Paper short abstract:

Based on 12-months fieldwork, this paper examines the mutual indebtedness of moral sensibilities and paid labour in the context of commercial animation making in Tokyo, Japan.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the mutual indebtedness of moral sensibilities and paid labour in the context of commercial animation making in Tokyo, Japan. Based on 12-months fieldwork, the paper ethnographically focuses on young animation makers who have to work extremely long hours with little job security as a path toward the realisation of their dreams. The concept of 'labour market' is one not many anthropologists use as part of their standard analytical lexicon. Yet I argue the ethnographic look at the labour market of the Japanese animation industry can expose the entanglements of the moral and the economic vividly with broader anthropological implications; for it is where labour, arguably the most controversial commodity since Adam Smith, becomes striped of its moral qualities and transformed into one of many economic resources for capitalist production.