In the West, Japanese culture comes in the form of Power Rangers, Godzilla movies, and Sanrio products, but of course the indigenous pop culture is much richer. Rather than focus on what the rest of the world has already encountered, Mark Schilling provides an encyclopedic compendium of books, movies, music, comedians, and cultural scandals that have had the greatest impact in Japan. Thus, for the outsider, The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture is an insider's guide to post-war Japan. Not content to simply catalog his entries, Schilling provides real depth and analysis in his articles, opening up Japan's rich pop heritage to the world at large.
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Amazon.com Review
In the West, Japanese culture comes in the form of Power Rangers, Godzilla movies, and Sanrio products, but of course the indigenous pop culture is much richer. Rather than focus on what the rest of the world has already encountered, Mark Schilling provides an encyclopedic compendium of books, movies, music, comedians, and cultural scandals that have had the greatest impact in Japan. Thus, for the outsider, The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture is an insider's guide to post-war Japan. Not content to simply catalog his entries, Schilling provides real depth and analysis in his articles, opening up Japan's rich pop heritage to the world at large.
Review
"Japanese pop culture is the beta version of twenty-first century American pop culture. Mark Schilling's encyclopedia is an invaluable guide to a rich but labyrinthine subject. I use it not to look up what I don't know, but to find out what I should know."—Roger Ebert, movie critic
"Over seventy entries cover Japanese popular culture from 1945 to the present, covering music, comedy, fads, popular media, and all aspects which have fueled Japanese popular concerns over the decades. This does more than create listings of movements: it provides the historical references and connections essential to understanding how these interests developed."— Midwest Book Review
"Over seventy entries cover Japanese popular culture from 1945 to the present, covering music, comedy, fads, popular media, and all aspects which have fueled Japanese popular concerns over the decades. This does more than create listings of movements: it provides the historical references and connections essential to understanding how these interests developed."— Midwest Book Review
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More About the Author
Born in Zanesville, Ohio in 1949, Mark Schilling arrived in Tokyo in 1975 and has lived there ever since. He has been reviewing Japanese films for The Japan Times since 1989 and reported on the Japanese film industry for Screen International, a British film trade magazine, from 1990 to 2005. He is currently Japan correspondent for Variety. His articles on Japanese culture and society have appeared in a wide range of publications, including The Asian Wall Street Journal, the Japan edition of Newsweek, USA Today, Interview, Winds, The Japan Quarterly and Kinema Junpo.
In 1997 Schilling published The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture and in 1999 Contemporary Japanese Film, both with Weatherhill. In 2003 he published The Yakuza Movie Book -- A Guide to Japanese Gangster Films with Stone Bridge Press.
He has contributed to several other books, including Japan Pop! (M.E. Sharpe, 2000), Ichikawa Kon (Cinematheque Ontario, 2001) and Encyclopedia of Contemporary Japanese Culture (Routledge, 2002), as well as translating and writing the introduction for Princess Mononoke -- The Art and Making of Japan's Most Popular Film of All Time (Hyperion, 1999).
In 2005 he programmed a 16-film retrospective devoted to the Nikkatsu Action genre for the Udine Far East Film Festival and published an accompanying book, No Borders, No Limits: The Wold of Nikkatsu Action with the festival organization, Centro Espressioni Cinematografiche. In 2006, he contributed to Asia Sings!, a book the Centro published as part of the Udine festival retro on Asian musicals. His latest book, No Borders, No Limits: Nikkatsu Action Cinema, was published FAB Press in September, 2007.
Schilling lives in Tokyo with his wife Yuko and his daughter Lisa. His son Ray is a graduate student at the University of Manchester.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A good attempt,
By
This review is from: The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture (Paperback)
Before you purchase this book, as yourself, "when have I ever seen a review of popular culture that covered everything?" The answer, probably, is never, and if so, this book won't change that. The author states as much in the introduction. Having said that, the book is very good at what it attempts to do, namely give novice readers a basic understanding of the key elements of Japanese popular culture in the post-War era. A book which covered every fad, popular music group, TV program and movie during that time period would be larger than several phone books and would have a hard time selling. What this book does well is describe, in a fair amount of detail, the important cultural icons, from Misora Hibari and Sazae-san, through Pink Lady and Doraemon, ending with SMAP and Sailor Moon. If you're looking for a primer on Japanese pop culture over the last 50 years, this is the book. If you already have deep personal knowledge or are interested in only one thing (like anime), you may be disappointed. One other small problem with the book is that because it is in print form, the information is fixed in time, but Japanese culture goes on. In other words, some of the stuff in this book is dated. The concept of the book might better be served by a web site, but I doubt that Mr. Schilling could make a profit with such a site. If anybody decides to try though, please let me know. I'd visit!
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Japanese popular culture you might not know about,
This review is from: The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture (Paperback)
Instead of cataloging the people and subcultures on the commercial fringe that Americans and other non-Japanese may be more familiar with, Schilling takes care to give the reader a broad view of actual Japanese pop culture from the post-WWII period through the mid-nineties. As to the criticism that Schiller chose to leave many things out of his encyclopedia: any other 320 page encylopedia on pop culture that spanned fifty years would be much the same. As Schiller says himself in the Introduction, "The book could easily have contained twice as many articles, but I tried to put more emphasis on depth than breadth of coverage ..." I feel I now have a better understanding of Japanese 20th century pop culture, not just of the quirky, fringe, or subcultural elements that happen to make their way to other countries or have a large presence on the internet.
15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Dissapointing,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture (Paperback)
After living in Japan for a few years I was really looking foward to reading this book and taking a stroll down memory lane. I couldn't believe how much of Japanese pop culture the author chose to leave out,not to mention this book is visually dull. For the money I paid I would have at least exptected "color" pictures. For other types of books this wouldn't matter but I would think if your going to write a book of this kind, ideally a comprehensive VIEW of popular culture in Japan, detailed photographs would have been nice instead of the minaturized black & white photos that show up every 2-3 pages. Besides if your going to write this like a coffee table book,you might as well throw some pretty pictures in.
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