Through provocative essays by specialists in different aspects of Japanese culture, this book provides an historical and analytical survey of the presence of Goddesses in Japanese audiovisual culture from its origins to the present day. It shows how these feminine myths are represented in Japan; not only as beneficial or creative deities, but also the archetypal strong or dominant woman that sometimes overshadows masculine figures and heroes, or as influential figures. Therefore, it analyzes this rich dialectic of the feminine and how the audiovisual culture has represented it thus far in film, TV series, and video games made in Japan. While many theories have been proposed to explain the presence of Goddesses in Japan, this book’s focus on audiovisual culture explores how this corpus challenges the traditional conceptions of the feminine as related to Goddesses.

This collection of essays analyzes the audiovisual representation of goddesses in Japanese popular culture. It proposes a dialectics of the different conceptions of the feminine as taken up in Japanese film, television, and video games.

In the last few decades, Japanese popular culture productions have been consolidated as one of the most influential and profitable global industries. As a creative industry, Japanese Media-Mixes generate multimillion-dollar revenues, being a product of international synergies and the natural appeal of the characters and stories. The transnationalization of investment capital, diversification of themes and (sub)genres, underlying threat in the proliferation of illegal audiences, development of internet streaming technologies, and other new transformations in media-mix-based production models make the study of these products even more relevant today. In this way, manga (Japanese comics), anime (Japanese animation), and video games are not necessarily products designed for the national market. More than ever, it is necessary to reconcile national and transnational positions for the study of this cultural production. The present volume includes contributions aligned to the analysis of Japanese popular culture flow from many perspectives (cultural studies, film, comic studies, sociology, etc.), although we have emphasized the relationships between manga, anime, and international audiences. The selected works include the following topics: • Studies on audiences—national and transnational case studies; • Fandom production and Otaku culture; • Cross-media and transmedia perspectives; • Theoretical perspectives on manga, anime, and media-mixes.

Capture Japan investigates the formation of visual tropes and how these have contributed to perceptions of Japan in the global imagination. The book proposes that images are not incidental in the formation of such perceptions, but central to notions about identity, history and memory. From a tentative western ally in 1952 to a 'soft power' superpower with a huge global influence in the 21st century, the book locates questions about Japan in the global imagination to the country's transforming geopolitical position. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach, with a multiplicity of perspectives from around the world, Capture Japan goes beyond binarisms to uncover how images can also produce discourses that challenge, subvert or even contradict each other. The word 'capture' in the title of the book recognises both the deeply problematic role that images have played in relation to colonialism, as well as the potential dominance that visual spectacles can wield in a contemporary context. Diverse essays from a wide range of perspectives investigate the institutional framework that has allowed certain types of images of Japan to be promoted, while others have been suppressed. In doing so, the book points to a vast network of images that have shaped the perception of Japan both from within and from outside, revealing how these images are inextricably linked to wider ideological, political, cultural or economic agendas.

The Films of Kore-eda Hirokazu: An Elemental Cinema draws readers into the first 13 feature films and 5 of the documentaries of award-winning Japanese film director Kore-eda Hirokazu. With his recent top prize at the Cannes Film Festival for Shoplifters, Kore-eda is arguably Japan’s greatest living director with an international viewership. He approaches difficult subjects (child abandonment, suicide, marginality) with a realistic and compassionate eye.The lyrical tone of the writing of Japanese film scholar Linda C. Ehrlich perfectly complements the understated, yet powerful, tone of the films. From An Elemental Cinema, readers will gain a special understanding of Kore-eda’s films through a novel connection to the natural elements as reflected in Japanese traditional aesthetics.An Elemental Cinema presents Kore-eda’s oeuvre as a connected whole with overarching thematic concerns, despite frequent generic experimentation. It also offers an example of how the poetics of cinema can be practiced in writing, as well as on the screen, and helps readers understand the films of this contemporary director as works of art that relate to their own lives.

The Routledge Handbook of CoFuturisms delivers a new, inclusive examination of science fiction, from close analyses of single texts to large-scale movements, providing readers with decolonized models of the future, including print, media, race, gender, and social justice. This comprehensive overview of the field explores representations of possible futures arising from non-Western cultures and ethnic histories that disrupt the “imperial gaze”. In four parts, The Routledge Handbook of CoFuturisms considers the look of futures from the margins, foregrounding the issues of Indigenous groups, racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities, and any people whose stakes in the global order of envisioning futures are generally constrained due to the mechanics of our contemporary world. The book extends current discussions in the area, looking at cutting-edge developments in the discipline of science fiction and diverse futurisms as a whole. Offering a dynamic mix of approaches and expansive perspectives, this volume will appeal to academics and researchers seeking to orient their own interventions into broader contexts.

"A sumptuously documented book, one that makes innovative use of the principle of montage to generate informative historical readings of Japan's myriad mass cultural phenomena in the early twentieth century. Both in terms of its scholarship and its methodology, this is a truly admirable work."—Rey Chow, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, Brown University "As Miriam Silverberg has brilliantly shown here, the modern times of 1920s and ‘30s Japan were rendered in a cacophony of cultural mixing: a period of consumerist desires and Hollywood fantasy-making but also the rise of nationalist empire-building. Excavating its kaleidoscope of everyday culture Silverberg astutely offers a theory of montage for how Japanese subjects 'code-switched' in juggling the mixed cultural/political elements of these times. Utilizing a montage of media, texts, sites, and scholarship, Silverberg leads the reader into the terrain of the 'erotic grotesque nonsense' in a work that is as scintillating as it is theoretically important."—Anne Allison, author of Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination "Unlike other scholars who merely view ero-guro-nansensu in its literal meanings, Silverberg brilliantly documents it as a complex cultural aesthetic expressed in a spectrum of fascinating mass culture forms and preoccupations. With great erudition and humor, she traces the sensory and conceptual modes that are animated with potency and sophistication through this cultural metaphor. This book is destined to be a classic in Japan scholarship."—Laura Miller, author of Beauty Up: Exploring Contemporary Japanese Body Aesthetics

How our visual and intellectual cultures are changed by the new interaction-based media and technologies.

"In the worldwide circulation of the products of cultural industries, an important role is played by Japanese popular culture in European contexts. Marco Pellitteri shows that the contact between Japanese pop culture and European youth publics occurred during two phases. By use of metaphor, the author calls them the Dragon and the Dazzle. The first took place between 1975 and 1995, the second from 1996 to today. They can be distinguished by the modalities of circulation and consumption/re-elaboration of Japanese themes and products in the most receptive countries: Italy, France, Spain, Germany and, across the ocean, the United States. During these two phases, several themes have been perceived, in Europe, as rising from Japan's social and mediatic systems. Among them, this book examines the most apparent from a European point of view: the author names them machine, infant, and mutation, visible mostly through manga, anime, videogames, and toys. Together with France, Italy is the European country that in this respect has had the most central role. There, Japanese imagination has been acknowledged not only by young people, but also by politicians, television programmers, the general public, educators, comics and cartoons authors. The growing influence of Japanese pop culture, connected to the appreciation of its manga, anime, toys, and videogames, also urges political and mediologic questions linked to the identity/ies of Japan as they are understood--wrongly or rightly--in Europe and the West, and to the increasingly important role of Japan in international relations."--Back cover