This paper addresses the need for the idea of civility in Japan, specifically when assessing impacts and potential effects of contemporary social movements. In order to make this argument, the paper firstly scrutinizes its history and scholarly discussions of the idea among American communication scholars. Secondly, the paper reviews how the idea has been discussed in post-World War II Japan. As the paper confirms the scarcity of civility literatures in Japanese language, it attempts to excavate the idea of civility discussed in fields of politics and public communication. Thirdly, the paper analyzes two specific social movements in contemporary Japan; mannequin flash mob and jitaku keibi tai [home guards]. By and through the analysis, the paper explores the possibility of these new movements for appealing to the public as well as avoiding criticisms while maintaining civility.

This paper analyzes the visual rhetoric of Lars von Trier’s 2003 film Dogville, exploring how the film reconfigures the relation between spectatorship and labor. The main argument of this paper is two-fold: first, the film illuminates the transformation of viewers’ subjectivity from “spectator” to “observer”; and second, it depicts the transition from visualization of labor to laborization of viewing. Focusing on the two essential aspects of the film, this paper critically examines how the unique visual style and aesthetics of the film incorporate “communicative labor” into the realm of cultural consumptions and visual experiences. In so doing, this paper concludes that Dogville visually illustrates the spectacular totalization of “viewing as labor” in contemporary mediascapes and on public screens.