Reviews for Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture

The average rating for Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2007-11-22 00:00:00 Arie Budhinata Mark Schilling's Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture is a remarkably enjoyable and remarkably useful and informative book. Schilling has wisely chosen not to cover everything under the sun, and instead provides entries for only the most significant and representative icons and moments of pop culture. Schilling has done a great job when it comes to writing entries that are entertaining, but also packed with significant amounts of historical background and (informed) cultural analysis. Clearly this is no work of deep scholarship, and shouldn't be judged on those merits, but Schilling manages to avoid the trap of presenting Japanese pop culture as a kind of "zone of crazy weirdness" that is impossible for non-Japanese to truly fathom. Schilling is able to perform the fairly rare trick of explaining Japanese pop culture with recourse to history and cultural characteristics, without presenting cookie cutter or dime-store reiterations of simplified (and largely untrue) stereotypical assumptions about Japan. A lot of this probably has to do with the fact that Schilling is based in Japan, as well as the fact that ' judging by the bibliography at the back of the book ' he's actually done quite a bit of research. Entries range from the familiar "GODZILLA" to the probably much less familiar "RIKIDOZAN," and of course there's everything in between as well. One good example of what's good about Schilling's entries can be found in the entry for "ANIMAL FRIENDS," the very first in the book. First Schilling presents a simplified version of the complicated nature of the Japanese relationship with the animal world ' "If nature caged (or abstracted into cuddly stuffed animals) is often kawaii (cute) to the Japanese, nature in the raw is often kowai (frightening)." Then Schilling trots out the history of contemporary animal booms in Japan and you learn some really interesting facts; for example, in 1943, all the large animals in the Ueno Zoo were starved to death by their keepers when food supplies in Tokyo ran critically low. After the war there were only three elephants in all of Japan,none of them in Tokyo. Tokyo children who wanted an elephant of their own started a letter-writing campaign and soon the PM of India, Nehru, ended up gifting an elephant to Tokyo as a gesture of goodwill. When Indira arrived, she was walked the entire nine kilometers from the dock to Ueno zoo, and thousands of people came to watch. And there's a lot more in that vein, and we haven't gotten to the pandas yet. I only have two real complaints about this book: 1) This book was published in 1997 and it doesn't look like there's a revised edition available. Since the transformation of pop culture occurs at such a high rate of speed, there's simply a lot that isn't covered in this volume (no mention in the index of Gothic Lolita culture, for example). As a guide to pop culture up through the 80s and perhaps early 90s, it's pretty good though. 2) There are a ton of atrocious proof-reading errors. They don't get in the way of reading, but proof-reading errors of this magnitude are a bit embarrassing. You may wonder what use a book like this is in the age of the internet? Why not just Wiki what you want to find out about? The quick answer to this is that this book is filled with interesting entries that you didn't even know you needed to know about. Do you already know about Kohaku Uta Gassen? How about Naruhodo the World? Momoe Yamaguchi? If you do, then you probably don't need this book, but if you don't, it's a great introduction. It's important to note that this book really does concentrate on popular culture only ' you're not going to get any mention of the Japanese noise music scene, or underground avant-garde cinema here ' but that's not really what this book is for, is it?

Review # 2 was written on 2019-02-11 00:00:00 Marc Lasecki What I liked -A decent book for Japan nerds -Interesting factoids -Covers the biggest stars and highlights of Japanese pop culture (of course, there are many not mentioned for the sake of length. not to mention the book is old) -Even though topics are arranged in alphabetical order, the book still follows a basic timeline What I didn't like -Writing was mostly coherent, but bland and repetitive -Humor wasn't funny -Needed a little more editing, especially for the last half My favorite sections were the ones about the music industry. Oh, and of course anime :3 Recommended for -otaku -japanophiles -people who want to find new old music and movies to enjoy