Popular Culture, Globalization and Japan

Japanese popular culture is constantly evolving in the face of internal and external influence. Popular Culture, Globalization and Japan examines this evolution from a new and challenging perspective by focusing on the movements of popular culture into and out of Japan. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, the book argues that a key factor behind the changing nature of Japanese popular culture lies in its engagement with globalization. Essays from a team of leading international scholars illustrate this crucial interaction between the flows of Japanese popular culture and the constant development of globalization. Drawing on rich empirical content, this book looks at Japanese popular culture as it traverses international borders flowing out through such forms as manga consumption in New Zealand and flowing in through such forms as foreigners writing about Japan in Japanese and how American influences affected the formation of Japan’s gay identity.Presenting current, confronting and sometimes controversial insights into the many forms of Japanese popular culture emerging within this global context, Popular Culture, Globalization and Japan will make essential reading for those working in Japanese studies, cultural studies and international relations.

"Social scientists and scholars of the humanities and the arts from New Zealand, Australia, and Japan address the relationship between the three aspects in ways that problematize the ownership of Japanese popular culture. They examine movements of popular cultural ideas and artefacts into and out of Japan, and offer new perspectives on forms of popular culture that extend beyond current Eurocentric notions that Japan - the Oriental or exotic Other - informs the production, distribution, and consumption of Japanese popular culture." -- Book News, 2007"...the essays in this book are widely varied and difficult to categorize under one particular framework, except that of positioning Japanese popular culture within an increasingly transnational world. While the editors do touch on this aspect in the introduction, an even fuller discussion might have helped make the book more effective as a general textbook. Nevertheless, it should be emphasized that each article on its own is well researched, thoughtful, and thought provoking. The pieces in this volume explore Japanese popular culture more widely and more deeply than those in previous compilations. Both students and scholars will have much to learn from it." - Susan J. Napier, Journal of Japanese Studies 34:2 (2008)