Customer Reviews

The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture

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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!

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.

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.

This book is a really interesting read if your curious about Japan. It tells you about a lot of popular people from Hitoshi Matsumoto to Beat Takeshi (guy on the covor with gun), popular classic anime from Doraemon (blue guy on cover) to Chibi Maruko-Chan, heros from the Power Rangers to Ultraman (front cover to the left), and alot more! The only problem I have with the book,which isnt the books fault, but it was puplished in 1997 so it's 14 years old and thats 14 years of Japanese pop culture missed like Pokemon! But the buy the book it's worth it!

I read this book back when I was a university student. I made a point of reading at least one article a day (but usually many more), until I had finished it. It really was, and is, a great overview of Japanese pop culture. I certainly still recommend it, however 12-years after it was published, it is certainly looking dated. I live in Japan now and can say with honesty that a large cross section of the current book would be new information to the children and teens of today. I would certainly love to see a second edition published with more content from the last decade!

This is such a great read - I live in Japan and thought it would get me in touch with the people around me. Since most of the entries feature pop culture from the late 1950s through the early 1990s, though, what I've ended up with is a lot of fun stories which the Japanese 30-somethings around me have never even heard!

The result? Everyone thinks I'm that weird foreigner who knows about and likes Pink Lady, who knows how many members there were in SMAP when they first started, and all the different generations of Ultraman.

The author lives in Japan, and does know what he's talking about. He pokes fun at some of the goofy stars and trends which have come along, without ever getting mean about them.

This makes for a highly readable book of short essays - highly recommended!

I lived in Japan for five years from 1991-1996. This book is manna from heaven by a guy who knows everything. I recommend it for greenhorns FOB and longtime permanent residents of Japan. With over 20 years in Japan, Schilling certainly knows his way around!

Everybody of the world may know Hayao Miyazaki's animation movies because his movie won an Academy Award. On the other hands, forigners may have the thought that Japan is a developing country on animation genre. But true Japan charm never finish by only that off course.

The Japanese uniqueness expand to many genres, anime, TV culture, movie, manga, music...

Comics are called Manga in Japan. The manga culture started after World War 2 mainly, the flame work as manga was made by Osamu Teduka(he is no alive now). His famouse manga is Tetsuwan Atomu. The main story is very simple that the main character Atom(robot) beat the evil character. But the age that the manga was published was 1950'. At those days, people worked very hard in debris because the time after WW2 had finished was very short. Atomu was a hero for such hard workers in poverty.
Even now Teduka is a hero for all Japanese manga or anime creaters, for all Japanese even. That reason is always not just the pioneer on the genre, he included hisself messages to his mangas always, for instance anti war philosophy, the opinion for environmental destruction and so on.. By doing such things, manga became to be not just fun genre.

Or as Japanese unique comic genre, there are Syoujo comic(comics for girls). The genre is very unique Japan only. The most famouse manga may be Berusaiyu No Bara. The main theme was Europian knights story in the Middle Ages of France. By using beautiful atmosphere like old France style or pure love story of knights, the creaters tempted girls very well. Japanese girls want such pure love story manga in some cases. Though I do not know the detail emotion because of a man, they may do the imaginary romance in such manga. The tendency have not change until now.

Japanese movies are unique genre in Japan too. Some foreigners may know the name Takeshi Kitano who won Europian movie awards. Japanese movie genre is variouse so that I can not explain by one word. When I dare to explain, the most famouse theme is Yakuza story(Japanese gangu). Off course some Japanese feel fears to Yakuza. But on the other hands, some Japanese watch Yakuza movies. On Yakuza world, the relationship between up and down posiion is very important. For instance, in the some movie, low position yakuza say"I can die for senior yakuzas", that is, absolute loyalty exict in Yakuza world.
Such unique stance will tempt some Japanese watcher, in the age that such stance is being lost, whether the stance is bad or not.

Thank you for reading poor English.

it's not possible. It just is -not- possible to do a pop culture encyclopedia no matter how hard one tries to. If you're going to do one, though, the key ingredients are to pick the lasting phenomenas and to assure your reader there's a depth in it worth covering.

Schilling doesn't cover most of what I remember from Japan. He doesn't cover rock music. He doesn't cover kogaru. He doesn't cover ramune or pocky. Honestly, on an encounter level with other similar books I've found myself insulted by the lack of knowledge presented in their so-called "encyclopedia". But with what he covers, he covers it well and authoratatively and with an expressed but not hideously overt sense of irony about the entire situation.

I've found myself keeping it for a reference piece because what he does cover tends to get incorporated into a lot of what he doesn't.

I like this book very much, and can let foreigner know Japanese culture more and more, deep and deep.