Pandemonium and ParadeJapanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai

Foster, Michael Dylan

doi:10.1525/california/9780520253612.001.0001

Cited by 21 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…Pokémon is therefore a "discursively charged space" (Allison 2006, p. 206), drawing on the Foucaultian definition of discourse as "the cartography by which the world is mapped by values, relationships and power(s)" (Allison 2006, p. 206). This discourse is not only articulated through the guidebooks and texts Nintendo and its affiliated companies produce, but also through the interactive and communicative spaces Satoshi Tajiri built into his creation, the playground discussions and Game Boy exchanges, the taxonomies Foster (2008) refers to (see below) and the websites devoted to Pokémon discussion and explanation. We can therefore liken the franchise to what Pickering (1995) might refer to as "material performativity" in which things "act" or "do" -in that they encourage action on the part of the consumer (through play, trade, knowledge) -but also in their gateway function, encouraging consumers to interact and engage with other elements of Japanese popular culture too.…”

Section: Pokémon's Networked Assemblagementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Allison notes that Pokémon is therefore a "borrowing and reinvention of a Japanese cultural past (gift exchange, supernatural spirits, otherworldly aestheticism)" (Allison 197). Michael Dylan Foster (2008) similarly links Pokémon to the yokai tradition, not just in terms of individual characters, but in the way success is based on knowledge about these creatures: "handbooks and catalogs list, illustrate, organise, and describe these creatures in classic hakubutsugaku-style: "Pokémon of the prairies", "Pokémon of the mountains", "Pokémon of the forests", and the like" endowing the Pokémon world with its own history and even an academic discipline reminiscent of yokaigaku, appropriately called "Pokémon-gaku", or Pokémon-ology." (Foster 2008, p. 214) This taxonomy is even built into the franchise in the form of the Pokédex, an electronic device listing Pokémon 's statistics vi .…”

Section: The Kawaii Aesthetic Of Pokémonmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Taking Pikachu as his case study, Kelts notes that the yellow Pokémon is unlike any Disney icon ix because he is not a conventional animal (be that mouse, duck or dog). Rather, he is "an animated representation of precisely nothing we know in our physical world" (Kelts 2007, p. 17) -the very definition of yokai -"unnatural", "out of the ordinary" (Foster 2008) and igyo no mono ("nonnormal things"). The closest equivalent, Kelts notes, would be the "animated inscrutability" of the Belgian-born Smurfs by Peyo (Kelts 2007, p. 17).…”

Section: The Kawaii Aesthetic Of Pokémonmentioning

confidence: 99%

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“Gotta Catch ‘Em All!”: Pokémon, Cultural Practice and Object Networks

Bainbridge¹

2014

IAFOR J Asian Stud

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The Pokémon franchise is over seventeen years old, a networked assemblage of heterogeneous elements (manga, gaming, toys, anime) that is also constitutive of new knowledges around both consumerism and commodification. This paper explores how all of the elements of this franchise, from the brand, to the various media platforms, to the Pokémon trainers, to the pocket monsters themselves (the non-human objects) as well as the designers and the consumers (the humans) function as objects in the construction of a social network. In so doing it seeks to understand not only how the franchise functions but also how the objects in this franchise (particularly the nonhuman Pokémon creatures and trainers) work in tandem to connect audiences to very specifically Japanese ideas of the "national imagination" (folklore, spiritualism, the supernatural) and environmental concerns (biodiversity, the struggle between conservation and containment) through the larger consumerist framework of acquisition and play structured as cultural practice. In this way, it is argued, that the Pokémon object network functions as a gateway into Japanese culture more broadly and a channel through which Japanese culture is itself mainstreamed internationally.

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Section: Pokémon's Networked Assemblagementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Kawaii Aesthetic Of Pokémonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Kawaii Aesthetic Of Pokémonmentioning

confidence: 99%

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“Gotta Catch ‘Em All!”: Pokémon, Cultural Practice and Object Networks

Bainbridge¹

2014

IAFOR J Asian Stud

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“…Here Pokémon is essentially articulating the materialism/conservation debate and, more importantly, provides a model for how to address it – the Phylomon project, essentially using the Pokémon model but with real biodiversity and ecology informing the content. In a sense the yokai-like taxonomy of Pokémon , identified by Foster (2008), is also an adaptation of E.O. Wilson’s Biophilia hypothesis that ‘humans have an innate desire to catalog, understand, and spend time with other life-forms.…”

Section: Pokémon and The Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘It is a Pokémon world’: The Pokémon franchise and the environment

Bainbridge

2013

International Journal of Cultural Studies

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Originating in 1996, Pokémon has become the second most successful game-based franchise in the world and arguably one of the best-known examples of transmedia storytelling in youth media today. Based around creator Satoshi Tajiri’s love of insect collecting, Pokémon imagines a world where wild creatures exist to be collected, trained and battle with one another. Such an ideology, simultaneously embracing both the conservation and consumption of nature, is emblematic of the larger challenges Japan has had to negotiate as a nation trying to balance economic development and environmental protection. In this way, this article argues that, when subjected to textual analysis, the Pokémon franchise can function as vernacular theory, interrogating the relationship between environmentalism, materialism and sustainable development, a series of popular youth media texts engaging with issues and subjects that are usually reserved for academia.

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“…Drazen (2003) relates the Japanese notion of "the gentle, compassionate spirit known as yasashisa" as being present within the anime alongside teamwork, and persistence in the face of adversity (p. 12). Several authors have connected Pokémon creatures to the Japanese yokai folklore (Allison, 2006;Bainbridge, 2014b;Foster, 2008). Bainbridge (2014b) notes that "Pokémon are monsters in the yokai tradition (Japanese folkloric monsters and supernatural beings but more often used to describe any supernatural or unaccountable phenomena)" (p. 8).…”

Section: Pokémon As Japanesementioning

confidence: 99%

A Pokébalancing Act: The Management Of Japanese Cultural “odor” In Pokémon

Raes¹

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Techno-orientalism" refers to the shift from the Western "fetishization" of traditionally Japanese art forms to the commodities that are commonly thought to "represent" Japan in the twenty-first century. These commodities include anime, video games, pachinko gambling parlors, and other technological, globalized products (Paulk, 2011). Sato (2004) refers to technoorientalism it as the tendency to imagine Japan through both the "traditional" stereotype and the "technologically oriented" stereotype (p. 355). In any case, advances in technology have contributed to orientalism through the ideological shift of non-Japanese audiences becoming familiarized with the cultural properties that "represent" Japan or Japanese-ness. As an Asian product rooted in Japan but distributed throughout the world, Pokémon has been promoted as such to these global audiences. Whether the appeal of the series rests within the Japanese qualities of its origins or the sanitized version that was distributed to other countries remains in question. I suggest that, although anime such as Pokémon have been edited to remove certain Japanese qualities, an inherent "Japanese-ness" remains that appeals to Western audiences' sense of novelty-seeking through the presentation of exotic difference, thereby essentializing the Japanese culture to that of "anime." This implies that part of Pokémon's popularity is caused by the appeal of the exotic "Other" that is suggested by the anime's Japanese origin. Anime Japanese animation, as well as the comic industry (manga) have long held a long place at the forefront of Japanese media culture. Scholars have recognized these the ubiquity of these industries, stating that they are interrelated (Condry, 2013; Ito & Crutcher, 2014) and interdependent (Pusztai, 2015). Pusztai (2015) states that the creative production qualities of these industries allow them to borrow heavily from each other in that storylines, characters, and 16 aesthetic stylistics are often interchangeably "recycled" between productions (p. 141). The creative collaboration between the two industries indicates their relevancy and saliency within Japanese culture. Furthermore, since anime incorporates the cultural personae of manga, taking on and reflecting the stories and themes that resonate with Japanese people, animation should be regarded as cultural artifacts that represent the given culture in which they are produced (Hubka, 2002; Price, 2001; Wells, 2002). Much has been researched concerning the stories and themes surrounding the most popular anime production company in Japan, Studio Ghibli, as well as its creator, Miyazaki Hayao, which was credited with much of anime's international popularity (Boyd & Nishimura,

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Pandemonium and ParadeJapanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai

Cited by 21 publications

References 0 publications

“Gotta Catch ‘Em All!”: Pokémon, Cultural Practice and Object Networks

“Gotta Catch ‘Em All!”: Pokémon, Cultural Practice and Object Networks

‘It is a Pokémon world’: The Pokémon franchise and the environment

A Pokébalancing Act: The Management Of Japanese Cultural “odor” In Pokémon

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