Japanese Society Exam 3

 In the early postwar period, how did advertisers benefit from (and reinforce) the idea that Japanese society was homogeneous?

Advertisers promote the idea of mass middle-class homogeneous society in order to maximize their market share in the early postwar period

 What are the main characteristics of cute culture and cute aesthetics?

Cute: what capitalist production processes de-personalize, cute goods re-personalize

Cute (kawaii): childlike, sweet, adorable, innocent, pure, simple, vulnerable, weak

Cute aesthetic: toddlers, baby animals, and frail old ladies

In the 1990s, what strategy did Japan’s television industry use to maintain its control over the domestic media market?

The tarento system

 How do the tarento (Japanese celebrities) differ from American celebrities? How did the television industry use the tarento to maintain a national community in 1990s Japan?

Tarento simultaneously appear in various media genres

Viewers are intimately familiar with them

Tarento are not talented

No separation between the public person and private selves of tarento

The tarento system transforms television into an "interactive" medium; this system constructs a sense of collectivity

 List the main characteristics of consumer culture in Japan as discussed in the lecture.

Tokyo as a consumable city (Takeyama)

Consumer culture and branding: japan is a privileged target of Western high-end fashion designers

Subcultures and consumerism: subcultures are commodified, repackaged, and resold to consumers

Consumerism as a means of self-determination (Lukas)

Women and consumerism: woman are the greatest spenders

Cute culture is Japan: cute has become a lucrative export term

 In her chapter titled “Consumable City,” what does Takeyama mean by saying that Tokyo has become both a space and an object of consumption?

The city is produced as an "affective cityscape" where lifestyles, meanings, and hopes are imagined, experienced, and consumed

 What does Takeyama mean by claiming that Tokyo is an advertising city?

Everything/everyone becomes a potential advertisement

 What is the relationship between consumerism and subcultures in Japan?

In Japan, subcultures are commodified, and resold to customers

 Describe the main characteristic features of Japan’s Internet culture

90% internet users

YouTube is the most popular social media platform

People access the internet primarily through mobile phones

 What does Lukacs mean by saying that Japan’s cute brand is characterized by semantic fluidity? Think of the examples given in lecture.

An epitome of cute, Ebihara Yuri, featured in McDonald's commercials

Hello Kitty featured on a pink and white Darth Vader costume

Examples of net idols who developed unique style of cute behavior

In the chapter titled “The Labor of Cute,” how does Lukacs characterize net idols? Who were they? What backgrounds did they come from?

Net idols included some high school and college students, but most were young office ladies and homemakers

Women sought self-exploitation, self-realization, and fun in their net idol careers

According to Lukacs (“Dreamwork”) who were the cell phone novelists? What segment of the population did they predominantly represent? Think of gender and class.

Most writers are women

They were predominantly from lower-middle-class or working-class backgrounds and often from rural areas of Japan

Most writers are precarious workers

According to Lukacs, how did cell phone novelists develop a precarity politics?

They raise consciousness about precarity in the epilogues of their novels

How did Gabriella Lukacs define technological utopianism in her discussion of DIY careers in Japan’s digital economy?

The internet democratizes the labor marker

Distributes the means of production equally

And eliminates discrimination from the world or work

According to Gabriella Lukacs, how does the digital economy contribute to generating and maintaining a precarious labor market and labor conditions?

The digital economy generates and sustains precarious labor by mobilizing dreams and hopes for future success, encouraging people to engage in affect labor, even as this work remains unstable, underpaid, and unlikely to deliver on those promises

 Describe the broader contexts (both in the Philippines and Japan) that shape the patterns of migration from the Philippines to Japan?

Shaped by economic inequality, labor export policies in the Philippines, and demand in Japan for feminized service and entertainment labor under restrictive immigration rules

Why do Filipina women migrate to work in Japan?

Limited economic opportunities at home, family obligations, and the chance to earn far more in Japan through hostessing, marriage migration, or other care/service work

 According to Lieba Faier, why do rural men go to Filipina bars?

They seek socialization, networking opportunities, and escape from everyday stresses

 In Faier’s view, why do Filipina hostesses emphasize that they love their Japanese husbands? 

Present their marriages as morally legitimate rather than purely economic or strategic

Describe the predominant (power) relationship between producers and consumers of anime in Japan.

Relationship is highly interactive and interdependent, with producers depending on active fan engagement

In the chapter titled “Akihabara,” how does Galbraith define and characterize otaku?

Deeply devoted fans with intense knowledge, affective investment, and specialized consumption practices focused on media, characters, and collecting

According to Galbraith (“Akihabara”), how were otaku perceived in the 1980s? How had this perception changed by the late 2000s?

often perceived as strange, antisocial, obsessive, and even dangerous

According to Henry Jenkins, why are media fans seen as individuals who do not conform to social norms? Why do media fans evoke social anxieties?

Seen as nonconforming due to their emotional investment and attachment to popular culture

How does Condry characterize fansubbers?

Organized, skilled, volunteer fan communities that translate, subtitle, and circulate anime out of passion

Ian Condry argues that fansubbing is a form of resistance. In his view, what common form of resistance is fansubbing analogous to?

Resembles practices where ordinary people bend rules to create alternative cultural circulation

Ian Condry argues that fansubbers debate the ethics of fansubbing, but there are a few principles they strive to uphold. What are these principles?

Non profiting from the work, stopping distribution when a title is officially licensed, preserving translation quality, and acting out of support for anime

In Condry’s view, what is the issue that both producers and fansubbers of anime agree on?

Getting anime seen and building audiences for it, caring about circulation and visibility

 According to Ian Condry, what is the relationship between fansubbers and nihonjinron?

Show that Japanese cultures can be understood and engaged by non-Japanese audiences

 What are the main features of hardware and software that Japan exported until the 1990s?

culturally odorless

Scholars have identified and analyzed a conspicuous rise in Japanese cultural exports during the 1990s. What are the main venues through which Japanese popular culture entered global circulation during the 1990s?

Included character-driven, story-rich, style-heavy popular culture such as anime, manga, and games

Define localization in the context of exporting media

Adapting media for another market by translating language and adjusting cultural references

 Define media mix

Strategy of spreading characters, stories, and brands across multiple media platforms and products

 Which of the following examples was used in lecture to illustrate how the Japanese government tried to transform the growing global interest in Japanese pop culture into soft power?

Television broadcasts, VHS and DVD circulation, gaming, manga translation, fan networks, conventions, and later internet sharing

What arguments does the SNL skit titled JPop America Fun Time Now offer to lampoon ardent fans of Japanese popular culture?

Mocks fans as culturally clueless, fetishizing, and immature cultures

Daniel White and Patrick Galbraith analyze the concept of “love capitalism.” What does this concept mean, and in what ways do young Japanese resist or protest it?

Organizes romance, intimacy, desirability, and self-worth through markets and emotional labor

Define the concept of familial productivism and explain how the decline of this system has shaped young people’s perceptions of marriage and child‑rearing in contemporary Japan.

Postwar system linking stable male employment and family reproduction, which has declined leading to skepticism about family formation

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