<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Call for Papers--Japanese TV Anthology</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<FONT FACE="Verdana"><BR>
<BR>
I’d like to thank all those people who sent us proposals, ideas, and inquiries in the last two months. Response has been rather overwhelming, and we are now trying to figure out what the final shape of the anthology will or should look like. However, we’d like to extend the deadline for paper proposals for a few more weeks because we’d like to see if there are any potential contributors interested in dealing with the following key issues and topics: <BR>
<BR>
</FONT><OL><LI><FONT FACE="Verdana">Japanese television programs except drama and commercials: especially animation, education programs, music/variety shows, news-infotainment, and cuisine programs
</FONT><LI><FONT FACE="Verdana">Japanese television station and its material and imaginary impact on urban development and transformation: for example, the role of Fuji TV in the transformation of Odaiba and Tokyo as an imaginary landscape
</FONT><LI><FONT FACE="Verdana">Television workers: personalities, news announcers, idols, script writers, etc.
</FONT><LI><FONT FACE="Verdana">Japanese television and its relationship with other media and information technology
</FONT><LI><FONT FACE="Verdana">The University and Japanese television: how Japanese TV is/is not studied in academia, the history and politics of Japanese television studies, the relation between Japanese television and cultural studies (in Japan and elsewhere), or between Japanese television and Japan studies, etc. <BR>
</FONT></OL><FONT FACE="Verdana"><BR>
If you or somebody you know are working on any of these or related topics, please contact me or the two other members of the editorial collective: Jungbong Choi (<FONT COLOR="#0000FF"><U>juchoi@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu</U></FONT>), and Eva Tsai (<FONT COLOR="#0000FF"><U>eva-tsai@uiowa.edu</U></FONT>).<BR>
<BR>
Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto<BR>
The University of Iowa<BR>
(<FONT COLOR="#0000FF"><U>mitsuhiro-yoshimoto@uiowa.edu</U></FONT>)<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
%%%%%%%%%%<BR>
CALL FOR PROPOSALS<BR>
An Anthology on Japanese Television<BR>
<BR>
Television is important in Japan. It is a formidable entity entrenched in Japan’s changing political and economic systems. Its presence in familiar, everyday settings—in a living room or on a tall, metropolitan building—has become part of many people’s daily experiences, even structuring, mediating, and reinforcing their way of life. People in Japan are spending more time than ever consuming televisual entertainment and information. Even when television is not the direct object of consumption, its interconnectedness with other aspects such as education, sports and leisure, and technology has facilitated many symbolic environments through which people negotiate identity and culture. <BR>
<BR>
But Japanese television is not just relevant within the Japanese national boundaries. In the past twenty years, Japanese television has decidedly entered new spaces and contexts as a result of global movements of people, capital, technology, and ideas. Some examples can be found in the accidental “spill” of Japanese television programs via regional satellites in East Asia, the rental and exchange of programs on video in diasporic communities, the sales of Japanese VCDs by online retail stores, and the active distribution of Japanese television programs on local and cable channels outside Japan. Encounters between Japanese television and new contexts have set off new debates concerning formations of identities, historical and cultural imperialism, and processes of globalization.<BR>
<BR>
As a fertile site that bears historical and contemporary importance, Japanese television is surprisingly under-researched in the academe. The existing discourse on Japanese television, while valuable, presents limited viewpoints and approaches. Understandably, the dominating topics—such as digitalization, government regulation, measurement of audience rating—“rightfully” examine the structure and power that inflect television as a business and technology. However, without undermining the significance of issues pertaining to technology, government and business, we need more voices to interrogate and reflect on the conditions and discourses that gave rise to these topics as well as to call attention to issues yet to be widely addressed such as ethnography of Japanese television production and gender representation in television programs.<BR>
<BR>
Paper proposals addressing the following and other topics are requested from scholars working in communication studies, cultural studies, film and television studies, media studies, anthropology, sociology, history, and any other relevant disciplines or fields. <BR>
<BR>
<BR>
</FONT>
</BODY>
</HTML>