Abstract: Tokyo/Pop Culture/Anime

I think for this paper I want to look at how Japan and Japanese culture in Western media is often presented in opposition to American/Western culture and is shown in ways that highlight the extreme differences between the Japanese and foreigners. Encounters with Japan are experienced by protagonists with what I see as feelings of culture shock, ethnocentrism or isolation. Japanese pop culture is portrayed as inauthentic, shallow and strange, but the redemptive qualities of traditional culture are usually nothing more than a spectacle (watching a Shinto ceremony, arranging Ikebana without understanding the underlying principles.) However, I feel like this is something Japanese pop culture, specifically anime, touches on as well: the superficiality and strange consumer driven culture that it is a part of that can be pretty isolating.

I’d like to investigate Japanese pop culture as it is represented in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation and then compare it to the anime series Nana, looking at how Japanese culture (through the lack of understanding and culture shock as seen in Lost in Translation and participation in the culture as seen in Nana through its main characters lives and the medium itself) is set up as sort of an alienating experience and why that is. I realize that what I’ve proposed is extremely broad/vague and that I don’t have a clear argument, but I’m hoping to narrow my research down in the next few days when I reexamine the texts.

Although one Translation is an American product and Nana is Japanese, I think they share some relevant themes about how people connect to the world around and would be interesting to compare.A significant portion of the paper will be textual analyses of Translation and Nana where I will focus on the ways the texts engage with Japanese pop culture and their representations of pop culture. I also plan on giving background on anime (and manga) and its role in Japanese society (which is pretty pervasive.)

I will be looking at Henry Jenkin’s “Pop Cosmopolitan” as well as the Ritzer and Liska essay “McDisneyization and Post-Tourism.” I think there is a link between critiques of people who consume Japanese pop culture and do not engage with the “authentic folk culture” of Japan and critiques of “post tourism” and the idea of “fake” experiences being preferred over “real” experiences. I will also be looking at Susan Napier’s work. One essay I have in mind is “ ‘Excuse Me, Who Are You?’ Performance, the Gaze and the Females in the Works of Kon Satoshi” to examine the female protagonists in Nana (and possibly in Lost in Translation) but also to examine how anime can be very self-conscious and aware of the images it creates and in doing so, critiques itself. Essentially, I think my paper will be looking at critiques of pop cultural (is this a word?) consumption that come from within and outside the culture.