Book Flyers by Yoshikuni Igarashi
Japan, 1972: Visions of Masculinity in an Age of Mass Consumerism, 2021
By the early 1970s, Japan had become an affluent consumer society, riding a growing economy to wi... more By the early 1970s, Japan had become an affluent consumer society, riding a growing economy to widely shared prosperity. In the aftermath of the fiery political activism of 1968, the country settled down to the realization that consumer culture had taken a firm grip on Japanese society. Japan, 1972 takes an early-sev-enties year as a vantage point for understanding how Japanese society came to terms with cultural change. Yoshikuni Igarashi examines a broad selection of popular film, television, manga, and other media in order to analyze the ways Japanese culture grappled with this economic shift. He exposes the political underpinnings of mass culture and investigates deeper anxieties over questions of agency and masculinity. Igarashi underscores how the male-dominated culture industry strove to defend masculine identity by looking for an escape from the high-growth economy. He reads a range of cultural works that reveal perceptions of imperiled Japanese masculinity through depictions of heroes' doomed struggles against what were seen as the stifling and feminizing effects of consumerism. Ranging from manga travelogues to war stories, yakuza films to New Left radicalism, Japan, 1972 sheds new light on a period of profound socioeconomic change and the counternarratives of masculinity that emerged to manage it.
Homecomings: The Belated Return of Japan's Lost Soldiers, 2020
Soon after the end of World War II, a majority of the nearly 7
million Japanese civilians and se... more Soon after the end of World War II, a majority of the nearly 7
million Japanese civilians and servicemen who had been posted
overseas returned home. Heeding the call to rebuild, these veterans
helped remake Japan and enjoyed popularized accounts of
their service. For those who took longer to be repatriated, such as
the POWs detained in labor camps in Siberia and the fighters who
spent years hiding in the jungles of islands in the South Pacific,
returning home was more difficult. Their nation had moved on
without them and resented the reminder of a humiliating, traumatizing
defeat.
Homecomings tells the story of these late-returning Japanese
soldiers and their struggle to adapt to a newly peaceful and prosperous
society. Some were more successful than others, but they
all charted a common cultural terrain, one profoundly shaped by
media representations of the earlier returnees. Japan had come to
redefine its nationhood through these popular images. Yoshikuni
Igarashi explores what Japanese society accepted and rejected,
complicating the definition of a postwar consensus and prolonging
the experience of war for both Japanese soldiers and the
nation. He throws the postwar narrative of Japan’s recovery into
question, exposing the deeper, subtler damage done to a country
that only belatedly faced the implications of its loss.
Articles and Book Chapters by Yoshikuni Igarashi
Japan Review : Journal of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies , 2024
The photographer Ishiuchi Miyako’s Hiroshima series features colorful and alluring photos o... more The photographer Ishiuchi Miyako’s Hiroshima series features colorful and alluring photos of items of clothing and artifacts that used to belong to hibakusha and are now stored at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. In response to criticism that she has aesthetized Hiroshima, Ishiuchi defends her artistic practice by casting it as resistance to a politicized history that has long imprisoned the city in images of death and destruction, which conceals the colors and beauty-the feminine quality-that once existed there. Despite her qualms with History, her work is framed by postwar representations of Hiroshima that have highlighted the inhumane effects of the atomic bomb. Through referencing these tragic images her Hiroshima photos express deep emotions. However, her aesthetic practice effectively silences the personal histories of the hibakusha these objects represent, relegating them to a generic story devoid of individuality. Situating Hiroshima within Ishiuchi’s career trajectory, this article examines the ways in which Ishiuchi produced a beautiful personal narrative through photography and writing but has struggled to extend that to a city with which she has no personal connections. More recent works from the Hiroshima series, which are less colorful and prominently display the traces of bodily injuries, suggest that she has grown uneasy with the privileged aesthetic of her original position and is now willing to embrace Hiroshima’s dark history.
国際基督教大学学報 3 a アジア文化研究 International Christian University Publications 3 a Asian Cultural Studies, Mar 30, 2008
Japanese Studies, 2007
Fifty-two Japanese and a few foreign media companies were present at the daily press conferences ... more Fifty-two Japanese and a few foreign media companies were present at the daily press conferences held at the Karuizawa Police Headquarters. Kunō, Asama-sansō jiken, p. 94. Commercial television
In Godzilla's Footsteps: Japanese Pop Culture Icons on the Global Stage, 2006
In an essay originally published in 1992, the cultural critic Nagayama Yasuo raised an intriguing... more In an essay originally published in 1992, the cultural critic Nagayama Yasuo raised an intriguing question: why do monsters always come from the South-specifically the South Pacific-in Tphp monster films? 1 Godzilla's original habitat is in the South Pacific. Mothra-a giant silkworm mothinhabits the imaginary Infant Island, which is in close proximity to the Polynesian Islands. The equally imaginary Faro Island in the South Pacific is supposed to be the home of King Kong in King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962). Monster Island, where monsters congregate, exists somewhere in the South Pacific in Godzilla's Revenge (1969). Although Nagayama offers many suggestive answers-such as that the monster comes back to reenact Japan's prewar colonial fantasies-ultimately his argument is less historical than allegorical. His overall argument fails to take into account the evolving cultural roles of the monster-its evolution from foe to friend. Godzilla's blind fury in the 1950s represents a threat to Japan's postwar prosperity, whereas Mothra's egg in the 1960s becomes an emblem of Japan's consumerism. Tphp monsters are transformed from fearful, destructive entities to lovable creatures amidst the rise of consumer society in Japan. Nagayama's question might be posed again, but more historically: why do monsters come from the South in the 1960s? If the image of the monster is historically unstable, so too is the trope of the South. Though the South plays the role of innocent past, impervious to social change, in Japan's historical discourse, the particular form this past takes in the 1960s is revealing. The South may take up its typical role in the 1960s-the "other" within the self, the innocent past that Japan can appropriate-yet its role is specific to its cultural moment. In the 1960s, as Japan was experiencing extreme economic and social changes as a result of the postwar boom, the South became a W.M. Tsutsui et al. (eds.
Book Reviews by Yoshikuni Igarashi
Journal of Japanese Studies, 2011
Journal of Japanese Studies, 2010
In the last two decades of the Showa period, the charismatic documentary filmmaker Ogawa Shinsuke... more In the last two decades of the Showa period, the charismatic documentary filmmaker Ogawa Shinsuke (1936-92) and the film production collective that carried his name, Ogawa Productions (a.k.a. Ogawa Pro), left indelible marks on the Japanese documentary film scene through their provocative works. Abe Mark Nornes scrutinizes the works of Ogawa Pro to gain a criti cal purchase on postwar Japanese documentary film history. The author's relationship with Ogawa Pro is intensely personal: he promised to write a book about the collective as Ogawa lay on his deathbed. The volume he has produced is helped by and simultaneously carries the imprint of his intimate connection to Ogawa and former members of the collective (which dissolved shortly after Ogawa's death). As mentioned on the back cover, "unprecedented access to Ogawa Pro's archives and interviews with former
Social Science Japan Journal, 2004
Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 31-2 (April-June 1999), 87-88
Talks by Yoshikuni Igarashi
Mit dem Ende des 2. Weltkriegs ziehen sich etliche japanische Soldaten in den Dschungel oder auf ... more Mit dem Ende des 2. Weltkriegs ziehen sich etliche japanische Soldaten in den Dschungel oder auf Inseln zurück. Statt nach Japan zurückzukehren, überleben einige von ihnen dort bis Mitte der 1970er Jahre – einsam und ohne jegliche medizinische Versorgung. Die letzten Holdouts kehren erst mehr als 25 Jahre nach Kriegsende zurück. Wie ist das möglich, was waren ihre Motive und inwiefern handelt es sich um ein spezifisch japanisches Phänomen?
Für die Beantwortung dieser Fragen haben wir diesmal einen Experten dabei: Yoshikuni Igarashi ist Geschichtsprofessor an der Vanderbilt University in Nashville (TN) und er beschäftigt sich schon lange mit den japanischen Holdouts. Er hat das Buch “Homecomings. The Belated Return of Japan’s Lost Soldiers” geschrieben und erklärt uns, wie es dazu kam.
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Book Flyers by Yoshikuni Igarashi
million Japanese civilians and servicemen who had been posted
overseas returned home. Heeding the call to rebuild, these veterans
helped remake Japan and enjoyed popularized accounts of
their service. For those who took longer to be repatriated, such as
the POWs detained in labor camps in Siberia and the fighters who
spent years hiding in the jungles of islands in the South Pacific,
returning home was more difficult. Their nation had moved on
without them and resented the reminder of a humiliating, traumatizing
defeat.
Homecomings tells the story of these late-returning Japanese
soldiers and their struggle to adapt to a newly peaceful and prosperous
society. Some were more successful than others, but they
all charted a common cultural terrain, one profoundly shaped by
media representations of the earlier returnees. Japan had come to
redefine its nationhood through these popular images. Yoshikuni
Igarashi explores what Japanese society accepted and rejected,
complicating the definition of a postwar consensus and prolonging
the experience of war for both Japanese soldiers and the
nation. He throws the postwar narrative of Japan’s recovery into
question, exposing the deeper, subtler damage done to a country
that only belatedly faced the implications of its loss.
Articles and Book Chapters by Yoshikuni Igarashi
Book Reviews by Yoshikuni Igarashi
Talks by Yoshikuni Igarashi
Für die Beantwortung dieser Fragen haben wir diesmal einen Experten dabei: Yoshikuni Igarashi ist Geschichtsprofessor an der Vanderbilt University in Nashville (TN) und er beschäftigt sich schon lange mit den japanischen Holdouts. Er hat das Buch “Homecomings. The Belated Return of Japan’s Lost Soldiers” geschrieben und erklärt uns, wie es dazu kam.
million Japanese civilians and servicemen who had been posted
overseas returned home. Heeding the call to rebuild, these veterans
helped remake Japan and enjoyed popularized accounts of
their service. For those who took longer to be repatriated, such as
the POWs detained in labor camps in Siberia and the fighters who
spent years hiding in the jungles of islands in the South Pacific,
returning home was more difficult. Their nation had moved on
without them and resented the reminder of a humiliating, traumatizing
defeat.
Homecomings tells the story of these late-returning Japanese
soldiers and their struggle to adapt to a newly peaceful and prosperous
society. Some were more successful than others, but they
all charted a common cultural terrain, one profoundly shaped by
media representations of the earlier returnees. Japan had come to
redefine its nationhood through these popular images. Yoshikuni
Igarashi explores what Japanese society accepted and rejected,
complicating the definition of a postwar consensus and prolonging
the experience of war for both Japanese soldiers and the
nation. He throws the postwar narrative of Japan’s recovery into
question, exposing the deeper, subtler damage done to a country
that only belatedly faced the implications of its loss.
Für die Beantwortung dieser Fragen haben wir diesmal einen Experten dabei: Yoshikuni Igarashi ist Geschichtsprofessor an der Vanderbilt University in Nashville (TN) und er beschäftigt sich schon lange mit den japanischen Holdouts. Er hat das Buch “Homecomings. The Belated Return of Japan’s Lost Soldiers” geschrieben und erklärt uns, wie es dazu kam.