Workshop on Japanese Popular Culture at Sophia University in Tokyo
Sophia University, Institute of Comparative Culture (ICC) presents
Studies of Japanese Popular Culture:
Examining the State of the Art and the Nature of the Gap with Miyadai Shinji and Azuma Hiroki
Sophia University, Yotsuya Campus
Bldg. #10, Room 301
July 11, 2009, 1pm-3pm
Map: http://www.fla.sophia.ac.jp/about/location.html
Convener: KONO Shion (Sophia University) s-kono@sophia.ac.jp
Organizer: David SLATER (Sophia University) d-slater@sophia.ac.jp
Speakers:
AZUMA Hiroki (Tokyo Institute of Technology)
MIYADAI Shinji (Tokyo Metropolitan University)
Anne ALLISON (Duke University)
Kukhee CHOO (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)
Steve Clark RIDGELY (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Dixon WONG Heung Wah (University of Hong Kong)
Tomiko YODA (Duke University)
Event will be conducted in English
Open to all
Free of charge
For more information please contact either Kono or Slater, or see the
conference page on ICC website http://icc.fla.sophia.ac.jp/index2.htm.
If you are interested in attending, please RSVP by July 6th:
jpc.sophia@gmail.com
Miyadai Shinji and Azuma Hiroki are probably the two most prominent scholars
in Japanese popular culture and subcultural studies in Japan. Their talks
will orient our event in a historical situation and contemporary review of
the production and consumption of Japanese Popular Culture.
In the past decade, the consumption of Japanese pop culture has skyrocketed
around the world, as anime, manga, and fashion from Japan have become a
commercial and cultural force in East Asia, North America, and Europe. The
ubiquity of Japanese pop culture is also bringing about transformations,
translations, and interplay of modes of consumption in pop culture across
the world, as attested by the examples of cosplay and Pokemon.
Despite its popularity, the critical discourses on Japanese pop culture in
Japanese and in English have rarely crossed paths during this period of
increasing popularity. Since the 1990s, Japanese critics has produced a rich
and sophisticated discourse on subculture that is also highly embedded in
local theoretical and political contexts. Meanwhile, English-language
studies of Japanese pop culture have been locked in US/UK cultural studies
theory, and have rarely engaged Japanese approaches. The result is an almost
complete lack of communication or even familiarity of the most immediate
scholarly context of Japanese popular culture.
Some of you might have seen Miyadai, Azuma and Kono in a Featured Session at
the Association of Asian Studies Conference in March 2009, “Post-Bubble
Culture and Theory: The Real Estate for Critique after Economic Collapse.”
This is the second in a series of events designed to develop these themes
and work toward a reorientation of research agenda for the future.
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Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture Office
7-1 Kioicho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-8554, JAPAN
TEL: +81-(0)3-3238-4082
FAX: +81-(0)3-3238-4081
Email: diricc(at)sophia.ac.jp
Web page: http://www.fla.sophia.ac.jp/icc/index.htm
