Shinji Oyama | Ritsumeikan University (original) (raw)

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Papers by Shinji Oyama

International Journal of Cultural Policy, 2023

The Weekly Shōnen Jump, published by Shueisha, is widely seen as the most important publication i... more The Weekly Shōnen Jump, published by Shueisha, is widely seen as the most important publication in global manga culture and home to some of the world's most iconic media franchises, including Dragon Ball, and yet remains largely understudied. This article interrogates how Shōnen Jump's success, steered by editors who are often deemed 'uncreative' within Japan's inflexible employment framework, challenges the Western ideal of creativity that is associated with autonomy and flexibility. The inquiry is conducted through two primary processes: firstly, the recruitment of editors-considered as creative managers-through 'Shukatsu,' a Japanese system that predominantly favors elite university graduates, who often lack a passion for manga or relevant education and work experience; and secondly, the dynamics of their collaborative relationships with manga artists. Highlighting Shueisha's exceptional job security and stability, akin to a 'last paradise' for a select few creative professionals, this examination challenges the homogenized Western narrative of creative labor, as a class characterized by precarity and challenges the conventional perception of creativity itself.

Book synopsis: While a decade ago much of the discussion of new media in Asia was couched in Occi... more Book synopsis: While a decade ago much of the discussion of new media in Asia was couched in Occidental notions of Asia as a "default setting" for technology in the future, today we are seeing a much more complex picture of contesting new media practices and production. As "new media" becomes increasingly an everyday reality for young and old across Asia through smartphones and associated devices, boundaries between art, new media, and the everyday are transformed. This Handbook addresses the historical, social, cultural, political, philosophical, artistic and economic dimensions of the region’s new media. Through an interdisciplinary revision of both "new media" and "Asia" the contributors provide new insights into the complex and contesting terrains of both notions. The Routledge Handbook of New Media in Asia will be the definitive publication for readers interested in comprehending all the various aspects of new media in Asia. It provides a...

Media International Australia, 2009

In this article, I analyse the regional strategy of luxury Japanese cosmetics brands to investiga... more In this article, I analyse the regional strategy of luxury Japanese cosmetics brands to investigate the claim of the Japanisation of Asia. I begin by examining the emergence of pan-Asian advertising for Japanese cosmetic brands, then make the case for an emphasis on branding, as distinct from advertising, which changes the way in which we understand this regional phenomenon. I explore the different ways in which a brand engages consumers, and argue for a sober assessment of the relative importance of advertising (and the salience of image of country of origin) in the overall branding process. I then follow the regional circulation of Japanese brands and media contents, neither of which can any longer be understood coherently in terms of a national framework such as Japanisation. I argue that the globalisation of advertising in Asia is a complex process shaped by large multinational corporations and a disjunctive flow of media contents, and that a more pronounced focus on brands will...

This thesis is an attempt to think through a number of questions arising from the intense circula... more This thesis is an attempt to think through a number of questions arising from the intense circulation of Japanese brands in East Asia, which I call the East Asian Brandscape, and, in doing so, produces an innovative conceptual framework to understand brands and branding. The ubiquitous presence of American brands has been linked to Americanization, particularly Hollywood film’s global dominance, and is summarized in the phrase ‘trade follows the films’. Similarly, the East Asian brandscape has been linked to Japanization, an intense circulation of Japanese popular culture throughout the region, and may be summarized in the phrase ‘trade follows manga’. This Japanization discourse is based on the unsubstantiated assumption that the globalization of Japanese brands is closely linked to the presence (or the lack) of symbolic appeal of Japanese popular culture in a given market. This thesis investigates the largely understudied processes in which the globalization of Japanese brands is taking place in the context of Japanization through case studies on Japanese luxury cosmetics brands. In the first section, ‘analysis from outside’, the thesis draws out a contour of the East Asian brandscape, which is shaped by large multinational corporations such as L’Oreal, Shiseido, and Estee Lauder. In global capitalism, brands are routinely exchanged across national borders by these corporations in order to manage and thrive on local differences. Drawing on Appadurai, this thesis argues that we need to understand brandscape as the organization of otherwise disjunctive scapes, rather than in the image of the Americanization model. In the second section, ‘analysis from inside’, I explore the ways in which the branding is reformulated as the design and management of consumers’ experience in/through a great number of brand interfaces – material and immaterial – in which semantic and symbolic registers (such as Japan’s symbolic appeal) are engulfed in the overall affective ambience of brand experience. What is at stake in this reconfiguration, it is argued, is the unequal distribution of skills and finance resources across national borders required to global brand management, rather than distribution and consumption of national symbolic power. What emerge through the analysis of both outside and inside is a complex and contradictory relationship between Japanese brands and globalization that is no longer understood in a national framework.

Oyama, Shinji (2009) The east Asian brandscape: distribution of Japanese brands in the age of glo... more Oyama, Shinji (2009) The east Asian brandscape: distribution of Japanese brands in the age of globalization. In: Berry, C.; Liscutin, N. and Mackintosh, JD (eds.) Cultural Studies and Cultural Industries in Northeast Asia: What a Difference a Region Makes. Hong Kong: ...

Book synopsis: In many organisations creativity is so often seen as the preserve of a small numbe... more Book synopsis: In many organisations creativity is so often seen as the preserve of a small number of people with “artistic temperaments” but in my experience all sorts of people have creative abilities which can be used to the benefit of a “creative” organisation. The task of a manager is to find ways of exploiting this. This Handbook provides the reader with insights to help them and others to promote the kind of creativity that adds real value.

Handbook of Management and Creativity, 2014

プライマリー国際関係学, 2021

国際関係学を初めて学ぶ読者へ向けた入門書。山積する課題から目をそらさず、21世紀の国際関係を学び研究するための基盤を提供する第９章グローバル化とメディアキーワード：メディアの媒... more 国際関係学を初めて学ぶ読者へ向けた入門書。山積する課題から目をそらさず、21世紀の国際関係を学び研究するための基盤を提供する

第９章グローバル化とメディア

キーワード：メディアの媒介作用、グローバル化、メディア効果、同質化、メディア生産の準中心地、グローバルメディア、

本章のねらい（学習目標）
・メディアを国際関係学における主要なテーマの一つとして考えるための基本的な知識と問題設定について理解する。
・メディアと媒介された経験について理解する。
・メディアの効果に関して同質化と異質化の言説を理解する。
・メディアのグローバル化の複雑さを理解する；グローバルメディアという言説を理解する。

contact me for the full text.

This chapter, which is written for undergraduate media studies textbook, addresses some of the mo... more This chapter, which is written for undergraduate media studies textbook, addresses some of the most glaring issues regularly found in Cool Japan discourse. In doing this, it introduces the concept of nation branding, globalization, self-orientalism, and creative industries as well as short case-studies on Kenzo and Netflix Japan originals. (in Japanese. Email me for a full text.)

Original title
「クールジャパンって本当にクールなの？」『基礎ゼミメディアスタディーズ』石田佐恵子、岡井崇之編. 世界思想社 (2020)

ERIA (Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia) Discussion Paper Series, 2019

This paper addresses rarely asked questions: is Cool Japan a creative industries policy and, if s... more This paper addresses rarely asked questions: is Cool Japan a creative industries policy and, if so, what kind of creative industries policy is it? It addresses these questions by examining Cool Japan's differences from the UK derived and globally very influential creative industries model. The paper will try to make sense of these differences by looking at how the Japanese creative industries comprise businesses of different sizes with a varied history and prestige, how those companies have complex and contrasting relationships with various state organisations, and how the forces of globalisation and its free-market and neo-liberal economic ideologies affect companies in various sectors differently. This will challenge the dominant narrative of Japanese Creative Industries and Cool Japan in which, it is generally believed, the former embraces globalisation and digitalisation, and the latter is responsible for broadening the appeal of Japanese popular culture abroad. This paper reveals the complexity and diversity of the creative industries from socio-cultural and politico-economic perspectives often overlooked in the Cool Japan discourse 1

(This is a shortened and modified version of my previous paper appeared in the Handbook of New Media in Asia)

Five: Designing Media Ecology, 2018

In this seventh and final essay of this series, I recollect what it was like to be putting into p... more In this seventh and final essay of this series, I recollect what it was like to be putting into practice the much-needed idea of provincializing Anglo-American cultural studies via (new) Japanese cultural studies in London, the center of knowledge production in the discipline. Such a project represents both ‘influx of knowledge from the peripheries to the center, and embedding of the peripheral formation of cultural studies in the center. It offers an account of running a Japanese cultural studies program in the heart of British Cultural Studies, and how doing so was filled with particular kinds of opportunities and challenges both at individual and institutional levels.

越境する想像力：ポピュラー文化のトランスナショナリゼーション, 2018

Five: Designing Media Ecology, 2017

Abstract: This essay, which is the sixth in a seven-part series, introduces a recent rise of Cult... more Abstract: This essay, which is the sixth in a seven-part series, introduces a recent rise of Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI) studies in the UK. It reviews some of the more prominent programs focused explicitly on the CCI looking closely at typical program and curriculum design and their theoretical scopes. The essay acknowledges criticism that has been raised within cultural studies against CCI, but nevertheless argues that the CCI is developing its own critical research agenda and deserves more attention from media and cultural studies scholars in Japan. First, such critical research agendas could be readily applied to the research on media and cultural industries in Japan, which could be delivered to much wider audience exist for the CCI studies. Insights from Japan could contribute to the CCI by injecting fresh perspectives and understandings in terms of the Japanese CCI’s distinctive organization, its negotiation of globalization, and distinct ways in which such notion of cultural labors, employments and/or reward are articulated within the CCI in Japan. It also enables us to have comparative perspective in widening critically research on Japanese CCI, which so far is focused too narrowly on Cool Japan, Japan’s most visible but by no way the only creative industries policies.

Platforms become buzzword of our time. Internet platforms such as Facebook and YouTube play an in... more Platforms become buzzword of our time. Internet platforms such as Facebook and YouTube play an increasingly important role in our social life connecting not only friends and family members, but also consumers and producers, or governmental or non-governmental organizations and citizens. They are becoming key site where large segments of contemporary social and cultural life are played out and new politics of culture are emerging. This essay, which is the fifth in a six-part series, reviews recent development within media and cultural studies in emerging field of platform studies in general and the notion of algorithmic power in particular. This essay argues that new cultural studies cannot afford not to engage with emerging politics of platform and algorithm in order to understand and critique the ways in which the power works in contemporary culture and media.

Five: Designing Media Ecology, Dec 2015

This essay, which is the fourth in a six-part series, introduces a short history, theoretical sco... more This essay, which is the fourth in a six-part series, introduces a short history, theoretical scope, and key thinkers of ‘digital labor’ debate that reformulates traditional distinction between production and consumption. Since Tiziana Terranova’s seminal text Free labor in 2000, the issue of digital labor, in which consumption becomes productive activity, has become one of the hottest topics within media and cultural studies. These works question persistent discourse that sees the Internet as liberating and democratic media to argue that it instead allows capital to colonize our most private space and time rearticulating the power and inequality in ways unforeseeable a decade ago. This essay reviews some of the most representative texts in this genre and assesse their strengths and weaknesses. It concludes that Japan could offer fresh insights to this debate in terms of its distinctive social-media ecology, different uses and appropriation of global social media, and culturally specific ways in which such notion of labor, cooperation and/or reward are historically articulated in order to question some of the Eurocentric assumption implicit in this debate.

International Journal of Cultural Policy, 2023

Media International Australia, 2009

Handbook of Management and Creativity, 2014

プライマリー国際関係学, 2021

第９章グローバル化とメディア

キーワード：メディアの媒介作用、グローバル化、メディア効果、同質化、メディア生産の準中心地、グローバルメディア、

contact me for the full text.

Original title
「クールジャパンって本当にクールなの？」『基礎ゼミメディアスタディーズ』石田佐恵子、岡井崇之編. 世界思想社 (2020)

ERIA (Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia) Discussion Paper Series, 2019

(This is a shortened and modified version of my previous paper appeared in the Handbook of New Media in Asia)

Five: Designing Media Ecology, 2018

越境する想像力：ポピュラー文化のトランスナショナリゼーション, 2018

Five: Designing Media Ecology, 2017

Five: Designing Media Ecology, Dec 2015

King's College London Asian Cultural Policy Seminars, 2022

Cultural Typhoon 2021, 2021

Labouring Creativity in the Global Context Cultural Work in East Asia and Beyond, 2019

Why do they not talk about creativity in Japanese Creative Industries? Shinji Oyama Ph.D. Profes... more Why do they not talk about creativity in Japanese Creative Industries?

Shinji Oyama Ph.D.
Professor, Ritsumeikan University
s-oyama@fc.ritsumei.ac.jp

Japan has built a formidable reputation as one of the major forces in global cultural production. Its game, animation, fashion, and music have left a particular mark on global popular culture; and a much more extensive range of Japanese popular culture has enjoyed the substantial impact on the formation of East Asian popular culture. While Japan certainly possesses the active and diversified creative industries and is continuously ranked high on various global creativity ranking, far less is known about creative workers in Japan. There has been a growing number of researches that are focused on Japanese popular culture; nevertheless, there are very few studies on the issue of workers in Japanese creative industries. This is in contrast to growing attention to the issue of cultural workers amongst scholars researching media and culture on a global scale. This paper is an attempt to start analyzing the distinctiveness and some of the most critical issues concerning workers in Japanese creative industries in the context of heightened global scholarly interests in and conceptualization of creative workers. This paper will reveal often-neglected tensions and fissures that exist within the Japanese creative industries to analyze the issue of power and inequality in one of the largest creative industries in the world.

It starts by addressing how the global creativity discourse function in Japan particularly in Cool Japan policies and discourse in the last two decades. The paper then gives some background knowledge about the structure of Japanese creative industries and discuss domestic dominance of what we call ‘old media,’ the core of the creative industries including television, newspapers, magazines, and advertising. In Japan, the old media still exerts tremendous influence upon national cultural production but has so far eluded scholarly attention at the cost of excessive attention on anime and manga, Cool Japan mainstay which is globally popular but is somewhat peripheral. This often-neglected view on Japanese creative industries reveals the tensions and fissures within the industries and the diversity of workers involved in the cultural production. In short, cultural workers within old media enjoy the unrivaled salary, perks, prestige, and job security that are protected by many regulations and their close connections with the political and business elites. For example, amongst the top 20 companies with the highest average salary, seven are old media, which would be unthinkable in the West where such list, if exist at all, would be dominated by large banks or the big technology companies. Many influential ruling LDP politicians had their sons and daughters at one of the big old media company. Cultural workers within the old media are not known and rarely talked about in terms of their creativity and innovation, because these are so matter-of-factly outsourced and burdened by young (and not so young), temporary, freelancing, female and precarious workers. The paper analyzes this uneven distribution of opportunity across gender, class, and social capital in the process of recruitment, working practices and other HR related practices that are different to the one that is known to the Western model of creative industries management.

The dominance of the old media is partly explained by how well they are coping with the forces of globalization and neo-liberalization. The old media more or less successfully eschew globalization in a very nation-centric way, sometimes at odds with the neoliberal logic driving creative industries, and their worker management, elsewhere. What becomes apparent in this paper is how creativity is managed very differently in Japanese creative industries than the Western model that is considered the norm in the literature on the issue of creativity and its management.

This paper analyzes trans-East Asian fashion production by looking at the different ways in which... more This paper analyzes trans-East Asian fashion production by looking at the different ways in which Japanese fashion companies enter the East Asian market. Firstly, it considers those Japanese fashion companies that market their home-grown brands, taking advantage of ‘Cool Japan’, the Japanese national branding campaign. Second, the paper discusses those Japanese fashion companies that bring either licensed or acquired Western fashion brands to East Asia. Third, it will consider some Japanese fashion brands that are licensed and/or acquired by Asian companies, which then bring the brands to Asian market. By tracing transnational movements of fashion, the paper attempts to reveal the complexity and contradictions of the process that complicate the notion of Japanese fashion and inter-East Asian fashion production.

This paper analyzes inter-East Asian fashion production by looking at the different ways in which... more This paper analyzes inter-East Asian fashion production by looking at the different ways in which Japanese fashion companies enter the East Asian market.

This paper looks at the biographies of iconic British fashion brands in Japan by analyzing the na... more This paper looks at the biographies of iconic British fashion brands in Japan by analyzing the nature and extent of transnational partnerships and collaboration between/within cultural industries in the UK, Japan and other East Asian counties/cities. Specifically, the paper focuses on British fashion brands including Paul Smith and Vivian Westwood, which are acquired by or licensed to a global Japanese company, and have had far larger sales in Japan than in the rest of the world. This will highlight the ways in which the complex transnational and tranas-local transactions of trademark, finance, design, marketing and manufacturing arrangements challenge conventional, that is, national understanding of creative industries as well as location of creativity in disjunctive international division of labour.

This paper looks at the biographies of iconic British fashion brands in East Asia by analyzing th... more This paper looks at the biographies of iconic British fashion brands in East Asia by analyzing the nature and extent of transnational partnerships and collaboration between/within cultural industries in the UK, Japan and other East Asian counties/cities. This paper is focused not only on the consumption, circulation and production of Western styles and images but also on the transnational and translocal movements of designers, finance, materials and final products. Specifically the paper is focused on British fashion brands that have either been acquired by or licensed to global Japanese companies, which then markets them across Asia. This will highlight how the complex transnational transactions of trademarks both in the form of acquisition and licensing along with design, marketing and manufacturing arrangements challenge conventional, that is, national understanding of creative industries as well as location of creativity in increasingly disjunctive international division of labour.

Japan has highly differentiated and one of the world's largest and most complex celebrity economy... more Japan has highly differentiated and one of the world's largest and most complex celebrity economy and culture. Yet it has rarely subject to serious scholarly attention. In this presentation I will map out differences between Japanese celebrity culture and Anglo-American models, which is considered global and standard, and draw up some lines of inquiry to start conversation between celebrity studies in Japan and international English language academia.

ICA Pre-Conference: Communication with Cool Japan, 2016

Creative industries is becoming increasingly important concept in Japan in recent years. The focu... more Creative industries is becoming increasingly important concept in Japan in recent years. The focus in many debates on the economy is no longer exclusively on manufacturing and productivity, for which Japan is long known for, but has shifted to nurturing creativity and culture and becoming a branded cool nation. There are a growing number of researches done in this area but most of them are focused on popular but quite niche genre of manga and anime. Most such research is concerned with so-called Cool Japan, which is a discourse about the popularity of Japan’s selected contents in overseas market and a set of economic, political and diplomatic policy to capitalize on it. The result is a lack of research on the core of creative industries, including television, internet, advertising and publishing, that hold far larger economic, political and social power than those niche products usually included in Cool Japan. Addressing this limitation in existing research, this essay presents a fuller picture of Japanese creative industries outside the limited perspective of Cool Japan and analyzes the complex and contradictory relationships between the two. The uneasy relationship between the twos reveals how different sectors are reacting differently to the force of globalization and how this uneven process are deeply embedded in the political, legal and economic specificities of contemporary Japan and the ongoing re-configuration of power.

「クールジャパン」に注目が集まる中、日本ブランドのグローバル化そのものにも強い関心が持たれています。そうした報道の多くは、日本ブランドの浸透には、ポピュラー文化の海外での支援を含めた官民挙げての... more 「クールジャパン」に注目が集まる中、日本ブランドのグローバル化そのものにも強い関心が持たれています。そうした報道の多くは、日本ブランドの浸透には、ポピュラー文化の海外での支援を含めた官民挙げてのオールジャパンの取り組みが必要だと声高に主張します。しかし、果たして日本ブランドのグローバル化とはそのような護送船団方式で「達成」しうる類いのものなのでしょうか。この講演では、批判的ブランド理論を紹介することで、日本ブランドのグローバル化という現象をもう少し複雑に捉える視点を提唱します。

International Conference on Affective Capitalism. University of Turku, 2014

Creative industries is becoming increasingly important topic in Japan in recent years. The focus ... more Creative industries is becoming increasingly important topic in Japan in recent years. The focus is no longer exclusively on productivity but has shifted to nurturing creativity and culture and becoming a branded cool nation. In this lecture I would like to talk about opportunities challenges that this shift involve but particularly what I see as fundamental contradictions in Japanese creative industries discourse.

CFP for international conference, 2019