[ecrea] East Asian Journal of Popular Culture 4.2 published

Intellect is pleased to announce that the East Asian Journal of
Popular Culture 4.2 is now available! For more information about the
issue, click here > https://bit.ly/2RTSy9Z

Content

Editorial

Authors: Ann Heylen And Kate Taylor-Jones And John Berra
Page Start: 145

Editorial: Contextualizing Japanese popular culture in and out of the
Japanese-language classroom

Authors: William S. Armour And Sumiko Iida
Page Start: 147

A brief history of Japanese popular culture in Japanese language
education: Using ‘manga’ in the classroom

Authors: Sumiko Iida And Yuki Takeyama
Page Start: 153

This article discusses a history of Japanese popular culture (JPC)
located in the broader field of Japanese language education,
particularly focusing on ‘manga’. JPC has drawn the public attention
of Japanese language educators following an international boom in the
consumption of anime and ‘manga’ in the early 2000s. However, looking
into JPC and its location in the context of Japanese language
education, its history goes further back to the late 1980s and the
early 1990s, when ‘manga’ and anime began to be used in classrooms.
Despite active attempts using JPC in Japanese language education,
research into this field was still inactive until the end of the
twentieth century. This article is therefore aimed at connecting
classroom practices and research into JPC over time since the late
1980s to look into how JPC in Japanese language education has been
viewed and used differently in its trajectory and implies its future
direction. The article first critically discusses the early days of
JPC, namely ‘manga’ in Japanese language education by reviewing three
periodicals of the early to the mid-1990s – Mangajin, Gekkan Nihongo
and Nihongo Kyōiku Tsūshin. Second, the article overviews research
into ‘manga’/anime and Japanese language education from the late 1980s
to early 2010. The results of the analyses imply that the early days
of JPC in Japanese language education were triggered by the struggle
of the instructors finding teaching resources rather than the
motivation of the learners. In contrast, a number of more recent
studies of JPC in Japanese language education align with both the
learners’ and the teachers’ demands and motivations of daily classroom
practice.

A portrait of Japanese popular culture fans who study Japanese at an
Australian university: Motivation and activities beyond the classroom

Authors: Taeko Imura
Page Start: 171

This article presents a quantitative study with a focus on portraying
Japanese Popular Culture (JPC) fans who take a Japanese language
course at a university. Questionnaires were administered to students
who were studying Japanese as a foreign language (JFL) at a
multi-campus university in Australia. 247 participants (which accounts
for an 85.6 per cent response rate) responded to questions concerning
interest in studying Japanese, future motivation and out-of-class
activities related to JPC. Further data regarding JPC consumption in
retrospect and perceived benefits of JPC in studying Japanese were
collected from those who identified themselves as JPC fans. It
revealed that nearly three-quarters of the students were self-claimed
JPC fans. While both fans and non-fans showed high interest in the
language, interest in traditional culture and travel to Japan, fans
revealed substantially higher motivation than non-fans in all other
accounts, namely future motivation. Non-fans, however, showed
relatively high motivation only in future employment. A prominent
finding was that fans were exposed to Japanese language far more
frequently outside the classroom than non-fans of JPC. The most
popular activities for fans were watching anime, listening to J-pop
music and playing video games. Reading ‘manga’ was also a frequent
activity but they were reading translated ‘manga’. The findings
suggest that future motivation associated with Japan and Japanese
language is an important element in continuing Japanese language
study. This article has implications for the role of popular culture
in foreign language (FL) education, in particular when many FL
learners are interested in popular culture like JPC.

The influence of Japanese popular culture on learning Japanese

Authors: Barbara M. Northwood
Page Start: 189

This article presents the case that because students like Japanese
popular culture (JPC) it can motivate them to take up Japanese
language study, and not only that, but can influence them to continue
their study. This stance is supported with findings from a research
project undertaken in Sydney Australia. Learner motivational
trajectories reveal that a strong interest in JPC is intertwined with
the motivation to learn Japanese sometimes to the point of becoming a
passion. Consequently, harmonious passion (HP) is examined in regards
to Motivation and a striking similarity is found. Learning Japanese
can take place effortlessly through engagement in JPC and is described
as ‘effortless effort’ (e-e). It is linked to directed motivational
current (DMC), an attractor state within complex dynamic systems
theory (CDST). Questionnaire outcomes and excerpts from interviews
with university learners portray the influence of JPC on learning
Japanese and the role it plays in developing language identities.

Using the revised Bloom’s taxonomy to reflect on the teaching of the
Japanese language through ‘manga’ and anime

Authors: William S. Armour And Sumiko Iida
Page Start: 205

This article is a reflective analysis of student course outlines in
which ‘manga’ and anime were the major contributors of Japanese
language input. By using the revised Bloom’s taxonomy to analyse the
transition of teaching these courses, we are able to locate this
article into the scholarship of learning and teaching. The analysis
revealed how the teaching processes employed by the two teachers
involved impacted course design and pedagogy. The analysis also
revealed the reasons for these processes. The article concludes by
providing several suggestions to teachers who plan to use either anime
and/or ‘manga’ in their Japanese language classrooms. We recommend
that a backward design process be adopted, in which the students
themselves create their own method or methods for learning Japanese.

‘Loving nation’ and ‘subjugated nation’: Popular narratives of the
nation in early twentieth-century Shanghai

Authors: Peijie Mao
Page Start: 221

This article examines the nationalist discourse in Shanghai popular
print media during the late Qing and the early Republican period,
focusing on the literary representation and imagination of ‘loving
nation’ (aiguo) and ‘subjugated nation’ (wangguo) in popular fiction.
It discusses the popular nationalism through ‘patriotic stories’
(aiguo xiaoshuo), a fiction genre promoted by Shanghai popular media
in the 1910s, which, on the one hand, responded to the external
plights of the newly established Republic of China, while on the other
shaped the popular imagination of a new national identity and modern
nation state. I argue that ‘patriotic stories’ contributed to this
national imaginary through a discovery of sentimentality, female
emotionality and an increasing fancy of the ‘other’, while
simultaneously producing the competing narratives of romantic love and
patriotic feelings, and private and public realms. This sentimental
narrative was also inextricably interwoven with the narratives of
trauma and humiliation, and an imagination of wangguo in popular
fiction. Viewing patriotism as a cultural production constructed
through memory, imagination and reinterpretation, I suggest that the
popular imagination of nation generated a hybrid and uniquely powerful
mode of nationalistic narrative, one conjoining sentimentalism,
patriotism and commercial interests in early twentieth-century China.

Refining modern beauties: The evolving depiction of Chinese women in
cigarette cards, 1900–37

Authors: Jie Gao
Page Start: 237

Early twentieth-century China was awash in new forms of visual
advertising, each revealing its own aspirations for the country’s
modernization. Along with print media advertising and yuefenpai
(calendar posters), cigarette cards represented a new and widely
viewed vehicle for both selling consumer goods and tacitly endorsing
new roles and behaviours for women during a period of great cultural
change. The manner in which women were depicted in these cigarette
cards from the late Qing Era to 1937 has not been studied as yet.
While cigarette cards were an imported medium, they were tailored to
local tastes and addressed many of the most pressing cultural and
social changes for women during this period. Images of women in
Chinese cigarette cards charted evolving fashion trends, hinted at new
sexual mores, challenged regressive old beauty ideals such as foot and
breast binding, and promoted physical activity as a means of
mobilizing women for national service as war with Japan loomed on the
horizon. Cigarette cards disappeared from China as a result of paper
shortages during the war and were no longer seen as appropriate under
communist rule, but they provide valuable insight into Chinese women’s
history in the first four decades of the twentieth century.

Book Reviews

Authors: Hanae Kurihara Kramer And  Michiyo Yoneno-Reyes And  Stefano
Centini And  Flair Donglai Shi And  Min Hui Yeo
Page Start: 255

Intercultural Communication in Japan: Theorizing Homogenizing
Discourse, Satoshi Toyosaki and Shinsuke Eguchi (eds) (2017)
Cool Japan: Case Studies from Japan’s Cultural and Creative
Industries, 1st ed., Tim Craig (ed.) (2017)
New Hong Kong Cinema: Transitions to Becoming Chinese in 21st-Century
East Asia, 1st ed., Ruby Cheung (2016)
華語電影在後馬來西亞：土腔風格、華夷風與作者論 (Post- Malaysian Chinese-Language 
Film:
Accented Style, Sinophone and Auteur Theory), 許維賢 (Hee Wai Siam)
(2018)

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