Popular Culture in Modern Japan undertakes an interdisciplinary investigation of aspects of Japanese popular culture pertinent to the study of modern and contemporary Japan. It explores characteristics of music, advertising, television, animated films, comics, print media and sports in the context of globalization. Teenagers in Hong Kong and Santa Barbara watched Princess Mononoke; authorities in Japan and China screen popular culture for sex and violence; print media in Japan criticize the "Americanization" of the Japanese language; their counterparts in the United States see a dominance of Japanese popular culture which the New York Times Magazine has recently referred to as "Pokemon Hegemon" (NYT Magazine 15 December, 2002).

Popular culture made in Japan requires particular interrogation in the light of theoretical debates about the infantilization of present-day societies, authenticity and identity, violence, gender boundaries and transgressions, class consciousness and nationalism. Our analysis will deal with the social, political, cultural and aesthetic aspects of the production and dissemination of popular culture within and beyond the national borders of Japan. More specifically, we will examine how

representations of popular culture operate to create and disseminate, reinforce and subvert - rather than merely reflect - cultural beliefs, conventions and ideas.

Fruhstuck 教授の著作の中には日本語に翻訳されたものもあります。次の本は、自衛官へのインタビューが満載の自衛隊研究です。かなりユニークな本です。