Regionalizing Culture

This ambitious work provides a comprehensive, empirically grounded study of the production, circulation, and reception of Japanese popular culture in Asia. While many studies typically employ an interactive approach that focuses on the “meaning” of popular culture from an anthropological or cultural studies point of view, Regionalizing Culture emphasizes that the consumption side and contextual meaning of popular culture are not the only salient factors in accounting for its proliferation. The production side and organizational aspects are also important. In addition to presenting individual case studies, the book offers a big-picture view of the dramatic changes that have taken place in popular culture production and circulation in Asia over the past two decades. The author has gleaned information from primary sources in Japanese, English, and other languages; research visits to Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, Bangkok, and Seoul; as well as insights of people with firsthand knowledge from within the cultural industries. From this broad range of source, he develops an integrative political economic approach to popular culture. Regionalizing Culture offers a dialectical look at the organization of cultural production, primarily at the structure and control of cultural industries, interconnections between companies and production networks, and relations between the business sector and the state. It traces the rise of Japan as a popular culture powerhouse and the expansion of its cultural industries into Asian markets. It looks as well at the creation of markets for Japanese cultural commodities since the late 1980s, the industrial and normative impact that Japanese cultural industries have on the structure of the local cultural industries, and the wider implications these processes have for the Asian region. The growing popularity and importance of Japan’s popular culture will make this book a basic text for scholars and students of popular culture as well as for those interested in political economy, media and communication studies, Japanese-Asian relations, Asian studies, and international relations.

"This ambitious work provides a comprehensive, empirically grounded study of the production, circulation, and reception of Japanese popular culture in Asia. While many studies typically employ an interactive approach that focuses on the "meaning" of popular culture from an anthropological or cultural studies point of view, Regionalizing Culture emphasizes that the consumption side and contextual meaning of popular culture are not the only salient factors in accounting for its proliferation. The production side and organizational aspects are also important. In addition to presenting individual case studies, the book offers a big-picture view of the dramatic changes that have taken place in popular culture production and circulation in Asia over the past two decades. The author has gleaned information from primary sources in Japanese, English, and other languages; research visits to Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, Bangkok, and Seoul; as well as insights of people with firsthand knowledge from within the cultural industries. From this broad range of source, he develops an integrative political economic approach to popular culture. Regionalizing Culture offers a dialectical look at the organization of cultural production, primarily at the structure and control of cultural industries, interconnections between companies and production networks, and relations between the business sector and the state. It traces the rise of Japan as a popular culture powerhouse and the expansion of its cultural industries into Asian markets. It looks as well at the creation of markets for Japanese cultural commodities since the late 1980s, the industrial and normative impact that Japanese cultural industries have on the structure of the local cultural industries, and the wider implications these processes have for the Asian region."--Publisher's description.

Anime is a quintessentially Japanese form of animation consisting of both hand drawn and computer-generated imagery, and is often characterised by colourful graphics, vibrant characters, and fantastical themes. As an increasingly globalising expression of popular art and entertainment, and distributed through cinema, television, and over the internet, anime series and films have an enormous following, not only in Japan but also in Asia. This book provides a comprehensive survey of the historical development, industrial structure, and technical features of Japanese animation and of the overall dynamics of its globalisation in key contexts of the Asian region. Specific chapters cover anime’s production logics, its features as an ‘emotion industry’, and the involvement of a range of Asian countries in the production, consumption, and cultural impact of Japanese animation.

From a nuclear North Korea and territorial disputes in the East China Sea, to global climate change and Asia-Pacific free trade agreements, Japan is at the center of some of the most challenging issues that the world faces today. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, comprising contributions from the fields of politics, sociology, history, and gender studies, this handbook creates a comprehensive and innovative overview of the field, investigating the widening variety of interests, sometimes competing, that constitute Japanese foreign policy. Organized topically, it is divided into sections, including: • Japan’s evolving foreign policy landscape • Global environmental and sustainable development • International and national security • International political economy • International norms and civil society. Providing an evaluation of the key actors, institutions, and networks influencing Japanese foreign policy, the Routledge Handbook of Japanese Foreign Policy is an essential resource for students and scholars of Japanese and Asian Politics, International Relations, and Foreign Policy.

This book explores the roles cultural intermediaries play in East Asian cinema. Based on extensive original research, and viewing cinema from the social science perspective which emphasizes the social processes entailed in the cultural production, circulation, and consumption of films and the social relations they involve, rather than studying films as texts, the book examines issues such as the differences between individual and collective intermediaries, the diverse resources and services that they mediate, their social background and targeted audiences, and the political implications of their work. One important conclusion is that cultural intermediaries have been central to creating the whole "idea" of East Asian cinema.

This anthology analyzes societal and cultural aspects of modern Japan. It identifies the dynamic trend and undercurrent in Japan by addressing three key areas: modernization, internationalization, and memory and imagination. Using interdisciplinary and multi-language approaches, it discusses topics such as religion, ethnicity, civil society, art, public health, popular culture, war, identity and education. It is a valuable resource for scholars and graduate students with an interest in cutting-edge research analyses of Japanese / Asian studies.

The 2012 smash "Gangnam Style" by the Seoul-based rapper Psy capped the triumph of Hallyu , the Korean Wave of music, film, and other cultural forms that have become a worldwide sensation. Dal Yong Jin analyzes the social and technological trends that transformed South Korean entertainment from a mostly regional interest aimed at families into a global powerhouse geared toward tech-crazy youth. Blending analysis with insights from fans and industry insiders, Jin shows how Hallyu exploited a media landscape and dramatically changed with the 2008 emergence of smartphones and social media, designating this new Korean Wave as Hallyu 2.0. Hands-on government support, meanwhile, focused on creative industries as a significant part of the economy and turned intellectual property rights into a significant revenue source. Jin also delves into less-studied forms like animation and online games, the significance of social meaning in the development of local Korean popular culture, and the political economy of Korean popular culture and digital technologies in a global context.

Cosmopolitical Ecologies Across Asia offers a unique insight into the non-human and spiritual dimensions of environmental management in a changing world. This volume presents a comparative, place-based exploration of landscapes across Asia and the entities, practices and knowledges that inhabit them. Rather than treating sacred mountains, terrains and water sources as self-contained, esoteric religious phenomena, the authors consider them within critical 'cosmopolitical ecologies' framings in which non-human entities are engaged as actors in the socio-political arena. The chapters include case studies of healing springs recognized by governments, and sacred mountains that are addressed by heads of states and Communist Party cadres, or that speak to the faithful through spirit mediums in a politics of re-enchantment. Contributors explore the diverse ways in which non-human entities such as forest spirits, reindeer, mountains and Buddhist Masters of the Land are engaged by humans to navigate environmental change and address a range of ecological threats from large-scale mining to climate change. Cosmopolitical ecologies approaches encompass the healing power of topography as well as transformative intimacies with other-than-human beings such as sparrows within an Islamic eco-theological poetic setting. In this light the book observes dynamic and creative processes of cosmological innovation including the repurposing of ritual to address challenges such as the Covid-19 epidemic. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environment and society across disciplinary perspectives in general, and to anthropologists, human geographers, political ecologists, indigenous studies, area studies, environmental sciences and environmental humanities scholars in particular. The Introduction to this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.