Description
Book SynopsisAsian Popular Culture explores the evolution and intersection of popular forms (gaming, manga, anime, film, music, YouTube videos) and explicates these media's changing cultural meanings in historical and contemporary contexts. At its core is the issue of the roles popular culture plays in the construction of national and regional identity.
Trade ReviewEmerging popular cultural and new media forms which have tended to evade historical and critical attention, now get thorough analyses by a diverse set of critics who create points of cogent analysis on the vast and diverse global map in Lent and Fitzsimmons' book. Clarity in these particular views creates a sense of the enormous change emerging in the cultures of Asia. -- Frenchy Lunning, Minneapolis College of Art and Design
This volume, an eclectic set of eight essays by an array of scholars and popular media specialists, covers Japan, China, South Korea, and Australia. What links these essays methodologically is the claim of interdisciplinarity with a focus on, to quote from the publisher's website, "the roles popular culture plays in the construction of national and regional identity." In actuality, the majority of these essays foreground Japan. For that reason, this collection will be of most interest to Japanophiles. Two essays explicitly cover regionality and globalization: one through a discussion of the history and diffusion of the board game Weiqi (Go), the other by examining online/handheld gaming in East Asia. The remaining essays are mostly "country specific," delving into the power of popular culture--from vinyl records in the 1960s to YouTube videos in the 2010s—in the re/formation of national identity. Summing Up: Recommended. * CHOICE *
Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1. Weiqi Legends, Then and Now: Cultural Paradigms in the Game of Go by Marc L. Moskowitz Chapter 2. Locating Play: The Situated Localities of Portable and Online Gaming in East Asia by Dean Chan Chapter 3. Regionalism in the Era of Neo-Nationalism: Japanese Landscape in the Background Art of Games and Anime from the Late-1990s to Present by Kumiko Saito Chapter 4. Otaku Evolution: Changing Views of the Fan-boy in Kon Satoshi's Perfect Blue and Paprika by Joseph Christopher Schaub Chapter 5. Breaking Records: Media, Censorship, and the Folk Song Movement of Japan's 1960s by James Dorsey Chapter 6. Mad-Cow Disease and Alternative YouTube Videos: Brechtian Politics of Aesthetics in Grassroots Media Spectacles, Voluntary Mobilization, and Collective Governance from Korea's Candlelight Movements by Gooyong Kim Chapter 7. Reaching Beyond the Manga: A Samurai to the Ends of the World and the Formation of National Identity by Michael Wert Chapter 8. Zen Dog: Lian Hearn's Hybrid Otori Pentalogy by Sheng-mei Ma
