Paper short abstract:

With focussing on players of Touken Ranbu ONLINE, a digital game which has 103 characters (tokendanshi/sword-men) created as personifications of actual swords, the paper explores how their perception of characters has led them to travelling to the places associated with the swords.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years, the Japanese media has created several anthropomorphic characters representing objects such as swords and fleets which attract fans to the places associated with these artefacts. While this phenomenon has been noticed by the tourism business sector, it has yet to be academically explored. Therefore, this paper focuses on players of Touken Ranbu ONLINE, a digital game produced by DMM Games (renamed EXNOA) and NITRO PLUS in 2015. The game has 103 male characters called tokendanshi (sword-men) created as personifications of actual swords. Generally, places associated with swords, such as museums exhibiting swords, and temples or shrines displaying votive swords, have gained an increasing number of female visitors because of the popularity of the game. The paper discusses; 1) how the fans perceived the characters of this game; and 2) how their perception of characters has led them to travelling to the places associated with the swords. The data were collected in August 2022 with a questionnaire survey using Google Forms among 1,593 participants. The results suggest that many players identified the game’s characters with swords and that the peculiar emotional ties to the swords via the characters motivated them to travel to actually see the swords. In response to the questions about ‘seeing’ the swords, most respondents used the Japanese word au that is only used when referring to people, instead of using the common word miru, which is generally used with both, persons as well as inanimate objects. The results also suggest that in the fan’s perception, the objects representing the characters are not mere materials but the respective spirits of each character in material form and therefore worth travelling for.

Paper short abstract:

Keshigomu figurines were emblematic of Japanese toy culture during the Shōwa fifties (1975-84), miniaturized playthings born from the austerities of oil shock petrocapitalism. This paper theorizes their agentic role in shaping children's play during a time of convergence in the culture industries.

Paper long abstract:

Keshigomu (“eraser”) figurines were emblematic of Japanese toy culture during the Shōwa fifties (1975-84), a category of plaything that came into being when the culture industries collided with the austerities of 1970s oil shock petrocapitalism. Colorful, affordable, and highly collectible, these miniature toys appealed to children through their ability to actualize the objects and affects of popular media franchises, while also covertly doubling as “erasers” that could be brought to school. Typically manufactured out of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a pliable yet highly durable polymer, keshigomu figurines rarely had any practical use as erasers. But their nominal function, as objects that are supposed to be able to remove written text, offers epistemic potential for thinking about their capacity to efface official media-driven narratives and open up spaces for transformative play.

This talk theorizes the material agency of keshigomu within transmedial systems, taking as case studies the Takara/Maruka line of keshigomu released with the American space opera Star Wars in 1978 and the Bandai line of kinkeshi (“muscle-rasers”) released during the first-wave serialization of the Japanese manga Kinnikuman (Muscle Man, 1979-1987). These two case studies allow for multi-faceted perspectives on the agency of keshigomu in transmedia systems during a time of increasingly interconnected cultural production between Japanese and American media and toy industries. Moreover, they stake out a transformative period in the materiality of media, when, to paraphrase Jeffrey Miekle (1995), the complex chains of molecules in plastics were being replaced by the strings of binary code in digital media. Working with hundreds of plastic artifacts, this paper consolidates two critical frameworks in its mattering of keshigomu. The first is a new materialist cartography of plastics that draws on theories of assemblage by Ian Buchanan and Jane Bennett to posit their agency in the ordering of transmedial objects and affects. The second is a ludological exploration of miniaturized toys, one that draws upon the work of Bob Rehak, Seth Giddings, and Katrina Heljakka to theorize toyetic affordances. In doing so, this paper gives a new materialist spin on the corporate slogan of Takara Toys during the 1970s--"Play is Culture" (asobi wa bunka).

Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates radio broadcasting in Japanese-occupied Singapore. Using materials on broadcasting and its programming, this shows the significant limitations of radio broadcasting there, contrary to the expectations of the military authorities.

Paper long abstract:

For Imperial Japan, radio broadcasting has played many political roles, such as cultural integration with the colonies, propaganda and national integration within Japan. This paper investigates the realities and limitations of radio broadcasting in Japanese-occupied Singapore during the Second World War. Much research has been conducted on radio broadcasting in the Japanese colonies and occupied territories, such as Taiwan, Korea and Manchuria. These studies have identified that radio broadcasts in the colonies were mainly in Japanese and primarily targeted the Japanese population in each region. As the Second Sino–Japanese War intensified, the Japanese language education programme expanded. Additionally, radio, as an ideological apparatus of the state, was expected to function as a medium for the indoctrination of time and discipline. Drawing on these previous studies, this paper clarifies the state of radio broadcasting in the multilingual and multi-ethnic context of wartime Singapore.

This paper analyses primary sources related to broadcasting and its programming. First, the broadcasting policy in Japanese-occupied Southeast Asia is examined. Although the primary objective of the occupation of Southeast Asia was to acquire resources, Japan also conducted aggressive propaganda to gain the cooperation of the local population. I attempt to clarify the nature of broadcasting developed for Southeast Asia, a multi-ethnic and multilingual area, using official documents and primary sources from broadcasting stations. Second, this paper sheds light on the characteristics of radio programmes, drawing on evidence from newspapers published in Singapore. The primary concern here is to investigate how broadcasting was conducted in Singapore, a ‘plural society’ that had been formed during the British colonial period, to gain the cooperation of its various ethnic groups. Finally, focusing on the nature of radio as a medium for Japanese language education, the characteristics of the radio lessons in Japanese language will be analysed. From the analyses above, I show that radio broadcasting in Singapore had significant limitations that were not expected by Tokyo or the Japanese military administration in Singapore.