[KineJapan] End of "Cool" Japan Workshop; Ann Arbor

[Markus Nornes]

In Ann Arbor, I did not sense that panelists were "reconstructing Cool
Japan" through the back door and explicitly or implicitly argue that Japan
cooler than thou. Patrick did put Miyazaki at the heart of his history of
lolicon, which is about as mainstream as you get, but I think most
panelists were fairly careful about generalizing or making broad claims
about subcultures vis a vis the mainstream.

That said, I still remain puzzled by the curious title* and because its
terms were never adequately unpacked the important issue of the government
program and its relationship to academia remained obscure.

The conference was most interesting when the stakes felt highest. Papers on
the American pedagogical context (Alisa Freedman and Laura Miller, for
example) revealed the importance of the North American tenure system--in
other words, while there are real and potential problems faced by Americans
teaching pop cultures, tenure buffers them from the most serious of
consequences. On the other end of the spectrum, Mark McClelland must
actually be careful about what films he watches, possesses or even
downloads in Australia; a film like Urotsukidoji is against the law there,
so he finally managed to watch it here in Michigan.

And then there was Patrick Galbraith's paper, which was one of the most
interesting. A history of lolicon, framed by problems he had with a book
publisher for refusing to take a stand on this material. In fact, his
presentation itself carefully avoided the issue of value, and was mainly
descriptive. When questions from the audience tried to pin him down, he
managed to sidestep them (two questions on the reception context, where
there are real shojo, got deflected--one to shonen, the other to a kind of
auteurism where the value of authorial intent was acknowledged). This
inspired some interesting discussion around the issue of value and of
politics, historical fights for various brands of sexualities and their
image cultures, scholarship and safety, and the like.

Unfortunately, we only left 45 minutes for open discussion; we clearly
could have talked all day and night.

Markus

* This conference was sponsored by the Center for Japanese Studies, which
supports the return of its former Toyota Visiting Professors to hold
academic events. Mark McClelland organized the content. I supplied the
drinks!


On Tue, Apr 8, 2014 at 11:48 AM, Gerow Aaron <aaron.gerow at yale.edu> wrote:

> I also attended the panel and AAS and found it interesting but
> problematic. All the presentations were interesting, more or less, but for
> a panel entitled the "End of Cool Japan," I found it largely engaged in
> reconstructing Cool Japan through the back door. While many of the problems
> cited about teaching problematic materials were important, too often this
> was framed in a discourse that effectively asserted non-Japanese nations
> are less cool about these sexually explicit materials--and thus that
> Japanese are cooler about it. It's a different Cool Japan than the one the
> Japanese government is currently trying to sell, but it has its structural
> similarities. This discourse was also often accompanied by problematic
> claims about "representation," in which both the problematic texts and
> their readers were claimed to represent a significant aspect of popular
> cultural practices or "Japanese" attitudes. Thankfully, a number of the
> presenters were more self-critical about this than others, but I was hoping
> for a discussion that was more critical of the concepts "cool" and "Japan,"
> especially in terms of how academics help construct them--even if they are
> in different forms than those offered by Ishihara Shintaro or Aso Taro.
>
> Occasionally, I would hope that Japanese popular culture studies also look
> at what is "uncool" in Japan, at the bland pop culture that doesn't so
> easily seem to transgress what we perceive as the dominant or which helps
> us make some point. Perhaps it is those bland phenomena which are more
> "other" than we think.
>
> I too wonder if the Ann Arbor edition addressed some of these concerns.
>
>
> Aaron Gerow
> Professor
> Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
> Yale University
> 320 York Street, Room 311
> PO Box 208236
> New Haven, CT 06520-8236
> USA
> Phone: 1-203-432-7082
> Fax: 1-203-432-6729
> e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu
> website: www.aarongerow.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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-- 
*Markus Nornes*
Chair, Department of Screen Arts and Cultures
Professor of Asian Cinema, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
Professor, School of Art & Design

*Department of Screen Arts and Cultures*
*6348 North Quad*
*105 S. State Street*
*Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285*
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