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- Convenor:
-
Jaqueline Berndt
(Stockholm University)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- Media Studies
- Location:
- Sessions:
- Saturday 29 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Warsaw
| Abstract in Japanese (if needed) |
Accepted papers
Session 1 Saturday 29 August, 2026, -Paper short abstract
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.
Paper short abstract
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.
Paper short abstract
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.