Asian Popular Culture

John A. Lent is publisher and editor of the International Journal of Comic Art and founding Chair of the Asia Pacific Animation and Comics Association. He was a university professor for fifty-one years.Lorna Fitzsimmons is associate professor and Coordinator of Humanities at California State University, Dominguez Hills in Los Angeles.

Emerging popular cultural and new media forms which have tended to evade historical and critical attention, now get thorough analyses by a diverse set of critics who create points of cogent analysis on the vast and diverse global map in Lent and Fitzsimmons' book. Clarity in these particular views creates a sense of the enormous change emerging in the cultures of Asia.

• IntroductionChapter 1. Weiqi Legends, Then and Now: Cultural Paradigms in the Game of Goby Marc L. MoskowitzChapter 2. Locating Play: The Situated Localities of Portable and Online Gaming in East Asiaby Dean ChanChapter 3. Regionalism in the Era of Neo-Nationalism: Japanese Landscape in the Background Art of Games and Anime from the Late-1990s to Presentby Kumiko SaitoChapter 4. Otaku Evolution: Changing Views of the Fan-boy in Kon Satoshi's Perfect Blue and Paprikaby Joseph Christopher SchaubChapter 5. Breaking Records: Media, Censorship, and the Folk Song Movement of Japan's 1960sby James DorseyChapter 6. Mad-Cow Disease and Alternative YouTube Videos: Brechtian Politics of Aesthetics in Grassroots Media Spectacles, Voluntary Mobilization, and Collective Governance from Korea's Candlelight Movementsby Gooyong KimChapter 7. Reaching Beyond the Manga: A Samurai to the Ends of the World and the Formation of National Identityby Michael WertChapter 8. Zen Dog: Lian Hearn's Hybrid Otori Pentalogyby Sheng-mei Ma