Description
Book SynopsisJapan, 1972 takes an early-seventies year as a vantage point for understanding how Japanese society came to terms with cultural change. Yoshikuni Igarashi examines a broad selection of popular film, television, manga, and other media, exposing the underpinnings of mass culture and investigating deeper anxieties over agency and masculinity.
Trade ReviewYoshikuni Igarashi retells the story of 1970s Japan in a startling new way, focusing on the rise of images of masculinity that were both a reaction against the supposed feminization of consumer culture and a product of the new media forms that saturated everyday life. His eminently readable analysis takes us on a fascinating tour of the novel visual cultures that ruled the day—television documentaries, yakuza films, and sports manga, among others. -- Michael Bourdaghs, author of
Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon: A Geopolitical Prehistory of J-PopOn the premise that Japanese society underwent a radical transformation in the early 1970s—toward the end of high growth but before the oil shock—Igarashi dives deeply into popular culture to show how mass consumerism affected everything from gender identity to hopes for the future. -- Carol Gluck, Columbia University
Igarashi’s long-awaited book on consumerist Japan circa 1972 toggles between the broad view and the minute detail with great creativity and insight. The resulting highly textured work spotlights the intimate relationship between consumption and selves in postwar Japan. Importantly, this book changes the way we see and think—of then, but also now. -- Christine R. Yano, author of
Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty's Trek Across the PacificAn evocative and incisive history of how profoundly the high-growth economy transformed postwar Japanese society and culture.
Japan, 1972 vividly captures feelings of loss, resistance, and disillusionment in a moment of cultural reckoning with the inescapability of mass consumerism. -- Eiko Maruko Siniawer, author of
Waste: Consuming Postwar JapanIgarashi pioneers a new paradigm for understanding the shift in cultural consciousness brought on by the spread of television. This book will interest scholars of all levels, from advanced undergraduates to senior scholars interested in modern Japanese history, cultural studies, social movements, media studies, and popular culture. -- James Dorsey, author of
Critical Aesthetics: Kobayashi Hideo, Modernity, and Wartime JapanA must-read for anyone interested in understanding an overlooked but important era. * Monumenta Nipponica *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Note on Personal Names
Introduction
Part I: Television1. Reflections on the Consuming Subject: The High-Growth Economy and Emergence of a New National Community
2. Circular Vision: The Metavisuality of Television
Part II: Travel3. Japan on the Move, a Family on the Run: Yamada Yōji’s Countervision of Contemporary Japan
4. Lost in Transition: Travel, Memory, and Nostalgia in Tsuge Yoshiharu’s Travel Manga
5. The Ethics of Witnessing: Kaikō Takeshi’s Vietnam War
Part III: Violence6. Heroes in Crisis: The Transformation of Yakuza Film
7. Jō & Hyūma: Kajiwara Ikki’s Manga Heroes and Their Violent Quest for Historical Agency
8. Dead Bodies and Living Guns: The United Red Army and Its Deadly Pursuit of Revolution
Epilogue: Legacies of 1972
Notes
Bibliography
Index
