Japan remained a serious nation and people, accomplished in traditional arts and modern manufacturing, but hardly a wellspring of entertainment and appealing cultural creations that would one day spread beyond Japan´s shores.／ Today it´s a different story. Japan´s pop culture has not only continued to evolve and blossom at home, it has also attracted a broad, street-level following overseas, giving Japan a new cultural impact on the world to complement its established economic impact. Japanese animation and comics have built a huge global following, and their Japanese names, ´anime´ and ´manga´, have entered the international lexicon. A new generation of young Americans, Europeans, and Asians have grown up watching not Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny but Japanese cartoons, from Astro Boy, Speed Racer, Star Blazers, and Robotech to Doraemon, Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball, and Crayon Shinchan. Anime fan clubs, ´fanzines´, and Web sites have sprung up by the hundreds, and hit movies such as Akira and Ghost In The Shell have helped Japanese animation gross tens of millions of dollars in yearly international box office and video sales. Japan´s manga (comics) are translated and read eagerly throughout the world, and the influence of manga´s fine lines and realistic aesthetic style can be seen in Western fashion and graphic design.／ Recent Japanese films have won top awards at the Cannes and Vienna Film Festivals, while Japan´s TV dramas and variety shows are in high demand throughout Asia. One Hong Kong shop routinely sells fifty video compact discs of a single Japanese TV drama per day, to customers who want to see the latest episodes as soon as possible. Japanese pop singers perform to packed venues in Hong Kong and mainland China, top ´Canto-pop´ (Hong Kong pop music) and other Asian recording artists do cover versions of hit Japanese pop songs, and the techno-pop sound of Japanese music tycoon Tetsuya Komuro provides the sound track for major Hollywood movies. Dreams Come True vocalist Miwa Yoshida graces the cover of Time magazine, and the all-girl rock group Shoonen Knife has a strong alternative following in the United States. In Taiwan and Hong Kong, teenagers take their fashion cues from the clothes of Japanese ´idol´ singers and TV stars and from Japanese teen magazines such as Non-No. Gossipy stories about Japanese entertainers such as Takuya Kimura and Noriko Sakai fill local newspapers. Among the Nintendo and PlayStation set, which encompasses most of the school-age population in many countries, Japanese video games such as Street Fighter, Tekken, and Final Fantasy rule the roost. Karaoke is a household word worldwide, and the parade out of Japan of hit pop culture products like Hello Kitty goods, Tamagotchi virtual pets, and Pokemon toys is unending. Even in South Korea, where anti-Japan sentiment thrives as a result of Japan´s 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean peninsula, demand for Japan pop is strong among the younger generation. Japanese music, comics, and fashion magazines commonly circulate ´underground´ despite a decade-long ban on the importation of Japanese cultural products, while popular manga such as Slam Dunk, which set off a basketball craze in South Korea, are translated into Korean, with the names and places changed so that they can be imported legally.／ In short, Japan pop is ubiquitous, hot, and increasingly influential. Once routinely derided as a one-dimensional power, a heavyweight in the production and export of the ´hard´ of automobiles, electronics, and other manufactured goods but a nobody in terms of the ´soft´ of cultural products and influence, Japan now contributes not just to our material lives, but to our everyday cultural lives as well.／ One sign of the level of interest in Japan´s pop culture was a conference on the topic held in Victoria, Canada, by the University of Victoria Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives in 1997. Launched with a one-page announcement sent to a few Japan specialists and posted on the Internet, the conference drew a strong international response and evolved into a three-day event featuring over forty presentations by scholars, writers, practitioners, and fans from four continents on Japanese pop music, comics and animation, TV dramas and commercials, movies, stand-up comedy, popular literature, and sumo wrestling, as well as issues such as social change, women´s roles, and the spread and appeal of Japanese pop culture overseas. In the audience, scholars from Harvard, Stanford, and Tokyo Universities, applying an academic lens to analyze Japanese society through its popular culture, rubbed shoulders with purple-haired, karaoke-singing ´otaku (hard-core aficionados)´ conversant with the latest pop music groups and manga artists. As diverse a group as one is likely to find at a university conference, all brought valid viewpoints to the subject and shared both a deep enthusiasm for Japan´s popular culture and an appreciation of its growing influence.／ The Victoria conference received considerable media coverage, and as its organizer, I found myself being asked the same questions over and over : What´s so special about Japanese pop culture? Why is it gaining such popularity outside Japan? The chapters of this book provide a fuller answer to that question.／[from ´INTRODUCTION´] ▼CONTENTS／ 1.Introduction (Tim Craig)／ ●PART I : POPULAR MUSIC／2.Can Japanese Sing the Blues? ´Japanese Jazz´ and the Problem of Authenticity (E. Taylor Atkins)／3.The Marketing of Tears : Consuming Emotions in Japanese Popular Song (Christine R. Yano)／4.Open Your File, Open Your Mind : Women, English, and Changing Roles and Voices in Japanese Pop Music (James Stanlaw)／5.A Karaoke Perspective on International Relations (Hiro R. Shimatachi)／ ●PART II : COMICS AND ANIMATION／6.Japanese Comic Books and Religion : Osamu Tezuka´s Story of the Buddha (Mark Wheeler MacWilliams)／7.The Romantic, Passionate Japanese in Anime : A Look at the Hidden Japanese Soul (Eri Izawa)／8.´Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen)´ : Volume 8, pages 17-31 (Keiji Nakazawa)／9.Gender Roles and Girls´ Comics in Japan : The Girls and Guys of ´Yuukan Club´ (Maia Tsurumi)／10.From ´Sazae-san´ to ´Crayon Shin-chan´ : Family Anime, Social Change, and Nostalgia in Japan (William Lee)／ ●PART III : TELEVISION AND FILM／11.New Role Models for Men and Women? Gender in Japanese TV Dramas (Hilaria M. Gossmann)／12.A New Kind of Royalty : The Imperial Family and the Media in Postwar Japan (Jayson Chun)／13.Into the Heartland with Tora-san (Mark Schilling)／ ●PART IV : JAPANESE POPULAR CULTURE ABROAD／14.Sailor Moon : Japanese Superheroes for Global Girls (Anne Allison)／15.Beauty Fighter ´Sailor Chemist´ (Yuka Kawada)／16.Doraemon Goes Abroad (Saya S. Shiraishi)／17.Pop Idols and the Asian Identity (Hiroshi Aoyagi)／) |
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