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An investigation in the under-researched area of Japanese erotic audio use, specifically the ways in which different genres of erotic voice media have been used since the twentieth century for non-sexual functions such as entertainment, parasocial connection, and wellness or self-care.

Paper long abstract

Scholarly work on erotic audio in both sex work and popular culture has formed a small but diverse international field in sexuality and sound studies since the 1990s, with research on phone sex lines (Hall, 1995) and Japanese adult messaging services (Kashimura, 1989), boys love cassettes and CDs (Ishida, 2019), pornographic “ero-games” (Kikawada, 2020), and narrated erotic fantasies streamed online (Cheng, 2025). Since the COVID-19 pandemic, scholars of "sexy" voice media aimed at women outside Japan have begun to examine the non-sexual functions of such texts, particularly with regard to wellness and self-care (Lee, 2022; Bellas & McAlister, 2023). Japan has a long history of erotic audio, but explorations of its purposes and pleasures outside the realm of sexuality are lacking. This presentation will therefore consider the ways in which various types of Japanese erotic voice media have been co-opted for non-erotic purposes.

I will begin with a brief discussion of an early form of mediated erotic voice, a subgenre of rakugo with roots in the late Edo period known as enshō. In a somewhat similar way to racy American “blue discs” of the same period, its purpose was to simultaneously titillate the audience and make them laugh (Smith, 2004). Released (and frequently banned) since the 1930s on short-playing records, this type of erotic-comic tale could be considered a foundation for subsequent voice media that comprise multiple functions, including arousal, parasocial connection, entertainment, and wellbeing. From ero-cassette tapes of the 1980s featuring the voices of gravure idols, whose often unprofessional performance has been seen as a way of prompting feelings of affection from fans (Yasuda, 2024), to anonymous online amateur recordings that fail to arouse commenters but make them laugh, and more recently commercialised audio streams that act as relaxation aids – engaging the listener as an imagined partner as the performer “makes love” to them and then helps them fall asleep – this presentation traces erotic voice media and its non-sexual functions through the twentieth century to the present. It will conclude with a short consideration of the potential uses of emerging interactive AI voices.

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MikuMikuDance (MMD) functions as a memetic engine within Japan’s user-platform-material ecosystem. Through 1,179 MMD-memes, this study shows how skill, performance, idolization, and skit-based production shape digital communication and reflect creative labor in contemporary online media.

Paper long abstract

The ever-expanding online space is predominantly driven by memetic production and creative practices. Japan’s online media demonstrates such an environment, in particular the MikuMikuDance (MMD) program for creating 3D models, which has led to various sub-cultures of memetic productions, such as internet memes, also influencing online communication and commercialism globally. However, Japan’s contribution within digital culture studies, specifically MMD’s global integration, remains underexplored. This study examines how the intricacies of memetic production shape digital connections and online communication through the case of MMD. It situates MMD within a user-platform-material environment through the lens of meme discourse, arguing that MMD mediates frictions of creative and economic powers. Furthermore, the study showcases communicative values users foster through the operating of MMD’s complex functions as well as its memetic production. A qualitative multimodal content analysis (n = 1,179) reveals four communicative expressions: Ability and skill, embodied performance, memetic idolization, and memetic skits.

keywords: Creative labor, digital culture, Memes, MMD, online communication, platforms

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A hermeneutic analysis of Togawa Naoki’s 1966 essay on pinku eiga, published in the Polish film journal Film, as a case of the transfer of Japanese film theory into socialist Poland. The paper situates the analysis within the crisis of 1960s cinema and kasutori bunka.

Paper long abstract

In 1966, an essay by Togawa Naoki entitled “Pink Films,” or the Erotic Offensive was published in issue 37 of the Polish film magazine Film, one of the few texts by Japanese film critics to appear in the Polish film press during the socialist period. This short essayistic piece, devoted to the phenomenon of pinku eiga, was addressed to readers largely unfamiliar with both the phenomenon and its author.

Togawa Naoki (Naosuke, 1917–2010) was a key figure in twentieth-century Japanese film culture: a critic and theorist, a long-term contributor to Eiga hyōron, a lecturer at Nihon University, and an active participant in the international circulation of film-theoretical discourse. His essay published in Poland thus represents a compelling case of the transnational transfer of knowledge about Japanese cinema into a media context peripheral to its original cultural milieu.

The paper offers a hermeneutic analysis of Togawa’s text, based on close reading, and situates it within the context of Japanese film culture in the 1960s. The analysis discusses pinku eiga (Sharp 2011; Nornes 2014) and its aesthetic and historical connections to the ero guro current (Silverberg 2006), as well as the broader transformations of Japanese cinema: the crisis of the studio system, often described as the “end of Japanese cinema” (Yomota 2019; Zahlten 2021), and the emergence of alternative models represented by the Art Theatre Guild (Domenig 2005).

The interpretation further considers the wider socio-cultural context of postwar Japan: a normative crisis, the absence of a new moral code, and the liminal condition of a rapidly transforming society—conditions that facilitated the commercialization of corporeality and sexuality within kasutori bunka (Olson 1992; Kapur 2018). Japan’s relationship with the West is treated as ambivalent, functioning as both a driver of modernization and a source of cultural frustration.

Finally, the analysis maintains methodological reflexivity from the perspective of a contemporary Polish researcher, while reconstructing Togawa’s critical position through a comparative reading of the essay alongside other works in which his thought is articulated or referenced (Leslie 1972; Gerow 2012; Kitsnik 2016; Fujiki 2022).

Keywords: Togawa Naoki; Pinku Eiga; Japan; Film; Criticism

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This paper uses media archaeology to reconstruct a fragmentary history of 'New Philippines News,' a Japanese newsreel series in wartime Philippines (1943–1945). Drawing on surviving reels and paratexts, it examines the series as imperial propaganda with subtle anti-Japanese narratives.

Paper long abstract

During the Japanese occupation of the Philippines (1942–1945), newsreels or news films (nyūsu eiga / ニュース映画) were principal forms of film propaganda. Designed not only to provide war updates but also to influence occupied populations, these films promoted images of Japanese life, military power, and imperial ideology. Newsreel series such as ‘Daitoa News’ and ‘Nippon News’ were strategically circulated in the Philippines, projecting narratives of anti-American sentiment, Japanese culture and military campaigns, and Filipino–Japanese collaboration. One year into the occupation, a local newsreel series titled ‘New Philippines News’ was produced, reportedly made from a Filipino point of view with Filipinos involved in the production. Screened until 1945, the series reported news in English for Filipino audiences, covering developments in Japan and other occupied territories while emphasizing everyday wartime normalcy and collaboration under Japanese rule. Many copies of ‘New Philippines News’ were destroyed during the Japanese retreat in 1945, rendering the series fragmentary and difficult to study. In addition, Japanese wartime newsreels, particularly those produced and circulated in Southeast Asia, remain understudied, further compounded by issues of media obsolescence and archival loss. Addressing this gap, the current study constructs a fragmentary film history of ‘New Philippines News’ through a media archaeological approach, or the study of historical media through surviving fragments, material remains, and paratextual traces. Drawing on ‘New Philippines News’ remnants, including extant digitized reels, an American-seized and reedited version, and paratextual materials such as advertisements and posters, the study examines how the newsreel series functioned during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines and highlights its promiscuity, revealing how it operated as Japanese propaganda while simultaneously carrying subtle anti-Japanese narratives. In doing so, the study foregrounds the use of newsreels in studying Japanese history in wartime Philippines through media archaeology, contributing to the wider scholarship on Japan’s historical wartime presence in Southeast Asia.

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This study examines the 2024 Fuji TV scandal—triggered by sexual assault allegations of a female announcer against top Japanese celebrity—as a pivotal case study in media governance, corporate ethics, and gender accountability in Japan. It analyzes the scandal as a media product and a social ritual.

Paper long abstract

This study examines the 2024 Fuji TV scandal—triggered by sexual assault allegations of a female TV announcer against top Japanese celebrity Nakai Masahiro—as a pivotal case study in media governance, corporate ethics, and gender accountability in Japan. The study reconstructs the "scandal flow," tracing the trajectory from initial tabloid leaks to a full-scale public scandal that resulted in the resignation of Fuji TV’s top leadership. It utilizes a triangulated corpus of media coverage, press conferences, and third-party reports to analyze the scandal through two primary theoretical lenses: The first lens, “Scandal-as-Product,” investigates the structural divide between the mainstream media (dailies, TV stations, wire agencies) that tend to ignore or censor scandals, and the non-mainstream media (weeklies, social media, foreign media) that usually trigger and amplify scandals in Japan. This lens demonstrates how the non-mainstream outlets overrode the self-censorship of the mainstream outlets, effectively reframing the incident from a private trouble to a corporate disaster. The second lens, “Scandal-as-Ritual,” evaluates the effectiveness of apologetic press conferences during the scandal. It shows how Fuji TV’s failure to conduct a proper apologetic ritual has backfired, leading to a massive scandal that alienated investors, employees, and viewers. Besides, the Fuji TV scandal activated a sustained #MeToo mobilization, as women leveraged an online hashtag testimony of workplace sexual coercion. Thus, it also offers a critical insight into the impact of gender accountability on Japanese media outlets during sex-related scandals.

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This paper discusses the representation of foreigners in Japan in Tōkyō Saradabōru by Kruomaru and in Sukima by Gao Yan. It argues that the former risks reinforcing the Japanese/foreign divide, whereas the second reframes identity through transnational histories and entangled colonial pasts.

Paper long abstract

In recent years, debates on immigration and multicultural coexistence have permeated social media and popular culture in Japan. Amid these discourses and a concurrent resurgence of conservative voices, manga and television dramas have become sites for negotiating the visibility of foreigners in Japan and raising questions related to colonial history and identity.

Based on textual and visual analysis, this paper looks at the representation of non-Western foreigners in Japanese manga. It is premised on the notion that such a discussion is enriched by the inclusion of non-Japanese writers who work in Japan. It examines two graphic narratives, Tōkyō Saradabōru (Tokyo Salad Bowl, 2021-2024) by the Japanese manga artist Kuromaru, adapted into an NHK live-action drama in 2025, and Sukima (Gap, 2025) by Gao Yan, a Taiwanese artist based in Japan.

Tōkyō Saradabōru follows an eccentric female detective, whose hair is dyed green, and a brooding police translator with a complicated past. They encounter various foreigners, who in some way or another become involved in crime, whether it be as victims or perpetrators. The manga aims to counter stereotypes and present foreigners as complex human beings who happen to make Japan their home. However, it tends to reinforce the Japanese–non-Japanese divide and overlook deeper historical entanglements.

In contrast, Gao Yan foregrounds transnational and trans-minority connections, exploring and questioning notions of identity and belonging as well as the painful work involved in the excavation of history and understanding of political processes, usually concealed by those in power. In Sukima, a Taiwanese art student arrives for a year of study abroad in Okinawa and forges connections with a cast of various people, Japanese, Okinawan and Chinese. Gao draws parallels between Taiwan and Okinawa through shared histories of annexation and occupation, weaving personal narratives that traverse national boundaries. Instead of creating the dichotomy of Japanese versus foreign, Gao crafts a complex web of connections that call attention to history.

This presentation highlights the importance of inclusion of diverse voices and points of view when we discuss the representation of foreignness and identity in Japanese arts and media.

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This paper examines how materiality shapes character representation as a form of semiotic practice on manga covers, revealing the relationship between material affordances and commercial imperatives that drives the production and circulation of meaning within Japanese popular culture.

Paper long abstract

Characters on manga covers represent the genres they belong to, visually communicating the type of narrative readers can expect. This is particularly evident in Boys Love (BL) manga, where character design encapsulates the genre’s romantic orientation as well as its affective and aesthetic sensibilities. However, within Japan’s contemporary and highly competitive market, BL manga covers must not only make use of characters to inform readers of genre affiliation but also to attract them to ensure commercial success. Rather than unpacking character representation in terms of gendered codes, as most studies have done, this paper turns to materiality, namely publication format and medium, to examine how it shapes the meaning-making of characters in the context of manga covers. Drawing on a social semiotic analysis of 580 BL manga covers and editor interviews, this study conceptualizes the meaning of characters along two dimensions, representational and interactional, corresponding to the cover’s dual functions to inform and to attract. First, it shows how publication format shapes representational meaning through the number of characters depicted. While the centrality of romance in BL conventionally prioritizes the depiction of two characters to inform readers of the main pairing, the presence of single-character covers reveals an alternative. This creates variation in strategies of informing across three publication formats. Second, it demonstrates how publication medium shapes the interactional meaning of characters. Through semiotic choices such as gaze, distance, and perspectivization, BL covers strategically deploy affect and aesthetic to attract readers, with their effectiveness varying according to whether the medium is print or digital. These semiotic choices reflect commercial interests, as producers negotiate the differing affordances of print and digital media while aiming for cross-platform effectiveness. To conclude, the discussion situates these findings within the recent resurgence of the shinsōban phenomenon, showing how commercial imperatives are materially realized through redesigned covers that reconfigure reader engagement with existing works. The implications of this research underscore the value of attending to materiality in analyzing how meaning is produced and circulated within the commercially driven backdrop of Japanese popular culture.

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This study investigates the shifting patterns of media narratives regarding Japan’s most vulnerable populations, focusing on the urban poor and foreign residents, particularly Japanese Brazilians (nikkeijin). The research examines preliminary findings from three major national print media outlets.

Paper long abstract

Mass media in contemporary Japan operates within a fundamental contradiction, serving as a primary conduit for communicating public policy while simultaneously treating its audience as consumers. This commercial drive often results in the marginalization of social issues that lack "market appeal," specifically the persistent reality of poverty. This study investigates the shifting patterns of media narratives regarding Japan’s most vulnerable populations, focusing on the urban elderly and foreign residents, particularly Japanese Brazilians (nikkeijin). While Japan has long been projected as a model of Asian prosperity, this image has frequently glossed over significant government failures to generate household wealth and address stagnant wages over the past two decades.

This research examines preliminary findings from three major national print media outlets: Yomiuri Shimbun, Asahi Shimbun, and Nikkei News. By selecting news coverage from pivotal economic periods—including the post-bubble era, the 2008 global financial crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic—this study identifies how media language shapes the "invisibility" of the poor. Findings suggest that while the urban poor are framed through a lens of "self-reliance," foreign residents are often portrayed as an elastic labor force. During economic shocks, these migrant workers—concentrated in manufacturing under irregular contracts—are the first to be discarded, yet remain excluded from the social security systems guaranteed to Japanese citizens.

The implications of these media patterns are profound for Japanese civil society. First, by framing poverty as a lack of individual self-reliance rather than a systemic policy failure, the media reduces public pressure for robust welfare reform. Second, the portrayal of foreign residents as temporary, irregular labor reinforces a "security gap" where tax-paying residents are denied basic living standards during emergencies. Ultimately, this study argues that the commercialized nature of Japanese media reinforces social stratification. By prioritizing narratives that satisfy consumer expectations over those that challenge policy shortcomings, the media perpetuates the exclusion of marginalized groups from the national discourse, hindering the development of a truly inclusive social safety net in an aging, globalized Japan.

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This paper examines representations of interethnic romantic relationships in Japanese celebrity and tabloid magazines published between 1952 and 1970, focusing on how discourses shifted from showcasing interethnic relationships as morally ambivalent to portraying them as an object of aspiration.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines representations of interethnic romantic relationships in Japanese celebrity and tabloid magazines published between 1952 and 1970.

By 1952, relationships between American servicemen and Japanese women had already become a recurring theme in postwar literature and cinema. War brides and pan pan girls had proximity to American military personnel, and this afforded them increased access to conspicuous consumption. They were depicted ambivalently, oscillating between social stigma and fascination.

However, censorship in Japanese media was significantly relaxed following the end of the American occupation in 1952, and the local press gained greater latitude to address the longer-term social consequences of these relationships. This shift is reflected in the growing number of reports on mixed-race children born as a result of the American military presence.

In 1956 the Annual Report on the Japanese Economy and Public Finance declared the end of the ‘postwar' era. The period between this year and the first oil shock in 1973 was marked by rapid economic reconstruction and the emergence of the so-called Japanese Economic Miracle. While political leaders framed the United States as Japan’s primary strategic ally, the developing consumer culture drew aesthetic models from Euro-America, looking at the ‘west’ as a source of fascination (akogare).

Within this context, this paper argues that representations of interethnic relationships underwent a gradual shift—from the morally ambivalent or stigmatized imagery associated with war brides and pan pan girls to a more aspirational discourse. Drawing on archival materials from the celebrity magazines Heibon (Heibonsha 1945-1987) and Shūkan Heibon (Heibonsha 1959-1987), as well as Myōjō (Shūeisha 1952-) and Shūkan Myōjō (Shūeisha 1958-1991), this study traces how interethnic romance was represented in media focused on post-occupation celebrity culture. Simultaneously, this paper aims to understand how the gender and ethnic composition of couples, as well as their legal status influenced their media portrayal.

By turning to under-analyzed sources such as the tabloid press, this paper seeks to examine how popular discourse intersected with broader sociopolitical change in reshaping public perceptions of interethnic romance, while also considering the extent to which these narratives may have been transmitted to the following generations.

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Using my curation of the exhibition “Inside/Out” (Waseda University, 2020–21) as a case, I argue that queer reading can act as detonative curation: a cruising method that follows attraction in the archive to disrupt heteronormative, linear, canon-centered narratives of Japanese film history.

Paper long abstract

This paper proposes queer reading as a curatorial method for building a queer film archive and writing queer film history. Within the heteronormative frameworks of Japanese film studies, the imperative to excavate the presence of LGBTQ+ people—and their contributions to the industry, filmmaking, criticism, reception, and archiving—has long been sidelined. This tendency extends to the National Film Archive of Japan, which regularly presents overarching narratives of Japanese film history through collection-based exhibitions. How, then, can we build a queer film archive within—and against—such exhibitionary frameworks in practice? As a film scholar, I examine how queer reading can operate as a mode of curatorial intervention in archival spaces. I argue that queer reading enables curators to renegotiate the meanings and uses of archival materials through exhibition-making by activating the memories, desires, and spectral traces of queer lives that objects and paratexts can carry. The paper is grounded in my experience curating “Inside/Out—LGBTQ+ Representation in Film and Television” at the Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum (Waseda University). Initiated in April 2018 and presented from September 28, 2020 to January 15, 2021, the exhibition traced the postwar history (1945–2020) of commercial and non-commercial queer film and television alongside their reception in Japan, and— to my knowledge—was the first museum exhibition in Japan to do so at this scale. My curatorial method begins by acknowledging my privileged positionality: the access it grants to archival spaces and the authority to select, frame, and display materials. This is not a celebration of archival authority; building on scholarship on queering museums (Sullivan and Middleton 2020), I treat it as a starting point for reading materials against the grain. Crucially, “against the grain” is not only interpretive but methodological: it concerns how one moves through archival space, follows attraction, and stages encounters. Drawing on Damiens (2020), I conceptualize cruising as an unexpectedly erotic curatorial method that disrupts heteronormative temporality in film-historical narration. I show how visceral pulls—through which objects, fragments, and paratexts call for contact across time—are indispensable to queer reading as detonative curation: a practice that ruptures linear, canon-centered narratives through selection, spatial design, and captioning.

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This paper analyzes the Trace Machine technology that reshaped Japanese animation production between the 1960s to the ‘90s. By effecting workflows, labour hierarchies, and drawing practices, this invention contributed to the establishment of stylistic conventions and production culture within anime.

Paper long abstract

The invention and widespread adoption of the Trace Machine in Japan fundamentally transformed both the stylistic and production cultures of Japanese animation from the early 1960s through the 1990s. Comparable to the introduction of Xerox-based copying processes in the United States, the Trace Machine constituted a significant technological shift that reconfigured animation workflows, labour organization, and visual style within the Japanese animation industry. Analyzing this earlier period of technological change offers a historically grounded perspective on how Japanese animation studios negotiated copying technologies and integrated them into production workflows.

Drawing on Renato Barilli’s theory of Technomorphism, which posits that artistic style materializes the logic of contemporary technologies (2012: 20), this study demonstrates how the material constraints and affordances of the Trace Machine became embedded in anime style and studio practices. As a Japanese counterpart to American Xerox-based animation copying technologies, the Trace Machine significantly altered the process of transferring drawings onto cels, increasing production speed, reducing costs, and reshaping animation style. For instance, during the production of Star of the Giants (1968), animators created darker, more consistent lines to ensure reliable cel transfer. This technical application contributed to the normalization of black linework, a visual feature now recognized in anime.

The adoption of the Trace Machine coincided with broader changes in studio organization and labour structures. Production workflows developed in the 1960s reinforced hierarchical divisions within studios, particularly in departments such as shiage, responsible for finishing. These tasks were increasingly outsourced to overseas contractors and assigned to part-time workers, illustrating how copying technology facilitated both industrial expansion and labour stratification (Lewis, 2018).

Drawing on archival research and qualitative interviews with industry practitioners and researchers, this paper reconstructs the role of the Trace Machine as a technology that reshaped production timelines, labour relations, and the stylization of anime. By foregrounding copying technology as a historical insight, the study demonstrates how technological change is contested, adapted, and ultimately aestheticized within Japanese creative industries. This historical perspective remains relevant to contemporary discussions of technological disruption, including debates concerning artificial intelligence in the anime industry.

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This paper analyses media representations of Ikebukuro since emerging as a hub of queer media fandom in the 2000s. I argue that the region reflects the central role of queerness in influencing how fans, corporations and municipalities interact with and drive changes in the Japanese media sphere.

Paper long abstract

‘Transmitting Anime Ikebukuro to the World’ reads the headline of an October 2023 article in the Asahi Shimbun covering the opening of the city funded Anime Tokyo Station, a then newly opened anime exhibition space in Ikebukuro – a region of north-west Tokyo. Anime Tokyo Station is one example of recent efforts by the local municipality, Toshima, to transform Ikebukuro into an ‘anime city’ that can act as a mecca for fans of Japanese animation. These plans build upon the large female-dominated fandoms for queer media that gather in the region and have grown increasingly prominent in media coverage of Ikebukuro since the early 2000s. Such representations of Ikebukuro as a hub of female fandoms stand in stark contrast to longstanding media depictions of the region as a place of danger represented by black markets, gangs and adult entertainment. This paper discusses the shifting representations of Ikebukuro since the 2000s from an area known for danger to an anime city, considering what the region reveals about the role of the queerness in the Japanese media. I draw on the discourse analysis of representations of Ikebukuro in media such as newspapers and online articles; published interviews with stakeholders in the region; and a discussion of how these connect to municipal policies. From this, I highlight how Toshima and its corporate partners have co-opted queer media fandoms for regional rebranding, using them as representatives of Ikebukuro to shift representations of the region. I further suggest that Ikebukuro has also begun to drive changes in how queer media is consumed in Japan as other regions seek to draw on similar approaches to Toshima to anime fandom. More broadly, Ikebukuro is revealing of the key role that queer media plays in driving media consumption in Japan. The shifting representations of Ikebukuro since the 2000s are simply one reflection of this importance, playing an important role in side-lining uncomfortable histories previously central to narratives of the region in favour of the new ‘anime city’ branding. Far from a niche interest, queerness is central to how fans, corporations and municipalities drive changes in the Japanese media.

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This study analyzes 1990s Japanese DTM magazines to argue that early online music scenes developed as extensions of magazine-based participatory cultures of music production, sharing, and evaluation, rather than as disruptions caused solely by new technologies.

Paper long abstract

This study examines Japanese music programming publications, specifically desktop music (DTM) magazines of the 1990s to elucidate the elements of participatory culture embedded in magazine-based submission practices and to analyze the process through which these cultural practices migrated to early online music scenes. Specifically, it focuses on the expansion of music production, sharing, and evaluation practices rooted in print media into networked music scenes through the adoption of communication technologies, such as computer networking services and the Internet.

This study aims, first, to demonstrate that DTM magazines functioned as infrastructural bases for a participatory culture by mediating sharing and mutual evaluation among users. Second, to theoretically situate the continuity between magazine-based submission cultures and early online musical practices. Through this approach, this study seeks to reconceptualize the emergence of online music culture in 1990s Japan as an extension of preexisting cultural practices rather than as a rupture owing solely to new technologies.

This study employs a qualitative analysis of major DTM magazines published during the 1990s, as well as contemporaneous music magazines and related mooks. Specifically, it examines reader submission sections, MIDI data contribution projects, and articles introducing network technologies to analyze how magazines functioned as media institutionally supporting a participatory culture. Additionally, early websites, mailing lists, and net labels were considered to comparatively examine the points of connection between magazines and online culture.

This study concludes that the culture of submission, sharing, and evaluation fostered by DTM magazines in the 1990s already fulfilled key principles of participatory culture, and that these structures were subsequently inherited by music scenes following the spread of the Internet. Guided by the logic of application, DTM magazines offered perspectives that actively integrated communication technologies into musical practice, thereby providing the cultural and practical foundations that enabled user-driven creative communities to transition into online spaces. Consequently, cultural practices in early online music scenes can be understood as reorganized and expanded extensions of print-based submission cultures, rather than entirely new formations.

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This presentation examines "Temptation on Glamour Island" (1959) by Yuzo Kawashima as a layered adaptation. Based on a play by Tadasu Iizawa, the film incorporates the Anatahan Incident and Josef von Sternberg’s work, and this presentation analyzes the process of that adaptation.

Paper long abstract

The purpose of this presentation is to examine the layered process of adaptation in “Temptation on Glamour Island” (1959), directed by Yuzo Kawashima. The film is an adaptation of “Yashi to Onna,” a stage play written by Tadasu Iizawa and first performed in 1956. Both works are rooted in the so-called Anatahan Incident, a real historical event that occurred on Anatahan Island in the Northern Mariana Islands, then under the Japanese mandate system. From 1945 to 1950, one woman and thirty-two men lived together on the isolated island until their rescue, a situation that attracted significant attention in postwar Japan.

The Anatahan Incident also inspired Josef von Sternberg’s film “Anatahan” (1953). Iizawa’s play and Kawashima’s film were thus created through the mediation of both the historical incident and Sternberg’s cinematic representation. In this sense, “Temptation on Glamour Island” can be understood as the product of a layered adaptation process encompassing the real event, Sternberg’s film, Iizawa’s theatrical work, and Kawashima’s cinematic reinterpretation.

Previous studies of “Temptation on Glamour Island” have largely emphasized its political aspects. In particular, Yoshinobu Tsunoo’s analysis compares the film with Iizawa’s play and identifies the repeated depiction of “meaningless death” as a defining feature of Kawashima’s adaptation. Tsunoo further argues that the politically meaningful satire of postwar society articulated in the original play—critiques of the imperial system and the postwar order—was largely abandoned in the film version. While this study provides an important account of the transformation from play to film, it does not fully address the broader adaptation process involving the historical context of the Anatahan Incident and the film’s relationship to Sternberg’s “Anatahan.”

This presentation addresses that gap by placing “Temptation on Glamour Island” at the center of analysis while moving between the Anatahan Incident, Sternberg’s “Anatahan,” and Iizawa’s “Yashi to Onna.” Through this comparative approach, it clarifies how representations shift across media and historical contexts. By also considering Kawashima’s retrospective assessment of the film as a thematically fragmented work, the presentation situates this analysis within discussions of Kawashima’s authorship, reassessing both the political significance and the limitations of “Temptation on Glamour Island.”

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The Visual Vocality theory treats images as media that speak in social negotiation. Through late-Edo Ontake pilgrimage icons and a Meiji-era missionary archive, I show how commoners used devotional prints to claim access, authority, and dignity against modernity's image bias.

Paper long abstract

Modern accounts of Japanese religion and visuality often reproduce modernity’s image bias: images are treated as illustration, affect, or “superstition,” while rational agency is located in text. This paper proposes “visual vocality” as an intervention in visual culture and media studies: the capacity of images to operate as speech acts and semiotic agents in social conflict, especially where non-elite actors are excluded from authoritative textual discourse.

The core case study is a printed icon (miei 御影) of Kaiun Myōken Daibosatsu from Mount Ontake (Kiso, Nagano), preserved in the late nineteenth-century Spinner collection in Zurich. The image records donor names and was produced by an Edo-period Kagura kō, a lay association that also commissioned a sculpture and built a small chapel on the mountain. Ontake had become a major commoner pilgrimage site by the late eighteenth century, as communities sought divine protection amid famine and economic strain. Under Tokugawa surveillance, unauthorized monuments and religious associations could be punished; I argue that the printed icon functioned as low-cost, mobile evidence of collective authorship and a public claim to inhabit sacred space.

A second strand addresses method and archive. I use Wilfrid Spinner’s collecting practices (1885–1891) as evidence for how such voices become recoverable. Unlike many imperial collectors, Spinner did not select objects for aesthetic splendour or as proof of absurdity; he documented pilgrimage routes, local iconographies, and household-scale images without ridicule, effectively preserving vernacular media ecologies that later iconoclastic and rationalist regimes—both Protestant and Meiji—worked to discredit.

Bringing together object analysis, media analysis of print circulation, and archival and field-based historiography, the paper argues that early modern Japanese images were not passive “visual culture” but operative media of agency. “Visual vocality” offers a transferable concept for media panels concerned with how publics form, negotiate authority, and contest knowledge hierarchies through images.

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This presentation examines how the Japanese publishing industry find the attractiveness of “hate articles”, such as anti-Chinese or Koreans, or LGBTQ, for magazine readers, and how such articles gain the popularity. The research is based on the exploratory interviews with editors.

Paper long abstract

In 2018, an anti-LGBTQ article written by Mio Sugita, a Diet member of Japan, provoked a sensational controversy, which gathered more attention because its publisher, Shinchosha, was one of the Japanese general and traditional publishers well known for their literature series. Eventually, Shincho 45, which published the article, was forced to cease the publication of the magazine. Seven years later in 2025, Shinchosha is being involved in a serious controversy again about an anti-Korean article in Shukan Shincho, while protesting action by insiders of the publishing industry keep going even though Shukan Shincho printed an apology in the magazine.

Looking back the history of the industry, Japanese tabloid magazines published by large general publishers have repeatedly published such articles since the late 1990s. The questions of this presentation are: how did the Japanese publishing industry find their attractiveness of “hate articles” for magazine readers, and how did such articles gain the popularity? Several commentators have pointed out that the rise of such articles resulted from the publishing industry’s slump, especially magazines’ since the second half of the 1990s, which is largely due to the emergence of the internet. To get out of the slump, tabloid magazines began publishing such articles as one of the genres of entertainment.

However, the attitude of the editors who elicited readers’ emotion by producing such articles has never been investigated. This presentation analyses editors' attitudes towards such articles, their expertise in eliciting emotion, and the decision-making structure within publishing houses. The analysis is based on qualitative content analysis of academic and non-academic literature on hate books and exploratory interviews with 30 editors including former and current chief editors of leading magazines, especially embracing the last chief editor of Shincho 45 who oversaw Mio Sugita’s article. On the other hand, Members of BLAR (Book Lovers Against Racism) who consists of counter activism protesting against Shinchosha are also included in the interviewees for examining possibilities for industry-led self-regulation.

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Paper short abstract

This paper argues that the TV drama Signal (Fuji TV, 2018), a Japanese remake of a Korean drama by the same name (2016), presents a deviation from the conventional representation of economic inequality in Japanese TV dramas and challenges the traditional view of Japan as a ‘middle-class society’.

Paper long abstract

This paper argues that the TV drama Signal (Fuji TV, 2018), a Japanese remake of a Korean drama by the same name (tvN, 2016), presents a deviation from the conventional representation of economic inequality in Japanese TV dramas and challenges the traditional view of Japan as a ‘middle-class society’.

The economic recovery in Post-war Japan has created a society where ‘[A]round three-quarters of the population identify themselves as middle class’ (Jones, 2007, p. 5), fostering a ‘middle-class’ myth. Japanese TV dramas reflected this view, where economic differences were presented on screen but bore little effect on the characters or the plotline, fostering and promoting the view that personal responsibility, grit, and perseverance are the main vehicles for improvement and advancement in life, ignoring the potential effect different socio-economic conditions have on life possibilities and struggles. Despite the economic crisis of the 1990s and the growing socio-economic inequalities, the effects of the ageing population and the rise in fractional contracts and low pay part-time employment (Shirahase, 2014), Japanese TV dramas of the late-90s-early 2000s continued to promote the ‘middle-class myth’.

Utilising transnational TV theory and focusing on textual and multimodal analysis of the drama, this paper discusses how, through the new phenomenon of Japanese remakes of Korean dramas, the drama adopts a convention, typical to K-dramas, where socio-economic disparities are foregrounded and play a significant role in characters’ lives, to expand the discourse within Japan. This allows the introduction of new discussions into the debate around economy and society in Japan, by openly and explicitly exploring the effects of socio-economic inequalities on characters’ life choices and possibilities.

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This paper examines yōgē (洋ゲー), a Japanese vernacular term for Western games, in over 800 Japanese-language user reviews, using inductive qualitative content analysis to explore how the term is used, associated with stereotypes, and deployed in evaluative discourse in the Japanese gaming context.

Paper long abstract

The Japanese digital game market is one of the largest in the world, both in exports and domestic consumption. However, in contrast to Western films, Western games are consumed only marginally. In the console game market, which is the best documented in terms of sales, only one non-Japanese game appears among the 100 best-selling games of all time. This creates a degree of self-sufficiency that has few clear parallels in other free gaming markets.

While Japanese players’ preference for domestic titles has been widely noted, this phenomenon has received limited focused attention in academic work. Koyama briefly mentions this issue, for example in relation to differences in visual styles that contribute to a divide between Japanese and foreign games (2023), but no detailed analyses are currently available.

This paper focuses on the so-called yōgē (洋ゲー), a vernacular term for Western games that has been in use for decades. In its early usage, particularly in the formative years of computer and console gaming, the term was often negatively affected by the quality of localization and differences in game design approaches. The paper explores the term in contemporary user-created discourse and maps the sentiments connected with its use.

To this end, the study analyzes a corpus of over 800 Japanese-language user reviews from the digital game distribution platform Steam in which the term yōgē is explicitly employed. While Steam primarily hosts PC games, which are not the driving force of the Japanese market, the platform provides a rare body of user-generated commentary suitable for examining evaluative discourse whose exploration helps uncover the users’ (often stereotypical) stances towards Western games.

The study employs inductive qualitative content analysis to identify common themes in the discourse. The findings will demonstrate the functions served by the term yōgē, the preconceptions commonly associated with it, and the contexts in which it appears. These results may also provide practical insights relevant to game marketing and localization strategies.

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This paper examines the videotape segments in Yui Kiyohara’s Remembering Every Night (2022) in relation to a global trend of videonostalgia and the film’s theme of memory, emphasising the role played by home video in the depiction of personal history within 21st century Japanese narrative cinema

Paper long abstract

Much like how vinyl records have come back into fashion, many filmmakers (see Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun) have been returning to the medium of video, often using it to talk about themes of memory and identity. In line with this nostalgic reappraisal of obsolete media, one scene in Yui Kiyohara’s Remembering Every Night (2022) features two characters watching a series of 90s home videos, as they are being converted from their original analogue tapes. Replicating a home movie gaze, these could-be family archives depict childhood birthdays, walks in the park, and other universal life experiences. Rather than subscribing to a popular, found footage tradition that uses video as mere documentary matter, Kiyohara weaves these tapes into a fiction narrative focusing on traces and the tension between “History” and “small histories”.

Drawing on Ina Blom’s definition of video as a “memory technology” (Blom, 2016) and Catherine Russell’s emphasis on the relationship between analogue video and autoethnography (Russell, 1999), this paper looks at the intrinsic relationship between memory, personal history and the physical medium of the video cassette as is speculated by Remembering Every Night. Linking the film’s interest in archaeology and historical artefacts to Laura U. Marks’ framework of “haptic visuality” (Marks, 1999) and Russell’s concept of “archiveology” (Russell, 2018), I look at how Kiyohara treats these tapes as physical artefacts capable of recording traces and goes beyond an "archival effect".

By examining the content of these tapes and their textual likeness to amateur media and using Shunji Iwai’s All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001) as a point of reference, I aim to situate Kiyohara’s film within a tradition of 21st Century Japanese cinema that relies on home video as a generational marker and a mediator of direct and personal experience. Given the centrality of films like Ringu (1998) within the discourse on videotape and Japanese cinema, this paper also aims to shift that focus from a territory of genre filmmaking and technological anxiety to one of intimacy, domesticity and contemporary identity.

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Paper short abstract

Serving as a conduit for cultural engagement, Japanese noise music acts as a parasitic force within otaku and dōjin cultures. Sharing “maniac” roots with niche hobbies, noise mutates in a resilient, rhizomatic practice, infiltrating popular media contexts to achieve new forms of cultural relevance.

Paper long abstract

Since its post-war experiments, Japanese noise music has served as a unique conduit for cultural engagement, connecting avant-garde experimentation with deep-rooted traditions and contemporary subcultures. This engagement manifests through diverse stylistic approaches, challenging aesthetic conventions while fostering new cultural dialogues by transcending musical and cultural boundaries, with some artists integrating noise into contemporary pop culture, such as Hijokaidan’s collaborations with idol groups like BiS and Vocaloid Hatsune Miku, bridging underground experimentalism with the mainstream and expanding the audience for noise. Given these premises, this paper examines the parasitic integration of noise music within Japanese otaku and dōjin (coterie) cultures, arguing that noise functions as a subversive “maniac” root shared between underground experimentalism and popular niche hobbies.

The analysis begins by identifying the shared “maniac” roots between punk, noise, and otaku culture, noting that all three are fundamentally underground practices centred on intense personal hobbies. A central case study is provided by Hatsune Kaidan's performance at the Music Media-Mix Market (M3), a long-running event for independent music circles. This performance demonstrated the porous boundaries between these worlds, as fans of polished idol culture and digital Vocaloid music readily embraced the chaotic energy of Hijokaidan’s harsh noise. Then it proceeds to further define dōjin culture as a space of “secondary creation” (niji sōsaku), where amateur creators draw inspiration from mainstream works to produce fan-made music, manga, and software, whose noise releases often feature bishōjo illustrations, signaling an aesthetic link to anime and manga. The study also examines the role of online databases for Vocaloid and the Touhou Project media franchise, which facilitates the large-scale appropriation and reuse of motifs through noise rock, ambient, and experimental styles. Finally, the integration of extreme aesthetics, such as guro and denpa, leads to subversive subgenres supported by independent netlabels. By proving that Japanese noise is a resilient, rhizomatic practice that survives by constantly mutating through contact with pop culture, this paper investigates how noise, often perceived as an inaccessible or marginal art form, functions as a “parasitic” force that infiltrates popular media contexts to achieve new forms of cultural relevance and social legitimacy.