Japanese Culture Through Videogames

Examining a wide range of Japanese videogames, including arcade fighting games, PC-based strategy games and console JRPGs, this book assesses their cultural significance and shows how gameplay and context can be analysed together to understand videogames as a dynamic mode of artistic expression.

List of contents

Introduction Part 1: Japanese culture as playable object 1. Katamari Damacy: nostalgia and kitsch 2. Packaging the Past in Ōkami 3. Japan and its Others in fighting games Part 2: Ideology and critique in Japanese games 4. Absentee parents in the JRPG 5. Nuclear discourse in Final Fantasy 6. Bioethics meets nuclear crisis Part 3: History, memory, and re-imagining war 7. An uncomfortable genre: the Japanese war game 8. Hiroshima and violence in Metal Gear Solid 9. The colonial legacy Conclusions

About the author

Rachael Hutchinson is Associate Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Delaware, USA. Her publications include Nagai Kafu’s Occidentalism: Defining the Japanese Self (2011) and Negotiating Censorship in Modern Japan (2013).

Summary

Examining a wide range of Japanese videogames, including arcade fighting games, PC-based strategy games and console JRPGs, this book assesses their cultural significance and shows how gameplay and context can be analysed together to understand videogames as a dynamic mode of artistic expression.

Product details

• Authors: Rachael Hutchinson, Rachael (University of Delaware Hutchinson, Hutchinson Rachael
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.06.2019
• EAN: 9780367111380
• ISBN: 978-0-367-11138-0
• No. of pages: 294
• Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan Series; Routledge Contemporary Japan Series
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Business > Individual industrial sectors, branches; Media Studies, Popular Culture, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Popular Culture, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Regional Studies, GAMES & ACTIVITIES / Video & Mobile, HISTORY / Europe / Nordic Countries