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The Politics of "Real" and "Virtual" in Japanese Culture
Organizer: David Leheny, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Chair: Ian R. Condry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Discussant: Anne Allison, Duke University
When reality itself becomes a political issue, it highlights both the world that is represented as realistic, as well as another, ostensibly "less real" world that remains hidden or at least unproblematized. In this interdisciplinary panel, we investigate how realities are politically constructed in postwar Japan, focusing primarily on efforts to define what is authentic/real and inauthentic/virtual. The four papers - on the history of photography, on contemporary anime globalization, on Japan's military, and on regulating video game violence - point to new directions in the social sciences by calling attention to the discursive strategies involved in the construction of specific realities and the denial of others. By working across the fields of history, cultural studies, anthropology, and political science, we aim both at uncovering politicized efforts to categorize experience as being real or artificial and at critically evaluating the social forces that shape these competing narratives. Debates about what constitutes "real" anime help to shape the markets for Japan’s mostly highly prized cultural exports, just as arguments over the reality of a soldier’s experience affect the role of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces. Similarly, photography's vaunted ability to capture "the real" has been politically important for artists and activists views of Japan’s postwar history, just as the legislators seeking to crack down on video game content have judged which dystopic images are fantastic and which are somehow realistic, and therefore menacing. Our papers thus collectively interrogate the ways "purely academic" questions in the social sciences relate to the "real" world.
Real Anime: The Cultural Politics of Youth, Violence, and Sex in Japanese Cartoons
Ian R. Condry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
In the history of Japanese animated films and TV shows, there has been a on-going concern among creators and fans with the notion of "real" (riaru) in the depiction of robots, violence, and sex. This essay will explore the shifting ideas of real in the ultimately "virtual" world of Japanese cartoons as a way of critically examining some of the assumptions underlying the idea of culture in Japan studies. What can we learn from the similarities and contrasts between anime fandom and Japan studies in terms of what constitutes "serious" or "real" engagement with the world? Why do some scholars in Japan and the US contend that anime is not "real" Japanese culture? How do anime fans and creators develop notions of "real" anime as a way of distinguishing "important, grown-up" works from those "commercial works, for kids"? Ideas of "real robots" like those in the Gundam series (for teens and adults), the fetishism surrounding figurines and dolls, and Akihahabara's "maid cafes" where waitresses dress up in fantasy costumes suggest some of the ways people transform the virtual into the real. Through a comparison of the construction of "real" in several examples the anime world, I believe we can come to a deeper understanding of the processes of status, exclusion, and value also operate in the world of Japan studies.
Must Real Soldiers Die?
Sabine Fruhstuck, University of California-Santa Barbara
Today, soldiers all over the world rescue victims of natural disasters, reestablish infrastructure after large-scale accidents, and prepare and secure mass spectator events, among other activities. Most soldiers do not engage in war for their entire careers. Despite this major expansion and diversification of military roles, a very specific notion of what constitutes a real soldier, following a conception that idealizes the soldier’s death in combat, has persisted in many parts of the world. The contradictory character of this notion of the real soldier has been particularly apparent in Japan which in 2003 sent soldiers to a war zone in Iraq for the first time since the foundation of the Self-Defense Forces in 1954 thus highlighting the conceptual and experiential definitions of soldiering. The largely fictional notion of the real soldier has been continuously nurtured by the utterances of political figures as well as popular cultural creations. In this paper I will examine the creation and frequent reconfiguration of military reality as it occurred first with the foundation of the modern mass army in the 1870s and the return of roughly 600 soldiers from Iraq in 2006, addressing the specific technologies that reify group fantasies of the real soldier.
"Real" Photography as Social Critique: Beggars, Bourgeois Values, and Maimed Veterans in Postwar Japan
Julia Adeney Thomas, University of Notre Dame
Black-and-white documentary photographs might seem the closest we can get to representing reality without subjective interference, but that's not what postwar Japanese photographers and photography critics argued in 1953 when they made the case for "real photography." This paper will examine a fierce debate in which all three Japanese participants--Tanaka Masao, Watanabe Kosho, and Domon Ken--argued that realism is not the product of the camera's objective mechanisms nor the purview of certain photographic styles or subject matter. Instead, realism arises only when the cameraman himself achieves the proper political subjectivity. Photographic reality is, by this understanding, the product of mindfulness, though exactly what that mindful political analysis should be was the source of controversy among these authors. Reality is, in any case, not an external condition that can be captured by the camera, but the combination of external relations of power and the photographer's own intellectual and empathetic analysis.
The Comparative Realities of Liberty City: Japanese and American Efforts to Regulate the Grand Theft Auto Games
David Leheny, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Since its introduction in 2001, the Playstation2 video game Grand Theft Auto III and its sequels has produced an almost unprecedented level of transnational attention to the violence of videogames. In this paper, I explore the political efforts in Japan and the United States to restrict the games' use to adults. The Grand Theft Auto games have come under special political scrutiny partly due to their "realism," a quality emphasized by Japanese and American politicians alike. After comparing the interests of politicians who typically promote legislation regulating popular culture, I draw attention to the construction of "realism" in criticizing the games. The GTA games are based explicitly on famous violent films, and draw their putative realism from their resemblance to widely accepted simulacra of modern life. In contrast, the "real" violence associated with building game systems, particularly in the African nations that produce the minerals for electronic components, remains unimaginable, and therefore nearly "fictive," to politicians and publics alike in wealthy nations. The paper's goal is therefore twofold. First, it articulates a comparative argument, the first of its kind, regarding the political interests that drive legislators to focus on popular culture as opposed to other forms of moral regulation. Second, it seeks to unpack the idea of "realism," arguing that our collective senses of threat, danger, and dystopias are driven far more by proximate, recognizable fictional images of disaster than by the verifiable but distant instances of brutality and violence that result from our patterns of consumption and political inaction.