all books all the time

Japan Pop!: Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture - Edited by Timothy J. Craig. This is a generally pleasing overview of Japanese cultural studies -- I think (though I haven't checked; I'm just going by the feel of the book) largely by Western, if not US, scholars. It was published in 2000 & I'd be really curious as to how some of the topics discussed have morphed since then; for example, I was interested in James Stanslaw's article on how female pop stars use English (or not) to assert certain things about themselves & their image, & I'd imagine this has developed much further in the last 11 years.

I also liked William Lee's piece talking about how popular TV shows (most recently -- & that's not v. recent anymore -- Crayon Shin-chan) use nostalgia about a certain type of family to draw in viewers, especially for shows that may have already been airing for decades & that rely on the appeal of a certain mythic timeless good-old-days social structure. One article by Anne Allison about Sailor Moon & her reception in the US retreads old ground for me (though it probably wasn't old when the book was published... ) about localization of Japanese anime, but also points out that part of the reason Sailor Moon wasn't nearly as popular in the US was because kids found her annoyingly "girly" for a superhero. For all those who posit the US as feminist light years ahead of other countries (including Japan), well, yes, look at that: US kids rejecting someone for trying to be both a superhero & feminine. Hm.

Other stuff I liked: Christine Yano talking about the continuing appeal of enka; Hiro R. Shimatachi on karaoke-induced culture clashes (though again, this is something I suspect has changed a lot since publication); & Hiroshi Aoyagi on pop idols as tools for pan-Asian identity. Anyway: a nice overview, and now I have to see what's been written in English more recently on some of these same subjects.

Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet - Edited by Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse. ( Read more... )

Global Goes Local: Popular Culture in Asia - Edited by Timothy J. Craig and Richard King. ( Read more... )

Wizard's Holiday - Diane Duane. ( Read more... )

Wizards at War - Diane Duane. ( Read more... )

The Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Reader - Edited by Kuan-Hsing Chen and Chua Beng Huat. This is a dense, 600-page academic anthology & as such took me ages to work through. Very much worth it, though, to read cultural studies stuff about Asia by Asians living in Asia; there just isn't enough exposure for this sort of writing in the West yet. Particularly important to me was that the anthology focused on how countries & cultures relate to each other; while the West is still referred to within the texts, to some degree, it's not the main point for comparison.

The most interesting articles to me tended to focus on pop culture, for example how two stars (one Taiwanese, one Korean) faced significant setbacks in their careers because they didn't fulfill cultural expectations about stars being patriotic. Another article discusses how one would frame an East Asian popular culture; how do Japanese or Korean dramas, for example, fare in other East Asian nations? How do alternative bands in Hong Kong, & the emotional energies they create, tie in with political unrest (even when the bands themselves may be largely apolitical)? How was World Cup fandom in Korea gendered & why was women's increased participation as fans such a big deal? There were also articles on peace activism & social movements more generally, state violence, colonialism & war.

Though there were articles covering a fair number of Asian countries in total, I did feel like the book was still rather lopsided in what countries and cultures were most represented. Perhaps a future anthology could help rectify that. Overall a tough but important read; some of the pieces were too academic in tone for my taste but that's usual with any anthology of this type. I really wished I had friends around who were reading this with me to discuss things with!