Can Cool Japan save Post‐Disaster Japan? On the Possibilities and Impossibilities of a Cool Japanology
This article considers Cool Japan in light of catastrophe, first theoretically through a phenomenological analysis of Cool Japan and Cool Japanology, suggesting that the study of Cool Japan itself is way of uncooling the object of inquiry, itself a reaction to the apocalyptic realities of everyday life since the dawn of the modern world. The article finishes with a sociological reflection on current events through a detourner of the sekai kei genre in Summer Wars' inclusion of two sociological types in its rendition of catastrophe. This article then is intended as a preliminary step to understanding the specificity and commonalities of Japanese cool power through an understanding of the phenomenon of cool and the contents to which cool often refers.
As part of ‘two essays in dialogue’ with a piece written by Dale Hudson, this article ::: advances critical discussions of the documentary film given the context of, and ::: challenges posed by, digitality. Specifically, it analyses ‘the digital’ in Michael ::: Takeo Magruder’s {transcription} and [FALLUJAH. IRAQ. 31/03/2004] and ::: Christina McPhee’s La Conchita mon amour as a means to advance discussion ::: of documentary beyond claims to realism and documentary truth towards what ::: Trinh T. Minh-ha calls ‘boundary events’. Tay argues that digital video, editing ::: and compositing expose the limitations of visual evidence to represent trauma.