PO319moduleoutline201213-draft

PO319
The Media and Politics of Contemporary Japan
Module Convenor: Dr Mitsutoshi Horii
Email: m.horii@kent.ac.uk
Teaching Period: Spring20011/12
Lectures/seminars: Lecture: Wed 10-11
Seminar: Wed 11-12
Room: CGUS
Introduction:
The role of the mass media as a ‘key’ ideological state apparatus, informing and
perpetuating political debate and opinion, is one that is oftenleft under-analysed by
degree programmes in Politics and International Relations.
The media-saturated and technologically advanced nature of Japan provides the basis
for this module’s critical engagement with a range of theoretical approaches to Media
Studies. This module discusses a variety of contemporary issues and debates within the
media of Japan. It pays particular attention to the discourse and ideological implications
in media representation, the comparativeexamination of the political economy and the
historical development of media institutions as well as the analysis of the media’s role in
the social construction of the nation, historical memory, and cultural identities.
The module willbe divided into three sections. The first section will introduce students
to ‘key’ theoretical concepts in Media Studies. Students willencounter theoretical
approaches and concepts, such as semiotics, discourse and ideology. Students will
analyse a range of media ‘texts’ using the theoretical approaches they have learnt. In
particular, students willfocus on representations of ‘Japan’ in Anglo-American media
and representations of the ‘West’ in Japanese media. The second section of the module
will explore the media’s role in the social construction of the nation and cultural
identities. This section refers to various kinds of representations fromnuclear
explosions to gender in contemporary Japanese media including manga/anime. Students
will analyse these in the context of globalisation and national/cultural identities. The
third section willdiscuss a range of contemporary issues and debates about the media
institutions of Japan. This section of the module will be organised around specific case
studies of the political economy including the issue of censorship.

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Course Schedule
13. Media and representation: Semiotics, Discourse and Ideology
14. ‘Japan’ in Anglo-American Media
15. The ‘West’ and ‘Others’ in Japanese Media
16. ‘Japan’ in the Japanese Media
17. Representing Nuclear Explosions
18. Reading Week
19. Manga and Anime
20. Sex and Gender
21. The Political Economy of Japanese Media
22. Representation and Japanese Politics
23. Media Censorship in Contemporary Japan
24. Course Summary
Inductive Reading List
 Freeman, L. 2000 Closing the shop: information cartels and Japan's mass media.
Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.
 Hammond, P. (ed) 1997. Cultural Differences, Media Memories: Anglo-American
Image of Japan. London: Cassell.

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ESSAY 1 (Deadline – Monday 25 February)
An analysis of a printed image with the theme of Japan (no more than 1,000
words)
Weighting for the module = 20%
Studentswill produce a 1000-word analysisof a printed image with the theme of Japan. The
analysisshould include the following:
 Make use of semiotic terminology(i.e., sign, signifier, signified, denotation,
connotation etc…) wherever possible.
 Consider the ideological valuespromoted bythe advert (What beliefs/valuesare
promoted byyour advert?) and how have theybeen promoted (what kind of
discourse it used?).
 Refer to academicsources wherever possible to back up argument of your analysis.
 Attach the printed material of your choice to your written analysis.
ESSAY 2 (Deadline – Tuesday 2 April)
Choose one essay title from the below (no more than 2,000 words)
Essay Titles:
1) Compare and contrast representations of nuclear explosions in the American and
Japanese media?
2) How are manga and anime related toJapanese politics?
3) What do representations of sex and gender in the contemporary Japanese media tell you
about the international relations of Japan?
4) How far do media texts in contemporary Japan reflect the interestsof the government?
5) Critically discuss the ways in which the Japanese state is portrayed by the Japanese media.
What kind of imageryof the Japanese state is constructed?
FINAL EXAM:

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Week 1 3
Media and representation: Semiotics, Discourse, and Ideology
This lecture explains what is meant by the media in this module, and explores the process by
which the media constructs ‘reality’. It introduces Hall’s concept of ‘representation’, and
examines the nature of ‘reality’: how it represents ideologies, how it becomes ‘true’ through
discourse, and what the media’s role is in this process. This lecture also explains how to
‘decode’ media texts, especiallyimages, and introducessome Japanese examples.
Essential Reading:
 Hall, S. 1997 ‘The work of representation’, in Hall, S. (ed) Representation: Cultural
Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage.
 Befu, H. 2009. Concepts of Japan, Japanese culture and the Japanese, in Y. Sugimoto
ed. The Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge
UniversityPress.
Further Reading:
 Chandler, D. 2012. Semiotics for beginners.
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/semiotic.html (Chapter 7,
Denotation, Connotation, and Myth)
 Barthes,R. 1982 [1970]. Empire of Signs. New York: Hill and Wang. [Trans. By
Richard Howard].
 Johansson, J. K. 1994. The Sense of “Nonsense”: Japanese TV Advertising. Journal of
Advertising 23(1): 17-26.
 Namba, K. 2002. Comparative Studiesin USA and Japanese AdvertisingDuringthe
Post-War Era. International Journal of Japanese Sociology 11: 19-34.
 O’Shaughnessy, M. & Stadler, J. 2005 Media and Society: an introduction. Oxford:
Oxford University Press. (Chapters4-13, 20-23)
 Painter, A. 1993. ‘Japanese daytime television, polupar culture, and ideology’, Journal
of Japanese Studies, 19(2): 295-325.
 Tanaka, K. 1994. Advertising Language: a pragmatic approach to advertisements in
Britain and Japan. London: Routledge. (esp. Chapter 6)
 Winther-Tamaki, B. 2003. Oil paintingin Postsurrender Japan: Reconstructing
Subjectivitythrough Deformation of the Body. Monumenta Nipponica, 58(3): 347-
396.

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Week 15
:
‘Japan’ in Anglo-American Media
Who constructs the image of other cultures? In the case of ‘Japan’ in the media, who exercise
power over the construction of its image? How has it been constructed historically? The
‘West’ may be imposing its stereotype of Japan. The image of ‘Japan’ may be the reflection of
the western stereotype. This lecture investigates the construction of ‘Japan’ in the Anglo-
American media.
Essential Reading:
 Ben-Ami, D. 1997. ‘Is Japan Different?’ Phil Hammond (ed) Cultural Differences,
Media Memories: Anglo-American Image of Japan. London: Cassell.
 Hammond, P. and Stirner, P. 1997. Fear and Loathingin the British Press.Phil
Hammond (ed) Cultural Differences, Media Memories: Anglo-American Image of
Japan. London: Cassell.
Further Reading:
 Alison, A. 2006. Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination.
Berkeley: Universityof California Press.
 Cooper-Chen, A. 1997. Mass communication in Japan. Ames: Iowa UniversityPress.
(Part 1, Chapter 1)
 Iwabuchi, K. 2003. Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese
Transnationalism. Durham and London: Duke UniversityPress. (Chapter 1)
 Littlewood, I. 1996. The Image of Japan: Western Images, Western Myth. London:
Secker & Warburg.
 Mayes, T. and Rowling, M. 1997. The Image Makers: British Journalists on Japan. Phil
Hammond (ed) Cultural Differences, Media Memories: Anglo-American Image of
 Ota, C. 2007. Relay of Gaze: Representations of Culture in the Japanese Televisual and
Cinematic Experience. Lexington Books. (Chapter 3-5)
 Owens, G. 1997. The Making of the Yellow Peril: Pre-War Western Views of Japan.
Phil Hammond (ed) Cultural Differences, Media Memories: Anglo-American Image of
 Revell, L. 1997. Nihonjinron: Make in the USA. Phil Hammond (ed) Cultural
Differences, Media Memories: Anglo-American Image of Japan. London: Cassell.
 Suvanto, M. 2008. Images of Japan and the Japanese: The Representation of the
Japanese Culture in the Popular Literature Targeted at the Western World in the
1980s – 1990s. VDM Verlag Dr. Muller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG
 Tsutsui, W. and Ito, M. (ed). 2006. In Godzilla’s Footsteps: Japanese Popular Culture
Icons on the Global Stage. Palgrave Macmillan.

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Week 16
‘West’ and ‘Others’ in Japanese Media
This lecture investigates the construction of the ‘West’ and ‘Others’ in Japanese media. The
lecture outlines the construction of particular imagery of the ‘West’ and ‘Others’ in Japan in
the historical context, and discusses the ideology in the imagery of the ‘West’ and ‘Others’ in
the contemporary Japanese media.
Essential Reading:
 Creighton, M. R. 2003. ‘Imaginingthe Other in Japanese AdvertisingCampaigns’
James G. Carrier (ed) Occidentalism: Image of the West. Oxford: Clearendon Press.
Further Reading:
 Bailey, K. 2006. Marketingthe eikaiwa wonderland: ideology, akogare, and gender
alterityin English conversation school advertisingin Japan. Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space, 24(1): 105–130.
(Part 1, Chapter 1)
 Cornyetz, N. 1994. ‘Fetishized Blackness: Hip Hop and Racial Desire in
Contemporary Japan’ Social Text,41(4):113-139.
 Darling-Wolf,F. 2003. 'Media, class, and western influence in Japanese women's
conceptions of attractiveness'. FeministMediaStudies 3(2):153-172.
 Goldstein-Gidoni, O. and M. Daliot-Bul 2002. ‘Shall We Dansu?’: Dancing with the
‘West’ in contemporaryJapan. Japan Forum, 14(1): 63-75.
 Hayashi, K. and Lee, E. 2007. The Potential of Fandom and the Limits of Soft Power:
Media Representations on the Popularity of Korean Melodrama in Japan. Social
Science Japan Journal 10(2): 197-216.
 Iwashita, C. 2006. Media representation of the UK as a destination for Japanese
tourists. Tourist Studies 6(1): 59-77.
 Nakar, E. 2003. Nosing around: Visual representation of the Other in Japanese
society. Anthropological Forum, 13(1): 49-66.
 Ota, C. 2007. Relay of Gaze: Representations of Culture in the Japanese Televisual and
Cinematic Experience. Lexington Books. (Chapter 2)
 Russell, J. 1991. ‘Race and Reflexivity:The BlackOther in Contemporary
Japanese Mass Culture’. Cultural Anthropology 6(1):3-25
 Yoshimi, S. 2003. ‘America’ as desire and violence: Americanization in postwar Japan
and Asia duringthe Cold War, Inter-Asia Cultural studies 4(3): 433-450.

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Week 17
‘Japan’ in the Japanese Media
If one applies Benedict Anderson’s famous term ‘imagined communities’, the nation can be
seen as a social construction. In the process of constructing a nation, the media plays a
crucial role. This lecture explores the media’s role in the construction of the Japanese
nation.
Essential Reading:
 Yoshimi, S. 2003. ‘Television and Nationalism: Historical Change in the National
Domestic TV Formation of Postwar Japan’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 6:
459-487.
 Revell, L. 1997. Nihonjinron: Made in the USA. Phil Hammond (ed) Cultural
Differences, Media Memories: Anglo-American Image of Japan. London: Cassell.
Further Reading:
 Cazdyn, E. 2000. Representation, RealityCulture, and Global Capitalism in Japan. The
South Atlantic Quarterly, 99(4): 903-927.
 Darling-Wolf, F. 2004. Post-war Japan in Photographs: Erasingthe past and building
the future in the Japan Times. Journalism, 5(4): 403-422.
 Fujitani, T. 1992. ‘Electronic pageantryand Japan’s “Symbolic Emperor”’, The Journal
of Asian Studies, 51(4):824-850.
 Gerow, A. 2000. ConsumingAsia, ConsumingJapan: The New Neonationalistic
Revisionism in Japan. In L. Hein and M. Selden (ed.) Censoring History: Citizenship
and Memory in Japan, Germany, and the United States. London: M.E. Sharpe.
 Hogan, J. 1999. ‘The construction of gendered national identities in the television
advertisementsof Japan and Australis’, Media, Culture & Society, 21: 743-758.
 Ito, M. 2002. Television and Violence in the Economy of Memory. International
Journal of Japanese Sociology 11: 19-34.
 Napier, S. 1993. ‘Panic Sites: The Japanese Imagination of Disaster from Godzilla to
Akira.’ Journal of Japanese Studies, 19(3): 327-351.
 Oblas,P. 1995. Perspectives on Race and Culture in Japanese Society: The Mass Media
and Ethnicity. The Edwin Mellen Press.
 Yoshimi, S. 1999. ‘Made in Japan’: the cultural politics of ‘home electrification’ in
postwar Japan, Media, Culture & Society 21: 149-171.
 Yoshimi, S. 2000. ‘The cultural politics of the mass-mediated emperor system in
Japan’, in Gilroy, P., Grossberg, L. and McRobbie, A. (eds) Without Guarantees: in
honour of Stuart Hall. London: Verso.
Week 17
Reading Week

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Week 18
Representing Nuclear Explosion
Were the nuclear bombingson the citiesof Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 necessaryevils
to finish the bloody war quickly and save more lives, or were they crimesagainst humanity
by targetingcivilian populations? The memoriesand interpretationsof the eventsof 1945
influences various imageryof nuclear explosions in the contemporary media. This lecture
exploresthe construction of various imageryof nuclear explosions in Japanese and
American media.
Essential Reading:
 Broderick, M. (ed) 1996. Hibakusha Cinema: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Nuclear
Image in Japanese Film. London: Kegan Paul International.
 Shapiro, J. 2002. Atomic Bomb Cinema. London: Routledge
Further reading:
 Boyer, P. 1996. Exotic Resonances: Hiroshima in American Memory. Hogan, M. (ed)
Hiroshima in History and Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.
 Broderick, M. 1988. Nuclear Movies: A Filmography. Northcote: Postmodern
Publishing
 Dower, J. 1996. ‘Three Narrativesof our Humanity’, in Linenthal, E. and Engelhardt,
T. (eds) History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past. New
York: An Owl Book.
 Dower, J. 1996. The Bombed: Hiroshimasand Nagasakis in Japanese Memory. Hogan,
M. (ed) Hiroshima in History and Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.
 Hein, L. and Selden, M. 1997. Commemoration and Silence: Fifty Yearsof
Rememberingthe Bomb in America and Japan. Hein, L. and Selden, M. (eds) Living
with the Bomb: American and Japanese Cultural Conflicts in the Nuclear Age. London:
M.E. Sharpe.
 Hogan, M. 1996. The Enola GayControversy: History, Memory, and the Politics of
Representation. Hogan, M. (ed) Hiroshima in History and Memory. Cambridge:
Cambridge UniversityPress.
 Knight, J. 1997. Japanese War Memories. Hammond, P. (ed) Cultural Differences,
Media Memories: Anglo-American Image of Japan. London: Cassell.
 Minear, R. 1995. Atomic Holocaust, Nazi Holocaust: Some Reflections. Diplomatic
History, 19(2): 347-365.
 Mohan, U. 1997. History and the NewsMedia: the Smithsonian Controversy.
Hammond, P. (ed) Cultural Differences, Media Memories: Anglo-American Image of
 Mohan, U. and Maley III, L. 1997. Orthodoxy and Dissent: the American NewsMedia
and the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb against Japan, 1945-1995. Hammond, P.
(ed) Cultural Differences, Media Memories: Anglo-American Image of Japan. London:
Cassell.

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Week 19
Manga and Anime
Manga and Anime are globalised cultural products from Japan. This lecture outlines how
they have been developed in Japan, exported from Japan, and received in different countries.
It also discusses the cultural politics of manga and anime: e.g. how they represent Japanese
cultural identityin the global market, whilst ‘hiding’their Japaneseness.
Essential Reading:
 Ito, K. 2005. A History of Manga in the Context of Japanese Culture and Society. The
Journal of Popular Culture, 38(3): 456-475.
 Napier, S. 2005. Anime from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle. New York: Palgrave
McMillan.
Further Reading:
 Allison, A. 2000. Permitted and Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in
Japan. London: University of California Press.(Chapters2 and 3)
 Allison, A. 2006. Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination.
Berkeley: Universityof California Press.
 Bryce, M. et al. 2010. Manga and Anime: Fluidityand Hybridityin Global Imagery.
Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies,
http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/articles/2010/Bryce.html
 Crawford, B. 1996. Emperor Tomato-Kechupe: Cartoon Propertiesfrom Japam. In
Broderick, M. (ed) 1996. Hibakusha Cinema: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Nuclear
Image in Japanese Film. London: Kegan Paul International.
 Driscoll, M. 2009. KobayashiYoshinori Is Dead: Imperial War / Sick Liberal Peace /
Neoliberal ClassWar. Mechademia, 4: 290-303.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mec/summary/v004/4.driscoll.html
 Freiberg, F. 1996. Akira and the Postmodern Sublime. In Broderick, M. (ed) 1996.
Hibakusha Cinema: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Nuclear Image in Japanese Film.
London: Kegan Paul International.
 Galbraith, P. 2009. Moe: Exploring Virtual Potential in Post-Millennial Japan.
Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies,
http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/articles/2009/Galbraith.html
 Kinsella, S. 1997. Adult Manga: culture and power in contemporary Japan. University
of Hawai’iPress.
 Kinsella, S. 1998. Japanese Subculture in the 1990s: Otaku and the Amateur Manga
Movement. Journal of Japanese Studies, 24(2): 289-316.
 Mori, Y. 2011. The Pitfall Facingthe Cool Japan Project: The Transnational
Development of the Anime Industryunder the Condition of Post-Fordism.
International Journal of Japanese Sociology, 20: 30-42.
 Morris-Suzuki, T. and Peter Rimmer. 2002. Virtual Memories: Japanese History
Debatesin Manga and Cyberspace. Asian StudiesReview, 26(2): 147-164.
 Morris-Suzuki, T. 2005. The Past Within Us: Media, Memory, History. London: Verso.
(Chapter 5)
 Nagaike, K. 2010. The Sexual and Textual Politics of Japanese Lesbian Comics:
ReadingRomanticand Erotic Yuri Narratives. Electronic Journal of Contemporary
Japanese Studies, http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/articles/2010/Nagaike.html
 Nakar, E. 2003. Memories of Pilots and Planes: World War II in Japanese Manga,

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1957-1967. Social Science Japan Journal, 6(1): 57-76.
 Zanghellini, A. 2009. Boys love in anime and manga: Japanese subcultural
production and its end users. Continuun: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 23(3):
279-294.
 Zanghellini, A. 2009. Underage Sex and Romance in Japanese Homoerotic Manga and
Anime. Social and Legal Studies, 18(2): 159-177.
Week 20
Sex and Gender
Imageries of sex and gender in the contemporary Japanese media often represent wider
social, political, and international issues. This lecture ‘decodes’ imageries of sex and gender
in the contemporary Japanese media and discusses ideological implications of narratives
constructed by those imageries in the context of politics and international relations.
Essential Reading:
 Arima, A.N. 2002. Gender Stereotypesin Japanese television advertisement. Sex
Roles, 49(1/2): 81-90.
 Skov, L. and B. Moeran (eds.) 1996. Women, Media, and Consumption in Japan.
London: Universityof Hawai’i Press.
Further Reading:
 Darling-Wolf,F. 2003. 'Media, class, and western influence in Japanese women's
conceptions of attractiveness'. FeministMediaStudies 3(2):153-172.
 Ford, F. et al. 1998. Gender Role Portrayalsin Japanese Advertising: A Magazine
Content Analysis. Journal of Advertising, 27(1): 113-124.
 Iles,T. 2005. Female Voices, Male Words: Problems of Communication, Identityand
Gendered Social Construction in ContemporaryJapanese Cinema. Electronic Journal
of Contemporary Japanese Studies,
http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/discussionpapers/2005/Iles.html
 Kelsky, K. 1994. Intimate Ideologies: Transnational Theory and Japan’s ‘Yellow Cabs’.
PublicCulture, 6:465-478.
 Kelsky, K. 1996. The Gender Politics of Women’s Internationalism in Japan.
International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, 10(1): 29-50.
 Kelsky, K. 2001. Women on the Verge: Japanese Women, Western Dreams. Durhan and
London: Duke UniversityPress.
 Matanle, P., L. McCann, and D. Ashmore. 2008. Men Under Pressure: Representations
of the ‘Salaryman’and hisOrganization in Japanese Manga. Organization, 15(5): 636-
664.
 McLelland, M. 2003. ‘A Mirror for Men?’ Idealised Depictions of White Men and Gay
Men in Japanese Women’s Media. Transformations, 6: 1-14.
 Miller, L. 2003. Male Beauty work in Japan. In J.E. Roberson and N. Suzuki (ed) Men
and Masculinities in Contemporary Japan: Dislocating the salaryman doxa. London:
Routledge Curzon.
 Miller, L. 2004. Those Naughty Teenage Girls: Japanese Kogals, Slang, and Media
Assessments.Journal of LinguisticAnthropology, 14(2): 225-247.
 Miller, L. 2011. Cute Masquerade and the Pimpingof Japan International Journal of
Japanese Sociology, 20: 18-29.

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 Tanaka, K. 2003. The language of Japanese men’smagazines: young men who don’t
want to get hurt. In B. Benwell. (ed) Masculinity and Men’s Lifestyle Magazines.
London: Blackwell.
 Yamaguchi, T. 2006. ‘Loser Dogs’ and ‘Demon Hags’: Single Women in Japan and the
Declining Birth Rate, Social Science Japan Journal 9(1): 109–114.
Week 21
The Political Economy of Japanese Media
This lecture explores the political and economic connections to major media corporations,
includingNHK, the Japan Broadcasting Corporation which is Japan's publicservice
broadcastingorganization. It also discusses Japan’s Kisha kurabu (pressclub) system and
criticallyanalyses economic and political relationshipsto media organisations.
Essential Reading:
 Akhavan-Majid, R. 1990 ‘The Press as an Elite Power Group in Japan’, Journalism
Quarterly 67 (4):1006-1014
 Pharr, S. and Krauss, E. (eds) 1996. Media and Politics in Japan. Honolulu: University
of HawaiiPress.
Further Reading:
(Chapter 2-4, 7-8)
 Freeman, L. 2000. Closing the shop: information cartels and Japan's mass media.
Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. (esp. Chapter 3)
 Kelly, W., T. Matsumoto and D. Gibson. 2002. Kish kurabu and koho: Japanese media
relationsand publicrelations. Public Relations Review, 28: 265-281.
 Krauss,E. 2000. Broadcasting Politics in Japan: NHK television news. Cornell
UniversityPress. (esp. Chapters1 and 9, and Part II)
 Krauss, E. 1996. Portrayingthe State: NHK Television Newsand Politics. In Pharr, S.
and Krauss,E. (eds) Media and Politics in Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press.
 Morris-Suzuki, T. ‘Free Speech – Silenced Voices: The Japanese Media and the NHK
Affair.’ AsiaRights Issue Four 2005.
http://rspas.anu.edu.au/asiarightsjournal/Morris-Suzuki.pdf
 O’Dwyer, J. 2005. Japanese Kisha clubsand the Canberra Press Gallery: Siblingsor
strangers. Asia Pacific media Educator, Issue 16.
 Pharr, S. 1996. Media as Trickster in Japan: A Comparative Perspective. In Pharr, S.
and Krauss,E. (eds) Media and Politics in Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press.
 Sugiyama, M. 2000. ‘Media and power in Japan’, in Curran, J. & Myung-Jin, P. (eds)
De-Westernising Media Studies. London: Routledge. Pp.191-201
 Tasker, P. 1987. Inside Japan: Work, Wealth and Power in the New Japanese Empire.
(Chapter 5)
 Tracey, M. 1998. The Decline and Fall of Public Service Broadcasting. Clarendon
Press.

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 Westney, D.E., 1996. Mass Media as BusinessOrganizations: A U.S.-Japanese
Comparison. In Pharr, S. and Krauss, E. (eds.) Media and Politics in Japan. Honolulu:
Universityof HawaiiPress.
Week 22
Representation and Japanese Politics
This lecture examinesrelationshipsbetween political power and media organizations,
includingNHK, which often claims to be politically‘neutral’. Consideringthe political
economy, media texts can be influenced by political power, whereaspolitics is also
influenced by the media.
Essential Reading:
 Ito, M. 2002. Television and Violence in the Economy of Memory. International
Journal of Japanese Sociology 11: 19-34.
 Pharr, S. and Krauss, E. (eds) 1996. Media and Politics in Japan. Honolulu: University
of HawaiiPress.
Further Reading:
 Altman, K.K. 1996. Television and Political Turmoil: Japan’s Summer of 1993. In
Pharr, S. and Krauss, E. (eds) Media and Politics in Japan. Honolulu: University of
HawaiiPress.
 Farley, M. 1996. Japan’s Press and the Politics of Scandal. In Pharr, S. and Krauss, E.
(eds) Media and Politicsin Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
 Feldman, O. 2005. Talking Politics in Japan Today. Sussex Academicpress.(Chapter
7)
 Iida, Y. 2003a. Media Politics and Reified Nation: Japanese Culture and Politics under
Information Capitalism. Japanese Studies 23(1): 23-42.
 Iida, Y. 2003b. Japanese Nationalism under Information Capitalism. International
Journal of the Humanities 1: 697-710.
 Kostic, Z. 2008. ‘The relationship between the Japanese State and the public
broadcaster NHK.’ANZCA08 Conference, Power and Place. Wellington, July 2008.
http://anzca08.massey.ac.nz
 Krauss,E. 2000. Broadcasting Politics in Japan: NHK television news. Cornell
UniversityPress. (esp. Chapters1 and 9, and Part I)
 Krauss,E. 1996. The Mass Media and Japanese Politics: Effects and Consequences. In
Pharr, S. and Krauss, E. (eds) Media and Politics in Japan. Honolulu: University of
HawaiiPress.
 Krauss,E. and B. Nyblade. 2005. ‘Presidentialization’in Japan?The Prime Minister,
Media and Elections in Japan. British Journal of Political Studies, 35: 357-368.
 McCargo, D. and L. Hyon-Suk. 2010. Japan’s Political Tsunami: What’sMedia Got to
Do with It? International Journal of Press/Politics, 15(2): 236-245.
 Takiguchi, Masaki. 2007. ChangingMedia, ChangingPolitics in Japan. Japanese
Journal of Political Science 8(1): 147-166.
 Tkach-Kawasaki, L. 2003. Politics@Japan: PartyCompetition on the Internet in
Japan. Party Politics, 9: 105-123.

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Week 23
Censorship in Contemporary Japan
Media texts are often subject to legal restrictions. While obscene and violent images are
often censored, some argue that censorship goes against the constitutional principle of
freedom of speech. This lecture explores the issue of censorship in contemporary Japan and
publicdebates surrounding it.
Essential Reading:
 Dashiell, E. 1997. Law and regulation. In A. Cooper-Chen. Mass communication in
Japan. Ames: Iowa UniversityPress.(Part 3, Chapter 10)
Further Reading:
 Alexander, JR. 2003. Obscenity, Pornography and the Law in Japan: Reconsidering
Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses. Asian-Pacific law & policy journal, 4: 144-168.
 Allison, A. 2000. Permitted and Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in
Japan. London: University of California Press.(Chapter 9)
 Diamond, M. and A. Uchiyama. 1999. Pornography, Rape, and Sex Crimesin Japan.
International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 22 (1): 1-22.
 Hirano, K. 1992. Depletion of the AtomicBombingsin Japanese Cinema duringthe
US Occupation Period. In Broderick, M. (ed) 1996. Hibakusha Cinema: Hiroshima,
Nagasaki and the Nuclear Image in Japanese Film. London: Kegan Paul International.
 Hori, H. 2005. Representinga Women’s Story: Explicit Film and the Efficacy of
Censorship in Japan. In SaraiCollective (ed.) Sarai Reader 05: Bare Acts. Delhi:
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