The End of Cool Japan: Ethical, Legal, and Cultural

Challenges to Japanese Popular Culture ed. by Mark McLelland

(review)

Björn-Ole Kamm

The Journal of Japanese Studies, Volume 45, Number 1, Winter 2019, pp.
129-134 (Review)

Published by Society for Japanese Studies

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jjs.2019.0007

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/717653

Access provided by Lunds universitet (7 Mar 2019 03:07 GMT)

 Review Section 129

and the eccentric identities and histories generated there could provide use-
ful context for the discussion of Tokyo and help to make the capital more
of a problem.
Given the chapters’ brevity (eight over 178 pages), the introduction might
have been the best place to provide this context. A longer introduction could
also have positioned the collection within its theoretical frameworks. The
individual essays engage to varying degrees with spatial analysis and mem-
ory studies but lack the space to explore them critically. The important work
produced in Japanese memory studies over the last 20 years, much of it
concerned with war memory, receives some attention with Thornbury’s dis-
cussion of Igarashi and references by Pendleton to Lisa Yoneyama’s work,
but I am curious to know how more recent research by scholars such as
Philip Seaton could contribute to the discussion of war memory that devel-
ops across several essays.
Overall, Tokyo does a great service by offering new insights to familiar
texts and introducing other important work to a wider audience. It dem-
onstrates the great value of close reading, by outlining the broad spatial
dynamics of the city—center and periphery, yamanote and shitamachi, the
network of waterways and the bay—and then filling in a wealth of street-
level detail that contributes enormously to our understanding of these em-
phatically place-based texts. This level of detail makes even a mega-city
such as Tokyo feel local and personal, revealing how, as Schulz writes,
“transformations of urban space, topography, and culture” can function as
“pivotal moments of (auto)biographical identity” (p. 71). Tokyo is a welcome
addition to the body of scholarship on Japan’s urban culture.

The End of Cool Japan: Ethical, Legal, and Cultural Challenges to Japa-
nese Popular Culture. Edited by Mark McLelland. Routledge, London,
2017. xvi. 224 pages. $165.00, cloth; $49.95, paper; $49.95, E-book.

Reviewed by
Björn-Ole Kamm
Kyoto University

At the end of Boys Love Manga and Beyond,1 a previous collection edited
jointly by Mark McLelland, he documents the rise of censorship of drawn
images from Japan. These legal and ethical challenges take center stage in

1. Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker, eds.,
Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan (Jackson: Uni-
versity Press of Mississippi, 2015).
130 Journal of Japanese Studies 45:1 (2019)

The End of Cool Japan, with a focus on the repercussions for research and
teaching about manga, anime, and video games. This new edited volume
critically appraises the country marketing campaign “Cool Japan,” which
has sought to bolster “soft power” and manage Japan’s image in the world.
Often critiqued within and outside Japan for its ineffectiveness and awk-
ward lumping together of anime and tea ceremony as “cool,” the campaign
took off in the early 2000s, when government officials became aware of
the economic success of so-called Japanese popular culture abroad. As the
book title portends, one underlying theme of the present volume deals with
encroaching “uncool” elements trespassing on officially sanctioned ideas
of coolness.
Among the most salient uncool elements discussed throughout the col-
lection are accusations by journalists in the West that Japan was the “Em-
pire of Child Pornography,” because its legislation in this area came late
and excluded fictional minors. In his introduction and based on personal en-
counters with journalists, McLelland argues that Japan continuously func-
tions as a weird “other” while also being simultaneously ensnared in such
accusations on behalf of nonexisting persons, namely, cartoon characters.
The following nine chapters explore the complex and contentious duality
of “cool” nationalism and “uncool” criminalization, and the contributors
trace issues of consumption, research, and education dealing with sexual
depictions in Japanese media. The first six chapters share the very personal
and often confessional tone of the introduction in how they deal with ex-
periences of researchers in Anglophone countries. The last three chapters
engage the challenges that fans of Japanese popular media face in Asia.
Alisa Freedman opens with a reflection on how U.S. student percep-
tions of Japan have changed from that of a feared and revered economic
superpower in the 1980s to the manga and anime heaven imagined today.
Taking the globally successful horror-thriller Death Note2 as her example,
she argues that Internet technologies and the many fan practices they en-
able (unlicensed translations, derivative fan works) ironically spell the end
for the very thing Japanese cultural administrators and corporations desire,
that is, control over what is cool. She offers readers a broad overview of
how fans outside Japan creatively make a text their own, often ignorant of
the legal issues involved and unaware of how they are transmitting a certain
image of Japan. Raising awareness about the role of fans in such globalizing
processes plays a part in Freedman’s teaching, in which students explore
social issues through their own media adaptations. The wide survey of is-
sues captured in this chapter builds a solid ground for the essays to follow.
However, on several occasions, one wishes Freedman had spelled out the

2. Original manga by Ohba Tsugumi and Obata Takeshi, Weekly Shōnen Jump (Tokyo:
Shūeisha, 2003–6).
 Review Section 131

implications a bit clearer (e.g., what insights a student gained about gender
assumptions in Japan by adapting Death Note as “Love Note” with a female,
instead of a male, lead).
Laura Miller continues with questions of how to engage with stake-
holders of Japan’s image abroad. She problematizes students who come to
Japan studies as avid fans but are unwilling to examine critically the texts
they love. Her stance as an anthropologist is not to teach about popular
culture but rather to harness manga and anime to tackle gender representa-
tions or sexuality in Japanese society. Here, she also discusses opposition
encountered outside the classroom in the form of “cultural gatekeepers”
(self-proposed “normal” Japanese) who accuse her of painting an incorrect
picture of Japan through research of “trivial” matters or sexual “deviance.”
The latter, which is perhaps best exemplified by the so-called BL genre
(“boys’ love” stories about male-male relationships usually targeted at a
female audience), has also played a role in some of her students refusing to
participate in class assignments based on their Christian beliefs. Following
Freedman, Miller’s chapter sets the frame for subsequent contributions.
Moving from cultural to legal challenges, Kirsten Cather delivers one of
the major messages echoed throughout the volume, which is how an unwill-
ingness to distinguish between real and fictional minors produces danger-
ous ignorance by denying knowledge and seeing harm everywhere. Instead,
she advocates engagement with difficult questions that arise from texts of-
ficially considered obscene. With the example of Misshitsu,3 the first manga
to be banned in Japan due to obscenity charges, she interrogates the taken-
for-granted notion of female sexuality as passive, with active desire merely
a form of self-victimizing performance for a male spectator. Cather shows
how “obscenity” legislation is less concerned with content and more with
worries about a reception by the potential audience. With her close reading
of a text complemented by detailed discussion of legislation and court cases
(within and outside Japan), her nuanced objection to singular interpretations
(discretely feminist or misogynist) amounts to one of the highlights in an
overall outstanding collection.
The following three chapters explore Cather’s direction of raising dif-
ficult questions about pop culture by relating the challenges of actually
researching such material. Sharalyn Orbaugh reports her shock when she
learned that many of the materials she researches and uses in education
are in violation of Canadian law as they depict sexual acts of characters
that could be interpreted as underage. Orbaugh relates her encounters with
advocates for Canada’s protectionist legislation juxtaposed with a detailed
discussion of the respective cases and court rulings. Echoing Cather’s analy-
sis, she argues that protecting supposedly weak groups, such as children,

3. “Honey Room,” by Beauty Hair/Yūji Suwa (Tokyo: Shōbunkan, 2002).

132 Journal of Japanese Studies 45:1 (2019)

may appear noble but tends to impose a passive sexuality on these groups.
As the relevant legislation does not discriminate between children of dif-
ferent age ranges, it serves not only to hinder teenagers from gaining sexual
literacy through fiction but apparently charges them with child pornography
for exchanging sexualized photos of themselves. In this, Orbaugh insists
that the impairment to adolescent sexual development through this sort of
censorship is more significant than any supposed harm inflicted on society
by fiction in which no real children were exploited during production.
A genre in which depicted characters invite an interpretation as under-
age is known as lolicon, short for Lolita complex. Patrick W. Galbraith
discusses the reticence to deal with questionable research subjects. To avoid
“guilt by association” and the potentiality of ruining their careers, research-
ers are likely to avoid topics like lolicon, which are, outside academia, em-
ployed as a symbol of Japan being full of dubious, if not outright criminal,
males. Galbraith demonstrates how avoidance of superficially unsavory top-
ics breeds harmful ignorance. Lolicon evokes the pedophilic desire and ex-
ploitation associated with the world-famous novel Lolita. However, lolicon
in the context of manga and anime in 1980s’ Japan refers to a sexual desire
for two-dimensional characters, sometimes paired with an explicit rejection
of intercourse with real people. Only through researching the genre and in-
terviewing people involved could Galbraith unearth these nuances of mean-
ing. The stigma of the genre perpetuates the silence on this issue, which is
apparent when he describes how publishing houses would rather cut parts
of his books than provoke moral outrage. Galbraith further underscores that
legislation in Japan still distinguishes between the actual and the virtual.
Taking cues from legislation in Canada, Australian law does not rec-
ognize this distinction. Adam Stapleton experienced this firsthand when he
sought to import “objectionable” research material from Japan. As a scholar
from outside Japan studies, he focuses on perceptions in the Anglophone
world. To make light of the neo-orientalist discourse of Japan as the “Em-
pire of Child Pornography,” in which unwelcome aspects of the speaker’s
society are projected on another, Stapleton compares Japanese gravure
idols (underage girls often in swim wear) with child beauty pageants in the
United States, where he finds similar portrayals of the erotic child. Link-
ing to previous chapters, he employs a personal tone to question his own
positionality when it comes to gaining access to materials of questionable
legality. For example, he muses about how his affiliation with a university
may have shielded him from severe consequences of the confiscation and
certification process, while his male identity still evoked hostility from cus-
toms officers.
The last three chapters move the discussion to the tensions fans of Japa-
nese popular culture experience in China, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the
Philippines. Japan’s history as an aggressor state and colonial power runs
 Review Section 133

like a common thread through this second part of the book. Ling Yang and
Yanrui Xu, for example, point out how Chinese fans of BL distinguish be-
tween a “cultural” Japan that is cool and a “bad” political Japan. The focus
of Yang and Xu’s study, however, is about how different groups of danmei
(boys’ love) fans relate to government regulations, censorship campaigns,
and mainstream media. The Chinese word for boys’ love circumvents the
direct connection to homosexuality (illegal in mainland China) by alluding
to cultivated aestheticism. With detailed examples ranging from commer-
cial sites to protected fan communities, Yang and Xu substantiate their ar-
gument that the relationship between danmei and censorship is not a simple
story of domination and resistance. The reaction to the repeated antiporn
campaigns—in which pornography is often only vaguely defined—encom-
pass various modes of compliance and self-censorship but also indifference.
This chapter is a rare window not only into these processes but also into BL
fandom in China.
Continuing with BL fandom, Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto addresses an
underresearched aspect of fans’ struggles, namely with their religious be-
liefs. Her chapter connects to Miller’s discussion of students rejecting class
assignments but complicates the picture because Bauwens-Sugimoto’s in-
formants are actually fans of what their religion deems inappropriate if not
unlawful: depictions of male homosexuality. She discusses a limited num-
ber of cases and sees her investigation as merely a starting point for more
studies about religion. Nevertheless, she is able to draw on an interesting
range of examples portraying how her female informants navigate conflict
with their faith, be it Catholicism in the Philippines or Islam in Malaysia
and Indonesia, as well as find support from (male) family members. While
previous chapters also problematize implicit assumptions of female sexual-
ity, her seemingly paradoxical hypothesis suggests that it is these very as-
sumptions that allow BL fans in the societies she studied to stay under the
radar—no one would believe that a religious woman reads a genre centered
on male-male sexuality.
The final chapter by Kristine Santos and Febriani Sihombing investi-
gates the postcolonial framework of manga production and consumption in
Indonesia and the Philippines. With the inclusion of histories of the comic
traditions in both countries, here too the reader is not presented with a simple
story but instead a portrayal of the complicated relationships that artists and
consumers have with the preservation of a national comic culture in the con-
text of influences from other regions, such as U.S. comics (usually not seen
as problematic) or Japanese manga. While some, especially “old-school”
artists, vilify any Japanese influence as neocolonial cultural subjugation—
with the assertiveness of “Cool Japan” feeding right into these debates—
others embrace a transcultural, or what Santos and Sihombing call a man-
gaesque, style in which any form of “Japaneseness” cultural administrators
134 Journal of Japanese Studies 45:1 (2019)

would have hoped to control is transformed, reimagined, and remixed with

other, “local-global” forms.
This outstanding collection exceeded my expectations regarding how
well the chapters interlink, build on each other, and substantiate common
claims. That being said, each chapter stands on its own and repeats impor-
tant points so that its particular focus (court cases, a genre, a region) can be
independently understood and explored in more detail. This volume offers
timely and valuable insights based on excellent scholarship that go beyond
the essentialist paradigm inherent in the national descriptor in “Japanese
popular culture.” With many students entering Japan studies because of an
interest in this very popular culture, the authors are able to not only provide
a healthy caution against simple ascriptions of nationality and origin but
also to expand the audience of the book by exploring the ethical and legal
challenges faced by fans, students, and researchers.
It should be noted that the contributing scholars are acutely aware of,
and explicitly highlight, the fact that their empirical material covers pri-
marily the legal environment in the Anglophone world. Being socialized in
continental Europe and living in Japan, I find that some of the legislation
examined feels more alien than the variety of manga discussed. However,
in a globalized world where Internet technologies help fans to appropriate
and spread popular culture, divergences in legislation about what is con-
sidered obscene or overly sexualized have real-world impacts. Indeed, pop
culture scholars may find their computers searched when they cross politi-
cal borders. In this sense, this exemplary volume problematizes challenges
which have broader implications beyond Canada or Australia and beyond
(un)popular culture.

Press Freedom in Contemporary Japan. Edited by Jeff Kingston. Rout-

ledge, London, 2017. xiv, 322 pages. $160.00, cloth; $54.95, paper;
$54.95, E-book.

Reviewed by
Tracy Dahlby
University of Texas at Austin

Donald Trump loves to pound away at the press, as he has amply demon-
strated by tweet-storming his contempt for the “fake news” media. But
when it comes to actually curbing press freedoms, Trump is no match for
Abe Shinzō. Neither the U.S. president nor his supporters in Congress have
dared, at least to date, to suggest laying a finger on the First Amendment or