and cartoonists will also be explored. Chapter 5 considers the globalization of Japanese popular culture from che perspective of soft power, exploring the potential impact of the worldwide popularity of Japanese anime, television, and style on Japan's international political and economic stature. A shore conclusion will reflect on how the worldwide appeal of Japanese pop culeure forces us to refine many of our simplistic notions regarding globalization and to rethink what “Japanese” culeure means in an era of iacense transnational incerchange. Finally, a note regarding the cerm popular culture isin order, Ac the stare of che ewenty-frst century, pop culture is an unavoidable pare of everyday life, yet defining exactly what ic constitutes is notoriously diffcule. Culeural studies scholars have written numerous books and arcicles debating, delineating, and complicating the meanings of popular culeure and its relationship co high culeure, folk culeure, mass culture, postmodernism, feminism, and globalization.“ Such theoretical concerns are beyond the scope ofthis booklet. For the purposes of this survey, popular culture will be understood as a commercial culeure, mass produced and mass consumed, designed eo appeal to mainstream tastes and encompassing a wide range of forms and media from cuisine and sports to music and fle. (Willie M. Tsrctsuty Tapansoe Repro Cute and Glohalrahr. Coes and AAS. Keg Zones prion Stdies , 0.6 Cie 4 FORMS AND THEMES IN JAPANESE POPULAR CULTURE ‘ompatéd 0 che icons of American pop cultare—Mickey Mouse, Elvis, and Coci-Cola—chings like anime, karsoke contests, and ramen noodles seem like ‘newcomers to the global marketplace. But the world's embrace ‘of Japanese populer culcure at the seart of the cwency-firse century did not happen‘overnight or even over the past ewo decades when Japanese creations flooded. global medi. Instead che rise of Japanese pop grew from a long histony of Japanese culcural ingenuity and a complex pattern of transnational interchange chat brought Western ways co Japan and Japan's pop innovations to.the world. This chaprer will survey the evolucion of Japanese popular culeure,:providing 2 basic incroduction to the breadth and depth of the Japanese pop imagination, an overview of the major forms of Japanese mass ‘entertainment thac have actracted international audiences, and a chronology of the” global diffusion of Japan’s monster movies and comic books, video ‘gimés acd celevision superheroes. And, alehough diversity is probably the msi! ton’picuous feacure of Japanese popular culture since World War II, this chajcer will also introduce four major chemes that have distinguished a Jabatiese style in the crowded global bazaar of pop fads and fashions, HIsTORICAL Roots ‘The origins of Japanese popular culture are often traced to the Tokugawa period (1600-1868). This time of unprecedented peace and competent (if not particularly dynamic) rule by Japan’s wartior elite, che samurai, wienessed significanc economic growth, especially in urban areas and che commercial sector. AS cities—and above all Edo, che capital of the nation’s military ruler, the shdgun—bustled wich trade, urban merchants grew increasingly prosperous and sought culcural outlets for cheir newfound wealth and leisure time, The merchants, who were looked down upon as social inferiors by 5the nation’s samurat masters, also embraced cultural pursuits as a means of asserting an independene identicy as arbiters of taste and fashion trendsecters. ‘As the historian Paul Varley has concluded, the cultural innovations of Tokugawa Japen, “while drawing heavily on Japan’s ariseocratic cultaral tradition, evolved as distincely popular, bourgeois forms of ar.” Imaginative new developments in lieerarure, cheater, and the visual arts all ‘emerged from Japan's vibrant cities in the late seventeenth and early eigheeench centuries. With literacy rates high, popular fiction flourished and the works ‘of authors such as Ihara Saikaku, who wrote accessible erotic advencures and reilistic stories of merchant life, reached large audiences. Kabuki cheater, which began among prosticutes seeking co ateract cuscomers by singing and dancing, evolved into an important form of urban entertainmene. Highly regulated by the shOgua’s officials, who feared its subversive potential and banned female performers from che stage, Kabuki appealed co all serata of urban sociery—inciuding samussi—with its colorful coseames, flamboyant actors, and repertoire of action-packed, melodramatic plays. Bunsalcu, = distinctive theatrical form feacuring chanting, music, and elaborace puppets manipulated by multiple operators, also gained a popular following. Wood- block prints were another imporeanc elemenc of Tokugawa urban culcare; unlike traditional paintings made for elite patrons, the prints could be mass produced and sold to an enthusiastic consuming public, These lively, brighdly colored images were known as uéiyowe, “piceures of the floating world,” and depicted che hedonistic world of Edo’s entertainment quarters, alive wich courtesans and Kabuki actors. Japan was largely isolaced from contact with che West during the ‘Tokugawa period, « fact chat many scholars have suggested may account, at leasc in part, for the nation’s remarkable culnural creacivity at the time. In 1854, however, Japan was “opened” to overseas trade and diplomacy by ‘American gunboats, and for the first time the material artifacts of Tokugawa popular culture began co filter oat ro Europe and the Uniced Srates. The story has often been told that the French impressionist painters, who would be profoundly influenced by Japanese aesthetics, first encountered whiye-e when they discovered the cheap and plentiful prints used as packing materials eo ‘wrap porcelain dishes exported to the West. In che 1870s, a fad for Japanese style swepe through fashionable society in Europe. Japanese wood-block prints end bric-e-brac (fans, kimonos, lacquerware) were avidly colleceed, and Japanese culoure was celebrated for its exoticism, its vibrant art forms, its distinctive sense of design, and its refined sensibilities. This vogue for Japonisme, as it came to be called, had ¢ huge impact on Western painting and ‘graphic design—inspiring artists such as Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, 6 Yigue 11, Color and boldly eigned woodblock pies, sucka his mi-ninereneh- cenaty work by Uragsea Kuniynhi of sone fom a Kabuki play, were an important part feta popular clere a Tligawa Japan. (Spence Museum of Are, Univer of Kass, (Geof Rose K. Auebach,1967.0021) ‘and Mary Cassatt—and shaped stylistic trends in ateas as disparate as fashion, Ceramics, archiceccure, poetry, and gardening, Tattooing, a form of art favored among laborers in Tokugawa cities, was also highly sought after by curious ‘Wescemers, many of whom regarded a small tattoo as the ultimate souvenir ‘of a-visie co Japan. Among those to return from Tokyo with a discreet piece of body are were che farure King George V of England and ‘Tsar Nicholas Il? ‘With tartooing, then, as with so much of the craze for Japonisme, Japan's id popular culeuce forms were embraced by a European and American elite of aftists, collectors, and aristocrats, Needless co say, just as Japanese culture rapidly diffused abroad after centuries of Tokugawa seclusion, so Western culeure flowed readily into Japan 1 the lae nineteenth and early ewenciech ceneuries. Especially after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, when a new regime aspired co build Japaa into @ modern industrial socier, che lifestyles, entertainments, and castes of Burope and the United Seats fascinaved the Japanese public. Wester clothing and hairstyles soon became commonplace, unfamiliar musical forms and instruments were inerodueed, and qumerous Western customs—from team sports such as baseball and sugby 10 imporeed foodways, including the eating of meac— were ineroduced through new government insticutions, including schools 7and the military services. The American impact on Japanese popular culeure proved particularly incense after World War I, when increasing incomes gave rise to. thriving mass consumer economy. Baseball grew into Jepan's national pastime, and Babe Ruth, who toured che councry in 1934 with a ceam of all-stars, became an icon; dance halls proliferated and American jazz became ‘an important part of what journalise Oya Sdichi tagged the “cacophoay” of modern urban life in Japan;’ and American comic strips such as Bringing Up Father and Mutt and Jeff covered the pages of Japanese popular magazines. Even on the sereets, and especially on Tokyo's fashionable Ginza, America became the seyle setcer. As the art historian And6 Kasei wrote in 1931 Ie is Americanism thae dominaces the Ginza today. IF you look at pedestrians on the sidewalks, you Gnd at once that cheirseyle and behavior are completely imitated from American movies... . The majority of rescaurants in Ginza do not secve French dinner with ‘wine, bat American lunch with beer. You can hear American jazz io every café... Ginza is filled wich the Americanism of large capital, speed, and the movies. Today, most Japanese want ro understand che ‘world only chrough Amesica* Juse as Western consumers had reincerpreted Tokugawa popular culeure as chey brought it home to London or New York—making mass-produced iyo the objectsof elite connoisseurship, for inscance—so Japanese audiences adjusted and adapred Western forms to local conditions. Soy sauce and rice wine transformed Western stew into subiyaki, Japanese jazz developed its own distinctive sound, and stylish Tokyo. women dressed in boch traditional Kimonos and short fapper skirts. Attemprs co render imported popular culcure more “Japanese” reached a fever pitch during World War II, when conservatives, who saw American lifestyles as corrosive of Japanese values, struggled to limit the damage caused by “decadenc” Wescern customs. Jazz ‘was banned, ultimately not very successfully, during the was. Moralises even attempted to change the very vocabulary of American cultural forms, replacing English-language terms (many of which had been used in Japan for almost a century) wich more patriotic Japanese equivalencs. Thus a saxophone became 4 kinzakie seibin magari shakubacbi (a “bent metallic fate"), and, on Japan's ‘wartime baseball diamonds, shortscops became yrighi (freelancers), balls and strikes were rechristened with Japanese names, and “when a runner slid ino ‘home plate the umpire would pronounce him ‘alive’ or ‘dead’ (ikite or shinda) instead of ‘safe’ or ‘out."”” As the record of cultural interchange between Japan and che West since the ninereenth century suggests, globalization is hardly a recent phenomenon but has deep historical roots. Moreover, itis clear that Japan was not simply 8 $igure2.2.,Henei Toulouse-Laurec’s pote “Divan Japonain” creed in 1893, xemplibcs ‘te profound impace of Japanese seschetics and the graphic syle of wie prints on European fC the ate nineteench cencury. Gpencee Museum of Are, Unvetiey of Kenss, Gi _meméy of Viginia Hale Jackson, 2008.0035.) *2Webternized” or “Ameticanized” in this contact of culeures bue eather ‘was atv active participant in a complex eranseational circulation of popular culture forms. Thus, the Japanese aesthetics of wood-block prints, temple gardens, and tattoos shaped European and American culcaral development 9just as Japanese society was influenced by the introduction of baseball, corsecs, and radio melodramas. In short, Jepan’s entry inco che global system in the nineteenth cencury, after more than two hundred years of isolation, did not lead inevitably to a dominant imperial West imposing its cultural scandards on a technologically deficient and politically vulnerable Japan. Instead, ‘Japan's global engagement unleashed a process of negotiation, adjustment, and creative reinvention as new fashions and customs flooded in from the ‘Wess and as Japan's vibrant indigenous popular culture flowed out to the world. POSTWAR POPULAR CULTURE ‘With Japan's surrender in 1945 and the arrival of an American army of occupation, Wescern popular culture recurned to Japan with unprecedented inceasity. This postwar diffusion may have started with the occupation forces and in the U.S. milicary bases—the noted photographer Tomatsu ShOmei, for example, wrote of his impression that “America gradually seeped out of the meshes of wice fences chat suetounded the bases and before long penetrated the whole of Japan’—bur Gls were far from the only carriers of American pop cultue.*In che decades after the was, American pop fashions were served ‘up co the Japanese people by the mass media and commercial interests both ‘American and Japanese. As John Nathan has describe Japan's emezping consumer class evolved an exalted vision of “America that became a national obsession. The American way oflife ssiewas conveyed to envious Japanese diences through eevision snd fm set the standard for success and happiness. The Japenese seadied and broughe home every imaginable Amesican style od manner, om crew cuts and heath fod stores to Christmas parties snd retivement homes. American fads from Hula-Hoops and yo- ys to paintball guns and outdooe barbeave grills creaced giant smacketing opporcnivies in Japan. . . . American movie sts, athleet, and singecs were overwhelmed by che number and the acdorofcheis Japanese fans? Despite the huge popularity in Japan of postwar imports—professional ‘wrestling and bowling, Blondie and Dennis she Menace comic sttips, television serials such as Fasher Knows Best, Disney cartoons and Hollywood westeras— Japan's homegrown popular culture industry was quick to recover from the ‘war. Inthe years of occupation, acted, dispirited, and generally impoverished populace sought mass entertainment as an escape from the challenges of everyday life. Japanese movie seudios were active and curned out a steady seream of domestic dramas, sports pictures, and musical comedies. Radio'was = 10 popular and affordable form of amusement, and large audiences followed radio dramas such as the ninety-tight-episode Kins no nate (What Is Your Name?), sentimental romance set in the bombed-our ruins of Tokyo. Kemishibai, a kind of scorycelling using illuscrated cards, was particularly favored by children and thrived during the occupation years. The Japanese toy industry also boomed with the coming of peace, as unemployed munitions workers applied cheit metalworking skills co tin cans scavenged from occupation garbage dumps, producing colorful and intricately made miniature cars, trains, and airplanes. These tin toys, sold eo occupation personnel, as well as to Japanese children cager for playthings, proved co be one of the first successful exports from. Japan to the United States when trade resumed after the wat. By the 1950s, following the end of the occupation in 1952, che Japanese economy was growing, standards of living were improving, and he public ‘was increasingly hungry for encerttinment products. After ewenty years of mobilization, war, and reconstruction, the Japanese people wanted to have some fun, and the mass entertainment induscry responded. The scudios churned oue films for the nation’s mushrooming theaters (which aumbered almose 7,500 by 1960); broadcasts in che new medium of television began in 1951, feacuring plentiful sumd wrescling, baseball, and imported American programming; comic books and manga magazines proliferated; and animated feacuces—in color and wide-screen format by the end of the decade—artracted growing audiences. And, although Japan had been almost eaciely on the receiving end of global flows of popular culture since World War I, in the 1950s Japanese pop once again began cisculating overseas, and expecially co the Uniced Scates, on a significant scale. Monster movies were the frst Japanese popular culture form to have 1 major postwar impact globally. In 1954, Toh6 Seudios released Gojira (Godzilla) the somber story ofa giant deep-sea crearuce, mutared by American hydrogen bomb testing, that devascaces Tokyo. Though inspired by the Hollywood classic King Kong, Gojira was an innovasive film, combining a tera ancinuclear message wich imaginative special effects. American discributors recognized the quality of the movie and brought ic, heavily edieed, to U.S theaters in 1956 as Gadsille, King of the Monsters. The populatity of Godzilla, both domestically and worldwide, inspired Japanese producers to create other slant monsters for che silver screen, including Mocha, a gaudy gigantic moth that debuted in 1961. Fifteen Godsilla lms were produced by 1975, and all were edited, dubbed, and discributed internationally; ocher series, like one featuring Gamera, mammoth fiying turtle, also made their way overseas t0 play at drive-in cheaters and on late-night television. The serious cone and didactic edge of the original Gojira was soos abandoned in favor of a more "4lighthearted, action-packed formula, and audiences around the globe readily embraced Japanese creature features as encercaining family films. Godzill’s appeal even spawned a wave of international imitators, with giant reprile pictures appearing from seadios in Great Bricain (Gergo, 1960), Denmark ‘Reptilicas, 1962), and South Korea (Yongary, 1967) Japanese animation followed a similar path inco the global marketplace. Anime, like monster movies, grew out of Western models but soon developed into a distinctive, highly creative form. The fist animated films seem to have reached Japan from Europe around the curn of the cwentieth century, and Japanese animators began co experiment with theit owa shorts about « decade later. The form matured during World War II, when animation was mobilized by the state and ingenious films such as Moreiard zmi mo shinpei Mforocars's Divine Sea Wasriors, 1945) were used co promoce Japan's war sims. After the defeat, Toei Animation pioneered the production of fearure- length films, including Hakujader (The Tale of che-White Serpent, 1958) and ‘Shinen sarutohi Saruke (Magic Boy, 1959), both of which were subsequently released in America, Toef's excly theatrical animation was heavily influenced by the work of Wale Disney, fearuring cure animal characters, singing, and scory lines based on familiar folkcales. Japan's mose celebrated posewar ‘animator, Tezuka Osamu, was also an admirer of Disney productions. Tezuka created the series Tezxewan ator, a Pinocehio-like scory of a robotic child conseructed by an elderly scientist, which premiered on Japanese TV in 1963 ‘and, as Astro Boy, in che United States the same year. Throughout the 1960s, 4s the Japan animation industry grew to serve the booming domestic TV market, and as the success of Astro Boy drove overseas demand, more and more Japanese enimaced series began to ceach American and global audiences. Wich ‘anime such as Eitoman (Sth Man), Tetsajin 28-¢6 (Gigantor), and Mach GoGoGo Speed Racer), television viewers worldwide were introduced to the android superheroes, crime-fighting robots, and adventuresome race car drivers chat inhabited Japan's pop imagination. By che 1970s, Japan's dramatic postwar economic growth had elevated it to the ranks of the world’s leading industrial nations. Japan gained a reputation for producing high-quality, affordable entertainment hardware: the miniature transiscor radios chat delighted global consumers from the late 1950s on, the videocassette recorders (VCRs) that dominated ineernational markets from the 1970s on, and the Sony Walkman, which made recorded music truly portable and personal, introduced in 1979. The “sofe” of Japanese popular culture was also gaining wider accepeance. In 1963, for example, Sakamoto Kyi's “Sukiyaki” topped the Billboard pop chacts in the United States, the only Japanese-language song ever to do so. Sushi, which was introduced to 2 Figure .3. The Godzilla fms, beginning with the 1954 Gojine, were pionecs in the global dlfusion of Japanese pop culture after Weeld War I. (Godaila” ©1954 Tans Co, Led. All ‘Rights Reserved) America in che 19505 but was slow fo catch on with mainstream diners, gradually became more fashionable; the invention of the California roll, a distinctively American take on Japanese cuisine, ac aos Angeles restauranc in BFigure 1.4, Teula Osamu’ pacbreaking 1963 anime series esa atom became familar co American television andiencesas Asis Boy. (@ Tezuka Production Co. L2d./Mushi Production Co, Lad.) sche mid-1970s was a major step in the global embrace of “saw fish.” Anocher important development was the introduction of Hello Kieey,frse marketed in Japan in 1974 but soon sold worldwide. The well-known fgure of mouthless ‘hice car with a red bow was developed by the Japanese company Sanrio and ‘was inspired loosely by the American cartoon character Snoopy. The cute and colosfal Iunch boxes, coin purses, and school supplies emblazoned with Hello Kitty's image were the frst Japanese character goods to charm consumers globally. Japan's rising stature as # supplier of youth entertainment products ‘was enhanced in the late 1970s with the scart of the worldwide video game craze, Although video gamés originated in the scientific labs of the United Scates and Great Britain, Japanese innovations came co drive the industry's growth. Space Invader, an arcade game developed by Taito, a Japanese firm shat had begun as 2 diseribucor of vending machines, was a phenomenon when ic was introduced in 1978. Japanese machines came co dominate the arcedes that sprouted in American malls and campus seudent centers, with games like Pac-Man (launched by Namco in 1980) and Nintendo's Dorey 14 Fijaie 1.5. Sanrio’ Hello Kier ia familiar global icon. Hire, «huge balloon ofthe ute (Goe inouthless) character appears in che Bsc nual Macy's Thtnkagving Day Parade in New York City (Photo © Hiroko MasuikelGecry Images) 13Kong (1981) and Mario Bros. (1983) enjoying huge popularity. Nintendd, whose corporace roots were in manufacturing playing cards, would become the global leader in both che hardware and sofeware of video gaming. The intends Entertainmenc System, a home video game console celeased in 1985, was based on the Magnavox Odyssey (which Nintend6 distributed in Japan) and was inserumental in moving video games from arcades into the hhomes of players. By che end of the 1980s, families around the world were likely to have a Japanese-made television attached to a Japanese-made VCR ‘and game console running Japanese-made games such as Frogger and Metroid. ‘The 1980s wimnessed the beginnings of an explosion in the global popularity of Japanese pop. This boom was driven a least ia pare by the burgeoning entertainment industry in Japan, powered by the rising incomes and expanding leisure time of Japanese consumers and especially Japanese youth. Ic was also propelled by 2 rapidly growing worldwide fascination wich “Japan as number one,” @ phrase coined by sociologisc Ezre Vogel in 1979 to caprure Japan's image as che globe's healthiest, wealthiest, safest, best- ‘educared, and mose cohesive society. Fan communities were another important part of the rising profile of Japanese pop: groups of dedicated admirers of ‘anime, for instance, were indispensible in bringing the latest creations of Japanese animators to international audiences. ‘The 1980s are considered by many cohave been the golden age of Japanese ‘animation, which had grown far more sophisticated, challenging, and diverse than the Disney-inspired cartoons first introduced to the American matket in the 1960s. Viewers worldwide were drawn in by complex science fiction sories (such as Uchi senkan Yamato, broadcast in the Uniced States as Siar Blazer), action nacratives that explored che boundaries between che human aad the machine (such asthe popular Gundam franchise), the magical fantasies of Miyazaki Hayao, and dystopian visions of « post-apocalyptic world (most notably Otomo Katsuhiro’s 1988 feacure Akira). Manga, a form wich an even longer history aad richer diversity in Japan than anime, also began co cetch on abroad in the 1980s. Hampered by the challenges of translation, as well as the lingering stereorype in the West thar comic books are lightweight, childish entertainment, manga was only belatedly appreciated globally as imaginative, graphically refined, and incredibly varied. Female readers, many of whom. ‘were Hiooked on Japanese comics by the American release of the Sailor Moon series in ehe lace 1990s, were a critical element in propelling manga’ rising worldwide popularicy® By che dawn ofa new millennium, Japanese popular culcure had entered che mainstream in America and throughout much ofthe world. Japan, buffered 16 crore Dy Cbliotiic'tecession, political instability, and social anxieties during che 1990s, was no Tonger such an objecc of international envy and alarm, bur ics “pop products were avidly consumed from Boston to Bangkok to Budapest Media franchises like Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! (which included video games, | trading cards, animated feature films, and toys) sarurated global markets and ‘Efeaed ubiquirous Bop icons. Anime became a fixture on American television ~ and began 10 earn respect as « distinctive arc form, notably when Miyazals's ‘Spinied Avéej(2001) won an Academy Awacd ‘Japanese live-action television, though long exported co Asia and other ‘parts of the world, finally began co be more widely discribuced in the Uniced “Scates”*Following'in.che wake of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (based on ‘a Jabanese supetheto series) in che mid-1990s, Japanese programming such as ri Ghef anc Tabesi's Castle (aired in America as MXC) became cule favorices ‘ahd spawned knock-off such as ABC’ [ Survived « Japanese Game Sho. Manga ‘betaine one of the cwenty-Erse cencury’s fist publishing sensations, as salee ‘of Japanese comics in the Uniced States soared from 60 million dollars in 2002 to 210 million in 2007, and the New York Times leunched a Graphic Books Besc'Seller Lise, wich a separate manga category, in 2009. Interest sn Japanese spotts also surged as stars such as Suzuki Ichird and Macsuzala ‘Daistike excelled in’ Major League Baseball and foreign talent, including the “Hawallan-bomn wréscler Akebono, rose co the highest levels of achievemenc in sam; Evet Japanese popular music, known as “J-pop” and often derided by ‘Mesters critics, began to aterace international avtention, especially as anime ‘and video. game theme songs introduced worldwide audiences to Japanese ‘performers “As the pace of international culeural inverchange acceleraced after World Wat Ul, and as popular culture flourished worldwide with spreading aflluence “atid increasing media saturation in everyday life, Japanese pop progressively ‘became an integral pare of the global imagination. As che frst non-Wescern ‘ation’ to-emerge’as a major and consistent contributor to global popular ‘culture'crénds, Japan dispelled the notion chat globalization was a process ‘monopolized by:American and Buropean archetypes, the English-language “iedia;or the powerful corporate interests of Hollywood and Madison Avenue. Given thé global blending of pop fashions in the lave twentieth and early “twenty-first ceneuries—not co mention the ascent of Japan's "Gross National Cool”“it should come as no surprise that one 1990 survey revealed chat Nintend6’s Mario was a more recognizable character to American children than Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse? 7THEMES IN JAPANESE POP Tdentifying chemes that characcerize contemporary Japanese popular culture is challenging given its tremendous diversity and richness. Just identifying commonalicies of subject, style, and rone in a form such as anisne, manga, for monster movies can seem almost impossible. Consider, for example, the fact that mange make up 40 percent of the books and magazines published in Japan, a nation of voracious readers. The manga market is segmented to appeal to specific audience demographics based on age and sex: kadoma manga aze cargeted at all young children, shéjo at giels, and shénen at boys of school age; jorei at young female adults and seimm at young male ones; and sein, often with strong erotic content, at adult men. Within these broad genres, the specific opics and chemes of comics eflece the enormous variety of individual incereses in Japanese society. Thus, manga series proliferate on subjects of wide appeal as well as surprising obscurity: romance, robots, current events, cooking, golf (and vireually every other sport), samurai epics, yabsza (gangsters), pets, desective stories, the business world, and the game of mah- jongg co name just a few. Despice such diversity, scholars have noved several distinctive chemes in Japan's postwar popular culvare. And, although these themes cannot encompass the full range of Japanese creativity from Gigentor to the Wii, they do appear co capeure some of the unique characteristics of Japanese pop that set it apart, in particular, from the familiar American mass ‘culture of Hollywood movies, MTV, Marvel Comics, and NFL foocball: A fascination wich apocalypse, with theend ofthe world and descruction on avast scale is one distinguishing feature of the contemporary pop imagination 5a Japan."® From Godzilla’ frst axtack on ‘Tokyo, when the city was consumed im cinematic flames in 1954, Japanese authors, animators, artists, video ‘game designers, and television producers have been obsessed with fictional Armageddons. In. what one observer has called ehe “doom-laden dreams” of ‘Japanese popular culeuze, Tokyo has fallen victim to earthquakes, tidal waves, Tires, foods, cyclonic winds, voleanoes, alien invasions, supernatural curses, viruses, toxic pollution, all nature of giant monsters, robots, blobs, and every imaginable form of nuclear explosion.!" Anime has proven a particularly rich medium for exploring apocalypse dnd reveling in che somber beauty of devastation: in the influential series Star Blazers, for instance, the Earth bas been seduced to a radioactive wasteland by an endless barrage of nuclear bombs feom a distant planer; in the dystopian Afira, biker gangs challenge a secretive, authoritarian state in a post-apocalyptic neo-Tokyo (chat is itself destroyed ax the climax of the film). As che only nation co suffer atomic attacks, Japan's fixation on world-ending holocausts is pechaps understandable, yet ‘not all pop treatments of mass destruction have been as choughtful as chose 18 Figure L6. Io Blazes, the World War If Japanese battleship Yamaco is roeend ats spacecraft in det co sve the Farch from alien aeack. (© Voyager Enterainmene In, wovwstarblazers. corn.) animate sees Uc snkom Yama, eens inthe United Seats at Star 19in Gojira and Akira: in che popular 1970s children’s series Time Boban, for example, each episode ended with the animated bad guys consumed by @ towering mushroom cloud swicling into the shape of a human skull ‘Japanese pop culture also has a long-standing obsession wich monsters. ‘Traditional Japanese folklore crawled with supernatural yabei, from ominois ‘ogres (oni) and mischievous foxes to the amphibious (and bloodchiescy) warer sprites called kappa. After World War II, Godzilla again was pioneer, leading a cavalcade of mucated crcarures—outsized and sometimes irradiated dragons and dinosaurs, apes, lobsters, and insects—onto the world’s movie screens. Monsters have also been a constant on Japanese television, especially on the long-running series Uhraman and ies many imitators (Specroman, Iron King, Zone Fighter) featuring live-action superheroes. Created by Tsuburaya Eiji, the special effeces master behind the Godzilla films, Ultraman was a giant red and silver alien who saved Japan on a weekly basis from an endless parade of destructive and deformed monscers. Monstrous beings also populate manga, anime, and video games, pethaps most prominently in recent years through the hundreds of “pockee monsters” (pubsito monsutd) in Nintendo's Pokémon franchise. In che Pokémon universe, like the fictional worlds surrounding Godzilla and Uleraman, monseees—some threatening, some more friendly, a few comic and endearing—are ever present and everywhere, a ubiquitous imaginative feavure of the Japanese landscape. ‘The aesthetic of “cute” (Lawaii)isanocher pervasive aspect ofcontemporary ‘Japanese popular culture. Cuce style is often said co have originated among young girls in the 1970s, but its roots seem to be much longer, stretching back at least co the craze for Dakko-chan golliwog dolls that began in 1960. Childishness, vulnerabilicy, smallness, and sweetness aze the essence of cute, and nothing seems co symbolize Aawaii caste better than Hello Kiccy, the adorable, diminucive character now emblazoned on everything from handbags to powder-pink bowling balls. Cuce has also become a distinctive characteristic of Japanese fashion, with fills, bows, and a childish look, and bas infuenced Japanese cuisine (in such ewaié foods as tiny, sugary cakes) and popular ‘music (chrough cute idols such as Matsuda Seiko). Cuteness suffuses anime ‘and manga, with amusing animal characters such as Doraemon (robotic cat), Hamucacd (a pecky hamster), and the charming forese spirits in Miyazaki Hayaos Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbor Totoro). According co sociologise Sharoa Kinsella, in the regimented, corporate society of millennial Japan, che cleure of cute is “all about acting childish in an effore to parcake of some of Frederik L. Schade, Dreamland Japen: Writing on Madere Mange (Betkeley: Stone Bridge Pres, 1996), 22. On kidyii, see Adam Kero, Maga fom he Floating World: Comicbok Cultre and te Kibyishi of Ede Japan (Cambridge: Harvard University ‘Asia Cancer, 2006). “ Mlakami has been memorably described by jouralise Isa Bunama a "a painter ofcazzon images, boch childlike and sinister, a highly successfil designer (of Louis ‘Vuicron bags among other things), 2 maker of mildly porcographic doll, an acetic cotrepreneus, a cheorist, anda guru, with a sradio of peotégés chat is «cross between 2 tradicional Japanese workshop and Andy Warhol’ Factory” Tan Buruma, “Virtual Violence,” Nev York Review of Boks, June 23, 2003, herplfanre.nybooks com aecclea/18072 (eecested May 17, 2010). 74 * Okada Toshio, Ozatupeke nysinon (An Ineroduetion ta Ose Scudies) (Tokyo: Oca shuppan, 1996), 358-365. Atkins, “Popular Culrare,” 467. 7 Joseph J. Tobin, "Introduction: Domesticating the Wess,” in Remade in Japan: Everly Lift and! Consomer Taste in 2 Changing Saciey, ed, Joseph J. Tobin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 3. ‘Tobia uses this evocative phease, although he docs nor endorse its sentiments bid. 3). See John Whittier Teea, “Introduction: Japanese Seadies into Cultural Seudies,” in Contemporary Jepan and Popular Cubtre, ed. John Whistier Treat (Honolulu: University of Hewat’ Press, 1996), 10. "© Marthew Allen and Rumi Sskamoto, “Ioeroduction: Inside Out Japan?” in Popular Culture, Globalization and Japon, ed. Matthew Allen and Rumi Sakamoco (London: Routledge, 2006), 3. "Melinda Takeuchi, “Kuniyeshi’s Minamoto Raiko and the Earth Spider: Demons and Protest in Late Toleugewa Japan,” Ars Orinselis 17 (1997): 5. * Quoted in Murakami Takashi, “Earth in My Window,” in Lisl Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subealtre, ed, Mcakarni Takashi (New York: Japan Sociery, 2005), 142. Quoted in Alexandza Munroe, “Introducing Little Boy. in Lite Bey: The Art of Jebus Exploding Subculture, ed. Murakami Takashi (New York: Japan Society, 2005), 246. ™ Marakami Takashi, “Supertlae Telogy: Greetings, You Ace Alive,” in Lisl Bayt ‘The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture, . Murakami Takashi (New York: Japan Society, 2005), 161. » Murakami, “Earth in My Window" 141 ° Alison, Millosial Mone, 1. P Bid, 12 Bid ° Azuma Hisoki, Osels: Japan's Databave Animals, rans, Jonathan Abel and Shion Kono (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), 15, 2 Tid 13, 24,20. * Ibid, 15, 20. ® See Thomas LaMatce, “Otaku Movement,” in Jes after Japan: Sticl and Cultural Life from the Recesionary 1990s 19 tbe Pree, ed, Tommiko Yoda and Harry 75‘Ac least in the United States, Japanese pop culture has long had the feputation for being extremely violent and strongly sexual in content. The fighting sequences in Tatsawan atomu, for instance, though mild by cusrent standards, were considered a little too intense for 1960s tastes and the series lasted only two seasons on American television. In the 1970s and early 1980s, ‘when anime fandom was just starting in America as a small fringe movement, the stereotype of Japanese animation being violent, pornographic, and morally suspect became widespread. There are cectainly aspects of Japanese pop that live up to this stereotype. Japanese adule anime and manga, known in the West as bentai, feature every imaginable form of sexual perversion, and some genres of Japanese film (gangster movies, horror features) are renowned for their explicit, even exaggerated gore. Yer ic is difficule to conclude that Japanese pop is, on the whole, more violent of risqué than what is produced in America ot Europe. Similarly, painting all of Japanese mass encertainment, from cuddly animal cartoons to lighthearted TV game shows, with such a broad brush obscures the profound diversity of Japan's pop forms. In the end, che most outstanding, characteristic of Japanese popular culture may well be its rich variety. In che graphic innovations of ubiyo-e and the riotous proliferation of mange, the monstrous spectacle of Godzilla and the diminutive cute of Hello Kitty, the visual pyrotechnics of anime and the kinetic action of video games, Japanese society’s stunning, creativity from the Tokugawa period co the start of the ewenty-Fist century is apparent. ‘The nexe challenge, then, is underscanding what forces in the historical and contemporary Japanese experience have stimulated the broad diversity and sparked the imaginative energy of Japan's pop universe 2 2 SOURCES OF THE JAPANESE POP IMAGINATION S™ the rise of Japanese pop culture as a global phenomenon, scholars, journalists, and critics have struggled co idencify what aspects of Japan's cultural traditions, history, and social organization have contributed co the imaginative richness of anime, video games, and giant monster movies. The search for a source of this creative spark has often proven confounding, as the diverse forms of contemporary Japanese pop have a long heritage and have followed a winding evolutionary path. This chapter surveys a variety of interpretations of the origins of the fertile Japanese pop imaginacion and ics enduring fascination with chemes of apocalypse, monstrosity, cuteness, and technological transformation. And, although some observers stress simple lineages—tracing Japan's pop ingenuity back co slavish imitation of Western imports oF che atomic nightmares of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—even a brief overview reveals a far more complex and contingent pedigtee for Japan's modern mass entertainments, JAPANESE CULTURE, WESTERN MODELS Pechaps the most common way of explaining the distinctive forms and rematkable creativity of contemporary Japanese pop has been co emphasize the impact of Japan's traditional culeure, Japan's long and unique cultural heritage, many observers have argued, is at the root of its postwar anime and manga, TV superheroes, and character goods. Thus, aspects of Japan's deep teaditions in aristic expression, folklore, and social life—an aesthetic of simplicity, a sensibility of play, and a rich imaginary of monstrous beings, €o name bue a few—are said co have shaped and spurred the evolution of Cool Japan as a global phenomenon. A number of scholars, including Susan Napier, have suggested chae Japanese culture “privileges the visual far more chan does that of the Wese."" 23One reason for chis may well be the Japanese writing system, which is based oon thousands of inericate characters (known as kanji) originally adopted from China, Many of these characters, described by one historian of manga as a “form of cartooning,” are ideograms and pictograms, pictorially representing things, concepts, emotions, or actions in a schematic, standardized form.” The influential Russian director and film theorist Sergei Eisenstein fele chat all of Japanese art was imbued with a “cinematic” quality and a distinctive sense ‘of montage because of the foundational influence of kanji. Simply reading and drawing these litele piceures may have inclined generations of literate Japanese to the creation and consumption of cartoons and comic books. The origins of manga and anime are also often traced to a variety of Japanese artistic forms, some stretching back as far as che medieval period. ‘Japan's earliest cartoons are usually held to be che Chiji-jinbutsu-giga, a sec (of four scrolls from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries attributed to the monk Toba S66 thae depice comic, anchropomorphized animals conducting, Buddhise rites. Line drawing flourished in the Tokugawa period, beginning with Zen piceures and scrolls (known as Zenga) and simple cartoons called Ortsu-e produced in large quantities as souvenirs in the seventeenth century. By che eighteenth century, paintings and prints called Toba-, lighthearted works of caricature inspired by che Chajii-jinbutsu-giga, became popular in Japanese cities. Ie was also at this time that Aibydsbi (literally “yellow cover” books), often considered the immediate ancestors of manga, were mass produced for urban audiences. Kilyashi were wood-block-printed volumes, usually satirical in concent, which combined sophisticated drawings wich narrative text. Whether they were the “world’s first comic books,” as claimed by manga expert Frederik Schodt, is open to question, but it does seem clear «that kibyésbi, like the whiyo-e prints of che day, left legacy of style and content for che later creators of manga and anime.’ ‘Among those who argue most vocally for che impact of traditional Japanese aesthevies—specifcally the standards that emerged prior co the arrival of che imperial, modern West in Japan in the lace nineteenth century— is the celebrated pop artise Murakami Takashi.’ Murakami coined the cerm suuperflat co describe an enduring sensibility in Japanese culcure characterized by simplified ewo-dimensional forms, vivid colors, stylized features, and a lack of perspective. In che techniques of traditional Nrbonga (Japanese-style) painting and the visual conventions of Tokugawa period wood-block prints, Murakami finds che progenitors of contemporary anime, manga, and video ‘games. He has also described che contemporary makers of toy figurines, the plastic models of animaced heroes and cinematic monsters so popular in Japan today, as the artistic descendants of he medieval craftsmen who carved statues 24 Figure 2.1. Savicial Ady of which Koikaws Harumachi's 1775 Kinki soe ga wo me (Me Gliver’a’ Golds Deeam of Splendor) wasn importan early example, ate generally considered tobe forerunners of modern manga, (Couresy General Library, The Univesity of Takyo) for Buddhise temples. And, although Murakami’s views are controversial, especially among art historians, other commentators on Japanese pop have embraced many of his conclusions. For example, Okada Toshio, one of the founders of the Gainax anime studio and an expert on pop culeure fandom, has proclaimed coday’s avid consumers of Japan's mass entertainments “the true heirs of Japanese culture.” Other genealogies linking contemporary pop forms to tradicional beliefs and practices have proliferated in recent years. The inspiration provided co Japanese filmmakers, animators, and video game designers by the ghouls and ‘goblins of Japanese folklore, che ya, has been widely studied; the creators of the myriad “pocket monsters” of Pokémon and the crews ofthe J-horror movie ‘genre, in particular, seem to owe a great debt to Japan's folk imagination. ‘The current Japanese predilection for character goods, miniaturization, and portability has reminded some commentators of nefswke—small and highly decorative ivory carvings, often of animals or mythical creatures, used by men in che Tokugawa period co secure little purses to their belts. The accessorizing, of cell phones with straps and charms, often featuring Hello Kiety or other -awaii icons, isa contemporary fashion statement particularly evocative of the netsuke tradition. Even Ultraman, the alien from Nebula M78 who has tarred 2sin more than forty television series since the 1960s, can claim aesthetic roots deep in Japanese culture: the superhero’s sleek silver mask, it has been said, ‘was modeled on a famous seventh-century statue of the deity Maitreya in the Buddhist cemple Koryaji Not all scholars, however, believe chat Japan's contemporary pop sensibilities can claim direce ancestry co the hallowed teadicions of Japanese culture, The historian E. Taylor Atkins, for example, has warned that “Anyone approaching Godzilla or television programs such as, say, Lun Chef ot Crayon Shin-chan, with the cardinal principles of classical Japanese aesthetics (suggestion, asymmetry, perishability, and simplicity) in mind risks disillusion. Since che early ewencieth cencury, imported entertainment has largely dictated standards of popular caste, particularly in music and cinema."* Indeed, over the past hundred years, Western observers have _generally perceived Japan asa nation of cultural imitators rather than cultural innovators. The Japanese, too, have embraced an image of themselves as adept copycats, distinctive culturally because oftheir ability to emulate foreign ways and adap¢ them creatively to Japanese realities, As Joseph Tobin has writen: ‘The Japanese are known to themselves and to others as an imitative people. The way chis story goes, the Japanese, unable fF unwilling to create, borrow. The genius of the Japanese lies nor in invention but in adaptation—of Korean pottery, combs, and textiles, Chinese script and scripture, Dutch science and medicine, French education, English colonialism, German milicarism, and American egalitarianism, corporate efficiency, and popular culture.” ‘The case can be made (and has been by some detractors) that the Japanese are “underhanded agents of cultural plagiarism” and Japanese pop is profoundly derivative of Western, and particularly American, mass entertainment forms." It is impossible to deny, of course, that Japanese filmmakers were inspired by che Hollywood masters who preceded chem, that Tokyo fashion designers learned the basics of haute couture from Pacis and Milan, chat Japanese animators and cartoonists took cues from Happy Hooligan and Betty Boop, or that the engineers at Nintend6 are indebted to pioneering American video games such as Pong. Many of the icons of ‘modern Japanese popular culeure mighe also be seen as knockofis: Godzilla ss a reptilian King Kong, Ultraman a retooled (and bigger) Superman, the prewar Japanese comic book hero Norakuro a canine version of Felix the Cat, Hello Kicty a feline take on Snoopy. Surveying this history of importation and inspiration and conclud- ing, as one cultural ceitic has, that Japan is just a "black hole,” voraciously 26 (and passively) consuming American media exports, is misguided? So, too, would be suggesting hae Japan’s contemporary pop universe is as Japanese as Mount Fuji, uncainced by contact with Western aesthetics cr global exchanges. As Matthew Allen and Rumi Sakamoto have observed, “The ‘Japan’ in “Japanese popular culeure’ is always already dislocated, con- taminated, cross-pollinat- ed, and criss-crossed.”"" Understanding the creative spark of Japanese forms such as anime and karaoke fequites an acknowledg- Figure 2.2. This eighteenthcencury ivory nowhe eae cd pie nape mat cea othe ar rom Japan's taiinal folklore. (© Trustes ofthe British Museum.) ment of both indigenous roots and imported ideals, both tradicional style and ‘American fashions, Japanese pop culture has flourished as a dynamic hy- brid, constructed by filmmakers, graphic artists, software designers, and musicians who, according co one scholar, “turned back into their cultural past, outwards towards che arc of other lands, and inwards co the realm of the imagination.”"" THE LEGACIES OF DEFEAT ‘To many observers, an abstract heritage of aesthetic traditions and global interchange is less important in explaining the vieality of contemporary Japanese popular culeure than a specific history of ¢rauma unique co ‘owencieth-cencury Japan, The experience of war, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan’s surrender, and its subsequent occupation by the United Staces are now generally seen as formative events in the making of a distinctively Japanese pop imagination. From Japan's defeat in 1945—and the individual and collective responses of pain, loss, and horror that accompanied it—came much of the energy and inspiration for the postwar boom in Japanese mass culeure. 27‘The ordeals of the batclefeld and bomb-scarred cities lefe eheir mark on many Japanese feature films, anime, and manga, For example, Honda Ishi, who directed the 1954 Gojira and many titles in che lacer Godzilla franchise, served as an infantryman in China and passed through the ruins of Hiroshima when he was repatriated (o Japan after che war; the firsthand experience of seeing the devastated city shaped Honda's strong antinuclear message—and stunning visuals of a monster-ravaged ‘Tokyo—in Gojira. For Yokoyama Mitsuteru, che manga arcise who created the giant robot Gigantor, American B-29 bombers became unforgettable visual memories: “In the fiebombing of ‘Tokyo, huge pieces ofscel lew chrough the sky. I could never get ehae image ‘out of my head, and it became the basis for my ‘iron-man’ idea."!? ‘The mushroom clouds that consumed Hiroshima and Nagasaki were particularly symbolic (as well as catastrophic) events and have long been incerpreted as the origin points of Japan’s extraordinary poscwar pop ingenuity. In recent years, this view has been offered most assertively, articulaely, and repeatedly by the artist Murakami Takashi, who has showcased his analysis of Japanese popular culture in a series of high-profile exkibicions and catalogs, notably in a 2005 extravaganza called “Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculeure” held at che Japan Society ia New York City. In Murakami’ opinion, che Japanese people have never fully come to terms with defeat in World War II, occupation by the United States, and 4 pattern of postwar subservience to America that has left Japan and the Japanese people somehow deformed and perpecually infancilized. Since frank and open discussion of the war's effects, especially the legacy of a relationship with the United States in which Japan is the weaker power, has been all but taboo in police society in Japan, Murakami argues, it has fallen to popular culture to explore the trauma of atomic warfare and the unresolved tensions of the postwar period. Thus, in popular cinema, manga, anime, video games, and avant-garde art, we see a compulsive reiteration of apocalypse, nuclear mutation, grotesque metamorphosis, cechnological escapism, masculine insecurity, social vulnerability, and other themes and imagery through which postwar Japanese struggle to find some sort of closuse for war, surtender, and ‘ongoing dependence on America ‘Two imaginative outcomes of this harrowing struggle have particularly fascinated Murakami. The first is the sense that the Japanese have been tendeted monstrous by the A-bombs, defeat, and postwar acquiescence to American dominance. “A pervasive impotence defines the culeure of postwar Japan, where everything is peaceful, tranquil, lukewarm,” Murakami has ‘wriccen, "Our general removal from world politics and distorted dependence on the U.S. leave us in a circumscribed, closed-in system, inhabiting 28 Figure 23. The celebrated pop arise Murakami Takashi las traced the cestivity of Japanese popular culrare to profound and unresolved traumas in the nation’ istry the atomic bombings of Hivoshima and Nagasaki, defeac in World War Il, nd postwar occupation by the Uniced Seaes. (Photo © Noel VasqueasGecey Images.) 29an Orwellian, science-fiction realm." “We are deformed monsters,” he ss chan human’ in the eyes ofthe ‘humans’ of che West." Not concludes, surprisingly, Murakami suggests, the prevalence of monsters (from Godzilla to Pokémon) in the Japanese pop imagination is @ reflection of this profound sense of deformity at the core of the nation’s postwar identity, Murakami's second observation is chat in the wake of World War Il, Japan has considered itself—and been regarded by the world—as a child. "For the past sixty years, he wrote in 2005 Japan has been a testing ground foran American-style capitalist economy, procecced in a greenhouse, nurtured and bloated to the poine of explosion, The results are so bizarce, they're perfect... [W]e Japaneseare truly, deeply, pampered children, ‘And as pampeted children, we throw constant tantrums while enthealled by our own cuteness, [t's the denouement of a culture, nourished by trauma, snugly raised in the incubator ‘of a society gone slack." Dependent on America politically, economically, and culturally, Japan has been infantilized as a nation, unwilling and unable to assert itself in the world; atthe same time, Murakami asserts, che Japanese people have actively embraced childishness, withdrawing from reality co seek refuge in juvenile fantasies. Thus, Japanese pop has been filled not just wich monsters but also with the ubiquitous trappings of cuceness, a surfeit of kawaii fashion and fiction thae symbolizes Japan's ongoing subservience co the United States as well as its desice to escape imaginatively incoa world of youthful, iresponsible Murakami’s provocative ideas have been taken up by @ number of scholars, journalists, and critics working on Japanese popular culeure, The anthropologist Anne Allison, for example, echoes Murakami in tracing the propensity for mutation, hybridity, and ceaseless eransformacion in Japanese pop back o the traumatic experience of World War II, writing that “the wholesale disrupcure, defeat, and despair Japan found itself in following che ‘war... fed.a popular imaginary in the 1950s of mixed-up worlds, reconstituted bodies, and transformed identities—monsteosities of various types." Allison places particular stress on “the collapse of paternal authority” in the wake of the war, a crisis of masculinity that shook Japan's traditionally patriarchal society: “From the desacralizing of the emperor to the national condemnation of the military leaders who had misled che country into a disastrous war—a discrediting of fathers... eeckled down to the male soldiers who returned (0 the family and household, where adule men no longer commanded ultimate respect.”"” This demasculinization of postwar Japanese society not only 30 made room for a new emphasis on femininity in popular culture (notably the exaggerated giely cute of products like Hello Kicty) but also spawned a dak imaginary of vulnerability, confusion, and horror. To Allison, this meant the creation of “unstable and shifting worlds where characters, monstrously ‘wounded by violence and the collapse of authority, emerge with reconsticuced selves." Other commentators have followed Murakami in focusing on the impact of defeat, occupation, and American global hegemony on Japan's national identity and its reflection in postwar popular culture, According to the philosopher and critic Azuma Hiroki, “the legacy of World War I has decermined the entire culeure of Japan to a greater excent chan we imagined." Specifically, Azuma argues, the “destruction of the ‘good old Japan’ through the defeat in World War II” and the subsequent “American culeural invasion of Japan” stripped the Japanese people of cheir traditional sense of identity. ‘The energy of Japan's postwar pop was chus born oue of “extreme anxiety about the complete transformation of Japanese culture after the war by the wave of Ameticenization and consumer society.” Buc while most analysts, including Murakami, have seen che resulting explosion of Japanese popular culeure as creative and original, Azuma sees it as essentially derivative of the torrent of American imports—Blondie and Disney, hula hoops and Barbie dolls—that swept into postwar Japan. Japan's contemporary mass culeure, ‘Azuma concludes despairingly, “did not develop from Japanese tradition but rather emerged after this tradition had disappeared”; the vibrant world of anime and manga, character goods, and sudoku puzzles finally constitute only « “pseudo-Japan manufactured from U.S.-produced material." CHANGE AND SUBVERSION ‘The views of Murakami Takashi and the others who have eraced the roots of Japan's postwar popular culture to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have not been accepted by all scholars. Some skeptics criticize ‘Murakami’s interpretations as overly simplistic, while a few faule him for exaggerating the lasting emotional and imaginative power of long-ago ‘traumas.”* Many commentators suggest that historical factors other than the ‘Acbombs and the experience of defeat may actually have been more sigaificane in shaping the Japanese pop imagination over che long term. For instance, Japan's rapid modernization feom the late nineteenth century ehrough the postwar era of high economic growth has been cited as one potential source of che creative energies behind Japanese pop. The widespread fascination with supernatural yééai after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, historian Gerald Figal has revealed, may be explained by the face thac chese mysterious, utshape-changing monsters captured the imagination of a modernizing nation itself undergoing odd and unexpected cransformations socially, culcurally, and politically. Later in ehe ewentieth century, the sweeping changes cha industrialization and modern life brought © Japan—from railroads and compulsory education to labor unions and air pollucion—may have sparked the anxious energy that has made Japanese mass entertainment so vibrant and dynamic, And from the societal obsession with science—an enduring focus of education, business, and government policy over the past century and a half —may have been born Japanese pop culture’s fascination with “mecha” and che cransformative potential of technology. ‘Another widely held belief is chat the unique pressures and censions that have characterized postwar Japanese society were the most important factors stimulating the creativity of Japan’s animators, television producers, and video ‘game designers, In other words, the vitality of Japanese popular culcure can be seen asa reaction to the generally restrictive and limiting. nacure of Japan's modern society and its institutions: a highly competitive education system hac does not reward independent thought or initiative, a straightlaced, hierarchical corporate world buile on conformity, cradicion-bound family ‘and gender systems that limie options for women and restrict personal feeedoms, and a collectivise social ethic intolerant of unorthodox thinkers and individualistic free spirits. Social steess is often said co weigh heaviest on Japanese youths, who constitute the major market for pop products such as ‘anime and character goods. Moreover, che tenacious recession that has gripped the Japanese economy since the early 1990s has placed new financial strains on Japanese families and engendered widespread pessimism about the fueure. [a this context, popular culture appears co be playing the role of a release valve ‘on the pressure cooker of contemporary Japanese life: media such as manga and video games provide creative individuals with a means of inventing and exploring alternate realities, fashion scacements such as Aawaii allow young ‘women to empower themselves and craft independent identities, and encey into animaced or cinematic fantasy worlds offers the consumers of Japanese pop at lease temporary and vicarious release from the constanc demands and myriad frustrations of daily life. Bue, as a number of journalists and scholars have asked, in addressing the tensions of Japanese sociecy are che realms of popular culture simply a form of temporary, therapeutic relief—an encertaining diversion for anxious people—or is Japanese pop a vehicle for resistance and subversion, for actively questioning and challenging a hidebound social system? Popular culture theorists have long been divided over che subversive potential of forms such a cinema and comic books; most conclude that mass entertainments 32 Figure 24, Otomo Katsuhiro’ manga Abia, which was made into an animated fm in 1988, was aclsimed internationally foe its seriking peapies and datk vision ofa post-apocalyptic Japan. (© MASH» ROOM/Kodanshs Led produced by «capitalise culeure industry of movie studios and book publishers are neutralized politically and ultimately serve t0 sustain the social and ideological status quo. This certainly seems to describe Hollywood, where the optimistic happy endings of creature features and sci-fi blockbusters (from Them! co Armageddon) offer reassurance rather chan criticism, serving up che psychologically comforting message that che establishment is strong, and society is stable even in ehe face of giant ants and rogue asteroids. The products of Japanese popular culture, however, are somewhat harder to pigeonhole chan Disney and American TV sitcoms. Susan Napier, for one, has stressed the distinctiveness of Japanese pop, contrasting the “utter bleakness” and “open-ended nihilism” of much contemporary anime and manga with the substantially less gloomy worldviews offered by Hollywood and other ‘Western purveyors of mass culture.” Yet most commentators have been hard- pressed co find evidence of more meaningful political resistance in Yu-Gi-Ot and Super Mario chan in che Three Stooges and Donald Duck. As E. Taylor Atkins has suggested, consideration of the Japanese case may help us move beyond time-honored debates over the subversive possibilities of pop and éembrace “a more complex and flexible concept of popular culeure asa public space in which a plechora of agendas, interests, and values compete.”® In the final analysis, ie seems apparent chac che factors contributing to the creativiey of the Japanese pop imagination are as many and varied as the forms of Japanese popular culture itself. The dropping of the atomic bombs 33‘was clearly a defining event in the making of postwar pop sensibilities, but so ‘were che appearance ofthe first Aidydsbi in the eighteenth century, the opening of Disney's Fantasia in Tokyo, and the collapse of the Japanese stock and real estate markets in the early 1990s. Teasing out a simple genealogy for the dynamism, imaginative energy, and riotous variety of Japan's contemporary pop culture is no easy matter. Likewise, trying to determine exactly why Japanese consumers may find watching Gojira or Akira cathartic, playing fon a Game Boy engrossing, or singing karaoke enjoyable is ultimately an impossible task. Is it to address che unresolved traumas of war? Relieve the tensions of a stressful day at school? Revel in the hollowness of Japan’s postwar identity? Express deep-seated resentments about Japanese society and American cultural imperialism? All of the above or none of them? Ac best, one might conclude that the distinctive diversity and richness of Japanese pop have emerged from a singular heritage of indigenous traditions, imported inspirations, shadows of war, misgivings about national identity, the ‘ongoing transformations of modern life, and the unique demands of Japanese society 34 3B THE GLOBAL APPEAL OF JAPANESE POPULAR CULTURE dressing the issue of reception—how media and entertainment ‘consumers understand the products they watch of read or experience— is a fundamental challenge in the study of popular culture. Making sense oue of reception is particularly complicated on a global scale, whea considering the circulation of pop properties across national boundaries, culeures, and languages. This chapter deals with some very basic questions regarding che international response to contemporary Japanese popular culture. Why have audiences worldwide embraced Japanese pop? Is there something. about Japanese popular culeure forms—their distinctive styles, sensibilities, and themes—that has made them international favorites? Or can eheir appeal be traced Co specific historical factors hae have shaped global pop castes since World War I? Or mighe the success of Japanese forms such as anime and ‘manga be rooted in economic phenomena, marketing savvy, and che power of the global media industry co shape popular fashions? In shore, how do we understand che passion chat global consumers bring to Godsilla and Sailor ‘Moon, Super Mario and sushi? QUALITY, CONTENT, AND DIFFERENCE When seeking an explanation for the global populaity of forms such as Japanese animation and Nintend6 video games, mose observers, whether fans or academic researchers, have tended to start with the pop products themselves. There does seem to be something intrinsic co Japanese mass entertainments—their style, their content, their message—chat is distinctive and broadly appealing, especially in contrast co the familiar fare of Hollywood blockbusters, American prime-time television, and the Billdaznt Top 40 music charts. Japanese pop has become a global success story not just because ie is 4s polished and sophisticated as the best of what America and Europe have 35‘was cleatly a defining evene in che making of postwar pop seasibilicies, but so ‘were che appearance ofthe first kidyésbi in the eighteenth century, the opening, of Disney's Fantaria in Tokyo, and the collapse of the Japanese stock and real estate markers in the early 1990s. Teasing out a simple genealogy for the dynamism, imaginative energy, and riotous variety of Japan's contemporary pop culture is no easy matter. Likewise, trying co decermine exactly why Japanese consumers may find watching Gojira or Adina cathartic, playing ‘on a Game Boy engrossing, or singing karaoke enjoyable is ultimacely an impossible task. Is it co address the vnresolved craumas of war? Relieve the tensions of a seressful day at school? Revel in che hollowness of Japan's poscwar idenciey? Express deep-seated resentments about Japanese sociecy and ‘American culeucal imperialism? All of the above or none of thesn? ‘Ar best, one might conclude that che distinctive diversity and richness of Japanese pop have emerged from a singular heritage of indigenous traditions, imported inspirations, shadows of war, misgivings about national identicy, the ‘ongoing transformations of modern life, and the unique demands of Japanese society. Touts, Topomese Paprlow Keg Zssees Willan M- Cotte enol Globalaatin . fron Shdies, Wo. 6- ARS. doo 34 dressing the issue’ of reception—how media and encerrainment consumers underscand che products they watch or read ot experience— 4g fundamental challenge in che seady of popular culeure. Making sense out ‘ofteception is parricularly complicaced on a global scale, when considering ths citculation of pop properties across ational boundaries, culures, and | Iengnages. Thisichaoter deals with some very basic questions regarding che jnceraational sesponse to contemporary Japanese popular culeure, Why have audiences worldwide embraced Japanese pop? Is chere something about ‘popular Gilttice forms—cheie diseinceive styles, sensibilities, and ies-—that has made chem international favorices? Or can theic appeal be to specific historical factors that have shaped global pop tastes since giid War T?'OF migh che success of Japanese forms such as anime end manga be rootéd Jn’ ecoaomic phenomena, marketing savey, and the power ‘ie global media industry to shape popular fashions? In short, how do we vundetstand the passion chat global consumers bring co Godzilla and Sailer Mop Sapet Maio and sushi? QUALITY, CONTENT, AND DIFFERENCE ‘Whe eeking’an‘explanation for the global popularity of forms such as ‘Japanese ‘animationand Nintendd video games, most observers, whether fans/ot academic researchers, have cended to start with the pop products hemielves. There does seem co be something intrinsic co Japanese mass ceccertainments—cheir eye, their conten, chit message—thac is discinctive and broadly appealing, especially in coneras othe familiar fae of Hollywood Soci Atco prime-time elevisio, and che Bib! Top 40 ance |) charts. Japanese pop has become a global success story noc just because it is [as polished and sophisticared as the best of what America and Europe have | . L be ais Se a =co offer bue also because ic is insistently and unapologecically different from che familiar and often predictable products of the Magic Kingdom, Macvel ‘Comics, and ehe top Paris fashion houses. ‘A concise lise of che characteristics of Jepanese popular culeare that have earned ic fans worldwide was provided in 2000 by Timothy Craig, who ‘edited one of the frst scholarly collections on the globalization of Japanese encerrainment products, Japan Pop! Ac che very cop of this listing was the cepuration of Japanese forms such as anime and mange for being high qualicy, innovative, and seylish. Craig was the frst to admit chat not all Japanese pop culture rose to such high seandards (one need only watch Japanese television talk shows to realize how deeary and derivative even Cool Japan can be), bue the engaging visuals, high production values, and obvious creativity of many of Japan's cultural exports certainly have been important draws for international audiences. Pethaps above all, the sophisticated graphic qualities of Japanese pop, which many observers argue may elevate Japanese animation, comic books, and video games to ehe searus of art forms, have excited and enchanted global consumers; the ability of Japan's colorful, kinetic, and varied graphic styles to capture post-apocalyptic wastelands, fast-paced action stories, and the playful fantasy worlds of childhood has set them apart in & crowded incernational markerplace. ‘Next on Craig’s checklist was a series of observations about the content of Japanese pop: chat it “embeaces life in all its dimensions” (in other words, that Je does act avoid che unpleasant aspects of human existence or bow co political correctness); chat it has a serong strain of idealism, innocence, and romance; that ic is accessible, “close eo che ordinary, everyday lives of its audience”; and shat it emphasizes human relationships (harmony, cooperation, the group), as well as spiritual development and growth. Some might question how commonplace it would be for anyone to strap into a hulking armored mechs ‘or encounter 2 giant radioactive lizard devastating 2 city, or whether one can find che innocence of Hello Kirey, the idealism of Star Blazes, or the faenilial ‘warmth of a manga such as Sezae-ren in che blasted dystopian cityscape of Akira, Nevertheless, forms such as anime and video games do seem to be ‘welcoming gateways to fantasy for global audiences regardless of culture, echnicicy, language, or sex, offering imagined worlds that are realistically complicated bu refreshingly uncynical in their treetment of heroism, love, and loss. Finally, Ceaig (ike many other observers) argues chat internstional audiences, and expecially chose in the West, have come to embrace mange, character goods, elevision serials, and movies from Japan simply because they 36 inestapably and appealingly differen. “To che cxent that elements cha ate abundant in Japanese pop - calmie—complex story and character development; fake ~ poreryals-of human acu; dreams and romantic optimism “ids! perspectved «focus on human relations, work, and mencal ‘strength--arescacer in Western pop culeure, Western consumers lind thae Japan pop enriches their pop culeare dit, giving them 2 fuller range offorms, theres, and viewpoines enjoy and pechape “tobeinfvenced by” ese manga magazine co Gren Lantern comic book, or the original Gara 5 1998 American remake to be convinced of che ingenious, stimulating inctiveness of contemporary Japanese popular culeure ‘Susan Napier, in her now classic 2001 book Ante From Akira te Princess ike, developed aid extended such ideas. Difference and sophistication, lec suggested, account for much of the global appeal of Japanese ‘One sien agpece of enime is et inistenc difeence from dominant American popular cutie... . What is pethaps mest serking ahour anime, compared coctherimpored media tac have been modifed for the American maker, he lack of compromize in aking thee nacacives palatable... The medium is both differen in away chac i appealing roa Wester audience satiated on the, predicabilces of American popular culate and alo © semalely eppeoechable ine univer hemes end images: © Gulbalientediacy and impact. One of these characrericies of anime, Nepiet ‘notes, i6¥ fiscination with metamorphosis and transformation. | sIndetd, anime may be the perfect medium to capeuce what i opethaps the overriding issue of our dey, the shifting narure of ‘decrity in a constantly changing sociery. With its rapid shifes ily transforming imagery, ‘the animaced medium is superbly posivioned co illustrste the of narrative pace and its const 37semosphere of change permeating not only Japanese sociecy but slso all industrialized or industralizing societies. Moving at rapid—somecimes breakneck—pace and predicated upon the Instability of form, animation is both a symptom and a meraphor foc a society obsessed with change and spectacle. In particule, animation’ emphasis on metamorphosis can be seen as the ideal artistic vehicle for expressing the postmodern obsession with Bacroating idencicy? ‘Napier also concludes thar» substantial part of anime’s appeal is ies subversive edge, its cenacious unwillingness to embrace the Hollywood happy ending that reassures audiences that all is well with the wold. Indeed, anime—as well as manga, sci-fi cinema, and much popular Setioa—ofcen leaves viewers with the abiding impression that the world is profoundly, ‘perhaps even irreparably, corrupt and dysfunctional. Countless Japanese pop narratives end with the hero dead, Tokyo in smoldering ruins, and fears of apocalypse only briefly alleviated. The dark imagination of Japanese mass culture has revealed itself not just in the animated Armageddons of Adira, Enangelion, and che manga seties Trigun bur also ia cule films such as Battle Royale (2000), in which 2 homeroom of Japanese junior high school students engage in the ultimate episode of Survivor, tracking and killing each other as part of government-sponsored TV game show. To many jaded entertainment consumess in 2 global entertainment marker weaned on the sunny monotony of Hollywood summer movies, Sarurday motning celevision, and Hannah ‘Moncana, the bleakness, lack of sentimentality, and unpredictability of mach Japanese pop can come as a welcome breath of fresh air. FAMILIARITY AND THE MEDIA MARKETPLACE Another approach to understanding the ellure of Japenese pop, at least ia the United Staves, isan historical one. Some scholars of Japanese popular culeure’s _global spread have seressed chat a long posewar heritage of cultural interactions beeween che Unieed States and Japan set the stage for the more recene rise of ‘Japanese pop forms in America. Thus, starting with the release of Gadzilla, ‘King ofthe Monsters in US. theaters in 1956, a steady stream of entertainment ‘products imported from Japan conditioned American audiences co the Look and feel of Japanese popullar culeure. So, some scholars argue, understanding, the contemporary appeal of manga, Hello Kitty, Iron Chef, and Ichird requires looking back historically and tracing how Godzilla fst captured American audiences in the 1950s, followed by the animaced Astro Boy in the 1960s and then Speed Racer, Kikcida, Ultraman, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and the other Japanese television serials char made their way across the Pacific and site Americar’ households in che subsequent decades. Japan became a pact of he Aisetican'pop culeure landscape after World War Il almost without anyone | poticing i-and the familiarity of these imported animated and cinematic 38 39styles prepared American audiences, even if only subconsciously, forthe waves of Japanese entertainment products thar would arrive from the 1980s 0. Consuming a regular diec of big-eyed cartoon characters, giant monseers on movie screens, bright colors, stylized violence, and plenty of robots, cyborgs, and androids, generations of Americans developed a taste for Japanese pop." Discovering why Japanese popular culeure icons were such a long-term presence in postwar America requires looking beyond issues of style and content, alchough this is where scholars of Japanese pop have tended eo focus, Specifically, understanding the historical ubiquity of Japanese products in the American entertainment market requires an appreciation of the economics of the U.S. television and film industries in che decades after World Was Il. In the heyday of the “American century,” as the postwar middle class enjoyed unprecedented affluence and ever-increasing leisure time, che public demand for encertainment products—as well as the means for delivering them—grew rapidly. The American media industry was consequently in need of cheap products of reasonably high quality co fill television airtime and movie cheater marquees. And for decades Japanese feature films and TV programs, live action and animated, easily seemed co fit chae bill. In the 1950s and 1960s, Godzilla and other Japanese creature features satisfied the needs of the American marketplace; U.S. movie theaters needed a ‘constant scream of new films, a demand that even Hollywood could not supply at the time. The celluloid adventures of Godzilla, Mothra, and the other fantastical beasts created on Japanese back lots were part of a familiar genre (ian monsters on the loose on the model of King Kong), were very inexpensive to purchase from Japanese studios eager for American dollars, and could be ‘easily transformed into @ palatable American encercainment experience with ‘only 2 small monecary investment in editing and dubbing. Thas Japanese science fiction feacures became a staple of down-marker American theaters — deive-ins, small-cown Saturday afternoon double bills—and chen larer were standard fare for late night television and undesirable weekend time slocs ‘when the “Creature Double Feature” became an institution on many VHF channels around che counery Japanese animation tracked a similar trajectory in che American television matket. From the 1960s on, anime imports were readily embraced by TV programmers who needed cheap but appealing material ro fill che early morning, after school, and Sarurday time slots chat catered to young viewers. ‘Ac the same time, American producers searted outsourcing animation projects 0 Japanese scudios. Such classics as the beloved stop-motion Christmas specials Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindetr (1964) and Frosty the Snowman (1969), 40 #5 well a8 numerous cartoon series (including My Litle Pony in the 1980s), ‘were all made-in Japan. The boom in American cable celevision in the late 1980s'and 1990s, when dozens of new channels needed fresh content, provided = another opportunity for anime in the U.S. marketplace (especially on venues like the: Cartoon Network, founded in 1992) and for Japanese live-action “programming, such as che breakthrough bie Iron Chef. dn short, ait important reason why American audiences have historically ‘bad access co Japanese popular culture—and thus could become accustomed “to ie over che long term—was not necessarily because it was so stylish, “sophisticated, refreshingly different, or critically acclaimed but simply | etause ie was so cheap and really available eo movie diseiburos, television © producers, and cable executives desperate to serve a constantly growing “American encertainmene marker. “THE SMELL OF POP ‘One of the mest impsrtant scholars working on Japanese pop culture today is the medie studies expert Iwabuchi Kéichi, who has written numerous essays “and an important book, Rezntering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese ‘Tranmatioaliom, chat examice Japanese encercainmeat products in a global context: Iwabuch’'s works, which largely deal with the seception of Japanese ‘elevision, music, and animation in Asia (eather than the West), revolve found cwo central propositions. The first is chat Japanese pop culture is | embraced in Asia because Japan is something of « halfway house becween East ‘and West; that isco say, Japan cakes the media products ofthe modern United ‘Ststes and Europe and subjects them to “indigenization and domestication,” waking them subtly more “Asian” in sensibiliey, aesthetics, and content nd consequently more palatable co Taiwanese, Singaporean, South Korean, ‘or Chinese audiences.® Thus, while Homer Simpson or ER might seem too "foreign, Pokémon and Japanese television melodramas ring strangely true co “Tyabuchi's Second provocative notion regards the smell of global pop = culeure products: In Iwebuchi’s analysis, all transnational culeural products— “movies, cattoons, advertising symbols—have some sort of odor reflecting “the calmace and sociery in which they were originally made, Many American, products, Iwabuchi argues, have a good odor, a “culeural fragrance,” because ‘hey are associated with positive attribuces of che American lifeseyle and the | American dream. Thus Hollywood movies have international buzz because their fragrance carties with them envious yearnings for American wealth, ‘freedom, democracy, leisure, and coolness. Japan, Iwabuchi suggests, does not 4 rhave this kind of pleasane scent in the noses ofthe world’s consumers. In fact, op culture products that make people think coo readily of their Japanese otigins are likely co have a bad odor—a stink—that comes from negative preconceptions of Japan. Western audiences, for example, may call to mind Lingering stereotypes of Japanese racial difference and infericrity while Asian consumers may be reminded of painful history of Japanese imperialism, colonialism, and regional dominance. The only Japanese pop produces chat have hie it big globally are chose that are “culeurally odorless,” thac are slick ‘nd sophisticated, creative and well maskeced, but which do not smell of Japan to consumers overseas, To Iwabuchi these odorless products, called by ocher scholars mukobuseki (lacking. sense of national origin), are the “chree Cs": ‘consumer technologies (such as transistor radios, karaoke, and the Walleman), comics and cartoons (in other words, manga and anime), and computer and video games. Indeed, Iwabuchi concludes, Japanese goods can only sell incecnationally if chey are scrubbed scrupulously clean of culeural association wich Japan and presented as a kind of placeless, hiscoryless, culcureless, ‘odorless entertainment commodity? Iwabuchi’s ideas are chought provoking and controversial. His approach may help explain che popularity of something like Hello Kitty, whose global ‘appeal has generally has been difficult for scholars to understand but which seems a perfect example of an odorless global icon, The same mighe be said of Pokémon or Yu-gi-oh! although in these cases the cole of aggressive and sophisticated global marketing campaigns needs to be carefully considered 4s well, Iwabuchi’s analysis also appears useful in making sense of why some Japanese entertainment products, though vastly populae in the domestic marker, have never artracted particular interest overseas, For example, the Otako waz txrai yo (Ie Tough Being a Man) series, a beloved forty-eight-film franchise of sentimental comedies about ne'er-do-well traveling salesman named Tore-san, may never have attracted large international audiences because ic smelled too much of Japan, with ies verbal humor and nostalgic sensibilities. Professional wrestling, by fae che most popular spectator sport in Japan ducing the 1950s, and pachinko, the unique form of pinball ubiquicous in postwar urban Japan, may also have failed co catch on globally because of ‘heir particularly Japanese culeural odoss.* Some commencacors are skeptical of Iwabuchi’s notions of the smell of popular culeare, questioning just how mukobusek? and odorless something like anime is, even though so many of the characcers in Japanese animation, with large round eyes, light skin, and blond, pink or blue hair, look anyching bbue Japanese. As Sussa Napier’s research has revealed, manga and anime are far from mukolueki vo theit American fans: enthusiasm for Japanese 42 | Bp 32. AUS slice ford the 12ch Feld Arillery Regiment pays Guter Her on a Nintendo Wii consile ara combar ourpese next Baquba, lq, in February 2008. Phoco © Pusch BastAFP/GecyIenages) _ entertainment products dnd interest in Japanese language and culeare are, ic stems, frequeiitly interrwined.? The very idea that Japan lacks fragrance in ‘2¢ global pop markerplace is also open co question; there can be litle doubt cat among che factors driving international interest in Japanese popular Ieare, ar lease during the 1980s and early 1990s, was Japan's image as a spidly rising economic power and a kind of high-tech utopia, leading che ld in robotics as well as video game technology. Despite such reservations, fiterpretacions case revealing light on the place of Japanese pop iplex ‘ircuities of globalization and on the factors chat have aditicned the'intemnational reception of Japan's mass culture forms. AMERICAN TRAUMA, JAPANESE POP © The journalise Roland. Keles proposed a novel approach to understanding the ‘global. popularity of Cool Japan in his 2006 book Japanamerica: How Japanese ep Calturs Has Iniaded she U.S. Keles argues chat Japanese pop forms such as “anime até, x Marakaami Takashi has compellingly argued, the creative outlet for Japan's uiniesolved agonizing over the atomic bombings of 1945; che stale of Sepeember 11, 2001, are che contemporary equivalent of Hiroshima and Nabiaki, leaving deep scars of fear and horcor that Americans have 20¢ yet beta’ able co heal or put behind chem chus, Japanese popular culeare has aa‘spoken” co U.S. audiences, and especially American youth, whose formative life experience was the spectacle of 9/11, because Americans now share the same unresolved tensions ehac have haunted the Japanese since World War I. In other words, Kelts bids us co conclude hac the United Stares today has a national trauma to rival Japan’s—"our mushroom cloud" —and, as a resule, has come to embrace the dark dreams and apocalyptic fantasies of Japanese popular culeare."? “The theory proposed by Kelts is suggeseive but problematic. In the first place, equating the aetacks on the World Trade Cencer and the Pentagon ‘with the aeomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is eroubling, not least because of the difference in scale (wich just under three thousand Killed on September 11 as opposed to the more than one hundred thousand Japanese who died on August 6 and 9, 1945). Kelts’s analysis also does noc explain Japanese popular culture's global appeal, which excends well beyond America’s borders to ations and regions where, presumably, che trauma of 9/11 was Got so acuce. Nor does Kelts account for the considerable popularity of Japanese anime, mange, mass cinema, and video games in che Uniced Scates long before the events of 2001. And, of course, the very cleverness, elegance, and cidiness of Kelts’s story inevitably evoke skepticism in a world of pop culture production and media consumption chat is anything buc simple, obvious, and neat. Yer Kelts's ideas do force us to consider the ways in which changing international condieions—political, social, and economic—have inflected the consumption of Japanese pop culture and invested Japanese forms with new meanings, relevance, and global resonance. A WORLD OF FANS Although scholars have been prolific in generating interpretations for the global appeal of Japanese pop, they have seldom directly asked che consumers of Japanese entertainment products, the worldwide fans of anime and manga, ‘Wii consoles and game shows, why they are so attracted co Japanese focms. ‘Those academic studies that have focused on American fans and subcultures immersed ia Japanese pop reveal a diverse range of mocivationsand attractions. Research on che young consumers of Pokémon, for example, confirms the ‘success of Nincend6’s incense marketing cempaiga, which fied a generation of| ‘American children with the passion to “catch ‘em all’ by buying and dealing collectible crading cards. A large survey of Godzilla fans found that most loved che color and action of Japanese creature features, the exuberane (but stylized) violence of monsters ‘wrestling and Tokyo being stomped, and the movies’ uncomplicated good 44 ‘igure 3 3 Comply hor or “coscure play”), which involves dressing up and performing ‘chars fiom anime and maigs, s now a popular fan activity globally. Here, a group of [Assan aint fa participate in the 2009 Madman National Cosplay Championships in yay: (Phots © Sergio DinisilGecry Images) eesus-evil story Lines. For middle-aged admirers of the king of the monsters, Godrilla films were perhaps most compelling as a form of nostalgia, a vehicle "for recalling memories of childhood and a simpler, gentler time of weekend “double features and Japanese acorsfighing it our in latex lizard suits. The F- college agedanimeenthusiascsscudied by Susan Napier confirmed the scholarly conclusions about the appealing style and concent of Japanese animation but also suggested that the sociability of che subculeure—gathering to watch Fat series, meexing at anime conventions, sharing informacion—was another “feajor axtrction of anime fandom in Americs.!? None of these international “followers of Japatiese pop, whether grade-school addicts of Pokémon or misty- ‘eyed fans of Godzilla, indicaved (at least consciously) that lingering traumas, siresolved tensions, of cultural odors drew them co mass entertainments "Fans and fan organizations have been important to the introduction and ppularization of Japanese forms, especially anime and mange, in the United ‘Scares and around the world. Anime conventions, which are now common ‘events in most large American cities and college towns, ate significant forums far disseminating Japanese pop, while anime and manga clubs foster networks 9! fans in schools and universities. Dedicated and vocal fans have been active 45 | i i : | | cain getting manga into public libraries and Japanese animation onto cable ‘television. Fans have also made extensive use of the Internet, creating blogs, chac rooms, and websites (such as the Anime News Necwork) to interact, build communities, and share information. The Internet has also created new means for fans to distribure Japanese entertainment products, often illicitly; fansubbing, che unaixthorized amateur subtitling of animated programming, ‘and scanlation, the scanning and translation of pirated comics, make anime, ‘aad manga readily available online to the large English-language audience. ‘Wich a missionary zeal for turning on international audiences co the Japanese ‘Pop forms they love, fervent fan communities are an often overlooked element in the global spread of Japanese popular culeare. ‘The reasons for the worldwide embrace of Japan's “Gross National Cool” ace, perhaps not surprisingly, as diverse as che forms of Japanese popular cultare and the sources of Japan's pop ceeativicy. The inerinsic characteristics of Japanese animation, cinema, and character goods—obvious quality, seylistic and thematic complexity, insistene difference from Westera pop conventions—have undoubcedly proven ateractive to global consumers. At the same time, external factors—the market forces tha consistently broughé Japanese entertainment products to American audiences, international stereotypes of Japan's cultural odor, the long shadows of Sepcember 11, and even the activities of devoted fans—also creaced conditions favorable to the diffusion of Japanese popular culture. Through a complicated interplay of content and context, Japanese pop forms have become familias icons and welcome diversions, mass-marketed commodities and cherished artifacts, as well a5 meaningful sives of identification, aspiration, and resistance in the contemporary global imagination. 46 © ADAPTING JAPANESE POPULAR » CULTURE FOR GLOBAL AUDIENCES day, Asis bee the cas since Wodd War Uke Japanese pop culture ‘products chat reach consumers abroad are usually not identical co the ‘ones hae Japan's domestic audiences enjoy. Pikachu may look the same in ‘New York a5 in Tokyo, but his fellow “pocker monsters” have different names | Jn dferenecouneries and their animated adveneares re aoe pectely the arne worldwide. Linguistic intermediation is inevitable ia the global circulation of _ Japanese entertainment goods; anime and Japanese movies are translated and "Subtided ot dubbed in English, Korean, or French to make them accessible to “audiences overseas. Bur editing also cakes place to make Japanese pop forms fem more familiar aid appealing co international consumers. This process _ of Hocalization”—the adiptation of pop culcare commodities o che culeural, ought and sold-is now regarded as a fundamental pact of the negotiations ad transformations of globalization. | Some observers have ascribed co che Japanese a particular genius for ization. Indeed, che very concepe of customizing mass-market products the particular preferences of local euleuces is often stid to have Joriginared in Japan in, che 1980s, when companies such 2s Soay began | discussing a business stracegy called dechabuke, a term usvally translated as ~ findigenizacion’ or “glocalization.”' And, indeed, the Japanese media industry “does seem to have been remarkably successful in cceating pop forms—such 2s ‘ouster movies and TV superhero series, Pokémon and character goods—chat G ppeal broadly co international audiences and can be readily modified co the tastes, expectations, and sensitivities ofa wide range of local markers. Buc a | Samber of scholars have emphasized the profound ways in which this process ‘E> of localization has cransformed Japanese pop products, censoring political | ‘meitages Considered sensitive abroad, seipping Japanese scyle and sensibilicies he aT‘Haroorunian (Durham; Duke University Press, 2006), 358-94; Tsutsui, “Oh No, ‘Thece Goes Tokyo.” Susan Napier, “Panic Sies: The Japanese Imagination of Disaster from Goseille to Akira" Journal of Japanese Studies 19:2 (sommer 1993): 330, 350. » Atkins, “Popular Culrure,” 470. CHAPTER 3 Craig, “Intcoduetion,” 16-17. * Napier, Anne, 9-10. STbid,.12. “ See William M. Tsutsui, Gadsille on My Mind: Fify Years of be King of Monsters ‘(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); and che essays in Tsutsui and Ito, ee. fn Gadsila’s Pots * Teucsui, Goda on My Mind, 115-20, “Iwabuchi Koichi, Reentering Globalivaton: Popular Culture and Japanue ‘Transnationatisn (Dutham: Duke University Pres, 2002), 11-14, 85-120. * Iwabuchi Koichi, "How ‘Japanese’ is Pokémon?” in Pikachu's Global Adenture: The Rie and Falt f Pokénon, ed. Joseph Tobin (Ducharn: Dake University Press, 2004), 36-58; Iwabuchi, Reamiering Globalization, 24-28, "On the Orato wa tsurai yo films, see Williaes M. Teuteai, “Through the Years with Godzilla and Tora-san Film Series in Postwar Japan,” in The Legend Resurns and Divs Harder Anotbsr Day: Estas on Film Seis, 8. Jennifer Forrest Jefferson, NC: ‘McFarland, 2008), 210-40. On Japanese professionel wressling, see Lee Thompson, “Professional Wrestling in Japan: Media and Message,” International Review of Spare Seciology 21:1 (2986): 65-80. Napien, Amine, 253-55; Napier, From Impresienion to Aine, 169-90. "Roland Kel, Japonamerita: How Japanese Pop Culture Hat braaded the U.S, (New ‘York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 9-34. S Tyutsei, Godsila on My Mind, 157-69. "Napier, Anime, 239-56, CHAPTER 4 " See Iwabuchi, Recensring Globalization, 8-120. * Quoted in Seuare Galbraith 1V, Mons Are Attacking Tokyo! (Venice, CA: Feral House, 1998), 102 76 * On the transicion from Gojira wo Gaduille, King of tbe Monster, see Touts, Gasille on My Mind, 38-42; and Seeve Ryle, Japan’ Favorite Mon-St Bingraphy of "The Big G” (Toronto: ECW Peese, 1998), 51-60. * Ryle, Jan's Favorite Mow Star, 149, > Hirofumi Katsuno and Jefftey Maret, “Localizing the Poleémon TV Series for the ‘American Marker,” in Pikachu's Glebal Advontrs: Tho Rite and Fall of Pokémon, ed Joseph Tobin (Durham: Duke Universiey Press, 2004), 80-107. Ibid, 103. * Joseph Tobin, "Pikachu's Global Adventute,” in Children, Young Pele, and Mada Globatixatoe, ed. Cilia von Feilizen an Ulla Caelsson (Géceborg, Sweden: ‘UNESCO Intemational Clearinghouse on Childsen, Youth and Media, 2002), 55. " See, for ecample, Jeff Klein, "Extreme Dubbing Challenge,” New York Times, April 25, 2004. ? Mark Gallagher, “What's So Funny about Iron Chef?” Jorrnal of Popular Film and “Tdovsion 31:4 (vinwee 2004): 181. CHAPTER 5 " MeGry, "Japan's Gross National Cool,” 44, 53, * Joseph S, Nye Je, Soft Power: The Mezns to Sucas in World Politics (New York: PoblicAffuirs, 2005), x > Geol Hiscock, “Soft Power’ Pare of Belancing Act,” CNN.com, September 21, 2006, htep//wwezenn.com/2006/WORLDiasiapcf09/0 japan softponersindex bel (accessed May 14, 2010). | Nye, Soft Power, 6. * Joseph S. Nye Jr, “Soft Power,” Foreign Paizy 80 (ancunmn 1990): 169. * McGray, “Japan's Gross Nasional Cool,” 46. * “About CGP,” heepsfarwa:cgp.orglindex.phpoption=sectionscid-=2 (accessed May 14, 2010). "See David L, McConnell, Importing Diversity: Inside Japan's JET Program (Berkeley: Univessiy of California Press, 2000) ” Asb also stared, “We have all grown up nourished by Shakespeare and Beethoven and other forms of culure emegging from the West. Yer we are now at the poine ‘where culture made ia Japan—whether anime and manga or sun and Japanese food culeare-—is equally able to nourish the people ofthe world, particularly she younger generations, We would be remiss not to utilize these to che fllese. ‘Aso Tard, “A New Looe at Cultural Diplomacy: A Call to Japan's Caleural 17Japanese animation onto cable of the Incernet, creating blogs, Je News Network) co inceract, 1¢ Incernet has also created new pment products, often illiciely; ing of animaced programming, of pirated comics, make anime ge English-language audience. jonal audiences to the Japanese ure an often overlooked element Japan's "Gross National Cool the forms of Japane ty. The intrinsic characteristics ctet_goods—obvious quality, difference from Western pop ctive co global consumers. Ac orces that consistently brought ¢, popular ican audiences, international shadows of September 11, and ced conditions favorable «0 the gh a complicated interplay of we become familiar icons and ities and cherished acti piration, and resisca LOST IN TRANSLATION? ADAPTING JAPANESE POPULAR CULTURE FOR GLOBAL AUDIENCES ‘olay, as has been the case since World War IT, the Japanese pop culture produces that reach consumers abroad are usually not identical co the cones that Japan's domestic audiences enjoy. Pikachu may look the same in New York as in ‘Tokyo, but his fellow “pocket monsters" have differen names in different countries and theit animated advencures are not precisely he same ‘worldwide. Linguistic intermediation is inevitable in che global circulation of Japanese entertainment goods; anime and Japanese movies ace translated and ‘subtitled or dubbed in English, Korean, of French to make them accessible to audiences overseas, But editing also takes place co make Japanese pop forms seem more familiar and appealing co international consumers. This process of “Localization”—che adaptation of pop culture commodities to the cultural, social, and political realities of the regions and nations where they will be bought and sold—is now regarded as a Fundamental part of the negotiations and transformations of globalization, Some observers have ascribed to the Japanese a particular genius for localization, Indeed, the very concept of customizing mass-market products to meet the particular preferences of local cultures is often said co have originated in Japan in the 1980s, when companies such as Sony began discussing a business strategy called dachabuka, a term usually translated as “indigenizacion” or "glocalization."' And, indeed, che Japanese media industry does seem co have been remarkably successful in creating pop forms—such as monster movies and TV superhero series, Pokémon and character goods—chat appeal broadly to international audiences and can be readily modified to the tastes, expectations, and sensitivities of a wide range of local markets. But a number of scholars have emphasized che profound ways in which this process Of localization has transformed Japanese pop products, censoring political ‘messages considered sensitive abroad, stripping Japanese style and sensibilities 47