Asian Popular Culture

Emerging popular cultural and new media forms which have tended to evade historical and critical attention, now get thorough analyses by a diverse set of critics who create points of cogent analysis on the vast and diverse global map in Lent and Fitzsimmons' book. Clarity in these particular views creates a sense of the enormous change emerging in the cultures of Asia. -- Frenchy Lunning, Minneapolis College of Art and Design
This volume, an eclectic set of eight essays by an array of scholars and popular media specialists, covers Japan, China, South Korea, and Australia. What links these essays methodologically is the claim of interdisciplinarity with a focus on, to quote from the publisher's website, "the roles popular culture plays in the construction of national and regional identity." In actuality, the majority of these essays foreground Japan. For that reason, this collection will be of most interest to Japanophiles. Two essays explicitly cover regionality and globalization: one through a discussion of the history and diffusion of the board game Weiqi (Go), the other by examining online/handheld gaming in East Asia. The remaining essays are mostly "country specific," delving into the power of popular culture--from vinyl records in the 1960s to YouTube videos in the 2010s—in the re/formation of national identity. Summing Up: Recommended. * CHOICE *