Transgressing Death in Japanese Popular Culture

This book focuses on the theme of the transgression of life and death boundaries through its representation in Japanese contemporary visual media, more specifically in the manga Fullmetal Alchemist, the animated film Journey to Agartha, and the computer game Shadow of the Colossus. By addressing how the theme was constructed by three different media and what these texts say about it, the book focuses on the narrativization of Japanese ontological anxieties. The book argues that, although these texts deal with matters of afterlife through fantasy worlds, the content of their stories, the archetypes of their characters, and their existential journeys echo contextually-situated conversations. Matters of gender, societal structure and, most of all, the tensions between individuality and sociocentrism not only permeate but structure the interrogation of our relation to the afterlife. This book stands to contribute significantly to media studies, literarystudies, and Japanese studies.

Looks at the framing of death and related themes through new popular culture forms such as manga, anime and computer games and their ontologies Conducts a philosophical investigation of the connections between traditional Japanese art and literature's depictions of the boundary between life and death, and newly emerging reinterpretations of those depictions in contemporary Japanese media products Connects the theme of death with contextual concerns on individualism, collectivism and the construction of new forms of community in contemporary Japan

Autorentext

Miguel Cesar completed his PhD at the University of Edinburgh. He obtained his degree in History at the University Complutense of Madrid in 2013, an MSc in American Anthropology at the same university, and an MSc in Japanese Society and Culture at the University of Edinburgh. He is currently an independent researcher studying the role of contemporary Japanese visual media in the shaping of current discourses on individualism and community.

Inhalt

1. Introduction.- 2. A Genealogy of the EBT Conversation in Japan.- 3. Transgressing Boundaries: Exile and Loneliness.- 4. Rebellion and Transgression in Journey to Agartha.- 5. Tragic Transgressions in Shadow of the Colossus.- 6. Conclusions.