Daniel White, "Administering Affect: Pop-Culture Japan and the Politics of Anxiety" (Stanford UP, 2022)
New Books in East Asian Studies
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Pop Culture Japan Is a Political Tool to Transmogrify an Anxiety
Pop culture Japan is essentially this imaginary that is also a political tool by which these anxious concerns about Japan's geopolitical status in the world can be translated transform transmogrified into a hopefulness for Japan's future and a kind of pride. The anxiety comes from this breakdown in a previous national imaginary in Japan that was tied to the state's global economic success in the 70s and 80s most prominently. In 2011 NHK announced this set of programming which they called overcoming the Japan syndrome campaign. And they basically created this this set ofprogramming in order to specifically address as they say Fuan Fuan Fuante, or 'overcoming insecurity'
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