Yearly Archives: 2013

3 posts

Cover art for Hikikomori: Adolescence Without End

Book Review – Hikikomori: Adolescence Without End

Saitō Tamaki. Hikikomori: Adolescence Without End. Trans. Jeffrey Angles.  Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013. Amy Borovoy The phenomenon of hikikomori, in which Japanese teenagers and young adults withdraw into their homes or their rooms, limiting contact with outsiders for six months or more, is in many ways mysterious. Is it a […]

Cover art for Passionate Friendship

Book Review – Passionate Friendship: The Aesthetics of Girls’ Culture in Japan

Shamoon, Deborah. Passionate Friendship: The Aesthetics of Girls’ Culture in Japan. By Deborah Shamoon. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 2012. Sarah Frederick. Passionate Friendships takes an ambitiously broad look at 20th century girls’ culture, examining the shōjofrom Meiji literature to 1920s girls’ magazines to 1970s shōjo manga. She argues […]

Cover art for The Soul of Anime

Book Review – The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan’s Media Success Story

Condry, Ian. The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan’s Media Success Story. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. Brian Bergstrom Ian Condry’s new ethnography of anime is a wonderfully accessible and lively tour through a comparatively understudied aspect of the medium: its production and circulation.  Our sustained scholarly interest […]