Daniel White, "Administering Affect: Pop-Culture Japan and the Politics of Anxiety" (Stanford UP, 2022)
In\xa0Administering Affect: Pop-Culture Japan and the Politics of Anxiety\xa0(Stanford UP, 2022), Daniel White draws on extensive fieldwork in government ministries and government-adjacent organizations to explore Japan\u2019s current \u201cpolitics of anxiety,\u201d the ways in which state administrators have transformed anxieties about Japan\u2019s global geopolitical status into future-oriented programs of national branding and revitalization based on a narrowly defined vision of pop-culture as synecdoche and savior. Examining the so-called \u201cCool Japan\u201d soft-power strategy and policymaking decisions to nominate anime favorite Doraemon as a cultural ambassador and icons of young women\u2019s culture as \u201cAmbassadors of Cute,\u201d White shows that the anxieties driving Japan\u2019s administrators are disseminated into the culture broadly. He also pays close attention to the gender politics of these campaigns and the instrumentalization of women as agents of national branding and soft-power politics.\n\ufeffNathan Hopson\xa0is an associate professor of Japanese language and history in the University of Bergen's Department of Foreign Languages.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies