Memory and forgetting: examining the treatment of traumatic historical memory in Grave of the Fireflies and The Wind Rises

Within Japanese popular culture, manga and anime have played a significant role in mediating responses to the outcome of the Pacific War. Miyazaki Hayao's (possibly) final feature-length film, The Wind Rises, has been an important addition to the preceding body of popular media ‘texts’ that raise such themes. This article aims to address the question of how far cinematic animation can reasonably be obliged to follow the kinds of historiographical concerns that inevitably arise when engaging with Japan's militarist past. To answer this question, considerable space is devoted to examining the historical context of what others have done in the post-war period and integrate that commentary into an analysis of how the works of Takahata Isao and Miyazaki Hayao fit amongst a succession of creative works that have been co-opted in the reshaping of historical perceptions of the Japanese at war amongst the Japanese themselves. This will also require some incidental discussion of methodological issues that arise when dealing with such cases as vehicles for understanding transformations in historical consciousness. Ultimately it is argued that Miyazaki does indeed make an important contribution to the commentary on the Japanese war experience, although it must, perhaps unavoidably, be on highly personal terms so far as The Wind Rises is concerned.     

Contesting soft power: Japanese popular culture in East and Southeast Asia

During the last two decades, Japanese popular culture industrieshave massively penetrated East Asia's markets and their productshave been widely disseminated and consumed. In this region,Japan has recently emerged as a cultural power, in additionto representing an industrial forerunner and model. The aimof this article is to explore the connection between popularculture and soft power by analyzing the activities of the Japanesepopular culture industries in East Asia, and by examining theimages their products disseminates. This study is based on exportdata, market surveys, and interviews with media industry personneland consumers in five cities in East Asia, arguing that theimpact of the Japanese popular culture lies in shaping thisregion's cultural markets and in disseminating new images ofJapan, but not in exerting local influence or in creating Japanese-dominated‘spheres of influence’. Received for publication December 18, 2006. Accepted for publication May 10, 2007.     

Thematics of counterterrorism: comparing 24 and MI-5/Spooks

This paper examines terrorism and counterterrorism as they are manifest in the popular culture of the USA and UK, focusing on two contemporary televisual works, namely, 24 and the series named MI-5 when aired in the US or Spooks when broadcast in the UK. I compare similarities and differences in the representation of agents (individuals) and agencies (organisations) involved in counterterrorism, and how such representations impact upon the two democratic polities. I explore themes of legitimisation, normalisation, and subversion in these works.     

Traumata on Screen: Cinematic Views from Southern Africa

ABSTRACT

This special themed issue of Communicatio explores the profound transformation of the political, cultural and intellectual contours of Africa from the vantage point of African film and grounded within the theoretical and epistemological discourses of trauma studies, memory studies, postcolonial studies, and decolonial studies. The contributors are particularly interested in exploring the relational flows between African cinematic works and the social and imaginary circumstances of their production, engagement and representation. Through an explication of the screen and viewing cultures from Africa, this themed issue wishes to make three contributions. The first is to the already established but on-going scholarly work of trauma studies, but specifically from an African, cinematic vantage point. The second contribution is to the theoretical body of work on African cinema (and in this context, “cinematic” includes both film/television). And the last contribution is to the emerging view that culture is a “two-way street,” to put it colloquially: a reversal of the dominant “Western” direction of culture, with an emphasis on different tones of social values and contexts, that have been marginalised in mainstream popular culture discourses.     

Recreating traditional music in postwar Japan: a prehistory of enka

This article examines how enka evolved from the earlier genre of kayōkyoku, looking at the musical markers of Japaneseness and considering issues of authenticity and originality in those earlier genres. The careers of composers Koga Masao and Hattori Ryōichi and singers Misora Hibari and Kasagi Shizuko show the development of a hybrid style of popular song both before and after the Pacific War, which would by the 1960s evolve into enka. As its core audience has aged, enka has become increasingly rigid and concerned with nostalgia for a ‘pure’ Japanese past, even though the music itself is quite distant from traditional musical forms. Analysis of three movie musicals from the late 1940s and early 1950s, Ginza kankan girl, Carmen comes home and Janken girls, also demonstrates the performance practices of popular music at the time, and the complex relationship between popular music and national identity.     

印度外交新态势：文化软实力的推进

约瑟夫·奈提出的“软实力”理论在世界政坛日益受到广泛的关注。印度将提升软实力作为新世纪外交的重要任务之一。印度文化软实力有着追求精神胜于物质、强调人与自然的和谐统一等传统价值理念和以民主、多元化、包容性为特征的政治价值观;流行文化亦内涵丰富并深具魅力。近年来,印度在南盟、周边、非洲拉美、欧美等不同层面不同领域因地制宜积极推进文化软实力。通过独具特色的文化软实力外交,印度有效地提升了国家形象,为自身的崛起营造了良好的发展环境。     

Uneven space of everyday modernity: the colonial logic of the suburb in Tanizaki Jun'ichiro's A Fool's Love

Tanizaki Jun'ichiro's A Fool's Love (1924–1925) has been widely studied as a representative text of the modern popular culture of the Taisho period. This article treats the work as a key text that reveals the colonial relations embedded in everyday modernity of Japan's interwar years, and examines the articulations of colonial relations in three registers of the text. It first investigates the protagonists' unrestrained embrace of cosmopolitan culture as a manifestation of Japan's ambiguous imperialist consciousness, shaped in the interstices between Western and Asian others. The second and third registers concern a particular kind of space dominant in the story: the modern suburb, which became a major symbol of Japan's modernity in the 1920s. In its subordinate relationship with the city, the suburb exemplifies colonial relations. The second register explored in the article is the overlap between the text's exoticism and suburban topography. A key scene on a resort beach is examined for its reference to Hawai'i and the setting's suburban nature in relation to Tokyo. The last register is the suppression of the story's suburban setting. The article analyzes the disappearance as a manifestation of the anxiety about the unevenness of capitalist development that the suburb represents.     

Suid-Afrikaanse “alternatiewe” rolprente en die Suid-Afrikaanse sosio-politieke werklikheid (Deel 2)

SUMMARY

Due to rapid social, economic and political change, many aspects of the traditional male sex role have been rendered increasingly dysfunctional and obsolete. This has led to a period of destabilisation in traditional gender roles and relationships, prompting sex role strain and a contemporary ‘crisis of masculinity’. This alleged crisis has given rise to renewed interest in the male sex role, providing the impetus for a new field of study in the eighties known as Men's Studies. This article examines the underlying assumptions of the so-called crisis of masculinity theory, and the factors that have precipitated this alleged crisis, namely the rise of feminism and the women's movement, the gay liberation movement, the declining emotional and mental health of men, and the rise of the mass media and popular culture.     

保护东南亚的文化多样性：东南亚的人类口头非物质遗产

东南亚地区是世界知名的人类文化多样性的宝库，在全球化时代，保护本土民俗文化、民族传统的传承和发展成为了紧迫的任务。21世纪，联合国教科文组织把东南亚地区的9项非物质文化列入了“人类口头非物质遗产代表作”名录。本文首先梳理了“口头非物质遗产”这一文化概念的定义，以及其中的社会话语内涵；然后把入选的9项代表作进行分类归纳，探讨它们的特点；最后分析了这些代表作在文化多样性保护中面临的问题和相应的保护行动。     

Japan's ikumen discourse: macro and micro perspectives on modern fatherhood

Ikumen is a buzzword that describes fathers who are actively involved in childrearing. This article focuses on the process in which the term ikumen and its meaning are diffused and investigates how soon-to-be fathers, themselves potential ikumen, view the ikumen discourse. Our endeavor is to grasp the transformation of father roles and the wider family in contemporary Japan through the public and individual engagement with the term ikumen. In this article, we combine macro and micro approaches to analyze ikumen as a discourse circulating in Japanese society and study the way in which the subjects of the discourse – soon-to-be fathers – view the ikumen discourse and interact with it. Utilizing an analysis of newspaper articles, we inquire into the process in which the concept ikumen became popular in Japan and the images that are affiliated with it. Through interviews, we then investigate how soon-to-be fathers as potential ikumen themselves perceive the term. Our results show the way in which an ikumen discourse emerged in Japan in opposition to the term kazoku sabisu, which since the 1970s describes the activities fathers engage in for the satisfaction of their families and fulfillment of social expectations. However, while the term is very popular in the media, the young families we interviewed see ikumen more skeptically. They both resist the popular discourse and adapt it into their construction of paternal identities through a differentiation between a strong versus a weak ikumen image.     

Mythological representation in popular culture today

Abstract

Mythologies that reside and operate within popular culture representations and the mass communications media reveal valuable insights into the way in which audiences are conditioned to interact with the social world. These myths require critical attention, and an understanding of contemporary myths should be established, as myths (being residents of the popular mass media) are decoded on a near constant basis by audiences.

This article addresses selected mythological representations in popular culture mass media, in order to examine the nature and societal functions of myths. Part of the importance of deconstructing contemporary myths is constituted by the myth's fictional content. While myths function to inform individuals of acceptable societal behaviour and contribute to an ordered social environment, they can also function negatively to represent negative connotative meanings about certain social groups or issues.

The importance of myth is therefore paramount, but the wealth of mythical nuances that could potentially receive critical attention is multitudinous. This article aims simply to uncover some insights into mass media mythological functionalities as a starting point for investigation.     

‘A MAD age’: Heibon Punch,student protest,the media and consumer society in Cold War Japan

Abstract

In the 1960s, Heibon Punch became one of the most popular weekly magazines in Japan. It was the first weekly magazine aimed at young men and I examine here a selection of articles from the late 1960s, a period of violent student protests and international uncertainty, to argue that the importance of Heibon Punch can be found in the creation of a commodified urban, male subjectivity. In the pages of Heibon Punch, the counter-cultures that were emerging along with the protest movements taking to the streets of the major cities, became firmly embedded within the ideological state promotion of a consumer culture. The government's explicit connection of national development to domestic consumption after the ANPO protests was tied to American military and economic power, and was simply one more assault on popular sovereignty. In the pages of Heibon Punch, the political nature of the social and economic transformations wrought by high-speed economic growth was effaced by the relentless consumerisation of individual subjectivity. I place the magazine, its editorial stance and mediatisation of subjectivity, within the broader emergence of an urban, middle-class culture of consumption that served to blur the contours of individual male subjectivity, and was, in many ways, a precursor of neo-liberal subjectivities that emerged full-blown both politically and economically in the 1970s and 1980s. By pressing its readers to decide for themselves how to negotiate the identities, ideas, and goods on offer in its pages, Heibon Punch shifted the focus of political subjectivity from the established social and political system to the core of the individual subject.     

World Cricket as a Postcolonial International Society: IR Meets the History of Sport

This article brings together the English School literature, postcolonial approaches to culture, the historical sociology of sport, and IR's own tentative engagement with sport to argue that world cricket constitutes a sui generis postcolonial international society in the sporting sector. The international society tradition within IR has been criticised for its failure to take sufficient note of the history of imperialism, and contributions from postcolonial scholarship can provide a necessary corrective here. However, the adoption of cricket in colonial societies involved a complex mixture of acceptance of and resistance to elements of British imperial culture, as has been documented in the work of some historical sociologists of sport and of philosophers of cricket such as C.L.R. James and Ashis Nandy. Contemporary world cricket is an arena in which the former imperial centre and a number of postcolonial states compete with each other within a framework of quasi-legal provisions (the Laws of Cricket), associated normative expectations (“The Spirit of Cricket”), and an international/transnational sporting organisation (the International Cricket Council). The concept of a geographically (but not regionally) limited, historically specific, and sectoral international society therefore still has some purchase here. This sphere is currently being shaped not by a clash between imperial values and postcolonial resistance, but by tension between the routinisation of international cricket and a shift of wealth and power within the game towards India. World cricket can be characterised as a sphere of non-violent sporting competition which may, perhaps, function as a source of international civility in relations between regions of the world influenced by British imperialism.     

Longing for home: The Tosa Diary's funa uta and Heian popular song

Less discussed than its other noteworthy characteristics is the degree to which Tosa nikki marks the ways that song permeated Heian culture. A particularly valuable example is provided by the funa uta or ‘boat songs’ that are transcribed in the diary, which are the only extant examples of this genre. Moreover, they represent a rare instance of popular songs from the period that are sung by commoners rather than professional performers or aristocratic amateurs, making them truly distinctive within the corpus of Heian song-texts that have survived. This article seeks to flesh out our understanding of the diary's funa uta through a close reading of their formal features as they relate to other types of Heian song and their content as it relates to their historical context. In doing so, it will present new hypotheses about their characteristics as a distinct genre whose signature refrains expressing a desire to return home operated on the level of meaning as much as musicality in binding together their lyrics, and whose concern with the forms of alienation that extreme mobility engender is particularly suited to shipborne travel and the sorts of exchanges between unrelated parties that it entailed.     

The Relevance of Détente to American Foreign Policy: The Case of Greece, 1967–1979

This article contributes to the historiography of détente from an original viewpoint, namely the relationship between the United States and Greece. It substantiates the argument that the supposed spirit of détente did not help lessen American realpolitik considerations concerning Greece and its surrounding geostrategic region; in fact, the more Cold War antagonisms intensified in the region, the more Greece was locked in the morass of superpower rivalries. This tendency was also, ironically, re-invigorated following Greece’s adoption of its own Ostpolitik largely thanks to the spirit of détente. This paradigm was reflected in the policy of the four successive American administrations between 1967 and 1979 during which détente had become the most popular notion in the Cold War lexicon.     

Science,society and the sea of fertility: new reproductive technologies in Japanese popular culture

Since the late twentieth century, assisted reproductive technologies have brought new challenges to our understanding of the family and gender relations. There are ever-widening gaps between medical practice, legal regulation and everyday understandings and practices. Some recent popular cultural texts in Japan have explored the issues raised by non-commercial surrogate motherhood. The background to these texts is a series of controversies concerning surrogacy and the use of assisted reproductive technologies and wider societal anxieties about family, reproduction and population management. In this article, I will focus on two novels by a medical practitioner and popular novelist who writes under the pseudonym Kaidō Takeru – Gene Waltz (Kaidō 2008) and Madonna Verde (Kaidō 2010) – and the associated film (ōtani 2011) and television series (NHK 2011). The fact that it was the national broadcaster Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK) that dramatised Madonna Verde suggests that the discussion of these issues was thought to have wide social and cultural resonance. I will place these texts in their social and cultural context with reference to medical, legal and popular discourses on new reproductive technologies in contemporary Japan. These new reproductive technologies have the potential to force a rethinking of masculinity, femininity, parenthood, family and gender relations. The popular texts also, however, draw on pre-existing ways of thinking about masculinity, femininity, marriage, reproduction and the relationships among science, ‘nature’ and society.     

Women,resistance, and development: a case study from Dangs,India

Studies of resistance often overlook the significance of gender. This article, based on the author's experience as a Project Officer with an NGO that supported the development work of a grassroots organisation, the Gram Vikas Mandali Association Trust, describes the historical context of everyday resistance by village women against the Forest Department in western India. The article concludes with an attempt to understand why women were marginalised in more recent incidents of organised popular resistance, and what this tells us both about the nature of resistance to the state, and the nature of women's involvement in it.     

From car bombs to logic bombs: The growing threat from information terrorism

The vulnerability of the critical infrastructure has led to increasing concern that it will be the target of terrorist attacks. This article explores definitional aspects of information terrorism and identifies two groups likely to find information terrorism attractive: conventional terrorist groups and information culture groups. As computer sophisticated youth move into the ranks of conventional terrorist groups, the groups will increase their reliance on computer technology, and information terrorism will be incorporated into a hybrid tactical repertoire. Information culture groups, however, confine their attacks to cyberspace. In contrast to the powerful group dynamics of the traditional underground terrorist group, networked groups, particularly information culture terrorists, may only be in contact electronically, and are subject to a radically different group psychology, virtual group dynamics, that significantly affects their decision making and risk taking, and has dangerous security implications.