Talking about culture pop is already very complex and interesting in itself, but focusing on a particular cultural context such as the Japan requires an extra effort. First of all, we must start from the fact that the concept of collective imagination overlaps with that of culture. It is therefore an imaginative culture that is based, in its proliferation, on the extensive mechanisms of diffusion, computerization, and consensus typical of thecultural industryThis conceptual background allows us to reason about the nature of the Japanese cultural models conveyed by manga, anime e Games, in fact they act as a junction between the past and the future of youth cultural forms.
Still class issues?
Regarding ethnological studies on Japan according to Jennifer Robertson (1998), there is a pair of definitions to consider introduced at the end of the nineteenth century based on the distinction between two classes citizens' primaries: taishû bunka e minshû bunkaThe first typology is presented as "popular culture/mass culture”, that is, a culture associated with the middle class, while the other refers, more generally and very similarly, to the concept of “fucks" The Good (1996), to the "people en masse", understood as an indistinct population with a populist connotation. taishû bunka today transcends social classes and is transversal to the whole society, while the minshû bunka, as opposed to aristocratic culture kizoku bunka, has a regional basis folkloric-traditional. In particular, with reference to contemporary Japan, Robertson suggests the adoption of the term taishû bunka as a translation of popular culture and mass culture. Furthermore, he proposes to speak of popular culture in its generic definitions and of mass culture in the presence of media manifestations in which products, narratives, and media are pervasively disseminated (Robertson, 1998, pp. 32-34).
Omnipresent contamination
La Pop culture It therefore unfolds following trajectories that contrast with so-called high culture. This is because it not only emanates from the nerve centers of mass culture production but is often suggested and/or promulgated, as mentioned above, by movements bottom up, that is, "from below", through processes of active participation of a public which gives life to fashions, trends and meanings which are then taken up, elaborated and strengthened by companies, mass media, artists, stylists (Savonardo, 2013). In the twentieth century, pop culture more present and powerful they have been, in the West, That US is that British, pervasive to the point of penetrating with great impetus in Eastern cultural markets, in a dynamic that has been considered by many observers to be a fundamental part of the imperialist path of the great Euro-American powers in Asia. For the last thirty years, however, the Japan has become a further diffuser of pop culture at the international level.
From J-pop…
The label used to designate a culture popular typically Japanese, it is J-pop, which initially only designated the light music declined in the various genres known in the West as rock, pop, rhythm & blues, but lately, always in the West and for study needs, the term has been expanded to designate the mass culture Japanese in its entirety. According to Clothilde Sabre (2007) This particular form of pop culture originates from a media-cultural universe having as its base products such as manga, anime and video games, the fashion associated with the urban styles that arise from them, and the marketing gadgets associated with these forms. Developed in the country after the Second World War and initially aimed at young people, it has seen its audience expand, even transcending the geographical boundaries of the Japanese islands.
… a Cool Japan(?)
Taking a critical look at a part of the speech of Koichi Iwabuchi on the topic, to justify the success beyond the national territory many of the elements of the J-pop they would be "odorless, devoid of cultural fragrance, literally, mukokuseki", that is devoid of that strongly Japanese characterization which would allow an identification by the non-Oriental public but above all a non-traumatic, subtle contamination and permeation of cultural objects (Iwabuchi, 2002). This would have allowed, according to the author, the creation of a distorted idea of Japan, in some cases a "non-idea", a separation between the “Japan that is” and the “Japan that is perceived”, a cultural fetishization of a country that is represented by reflection only for its adaptations and syncretisms and not for its traditions, the so-called Cool JapanThe term, coined in 2002, was first used to express the rapid rise of the country of the rising sun in transcultural superpower, thanks to its previously widely described ability to syncretize with Western countries and culture. The result of a conflict over the definition of Japanese culture, the cool japan It has been described as a form of soft power, or "the ability to indirectly influence behavior or interest through cultural or ideological means" (Christine R. Yano, 2009).
Lecturer in Communications and HR Management. Journalist with a degree in Sociology (cum laude). Editor-in-Chief of Sociologicamente.it.
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