In the 1970s and 1980s, the animation industry in Japan saw the emergence
of distinctive consumers, called “anime fans.” This brought quantitative and
qualitative changes in products in the animation market. The aim of this paper
is to reveal how animators dealt with this change and how they reformed their
working culture. The authors have shown that the working culture underpinned
market movements in the 1970s and 1980s.
Historically, animators preferred working as freelancers on a piece-rate
system rather than as regular workers on a fixed salary. This was due to their
meritocratic occupational norm. However, the number of animation programs
increased during the anime-boom period, and animators were forced to cooperate
with a much broader workforce to produce many programs suitable for the
diverse demands of fans. This limited animators’ discretion. In this study, the
authors wanted to understand how it was possible for the animation industry to
continue supplying the workforce necessary to adapt to market changes during
this time.
For this purpose, the authors analyzed texts in animation magazines from
the perspective of the labor process theory, which explains the relationship
between workstyles and the transformation of markets. One of the key concepts
of this approach is workers’ shared norms. The authors also employed
ethnomethodology, which elicits vivid insights regarding such norms, to analyze
round-table talks and interviews with animators working at animation magazines.
While animators understood the quantitative expansion of the animation
market as limiting their discretion, there was a disparity in how they coped
with the situation. The older generation recognized their skills in detail and
relied on networks built by longtime co-working. The younger generation
accepted the new situation and found their occupational value in the new working
environment through the occupational image of “the artisan.” This image
reflected the new occupational competence and made the formation of peer
communities of young animators possible. This industrial transformation sustained
the supply of a broad workforce, which drew on various expressions during
the anime-boom period.
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