![]() The sample pictures shown on our web page may differ from the actual. If the item is heavily damaged, the condition is written on item page. This essay wants to collect and analyze this "in-famous moments" of the brand in the States and in Europe, showing how the prejudice towards the "japaneseness" never disappeared the same japaneseness that takes roots – and has modified the western aesthetic paradigms since the late 70s – in our western way of thinking, in the modern video-games environment, in our social common sense.Items in our store are second-hand and might have slight damage. Between the other guilty forms of this transmedial or polymedial phenomenon, the most interesting one is the cartoon transposition, which was hardly de-bated among international press in the early oughts. Since its very first appearance in West, the Pokémon popularity, and the journalistic critic, comes from the sociocultural prejudices towards an exotic country as Japan is perceived still today, two years after the Pokémon GO mobile app launch, and after twenty years of healthy brand life, several critics appears and disappears. ![]() Pokémon integrates, as a commercial brand, numerous ways to communicate, and it is a fine enter-tainment for billions of people every day, in every corner of the planet, through all kind of modern media channels. The database is one way to talk about both anime and yōkai more productively, and also to expand the ways we talk about how texts are produced and consumed. I begin with discussion of Mizuki Shigeru's updating of Toriyama Sekien's yokai encyclopedia in Gegege no Kitaro and related publications, and continue with analysis of Inuyasha by Takahashi Rumiko, one of the most popular recent manga/anime series to draw extensively on folklore. ![]() This essay explores the tendency towards the creation of databases in both yōkai and anime, and how the database makes yōkai available for modern narratives. ![]() But how else can we talk about them besides simply explaining the references to traditional culture? What is the deeper connection between yōkai and anime, or between modes of anime and yōkai discourse? Popular discourse on both anime and yōkai seem to have an affinity for the creation of databases, or vast compendiums of knowledge, wherein each data point is equally important. There are many websites and books for non-Japanese fans listing the references to folktales and yōkai in popular manga and anime, to help make them accessible to foreign audiences. Yōkai, a general term which might be translated as monsters, spirits, or demons, are a rich source of material for contemporary pop culture narratives, especially for stories in science fiction, fantasy, action, and adventure genres. Many anime and manga narratives draw on Japanese folklore, re-imagining tales for a modern audience, and contain references to or examples of supernatural creatures, or yōkai. Particular attention is given to the interlinking of narratives, figures, and hegemonies involved in the establishment of the tengu (the mountain monster), the kappa (the water goblin), the hybrid monsters in Miyazaki Hayao’s animation, and the wider trans/national monstering process shaping present Japan. The volume brings together different case studies on some of the most popular monsters in Japan, from the classical past to the contemporary present. ![]() More specifically, it examines the discursive emergence of monstrous Japan, as configured by the modern intertwining of hegemonic Occidentalism, Orientalism, and self-Orientalism. The book explores the “ontological liminality” addressed in monster theory (Cohen, 1996) by means of a multi-disciplinary approach, cross-cutting literary studies, visual studies, cultural anthropology, history, and sociology. But why have old and new monsters gained such prominence with regard to folkloric customs, premodern urban culture, content industry, and transnational flows? How is this popularity connected to national identity formation and institutional legitimacy, as exemplified by the modern rise of yōkaigaku, the nativist science of monsters? And finally, what is the critical potential of monstrosity in terms of displacing naturalised identification and Othering, within the globalising entanglement of self-representations in Japan and hetero-representations of Japan? These questions aim to complicate our understanding of ‘Japan’ and ‘monsters’ in order to contribute to a transcultural theory of monsters, in contrast to prevalent investigations that focus instead on the cultural-intrinsic or the historical-specific Japaneseness of its monstrous repertoire. Contemporary Japan has become the stage for displaying an endless assortment of traditional, modern, and postmodern monsters. ![]()
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