The Association for the Studies of Culture and Representation (hyōshō bunkaron gakkai; hereafter ASCR) was established in July 2006 with its inaugural annual conference as well as general assembly. The preparatory phase included a preparatory academic conference in November 2005. Thereafter, it launched its web-newsletter REPRE in September 2006, and its annual academic journal Hyōshō in April 2007. This essay chronicles the initial phase of ASCR from the viewpoint of an actively engaged young (at the time) scholar.

    ASCR originated in the graduate and undergraduate courses of the Studies in Culture and Representation (hyōshō bunkaron) in the Komaba campus, The University of Tokyo. As a relatively new discipline of humanities, hyōshō bunkaron treats art, philosophy, and culture from a broad and transdisciplinary perspective. This essay discusses the academic and institutional circumstances surrounding hyōshō bunkaron in Japan in the first half of the 2000s, and the need to establish a new academic association whose activities are open to researchers of other academic institutions as well.

    Furthermore, the essay explicates the media environment of Japan in the 2000s, such as the proliferation of desktop publishing software and on-demand printing service, the advent of new critical and literary journals both in commercial and independent forms, and the transitory phase of the Internet culture-from the initial do-it-yourself (DIY) stage to the more commercialized space of global capitalism and attention economy. Situating the launches of REPRE and Hyōshō in these contexts, the essay explains why the former is published as a web magazine, while the latter is published semi-commercially and circulated via the distribution network of books and magazines in Japan.

    In this article, we would like to discuss the state and future of academic journals and the association of academic societies, based on our experience with 5: Designing Media Ecology, a Japanese-English bilingual little magazine we have been publishing since 2014.

    Discussing the state of academic journals as media means discussing the state of academic societies as media. For the Japan Society for Media, Journalism and Communication Studies (JAMS), an association of people engaged in research and practice of media, journalism, and communication, the academic journal is a kind of media practice, and it is much more significant to discuss the state of the journal than any other. Of course, here we will discuss trends in academic societies and academic journals in general, not limited to the JAMS or Media Studies. The significance of overlaying our experience with little magazines with academic journals is that they all share the same aspect of media practice, despite their differences in scale.

    The article is organized into three chapters. In Chapter 1, Mizukoshi, the editor-in-chief of 5, traces how media studies in Japan emerged from the various general magazine media, not among academic journals, since the late 1980s. Then he reflects on three events from the 1990s to the 2010s that, in the end, led to the publication of the little magazine. In Chapter 2, Miyata, the designer of 5, gives an overview and discusses the characteristics of the little magazine, with emphasis on material dimensions such as the paper, magazine size, layout, and cover design, to community dimensions such as developing sales places as a communication sphere. Based on the above, in Chapter 3, we suggest the future vision of academic journals and academic societies in the digital environment of the mid-21^st century.

    This paper aims to describe the academic context in which the authors founded Medium: Journal for Culture and Technology in 2020, attempting to create a new platform for the exchange and accumulation of knowledge about, as the title of the journal suggests, media, culture and technology. Up until now, the authors have published five issues of the journal, which have included peer-reviewed articles, book reviews, translations of essays written in foreign languages and other types of academic texts.

    We begin our discussion by describing the background to our decision to launch Medium. As Ph.D. students at the time, the authors were concerned about the fact that there were not enough platforms for the publication of academic work in media studies in Japan, especially those based on humanities knowledge and methodologies. This situation prompted us to establish a new journal for such a purpose, although the authors did not set any disciplinary boundaries for the journal and sought to make it an interdisciplinary academic platform.

    Next, we outline the process and methodology by which the authors have edited and published Medium. Due to the limited financial and human resources, we had to adopt and develop some strategies to continue publishing an interdisciplinary journal for media studies in a stable and attractive way. Among these, this paper focuses on three key strategies: (i) how we called for and screened the papers to be published in Medium, (ii) how we designed the workflow for publication, and (iii) how we raised sufficient funds for publication and distribution.

    Finally, we offer some reflections on the future of academic publication, based on our experience of publishing Medium. In particular, we point to the need to recognize the structural limitations of the academic journal as a medium in general, and suggest the need to develop alternative platforms that can complement and extend their functions.

    This study examines the history of weather radar in Japan from the perspective of media infrastructure studies. Previous studies have primarily investigated the contribution of observational data to weather forecasting. In addition, the use of radar imagery in television broadcasting in the 1980s has typically been attributed to technological advancements such as digitization and the elimination of ground clutter. However, this study focuses on the distribution processes and practices of diverse actors involved, showing how weather radar became a medium for visualizing meteorological phenomena on television.

    This study analyzes Reports on Radar Technology and Operations, an internal JMA publication that documents radar operation, maintenance and key meeting minutes. Drawing on these documents, it explored the working environments of radar operators, the challenges encountered in information transmission, and the selection process for specific visual formats.

    Two major issues related to information transmission were discussed. The first concerns the mode of data sharing, that is, whether to transmit coded observational data or share them as images. The second one involves the image format, that is, whether to transmit hand-drawn sketches or photographs. Although the sketches were less precise and objective, they were favored for their immediacy and clarity, particularly once the ground clutter was removed.

    However, these sketches were not adapted for television. Weather radar images began to be used in television broadcasts only after digitizing devices were introduced. While previous studies have emphasized technological developments such as digitization and clutter removal as key factors, this study argues that differences in values between meteorological and media professionals were also critical. Television prioritized objectivity and precision, rendering subjective and skill-dependent sketches unsuitable for public dissemination.

    In conclusion, by focusing on the invisible work embedded in distribution processes, this study highlights how infrastructural practices have fundamentally shaped the media experience.

    This study aims to explore the methods of media lifespan research, focusing on planned obsolescence. The reasons for exploring planned obsolescence are explicated, and discussion on planned obsolescence is summarized. Next, the current state of digital media is examined and the need to focus on “quality” apart from “desire” is highlighted. Based on this, a three-step method for media lifespan research is proposed. The first step involves the development of a digital archive; the second is about media archaeology, focusing on media art; and the third pertains to design history research, linking media lifespan to the cultural history of materials. Finally, this study proposes media lifespan as a new research topic in media studies.

    Although house journals are a significant research subject in both media history and business history, the Japanese media studies field has largely overlooked them. This paper investigates the social expectations and meanings attributed to house journals in Japan and how they were understood as media. To this end, we analyze how the significance of house journals was articulated in management texts in the 1950s, when modern house journals began to spread in postwar Japan, focusing on their intelligibility. The analysis reveals that house journals had three main roles: (1) as facilitators of upward and downward communication, (2) as potentially manipulative tools to be wary of, and (3) as scientific media. Furthermore, perceptions of human relations, communication, and house journals varied depending on whether the vertical relationship was understood within the framework of labor-management cooperation or labor-management conflict. Conceptions of communication, a key concept in business administration, were therefore intrinsically linked to the understanding of house journals. This finding suggests the value of industrial sociology in studying house journals as media.

    The concept of DIY as a countercultural practice has shaped a part of what is now known as “surveillance culture,” with the proliferation of social media playing a crucial role. However, in discussions of contemporary surveillance studies, the term “DIY” is often narrowly interpreted as merely “voluntary,” lacking a more nuanced analysis. At the same time, while technologies such as self-tracking have been associated with both surveillance culture and the global spread of sexual abstinence practices, little attention has been paid to the situated knowledge created by the practitioners themselves.

    This study investigates the Japanese sexual abstinence (ona-kin) community in the 2000s to explore how early online DIY culture contributed to forms of bodily self-tracking that predate the rise of social media. Drawing on archived web resources, we trace the emergence of self-control practices through gamified systems originating on 2chan in the early 2000s. From the mid-2000s to early 2010s, users began creating and sharing their own websites and applications. These platforms not only enabled individuals to track the duration of their abstinence and progress through class-based rankings, but also facilitated peer-to-peer communication, knowledge exchange, and ongoing motivation.

    These practices reflect a DIY ethos grounded in anti-consumerism and collective production, supported by bulletin board systems (BBS) that encouraged participation and content creation. At the same time, they foreshadow features commonly associated with surveillance culture—such as gamification, algorithmic regulation, and voluntary self-monitoring—that later became widespread through social media. We concluded that the concept of DIY culture has not only metaphorically but materially influenced the development of surveillance culture. However, this convergence also reveals a tension: while DIY-based self-surveillance promotes self-discipline and improvement, it can also lead to voluntary submission to monitoring norms.

    This paper examines the logic of choices in animation production regarding whether it is produced by insourcing or outsourcing, based on narratives of production operators who are in charge of managerial work.

    In terms of development in the internal division of labor in content production, it is pointed out that cultural differences can be a problem in international collaboration, as well as linguistic differences. Cultural differences can arise in interprofessional or interorganizational division of labor, including outsourcing work in particular, in a domestic context.

    When production operators choose outsourcing for freelance animators, they tend to face the gap. This paper focuses on how production operators interact with domestic or overseas creative workers, and the managerial practices of production operators to deal with cultural differences between professions or organizations

    To collect the workforce necessary to produce the work, production operators sometimes choose freelance workers or creators who belong to other domestic or overseas companies, as well as creators who belong to the same company as the production operator. In outsourcing, production operators conduct the daily managerial work while they consider the cultural differences between other companies or countries, and carefully predict the schedules that freelancers construct individually. Through this examination of the work of production operators, this paper reveals how they manage collaboration to accomplish content production. This paper also demonstrates one of the dimensions of how production structures, mainly organized by a freelance workforce, are maintained.

    This paper analyzes how “entertainment journalism” emerged in the Japanese magazine industry in the 1960s-1980s. With the advent of publisher-affiliated weekly magazines in the post-World War II period, publications began to feature so-called “tabloid” topics, including news drawn from the entertainment industry. Several reporters positioned entertainment news reporting as “journalism.” Entertainment journalism gradually found its way into TV wide shows, and the state of entertainment journalism began to be discussed in independent media criticism magazines.

    This paper traces the discursive construction of entertainment journalism by examining (1) books and essays presenting the inside story of the publishing-affiliated weekly magazine industry, (2) articles from various weekly and monthly magazines and books related to entertainment journalism, and (3) articles in independent media criticism magazines. The analysis reveals that the genre of entertainment journalism evolved through the ways in which weekly and monthly magazine reporters and editors, as well as TV reporters, commented on the state of entertainment journalism. The proliferation of discourses on entertainment journalism, including criticism of it, has enabled the growth of this genre.

    The study is significant for its focus on the entertainment journalism of weekly magazines-a largely ignored realm in media and journalism studies in Japan. Additionally, it depicts the relations among publisher-affiliated weekly magazines, TV wide shows, and independent media criticism magazines that shaped present-day entertainment journalism.

    The purpose of this paper is to analyze how the phrase “dream super express”, used at the time of the construction of the Tokaido Shinkansen, was represented in national newspapers from 1945 to 1964, and what was entrusted to it. This will provide one perspective on why the Shinkansen is still being built in Japan today.

    To do this, I focused on two national newspapers, the Asahi Shimbun and the Yomiuri Shimbun, and collected articles about the Tokaido Shinkansen from their databases. From these articles, I analyze articles that used the expressions “dream” and “dream super express”.

    The construction of the Shinkansen was planned as a solution to the problem of traffic congestion on the Tokaido Main Line. Although the phrase “dream super express” was used from the beginning of the construction project in the late of 1950s, it was used in the sense of a “dream story” that was not certain to be realized. The Shinkansen, which would drastically reduce travel time, was unimaginable at that time.

    However, in the 1960s, with the appearance of test cars and model line sections, the meaning of the phrase changed. This was because people from all over the world and children received the message of the Shinkansen as a medium through test rides and other events, and these things were published in the national press. The phrase “dream super express” came to be used in the sense of a world-class, technological masterpiece of Japan that secured the brilliant “dream” of the community of “Japan” and its “future”.

    It could also be said that this was due to the interaction between the bullet train as media and the bullet train in the media.

    This paper analyzes Travail, Japan’s first job information magazine for women, launched in 1980, focusing on how the ideal images of working women portrayed in the magazine evolved. Targeting primarily women under 30, Travail not only provided job listings but also helped broaden the range of occupational roles perceived as accessible to women. The magazine presented two seemingly contradictory ideals of working women: the “office flower,” representing traditional femininity, and the “superwoman,” symbolizing strength and ambition. In 1984, because of growing public debate over gender equality legislation, Travail underwent a major rebranding called “Jibun Ishin” (“Self-Reformation”). This reformation enhanced the magazine’s Western-inspired aesthetic in its covers, TV commercials, and editorial content, emphasizing the ideal of the empowered, self-actualized working woman. Although these two images-the “superwoman” and the “office flower”-carried inherent tensions, they coexisted, offering readers aspirational yet realistic role models to choose for career transitions and professional growth.

    Based on the analyses of retrospectives and interviews with the Hayakawa Publishing Corporation staff, as published in Hayakawa publications and other sources, this study examines the strategy applied by Hayakawa Publishing to promote mystery fiction as a form of “middle culture” to secure a more prominent position within this cultural landscape, and explores the readership influenced by this strategy. The organization began publishing Hayakawa Pocket Mystery in 1953, seeking readership expansion via renewal of the detective genre, in terms of form-with its unique format and abstract covers-and content-with its translated works for general readers. This approach was carried over into the July 1956 launch of the monthly Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, featuring a saddle-stitched binding, abstract artwork, and emphasis on original publishing. Hayakawa Publishing defined the mystery genre as an intellectual pastime-a notion widely embraced by its readers. Following its strategy to elevate the status of the genre, the classification of mystery publications shifted from Honkaku/Henkaku to Honkaku/English entertainment.

    Additionally, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Hayakawa Pocket Mystery functioned as symbols of aesthetic and intellectual excellence. Mystery, which provided readers with a sense of elitism, held a pre-eminent position within the “middle culture.” Hence, these publications were commonly read on commuter trains, alongside weekly magazines. Readers navigated two perspectives: one that regarded mystery as a form of mental exercise and a way to learn about the U.S.; the other that regarded it as entertainment, justifying it based on its intellectual appeal. Thus, the genre of mystery evolved into intellectual entertainment that appealed to the pride of the elite, and transformed into a form of entertainment that could be excused, even when dismissed by a culturally oriented society.

    This paper uses the NHK War Testimony Archives to analyze user practices in digital archives, particularly focusing on user engagement with the archive through “searching” for specific terms. These practices are unique to digital environments and play a significant role in relaying war memories.

    The emergence of digital archives has not only introduced management ideas and methods distinct from those in traditional archives but has also significantly altered user practices. Particularly, the development of the “search” function, which enables users to input specific terms within the archive and connect to related materials. This process generates “new stories” that go beyond the expectations set by traditional archival management frameworks.

    This paper presents the results of searches for two terms: “Tokkō (特攻)” and “Taiwan (台湾).” The results for “Tokkō” include testimonies from kamikaze pilots and those involved in the kamikaze attacks. In contrast, the results for “Taiwan” reveal multi-layered narratives and two distinct elements: kamikaze pilots stationed in Taiwan, and Taiwanese indigenous people.

    To investigate this multi-layered portrayal of “Taiwan,” this paper draws on Aleida Assmann’s theory of Cultural Memory, which emphasizes focusing on “traces” buried within archives. Identification and connection of these traces facilitate the construction of new stories that challenge dominant memories.

    Finally, this paper applies the Cultural Memory theory to reveal the “traces” identified in the testimonies stored in the NHK War Testimony Archives. Both the kamikaze pilots and the Taiwanese indigenous people talk about their lives in Taiwan during the war. By comparing their accounts, we can identify points of intersection between their memories. Thus, digital archives enable new types of user practices for relaying and transmitting war memories.

    This study focuses on the presence of American spectators at striptease and burlesque shows that gained popularity in occupied and post-occupied Japan. By analyzing the hybridity of these cultures, this research aims to elucidate how burlesque functioned as a site for sustaining and reproducing desires surrounding the “Other.”

    Utilizing postcolonial theory, particularly Homi K. Bhabha’s concepts of “hybridity,” “ambivalence,” and “mimicry,” this study explores the complex cultural negotiations under U.S. occupation. Based on Japanese and American newspapers and magazines from that period, this study investigates how Japanese performers perceived GIs (U.S. military personnel) and how American spectators described Japanese burlesque in their writings. It also examines how theaters shape their performances and advertising in response to these dynamics.

    Focusing on Shinjuku Central-one of the leading burlesque venues-this study analyzes Japanese-language theater pamphlets and both Japanese- and English-language advertisements. GIs, who enthusiastically enjoyed the performances were regarded by performers as ideal spectators whose lively reactions helped create a sense of unity between stage and audience. In contrast, American intellectuals described Japanese burlesque as an “immature and strange imitation,” especially when compared to American burlesque. Their writings reflect an ambivalent gaze that simultaneously acknowledge and deny cultural differences.

    After 1951, Shinjuku Central increasingly developed hybrid performances that incorporated international and exotic cultural elements with divergent strategies used in Japanese and English advertisements. These performances represented Asia and the tropics, constructing an image of the non-Western “Other.” Thus, postwar Japanese burlesque theaters became hybrid spaces where multiple actors-including American spectators, Japanese performers, theater managers, and Japanese spectators-engaged in mutual acts of gazing, through which plural “Others” were constructed.