Television, Japan, and Globalization

Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies No. 67 Television, Japan, and Globalization is a collection of essays that describe vivid and compelling examples of Japanese media and analyze them with sophisticated theoretical methods. The book makes a stunning contribution to the literature of television studies, which has increasingly recognized its problematic focus on U.S. and Western European media, and a compelling intervention in discussions of globalization, through its careful attention to contradictory and complex phenomena on Japanese TV. Case studies include talent and stars, romance, anime, telops, game/talk shows, and live action nostalgia shows. The book also looks at Japanese television from a political and economic perspective, with attention to Sky TV, production trends, and Fuji TV as an architectural presence in Tokyo. The combination of textual analysis, brilliant argument, and historical and economic context makes this book ideal for media studies audiences. Its most important contribution may be the way these essays move the study of Japanese popular culture beyond the tired truisms about postmodernism and open up new lines of thinking about television and popular culture within and between nations.