If you check the sidebar, you'll notice a new link to JAPA - Japan As Popular Culture Association. Nominally it's an association of professionals trying to promote pop culture in Japan on an industrial level. Some of the members listed on their page are from government institutions; some of them are from the private sector.
I note, one of them is a member of the band 'Shonen Knife', so this is a pretty eclectic crowd with an uncertain direction.
I got invited to join by Contemporary Art critic Yumi Yamaguchi, who also produced my short film 'Rakuda1.2' some years back. If anything interesting happens on their mailing list (and it usually does) I'll be sure to report back. I'm really not sure how I 'qualify' at all, but I'm putting it down to a new adventure. :)
In the mean time, make sure you check out some of their conference minutes. Try this for size from March 2006:
1. Japanese Sound-scapePretty interesting if you can decipher the actual concerns from this short-hand.
Los Angels people living the university town does not care about sounds very much. They might think it is personal freedom to make noise, or they still have a sense of livening in the age of Western reclamation.
2. Japanese views of animals
Cute animal characters are often used of advertising for adults in Japan, but it is not common in western countries. Typical example is the sticker with a cat being caught in doors of a train with a “ouch!” face.
There are some Manga research books to analyze characters of Manga or animations such as “ Tezuka is Dead”, “ Girls Folklore” by Eiji Otsuka and “ Manga Country Nippon by Jaqueline Berndt. The honorary professor of the National History Museum at Sakura Manabu Tsukamoto is an expert of Japanese views of animals by writing “ The Folklore of Political Monism about Animals”. Yujin Kawabata’s non-fiction books such as “ Penguin Meets Japanese”, “I Caught a Whale, and I Thought” and “What a Zoo Can Do” etc., “ A Frog’s Mind” by Chiba Central Museum.
We do not create a rabbit character for boy in Japan. Pink colored animals like a rabbit becomes a character normally, but they use a realistic expression for a picture book and a creation in France.
It changes historically. A squirrel that lives Japanese mountain naturally has not been on Japanese old tare of a fairy tale story, but once it appears as a suit of “Sho-chan” in the Taisyo era. It suddenly became a one of the cute characters.
French two students learning design found the illustration of a cat holding its nose on the package of sands for a cat’s toilet, and said that it is cool than putting a photo of a cat, it is like a original design of Japan.
A penguin is a popular character in Japan. It is a shocking data that one third of raised penguin are in Japan.
It has some levels to personify an animal as humanlike conversation in the animal world < personifying lifestyle < profession < conversation with human. There are a lot of working animal characters for local governments, the National Athletic Meets and CI. Mr. Kentaro Takemura reported the personifying levels in “Saruman”.
http://takekuma.cocolog-nifty.com/
3. Hanuman
“ Hanuman and Five Kamen-Riders”. There are a lot of hints to consider cultural development.
http://blog.livedoor.jp/textsite/archives/50168971.html
It is a surprising that Chaiyo, famous of the Ultra man copyrights case, also did Kamen-riders.
“ Eiga-hiho” magazine have reported about Chaiyo production from Nov. 2004 issue to Jan. 2005 issue.
http://www.yosensha.co.jp/hihotop.html
It said on Dec. 2004 issue that Chaiyo and Toei co-produced “Hanuman and Five Moddaeng (Kamen-Riders)” and they officially borrowed and shot the riders’ suits.
Here's an interesting one from their first month of keeping records:
4.Globalization of media (cultural influences)Now that's some interesting thinking right then and there.
Although the volume of Japanese Contents exports is increasing, the cultural influence from such Contents is still small. This may be related with the fact that the scale of Japanese media (Contents industry) and its international competence is much smaller compared with the media conglomerates in the US and Europe.
Is it possible to represent the international competence of pop culture in figures? If so, such figures can could be used as indices for the industrial competence of Japanese Contents and also be used to study the correlation between such competence and the wider influence of Japanese pop culture (such as the “Japanese point of view”) overseas.
i.Sales of a certain character product and the profit an industry makes from the product does not have a direct correlation to the respect given to the creators and authors of the product, with the differentiation or predominance of the product in the market, or the influence of the product on regional culture or on the societies that accept the product.
ii.Japanese media does not actively seek for export business. While the US media industry has long-focused on Japan’s abundant media market, despite its size, and established the know-how of importing and distributing Japanese media.
iii.Are the impacts of financial influence and propagation and the impact of cultural influence and propagation identical? Phenomenon of Econo-rationalization and phenomenon of cultural acceptance sometimes appear to be the same.
iv.“Ethnic” is the subjective definition of “dissimilarity.”
v.Spread of Japanese culture in Asia (a spin-off from mature domestic industry?): What is the future stance of the Japanese Contents production as globalization and technology outflow continue to advance?
5.Pop culture and security
Is it possible to understand pop culture as a form of security, as well as considering whether it is safe to rely on the US pop culture?although it is practically the center of media culture of Japan?
The worldwide success of the Japanese animation and comic business relies on the effort of authors and production companies. It is hard to say that animation or comics are successful international business seeds or whether they have validity in the belief that culture can be a security treaty.
6.Hollywood and Japanese Culture
Issues of non-Euro-America areas, including Asia, are often talked of with the nuance that Japanese cultural policy has remained the same since the Meiji revolution? that is, “Leave Asia and join Europe where tradition lives,” or the superiority of Japanese culture. However, is this adequate for those who accept Japanese culture?
One common point in games, animations, and comics is that a realistic Japanese person does not appear in them. Usually, the main character looks like a white westerner. The influence of Hollywood stereotyping may be stronger than we imagine.
i.When creating a film aiming at the international market, it is essential to consider the balance of characters’ races and not to specify the characters’ religions and cultural backgrounds.
ii.America’s view of Japan is changing. It has become natural to think that new games and animations always come from Japan.
iii.“Culturally unbound” or “non-ethnic” animations and games from Japan have spread across the world as pop culture (flexible culture) not as highbrow culture.
iv.This success may be due to the symbolization of characters (as a concept opposite to realism), which is one of specialties of the Japanese.
v.Not all the authors of works that have received internationally high reviews are clearly conscious of global standard. “Style-Japanesque” is not the essence of popularity; therefore it is not necessary to be obsessed with such style.
7. Ability of agenda setting:
Why is the agenda-setting ability of the Japanese media weak? Is it also weak in Asia? Generally in Asia, self-categorizing elites respect America and self-categorizing middle class love Japan for some reason. Isn’t Japan now Eastern Asia’s re-embodiment of 19th century Euro-American culture (civilization?)?
i.The wave of media globalization does not influence Southeast Asia and Japan.
ii.Japanese media, which is popular across the world, including Asia and the Middle East, may be the result of people’s dissatisfaction with the fact that only a limited amount of world information is available from NHK. (e.g. 2ch.net)
iii.Journalists often study in the US ? The centric and open US approach to journalism making a clear contrast with the closed Japanese media environment.
iv.Lack of professionalism as a journalist in Japanese media industry, therefore no ground to cultivate journalistic skills.
There's actually an association that would have me as a member. That's amazing in itself.
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