William Tsutsui - Böcker

Japan’s oceans demand our attention. Violent, prolific, and changeful, they define life and death on the archipelago: pushing the shore under the rush of tsunami, charging typhoon circulation, feeding millions, and seeding conflicts over territory and resources. And yet, Japan studies remains largely beholden to a terrestrial view of the world that is at odds with the importance of the sea. This “terrestrial bias” also means that on those occasions when oceans are recognized they are most often presented as dividers or connectors—spaces in between rather than rich ecologies and meaningful sites. Oceanic Japan>/i> is meant to help readers re-envision Japanese history in order to show how the seas created the country that we know today.The book convenes a diverse, multinational, multidisciplinary group of scholars to expand the scope of Japan studies and the field of environmental humanities. The chapters draw from the broader turn to the sea—characterized by new oceanic and terraqueous perspectives—developing within these fields and in areas such as Pacific history and Indian Ocean studies. The volume editors’ vision is bifocal. On one hand, they aim to reorient East Asian studies and Japan studies to the sea, underlining how oceans have shaped dynamics from the Tokugawa Era forward into the age of empire and the crisis of the Anthropocene. On the other hand, they argue for a more nuanced environmental approach within the burgeoning field of Oceanic studies. Seeing oceanic spaces as more than entrepots or political spheres requires thinking in new, often vertical, volumetric ways. The chapters follow human and non-human actors to recognize the variegation of watery ecologies through winds, tides, coasts, seabeds, and currents such as the Kuroshio and Oyashio, which have always shaped life on the archipelago.

These essays consider the Godzilla films and how they shaped and influenced postwar Japanese culture, as well as the globalization of Japanese pop culture icons. There are contributions from Film Studies, Anthropology, History, Literature, Theatre and Cultural Studies and from Susan Napier, Anne Allison, Christine Yano and others.

How do contemporary Japanese television dramas grapple with questions of diversity and inclusion—and what do their stories reveal about the society that produces them? To address these questions, Yasue Kuwahara offers the first comprehensive analysis on how Japanese dramas have portrayed gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, and disability, revealing the cultural logics that shape who is included, how, and to what extent.Drawing on close textual readings, the book uncovers the subtle and overt ways that TV dramas negotiate Japan’s evolving social landscape. It illuminates how deeply rooted norms—especially the pressures of seken (an inescapable, invisible network of social relationships and unwritten rules) and futsu (acceptance through majority consensus)—continue to regulate social boundaries, often reinforcing conformity even when narratives appear progressive.This book also highlights the strategic use of kazoku (family) and the ubiquitous “family meal” as comforting tropes that seek to reconcile marginalized identities with an imagined national unity. These moments of televisual intimacy reveal both the possibilities and limits of media-led inclusion in a society wrestling with shifting demographics and the slow erosion of traditional hegemonies.Crucially, the book interrogates the rise of konpura—a shortened form of “compliance” that originated in business and now permeates multiple institutions—exploring how its cautious logic increasingly shapes cultural production. Rather than guaranteeing equity, konpura often functions as risk management, discouraging overt harm without encouraging structural change.Ultimately, the book asks whether contemporary dramas foster genuine social transformation or merely offer “cosmetic multiculturalism” that performs diversity without challenging inequality.