Japan Pop!: Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture

by Timothy J. Craig (Editor)

This book looks at various forms of Japanese popular culture: pop song, jazz, enka (a popular ballad genre of music), karaoke, comics, animated cartoons, video games, television dramas, films, and "idols," teenage singers and actors. As pop culture not only entertains but is also a product and reflection of society, the book is also about Japan, about Japan's similarities and differences with the rest of the world, and about how Japan is changing. Relations between the sexes, shifting gender roles; social and family life conditions; Japan's cultural identity; and views on love, work, duty, dreams, war and peace, good and evil, beauty and ugliness, life and death--all of these are cast in a revealing light by Japanese pop culture as captured in this book.

The authors are all specialists in their subjects, and each chapter is academically sound, intriguing, and accessibly written. In addition to describing and analyzing the authors also give the reader a direct taste of Japan's pop culture via the presentation of story plots, character profiles, song lyrics, manga (comics) samples, photographs, and other visuals, and the thoughts and words of Japan pop's artists, creators, and fans. This book is visually enhanced by 32 pages of magna plus 50 additional photos, illustrations, and shorter comic samples.

Genres: Nonfiction, Japan, History, Music, Japanese Literature, Asia

358 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2000

About the author

Tim Craig grew up in Pendleton, Indiana, went to Wabash College, and washed up on Japan's shores in search of adventure at the age of 23. He got hooked, and has split the many years since then among Japan, the US, and Canada. He is now happily settled in Ashiya, Japan, between Osaka and Kobe.

Tim has 20-plus years’ teaching and research experience in Canadian and Japanese business schools, and is founder and chief editor of BlueSky Academic Services (www.blueskyacademic.net). In addition to enjoying Japanese pop culture and cheering for the Orix Buffaloes baseball team, Tim is rhythm guitarist and lead singer for the Osaka-based Zen Brothers band.

Reviews

[RyuKatayama08 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Timothy J. Craig's exploration of modern Japanese culture was an interesting read as being Japanese myself, I wanted to see how this book captured the culture I grew up in. Turns out, he did a great job at capturing different aspects of Japanese culture and even some that I never really knew. The Japanese Jazz community and culture turns out to exist for a long time and being recently involved in it, it was a pleasant surprise. It also captured music, animation, games, and books that became popular from the Showa period and if anyone is looking for a book to read about Japanese culture, this is a great place to start from.

[Holly Interlandi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Timothy Craig's introduction does a better job at explaining why I love Japanese music than I ever could.

[Giulia · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Overall very interesting, if a bit redundant at times.

[Michael]

Did you know the Japanese Imperial Family has a goverment agency tasked with dealing with the Imperial Family? The "Kunaicho" work as a secret service/handlers for the Imperial Family. In the good old Meiji period, the Kunaicho worked as a secret police as well, stuffing out any criticisms made of the Imperial Family.

"Japan Pop!" is a smattering of academic-lite articles. The editor's introduction paints the book as such:
"My aim has been to create a book that is of interest to a broad audience-fans as well as scholars, students as well as professors-anyone at all with an interest in Japan and its popular culture. For a few of these chapters this has meant editing material to make it more broadly accessible-explaining phenomena and concepts that nonspecialists may be unfamiliar with and replacing academic terminology with more ordinary phrasing, though never 'dumbing down' the content."

The extent of the "dumbing down" isn't fully known but its effects are felt. Most essays read like upper level undergraduate essays. A fair chunk of most articles is dedicated to describing the anime/manga/song/group/show to the reader and the payoff for all that descriptive real estate is not really felt. The book reads as one that can be skimmed rather than closely read. The two articles worth close reading: "Can Japanese Sing the Blues" and "A New Kind of Royalty" work as "Blues" makes some interesting arguments about the authenticity of Jazz and "Royalty" for its interesting history of the Japanese Govt.'s bringing of the Imperial family to celebrity status in the 1950s (see Kunaicho above).

Those familiar with Japanese pop culture won't be surprised by any argument or revelation made and those new won't really have much meat to chew on with those revelations/arguments. An article discussing Japanese Romanticism in anime and manga describes the "Final Fantasy" series and why its an example of Japanese Romanticism (in short, because of the music, character's expressions, and the world of sword fights mixed with technology). The little blurb describes the series and leaves it at that. You'll find yourself asking "so what?" to a lot of these article's examples. The little blurb about "Final Fantasy" left me wondering what makes the series a good example of Japanese Romanticism. The article closes with the two lines: "It is hard to maintain something divine in this world; it is too easy to forget. Anime serves to remind" which the author uses to sum up some argument that anime reveals the secret heart of Japanese people's inner soul or feelings or something like that.

The end result feels like you're in a class with a teacher that just reads the powerpoint out loud to you. You'll get the point the first time around and be told the same point again and again. You can dig out some good details and interesting historical facts from a lot of the book but the book is more of a skim than a read.

[Xarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the articles in this book to be really informing. I've seen the Japanese culture in two distinctly different sides: the solemn and hardworking side and the lighthearted and imaginative side. This book helped me understand these two contradictions.

I was surprised how a number of the articles discussed Western (the US, Europe, etc.) views on Japanese pop culture: “It’s different (i.e. weird).” From the pop music I’ve heard, to the manga and anime, to the novels, I’ve never felt that it was weird. It’s been different than what I’ve heard/seen/read, but never to the point I’ve turned away from it. In fact, I find a lot of Japanese art (whether popular or not) to be quite interesting and quite refreshing.

[Ta0paipai · Rating 3 out of 5]

Japan Pop! presents a mixed bag of articles regarding Japanese culture. Highlights include a deep examination of "authenticity" and Japanese jazz, an article on the wedding and moralization of the Japanese emperor, and a look at Japanese households through the series Sazae-san, Chibi-Maruko-Chan and Crayon Shin-Chan. However, sections on Sailor Moon and Power Rangers prove less thoroughly researched, dated and therefore pale in comparison. However, the good outshine the rest and Japan Pop! is still worth a look for any Japanese cultural connoisseur.