General editorial: EAJPC 8.2

Abstract

This issue of the East Asian Journal of Popular Culture (EAJPC) includes a thematic section, edited by Scott Sommers, consisting of four papers dealing with various cultural ramifications of a modern popular culture in middle-class Japan, particularly in relation to gender and consumerism. It further features articles analysing the role of humour in the Sinophone world: one (by Charles Lam and Genevieve Leung) on the emergence during the 1970s of a consciousness of distinctive Hong Kong identity through the prism of the television sketch comedy, the Hui Brothers Show and another (by Jacob Tischer) investigating the use of a humorous social media strategy by Taiwan’s government in its attempts to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. The issue concludes with a paper by Marketa Bajgerová Verly on the representation of female victims of the Sino-Japanese War in the museums of the PRC. The book reviews section features commentary on four recently published works that relate to themes discussed in the research articles.