Media Theory in Japan

✍ Scribed by Marc Steinberg; Alexander Zahlten

• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Year: 2017
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 441
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Providing an overview of Japanese media theory from the 1910s to the present, this volume introduces English-language readers to Japan's rich body of theoretical and conceptual work on media for the first time. The essays address a wide range of topics, including the work of foundational Japanese thinkers; Japanese theories of mediation and the philosophy of media; the connections between early Japanese television and consumer culture; and architecture's intersection with communications theory. Tracing the theoretical frameworks and paradigms that stem from Japan's media ecology, the contributors decenter Eurocentric media theory and demonstrate the value of the Japanese context to reassessing the parameters and definition of media theory itself. Taken together, these interdisciplinary essays expand media theory to encompass philosophy, feminist critique, literary theory, marketing discourse, and art; provide a counterbalance to the persisting universalist impulse of media studies; and emphasize the need to consider media theory situationally. Contributors. Yuriko Furuhata, Aaron Gerow, Mark Hansen, Marilyn Ivy, Takeshi Kadobayashi, Keisuke Kitano, Akihiro Kitada, Thomas Looser, Anne McKnight, Ryoko Misono, Akira Mizuta Lippit, Miryam Sas, Fabian Schäfer, Marc Steinberg, Tomiko Yoda, Alexander Zahlten

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface (Interface)
Introduction
Part I. Communication Technologies
1. From Film to Television: Early Theories of Television in Japan
2. Architecture as Atmospheric Media: Tange Lab and Cybernetics
3. The Media Theory and Media Strategy of Azuma Hiroki, 1997–2003
4. The InterCommunication Project: Theorizing Media in Japan’s Lost Decades
Part II. Practical Theory
5. McLuhan as Prescription Drug: Actionable Theory and Advertising Industries
6. The Culture Industries and Media Theory in Japan
7. Girlscape: The Marketing of Mediatic Ambience in Japan
8. 1980s Nyu Aka: (Non)Media Theory as Romantic Performance
9. Critical Media Imagination: Nancy Seki’s TV Criticism and the Media Space of the 1980s and 1990s
10. At the Source (Code): Obscenity and Modularity in Rokudenashiko’s Media Activism
Part III. Mediation and Media Theory
11. An Assault on “Meaning”: On Nakai Masakazu’s Concept of “Mediation”
12. Much Ado about “Nothing”: The Kyoto School as “Media Philosophy”
13. Kobayashi Hideo and the Question of Media
14. Media, Mediation, and Crisis: A History—and the Case for Media Studies as (Postcultural) Anthropology
Afterword. The Disjunctive Kernel of Japanese Media Theory
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
Y
Z