Manga, anime, J-pop, and other forms of Japan's mass culture are increasingly popular around the world, a situation which requires structural, demographic, and communicative research from sociological perspectives. In this study, a group of young Japanese sociologists scrutinizes the sociological foundations of the ways in which the Japanese people produce and consume cultural commodities and live their everyday lives surrounded by these products. The study includes an examination of: the dependency of Japan's youth on mobile phones * modes of television viewing * infatuations with animation characters * network-formation through rock festivals * family relations * local culture * fashion * work orientations * the national consciousness as an aspect of their 'everyday culture.' The book presents the landscape of Japanese popular culture as depicted by the very sociologists who themselves live these cultural lives within Japan.

Reviews

"...this book is highly recommended for the classroom as it affords critical context for understanding how academics analyze, dissect and evaluate their research topics, thereby providing a look at the "process" behind completed products (i.e., scholarly works)....also showcases valuable work by Japanese researchers that requires more exposure to the Anglophone world." - Public Affairs, Vol. 86, Issue 4, December 2013

"This body of work offers new understandings and articulations of the shifting cultural meanings of issues that critically affect those young generations: disparities in regular and irregular work, stifled social mobility, uneasy gender or family dynamics and sexuality, shifting authority relations in parenting and schooling, unstable emotional moorings of hope, confidence, and aspirations, and more. . . . a significant contribution to a burgeoning body of work on popular culture in recent decades . . . should be of interest to many scholars of popular culture, youth, subculture, and social and cultural change in contemporary Japanese society." - Akiko Hashimoto, Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 40:1, 2014

MINAMIDA Katsuya

MINAMIDA Katsuya is a Japanese sociologist and Professor in the Faculty of Sociology, Musashi University. He graduated from the Faculty of Literature, Chiba University, and completed his PhD in Sociology at Kansai University. He took on his current position in 2009 after having served as Associate Professor at Kobe Yamate University. His research interests include sociomusicology, information media studies and urban culture theory.

TSUJI Izumi

TSUJI Izumi is a sociologist and Professor in the Faculty of Literature, Chuo University. He has served as Lecturer in the Faculty of Humanities, Matsuyama University, and as Associate Professor in the Faculty of Literature, Chuo University, He specializes in media theory and cultural sociology.