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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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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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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.