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Examining a wide range of Japanese videogames, including arcade
fighting games, PC-based strategy games and console JRPGs, this
book assesses their cultural significance and shows how gameplay
and context can be analyzed together to understand videogames as a
dynamic mode of artistic expression. Well-known titles such as
Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, Street Fighter and Katamari Damacy
are evaluated in detail, showing how ideology and critique are
conveyed through game narrative and character design as well as
user interface, cabinet art, and peripherals. This book also
considers how 'Japan' has been packaged for domestic and overseas
consumers, and how Japanese designers have used the medium to
express ideas about home and nation, nuclear energy, war and
historical memory, social breakdown and bioethics. Placing each
title in its historical context, Hutchinson ultimately shows that
videogames are a relatively recent but significant site where
cultural identity is played out in modern Japan. Comparing Japanese
videogames with their American counterparts, as well as other media
forms, such as film, manga and anime, Japanese Culture Through
Videogames will be useful to students and scholars of Japanese
culture and society, as well as Game Studies, Media Studies and
Japanese Studies more generally.
Japanese Role-playing Games: Genre, Representation, and Liminality
in the JRPG examines the origins, boundaries, and transnational
effects of the genre, addressing significant formal elements as
well as narrative themes, character construction, and player
involvement. Contributors from Japan, Europe, North America, and
Australia employ a variety of theoretical approaches to analyze
popular game series and individual titles, introducing an
English-speaking audience to Japanese video game scholarship while
also extending postcolonial and philosophical readings to the
Japanese game text. In a three-pronged approach, the collection
uses these analyses to look at genre, representation, and
liminality, engaging with a multitude of concepts including
stereotypes, intersectionality, and the political and social
effects of JRPGs on players and industry conventions. Broadly, this
collection considers JRPGs as networked systems, including evolved
iterations of MMORPGs and card collecting "social games" for mobile
devices. Scholars of media studies, game studies, Asian studies,
and Japanese culture will find this book particularly useful.
"Representing the Other in Modern Japanese Literature" looks at the
ways in authors writing in Japanese in the twentieth century
constructed a division between Self and Other in their work. Using
a cross-section of authors and texts as case studies the
contributors illuminate themes and issues related to this
delineation of the Other and the Japanese Self.
Part one of the book concentrates on the West and Asia as a
contrastive Other, focusing on Japan looking at Others outside
Japan. Taking geographical, racial and ethnic identity as a
starting point to explore Japan's vision of 'non-Japan',
representations of the Other are examined in terms of the
experiences of Japanese authors abroad and in the imaginary lands
envisioned by authors in Japan. Part two goes on to look at Japan's
perspective of Others inside the borders of Japan and within the
same ethnic grouping and how Japanese society looks out at the
peripheries and margins of its own society. Finally, part three
discusses whetherthere is any middle ground between this typical
Japanese society and the Others on the periphery.
"Representing the Other in Modern Japanese Literature" looks at the
ways in authors writing in Japanese in the twentieth century
constructed a division between Self and Other in their work. Using
a cross-section of authors and texts as case studies the
contributors illuminate themes and issues related to this
delineation of the Other and the Japanese Self.
Part one of the book concentrates on the West and Asia as a
contrastive Other, focusing on Japan looking at Others outside
Japan. Taking geographical, racial and ethnic identity as a
starting point to explore Japan's vision of 'non-Japan',
representations of the Other are examined in terms of the
experiences of Japanese authors abroad and in the imaginary lands
envisioned by authors in Japan. Part two goes on to look at Japan's
perspective of Others inside the borders of Japan and within the
same ethnic grouping and how Japanese society looks out at the
peripheries and margins of its own society. Finally, part three
discusses whetherthere is any middle ground between this typical
Japanese society and the Others on the periphery.
Examining a wide range of Japanese videogames, including arcade
fighting games, PC-based strategy games and console JRPGs, this
book assesses their cultural significance and shows how gameplay
and context can be analyzed together to understand videogames as a
dynamic mode of artistic expression. Well-known titles such as
Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, Street Fighter and Katamari Damacy
are evaluated in detail, showing how ideology and critique are
conveyed through game narrative and character design as well as
user interface, cabinet art, and peripherals. This book also
considers how 'Japan' has been packaged for domestic and overseas
consumers, and how Japanese designers have used the medium to
express ideas about home and nation, nuclear energy, war and
historical memory, social breakdown and bioethics. Placing each
title in its historical context, Hutchinson ultimately shows that
videogames are a relatively recent but significant site where
cultural identity is played out in modern Japan. Comparing Japanese
videogames with their American counterparts, as well as other media
forms, such as film, manga and anime, Japanese Culture Through
Videogames will be useful to students and scholars of Japanese
culture and society, as well as Game Studies, Media Studies and
Japanese Studies more generally.
Censorship in Japan has seen many changes over the last 150 years
and each successive system of rule has possessed its own censorship
laws, regulations, and methods of enforcement. Yet what has
remained constant through these many upheavals has been the process
of negotiation between censor and artist that can be seen across
the cultural media of modern society. By exploring censorship in a
number of different Japanese art forms - from popular music and
kabuki performance through to fiction, poetry and film - across a
range of historical periods, this book provides a striking picture
of the pervasiveness and strength of Japanese censorship across a
range of media; the similar tactics used by artists of different
media to negotiate censorship boundaries; and how censors from
different systems and time periods face many of the same problems
and questions in their work. The essays in this collection
highlight the complexities of the censorship process by
investigating the responsibilities and choices of all four groups -
artists, censors, audience and ideologues - in a wide range of case
studies. The contributors shift the focus away from top-down
suppression, towards the more complex negotiations involved in the
many stages of an artistic work, all of which involve movement
within boundaries, as well as testing of those boundaries, on the
part of both artist and censor. Taken together, the essays in this
book demonstrate that censorship at every stage involves an act of
human judgment, in a context determined by political, economic and
ideological factors. This book and its case studies provide a
fascinating insight into the dynamics of censorship and how these
operate on both people and texts. As such, it will be of great
interest to students and scholars interested in Japanese studies,
Japanese culture, society and history, and media studies more
generally.
The Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese Literature provides a
comprehensive overview of how we study Japanese literature today.
Rather than taking a purely chronological approach to the content,
the chapters survey the state of the field through a number of
pressing issues and themes, examining the ways in which it is
possible to read modern Japanese literature and situate it in
relation to critical theory. The Handbook examines various modes of
literary production (such as fiction, poetry, and critical essays)
as distinct forms of expression that nonetheless are closely
interrelated. Attention is drawn to the idea of the bunjin as a
'person of letters' and a more realistic assessment is provided of
how writers have engaged with ideas - not labelled a 'novelist' or
'poet', but a 'writer' who may at one time or another choose to
write in various forms. The book provides an overview of major
authors and genres by situating them within broader themes that
have defined the way writers have produced literature in modern
Japan, as well as how those works have been read and understood by
different readers in different time periods. The Routledge Handbook
of Modern Japanese Literature draws from an international array of
established experts in the field as well as promising young
researchers. It represents a wide variety of critical approaches,
giving the study a broad range of perspectives. This handbook will
be of interest to students and scholars of Asian Studies,
Literature, Sociology, Critical Theory, and History.
The Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese Literature provides a
comprehensive overview of how we study Japanese literature today.
Rather than taking a purely chronological approach to the content,
the chapters survey the state of the field through a number of
pressing issues and themes, examining the ways in which it is
possible to read modern Japanese literature and situate it in
relation to critical theory. The Handbook examines various modes of
literary production (such as fiction, poetry, and critical essays)
as distinct forms of expression that nonetheless are closely
interrelated. Attention is drawn to the idea of the bunjin as a
'person of letters' and a more realistic assessment is provided of
how writers have engaged with ideas - not labelled a 'novelist' or
'poet', but a 'writer' who may at one time or another choose to
write in various forms. The book provides an overview of major
authors and genres by situating them within broader themes that
have defined the way writers have produced literature in modern
Japan, as well as how those works have been read and understood by
different readers in different time periods. The Routledge Handbook
of Modern Japanese Literature draws from an international array of
established experts in the field as well as promising young
researchers. It represents a wide variety of critical approaches,
giving the study a broad range of perspectives. This handbook will
be of interest to students and scholars of Asian Studies,
Literature, Sociology, Critical Theory, and History.
Censorship in Japan has seen many changes over the last 150 years
and each successive system of rule has possessed its own censorship
laws, regulations, and methods of enforcement. Yet what has
remained constant through these many upheavals has been the process
of negotiation between censor and artist that can be seen across
the cultural media of modern society. By exploring censorship in a
number of different Japanese art forms - from popular music and
kabuki performance through to fiction, poetry and film - across a
range of historical periods, this book provides a striking picture
of the pervasiveness and strength of Japanese censorship across a
range of media; the similar tactics used by artists of different
media to negotiate censorship boundaries; and how censors from
different systems and time periods face many of the same problems
and questions in their work. The essays in this collection
highlight the complexities of the censorship process by
investigating the responsibilities and choices of all four groups -
artists, censors, audience and ideologues - in a wide range of case
studies. The contributors shift the focus away from top-down
suppression, towards the more complex negotiations involved in the
many stages of an artistic work, all of which involve movement
within boundaries, as well as testing of those boundaries, on the
part of both artist and censor. Taken together, the essays in this
book demonstrate that censorship at every stage involves an act of
human judgment, in a context determined by political, economic and
ideological factors. This book and its case studies provide a
fascinating insight into the dynamics of censorship and how these
operate on both people and texts. As such, it will be of great
interest to students and scholars interested in Japanese studies,
Japanese culture, society and history, and media studies more
generally.
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