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Paper short abstract

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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Paper short abstract

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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Paper short abstract

This paper discusses (1) national policies that regulate and promote AI in media production; (2) the practices of media workers who critically adopt, adapt, and evaluate AI technologies in their creative work; and (3) audience and platform responses to AI-generated content.

Paper long abstract

The rapid emergence of generative AI has profoundly reshaped creative industries and intensified global debates about the future of cultural production. Within this context, media industry workers and media artists encounter both new opportunities and significant challenges. To examine how generative AI is transforming media industries in Japan, this paper analyses three interrelated layers: national policies that regulate and promote AI in media production; the practices of media workers who critically adopt, adapt, and evaluate AI technologies in their creative work; and audience and platform responses to AI-generated content that shape market trends and value hierarchies in media production. Combining 20 semi-structured interviews with media industry professionals and digital media artists in Japan who critically engage with generative AI, alongside document analysis of policy papers and industry association reports, the paper presents three key findings concerning media industries and media policy in Japan. First, the Japanese government actively promotes the adoption of generative AI across media sectors ranging from advertising to film and television, guided by an AI-friendly and innovation-oriented policy framework. However, an unintended consequence of this approach is the marginalisation of media workers’ concerns regarding autonomy, authorship, and copyright. Second, the paper identifies diverse forms of critical engagement among media producers, who use generative AI at different stages of the creative process while holding varied conceptions of its role. These include viewing AI as a tool to accelerate production and democratise creative opportunities, as a creative partner for idea development that still requires human refinement, and as a conventional or socially consensual reference point that creators deliberately challenge through human creativity. Finally, the paper demonstrates that Japanese fan communities exhibit mixed responses to generative AI, ranging from the legitimation of AI-generated media as an emerging artistic genre to strong criticism of its use in popular culture, which some fans regard as a form of cheating or betrayal. By foregrounding the Japanese case, this paper highlights how the impacts of generative AI are shaped by specific policy and cultural contexts, contributing to the de-westernisation and internationalisation of research on AI and media production.