Pub Date : 2023-09-25DOI: 10.1080/10371397.2023.2254705
Scott Mehl
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Pub Date : 2023-07-27DOI: 10.1080/10371397.2023.2239169
Rachel Dinitto
{"title":"Introduction to Special Issue: The Limits of Nuclear Discourse","authors":"Rachel Dinitto","doi":"10.1080/10371397.2023.2239169","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2023.2239169","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44839,"journal":{"name":"Japanese Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43569013","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 : 2023-05-21DOI: 10.1080/10371397.2023.2214507
Jenny Hall
Fieldwork is about 'being there' in the field to gather data. But what happens when researchers cannot visit the field? This article explores how Japan scholars have been dealing with the impact of COVID-19 on their research. It examines how restrictions on travel affect access to materials and engagement with fieldwork subjects, highlighting how the pandemic has created both obstructions and opportunities. The term 'fieldwork' usually involves ethnographic methods of data collection such as participant observation and interviews, but a wider interpretation encompasses visiting archives, libraries and museums. This article takes an inclusive definition of fieldwork to discover the impact of not 'being there' for scholars of Japan. Findings show that the inability to 'be there' has led more scholars to seek out material from online data repositories, archives and library collections. However, while the demand for online resources is increasing, materials are not always easily accessible to Japan scholars. The impact of travel restrictions on librarians has in turn affected the aggregation of materials, which has occasioned scholars to seek alternative methods of sourcing materials. Finally, through a case study, this article examines the methods scholars are adopting in digital ethnographic data collection to adjust to not 'being there'.
{"title":"Distance and Fieldwork in a Pandemic: How Not ‘Being there’ is Impacting Research on Japan","authors":"Jenny Hall","doi":"10.1080/10371397.2023.2214507","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2023.2214507","url":null,"abstract":"Fieldwork is about 'being there' in the field to gather data. But what happens when researchers cannot visit the field? This article explores how Japan scholars have been dealing with the impact of COVID-19 on their research. It examines how restrictions on travel affect access to materials and engagement with fieldwork subjects, highlighting how the pandemic has created both obstructions and opportunities. The term 'fieldwork' usually involves ethnographic methods of data collection such as participant observation and interviews, but a wider interpretation encompasses visiting archives, libraries and museums. This article takes an inclusive definition of fieldwork to discover the impact of not 'being there' for scholars of Japan. Findings show that the inability to 'be there' has led more scholars to seek out material from online data repositories, archives and library collections. However, while the demand for online resources is increasing, materials are not always easily accessible to Japan scholars. The impact of travel restrictions on librarians has in turn affected the aggregation of materials, which has occasioned scholars to seek alternative methods of sourcing materials. Finally, through a case study, this article examines the methods scholars are adopting in digital ethnographic data collection to adjust to not 'being there'.","PeriodicalId":44839,"journal":{"name":"Japanese Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41775464","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 : 2023-05-17DOI: 10.1080/10371397.2023.2211944
Megan Catherine Rose
The implementation of social isolation policies in response to COVID-19 coincided with Nintendo's video game Animal Crossing: New Horizons (also known as atsumare dobutsu no mori) gaining popularity. At this time, the game served as a means of escape and comfort for those experiencing loneliness and anxiety. The kawaii animal characters that occupy the players' island in this game are designed to elicit social responses from players as a central part of gameplay, through dialogue, animation, and character design. This article contributes to an emerging body of work that considers the social relations formed between kawaii characters and viewers, through a digital ethnography of English-speaking Animal Crossing fan practices on Twitter, Reddit and Instagram. A key appeal of Animal Crossing during COVID-19 lockdowns resided in its kawaii character design, which elicits caring and playful behaviours in players. Through design, the non-player characters shift between functioning as an object upon which players can act, to a simulated subject that encourages social interactions from the player and stimulates the imagination. Through this flexibility of appearing both 'real' and 'unreal', players could interact with characters according to their needs during social distancing.
为应对新冠肺炎而实施社会隔离政策的同时，任天堂的电子游戏《动物森友会：新视野》（也称为atsumare dobutsu no mori）也越来越受欢迎。在这个时候，游戏为那些经历孤独和焦虑的人提供了一种逃避和安慰的手段。本游戏中占据玩家岛屿的卡瓦伊动物角色旨在通过对话、动画和角色设计，作为游戏的核心部分，引起玩家的社会反应。这篇文章通过推特、Reddit和Instagram上讲英语的动物森友会粉丝实践的数字民族志，为一个新兴的研究卡瓦伊角色和观众之间形成的社会关系的作品做出了贡献。新冠肺炎封锁期间，《动物森友会》的一个关键吸引力在于其kawaii角色设计，它激发了玩家的关爱和顽皮行为。通过设计，非玩家角色从扮演玩家可以行动的对象转变为鼓励玩家进行社交互动并激发想象力的模拟主体。通过这种既表现为“真实”又表现为“不真实”的灵活性，玩家可以在保持社交距离期间根据角色的需求与他们互动。
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Pub Date : 2023-05-04DOI: 10.1080/10371397.2023.2219618
J. Hall
Julie Valk’s monograph, Selling the Kimono: An Ethnography of Crisis, Creativity and Hope, aims to address an apparent paradox – that the kimono industry is both in crisis and thriving. Valk tackles this by contextualising the garment and its attendant practices and meanings through ethnographic fieldwork with creators, sellers and consumers of kimono. This paradox is certainly not a new discovery (see Assman, 2008; Cliffe, 2017; Okazaki, 2015), but the focus and subject matter of Valk’s book is original. By taking an economic anthropological approach, and by focussing on the idea that crisis often instigates change and highlights resilience, Valk gives a new insight into how the industry is evolving. Her research focussed on lesser-known regions and retailers in particular to demonstrate that the culture of kimonowearing is undergoing a shift away from kimono as ‘luxury item’ to a more casual ‘kimono laifu’ (‘kimono life’) (128). Valk’s fieldwork was based in Toyoto, Aichi Prefecture, but she also visited other main production sites in Tokyo, Kyoto, Kanazawa, Nishio, and Nagoya. This multi-site fieldwork approach of participatory observations and qualitative interviews with wholesalers, retailers and customers in Japan enables her to give a broad view of the industry. Based on this rich empirical data, Valk develops her argument in eight chapters. Chapter 1 outlines her paradoxical argument that the kimono industry is both in crisis and thriving. It details how the industry has positioned itself not only as kimono producers and retailers, but also as knowledge experts capable of advising customers whose knowledge of the kimono ‘rules’ that arose in the post-war period had become lost as a result of the kimono being less frequently worn in Japanese society. Chapter 2 provides background on the particularities of the kimono as an item of clothing. Valk notes that wearing a kimono requires a different skill set, one that ‘forces a continued engagement’ (27) throughout the day, which often proves to be a barrier for consumers. This chapter also provides an overview of the development of the kimono industry and outlines the way in which the kimono retail industry is structured. Chapter 3 establishes the groundwork for the rest of Valk’s argument by documenting the gradual formalisation of the kimono in the twentieth century. In post-war Japan when the population was adopting Western clothing, the kimono industry rebranded kimono culture as being primarily for ceremonial events, elevating it to the status of luxury item. This formalisation and parallel decline in everyday wearing of kimono is supported by Valk’s qualitative data from interviews conducted with women in their 50s, 60s and 70s from Aichi prefecture. Chapter 4 focuses on wholesalers and the concept of resilience within the kimono industry. Valk introduces the idea that those who are able to survive do so because they practice active resilience (pro-active efforts to change the circumstanc
{"title":"Selling the Kimono: An Ethnography of Crisis, Creativity and Hope","authors":"J. Hall","doi":"10.1080/10371397.2023.2219618","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2023.2219618","url":null,"abstract":"Julie Valk’s monograph, Selling the Kimono: An Ethnography of Crisis, Creativity and Hope, aims to address an apparent paradox – that the kimono industry is both in crisis and thriving. Valk tackles this by contextualising the garment and its attendant practices and meanings through ethnographic fieldwork with creators, sellers and consumers of kimono. This paradox is certainly not a new discovery (see Assman, 2008; Cliffe, 2017; Okazaki, 2015), but the focus and subject matter of Valk’s book is original. By taking an economic anthropological approach, and by focussing on the idea that crisis often instigates change and highlights resilience, Valk gives a new insight into how the industry is evolving. Her research focussed on lesser-known regions and retailers in particular to demonstrate that the culture of kimonowearing is undergoing a shift away from kimono as ‘luxury item’ to a more casual ‘kimono laifu’ (‘kimono life’) (128). Valk’s fieldwork was based in Toyoto, Aichi Prefecture, but she also visited other main production sites in Tokyo, Kyoto, Kanazawa, Nishio, and Nagoya. This multi-site fieldwork approach of participatory observations and qualitative interviews with wholesalers, retailers and customers in Japan enables her to give a broad view of the industry. Based on this rich empirical data, Valk develops her argument in eight chapters. Chapter 1 outlines her paradoxical argument that the kimono industry is both in crisis and thriving. It details how the industry has positioned itself not only as kimono producers and retailers, but also as knowledge experts capable of advising customers whose knowledge of the kimono ‘rules’ that arose in the post-war period had become lost as a result of the kimono being less frequently worn in Japanese society. Chapter 2 provides background on the particularities of the kimono as an item of clothing. Valk notes that wearing a kimono requires a different skill set, one that ‘forces a continued engagement’ (27) throughout the day, which often proves to be a barrier for consumers. This chapter also provides an overview of the development of the kimono industry and outlines the way in which the kimono retail industry is structured. Chapter 3 establishes the groundwork for the rest of Valk’s argument by documenting the gradual formalisation of the kimono in the twentieth century. In post-war Japan when the population was adopting Western clothing, the kimono industry rebranded kimono culture as being primarily for ceremonial events, elevating it to the status of luxury item. This formalisation and parallel decline in everyday wearing of kimono is supported by Valk’s qualitative data from interviews conducted with women in their 50s, 60s and 70s from Aichi prefecture. Chapter 4 focuses on wholesalers and the concept of resilience within the kimono industry. Valk introduces the idea that those who are able to survive do so because they practice active resilience (pro-active efforts to change the circumstanc","PeriodicalId":44839,"journal":{"name":"Japanese Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47742668","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 : 2023-05-04DOI: 10.1080/10371397.2023.2227581
A. Bates
Abstract The 3.11 triple disasters occurred at a moment of increased anti-immigrant sentiment in Japan exemplified by the activities of the Zaitokukai, a particularly anti-Korean right-wing group. This xenophobic sentiment provided fertile ground for the spread of malicious racialized rumours blaming foreigners for an array of crimes in the aftermath of the disaster. This article considers the mechanisms through which post-disaster narratives, including rumours, can work to either reaffirm the boundaries or create an empathetic bridge. In addition to the rumours, the article explores Japan Sinks 2020 (Nihon chinbotsu 2020), an anime series about a multi-ethnic family encountering a major disaster, and Kawakami Hiromi’s ‘Gods 2011’ (‘Kamisama 2011’, available in translation as ‘God Bless You 2011’). These texts in a variety of media participate in what Michael Omi and Howard Winant (2015) term ‘racial projects’. Some portray foreigners as criminals and the others encourage a more welcoming attitude.
{"title":"Outsiders in Disasters: Racism, Rumours, and Fiction in Post-3.11 Japan","authors":"A. Bates","doi":"10.1080/10371397.2023.2227581","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2023.2227581","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The 3.11 triple disasters occurred at a moment of increased anti-immigrant sentiment in Japan exemplified by the activities of the Zaitokukai, a particularly anti-Korean right-wing group. This xenophobic sentiment provided fertile ground for the spread of malicious racialized rumours blaming foreigners for an array of crimes in the aftermath of the disaster. This article considers the mechanisms through which post-disaster narratives, including rumours, can work to either reaffirm the boundaries or create an empathetic bridge. In addition to the rumours, the article explores Japan Sinks 2020 (Nihon chinbotsu 2020), an anime series about a multi-ethnic family encountering a major disaster, and Kawakami Hiromi’s ‘Gods 2011’ (‘Kamisama 2011’, available in translation as ‘God Bless You 2011’). These texts in a variety of media participate in what Michael Omi and Howard Winant (2015) term ‘racial projects’. Some portray foreigners as criminals and the others encourage a more welcoming attitude.","PeriodicalId":44839,"journal":{"name":"Japanese Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41590334","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 : 2023-05-04DOI: 10.1080/10371397.2023.2239173
A. Tokita
{"title":"Popular Music in Japan: Transformation Inspired by the West","authors":"A. Tokita","doi":"10.1080/10371397.2023.2239173","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2023.2239173","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44839,"journal":{"name":"Japanese Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44403046","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 : 2023-05-04DOI: 10.1080/10371397.2023.2217103
Anri Yasuda
ABSTRACT It has been observed that ‘3–11’ marked an inflection point in Japanese cultural discourse, after which there prevailed a broad malaise about the social faults and systemic inequities that the natural and nuclear disasters had exposed in their aftermath. Kanehara Hitomi’s novel Motazaru Mono (Those without, 2015) explores this affective shift through her characters’ struggles to contend with the upending of their worldviews and values since 2011. In turn, Kanehara’s stories written during the COVID-19 pandemic’s peak of 2020–2021 show characters responding to the global crisis through the lens of a generalized state of precarity that, I argue, harkens back to 3–11 and earlier. With reference to Lauren Berlant’s notion of the ‘crisis ordinary’ mentality, I analyze ‘Unsocial Distance’ (June 2020), a love story between two youths who regard COVID-19 as an inconvenience rather than a true emergency. I then examine ‘Techno-break’ (January 2021) which ends with the protagonist’s mental and moral devolution in the socially distanced solitude she first enters as an anti-COVID measure. ‘Techno-break’ advocates for confronting the tolls of the prolonged pandemic, and for addressing the deeper-seeded fault-lines of Japanese society that contribute to more recent challenges.
{"title":"Crisis and Literature in Contemporary Japan: From 3-11 to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Kanehara Hitomi’s Fiction","authors":"Anri Yasuda","doi":"10.1080/10371397.2023.2217103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2023.2217103","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT It has been observed that ‘3–11’ marked an inflection point in Japanese cultural discourse, after which there prevailed a broad malaise about the social faults and systemic inequities that the natural and nuclear disasters had exposed in their aftermath. Kanehara Hitomi’s novel Motazaru Mono (Those without, 2015) explores this affective shift through her characters’ struggles to contend with the upending of their worldviews and values since 2011. In turn, Kanehara’s stories written during the COVID-19 pandemic’s peak of 2020–2021 show characters responding to the global crisis through the lens of a generalized state of precarity that, I argue, harkens back to 3–11 and earlier. With reference to Lauren Berlant’s notion of the ‘crisis ordinary’ mentality, I analyze ‘Unsocial Distance’ (June 2020), a love story between two youths who regard COVID-19 as an inconvenience rather than a true emergency. I then examine ‘Techno-break’ (January 2021) which ends with the protagonist’s mental and moral devolution in the socially distanced solitude she first enters as an anti-COVID measure. ‘Techno-break’ advocates for confronting the tolls of the prolonged pandemic, and for addressing the deeper-seeded fault-lines of Japanese society that contribute to more recent challenges.","PeriodicalId":44839,"journal":{"name":"Japanese Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44825560","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 : 2023-05-04DOI: 10.1080/10371397.2023.2209505
Steven Jackson
Assmann, S. (2008). ‘Between tradition and innovation: The reinvention of the kimono in Japanese consumer culture’, Fashion Theory, 12(3), 359–376. 10.2752/175174108X332332 Cliffe, S. (2017). The social life of kimono: Japanese fashion past and present. London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic.10.5040/9781474286107 Milhaupt, T. (2014), Kimono: A modern history. London: Reaktion Books. Okazaki, M. (2015). Kimono now. Munich, London, New York: Prestel Publishing.
{"title":"The end of Pax Americana: the loss of empire and hikikomori nationalism","authors":"Steven Jackson","doi":"10.1080/10371397.2023.2209505","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2023.2209505","url":null,"abstract":"Assmann, S. (2008). ‘Between tradition and innovation: The reinvention of the kimono in Japanese consumer culture’, Fashion Theory, 12(3), 359–376. 10.2752/175174108X332332 Cliffe, S. (2017). The social life of kimono: Japanese fashion past and present. London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic.10.5040/9781474286107 Milhaupt, T. (2014), Kimono: A modern history. London: Reaktion Books. Okazaki, M. (2015). Kimono now. Munich, London, New York: Prestel Publishing.","PeriodicalId":44839,"journal":{"name":"Japanese Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45913615","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 : 2023-05-04DOI: 10.1080/10371397.2023.2239164
Bernard Shee
Abstract Be it the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the escalations of the Cold War, or the triple disaster at Fukushima, the problem of representing disaster remains an exigent yet precarious one. Published amid rising global tensions, Abe Kōbō’s The Ark Sakura (Abe, 1984) questions the limits of representation within this perplexing discursive landscape. In this article, I will examine the text’s engagement with the concepts of governmentality, time, and representation, with special consideration towards an overarching structural critique of the role of information – more specifically, the flow and distribution of information – within Cold War nuclear discourse. Just as the tunnels of the quarry in the novel amplify and distort every sound and utterance into confusing, often duplicitous signals, the discourses surrounding nuclear disaster have always had to traverse complex topologies of frequently conflicting signs and signifiers, including but not limited to corporate, geopolitical, and ideological interests. To that end, I propose a reading of the novel alongside a reconceptualization of nuclear discourse as belonging to a larger genealogy of technological narratives, media compositing, and networked power, and in so doing, attempt to situate it within ongoing modalities of how techno-ecological disaster is imagined and discussed.
{"title":"Indeterminate Crises, a Nuclear Continuum: Abe Kōbō’s The Ark Sakura and the Structures of Technological Discourse in the Nuclear Age","authors":"Bernard Shee","doi":"10.1080/10371397.2023.2239164","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2023.2239164","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Be it the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the escalations of the Cold War, or the triple disaster at Fukushima, the problem of representing disaster remains an exigent yet precarious one. Published amid rising global tensions, Abe Kōbō’s The Ark Sakura (Abe, 1984) questions the limits of representation within this perplexing discursive landscape. In this article, I will examine the text’s engagement with the concepts of governmentality, time, and representation, with special consideration towards an overarching structural critique of the role of information – more specifically, the flow and distribution of information – within Cold War nuclear discourse. Just as the tunnels of the quarry in the novel amplify and distort every sound and utterance into confusing, often duplicitous signals, the discourses surrounding nuclear disaster have always had to traverse complex topologies of frequently conflicting signs and signifiers, including but not limited to corporate, geopolitical, and ideological interests. To that end, I propose a reading of the novel alongside a reconceptualization of nuclear discourse as belonging to a larger genealogy of technological narratives, media compositing, and networked power, and in so doing, attempt to situate it within ongoing modalities of how techno-ecological disaster is imagined and discussed.","PeriodicalId":44839,"journal":{"name":"Japanese Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44102249","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}
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