Pop Culture and the Everyday in Japan: Sociological Perspectives

Manga, anime, J-pop, and other forms of Japan’s mass culture are increasingly popular around the world, a situation which requires structural, demographic, and communicative research from sociological perspectives.

In this study, a group of young Japanese sociologists scrutinises the sociological foundations of the ways in which the Japanese people produce and consume cultural commodities and live their everyday lives surrounded by these products.

This study includes an examination of:

The dependency of Japan’s youth on mobile phones. Modes of television viewing. Infatuations with animation characters. Network-formation through rock festivals. Family relations. Local culture. Fashion. Work orientations. The national consciousness as an aspect of their ‘everyday culture’.

The book presents the landscape of Japanese popular culture as depicted by the very sociologists who themselves live these cultural lives within Japan.