Japan

Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times

Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times

Language: English

Pages: 390

ISBN: 0520260082

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


This history of Japanese mass culture during the decades preceding Pearl Harbor argues that the new gestures, relationship, and humor of ero-guro-nansensu (erotic grotesque nonsense) expressed a self-consciously modern ethos that challenged state ideology and expansionism. Miriam Silverberg uses sources such as movie magazines, ethnographies of the homeless, and the most famous photographs from this era to capture the spirit, textures, and language of a time when the media reached all classes, connecting the rural social order to urban mores. Employing the concept of montage as a metaphor that informed the organization of Japanese mass culture during the 1920s and 1930s, Silverberg challenges the erasure of Japanese colonialism and its legacies. She evokes vivid images from daily life during the 1920s and 1930s, including details about food, housing, fashion, modes of popular entertainment, and attitudes toward sexuality. Her innovative study demonstrates how new public spaces, new relationships within the family, and an ironic sensibility expressed the attitude of Japanese consumers who identified with the modern as providing a cosmopolitan break from tradition at the same time that they mobilized for war.

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The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Silverberg, Miriam Rom. 1951– Erotic grotesque nonsense : the mass culture of Japanese modern times / by Miriam Silverberg. p. cm.—(Asia Pacific modern : I) (Philip E. Lilienthal Asian studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 13: 978-0-520-22273-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Popular culture—Japan—History—20th century. 2. Japan— Civilization—1912–1926. 3. Japan—Civilization—1926–1945. I.

their idols fallen on hard times. This came at a time, of course, when readers of all classes were experiencing the effects of the depression in Japan in terms of such hardships as salary reductions, unemployment, and starvation in the countryside, where many urban transplants sought haven. Even as articles about family suicides were appearing in the press, readers of Eiga no Tomo were treated to gossip about the star system. The June 1931 issue of Eiga no Tomo offered a photo layout of a Sunday

Japanese film world was “in crisis” because of rationalization. The term hijojidai (emergency era) had been put into wide usage by 1933 in such propaganda as the “Emergency Era Proclamations” of the military and in the talkie film Emergency Era Japan, featuring War Minister General Araki Sadao. After the onset of war with China, it was now a repeated term in Eiga no Tomo, as in the article “Primer for the Emergency Era,” which focused on restrictions on the importation of foreign films. At the same

shadows—distinct from everyday life—and that they should focus on the spiritual qualities of moviemaking. And half a year later, a full-page ad for Ohinata Mura (Ohinata village), the movie based on the move to Manchuria of half the denizens of one impoverished village in Northern Japan, may have called for the “Building of Greater East Asia linking Japan-ManchuriaChina.” But opposite the photograph of two East Asian men, one clad in a Western suit, cigar in hand, the other leaning on his walking

state ideology of family. Before examining each of the three topics it is worth looking back to the official version of the housewife’s place in the family-state, relying on the extensive scholarship made available by Japanese scholars.3 The Household Becomes Modern Life / 145 the family-state of shufu no tomo Basing his work on pre- and postwar scholarship, Ito Mikiharu provides a subtle analysis of how two combinatory premises held the prewar familystate (kazoku-kokka) ideology together:

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