Consuming the Past: Japanese Media and the Twenty-first Century

Prof Katsuyuki Hidaka (Ritsumeikan University)

Abstract

Through an analyses of themes of ‘nostalgia’ in contemporary Japanese media and cultural products, this lecture, based upon Professor Hidaka’s recently published book Shōwa Nosutalujia To Wa Nanika (What is Shōwa Nostalgia?) (Sekai Shisōsha 2014), argues that the narratives and representations in contemporary media, commonly dismissed as a simple yearning for the recent past, are actually critiques of Japanese post-war society. There has been a recent ‘boom’ in the number of Japanese cultural products representing a deeply nostalgic longing for the ‘heydays’ of Japan’s period of high economic growth in the 1960s and 1970s. This phenomenon has been called the ‘Shōwa thirties boom’ (Shōwa sanjyū nendai būmu) or ‘Shōwa thirties nostalgia’ (Shōwa sanjyū nendai nosutarujia). Although this yearning for the late Shōwa period was in evidence in the early 1990s, it was the huge box office success of the 2005 film franchise Always: Sunset on Third Street (Ōruweizu sanchōme no yūhi) that marks the advent of the nostalgia ‘boom’. Remakes of television dramas of the 1960s and 1970s, and recent drama serials copying the style of the Shōwa 30s have also attained great popularity. Moreover, recent years have seen the production of a number of television documentaries, magazine articles and popular songs focusing on the ‘glory’ of that era. The main objective of this lecture is to explore what sparked ‘Shōwa nostalgia’ at this particular historical juncture and how the late Shōwa period is represented in the media today. In addition, the lecture explores the socio-cultural meanings underlying this proliferation of Shōwa nostalgic content.

Speaker’s Biography

Katsuyuki Hidaka PhD is a Professor in Media and Cultural Studies at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto and also a Research Associate at the Centre for Film Studies, SOAS, University of London. Before he became a Media Studies scholar, he had served as a TV director and producer for NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) for many years. During his career as a TV journalist and director of numerous news and documentary programmes, he developed an academic interest in the manner through which media industries integrate collective interests and memories into media narratives. Hence, he pursued postgraduate study at the University of Leeds in the UK, leaving NHK ten years ago to turn his full attention to academic endeavours, for which he received a PhD at SOAS. Although his current research interests are diverse, they could be classified broadly into the following areas: first, memories, the past, modernity and media; secondly, media narratives after catastrophic disasters and social change (e.g. Japanese media since 3/11); and thirdly, the application of “Radical Democracy” (Laclau and Mouffe) to media and cultural studies. He has published widely in these fields including his recent book, Shōwa Nosutalujia To Wa Nanika (What is Shōwa Nostalgia?) (Sekai Shisōsha 2014).

Organiser: Japan Research Centre

Contact email: centres@soas.ac.uk

Contact Tel: +44 (0) 20 7898 4893/2

Sponsor: Co-hosted by the Centre for Film Studies