Cover
title: Japan Pop! : Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture
author: Craig, Timothy J.
publisher: ME Sharpe, Inc.
isbn10 | asin: 0765605600
print isbn13: 9780765605603
ebook isbn13: 9780585383316
language: English
subject Popular culture Japan, Japan Civilization 1945-
publication date: 2000
lcc: DS822.5.J386 2000eb
ddc: 952.04
subject: Popular culture Japan, Japan Civilization 1945-
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JAPAN POP!
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JAPAN POP!
Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture
Timothy J. Craig, Editor
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An East Gate Book
Copyright © 2000 by M. E. Sharpe, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher, M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 80
Business Park Drive, Armonk, New York 10504.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Japan pop! : inside the world of Japanese popular culture / edited by Timothy J. Craig
p. cm.
"An East gate book"
Includes bibliographical references and index.

Mark Wheeler MacWilliams
109
7. The Romantic, Passionate Japanese in Anime: A Look at the Hidden Japanese Soul
Eri Izawa
138
8. Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen): Volume 8, pages 17–31
Keiji Nakazawa
154
Page vi
9. Gender Roles and Girls' Comics in Japan: The Girls and Guys of Club
Maia Tsurumi
171
10. From Sazae-san to Crayon Shin-chan: Family Anime, Social Change, and Nostalgia in Japan
William Lee
186
Part III: Television and Film
11. New Role Models for Men and Women? Gender in Japanese TV Dramas
Hilaria M. Gössmann
207
12. A New Kind of Royalty: The Imperial Family and the Media in Postwar Japan
Jayson Chun
222
13. Into the Heartland with Tora-san
Mark Schilling
245
Part IV: Japanese Popular Culture Abroad
14. Sailor Moon: Japanese Superheroes for Global Girls
Anne Allison
259
15. Beauty Fighter "Sailor Chemist"

In Japan, people's names are usually written with the family name first and the given name last. However, as this book is written not just for Japan
specialists but for a more general audience as well, I have listed Japanese names in the usual English order: given name first and family name last.
Japanese words are generally italicized (e.g., yume, namida). An exception is made for words which are used repeatedly in a chapter; such words
are italicized and defined the first time they are used (e.g., enka, anime), and thereafter printed in roman type (enka, anime). A "long sign"
(macron) over a vowel in a Japanese name or word indicates that the sound of the vowel is sustained; thus the difference in pronunciation between
koi (love) and (an act, kind intentions, or goodwill).
In Japanese titles that include "borrowed" English words, I have generally used the standard English spellings of those words rather than
phoneticizing them; thus "Diamonds" instead of Daiamondo and Club rather than Kurabu.
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Page 1
JAPAN POP!
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1
Introduction
Tim Craig
"Where . . . Where am I? I know I must have drowned, but. . . ."
You have died. Akanemaru has ceased to exist. His body has decayed and dissolved into the sea. . . . Look around you. . . .
"WHAT?!! What is this?! What am I?!"
You are now a microscopic sea creature. You are nothing more than a miserable little speck. The instant your human form ceased to exist, you
were reborn.
"But WHY?! Why have I changed? What have I done to deserve this?"
You didn't do anything wrong. . . . This was simply your destiny—to become something different, when your life as a human ended. . . .
"NO!! I'm a man!! And I want to live like one!! . . . Oh No! Something huge is coming! I'm going to be swallowed!"
—From Phoenix, by Osamu Tezuka1
***
Hey you say you were a butterfly
I see you in a peaceful field

Recent Japanese films have won top awards at the Cannes and Vienna Film Festivals, while Japan's TV dramas and variety shows are in high
demand throughout Asia. One Hong Kong shop routinely sells fifty video compact discs of a single Japanese TV drama per day, to customers who
want to see the latest episodes as soon as possible.3 Japanese pop singers perform to packed venues in Hong Kong and mainland China, top
"Canto-pop" (Hong Kong pop music) and other Asian recording artists do cover versions of hit Japanese pop songs, and the techno-pop sound of
Japanese music tycoon Tetsuya Komuro provides the sound track for major Hollywood movies. Dreams Come True vocalist Miwa Yoshida graces
the cover of Time magazine, and the all-girl rock group Knife has a strong alternative following in the United States. In Taiwan and Hong
Kong, teenagers take their fashion cues from the clothes of Japanese "idol" singers and TV stars and from Japanese teen magazines such as
Non-No. Gossipy stories about Japanese entertainers such as Takuya Kimura and Noriko Sakai fill local newspapers.4 Among the Nintendo and
PlayStation set, which encompasses most of the school-age population in many countries, Japanese video games such as Street Fighter, Tekken,
and Final Fantasy rule the roost. Karaoke is a household word worldwide, and the parade out of Japan of hit pop culture products like Hello Kitty
goods, Tamagotchi virtual pets, and Pokémon toys is unending. Even in South Korea, where anti-Japan sentiment thrives as a result of Japan's
1910–1945 colonial rule of the Korean peninsula, demand for Japan pop is strong among the younger generation. Japanese music, comics, and
fashion magazines commonly circulate "underground" despite a decades-long ban on the importation of Japanese cultural products, while popular
manga such as Slam Dunk, which set off a basketball craze in South Korea, are translated into Korean, with the names and places changed so
that they can be imported legally.5
In short, Japan pop is ubiquitous, hot, and increasingly influential. Once routinely derided as a one-dimensional power, a heavyweight in the
production and export of the "hard" of automobiles, electronics, and other manufactured goods but a nobody in terms of the "soft" of cultural
products and influence, Japan now contributes not just to our material lives, but to our everyday cultural lives as well.
Why Japan Pop Is Hot
One sign of the level of interest in Japan's pop culture was a conference on the topic held in Victoria, Canada, by the University of Victoria Cen-
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tre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives in 1997. Launched with a one-page announcement sent to a few Japan specialists and posted on the Internet, the
conference drew a strong international response and evolved into a three-day event featuring over forty presentations by scholars, writers,
practitioners, and fans from four continents on Japanese pop music, comics and animation, TV dramas and commercials, movies, stand-up
comedy, popular literature, and sumo wrestling, as well as issues such as social change, women's roles, and the spread and appeal of Japanese
pop culture overseas.6 In the audience, scholars from Harvard, Stanford, and Tokyo Universities, applying an academic lens to analyze Japanese
society through its popular culture, rubbed shoulders with purple-haired, karaoke-singing otaku (hard-core aficionados) conversant with the latest
pop music groups and manga artists. As diverse a group as one is likely to find at a university conference, all brought valid viewpoints to the subject
and shared both a deep enthusiasm for Japan's popular culture and an appreciation of its growing influence.
The Victoria conference received considerable media coverage, and as its organizer, I found myself being asked the same questions over and

Providing vitality to this artistic skill is a strong strain of innovativeness and creativity which is evident in Japan's more established arts but which
bursts forth even more strongly in today's pop world of television, fash-
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Figure 1.1 "The Great Wave at Kanagawa," by Hokusai
ion, pop music, comedy, video games, and manga, where the weight of tradition is less heavy. One source of this is the cross-fertilization between
old and new, native and foreign, one genre and another, which is a hallmark of Japanese culture. Many observers have noted Japan's propensity to
"borrow" foreign things—Chinese characters, English words, capitalism, democracy, the transistor, curry—and to tinker with them, merging them
with native or other elements so that they become something new and often quite distinct from the original.
Take manga, for instance. Led by Osamu Tezuka, the man known in Japan as the "god of comics," Japanese comic artists have taken a physical
form imported from the West, combined it with a centuries-old Japanese tradition of narrative art and illustrated humor, and added important
innovations of their own to create what amounts to a totally new genre, one that manga scholar Frederik Schodt calls a "full-fledged expressive
medium, on a par with novels and films."10 Among the features that make manga richer and more interesting than the American comics whose
form they borrowed are their length, which allows for more complex storytelling and deeper character development; the "cinematic" drawing style
that Tezuka developed, which enables artists to impart greater visual impact and emotional depth to their stories; and the incredible
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Figure 1.2 From Volume 1, "Reimeihen" (Dawn), of Osamu Tezuka's Hi no Tori ("Phoenix")
diversity of manga in art styles, subject matter, and target audience. Dozens of manga works enjoy the status of artistic and literary classics,
including Tezuka masterpieces such as Hi no Tori (Phoenix), a 3,000-page tour de force that spans distant past and far future; leaps between
earth and outer space; explodes myths of Japanese history; and dramatically explores the meaning of love, the relationship between mankind and
technology, and man's foolish quest for everlasting life. Another is Keiji Nakazawa's Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen), a powerful semi-
autobiographical portrayal of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima which is shocking in its graphic realism, yet also warm, comical, and ultimately
inspirational thanks to the strength, humanity, and indomitable spirit of the war orphans who are its main characters. Aoki's Naniwa
(Osaka Financiers), the story of a good-hearted man in the ugly business of money lending, is both a primer on finance and a treatment of good
and evil reminiscent of Leo Tolstoy's
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Figure 1.3 Ukiyo-e kabuki actor, by Sharaku
Crime and Punishment, a work that influenced the author.11 Children's series such as Doraemon and Dragon Ball are inventive and humorous,
and provide dreams and wisdom to young readers the world over. This list could go on and on.12
Quality and innovation mark other forms of Japan pop as well. In music, pop and rock groups like Southern All Stars and Shang Shang Typhoon
draw upon a variety of instruments, languages, singing styles, and musical traditions to create sounds that are unique, fresh, and universally

encourages the girlfriend of a
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customer who cannot repay his loan to work as a prostitute to cover her boyfriend's debt. Scenes such as this can be disturbing, not least to
Haibara, who is tormented by what he has done. But they are part of life and are neither denied nor hidden, perhaps with the thought that
knowledge of the world as it is is not such a bad thing, and may in fact be necessary if one is to cope successfully with life's difficulties, or to
endeavor to make the world a better place. Kazuhiko Torishima, editor of Japan's best-selling manga magazine Jump (Boys' Jump), states:
"I feel sorry for U.S. kids, who live in an adult-filtered Disney world."15
A second notable characteristic of Japan pop content is a strong strain of idealism, innocence, and what the Japanese call roman (from the word
"romance"): dreams, daring adventure, striving to achieve great things.16 On this point there is a rather sharp contrast with current American pop
culture, with its heavy doses of cynicism, "attitude," and putting people down.17 Japan pop's positive, idealistic bent pervades numerous comics,
cartoons, TV dramas, and even video games. These frequently have children or teenagers as central characters; are suffused with an atmosphere
of romance and innocent wonder; and glorify the imagery of youth and dreams of heroic adventure, passionate love, and eternal struggle and
longing. Jump bases its editorial policy on a survey that asked young readers to name the word that warmed their hearts most, the thing they
felt most important, and the thing that made them the happiest. The answers were (friendship), doryoku (effort), and (victory), and these
became the magazine's criteria for selecting stories.18
A third feature of Japan's popular culture is its closeness to the ordinary, everyday lives of its audience. American comic artist Brian Stelfreeze has
said, "Comics in the United States have become such a caricature. You have to have incredible people doing incredible things, but in Japan it
seems like the most popular comics are the comics of normal people doing normal things." 19 Part of the normalcy is that the characters that
populate Japan's manga, anime, and TV dramas display plenty of character flaws and weaknesses along with their strengths and good points.
Nobita and Serena, the central characters of Doraemon and Sailor Moon, are lazy, hopeless at sports, poor at school, frustrated in love, and
constantly made fun of by their pet cats. They possess positive traits as well—both are occasionally strong, clever, and successful—but their
weaker points are perhaps more important, not just as a source of humor but in making them human, and thus easy for their readers and viewers to
identify with. Many Japanese artists also identify closely with
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their audience. On the key to writing a successful children's manga, Doraemon creator Hiroshi Fujimoto says, "You can't draw children's comics
from the perspective of adults and try to create what you think the children will like. You have to create something you really enjoy, that they also
happen to enjoy. You have to be at their eye-level, in other words, with their perspective. I guess that I have a bit of the child in me that refuses to
grow up, because I'm extraordinarily lucky in that what I like to draw, they like too."20 A comparison between Doraemon and the popular American
cartoon series The Simpsons is illustrative. Like Doraemon, The Simpsons features children as main characters and is clever and entertaining;
but with its cerebral humor and frequent pop references, The Simpsons has a distinctly adult feel, and is more something to laugh at from a