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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 1999. / Bibliography p. 289-312.

This dissertation focuses on the production and development of a conspicuous, widespread culture phenomenon in contemporary Japan, which is characterized by numerous young, mediapromoted personalities, or pop-idols, who are groomed for public consumption. The research, based on eighteen months of in-depth fieldwork in the Japanese entertainment industry, aims to contribute to the understanding of the allegorical role played by pop-idols in the creation of youth culture. Pop-idols are analyzed as personified symbols that function as vehicles of cultural production. The principal issues suggested in this research include: the criteria of popidol production; the ways in which pop-idols are produced; the perceptions of pop-idol performances by producers, performers, and consumers; the ways in which idol personalities are differentiated from each other; the ways in which pop-idol performances are distinguished from other styles or genres; and the social, cultural, political, economic, and historical roots as well as consequences of pop-idols' popularity. These issues are explored through the examination of female pop-idols. The single, most important function of pop-idols is to represent young people's fashions, customs, and lifestyles. To this end, the pop-idol industry generates a variety of styles that can provide the young audience with pathways toward appropriate adulthood. They do this within their power structure as well as their commercial interest to capitalize on adolescence - which in Japan is considered the period in which individuals are expected to explore themselves in the adult social world. The stylized promotion, practiced differently by promotion agencies that strive to merchandise pop-idol images and win public recognition, constitutes a field of symbolic contestation. The stage is thus set for an investigation of the strategies, techniques, and processes of adolescent identity formation as reified in the construction of idol personalities. This dissertation offers a contextualized account of dialogue that occurs between capitalism, particular rhetoric of self-making, and the lifestyle of consumers, mediated by pop-idols and their manufacturing agencies that function together as the cultural apparatus. The analysis developed in this dissertation hopes to provide theoretical and methodological contributions to the study of celebrities in other social, cultural, and historical settings.

This dissertation focuses on the production and development of a conspicuous, widespread culture phenomenon in contemporary Japan, which is characterized by numerous young, mediapromoted personalities, or pop-idols, who are groomed for public consumption. The research, based on eighteen months of in-depth fieldwork in the Japanese entertainment industry, aims to contribute to the understanding of the allegorical role played by pop-idols in the creation of youth culture. Pop-idols are analyzed as personified symbols that function as vehicles of cultural production. The principal issues suggested in this research include: the criteria of popidol production; the ways in which pop-idols are produced; the perceptions of pop-idol performances by producers, performers, and consumers; the ways in which idol personalities are differentiated from each other; the ways in which pop-idol performances are distinguished from other styles or genres; and the social, cultural, political, economic, and historical roots as well as consequences of pop-idols' popularity. These issues are explored through the examination of female pop-idols. The single, most important function of pop-idols is to represent young people's fashions, customs, and lifestyles. To this end, the pop-idol industry generates a variety of styles that can provide the young audience with pathways toward appropriate adulthood. They do this within their power structure as well as their commercial interest to capitalize on adolescence - which in Japan is considered the period in which individuals are expected to explore themselves in the adult social world. The stylized promotion, practiced differently by promotion agencies that strive to merchandise pop-idol images and win public recognition, constitutes a field of symbolic contestation. The stage is thus set for an investigation of the strategies, techniques, and processes of adolescent identity formation as reified in the construction of idol personalities. This dissertation offers a contextualized account of dialogue that occurs between capitalism, particular rhetoric of self-making, and the lifestyle of consumers, mediated by pop-idols and their manufacturing agencies that function together as the cultural apparatus. The analysis developed in this dissertation hopes to provide theoretical and methodological contributions to the study of celebrities in other social, cultural, and historical settings. / Arts, Faculty of / Sociology, Department of / Graduate

This thesis will examine how gay men are depicted in mainstream Japanese pop culture. To be discussed are: gay-themed comics for girls, mainstream movies in which the protagonists are gay, and finally, gay men's magazines which are gay authored and consumed. In examining how fantasies in these texts respond to the needs of various readerships, it is possible to understand how important and challenging it is for gay Japanese men to create identities of their own, identities which will allow them more possibilities than the prevailing facade of compulsory heterosexuality, complete with marriage and children.

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Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2017-12-21T11:25:57Z No. of bitstreams: 1 André Noro dos Santos.pdf: 29750228 bytes, checksum: e9169b8e0a8eb8f264ac2242908e7884 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-12-21T11:25:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 André Noro dos Santos.pdf: 29750228 bytes, checksum: e9169b8e0a8eb8f264ac2242908e7884 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-11-27 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The objective of this thesis is to analyze the behavior of the Brazilian otakus and how they imagine and translate their obsession with the Japanese culture. As an empirical object we chose the manga created by Brazilians and some otaku communities reunited in social networks and pop culture events. The hypothesis is that in the translation of the otaku culture and its media products, rather than a language search that could generate, for example, a "mongrel manga", is the mimesis and the assimilation of a behavior and a way of life which, in the Brazilian version, becomes quite unique and, not rarely, distant from some stereotypes generated by the Japanese themselves. In this regard, we observe that the Brazilian otakus have nothing to do with the image of the introspective otakus that marked the beginning of the movement in Japan. The theoretical fundation was based on foreign (e.g. Azuma and LaMarre) and Brazilian (e.g. Luyten, Nunes and Almeida) bibliographies that analyzed the phenomenon. In methodological terms, the research was also extended to the social networks, which constitute the major means of communication of the otakus, as well as to places of concentration of these groups such as the Liberdade neighborhood in São Paulo. The results indicate that the Brazilian otaku culture was gradually becoming another way of commercializing an imagined Japan (Greiner 2015 and 2017), differing from other experiences by focusing exclusively on Japanese culture, without adopting a generic Asian image / O objetivo desta tese é analisar o comportamento dos otakus brasileiros e o modo como imaginam e traduzem a sua obsessão pela cultura japonesa. Como objeto empírico elegemos o mangá criado por brasileiros e algumas comunidades otaku reunidas em redes sociais e eventos de cultura pop. A hipótese é que na tradução da cultura otaku e de seus produtos midiáticos, mais do que uma pesquisa de linguagem que poderia gerar, por exemplo, um “mangá mestiço”, trata-se da mimese e da assimilação de um comportamento e de um modo de vida que, na versão dos brasileiros, torna-se bastante singular e, não raramente, distante de alguns estereótipos gerados pelos próprios japoneses. Neste sentido, observamos que os otakus brasileiros nada têm a ver com a imagem dos otakus introspectivos que marcaram o início do movimento no Japão. A fundamentação teórica partiu de bibliografias estrangeiras (e.g. Azuma e LaMarre) e brasileiras (e.g. Luyten, Nunes e Almeida) que analisaram o fenômeno. Em termos metodológicos, a pesquisa foi também ampliada para as redes sociais, que se constituem como o principal meio de comunicação dos otakus, assim como para locais de concentração desses grupos, como o bairro da Liberdade em São Paulo. Os resultados indicam que a cultura otaku brasileira foi, aos poucos, se transformando em mais um meio de comercialização de um Japão imaginado (Greiner, 2015 e 2017), diferenciando-se de outras experiências por focar exclusivamente na cultura japonesa, sem adotar uma imagem genérica asiática

This thesis examines shojo manga (Japanese comics for girls) as a site of the subversion of gender. The focus will be on stories about cross-dressing, as the crossdressed heroine poses from the outset questions about the nature of girls within shojo manga and the girls who are supposedly reading the texts. The analysis takes place at two levels: visual language and narrative. Over the course of five chapters, focusing on a couple of series in each, this thesis will show the various ways categories of gender and sex are undermined in five different subgenres. Yet gender norms are recuperated in the end. The manga always return to the figure of the shojo , the ambiguously gendered "not-quite-female" female that must expire at adulthood and the regulatory function heterosexuality plays in this inevitable demise. Nevertheless shojo manga readers need not necessarily share this end. The various ways that the reader is positioned both visually and narratively suggests that her gender and sexuality remains ambiguous and indefinable.

This thesis follows my previous studies of modern Japanese society and popular culture. I will especially focus on gender stereotypes, particularly negative stereotypes concerning women who refuse to bow to a substantial pressure from society endowed with a strong Confucian tradition. It was this very tradition - together with a foreign concept akin to the Western domesticity cult - what gave rise to the ideal of "good wife, wise mother" (rjósai kenbo), which at least in some form remains quite tangible even in contemporary Japanese society. One of the tasks this thesis wants to undertake is to describe how the negative stereotyping of women who stood in either conscious or natural opposition towards this ideal affected portrayal of women in Japanese popular culture (especially comics), which can be a very good perpetuator of all kinds of stereotypes. At the same time, I would like to find out whether it managed to partially subvert at least some of the negative images of women who refused to be good wives and wise mothers. Key words: gender stereotypes, Japan, popular culture, comics, rjósai kenbo, manga

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