Paper short abstract:

Drawing on an ethnographic case study, this paper examines the practices employed by Japanese fan artists to navigate the visibility of their own works within the infrastructure of dōjinshi culture and their effects on the spreadability of this form of fan comic in a transcultural context.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the practices employed by Japanese fan artists to navigate the visibility of their own works within the infrastructure of dōjinshi (amateur comic) culture and their effects on the potential spreadability of this form of fan comic in a transcultural context (Chin/Morimoto 2013). Beyond the vast market for commercially published graphic narratives (manga) in Japan, there lies a still expanding and particularizing market for amateur publications, which are exchanged in printed form at specialized events and not primarily digitally over the internet.

Most of the works exchanged at these gatherings make use of scenarios and characters from commercially published media, such as manga, anime, games, movies or television series and can be classified as fan works, poaching from media franchises and offering a vehicle for creative expression. The fan artists publish their works by making use of the infrastructure provided by specialized events, bookstores and online printing services (as described in detail by Noppe 2014), without the involvement of a publishing company and without the consent of copyright holders. In turn, this puts the artists at risk of legal action, especially when their works are referring to the content owned by notoriously strict copyright holders such as the The Walt Disney Company, which has acquired Marvel Comics a decade ago.

Based on an ethnographic case study of Japanese fan artists who create fan work of western media franchises (the most popular during the observed timeframe being The Marvel Cinematic Universe), the paper identifies different tactics that dōjinshi artists employ to ensure their works achieve a high degree of visibility amongst their desired audience of other fans and avoid attracting the attention of casual audiences or copyright holders.

Paper short abstract:

This paper studies Shakespeare in manga, anime and cosplay, such as Tezuka's "Robio to Robiette". I would argue that such cases offer insights into Japan's negotiations with the dichotomy between high culture and pop culture, between the global and the local, and the West and the East.

Paper long abstract:

The combination of manga, originally local pop culture coming from Japan, and Shakespeare, a global Bard regarded as the icon of high culture, might be surprising, but Shakespeare in manga has a long history, back to, if we try to be conservative, Tezuka Osamu's manga adaptation of The Merchant of Venice (1959) in which the scenes are set in Venice, with Portia as the only daughter of a media tycoon who televises his dying moments, or if we include manga-style black-and-white images, back to a 1874 drawing by a British artist residing in Japan of a Hamlet as a samurai speaking "To be or not to be" in gibberish Japanese, or slightly later to 1885 illustrations of Antonio as a handsome entrepreneur in the Edo era (the first adaptation of The Merchant of Venice).

This presentation examine Shakespeare in illustration, manga, anime and cosplay such as a drawing by Kyujin Yamamoto of O-Nami (Natsume Soseki, Kusamakura:1906) as an Ophelia on water (1926), a cartoon of Baron Shidehara, Minister of Foreign Affairs as Hamlet (1932), Tezuka's "Robio to Robiette"(1965), a Korean boxer traumatized by the Korean War as Macbeth/Lady Macbeth in Chiba Tetsuya's Ashita no Joe, Moto Hagio's Poe no ichizoku with Edgar as Rosalind (As You Like It) (1974), Morikawa Kumi's manga adaptation of Twelfth Night (1978), leading up to more recent ones such as GONZO's sci-fi animation Romeo x Juliet (2007) and a character named William Shakespeare in Fate/Apocrypha (2012-14). It also examines Manga Shakespeare Series by SelfMadeHero (2007-), a British publishing house, as an important case of glocalization both of manga and Shakespeare.

By studying these cases, this presentation argues that Shakespeare in manga-style illustrations, graphic novels, anime, games and cosplay offers insights into Japan's negotiations with West as represented as Shakespeare, in the ways that problematizes the dichotomy between high culture and pop culture, between the global and the local.

Paper short abstract:

Through exploring the portrayal of the hero in the Korean original and Japanese remake of the television drama Cain and Abel, I explore the complex relations between the Japanese television industry and the rise and effect of the Korean media in the region.

Paper long abstract:

For years Japanese media, and in particular television, was ‘self-sufficient’. Local productions took up most of the broadcasting schedule on open channels, and foreign content was limited in amount and mainly broadcast on cable and satellite. The introduction and success of the Korean television dramas in the early 2000s, first on satellite channels and then on open ones, gave rise to a mix of reactions spanning from fascination of the neighbouring country’s content to a sense of competition and subsequently a fear of the influence of this close-but-other rising media giant. This led to the reduction of Korean dramas on the main open channels and gave rise to a new phenomenon: Japanese remakes of Korean dramas.

Looking at television drama remakes through the broad lens of audio-visual translation, Japanese remakes of Korean dramas present a unique field through which to explore the state of the television industry and the Japanese mediascape and its role in society. Focusing on one pair of dramas, Cain and Abel (SBS, 2009) and Cain and Abel (FujiTV, 2016), and in particular the protagonist, this paper explores how Japan negotiates what it sees as ‘Japanese’ vis a vis the rise of Korean media in Japan and the region at large.

Using close reading and textual and narratological analysis of the portrayal of the protagonist in both the original Korean and Japanese remake of Cain and Abel, I argue that the new phenomenon of Japanese remakes of Korean dramas signals the realisation of the industry of the need for new ideas vis a vis the rise of Korea, but the practice of remake enables a controlled exploration of foreign content to fit the expectations of myths prevalent in Japan.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes the ironic role that imagined Japan and Japanese bodies play in the HBO series Westworld (2016-present) that features a supposedly post-racial world in which Western bodies define their identities through a process of the West's optimistic future-facing Orientalism.

Paper long abstract:

In HBO's Westworld (2016-present), humans and robots navigate mazes of both space-time and the mind to define Self and consciousness. The show highlights the transformative experiences of android Maeve who attempts to escape the titular "Old West" theme park. In her flight, Maeve discovers a futuristic control center where robots like her are made, abused, and controlled—each a body-object created to satisfy the dark pleasures of a dominant, colonizing power. Maeve encounters successive scenes of shock and horror in labyrinthine laboratories, but a truly exotic sight—Japanese samurai androids engaged in swordplay—causes her to utter the classic science-fiction line of unmoored astonishment: "What is this place?"

Westworld, the show explains, is "the answer to that question you've been asking yourself—who you really are." In the park, humans learn their "true natures" and androids transcend programming to develop consciousness. And yet, in the show's post-racial representation of black and white bodies coexisting in a reimagined Civil War West where slavery is deracialized as a battle between human and machine, not all are created equal. It is in neighboring "Shogun Land," an anachronistic recreation of Japan's Edo Period, where protagonist Maeve finds her true voice and conscious Self that will help her lead other prisoners of Westworld to their own Self awakenings. This paper analyzes the ironic role that imagined Japan and Japanese bodies play in a supposedly post-racial construct in which Western bodies define their identities through a process of the West's optimistic future-facing Orientalism.