NOTA |
(*)(Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture) (★)(From its humble beginnings as a video game launched in the mid-90s, ´Pokemon´ has become a global entertainment franchise, even reaching into the real world via ´augmented reality´ with the mobile game ´Pokemon GO.´ In this work, Nakazawa Shinichi argues that the Pokemon worldview is the best contemporary example of Claude Levi-Strauss´s ´savage mind (la pensee sauvage)´, suggesting that computer games can often be viewed as attempts to reconnect the human unconscious with the true, hidden essence of nature. The author supports his argument through close analysis of the development of electronic gaming in Japan. Drawing on Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, Levi-Straussian structuralism, and other resources, he explores cultural touchstones like ´Space Invaders´,´Ultraman´, and the RPG genre, showing how their rich expression appeals directly to the urges and impulses within children, helping them come to terms with their place in the world. This book is both a work of game criticism revealing ´la pensee sauvage´ within today´s video games and an examination of the Japanese popular culture from which the Pokemon phenomenon was born. ◆Nakazawa Shinichi, born in Yamanashi in 1950, is an anthropologist and a philosopher who currently directs the Institut pour la Science Sauvage at Meiji University, Tokyo. Since his bestselling debut ´Tibetto no Mootsaruto (Mozart in Tibet)´, based on his own experiences studying Buddhism in Tibet, he has written dozens of books exploring the relevance of premodern thought to contemporary life.) |