First book of its kind to examine images of women in Japanese consumerism. Explores a variety of media targeted at women - in particular magazines, but also television, popular literature and consumer trends. Covers visual and print media.

Examining images of women in Japanese consumerism, this book explores a variety of media targeted at women - in particular magazines, but also television, popular literature and consumer trends.

This is a fascinating look at various forms of Japanese popular culture: pop song, jazz, enka (a popular form of ballad genre music), karaoke, comics, animated cartoons, video games, television dramas, films, and idols -- teenage singers and actors. As pop culture not only entertains but is also a reflection of society, the book is also about Japan itself -- its similarities and differences with the rest of the world, and how Japan is changing. Relations between the sexes, shifting gender roles, social and family life, Japan's cultural identity, and views on love, work, duty, dreams, war and peace, good and evil, beauty and ugliness, life and death -- all are cast in a revealing light by Japanese pop culture as presented in this book. The authors are all specialists on their subjects, and in addition to analyzing Japan's pop culture they give the reader a direct taste through the presentation of story plots, character profiles, song lyrics, manga (comics) samples, photographs and other visuals, as well as the thoughts and words of Japan pop's artists, creators and fans. The book features 32 pages of manga plus 50 additional photos, illustrations, and shorter comic samples.

This anthology has a cultural focus and addresses issues of race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality.

DIVA study of the "modern" woman in Japan before World War II./div

Re-Imaging Japanese Women takes a revealing look at women whose voices have only recently begun to be heard in Japanese society: politicians, practitioners of traditional arts, writers, radicals, wives, mothers, bar hostesses, department store and blue-collar workers. This unique collection of essays gives a broad, interdisciplinary view of contemporary Japanese women while challenging readers to see the development of Japanese women's lives against the backdrop of domestic and global change. These essays provide a "second generation" analysis of roles, issues and social change. The collection brings up to date the work begun in Gail Lee Bernstein's Recreating Japanese Women, 1600-1945 (California, 1991), exploring disparities between the current range of images of Japanese women and the reality behind the choices women make.

Fran Lloyd focuses on the resurgence in the imaging of sex and consumerism in contemporary Japanese art and the connections they establish with the wider historical, social and political conditions within Japanese culture.