Tag: Japanese Culture and Media,
Visual Framing in Ichikawa’s 1964 Tokyo Olympiad
Depicting a mega-event such as an Olympic Games is generally centered around heroic victories played out in spectacular stadiums. Such films usually combine elements of Nichols’ (2010) poetic and expository modes. But beyond the use of Nichols’ taxonomy, the issue of framing is also paramount in deconstructing an Olympic documentary. At the heart of the …
Framing the Pre-Olympic News Coverage of Tokyo 2020: A Comparative Analysis of Tokyo’s Successful Bid and the Olympic Stadium Design
The Olympics as a global spectacle usually generates a significant amount of international news coverage for the host country. The power of the media to shape public opinion or the ‘complementary role of macro-communications and interpersonal micro-communications through media’ as Jacques Ellul describes it, suggests that the messages and symbols which are now emerging from …
Tokyo 2020 Olympics: Nation Branding Creates an Opportunity for a New Cultural Narrative for Japan
What is the role of the 2020 Olympics in shaping the narrative for Japan’s cultural and national identity? A cultural approach to nation branding targets a range of possible identities for Japan, shaping a narrative for the benefit of external and internal audiences (Kaneva, 2011). Building on the concept of nation branding being developed through …
Rites of Passage in Japanese Traditional Culture
The paper examines the rites of passage in Japanese traditional culture from the perspective of semiotic method, a study of signs, symbols and significations. Sign systems of traditional customs and rituals ensure transmission of cultural values and information between and within generations. Based on the analyses of concrete elements and symbolic content of life-cycle rituals …
Shibata G: Filmmaker of a Hybrid Japan
Shibata Go� is a Japanese contemporary independent filmmaker. He made only a few movies and yet unfairly unknown. Until recently, attention was paid only to his second long-movie, Late Bloomer (Osoi Hito) in 2003 from some independent reviews like ‘The Midnight Eye’ However, his first film, NN891102 (1999), which is also the work from his …
Politeness Strategies Among Japanese College Students: Discussion of the Acquisition of Honorifics and Onomatopoeias
In general, learning the proper use of parts of speech peculiar to the Japanese language, such as honorifics and onomatopoeias, often becomes a problem in Japanese language education. Honorifics are considered to be difficult by many Japanese and are used incorrectly on many occasions. Also, onomatopoeias are frequently used in various cartoon and comic books, …