Pub Date : 2023-03-10DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2023.2183977
Junichi Kasuga
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Pub Date : 2023-02-19DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2023.2180075
Edwin Michielsen
{"title":"Tenkō: Cultures of Political Conversion in Transwar Japan","authors":"Edwin Michielsen","doi":"10.1080/09555803.2023.2180075","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2023.2180075","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44495,"journal":{"name":"Japan Forum","volume":"35 1","pages":"482 - 484"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44038206","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-30DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2023.2170448
P. Jolliffe
This collection of twenty-five medieval short stories is a collaboration between fifteen translators, including the two editors Keller Kimbrough and Shirane Haruo. The stories were written during the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries and published in different types of emaki formats. They are all illustrated short stories with origins in medieval scrolls and manuscripts. In the Edo period these medieval tales were further popularized as woodblock prints and labelled as otogiz oshi (companion small books). One innovative technique in some of these stories was to arrange the texts and images in a way that allowed dialogues to enter the picture frame, similar to speech balloons in contemporary manga (Tsuji 2001, 69). In emaki these printed words inside or around drawings are called gach ushi. Often the speech conveyed in this way was in vernacular Japanese, contrasting with the main text in classical Japanese. Research on Japanese medieval short stories typically draws together an interdisciplinary scholarship on Japanese literature, history of art, religion, cultural studies etc. Likewise, the collaborative work of Monsters, Animals, and other Worlds is the fruit of an international symposium on monsters and the fantastic in early modern Japanese illustrated narratives, held at Columbia University on November 1, 2013. My own interest in these stories stems from my historical anthropological research on children and childhood in late medieval and early modern Japan. For this research, medieval short stories are a fascinating source thanks to their textual and visual representations of children and also because boys and girls were among those who listened to and read these stories. The book contains an introduction, followed by the twenty-five translated stories divided into three categories. The first section runs under the theme ‘Monsters, Warriors and Journeys to Other Worlds’, the second section covers ‘Buddhist Tales’ and the third section is about ‘Interspecies affairs’. It is noteworthy that although grouped in three different sections, most stories in this book share an engagement with Buddhist doctrine and praise for filial piety. Shirane’s introduction explains the largely Buddhist context of medieval Japanese short stories as well as their use during public religious lectures to men, women and children of different social status. The introduction also discusses the meanings of border-crossing in this volume. Indeed, border-crossing, both between species and geographical
{"title":"Monsters, Animals, and other Worlds. A Collection of Short Medieval Japanese Tales","authors":"P. Jolliffe","doi":"10.1080/09555803.2023.2170448","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2023.2170448","url":null,"abstract":"This collection of twenty-five medieval short stories is a collaboration between fifteen translators, including the two editors Keller Kimbrough and Shirane Haruo. The stories were written during the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries and published in different types of emaki formats. They are all illustrated short stories with origins in medieval scrolls and manuscripts. In the Edo period these medieval tales were further popularized as woodblock prints and labelled as otogiz oshi (companion small books). One innovative technique in some of these stories was to arrange the texts and images in a way that allowed dialogues to enter the picture frame, similar to speech balloons in contemporary manga (Tsuji 2001, 69). In emaki these printed words inside or around drawings are called gach ushi. Often the speech conveyed in this way was in vernacular Japanese, contrasting with the main text in classical Japanese. Research on Japanese medieval short stories typically draws together an interdisciplinary scholarship on Japanese literature, history of art, religion, cultural studies etc. Likewise, the collaborative work of Monsters, Animals, and other Worlds is the fruit of an international symposium on monsters and the fantastic in early modern Japanese illustrated narratives, held at Columbia University on November 1, 2013. My own interest in these stories stems from my historical anthropological research on children and childhood in late medieval and early modern Japan. For this research, medieval short stories are a fascinating source thanks to their textual and visual representations of children and also because boys and girls were among those who listened to and read these stories. The book contains an introduction, followed by the twenty-five translated stories divided into three categories. The first section runs under the theme ‘Monsters, Warriors and Journeys to Other Worlds’, the second section covers ‘Buddhist Tales’ and the third section is about ‘Interspecies affairs’. It is noteworthy that although grouped in three different sections, most stories in this book share an engagement with Buddhist doctrine and praise for filial piety. Shirane’s introduction explains the largely Buddhist context of medieval Japanese short stories as well as their use during public religious lectures to men, women and children of different social status. The introduction also discusses the meanings of border-crossing in this volume. Indeed, border-crossing, both between species and geographical","PeriodicalId":44495,"journal":{"name":"Japan Forum","volume":"35 1","pages":"479 - 481"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43165408","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-30DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2023.2170447
Rhiannon Paget
{"title":"Tokyo Before Tokyo: Power and Magic in the Shogun’s City of Edo","authors":"Rhiannon Paget","doi":"10.1080/09555803.2023.2170447","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2023.2170447","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44495,"journal":{"name":"Japan Forum","volume":"35 1","pages":"476 - 478"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44011389","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2021.2013300
R. Denison
Abstract This article analyses one of the most ubiquitous but overlooked categories of Japanese cinema: gekijōban. Straddling Japanese franchising from live action to animation, gekijōban films have appeared in Japanese cinemas for decades, becoming one of the most significant facets of Japanese serial media production. This article investigates how gekijōban films have sailed beneath theoretical radar both in Japan and beyond by first analysing existing theories on media mix, before outlining some of the trends in gekijōban production and then concluding with a media mix case study, Meitantei Konan (Case Closed), in order to understand why it is that these franchise films have become so common and yet have remained so obscure. I argue that by refocusing attention on these overlooked films, we can see media mix management in practice and process, and understand the roles these often extremely popular films play within Japanese media franchising.
{"title":"Gekijōban (theatrical version) anime as feature films in anime franchising","authors":"R. Denison","doi":"10.1080/09555803.2021.2013300","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2021.2013300","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article analyses one of the most ubiquitous but overlooked categories of Japanese cinema: gekijōban. Straddling Japanese franchising from live action to animation, gekijōban films have appeared in Japanese cinemas for decades, becoming one of the most significant facets of Japanese serial media production. This article investigates how gekijōban films have sailed beneath theoretical radar both in Japan and beyond by first analysing existing theories on media mix, before outlining some of the trends in gekijōban production and then concluding with a media mix case study, Meitantei Konan (Case Closed), in order to understand why it is that these franchise films have become so common and yet have remained so obscure. I argue that by refocusing attention on these overlooked films, we can see media mix management in practice and process, and understand the roles these often extremely popular films play within Japanese media franchising.","PeriodicalId":44495,"journal":{"name":"Japan Forum","volume":"35 1","pages":"98 - 119"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41816936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2022.2160479
R. Denison, C. Verevis
In recent years an expanding field of academic enquiry has centred upon issues of serial film and media production and formats (including: Forrest 2010; Herbert 2017; Herbert and Verevis 2020; Henderson 2014; Hudelet and Cr emieux 2020; Jess-Cooke 2009; Jess-Cooke and Verevis 2010; Johnson 2013; Kelleter 2017a; Klein and Palmer 2016; Kramer and Rudiger 2015; Krutnik and Loock 2017; Loock and Verevis 2012; Perkins and Verevis 2012; Smith and Verevis 2017; Verevis 2006; Verevis 2017). In the main, this work has been focused on either Hollywood cinema, or on the transnational and transcultural facets of remaking and adaptation flowing from and to Hollywood. This special issue – ‘Serial Filmmaking in Japan’ – seeks to demonstrate how Japan might usefully become the focus for a recentring of these debates (Iwabuchi 2002). We use Japan as a representative of the many nations that have their own histories, traditions and cultures of serialisation. As the articles in this issue demonstrate, film production in Japan provides an especially productive example with a wide range of industrial structures that encourage adaptations, remakes, series and other serial formats. Moreover, like extant work in the field of seriality studies, these essays seek to emphasise the possibility of serialisation as both an industrial and an aesthetic principle, at once showing ‘the dependency of culture on serial reproduction’ (Kelleter 2017b, 14), and tracing how various formatting practices ‘[do] not simply follow an original but [recognise] new versions as free adaptations or variations that actualise an implicit potentiality at the source’ (Verevis 2017, 149). Taking up this type of approach to explore some examples of Japan’s serial film worlds, this special issue demonstrates the ways in which serial media formats are
{"title":"Serial Filmmaking in Japan: Introduction","authors":"R. Denison, C. Verevis","doi":"10.1080/09555803.2022.2160479","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2022.2160479","url":null,"abstract":"In recent years an expanding field of academic enquiry has centred upon issues of serial film and media production and formats (including: Forrest 2010; Herbert 2017; Herbert and Verevis 2020; Henderson 2014; Hudelet and Cr emieux 2020; Jess-Cooke 2009; Jess-Cooke and Verevis 2010; Johnson 2013; Kelleter 2017a; Klein and Palmer 2016; Kramer and Rudiger 2015; Krutnik and Loock 2017; Loock and Verevis 2012; Perkins and Verevis 2012; Smith and Verevis 2017; Verevis 2006; Verevis 2017). In the main, this work has been focused on either Hollywood cinema, or on the transnational and transcultural facets of remaking and adaptation flowing from and to Hollywood. This special issue – ‘Serial Filmmaking in Japan’ – seeks to demonstrate how Japan might usefully become the focus for a recentring of these debates (Iwabuchi 2002). We use Japan as a representative of the many nations that have their own histories, traditions and cultures of serialisation. As the articles in this issue demonstrate, film production in Japan provides an especially productive example with a wide range of industrial structures that encourage adaptations, remakes, series and other serial formats. Moreover, like extant work in the field of seriality studies, these essays seek to emphasise the possibility of serialisation as both an industrial and an aesthetic principle, at once showing ‘the dependency of culture on serial reproduction’ (Kelleter 2017b, 14), and tracing how various formatting practices ‘[do] not simply follow an original but [recognise] new versions as free adaptations or variations that actualise an implicit potentiality at the source’ (Verevis 2017, 149). Taking up this type of approach to explore some examples of Japan’s serial film worlds, this special issue demonstrates the ways in which serial media formats are","PeriodicalId":44495,"journal":{"name":"Japan Forum","volume":"35 1","pages":"1 - 9"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44820311","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2022.2149835
D. Breeze
Abstract Serialised filmmaking methods have been generally determined to fall in two types of narratology: those that promote narrative development between instalments (‘sequel’) and those that resist development (‘series’). However, contemporary Japanese franchises have frequently unfolded across film and television, demonstrating alternative forms of storytelling that make semantic definition more problematic. This article investigates the serial practices in Umizaru – a popular Japanese action series adapted from a manga by the Fuji Television Network that unfolded across four films and a televised drama. Analysis reveals how this ‘medium-jumping’ transmedia journey enables a fluctuating interplay between two narrative scenarios or ‘tracks’ that opposingly promote and constrain serialised development across the films, effectively shifting them between ‘sequel’ and ‘series’ formats. Elaborating on Jenkins’ definition of ‘transmedia storytelling’ and Cattrysse’s interpretation of ‘cultural proximity’, ultimately, this article argues that the serial processes in Fuji’s Umizaru cycle are best understood according to a range of generic, discursive and intertextual associations tied to the mediums hosting the series at a given time, and the ‘proximity’ between transmedia movements.
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2022.2152472
D. Martinez
Abstract What accounts for the huge success of the Star Wars franchise and conversely also for the failure of some attempts at replicating its achievement? This article argues that focusing on four concepts – making things right, scalar replication, the transcultural and transnational – can help us to understand why the 50th anniversary remake of Kurosawa Akira’s Kakushitoride no Sanakunin (The Three Villains of the Hidden Fortress, 1958) was not a success. There are various ways in which Kakushitoride no Sanakunin, The Last Princess (The Hidden Fortress, The Last Princess, Higuchi Shinji, 2008) works to answer questions thrown up by the original – to make things right – as well as a clear attempt at scalar replication. Moreover, this remake endeavored to capture the magnitude not just of the original but also of Star Wars IV: A New Hope – which had long acknowledged Kurosawa’s influence – and its sequels. It clearly aimed to produce, if not a franchise, then at least a sequel. The poor box office takings in Japan and the few international distribution deals for Higuchi’s remake reveal just how tough it can be to successfully translate and transmute a narrative, as well as how difficult it can be to create an economically successful and thus transnational franchise series.
摘要《星球大战》系列取得巨大成功的原因是什么？反过来，复制其成就的一些尝试也失败了？本文认为，关注四个概念——使事情变得正确、标量复制、跨文化和跨国——可以帮助我们理解为什么黑泽明的Kakushitoride no Sanakunin（《隐藏堡垒的三个恶棍》，1958年）50周年翻拍版没有成功。Kakushitoride no Sanakunin，《最后的公主》（The Hidden Fortress，The Last Princess，Higuchi Shinji，2008）以各种方式回答原作提出的问题——纠正问题——以及对标量复制的明确尝试。此外，这部重制版不仅努力捕捉原作的重要性，还努力捕捉《星球大战IV：新希望》及其续集的重要性，该片长期以来一直承认黑泽明的影响。它的目标显然是制作，如果不是一个系列，那么至少是一个续集。日本糟糕的票房收入和Higuchi翻拍电影的少数国际发行协议，揭示了成功翻译和转化叙事是多么困难，以及创造一部经济上成功的跨国特许经营系列是多么困难。
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2023.2181375
Laura Treglia
Abstract This article revolves around recurrences that run through Japanese cinema and related media cultures from their early twentieth century through the late post-war decades. It posits a conspicuous, although not unique, compulsion to repeat that manifests itself as diffracted into different orders of ‘returns’ or ‘iterations.’ These pertain to successful narratives and motives, as well as to production strategies, gendered role compartmentalisations and the political economy of patterned synergies across different media forms and channels. The article thus seeks to unravel multiple fils rouges traversing Japanese cinema in the twentieth century by first focusing on early media tie-ins in the 1920s in the context of the development of mass literature and systematic adaptation of serialised period novels into competing film versions. Then, it illustrates how the Kaji-centred multiplicities of the early 1970s, especially in relation to the manga-based Female Prisoner Scorpion (1972–73) and Lady Snowblood (1973–74) film mini-series, show the entrenchment of those practices and persistent links to the jidaigeki (period) genre, with its associated tropes of the wandering outlaw and warrior’s training journey motifs. Finally, Kaji’s intertwined careers as singer and actress are seen to include all such iterations and incarnate a transmedia, transhistorical and cross-cultural journey.
{"title":"Star, Scorpion, and the Snowblood: Kaji Meiko’s multiplicities and the Japanese culture industry","authors":"Laura Treglia","doi":"10.1080/09555803.2023.2181375","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2023.2181375","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article revolves around recurrences that run through Japanese cinema and related media cultures from their early twentieth century through the late post-war decades. It posits a conspicuous, although not unique, compulsion to repeat that manifests itself as diffracted into different orders of ‘returns’ or ‘iterations.’ These pertain to successful narratives and motives, as well as to production strategies, gendered role compartmentalisations and the political economy of patterned synergies across different media forms and channels. The article thus seeks to unravel multiple fils rouges traversing Japanese cinema in the twentieth century by first focusing on early media tie-ins in the 1920s in the context of the development of mass literature and systematic adaptation of serialised period novels into competing film versions. Then, it illustrates how the Kaji-centred multiplicities of the early 1970s, especially in relation to the manga-based Female Prisoner Scorpion (1972–73) and Lady Snowblood (1973–74) film mini-series, show the entrenchment of those practices and persistent links to the jidaigeki (period) genre, with its associated tropes of the wandering outlaw and warrior’s training journey motifs. Finally, Kaji’s intertwined careers as singer and actress are seen to include all such iterations and incarnate a transmedia, transhistorical and cross-cultural journey.","PeriodicalId":44495,"journal":{"name":"Japan Forum","volume":"35 1","pages":"32 - 53"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48864081","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-07DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2022.2152473
Shiori Hiraki
This book opens with a powerful statement: ‘Craft culture is dynamic, and the passage of time has led to both change and resistance to it’ (p. 7). As Guth explains in the introduction, craft in Japan has been categorized as ‘tradition’: something unchanged from the past, made of Japanese materials and by hand, and by male master artisans. The dichotomy that forms between those created by renowned masters in the city and those with anonymous craftsmen in the countryside is a repeated theme. Generally, the history of each craft is told individually, using a linear approach that takes technological advancement as its given premise, and the interplay amongst the different genres and the more complex demography of various technologies are often overlooked. The modern Japanese term for craft, k ogei, is bound up with the problems mentioned above. Guth challenges these myths. By discussing the division of labour amongst the makers (men and women), the experiments on natural resources for new materials, progress in developing new tools, and the dissemination of information, she introduces a craft culture that is more diverse and dynamic than what has previously been thought. The point made clear in her introduction is that this book is not only about craft culture as it was in the early modern period. Instead, it is about how we, as the modern observers, should look at craft culture in the period in question, with a wider inter-regional and trans-regional scope, and with more emphasis on knowledge production and dissemination. Setting the time frame of the period between 1580 and 1860s as early modern is a strategy for opening the period in question to comparison amongst other regions (p. 13). To achieve this goal, three parts support this book: the first part is a detailed technical description of objects and their making process, followed by the second part that analyses the production and dissemination of knowledge in the period in question through media (mainly printed books and images), and lastly the third part that addresses the issue of how we should unpack such knowledge both in objects and in media with careful attention to tacit knowledge of materials and physiological experiences, and to social structures of the early modern period that are not expressed in words. The book is comprised of five chapters. Chapter One, ‘Natural Resources,’ questions the stereotype that the craft industry went hand in hand with the Japanese love of nature. What the early
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