Japanese media at the beginning of the 21st century : consuming the past

Bibliographic Information

Japanese media at the beginning of the 21st century : consuming the past

Katsuyuki Hidaka

(RoutledgeCurzon contemporary Japan series, 67)

Routledge, 2017

  • : [pbk.]

Other Title

Shōwa nosutalujia to wa nanika?

昭和ノスタルジアとは何か

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Note

Translation of the greater part of the Japanese book "Shōwa nosutalujia to wa nanika?" (What is Shōwa nostalgia?), published in 2014

Includes bibliographical references (p. [170]-183) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Hailed by Japanese critics as a milestone in the study of contemporary Japanese media, this book explores the contemporary 'boom' in Japanese media representations of the recent past. Recent years have seen the production of an unprecedented number of films, animation, manga, and television programmes representing a deeply nostalgic longing for the Japanese heyday of high economic growth in the 1960s and occasionally the 1970s known in Japan as the Showa '30s and '40s. Hidaka provides a comprehensive account of an under researched contemporary Japanese media phenomenon by exploring why this nostalgia has been sparked at this particular historical juncture and how that period is represented in the Japanese media today. The book accomplishes this through a detailed textual and narrative analysis of representative films and television programmes, in relation to their social and cultural context. While these nostalgic media renderings are seen by many critics as innocuous, this study demonstrates that they do not show a simple yearning for the period, but reflects a growing discontent with Japanese post-war society. In this regard, this book concludes that the current nostalgia wave is a critical reaction to the recent past as it seeks to revise historiography through a processes of introspection within popular conceptions of the meta narrative of 'nostalgia'. Winner of the Japan Communication Association 2015 Outstanding Book Award.

Table of Contents

1. List of Figures 2. Acknowledgements 3. Notes on Japanese Names and the Romanization of Japanese Words 4. Introduction: Myths about Nostalgia 5. Chapter 1 - Background 6. Chapter 2 - Yearning for Yesterday: Is Modernity an Unfinished Project?-Always: Sunset on Third Street and Tokyo Tower: Mom and Me, and Sometimes Dad 7. Chapter 3 - Technology and Nostalgia-Project X: Challengers and Hula Girls 8. Chapter 4 - Conflict between Ideal Self and Real Self-Twentieth Century Boys and Crayon Shin-chan: The Storm Called 'The Adult Empire Strikes Back' 9. Conclusions 10. Filmography 11. Bibliography

by "Nielsen BookData"

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