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TOP PAPERS FROM YOUR NEWSFEED |
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In Praise of the "Coffin": Japanese Capsule Hotel and Creative Urban Sociality”
This is a chapter from the book Politics and Aesthetics of Creativity: City, Culture and Space in East Asia, edited by Lu Pan, Dixon Heung Wah Wong & Karin Ling-fung Chau, published by Bridge21 Press (Piscataway, NJ) in 2015. In this chapter, I discuss the role of capsule hotels in the Japanese context, showing that Japanese urbanites don't just use capsule hotels as places to sleep as we tend to see this particular phenomenon as being entirely frugal outside of Japan, but also as places to socialize, to be alone, and to be themselves. Based on multiple-year ethnography, this research...
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How to Diagnose an Invisible Epidemic
Introduction to the book Saitō Tamaki, _Hikikomori: Adolescence without End_, translated by Jeffrey Angles (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013).
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Wild Grass on the Riverbank (Hiromi Itō)
Alternating between the California desert and the overgrown landscapes of her native Japan, this book-length, narrative poem by Japan's foremost feminist poet, Hiromi Itō, tracks the life of a group of children lead back and forth across the Pacific by their poet mother. This book plunges readings into dreamlike landscapes of volatile proliferation--a world where nothing is clear cut and where the boundaries of native/foreign, indigenous/migrant, plant/animal, human/inhuman, male/female, alive/dead, all disappear. At once grotesque and vertiginous, this masterpiece--one of the first...
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SEALDs (Students Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy): Research Note on Contemporary Youth Politics in Japan
Recently, young people have been out on the Tokyo streets and in the mass media in opposition to Prime Minister Abe’s efforts to pass the State Secrecy Acts, the “reinterpretation” of Article 9 of the Constitutions and the Security Bills. None have garnered more interest or exerted more influence than SEALDs, Students Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy. They are worthy of attention for various reasons, but we should note at the start they are the first college-based social movement in 50 years to have drawn such attention in their efforts to directly address the Japanese government’s...
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Who Will Play Terebi Gēmu When No Japanese Children Remain? Distanced Engagement in Atlus’ Catherine
This article examines the Japanese action puzzle game Catherine, arguing that the game presents a social narrative that comments on Japan’s pressing issue of a declining birthrate and aging population. It also theorizes a strategy for player involvement based on ‘‘distanced’’ (self-reflexive and meta) engagement. Through an examination of the narrative, characters, and gameplay, supplemented with national fertility survey data from Japan, the article argues that Catherine subverts classic game tropes and fosters player engagement with a socially relevant diegesis. Simultaneously, the unique...
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