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- Volume 4, Issue 2, 2018
East Asian Journal of Popular Culture - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2018
Volume 4, Issue 2, 2018
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A brief history of Japanese popular culture in Japanese language education: Using ‘manga’ in the classroom
Authors: Sumiko Iida and Yuki TakeyamaAbstractThis article discusses a history of Japanese popular culture (JPC) located in the broader field of Japanese language education, particularly focusing on ‘manga’. JPC has drawn the public attention of Japanese language educators following an international boom in the consumption of anime and ‘manga’ in the early 2000s. However, looking into JPC and its location in the context of Japanese language education, its history goes further back to the late 1980s and the early 1990s, when ‘manga’ and anime began to be used in classrooms. Despite active attempts using JPC in Japanese language education, research into this field was still inactive until the end of the twentieth century. This article is therefore aimed at connecting classroom practices and research into JPC over time since the late 1980s to look into how JPC in Japanese language education has been viewed and used differently in its trajectory and implies its future direction. The article first critically discusses the early days of JPC, namely ‘manga’ in Japanese language education by reviewing three periodicals of the early to the mid-1990s – Mangajin, Gekkan Nihongo and Nihongo Kyōiku Tsūshin. Second, the article overviews research into ‘manga’/anime and Japanese language education from the late 1980s to early 2010. The results of the analyses imply that the early days of JPC in Japanese language education were triggered by the struggle of the instructors finding teaching resources rather than the motivation of the learners. In contrast, a number of more recent studies of JPC in Japanese language education align with both the learners’ and the teachers’ demands and motivations of daily classroom practice.
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A portrait of Japanese popular culture fans who study Japanese at an Australian university: Motivation and activities beyond the classroom
By Taeko ImuraAbstractThis article presents a quantitative study with a focus on portraying Japanese Popular Culture (JPC) fans who take a Japanese language course at a university. Questionnaires were administered to students who were studying Japanese as a foreign language (JFL) at a multi-campus university in Australia. 247 participants (which accounts for an 85.6 per cent response rate) responded to questions concerning interest in studying Japanese, future motivation and out-of-class activities related to JPC. Further data regarding JPC consumption in retrospect and perceived benefits of JPC in studying Japanese were collected from those who identified themselves as JPC fans. It revealed that nearly three-quarters of the students were self-claimed JPC fans. While both fans and non-fans showed high interest in the language, interest in traditional culture and travel to Japan, fans revealed substantially higher motivation than non-fans in all other accounts, namely future motivation. Non-fans, however, showed relatively high motivation only in future employment. A prominent finding was that fans were exposed to Japanese language far more frequently outside the classroom than non-fans of JPC. The most popular activities for fans were watching anime, listening to J-pop music and playing video games. Reading ‘manga’ was also a frequent activity but they were reading translated ‘manga’. The findings suggest that future motivation associated with Japan and Japanese language is an important element in continuing Japanese language study. This article has implications for the role of popular culture in foreign language (FL) education, in particular when many FL learners are interested in popular culture like JPC.
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The influence of Japanese popular culture on learning Japanese
More LessAbstractThis article presents the case that because students like Japanese popular culture (JPC) it can motivate them to take up Japanese language study, and not only that, but can influence them to continue their study. This stance is supported with findings from a research project undertaken in Sydney Australia. Learner motivational trajectories reveal that a strong interest in JPC is intertwined with the motivation to learn Japanese sometimes to the point of becoming a passion. Consequently, harmonious passion (HP) is examined in regards to Motivation and a striking similarity is found. Learning Japanese can take place effortlessly through engagement in JPC and is described as ‘effortless effort’ (e-e). It is linked to directed motivational current (DMC), an attractor state within complex dynamic systems theory (CDST). Questionnaire outcomes and excerpts from interviews with university learners portray the influence of JPC on learning Japanese and the role it plays in developing language identities.
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Using the revised Bloom’s taxonomy to reflect on the teaching of the Japanese language through ‘manga’ and anime
Authors: William S. Armour and Sumiko IidaAbstractThis article is a reflective analysis of student course outlines in which ‘manga’ and anime were the major contributors of Japanese language input. By using the revised Bloom’s taxonomy to analyse the transition of teaching these courses, we are able to locate this article into the scholarship of learning and teaching. The analysis revealed how the teaching processes employed by the two teachers involved impacted course design and pedagogy. The analysis also revealed the reasons for these processes. The article concludes by providing several suggestions to teachers who plan to use either anime and/or ‘manga’ in their Japanese language classrooms. We recommend that a backward design process be adopted, in which the students themselves create their own method or methods for learning Japanese.
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‘Loving nation’ and ‘subjugated nation’: Popular narratives of the nation in early twentieth-century Shanghai
By Peijie MaoAbstractThis article examines the nationalist discourse in Shanghai popular print media during the late Qing and the early Republican period, focusing on the literary representation and imagination of ‘loving nation’ (aiguo) and ‘subjugated nation’ (wangguo) in popular fiction. It discusses the popular nationalism through ‘patriotic stories’ (aiguo xiaoshuo), a fiction genre promoted by Shanghai popular media in the 1910s, which, on the one hand, responded to the external plights of the newly established Republic of China, while on the other shaped the popular imagination of a new national identity and modern nation state. I argue that ‘patriotic stories’ contributed to this national imaginary through a discovery of sentimentality, female emotionality and an increasing fancy of the ‘other’, while simultaneously producing the competing narratives of romantic love and patriotic feelings, and private and public realms. This sentimental narrative was also inextricably interwoven with the narratives of trauma and humiliation, and an imagination of wangguo in popular fiction. Viewing patriotism as a cultural production constructed through memory, imagination and reinterpretation, I suggest that the popular imagination of nation generated a hybrid and uniquely powerful mode of nationalistic narrative, one conjoining sentimentalism, patriotism and commercial interests in early twentieth-century China.
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Refining modern beauties: The evolving depiction of Chinese women in cigarette cards, 1900–37
By Jie GaoAbstractEarly twentieth-century China was awash in new forms of visual advertising, each revealing its own aspirations for the country’s modernization. Along with print media advertising and yuefenpai (calendar posters), cigarette cards represented a new and widely viewed vehicle for both selling consumer goods and tacitly endorsing new roles and behaviours for women during a period of great cultural change. The manner in which women were depicted in these cigarette cards from the late Qing Era to 1937 has not been studied as yet. While cigarette cards were an imported medium, they were tailored to local tastes and addressed many of the most pressing cultural and social changes for women during this period. Images of women in Chinese cigarette cards charted evolving fashion trends, hinted at new sexual mores, challenged regressive old beauty ideals such as foot and breast binding, and promoted physical activity as a means of mobilizing women for national service as war with Japan loomed on the horizon. Cigarette cards disappeared from China as a result of paper shortages during the war and were no longer seen as appropriate under communist rule, but they provide valuable insight into Chinese women’s history in the first four decades of the twentieth century.
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Book Reviews
AbstractIntercultural Communication in Japan: Theorizing Homogenizing Discourse, Satoshi Toyosaki and Shinsuke Eguchi (eds) (2017) 1st ed., New York: Routledge, 244 pp., ISBN 978-1-13869-937-3, h/bk, $145, ISBN 978-1-31551-693-6, electronic, $49.46
Cool Japan: Case Studies from Japan’s Cultural and Creative Industries, 1st ed., Tim Craig (ed.) (2017) Ashiya: BlueSky Publishing, 279 pp., ISBN 978-4-99098-221-8, p/bk, $19.95
New Hong Kong Cinema: Transitions to Becoming Chinese in 21st-Century East Asia, 1st ed., Ruby Cheung (2016) New York, NY: Berghahn Books, 273pp., ISBN 978-1-78238-703-9, h/bk, $130.00/£92.00; ISBN 978-1-78533-761-1, p/bk, $27.95/£19.00
華語電影在後馬來西亞:土腔風格、華夷風與作者論 (Post- Malaysian Chinese-Language Film: Accented Style, Sinophone and Auteur Theory), 許維賢 (Hee Wai Siam) (2018) Taipei: Lianjin, 391 pp., ISBN 978-9-5708-5098-7, h/bk, NT$650
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