The virtual cultural tourist: Film-induced tourism and Kubo and the Two Strings

Over the past two decades, there has been growing research in film-induced tourism. Much of this research is focused on how film influences tourist destination choices. There has been less emphasis, however, on the nature and types of movies that may induce this attraction to such locations. By examining Kubo and the Two Strings (Knight, 2016), a stop-motion animation produced by Laika Studios, this paper aims to apply film studies to explore current understandings of film-induced tourism. This paper argues that Kubo is itself a form of film-induced tourism by positioning the viewer as a virtual cultural tourist whose cinematic experience may be likened to a veritable media pilgrimage through Japanese culture, history and aesthetics. The movie introduces the viewer into an imagined world that borrows from origami, Nō theatre, shamisen music, obon rituals and Japanese symbolism, philosophy and mythology. The resulting pastiche is a constructed diorama that is as transnational and postmodern as it is authentic and indigenous.

The pilgrimage and illustrated journals of David Roberts in the southern Mediterranean Sea and the Near East (1838-39) and the marketing of his illustrated journals in the Shows of London

The body of drawings and sketches created by the Scottish painter David Roberts (1796-1864) during his expedition to the Holy Lands in 1838-9 marked the high point of his professional career. This paper will look at the period after his return to Britain in July 1839, particularly to 1842. It will suggest that although Roberts was no doubt influenced by his Scottish Presbyterian upbringing, religious faith was not as central to his trip as has often been supposed. It was instead through the business acumen of his publisher F.G. Moon that this body of work came to be regarded not merely as an aesthetic achievement but as a cause célèbre. A skilful and coordinated marketing campaign elevated these drawings to the status of a pilgrimage; a contemplative journey through the sites of biblical antiquity. Through detailed analysis of contemporaneous accounts it will show how one of the costliest publications of the era was disseminated, passing from prestigious galleries and the libraries of a wealthy elite through a continuum of public art exhibitions and popular media including panoramas, dioramas and the newly-emerging field of dissolving views. This will provide a rare case study into the interconnectedness of London’s exhibition culture in the 1840s.

Diverse Voices in Translation Studies in East Asia – Nana Sato-Rossberg & Uchiyama Akiko (eds)

Diverse Voices in Translation Studies in East Asia is the 27th volume in the Peter Lang series New Trends in Translation Studies. While each chapter in Diverse Voices in Translation Studies in East Asia independently bears fruit to the particular facet of translation studies that it examines, as a whole this edited volume reads as one sweeping encapsulation of contemporary East Asian translation studies that demonstrates the depth and potential of the field. It engages [...]

Immersed, yet distant: Notes for an aesthetic theory of immersive travel films

The purpose of this article is to highlight a few stylistic and aesthetic principles, common to the genre of the travel film (both documentary and fictional), as employed by immersive media and devices from the twentieth century – such as the Hale’s Tours of the World, Todd-AO, and Cinerama – up to today’s digital systems like Virtual Reality and 4D Cinema. I will discuss how the different experiences of simulated travels, proffered by those media, are all related to a broader aesthetic tendency in creating what I label as enveloping tactile images. Such images are programmed to surround the viewer from every side, thus increasing their spectacular dimension, but at the same time they strive to temper and weaken the haptic solicitations aroused in the viewer by the immersive apparatus itself. In this sense I propose that the spectator of immersive travelogue films is ‘immersed, yet distant’: she is tangled in the illusion of traversing an enveloping visual space, but the position she occupies is nonetheless a metaphysical one, not different from that of Renaissance perspective, because even if she can see everything, the possibility to interact with the images is denied, in order to preserve the realistic illusion. By analysing the stylistic techniques employed to foster the viewer’s condition of non-interactive immersion in the enveloping world presented by the medium, I will consequently address the topic of the conflict that such immersive aesthetics establish with traditional forms of audiovisual storytelling.

Anime tourism in Italy: Travelling to the locations of the Studio Ghibli films

Film-induced tourism, intended as travelling to places where films and TV series have been shot or set, has been extensively studied in the last two decades in several disciplinary fields. For example, the term ‘media pilgrimage’ emerged in media sociology to highlight the sacred dimension these practices may assume, while fan studies have focused on the narrative of affection built upon specific places. Calling forth the relationship between film and landscape, these phenomena have been also explored in the light of film semiotics and media geography. In the past decade, the representation of landscape and the construction of the sense of place in animation benefited from increased scholarly attention; however, the links between tourism and animation still appear under-explored. Japanese animation, because of its prominent use of real locations as the basis for the building of its worlds and the tendency of its fanbases to take action (even in the form of animation-oriented tourism), is an especially promising field, in this respect. In the last fifteen years, a debate on ‘content(s) tourism’ has involved the Japanese government as well as academic scholarship, referring to a wide variety of contents, from novels to films and TV series, anime, manga, and games. The article presents a case study: a discussion of the experience of anime tourists who visited the Italian locations featured in the films by the world-famous animator and director Miyazaki Hayao, especially in Castle in the Sky (1986) and Porco Rosso (1992). The experiences of anime tourists were collected from images and texts shared through the social network Twitter.

What is visual Vaporwave? Vaporwave arts and their history and position in China

By Vaporwave we refer to a digital-born electronic music genre and a trend in visual aesthetics. It emerged in some US-based online communities in the early 2010s, and now its visual expressions are in vogue in Chinese visual media context. In this article, Vaporwave’s aesthetics are discussed through three stages of analysis. In the first part, the paper outlines relevant theories and general features of Vaporwave’s (both visual and musical) aesthetics; next, the paper focuses on Vaporwave's visual characteristics, and, to provide a deeper understanding of its visual aesthetics, I discuss a school of painting derived from early twentieth-century Italy—Metaphysical art. In the second part, the article discusses why and how vaporwave aesthetics are inseparable from some Japanese visual characteristics and how it is represented in China, with particular reference to examples of Japanese comics from the 1980s/early 1990s and one popular Chinese video-focused social media TikTok in recent years. In the third part, the article focuses on illustrating Vaporwave's visual features in the Chinese context in recent years, and several examples are provided.

Cute at an older age: A case study of Otona-Kawaii

The word kawaii, meaning ‘cute and sweet’ in English, has been part of the Japanese culture for centuries. While the word and trend were historically associated with young women and children, there has recently been an attempt to expand the definition of kawaii outside of its traditional borders to other age and gender groups by creating uniquely synthesised words and trends. The newly coined term otona-kawaii [‘adult-cute’] refers to mature women who passed their teen years and continue to dress cute and behave innocent and adorable. In this paper, a focus will be taken upon the new concept of otona-kawaii, and how it is defined and evaluated by the Japanese people. Results of a recent survey conducted among 717 male and female respondents between the ages of 18 to 29, showed that many of them were in favour of the idea of behaving cute at an older age. It was also found that women were more familiar with the term otona-kawaii and had a more positive approach towards it than men. The results of the study suggest that kawaii can be extended beyond infants and may apply to other age populations, such as mature women. The aim of this study is to bridge the gap between kawaii and maturity by providing some empirical evidence and information, bringing to a deeper understanding of the concept of kawaii, contributing to the scholarship of the kawaii culture in Japan.

The Values in Numbers: Reading Japanese Literature in a Global Information Age – Hyot Long

The Values in Numbers: Reading Japanese Literature in a Global Information Age by Hoyt Long (Columbia University Press, 2021) sets out with two aims: to ask what computational methods might bring to the acts of reading and studying Japanese literature; and to open up the Digital Humanities, which in the United States have been dominated by the English language, to alternative insights, challenges, and solutions that arise when the objects of analysis are Japanese texts. The book’s opening sets [...]

Editorial – Fulfilling the purpose of a rich, productive, and successful 2021. And preparing for an as much as possible, definitely “true normal” 2022

Dear readers, students, fellow scholars, welcome to this tenth instalment of Mutual Images Journal, which we have titled “Aesthetic journeys and media pilgrimages in the contexts of pop culture and the creative industries from and to East Asia”, trying to subsume in it the variety of themes the volume hosts. Audaces fortuna iuvat The Latin adage of this introduction states: “good luck helps the daring ones”. We think this is what happened to us and Mutual Images, both the journal and the association as a whole. We had left 2020 with more than just the proverbial mixed feelings: we were all uncertain and confused about what would and could happen in 2021. We won’t give you a summary of the many facets of what 2020 has been for the world, because each of you knows that all too well. But for MIRA, at least, 2021 was a moment of rally and refocus on what we hold dear: research, publishing, and the careful organisation of workshops and similar events. We rolled up our sleeves as so many people around the world did, and, in our microcosm of transcultural research in the humanities, media, cultural sociology, and area studies — whether supported by universities or independently run — we brought home two very nice workshops and a summer school. One workshop was held in Italy and Spain in November 2020 and the other in Japan in January 2021, although, for obvious reasons, both were technically conducted mainly online; and the summer school took place on-site in China, in June 2021. The two workshops saw [...]